Kat with a K

Gossip Girl 4.1: "Belles de Jour"

Apparently I have more Gossip Girl thoughts to add to the liveblog. Read on!

First, a shallow observation: Was it just me or were all the guys looking really hot this episode? Nate, Dan, even Rufus. The hiatus was good to them. I mean, not that they're usually ugly or anything, but they seemed even more attractive than normal.

Let's go plot line by plot line here . . .

Georgina: what is she UP to? I'm assuming Dan's not really the father, of course. (And I loved that Rufus is suspicious of doctors in the paternity test thing. Continuity from last season's fake illness plot! Overall, I liked how Rufus and Lily were responding to this, although Lily was slightly quick to embrace Georgina.) Did Georgina just not want the baby but not want to give it up for adoption, so she decided Dan was the best of her options for where to leave him? Since it's her, I'm assuming there are some sort of evil machinations going on, not just cold feet about the baby. Who was she speaking to in Russian?

Nate: he's so adorable and means so well, but I wish they would give him some plots that didn't revolve around his cluelessness. For one thing, anyone who spent his whole childhood and early adolescence in such close proximity to Blair should be used to watching for signs of extreme drama and diabolical plots. I like how it seems that he was the one person Dan was talking to, though. I love their bromance, especially since Nate and Chuck are kind of over for the moment.

Juliet: Mystery! What is she up to? They were obviously trying to make us think she was Gossip Girl, but that's way too obvious. She was clearly researching the group and trying to infiltrate it. Was she trying to get to Nate for some reason, or was she using him to get to someone else? Nate would be the obvious pick in a quest to get access to Chuck or Serena, say. Maybe even Blair. The book Juliet was reading when she met Nate was The House of Mirth, and the main character is named Lily Bart - that CAN'T be a coincidence, what with Lily and Bart Bass. The book is about Lily's downward spiral as she makes choices that strip her of her money and social status, so that could easily be an analogy for whatever Juliet's plot turns out to be.

Blair and the prince: such an interesting echo of the Marcus situation. At first I was annoyed that she seemed to be regressing and worse than ever with her snobby class issues, but the more I think about it, the more I think that is in fact how she would respond to the loss of Chuck. She let down a lot of her defenses in order to love him, and now that he's gone she's desperately clinging to all her rules of how things are supposed to work because that's the only way she can continue to function.

Blair and Serena: At heart, this is the relationship that the show is really about. But I thought they made that a little too explicit in this episode, with them actually talking about their rivalry, etc. I find it more believable when they can't really acknowledge that, because they know they need each other so much.

Chuck: I love love love the "Henry Prince" thing, on two levels at least. One is that the play he was looking at was Henry V, which is about the debauched prince growing up and becoming a real leader, and that's so perfect for both what Chuck was trying to do most of last season and what his story will probably be this season. The other is that I love that Chuck starts calling himself Prince right when Blair is literally looking for a prince. This is how they work: Blair is a dreamer but she gets paralyzed by trying to make things play out the way they do in her fantasies. Chuck sees a lot of the same dreams, but he's willing to just do what it takes to make them happen regardless of how things are "supposed" to work. Sometimes this is good and sometimes it ends up being bad. But in this case - Blair wants a prince? Chuck IS a prince, just through the power of his mind. And it doesn't matter that he isn't actually, because what Blair can't admit to herself is that she doesn't actually need a prince - she just needs
Chuck. So in a way he's not lying. He's being what she needs, even if she can't really see it yet.

And non-plot lines: Has Eric dropped off the face of the earth? At least they mentioned Jenny. I don't really miss Jenny, but I miss Eric. And I thought even parents as oblivious as Rufus and Lily should have noticed that Dan and Chuck were MISSING FOR MONTHS. For one thing, you'd think Dan would have called one of his parents the first time he was alone with a crying baby. Oh, and Vanessa! She was being all reasonable and had some good lines and I do not like this. If I can't hate Vanessa, my worldview is shaken.