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Thursday, March 24, 2011

Gossip Girl-Someone actually doesn’t like Serena? Best. News. Ever! (My thoughts on episode 4.03: The Undergraduate)

I have to say that I absolutely loved this episode, because for once Serena wasn’t treated like she’s God’s gift to the world who always gets her way. Blair and Serena were just starting the year at Columbia University and there’s a very exclusive sorority house, the Hamilton house that if you’ve been chosen to be a member of, you’re given a key. They went to the house to get their keys, because they both assumed that they had chosen to be a member of. However, when they got there they found out that Juliet is the key master of the house and she tells them that there’s only one key left. Blair and Serena both assumed that it’s for Serena, and Serena tells Blair that she wouldn’t take the key, but surprise! Juliet tells them that the key is for Blair, not Serena, so Serena is forced to leave the house since she’s not a member.

The episode opened with the Gossip Girl website being down for maintenance, but just as Blair gets her key, the website goes back up with a post about Chuck’s return to the Upper East Side with Eva and a post about Georgina being off on a beach.

Chuck meets with Lily to apologize for disappearing for months. He also tells her about Eva and how much he likes her. He also tells Lily that he wants to introduce Eva to everyone, and they both decide that Chuck should bring Eva to the party that they will all be going to soon so that the family’s first meeting with Eva wouldn’t be so formal and stressful. Later Lily talks to Rufus about Chuck and how he wants them all to meet Eva, Rufus is skeptical about the idea, but Lily convinces him to go along with it and keep an open mind. After that, Rufus talked to Eric about the whole situation with Chuck and Eva. Eric was very reluctant to believe that Chuck had really changed, pointing out the fact that Chuck has already been given countless second chances and has never truly changed. He also told Rufus that Chuck had tried to rape Jenny several years ago (In the pilot episode), so Chuck sleeping with Jenny last year wasn’t just an isolated incident. I have to say that I really liked that they mentioned what happened with Chuck and Jenny way back in the pilot episode. Most teen dramas have a history of retconning storylines or just dropping storylines never to be mentioned again.

As the episode continues, Serena begins to feel more and more shut out, especially after Blair blows her off to hang out with other girls in the house by lying to Serena. Not only did Blair blow Serena off, both Dan and Nate blew her off. Yes! For once Dan and Nate aren’t drinking the pro-Serena Kool-Aid. I’m sorry, but I just hate Serena. She’s so overrated. Of course, Serena finds out that Blair was lying about where she was and decides to confront Juliet who basically tells her the world doesn’t revolve around her, despite what she might think. I love you, Juliet! Will you marry me?

Blair had a run-in with Eva and insulted her about not being rich, leaving Eva feeling insecure about herself and her relationship with Chuck, but Chuck reassures Eva that he really does want to be with her.

Serena later finds out that Juliet was handing out more keys to other girls, so she confronts her about it. Juliet claimed that she didn’t have anything to do with her not getting a key and that it was the alumni association’s decision not to give her one. She also said that Serena’s name had been on the list until a few days ago when they got a call from Blair about some of the bad things that Serena has done in the past. Of course, Serena refused to believe that Blair would do something like that. Honestly, why does Serena think so highly of herself? If you ask me, she’s really not very special at all.

Toward the end of the episode everyone gathers at a party. Blair and Serena get into what Juliet and everyone else at the party thinks is a fight in which Blair mocks Serena about her love life and how she’s bounced from guy to guy, often times dating someone, breaking up with them, dating someone else, and breaking up with that guy, only to go back to the first guy she was with. Serena mocked Blair for constantly flip-flopping on how she feels about Chuck and is never able to make up her mind about whether she loves him or hates it. However, everyone at the party discovers that the whole fight was staged and was just filmed earlier by Dorota and sent to Gossip Girl in order to expose the fact that Juliet intentionally blocked Serena’s membership in order to pit Serena against Blair. Despite the fact that the whole fight had been staged, I still loved it because Blair pretty much said everything that I hate about Serena and all of her storylines on the show being only about her love life.

It also turns out that Blair and Serena had brought Lily in on their plan too, because she told Juliet that there were members on the board of Bass Industries that had connections to the Hamilton house who had informed her that Serena’s name had been on the list of people who had been accepted into Hamilton house all along, so in the end Serena got a key to the Hamilton house after all. With Blair and Serena both being accepted into Hamilton house, they decided to be come roommates. I’m sad that my joy over having almost everyone reject Serena was short-lived, but I thought it was really great to have things not go Serena’s way for once.

