An article in the Wall Street Journal profiled the women writers behind the hit AMC drama Mad Men, where they make up the majority of the staff. Such a writers’ room is a rarity; more often seen is a writers’ room composed entirely of men. But the world of television is a utopia of diversity in comparison to the feature world. Try this little test: think of all the contemporary Hollywood directors you can name. Now think of all the women on that list. I like to think I’m well versed in these things, and I barely need more than one hand to count the number in the second category.

There are two questions that revolve around this issue: Why is there such a lack of representation of women in Hollywood, and why is television slightly more diverse than features? It’s especially interesting in this historical moment where the Sotomayor nomination revealed quite a bit of rhetoric with the unspoken assumption that the white male was the standard of unbiased neutrality. There has been a mountain of writing on this very topic, but let’s try to sketch some points out.

It goes without question that the majority of what comes out of Hollywood is saddled with some sort of inequality of representation. My favorite of these tests: think of the last dozen films you’ve seen, and think of the most prominent woman in each one. Now how many of those women are more than a wife/girlfriend/sex object/love interest? (The only genre in which women are strongly represented is romance, for obvious reasons. Pursue that line of inquiry and you just get into wheels within wheels, so I’m just going to recommend that you watch The Celluloid Closet for that.)

Some of this lack of representation in front of the camera stems from a lack of representation behind the camera, and both shortcomings come from an inherent bias somewhere in the chain of production. This bias is largely inadvertent, because most filmmakers aren’t going around saying, “We can’t put a black/Latino/Asian/female person in this role.” But I have to say “largely” because in some cases, that’s exactly what they’re saying:

“There’s sort of an accepted myth that if you have two black actors, a male and a female, in the lead of a romantic comedy, that people around the world don’t want to see it,” [Will] Smith told the British paper, the Birmingham Postwhile promoting the flick [Hitch] overseas. “We spend $50-something million making this movie and the studio would think that was tough on their investment. So the idea of a black actor and a white actress comes up—that’ll work around the world, but it’s a problem in the U.S.”

So in Hollywood logic, a black woman won’t do well overseas and a white woman won’t do well in America. So let’s split the difference and cast a Latina! Not exactly cinema’s finest hour, but it shows that most of the skewed representation isn’t because of some malicious atmosphere but because of a drive to chase the bottom line—movies are a business after all, and so the studios pander to the biases of their audiences. Another way this is seen is in the conventional wisdom that women will watch films centered around men and male themes but it doesn’t work the other way around.  So in Hollywood’s Barnumesque logic, catering to the shallowest and most narrow-minded among us will lead to maximum profit.

That explains part of it. But shouldn’t women be able to direct all kinds of films? Kathryn Bigelow tells us yes, but look at the rest of the films out there and the evidence is scant.  Just as how a number of U.S. Senators thought that white males are free of the racial and gender bias that Latina women apparently carry with them, the Hollywood assumption is that men can do your standard chick flick rom com as well as women can, plus everything else to boot.

Again, this is (largely) absent of any active malice. Few people would say that men are inherently better scientists than women (except for Lawrence Summers and look where that got him) and few people would say that men are inherently better musicians than women (except for the Vienna Philharmonic). And yet when orchestras started hiring via blind audition in which the performer was hidden behind a screen, there was a corresponding increase in the number of women hired.  Some biases are just too subtle, too ingrained, and too subconscious; and the smallest things can tip the balance in hiring.

Few people would say that men are inherently better writers and directors than women. But you can’t hire directors and writers behind a blind screen. There are no objective criteria in this industry; it’s all about personality and reputation. Once again, the focus is the bottom line: on a feature, one director and one script hold everything together. The studios want proven performers to fill those roles, known quantities from a select list that can turn out a good product.  Right now, most of the names on that very short list are men; those demographics may shift in the future, but it looks to be a long and slow process.

What about television? The Journal article notes that 23% of television writers last year were women, a clear minority. However it’s far better than the 12% of feature writers that were women. What makes the difference?

