Sex, drugs, booze, and a little nighttime breaking and entering–sounds like just another evening out for the East Side kids, but this time there were consequences.
When the Gossip Girl crew sneak into their school’s pool for a little midnight swim, we are treated to a few minutes of what the CW does best: show scantily clad teenagers acting like, well, scantily clad teenagers. Unfortunately, when Andrew Collins ends up unconscious at the bottom of the deep end, things go horrible wrong for all concerned.
Turns out the new headmistress at Constance High isn’t into playing favorites and the GG crew is finally confronted with something the show has been missing all year: a problem that money can’t solve–or, almost.
In short succession: Blair lies her way out of trouble, Chuck takes the early blame, and Serena knows too much. And just when it looks like things are taking a turn for the familiar–with Rufus warning Dan that the idle rich will sooner throw him under the bus than take one for the team–Nate decides to take one for the team–Team Blair, that is. Suddenly, suspension and expulsion are in the offing and Serena’s bad girl past comes back to haunt her good girl future with a vengeance.
How this problem got resolved was one of the niftiest twists all season:
1) Lily decides to not marry the living ATM that is Bart Bass and instead she follows her heart down poverty lane.
2) Serena–who for some reason knows nothing about her mother’s past–demands Lily stay the hell away from her boyfriend’s daddy.
This leads to one of the best TV moments I’ve seen in a long time–the scene of Lily, all tight-lipped and noble-suffering, standing alone on the streets of NYC. Talk about making a sacrifice for one’s children.
Of course, Lily might be capable of the big gesture, but that doesn’t mean she likes to sleep alone. Her jump back into Bart’s bed puts the big bank back in business. Suddenly, a well-placed endowment gets Serena out of trouble, confirms Dan’s worst fears and makes me want to marry Lily myself–if only I could afford her.
Purposefully, I’ve ignored Blair and Chuck and Vanessa’s little Sex, Lies, and Videotape sub-plot, since it seemed more like filler than fact.
Besides again reducing Chuck to a cliché–a stupid turn for the show’s most interesting character–I’m guessing, with the new season in the offing, we haven’t seen the last of the mystery of ‘what happened to Blair’s virginity?’
Then again, I can’t be the only one who has trouble believing that a gal with as much lingerie as she would keep her cherry intact until her 18th birthday–but what’s a little verisimilitude in the face of so much soap operatics.