Gossip Girl: The Tyra & Hilary Show

Gloriosky, they've done it again. Gossip Girl, our wobbly soap about the youngs and their money, produced a downright entertaining hour of television last night. It was silly and ridiculous as always, but something about that last night just didn't matter. Maybe the show is getting better and more honed in its inanity. Or maybe I'm just losing the strength to care. Whatever the reason, a commendable job was done by all. Even Hilary Duff!

You need new material, girl.

Yes, Hilary Duff is now on the show, for what is apparently going to be the rest of the season. She's playing a movie star named Olivia who is going to win an Oscar maybe for doing a really bad French accent. Why people keep giving Hilary Duff things to do that involve accents is beyond me, but c'est la vie, as Hilary would say in Classy Talk. So why is Hilary on the show? Why now?

Well, because a young movie star trying to hunker down and be anonymous at NYU (or Columbia) is about the last New York cliche the show hadn't yet covered, so here we go. Third season in, we're out. We're tapped. There is no more to be said about anyone under the age of 25 in New York City. Unless, you know, the show decides to feature some kids from Bed-Stuy or the Bronx or Staten Island or something. There would be some new stories there. That would be truly remarkable. Hell, I'd be impressed if they had a character who went to Stuyvesant even. I mean, that's a public school! Wowsers and winkies! But aw heck why would we want to go and ruin a perfectly good show about how rich people are better and we should all be rich people. That's not the TV way. So yeah. Movie Star Goes to College. That's it. There are no more stories.

How did it all begin? How did we get to this finished place? Well, we didn't really. There wasn't really a plot to this episode, it was all just a sort of blobby gob of mush. Olivia the Movie Star shows up and is told she has to star in black and white. No! Just kidding. She is told that she has to still be famous because she has a movie coming out and lots of people are making money off of her. Chief among these moneymakers is Olivia's PR lady, a girl who couldn't have been more than 22 named Bitsy. Bitsy is controlling and awful and sends many, many expositional text messages that are very helpful to people who are reading her phone over her shoulder. People like us. Thank you, Bitsy! Thank for you sending messages like "You need to be at tonight's big movie premiere right now!" instead of just a general "Where are you?" I know when I send text messages to friends it's always like "Hey Cathy, I am on my way to your house where we plan to drink wine, see you soon, Sincerely, Richard." This is just how people who are considerate send text messages. Bitsy knows. Bitsy is good at her job.

But Hilary/Olivia doesn't want that! She just wants to be a normal college student who lives in the dorms with her roommate who has cavewoman hair and bangly earrings, just like any college kid. Yes, Olivia is indeed shacking up with one Vanessa Abrams, who was totes thrilled to see a honey-blonde movie star saunter in to her room and say "Room enough in here to sleep two?" And there was room. Vanessa made room. But, um, can we talk about someone moving in to college after there's already been like two weeks of class? That does not happen on the regular, because I'm pretty sure that colleges don't just let you in whenever you want. "Hm, well, Christmas break starts tomorrow, but sure, why not. Come on in and welcome to college!" But, Hilary/Olivia is a big fat movie star, so maybe NYU made an exception, endowment dollar signs blinging in their purple eyes.

So Hilivia is dorming with Vanessa, who likes to sit on the edge of her bed while Hilivia sleeps and gently stroke that dandelion-tuft hair. It's so soft and warm and smells of apricots. Vanessa will lie back on her bed and stare at the ceiling and she'll feel warm all over, like she's sinking into bathwater. She'll think of her beloved Olivia and whisper to herself "If music be the food of love..." And that's that. Vanessa's found a friend.

Speaking of blonde moon goddesses who keep people up at night, Serena is not going to Providence. Though Melina Kanakaredes has begged and begged her to come to Providence, Serena just flatly refuses. Too bad that the LilBot is back in town after giving birth to her dead mother and is demanding that Serena get on that train and zip on up to Rhode Island to start school two weeks late. "You haven't missed anything," she tried to reassure Serena. "Just little stuff like making friends with everyone on your floor and getting your syllabuses and being prepared for the test you'll be forced to take on Monday. Oh and have you started your psych paper? Oh, right, you haven't registered yet..." Though Lily's words made her feel comforted and like she wasn't missing much, Serena held fast. "I'm not going to Brown because I am lazy and spoiled and that is OK for a young lady to be, plus I still want to be on the show." Rufus and Lily looked at each other and mouthed "What show???" and then turned to the camera and gave it a "Kids! What can ya do?" look and the laugh track played and it was time for commercial.

