Don't Forget About Gossip Girl

That was the longest episode of Gossip Girl that's basically ever aired, right? I mean, that thing was epic. With all the plot twists and turns about politics and celebrity stuff and Dan Humphrey being the grossest person in the world. It was just so much for one little episode of our wan exploration of pretend things that don't now nor ever will exist.

It was certainly timely at least. Today, right at this moment, people across the country are casting ballots for various governors and councilmen and whatnot. Right here in New York a megalomaniacal billionaire is running for Lifetime Mayor in an election that's caused no small amount of grief and torment. The world is forever changing--dynasties swelling and dying, lone heroes running through the night--and Gossip Girl wanted to reflect that. Because Gossip Girl's chief aim is to hold a mirror up to a troubled world and say "Here, just here. You are here." So let's be thankful for last night's politically-charged episode, for what it taught us about ourselves, for what it urges insistently to us that we must learn.

In the world of New York, in this city of stabbed skies and creeping brick, the most important relationship a boy can have is a homoerotic one with his cousin. Seriously, did you guys observe the palpable sexual tension between Natalie Archibald and his Keds-faced cousin Tripp Vanderblixen last night? You could cut that shit with a butter knife. It was not unlike when, in the later years of The Brady Bunch, Marcia and Greg started boffing off camera and then in scenes it was like "Ewwww! They're totally doing it!!" Though they're not siblings, Nate and Tripp are cousins, so it still seemed vaguely inappropriate. (But, you know, inappropriate in that really fun way.) Honestly Gossip Girl, just have them make out or keep them away from each other. This will-they-or-won't-they is simply killing us! And by "us" I mean me and my sister, who sat in her living room last night and said "Ewwww. They're totally doing it," whenever the two boys had a scene together.

But yes! Tripp Vanerborken is back and he is running for Congress and it is very important. You see, any time a 26-year-old twink who's stuffing his cousin runs for public office, it becomes an utmost issue on the American thoughtscape. And as that very exact thing was happening in the Manhattan of Josh Schwartz's lazy wishes last night, we got an episode that was, must like Nate himself, crammed full of Tripp Vinkrydinkins. Tripp was everywhere. Tripp was in Vanessa's face, because she was filming a documentary about him. (Every time the writers can't figure out how to get Vanessa invovled in an episode, they just say "Oh, um, she's filming a documentary?" and then there Vanessa is.) Tripp was hitting on Serena (thought that wouldn't come til late in the episode). And Tripp was emblazoned, big and Obama-esque, on the walls of Chucktini Bass's fancy hotel bar for lonely jerks. Yes it was that kind of episode of Gossip Girl in which every little annoying plot point is snapped perfectly into each other. Nate has a political cousin, so Nate's in the episode. Political cousin needs to be filmed, so there's Vanessa. Political parties are hot these days now that we have our gay Kenyan Islamosocialist president, so celebrities want to go to them, which means the high-powered PR firm that aims to employ 18-year-olds wants to send their clients there, which means Serena, an 18-year-old, needs to go babysit them. Political parties full of celebrities need to be held somewhere, like at a hotel, and Chucktini owns a hotel, to there you go with that. Um... Oh, sure, Blair dates Chuck, so she's there. And Dan? Well, Dan smells of cabbage and nobody likes him, so he's home playing Yahtzee with old people and his chubby girlfriend.

Hilary Duff! She's still on this program, slopping around, waiting for Jason James Richter to come rescue her. I'm being mean, but it's really only because Hilary Duff is perhaps the most untalented famous person on the planet. What on Earth is the attraction with this girl? Here's a terrible fact: I own, actually paid money to have forever, the film Material Girls. It is horrible. Hilary Duff should be sealed in cement and buried in a cave as if she were Leo Biederman. No one should ever be Duff'd again. And yet we get her, every week now, on The Gossip Girls. Last night was all about how she is famous and isn't that so fun. Except no, it is not fun. Somehow Gossip Girl has made being a movie star who goes on talk shows look boring. Next week they're going to do an episode that's all about sitting on the couch, getting stoned, watching House Hunters, and eating Goldfish crackers--which is the most fun activity in the known human world--and it will somehow look boring. They've a talent, a particular knack, for making glamorous things seem brain-shatteringly dull. Do they give Peabodys for this? Anyhoo, Duff and Dan were part of a separate storyline last night that had nothing to do with politics-schmolitics, so we'll have to talk about them separately.

