InsaneJournal

So...the doctor says heart fluttering occasionally happens with the medication, but that he hasn't heard of it being anything serious. Okay...it's supposed to go away, and it pretty much has. Got to monitor it though.


ETA: here's the TwoP recaplet of the episode: here



Tonight’s “Gossip Girl” was an episode that started out looking like it’d be incredibly stupid and ended up awesome. Well, mostly awesome. It starts out with the kids all preparing to perform “The Age of Innocence” , even though 1) none of the characters have ever shown interest in acting or theater before, and 2) they had not at any time during this season mentioned preparations for this play, it’s just, all of a sudden it’s two days before opening night and not only is every major teen character in it except Vanessa (who doesn’t go to the school) and Jenny and Eric (who are not a seniors) but they have full, expensive and elaborate sets and costumes. Dorota is there helping Blair do her hair. And Blair is ranting in a highly exaggerated fashion, almost a parody of herself.

And then Nellie Yuki gets an email that says she’s been accepted to Yale. Yale found out that Blair “hazed a teacher” and rescinded Blair’s acceptance (right, okay, still not buying that but whatever). Someone *keeps* sending out Gossip Girl emails with nasty, reputation destroying stuff about Blair. Blair tries to blame Vanessa, and then yells at Serena when Serena takes Vanessa’s side. Serena yells back and says she puts up with Blair’s shenanigans in the hope that Blair would eventually grow up but she sees clearly now that Blair never will. Blair tries to blame Nellie, at which point almost everyone turns on her.

Meanwhile, their director is this cliché of a pretentious artist, the kind of guy Serena would fall for, and for most of the episode she appears to be. She’s even got Vanessa Cyranoing for her while she tries to flirt with him. Nate unfortunately overhears Vanessa on the phone feeding Serena adoring lines to parrot to the director and gets all hurt and jealous.

Dan is still having an affair with Miss Carr, using Jenny to pass messages on except Rufus intercepts the last one and goes to confront Miss Carr.

I mean, so basically everyone is acting like ridiculous, clichéd, over exaggerated versions of themselves, like they’re being written by a fan fic writer. Nate even gets this great line…

“We have nothing in common. I like ESPN, and you like…books and movies and stuff.” Because Nate, weirdly lovable as he is, is kind of a mimbo.

The director, meanwhile, is ticking everyone off one by one. Dan’s having sex with Miss Carr in the costume room and Blair’s life is imploding. Opening night, the director has somehow managed ot get a famous theater critic to come to the show (and there’s this very funny moment when Headmistress Queller asks the critic if he’s enjoying the show and he’s got this “why am I HERE being forced to pretend these amateur, over entitled brats have talent?” look on his face). I’m going to assume the GG director, scriptwriters and cast were deliberately aiming for “Bad High School Play” acting, complete with wandering slightly British accents.

Then Nate comes out, so distraught by his fight with Vanessa that he forgets his lines. He decides to screw it, because he's sick of people thinking he's sheltered and stupid and tells the director off in front of the entire audience, which prompts the other actors to start yelling about their problems and the whole Upper East Side High School as Nineteenth Century Romance Novel motif that has been underlying throughout the entire series explodes all over the audience and I was like “oh, so that’s why things were so weird at the start”. It was supposed to be all about people and their exaggerated public personas, who keep making the same stupid mistakes like they’re, well, actors in a play about people who are just like the way the rest of the world thinks they are in real life and how they need to learn to stop doing that in order to get themselves out of their current problems. Dorota is even on stage playing the maid in the play.

So I think we can refer to this as "The Meta Episode".

Especially since the theater critic comes up to the director after and congratulates him on his brilliance at directing such a passionate and honest version, and the director attempts to take credit for it in front of the entire cast. This does not go over well at all, with Serena speaking for everyone when she snaps “I can’t believe I was ever attracted to you.” On behalf of everyone who suffered through high school with an obnoxious drama coach, go Serena, go Serena GO!

The director says, condescendingly, “Didn’t you know I’m gay?”

Dan, meanwhile, realizes that it was Miss Carr who sent those Gossip Girl tips in. Shocked and disillusioned, he breaks up with her and rats on her to Blair. Blair is all talk, we already knew that, so when it comes right down to it, she can’t do any of the things she threatened to do to Miss Carr. Miss Carr has to live with what she did, ruining someone’s life for no reason, Blair reasons that knowing that should be enough for now (too bad, I actually did want Blair to get her for it).

But Blair is about to have a meltdown...and Chuck is waiting pathetically for her at home.