Gossip Girl is a good lesson for young people these days because it teaches you that college sucks. Even though Rufus and Lily say valid things like "It's really hard to get a good job these days if you don't have a college degree," Serena is in the right for being blonde and beautiful and already sorta famous and not wanting to do more school. I guess that might be the lesson. If you are blonde and beautiful and rich and already sorta famous, you don't have to go to college, because you're already better than college. Similarly, if you are brown-haired and beautiful and rich and not quite as sorta famous, college will be a miserable shitshow for you, so you should go back to high school. This was the thinking of one Blinky Migdorf, who hates NYU. See, she's trying to be all high-steppin' and flashy and popular, but NYU kids don't do high-steppin', flashy, or popular. They do brooding and cocaine-soaked. They take over administrative buildings for vague reasons and make their chief ransom demand that when this is all over, we can't, like, get in any trouble or anything. NYU kids have eaten more seitan than anyone should be allowed to eat. So Blair just has no context there. (Except, you know, that she's beautiful and brown-haired and rich and sorta famous. 18-year-old kids just hate that kind of thing.) But where did Blair fit in perfectly? Yep, you guessed it. Wait, no, ew. You did not guess it. That is not where Blair fits in perfectly. Ew. Stop thinking that. I meant Constance's Billiards Academy, you perv. God Vanessa, you're so gross all of a sudden.

Dreamer examines her billow.

Anyway! Blair is miserable at college school, so she's decided to go back to high school. Only when she gets there, she doesn't like what she sees. Jenny. Remember Jenny? Yeah, she hasn't really been on the show much this season because the show is about college now and despite what some of you boys (there are no straight boys reading this) might furtively wish for, Jenny is not old enough to do anything that people do in college. Jenny is six years old. But Jenny is also strong and brave and changed sometimes. She had such a terrible experience with the social hierarchy at Constance's Pool-Sharking School that she's decided it should exist no more. No one will throw yogurt on top of anyone's head ever again. No one will throw yogurt in Jenny's face either. At least not until she's 18. SCANDAL. But yeah, Jens made an impassioned speech to her be-skirted constituents and told them that the reign of terror had ended. Here was a new egalitarianism in which headbands were banned, everyone had to wear fourteen liquid quarts of black eyeliner or face execution (srsly wtf was up with the eyeliner on all those chippies?), and everyone had to be nice to Erik because nobody likes him except Jenny and he cries a lot. And, you know, the first two, who really cares. But seriously guys, please be nice to Erik? He's just... he's just needy.

So with the great perestroika in bloom, Jenny was thrilled to be back in class, learning how to run the table. BUT. OH NO. There, loping over the western hills of Central Park like some great, wicked beast slouching toward Bethlehem... What is that dark mass, that thrumming, living mound of inexorable doom? Aha! It's Blixen Walmart and her army of none. She's come to teach the pretty bitchy girls how to be appropriately pretty and bitchy. She calls it bretty. Randy Jackson calls it pitchy. You can call it what you want. (Egalite!) So Blair decided to have a sleepover in which a bunch of young impressionable prep school hotties were locked in her bedroom alllllllllll night. Just giggling and having pillow fights. Playing sexy Truth or Dare. Putting their retainers in and talking about heavy flow days. Eating too many pretzels and farting discreetly in a corner. Snoring loudly throughout the night. That whole scenario stopped being sexy pretty quickly there, eh?

Blair's back at high school trying to rule and Chuck thinks it's sad. So does Jenny. And what says "Hey remember that time you tried to rape me on a roof?" better than a little plan hatched between the two of them to get Blair back on track with the college game. Form a plan they did and it was masterful. It was deft and complex. It was like a puzzle. It was The Spanish Prisoner. Basically it was: Chuck's going to bring Jenny to a party so Blair will get jealous. That's... um... That's actually it. Awesome.

Back at NYU, Dan the Cro-Magnon Man had unwittingly met Hilary Duffery the Movie Star. See, he was walking down the street and then buying something from a food cart and so was Hilivia, so they got to talking and now Dan is ecstatically in love. OoooOOooo, Vanessa's gonna be maaaaaad... But yeah, they got to talking and then later Dan and his boyfriend Nate were hanging out at a coffee shop and Hilivia was there again. Nate squealed like a pretzel-farting sleepover school girl and said "Omigod, omigod, that's Olivia the Movie Star! Didn't you see her vampire King Arthur movie??" Yeah, that was a thing that Olivia was supposed to be in, Eternal Knight, and that was funny. Good for the writers! But yeah, Nate was totes into her because honey he just MmMmm three snaps lovvves a diva. So Dan decided to bungle up to her and awkwardly try to bed her and Olivia totally loved it, but she kept getting torn away from their intimate moments by her wicked PR lady's hyper-explainy text messages. "Why are you not at the important photoshoot where I am right now?" So Dan was sad and confused and Hilary Duff was mad and decided to have a yelling lunch with Bitsy PR.

