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Monday, July 25, 2011

Gossip Girl: Secrets, Lies, Schemes, and a Basseectomy (My thoughts on episode 4x08: Juliet Doesn’t Live Here Anymore)


I have to say that I absolutely loved this episode. Although, I’ve basically decided that whenever I’m trying to decide exactly how I feel about an episode of Gossip Girl, I pretty much have to ignore my thoughts on anything Serena does in an episode because I pretty much always hate her storylines and find myself getting annoyed with Serena’s behavior. Anyway, back to my thoughts on the episode.

One of the things that I loved about this episode is that it focused a lot on Juliet’s ongoing vendetta against Serena. It was really cool to see how almost all of the characters became involved with trying to expose Juliet in this episode. Since I absolutely loathe Serena, I have loved the character Juliet since the first episode that she appeared in and the writers made it clear that she was out to get revenge on Serena for something that had happened in the past. The writers revealed a lot about Juliet in addition to what we already knew. She’s poor, and she depends on Colin for money to pay for her college tuition and the rent for her apartment, which appeared to be fairly run down and cheap in terms of rent. In the past few episodes, Nate had been becoming increasingly frustrated with Juliet for lying to him and keeping secrets from. In this episode, Juliet finally told Nate all of this. She also told Nate that she does her own hair, and that she feels like she has to keep up the illusion that she’s rich in order to be accepted by her fellow members of the Hamilton house. One thing that has really frustrated me with Juliet’s storyline and the reveal that she depends on Colin for money is the lack of explanation as to what the deal is with Juliet and Ben’s parents and why they don’t appear to be in the picture. They didn’t explain whether their parents had died and they didn’t leave any money to Juliet and Ben for them to pay for their expenses. I really want to know why it is that Colin, who is Juliet and Ben’s cousin, is very rich and successful as a both a business and a guest lecturer at Columbia, while Juliet and Ben are both poor.

A part of me can understand why Juliet feels the need to get revenge on Serena and therefore defied Colin when he told her that she had to forget about her vendetta against Serena if she wanted him to continue to support her financially; the other part of me doesn’t understand why Juliet didn’t listen to Colin’s warning when she clearly needs his money. However, Colin’s really cold attitude toward Ben being in prison really frustrates me. I think he should stand by both Juliet and Ben, regardless of anything that has happened in the past with their family.

My other favorite thing about this episode was the whole storyline with Blair and Chuck trying to end their fling once and for all. I love that both of their approaches to the situation were completely different from the others. Blair’s line about getting a “Bassectomy” was hilarious, which basically meant that she was going to try and avoid Chuck at all cost. Chuck thinking that the best way to handle things was to engage in emersion therapy, which would basically consist of them having as much sex with each other as they possibly could until they were sick of each other, was classic Chuck.

I also loved seeing Vanessa basically being a villain and helping Juliet take down Serena, but she also had the ulterior motives of trying to prove that she hadn’t sent the email trashing Serena like everyone thought she did. Although, the downside of having the writers making Vanessa be a villain has caused the other characters to shun her and she is becoming increasingly pointless to have on the show. It was nice to see Nate working with Vanessa to figure out what Juliet is up to by asking Juliet to have coffee with him while Vanessa snooped in Juliet’s apartment for information about Juliet’s plans. I can see more and more why Jessica Szohr isn’t coming back as a series regular for season five and will just be a guest star. That’s the right decision in my opinion since Jessica already kind of feels that way to me whenever I watch her season four anyway.

Serena pissed me of yet again in this episode as she and Colin continued their affair and were planning to go on a romantic getaway together until she came to her senses and decided to end things with Colin. I also can’t believe that Colin actually resigned from teaching at Columbia so that he and Serena could be together. I don’t think Serena is worth all of that.

Dan also ticked me off in this episode. I hate that he once again found himself being attracted to Serena and considering trying to get back together with her. Luckily, Dan changed his mind after he saw Colin and Serena together and realized that they were romantically involved with each other. I really hope Dan will be able to one day no longer even be tempted to consider getting back together with Serena. I’m so glad that he told Serena off for being romantically involved with Colin, not that it had any long-term affect on Serena and how she conducts herself in terms of her sex life.

I loved the part of the episode where Dan saw Colin and Serena getting into a cab together and Blair and Chuck going their separate ways after one of their hookups all without any of them knowing that he had seen what they were doing.

The way that Juliet’s plan for revenge against Serena, or at least most of it was revealed to all of the characters when Vanessa was going to tell the dean of Columbia about Serena and Colin’s romantic relationship and show her the pictures of Serena and Colin together that were on Juliet’s flash drive, only to have Juliet decide to somewhat come clean on her own was all very clever and funny. I loved it when Blair dropped Juliet’s flash drive into her glass of champagne so no one could see the pictures. That really made me laugh.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but kind of feel sorry for Juliet when Colin told her that he was cutting her off financially after he found out that she secretly took pictures of him with Serena. I also have to admit that I’m kind of impressed with Juliet for still being determined to finish her plans for revenge against Serena even after she’s been shunned by all of the people she had kind of been friends with and was cut off financially by her cousin. I love that Juliet is now working with both Vanessa and Jenny to carry out her plan. I still think that was a pretty clever twist even after watching this episode several times.

All in all, I really loved this episode a lot for the most part, so I give it a rating of an A.

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