Last night, confessions spilled forth from the lip-glossed mouths of the characters on Gossip Girl: Juliet confessed to Serena that she had drugged her. Lily, confronted by Serena, admitted that she forged her daughter’s signature on a an affidavit falsely accusing her teacher of rape and that she was planning on selling Bass Industries behind Chuck’s back. And Anne, Nate’s mother, admitted something that all Upper East Siders know but would ordinarily never admit: The parties are way more important than family. But despite his urging everyone else to “get everything on the table,†Rufus stayed mute about the origins of his deepening tan. Mystic, or tanning bed? We guess they had to save something for the rest of the season.
And now, onto our weekly reality index!
More Real Than Blair Washing Reidel Stemware in L’Occitane Shampoo:
• The Gossip Girl homepage reads: “Serena Seeks Support.†After we stopped laughing for seven minutes, we decided this should be the title of the series. Plus 1.
• Of course Blair would force Dan to go to Sant Ambroeus
to start off his mission with her. You have to break him before you can train him! Plus 2.
• That Blair drinks espresso doppio explains a lot of things. Plus 1.
• Blair: “You can’t show up at a ball and not expect at least one social-climbing doppelgänger to show up and impersonate you.†Plus 2, because, well, we have no evidence to the contrary.
• After all the insane things Juliet has done, it is only the point at which she drugs Serena when, according to Blair, she goes “straight off the rails and heads straight for crazy town.†Plus 1.
• Of course Blair changes into checkered Chanel and a beret, the better to sleuth with. Even Dan has on his Inspector Gadget coat. Plus 5.
• For the first time in recent memory, Dan is forced to face the fact that Serena is his half step-sister, which spurs a gushing confession to the receptionist at the Ostroff Center. Plus 3. Luckily Blair, wearing her best Mary Magdalene hair, is there to cut him off.
• Dan: “That’s your plan? Disguises and accents?â€
Blair: “I never said anything about accents … Can you do any?†Plus 2.
• Dan, of course, is the first person to think of actually using Gossip Girl for good, rather than evil. Plus only 5, because it’s not like her to hold back information. Still, “Find the bitch†is the best e-mail ever to be sent on television.
• For once, an in-box on this show is full of standard, boring e-mails. Half of Blair’s missives are from Dorota. Plus 3. (But would Blair really have a friend named “Misty�?)
• Blair: “Is the pedal to the metal? Because I swear if I shoved my feet through the floor I could run faster.†Plus 2.
• Blair doesn’t know how to drive. Plus 10.
• Dan: “First, my dad swapped a ‘69 Les Paul for this car, and it’s a collector’s item. And second it was either this or the Lincoln Hawk van which, all I’m saying, has graphics.†Plus 3.
• Dan talks about how he’s going to start writing the whole episode but never does it. Plus 3.
• The only sign that Juliet’s family is as poor as we’ve been lead to believe is that her mother, who lives in a sizable, well-furnished home, wears jeans and fails to have her hair done in a chignon every day. Plus 3.
• Blair calls Juliet Ben’s “Mystic Pizza townie sister.†Plus 1.
• The Post business reporter’s completely perplexed look after having been in an actual businessperson’s apartment. Plus 2.
• Chuck’s face hurts from smiling. Plus 5.
• A boy who is passed out at the high school party has “I [heart] balls†written across his forehead. A penis directed at his mouth would have been more accurate, but that’s pretty close. As Blair says, “At least he’s owning it.†Plus 5.
• Dan: “What are we going to do, just walk up to her and pull her hair?
Blair: “For starters!†Plus 2.
• Damien: “So how’s your sister?â€
Dan: “She’s been living in Hudson.â€
Blair: [Brightly.] “I banished her!†Plus 2.
• Ether is now a “turn of the century roofie.†Aw. Plus 2.
• Damien says Juliet “is a townie†like it’s an epithet. He can barely spit the word out. Plus 4.
• Juliet drives a Mercury. And she still, as an adult, has to stop for snooty boarding school kids who stumble out in front of her car without looking. No wonder she was almost driven to murder. Plus 5.
• High school age Damien and Serena are amazing. No points, but, adorable!
• Serena asks to discuss “arbor imagery in the poems of Sylvia Plath†with her hot teacher. Plus 2.
• Ben: “The ability to have thoughts and not act on them is what separates man from beast.†Sounds like a citation, but isn’t! Classic boarding school professor BS. Plus 4.
• Serena: “You know, I think he was the only guy to ever say no to me.†Plus 10. “I was in love with him.†Oh, the frigid daddy issues are crushing us.
• Blair: “Serena had an affair with her teacher because let’s face it, its’ Serena and what else is there to do in Connecticut, then she came to her senses and discarded him like last season’s Chanel booties. THEN, he became a crazy stalker and Serena pressed charges. That should be a warning to you, Humphrey … Never-to-be-realized literary aspirations? Check. He’s a townie … You’re from Brooklyn, so, check. Giving up everything to become Serena van der Woodsen’s stalker? Check! Face it, Humphrey, you are one knitted tie away from Mr. Donovan territory.†Plus 30 for that monologue.
• Serena, to Juliet: “And then you just left me for dead, in a motel room? Why, because of Nate? Or Colin?â€
Juliet: “No, you stupid bitch, because you destroyed my brother’s life!†Plus 10, because how many people on this show have been wanting to call Serena a stupid bitch and haven’t?