There they were, just mindin' they yelly business at Hundred Acres on MacDougal when who should terribly eavesdrop on them but Serena van der Snitsen. Because this show is what it is, Olivia and Bitsy totally knew who Serena was. And Serena gave Olivia some handy paparazzi-avoiding tips, so Bitsy decided that she was in love with her. She offered Serena a job in movie PR, because that is exactly how you get hired in that cutthroat industry. You sit in a restaurant by yourself, eavesdrop on a celebrity's private conversation, and then direct them to a back alley. It also helps if you're 18 and have no plans to get a college degree. If you have that going for you too, then you are the ideal candidate for Fame PR, Inc. So yay! Serena got a job! Yeah yeah yeah!

When you're acting, Smizing is called Smacting.

Oh... Oh God. Serena you should quit your new job. Because your first client? It's f'ing Tyra Banks. Ha ha ha ha. Tyra Banks was on Gossip Girl last night and girl, she was giving. Tyra showed up to act. I think I heard Sanford Meisner faint up in heaven. Uta Hagen started to do a fitful jitterbug. Lee Strasberg climaxed. I mean Tyra just affixed that damn wig to her head bone and it was time to go to Actingtown. Her part was the worried movie star (a costar of Hilivia's in French Accents: The Movie) who wanted to show the world that she could really act. There was one important part in the new movie (which, OMG, was premiering tonight--how handy! A party on Gossip Girl!) which she loved and couldn't wait for everyone to see, especially her new best friend Snitsy. The only problem? The part got cut. Yep. And Bitsy knew this and wanted Snitsy to keep it a secret so Tyra would find out at the premiere and have a major public freakout, which would be great PR. Which... I don't know. That doesn't sound right to me. Movie theater freakouts are good for like a reality star or Vivica A. Fox maybe. But for Serious Actress in a serious French Accents movie? I think Bitsy actually isn't very good at her job. But yeah, Sereenz was totally conflicted. Should she do her job, or should she shit in her hat and go stomping off into the hazy sunset with her principles intact? No one knows.

It was movie premiere time! Olivia was trying to be a Real Girl but also a Movie Star, so that storyline had to be wrapped up at the party. As did Vanessa's crotch-tingling passion for Olivia as... um, a friend! Ha ha, laughing casually. Vanessa only likes Olivia as friends. Rufus and Lily were going to the movie premiere too, because why the hell not, and all Rufus wanted to do was eat enormous tubs of popcorn. Can you even buy popcorn at big movie premieres? Having never been to one (yet...), I have no idea. But either way, it was just very strange that Rufus was so into the idea of eating enormous tubs of popcorn. Lily was into the idea of OMG Serena Just Go to Goddamned College Already, but Snitsy wanted to show her that she was a big girl with a big PR job now, and look, her first client is that crazy woman in the wig over there who is yelling at cocktail limes about her weight issues. Oh, and, fehhh, Chuck and Little Jinfree came to the party together and Blair yelled at them and then they were all "Ohhhhhh snap, ya burnt! We totally busted you." And Blair laughed and gave a "Kids! What can ya do?" look to the camera and her story was done for the day.

While Blair stood offstage, smoking a cigarette and fiddling with her cellphone, the onstage action was this: It's dark. There are fluttery lights. A woman who is basically a series of small explosions all happening very close to each other sits anxiously. It is the premiere of Being Gerard Depardieu and Tyra really wants to see her big scene. Except! Oh noes, Serena didn't warn her and now T.T. is so upset and she's running out of the theater. Too bad the doors are locked and a French lady is going to burn them all to the ground and then the guy who directed Hostel is going to come in and shoot Hitler. But yeah, Serena was upset because Tyra was upset but in the end she did the right thing and told T.T. not to freak out, which enraged Bitsy, but don't worry. Tyra totes has Serena's back and she's going to make sure she doesn't get fired. So, oh boy, a PR story arc this season. Grummmmble.

Um... Oh, uh, Dan and Olivia are like totally going to knock uglies, which made Vanessa sad. So sad, in fact, that she called Paddington Winkers up in Beansburg and he was all "Aw yeah chica, eythang's pretty chill up here, 'cept that Georgina chick is in town." Dunh dunh dunhhhhhh went the music as Vanessa dropped the phone to the ground and screamed and screamed and screamed. Also screaming was Jenny, in the courtyard of her liceo, ranting again about freedom and independence.

And there in the background, bundled up in a scarf and a thick wash of sadness, was Erik. Tiny, brown-haired Erik, kicking cans down the street, whistling at birds (he pronounces them "boids"), running a stick along metal fences to hear that satisfying clang clang clang. He'd go and find another life, he figured. Get on a train or a bus or hitch his way to Ohio. Live in the Middlewest, feel the thrill of that flat. He'd go hole up in the mountains, in secret Idaho. He'd go dig his hands in the loamy soil of Oklahoma. Stare out at the Mississippi Delta and close his eyes and see nothing but blue and riverboats. That's all he wanted. To feel real things. To go find Jonathon. He wanted to disappear on his own terms.

Kids, huh? What can ya do.