The Dan/Duff thing was this: Hilary was promoting her new movie Out of Africa 2: Denys Finch's Revenge, which meant that she had to go on a bunch of late night laffers to peddle her cushy wares and hopefully drum up support for the film. Her first stop on the Ironweed 2: The Streets press tour was the little-known cult TV series Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, which runs on public access at about three in the morning I think. And while on this little TV prog'rum, she told a terrible story about Daniel that was embarrassing to everyone in this nation. See, she should have been talking about The Heartburn Supremacy, but instead she just flapped her walrusy gums about the time that she and Dan were on their first date and he came back from the bathroom and his shirt was on inside out and he said "Oh yeah I had to take off my shirt because this dude Tripp and I totally just did it a spider crawled inside." Can you believe that funny story? About a spider and a shirt and a restaurant. Local short-order cook/talk show host Jimminy Fallon said "Whoa that's crazy, look everyone, now I'm telling a joke..." and Hilary laughed and said "It's our one-month anniversary." So basically she made an ass of Dan on local television. Quel problemo!

Later on Dan totally wanted to see Hilary talking about The French Lieutenant's Woman: Extinction on the chatter box, but little did he know what wicked nefarious secret HilDu was hiding about the taping. She'd made an ass of Dan and his spider-infested wardrobe, and how could she ever explain it? Of course eventually Dan saw the clip. See, he was at Rufus and Lily's crash mansion playing Checkers with Jenny or something, and when he went to go hook up with Tripp again in the bathroom pee, he walked by Jenny's computer and saw the Funny or Die (die, plz) clip of what Hilary had said. It was such a scandal! The Gossip Ginx writers couldn't come up with a more interesting embarrassing (but redeemable! not something truly mortifying because Dan must still be "sexy"!) story than Dan having a bad case of spider-shirt. So he saw the clip in which they're all gonna laugh at you, and so he got really pissed off and sad and embarrassed and ran off to go crucify Piper Laurie to a wall with kitchen knives. What was Hilary going to do to make it up to him?

Well, as it turns out, she didn't have to make it up to him at all. Because he's in love with her, deep abiding love, so he can forgive and tell her the real story of Spider Day. It wasn't a spider at all. What had happened was that he was so nervous that he'd sweat a lot and had taken off his shirt in the bathroom to be caressed by a passionate Tripp Vanderacres dry it off. And then he'd put it back on and didn't realize it was inisde out, so hardy har har, that was the situation. Hilary smiled at him pityingly and a strange wind blew in the open window. Outside a pigeon cooed. Dan said "Spider... shirt?" And Hilary patted him on the head. The camera hovered for a moment, as long is it could, but then it had to leave. This scene was going nowhere. After it left, Dan and Hilary just stood and stared out the window, the afternoon curtain billowing around them, a gauzy frame, a hazy and forgiving focus.

On to the politics. Tripp is running for President. Everyone wants Tripp to win the Presidency so we can get that trisexual Indonesian communist out of office. Because no one apparently has classes or homework, everyone is involved with the campaign. Especially Nate, who, as I mentioned earlier, is having some sort of romantic tryst with Tripp. Nate is second in command to his beloved Grandfather, a steely and steel-haired old man who eats little shits like you for breakfast. But he does it with a silver spoon while reading a copy of the New York Times. He's that kind of old dude--fashionable and stern, speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Also speaking softly and carrying a medium-sized stick, Nate was basically in control of his cousin's image. Tripp and his devious wife (you'll see why devious later) Maureen need to look polished and perfect in the lead-up to the election, and who better to help the couple put a happy veneer on a miserable, shamed interior than Nate, who hides many secrets in that perfect but thinning coif of his.

So while Nate's doing that, Grandfather is scheming away about how to secure Tripp the presidency. Putting all of his smarts--the mossy, moneyed peat of his brain, his Ivy-league education, his years buccaneering in the private sector, all that age and experience--into play, Grandfather came up with the best, most-intelligent plan he could: Have some guy jump in the water. That was Grandfather's sneaky plan to get Tripp into the White House. If Tripp was by the water one day and then some guy was drowning in the water and then Tripp dove in and saved him and some weird witch-haired Latina happened to be videotaping it, then he would totes win the election and it'd be goodbye grandmother-killing hippie Harvard homo. Good planning, Grandfather! Or was it Grandfather at all?