A theory I heard once was that feature directing and scriptwriting was about self-aggrandizement, competition, and dominance. Television directing and writing, on the other hand, was about consensus-building, collaboration, and long-term planning. Features were full of “daddies” and television shows were full of “mommies.” While this was quite possibly one of the stupidest things I had ever heard, it sounds like the type of conventional wisdom that some executive somewhere would believe.

A more plausible take on the situation is that features are generally larger in scope, more visual, and more action-oriented. Television on the other hand tends to be more intimate, more dialogue-driven, and more focused on character and relationships. Along with this, feature audiences are male-driven and television audiences are female-driven. Combine those two bits of wisdom and view them through the lens of subtle gender bias, and it seems like those in charge might think that women are better-equipped to handle television (but not enough to bring them toward any sort of equality).

But to me the strongest element seems to be one of risk. Hollywood is a business, and everyone wants to maximize profit while minimizing risk. The sad fact is that the conventional wisdom says that hiring a woman anytime and anywhere is a risk compared to hiring a man. The difference is that in a feature, hiring that woman as the sole director or the sole writer puts everything at risk. The episodic nature of television means that you only put a small part of the larger whole at risk when you hire a woman. And that makes the risk acceptable enough to do it.

Of course, the fact that one of the best shows on television is written mostly by women means that all your conventional wisdom is bullshit.

The central plotline of the episode is dominated by Serena: the stresses placed upon her love affair with Trip, its dissolution, and her car accident. Apparently Gossip Girl was not content with the Kennedy parallels by the fake Chappaquiddick earlier in the season that they had to have a real one: Trip crashes his car after being accosted by three wolves (really?) in the middle of the road, and he and his wife try to cover up the incident by making it look like Serena was driving the car or something similar. Ignoring the fact that this was a plotline used in the comedy Arrested Development, and that there is a huge bloody indentation in the passenger-side windshield, the problem is that this is putting Serena into the utterly cliche “girl in peril” role. The answer to all the dramatic conflicts in this episode is “Serena is hurt, let’s all rush to the hospital!” The Jenny-Eric conflict fizzles out with a rather weak justification about family, considering all the horrible things they’ve done to each other this season — they seem to be setting Jenny up for the even-more-insipid plotline of “Jenny is a drug dealer!”

The events turn the rather bland character of Trip into a scumbag rather quickly, but he seems schizophrenic (as a politician usually ends up seeing, true), another hodge-podge of plot necessities that only exists to create artificial conflicts. It also places Nate conveniently in the role of protector, voice of reason, and hero, finally punching out his own cousin. (The quality of a season of a Josh Schwartz show can be judged by how frequently someone gets punched out. Season One: a punch in the pilot and in almost every other episode. This season: it took twelve episodes for the first K.O.)

The problem revealed by this storyline is that it shows that at this point, in order for Serena to be a sympathetic figure, she has to be a pitiable one. She has to be wronged; she has to be weak; she has to be placed in grave danger. In other words, she has to be Marissa Cooper. The Marissa Cooper Problem was seen in The O.C., where Mischa Barton’s character was a loathsome, vile creature: self-centered, over-dramatic, codependent. She always made incredibly stupid decisions, tried to make herself the center of attention with transparent cries for help, and generally ruined every plotline she was remotely involved in. Contrast this to the Serena of Gossip Girl’s first season, who was intelligent and reasonable; even though she wrestled with her past and with inner demons, she was possessed with a self-awareness and confidence that Marissa Cooper lacked. Unfortunately, it seems as the seasons wore on, Serena trended downwards toward that broken characterization like it was some kind of baseline equilibrium. I’ve mentioned similar problems with the character of Jenny Humphrey; it’s interesting that the most well-adjusted and sympathetic female main character on the show is Blair Waldorf, who also happens to be the character who hews the closest to traditional gender roles.

In fact, the only character really served by the episode and treated with a measure of dignity and thoughtfulness is Chuck Bass; it’s the anniversary of his father’s death, and the weight of that lays heavily upon him. His internal monologue is externalized as a dialogue with a ghostly vision of Bart Bass, and in those scenes the show actually takes time away from the relentless pushing of plot points to breathe in and realize one of their characters as something more than the conjunction of conflicts. Chuck continually compares himself to his father, and part of what drives his character is the indelible fact that his father died knowing him only as a wastrel and a dissipated lush. Bart Bass will never see his son be a man, and this invests Chuck with a measure of guilt, compounded by the fact he couldn’t even muster up the courage to see his father on his deathbed. It’s a powerful internal struggle, as we see Chuck deciding between whether to wall himself away from others and retreat into the exacting security of work — in other words, to honor his father by being the same man as he was — or to connect to others, to reach out and admit his own inner humanity — to honor his father by being a better man than he was.