• Lily: “Eric, somewhere in between a Marlins jersey and absolute truth lies the better part of decorum. Becoming an adult means learning that.†That was basically a jumble of words that would mean nothing in any other context. But we totally get it. Plus 2.
• Chuck leaves before Thanksgiving to “New Zealand to enjoy a taste of summer and girls who enjoy sex games in the rainbforest.†That sounds like a one way ticket to diseasetown, but since Chuck has already been there countless times … Plus 2.
• Blair’s subtly downcast face after Chuck leaves for New Zealand: Plus 1.
• Rufus is driving out to Montecito alone. Blair: “See, I told you road trips are strictly for Humphreys.†Plus 2.
• Blair to Nate, when he shirks cleaning duty: “I stuck my hand up a turkey’s butt, you’re not getting out of your job.†Plus only 1, because let’s be honest, food-phobe Blair did no such thing.
• Chuck: “Good-bye, friends, Dan.†Plus 1.
Total: 138
Faker Than Rufus Owning a Vintage Morris Minor Convertible:
• Why exactly did Blair, who went over to Dan’s apartment to explain what had happened, wait to explain it all again the next day over espresso? Minus 3.
• When you are in a treatment center, they do not allow you to have weapons. Then why is Serena allowed to wear a full set of kashakas around her neck? Minus 4.
• Chuck and Lily went to meet with the Post for some business story as “damage control.†So they could get Photoshopped with devil horns and surrounded by flames? We don’t think so. Minus 2.
• Eric is completely unimpressed when Blair and Dan show up at the Ostroff Center to tell him that Serena wasn’t actually doing drugs. “She’s getting the help she’s needed for a long time,†he says. We’re sorry, what? Did he not hear when they said his sister was drugged and driven crazy by a lunatic? Minus 4.
• Also, since when is Eric so anti-scheming? He should have taken one look at Blair’s beret and Dan’s trench and said, “I’ll get my fake mustache and monocle!†Minus 2.
• Anne Archibald: “No party is more important than family.†Ha! Hahahahahahah. If there’s one thing we’ve learned on this show, it’s that parties are more important than anything except moving the plot forward. Minus 4. (It would be more, but later Anne admits: “The truth is, I need this more than I need your father.†This being cocktail parties. Awesome.)
• No way would Blair have a Dell. Nor would she have some bogus “@day9mail.com†domain address. And, aaaaugggh. Bing! We’re blind! Minus 10.
• So, according to Bing, there are no Cornice Avenues in America, let alone a “252 Cornice Avenue.†Not even in Cornwall, Connecticut. In fact, there is no Knightly School in Cornwall, Connecticut, or any boarding school at all, in real life. But there is one in the Farrelly brothers movie Outside Providence, starring the late, great Jonathan Brandis. So … wash?
• Blair and Dan are bouncing around in that vintage convertible in such a fake manner, it’s like they are in an improv-comedy troupe and someone in the audience called out, “A bus driver and a prostitute!†Minus 2.
• Rufus is judgey about Lily day drinking? He’s a house husband! He probably is already drinking Chardonnay out of a mug on the veranda during brunch. On Tuesdays. Minus 4.
• Why would this party be going on during the day? Part of the thing about boarding school is that they keep you busy at all times during the day so you can’t do exactly that. Maybe in the early evening, or early morning … Minus 2.
• There’s no way Nate’s mom’s business managers would just let the Captain make real-estate transactions, from jail. Minus 5.
• You know, Captain, they don’t make you shave your head in prison. It’s not Auschwitz. Minus 3. Look at how adorable Ben’s hair is!
• Why is it Christmas season but there is still fall foliage in Connecticut? Minus only 1, because we prefer Connecticut to be remembered this way, always.
• Sorry, but kids don’t go back to their parents’ houses in Connecticut to buy drugs on break, as Damien says. They stock up on drugs at school to take home for break. Either that or one time they stash a big bag of junk behind a the Joy of Sex in the basement bookshelf because they know no one will find it there and use it bit by bit over the year when they come home. We’ve heard. Minus 5.
• Wait, doesn’t Nate know Juliet’s last name? Couldn’t they have just found her that way? Moreover, why didn’t they just call her? Minus 3.
• “The trip to the Mary McCarthy Library at Vassar was so not worth it.†This may have been the most awkward piece of exposition in a show filled with exposition. But they made the effort to find a real place, so we won’t take away any points.
• How does Blair know that Dan hasn’t been writing? Minus 5.
• In an amazing triumph of set design, Lily is in a picture over Chuck’s left shoulder wearing the EXACT dress and earrings — and hairdo — she is wearing at the moment of the confrontation. No points, but, wow.
• Serena’s impassioned speech to Lily about how she put the wrong man in prison is undercut by her cameltoe. Minus 2.
• A title card reads: “One Week Later�? No points, but it goes to show that everything on this series happens in one- or two-day spans, and anything longer than that needs a written explanation.
• Serena shows up to Ben’s prison in a sparkly minidress and top. Because nothing says “I’m sorry you’ve been wrongfully doing time for raping me†like sequins. Minus 2.
Total: 54
Despite fact that this episode contained both a “We don’t have time for tea after all†scene and a person-waiting-in-the-dark-then-suddenly-flicks-on-the-light scene, this episode fell on the side of reality, which befits an episode of truth-telling. We’ll see if the clichés fare as well next week year, when Dan and Blair are sure to accidentally make out and hate themselves for it.