“Pret-a-Poor-J”
October 27th, 2008
It’s been a long time since I’ve commented on Gossip Girl, but the show has been on a weird trajectory as of late. The season has had a lot of false starts: I thought they were going to villify Serena in her battle with Blair over supremacy, but now they’re back to being tight friends. I thought they were going to actually give the Nate/Vanessa storyline some time to breathe, and instead Vanessa’s back to being irrelevant and Nate’s moved in with the Humphreys. I thought that they were going to let Jenny settle into her new career in order to spare us more of her storyline, and instead they thrust her back into the show’s romantic and dramatic center.
Really, we’re right where we left off last season: with Blair and Chuck as the only interesting characters on the show, and everyone else just kind of puttering between pointless storylines. Even Blair and Chuck acknowledge, of course, that it’s the game that keeps them interesting, and even that could get old with time. And, to be fair to the show, “Pret-a-Poor-J” does represent the start of a new direction for the show (now 1/3 into its season, recently upped to 24 episodes), but it’s a start that seems too quick: new characters and new worlds can have an impact, but this feels more cheap than earned.
Cultural Learnings 