Friday Night Lights also recently dealt with a plot arc about one of its main protagonists, Matt Saracen, dealing with the death of his father. Although the shows are diametric opposites — rural Texas versus Upper East Side Manhattan, raw and subtle versus stylized and soapy — it’s interesting to see the commonalities between the two arcs. Both seem to manifest the loss of the father as a spiritual wound; for Matt it is fresh and deep, while for Chuck, it is a dull ache, scarred over and yet impossible to ignore. Both are confronted with images of their fathers, unsure of how to reconcile the man they see with the man they knew and will never see again. Both shows meditate on how grief is a personal and supremely unique torment, impossible to share with others; and yet we do it anyway because we don’t know anything else. Without indulging in normative claims about what a family should be, both shows dramatize that we live in a society that is bereft of fathers and yet that same society will always live in their shadow. And finally, both Friday Night Lights and Gossip Girl tell us in order to heal the wounds and pain caused by the loss of their fathers, the characters must confront their own fears and misgivings about who they are as individuals. Chuck and Matt are men, not their father’s sons.

Of course, Gossip Girl is a soap opera, and it can’t escape that; it has to plant and pay off another over-the-top storyline about “Chuck’s mother didn’t die in childbirth and has been living in secret for decades, isn’t that crazy?” But let’s ignore that for now. Of all the characters’ obsessions and conflicts with their parents, Chuck’s is the most potent and the most thoughtful. And of all of Gossip Girl‘s reversals and inversions over the years, the supreme one is that the most villainous and corrupt character has matured into the most nuanced and truly understandable one.

Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.

– William Bradford, History of the Plymouth Plantation

Gossip Girl graces its fans with a belated Thanksgiving episode this year; these episodes tend to be the bulwarks of the season, playing directly to the show’s core strengths: filial and political intrigue, incredible awkward moments, and reversal upon reversal upon reversal. This year’s episode is no exception.

The “Jenny-as-neoconservative US interests” allegory continues in full force, as somehow Jenny cannot comprehend why after exercising heavy-handed domination and humiliation over Eric and his boyfriend Jonathan why they would somehow hate her and why Eric would not want to be best buddies at Thanksgiving. Of course, once the cards come out and Eric reveals that he was behind the attempted sabotage of cotillion, Jenny promises retaliation while Eric promises never-ending war. This is part and parcel with the disparity of force brought to bear by the hegemon and the challenger. The hegemon is on the defense; the challenger is on the offense. The hegemon has everything to lose; the challenger has nothing to lose. The hegemon has to win every time; the challenger only has to win once. Most likely something (perhaps not Eric, but something) will bring Jenny crashing back down to earth, if only because turning Jenny into a permanent Blair clone holds little long-term narrative potential.

Meanwhile, the fallout from the Dan-Vanessa-Olivia threesome continues to reverberate; Olivia is out of the picture and shooting a new film (and possibly off the show for good?) leaving Dan to stew with the seemingly newfound feelings for his best friend. This plays off as awkward banter during the Thanksgiving dinner proper and Vanessa’s mother Gabriela bringing her perception and wisdom to the situation. It’s actually quite difficult to summon interest for this plot, because as mentioned before, Dan Humphrey is no longer our point of entry into this world. Back in the salad days of Season One, we were traversing into unknown territory, and Dan — good old cynical outsider Dan — provided our viewpoint into the world of the Upper East Side. However, his transition over the seasons has made him into as much of an insider as anyone else on the show; he’s become one of the soapy characters without any of the interesting soapy plots. Again, this is the same transition that The O.C. went through somewhat unsuccessfully, and calls into question whether there isn’t something inherently self-limiting to this narrative cycle — it’s got enough life for a couple of seasons, but trying to sustain it is like keeping a corpse on life support.