See we realized that the whole Tripp saving a dude thing was staged because old Vanessa Zapruder had to go film the incident and then look at her footage while dramatic music played and then realize, using the magic of freeze frame and obvious human eyeballs ("Hey, that guy just voluntarily jumped in the water."), that it was a fakery. Because V. is a seasoned and principled journalist very concerned with her "career", she knew she had an obligation to sell the footage for top dollar and then run cackling off into the night back to her her barrio where she could spend all the cash on brand new cavewoman wigs. There's only one problem. That tough, imposing man with the strong features and flinty intelligence? Well behind him is Nate, little Strawberrry Shortcake of a campaign manager as he is. And Nate will protect his family because his family is thick as thieves and Vanessa is nothing more than a prostitution whore.

SCENE 12 INT. RIGAMAROLE ENSUES

Alls you need to know is that eventually Nate decided that he had to speak his truth about the whole water wings fiasco and lie to the public by saying that he was the one who had hired the man to jump into the drink so Tripp could maybe save him (it was such a vague plan. Couldn't someone else have dived in and rescued the fake drowner? There are so many unknown variables at play. It's like in the Ocean's movies where they seemingly can predict exactly how people will react to things. It's just not real). Everyone was scandalized that this beautiful young lady with the short haircut wearing a suit (a freshman at Smith perhaps?) could do such a dastardly deed. In private, Nate and Tripp furiously made out and groped blamed Grandfather, who plead ignorance. And ignorant he really was (this time...). Remember when I called Maureen devious? Well, it's because she's the one who staged the hoax. She strapped that drowning guy into a balloon and sent him skyrocketing over Denver. A big old hoax. That crafty beeswax.

I can't really talk more about this episode. There was really annoying stuff with Serena and her PR job that is annoying because PR jobs are annoying on television shows. Why is that the chosen hip profession on TV these days? Is that really the bar we want our young people reaching for? "What do you want to be when you grow up, little girl? A doctor? A judge?" "I want to represent mid-level talent to increase their personal brand awareness using various platforms like new media and carefully curated public appearances." "Oh. I see. Pardon me, my darling, but I'm going to go over there and shoot myself." But whatever, basically Sereenz had to still pretend to date that ratty Twilight guy and Blair called Serena a prostitute, which she sort of is, but everyone is on this show. In this world. On this doomed, blue planet.

Speaking of Blair and prostitutes, she did actually befriend a hooker. See it wasn't enough for the GG writers to get all politicky with the Obama Hope stuff. No, they were hungry for more references. So, they trucked in the Spitzer hooker story and had this blonde bubbly girl be a secret call girl. Isn't that wicked of them? I mean, isn't that just so topical? Yes, you are right to vomit. It is the only thing to do when hearing about Gossip Girl's attempts at topicality. It is the only thing.

At one point in the episode Hilary was complaining to Serena about how things are hard, everyone is always talking about you, especially if you're a celebrity. You know, you've got girls in the dorm hall, people writing things in bathroom stalls, plus the internet that's on the computers. "And don't forget about Gossip Girl," Serena said in the saddest line of the show's entire history. Don't forget about Gossip Girl... Just sort of offered up there meekly, this once-central tenet of the show. Now it's just... don't forget about her. She exists. She exists in the throwaway lines. In the gleaming maw of a politician's eye. Gossip Girl is everywhere. She's nitrogen. She's silver balloons hurtling over the Rockies. She's making jokes with Jimmy Fallon. Don't forget about her. Don't cry for her. She's already dead.

Speaking of dead, Jenny is near death. She was sick last night. All pale and scrubbed of pounds of eye makeup. She lay on her little fainting couch, sheathed in that sickly glow of young, Romantic TB patients. Her dear friend and piano tutor Gould Septimus Erik sat by her side, stroking her hand, feeding her orange plugs and whispering lovely nothings about old days, old wisps of spring, dashes of winter, thick inky blots of summer. "Remember the time..." he would say, his voice tired from trying not to crack and cry. "Remember the time when..." And Jenny looked up at him, already the edges of this known world fraying and narrowing, and she said "Oh darling Erik, oh darling boy. Do you think they'll ever remember us, when we're centuries past?" And a great swell or gulp passed through Erik, up his throat, into the dark rooms of his eyes. And he said "Oh Jennifer, you musn't worry about such things. You really musn't."

They sat there, the sun marking time in wan rectangles passing across the walls, and at some point Jenny slipped away. And so too did Erik. This lonely pair, gilded and strange and forgotten. From a time long gone. Whitman's pioneers. The iron wheels of all of us.

Don't forget about them. And don't forget to vote.