Rufus told Dan that he’s not Milo’s father. Although, they didn’t show the beginning of that conversation, and that really bothered me, because I would have loved to see Dan’s initial reaction to finding out the truth about him not being Milo’s father. Despite learning that he isn’t Milo’s father, Dan still felt responsible for taking care of him since his name was on Milo’s birth certificate. Georgina had gone away on a spa trip and didn’t know when or if she was ever coming back. He went to talk to an adoption agency and refused to give Milo up for adoption after learning that he would be put in foster care until he was adopted, if he was even adopted at all. Vanessa offered to move in with Dan to help take care of Milo, which Dan was very grateful for since it was way beyond “girlfriend duty” to help him take care of a baby that wasn’t biologically hers’ or his.

Georgina eventually returned to New York and Dan confronted her about the fact that he wasn’t Milo’s biological father. She explained that she had gotten into some trouble with some people and that her life was in danger, so she decided to try and pass off Milo as Dan’s son, because she figured it would get the people who were coming after her to back off, which it did. Plus, she figured Dan would step up and do the right thing. Georgina told Dan that she had talked to her family and that she was taking Milo. At first Dan said he wouldn’t let her take Milo, but she told him that he didn’t have a choice.

Despite the fact that Dan no longer had think about taking care of Milo, Dan asked Vanessa if she would still agree to live with him, which she did. I have to say that Georgina can be an extremely self-centered bitch at times. A lot of times I find it amusing, but this time it pissed me of that she actually tried to pass someone else’s baby off as Dan’s just because her life was in danger. If you ask me, if she doesn’t want to deal with the consequences that sex can create for people, then they shouldn’t even be having sex in the first place.

I have to say that Dan’s storyline was definitely my favorite storyline of the episode, because it wasn’t centered completely around his love life, which most of the characters on the show’s storylines are.

Nate didn’t have much of a storyline in this episode. He gave Chuck his black book of girls’ phone numbers and continued to lament over the fact that Serena didn’t want to date him anymore, but also continued to pine for Juliet who continued to reject him. I did love that Nate didn’t find Serena’s scheme against Juliet very amusing and that he was still mad at her for cheating on him with Dan and told her that he still wanted to be with Juliet. Nate confronted Juliet about shutting Serena out of the Hamilton house, which she had admitted to doing because she didn’t think she could handle seeing Serena every day, knowing that Serena wanted to be with Nate. She also finally admits that she does want to be with Nate and they share a kiss. If you ask me, the writers seriously need to start giving Nate storylines that don’t involve his love life. My favorite storylines for Nate have almost all been ones that were centered around his family drama, because they’ve always had a lot more substance to them than his constant storylines about his love life.

Later at the party, Rufus confronted Chuck about trying to rape Jenny in front of Eva and everyone else. Chuck insisted that he had changed, but Eva was unsure if she could trust him and ran off. Chuck confronted Eva and told her that he had really changed and asked her to give him another chance, which she agreed to do since she liked the way he was when they met. She also agreed to move in with him.

At the very end of the episode we see Juliet meeting an inmate at a prison about her plan. The conversation was very cryptic and they didn’t really explain the relationship between the two of them, but based on the later episodes that I have seen, I would say that Juliet is his sister. Also, her plan for revenge seems to be centered around driving Blair and Serena apart.

In regards to the whole family situation with Lily, Rufus, Serena, Eric, Dan and Chuck has got to be the weirdest family that I’ve ever seen since Lily isn’t Chuck’s biological mother and she basically became his legal guardian in order to help protect Chuck’s stake in Bass Industries. Plus, Dan is finally living a bit of the Upper East Side lifestyle and Rufus acts like a real father to Serena and Eric despite the fact that he’s not their biological father.

All in all, I absolutely loved this episode, because for once not everyone treated Serena like she’s God’s gift to the world and that she deserves to automatically get whatever she wants. Also, I really did love how Dan’s storyline was centered mostly around trying to take care of Milo instead of being all about his love life, like most of the other character’s storyline almost always are. Dan has definitely always been my favorite guy on the show, and Blair has always been my favorite girl on the show since both Dan and Blair have always had a nice blend of storylines about their love lives, as well as the other aspects of their lives.

That being said, I give this episode a rating of an A-.

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