What ends up happening in this kind of narrative cycle is that we become inured to your standard soap plots; either the plotlines have to be thinly-veiled retreads of things we’ve already seen, or things have to be pushed to newer and more extreme levels, eventually creating an atmosphere and mood that is unsustainable. For example, now that we’re fully ensconced in this world, it seems that the only things that can hold our attention and have some narrative oomph are indeed the crazy soap-bubble plotlines — aka the Serena-Nate-Tripp clusterfuck. This is a plotline that was mind-numbingly boring when it was merely about Serena wondering whether or not she should sleep with a married congressman, but with the introduction of Tripp’s wife as an active antagonistic force, there is an actual sense of intrigue when played out over the course of the Thanksgiving meal. This is also complicated by Nate’s revelation of his own feelings for Serena, which seems to pose a parallel to Dan: note how Nate’s active reaching out towards Serena ends up in heartbreak, while Dan’s denial of his own feelings results in a pleasant status quo, regardless of how false it may actually be.

The French theorist Guy Debord (I told you the Situationist International would show up here sooner or later) discussed two opposing forces at work in representational culture and media: detournement and recuperation. Detournement happens when marginalized, avant-garde, or oppositional forces take a piece of mainstream culture and invert it to create a new work with a subversive quality, one that often challenges core assumptions of the mainstream. One can argue that this is exactly what happens with the centerpiece of the episode, the continual series of relationship-shattering revelations that summon a feeling akin to a boxer getting pummeled in the face repeatedly. The scene is backed by the Jason Derulo track “Whatcha Say”, which samples Imogen Heap’s song “Hide and Seek” — which any follower of Josh Schwartz’s work knows is indelibly linked with the most hilarious scene from the entire run of The O.C. (In its own way, the connection between the two may be seen to be a cry for help.)

In opposition to detournement is recuperation, in which mainstream media takes oppositional forms (for example, punk music — or the decentralized multicentric communication style of today’s youth) and repackages it in such a way that it retains or generates mass appeal while being stripped of its oppositional or subversive content. Gossip Girl exists in the grey zone between the forces, playing with mitigated versions of each. At its best, by purposefully taking a different tack from the novels from which it was spawned, the series’ self-awareness plays directly into upending its own forms; the viewers can engage in negotiated readings of the material, and the show becomes open to various form of critique (such as from a Marxian perspective). At its worst, the show abandons this course and takes the path of least resistance, only playing at a hip self-awareness while it attempts to rely on its performers’ natural charms to get through tired retreads of done-to-death plotlines.

This precise position is not exactly one of recuperation, but it evokes similar responses because the question facing Gossip Girl is whether it is relevant to its audience anymore. A recent article in The New Yorker noted that

Even before the financial crash of last fall, the sales of “Gossip Girl” books had leveled off, and since then they have declined — in part because “fans are getting their ‘Gossip Girl’ in other places,” as Morgenstern puts it, but also because the books’ milieu is less beguiling, and less relevant, than it once seemed to be. At Alloy, too, a certain weariness with brat lit has set in. “We are really a little sick of mean-girl stuff”… “More serious, angsty literature is where girls are right now. Morbid, dead-girl lit.”

Twilight is the new Gossip Girl. Perhaps it’s right that a navel-gazing focus on the decaying dead space within American culture, a twisted and somewhat sadomasochistic Nietzschean power fantasy, has replaced a cynical and self-conscious quasi-celebration of excess and style as the flashpoint in young adult literature and media. So then, what is to be done with Gossip Girl? One can almost feel this awareness of being marginalized in the series itself, and this season has been one long mission to transform and transition into a form that is still viable. Will it succeed? It’s up in the air at this point, but if a country can seriously transform a singular semi-fictional event that happens to be one of the few points in Native American relations that wasn’t wholesale massacre and oppression into one of its major national holidays, then anything is possible.

(I assume it will be covered in great deal in the upcoming episode, so I’m shelving discussion of the Serena-Lily-Dr. Van der Woodsen plotline — but let’s just say that the “identical coats” plot element was so brazenly transparent that it works. More intrigue is afoot…)

First, let’s examine the sub- and filler plots. There’s Jenny and the ambassador’s son, which is fairly forgettable — especially since we’ve seen it before, and without the self-aware acknowledgment that accompanied cotillion on “They Shoot Humphreys, Don’t They?” Jenny hangs out with a slightly more mature-seeming, kind of dangerous guy, but she’s too rebellious and headstrong to the warnings given to her; this is the Jenny and the fashion photographer all over again, and with nary an inversion or nuance to it. If we acknowledge that the supreme strength of the television medium is the ability to construct longer and more complex narratives than would be possible in a shorter form, then a plotline like this is an almost-criminal misuse of the form. Gossip Girl doesn’t need to be Mad Men or The Wire, but even heavily episodic shows like CSI know that character progression is important. From a purely story-focused perspective, I preferred the fast-talking relentlessly creative J. Humphrey whose headstrong nature led her to charge into untenable endeavors that ended in beautiful failure, instead of the ennui-filled Upper East Automaton she always secretly dreamed of becoming. From a political perspective though, Jenny is a picture-perfect representation of the pernicious effect that windfall wealth has on the labor aristocracy, who choose to sacrifice creative potential and identity to wallow in expropriated riches. Of note in the plotline is Chuck Bass’s role; the Chuck -Jenny interaction is one of the sparsely-plotted pairings in the series, so it’s interesting to see the changing dynamic in that regard. Starting from his attempt to rape her in the series pilot, the two reached a detente, and Jenny held up the mirror for Chuck and showed him that he was heading down an isolating and self-destructive path. The possibility that he might do the same for Jenny is a bright spot in the arc and would be a trademark inversion.

The interposition of Nate in the Serena-Trip affair plotline surprisingly gives it a watchable dimension. It’s refreshing to get him back in world-weary guru mode, as the character who’s gone through some of the worst tribulations in the series. Unlike the credulity-straining machinations of his brother’s Congressional election, the current situation — affairs with married partners and fucked-up love triangles — are right in his wheelhouse, as he acknowledges himself. Sadly, Gossip Girl tries to give the plotline dramatic oomph in one of the few ways it seems to remember: by making Serena act as stupidly as possible. It’s unfortunate. Since the show is one that lives and dies by its triangles, Nate has to be the third point on it, the way that they bring up buried tension between him and Serena is actually intriguing. However, the plot is damned by the utter lack of chemistry between Serena and Trip; everything they do is telegraphed by obvious shorthand. For example, they finish each others’ stilted anecdotes to announce to the audience that they have a history, and they have a hackneyed “up late at the office” encounter to bludgeon “This is what sexual tension looks like!” Most of the rest of their interactions are repeated “This is wrong” – “But it feels right” waffling exchanges in Trip’s office. To be fair, it appears to be a roughly accurate anatomy of most workplace affairs, but it’s a writer’s job to make plot progression more than the rattling off of bullet points from an outline. Note the ultra-mechanical kiss scene between them at the end of the episode, where they appear to be carefully making sure they’re hitting their marks. Blake Lively has delivered good work before, so this seems to be more of an issue with the lifelessness of the plotline. It almost makes me try to look for a satirical element that’s going over my head.

Now, on to Dan and Vanessa and Olivia (and Blair and Lady Gaga). This episode’s plot revolves how Dan is utterly oblivious to the emotional undercurrents following his threesome, a curious blind spot for someone who wishes to be a writer. As recounted in the flashbacks (some hilarious, as Hilary Duff admirably sells the “getting kicked out of Dan’s bed” pratfall that Blake Lively nailed in the first season), both Olivia and Vanessa have residual doubts and awkwardness from that night’s events. Couple this with Blair’s attempts to impress the NYU Tischies (or Tischites, whatever) and somehow Dan is tasked with writing “A Snow White – Lady Gaga musical to be directed by Blair Waldorf” in which Olivia stars. Vanessa ends up the director, making the whole thing a minefield. The resulting amateur theater is hilariously awful on all counts, but excising it from the Lady Gaga context, it’s all about how Olivia orchestrates events to get Vanessa and Dan to kiss during the skit to generate a moment of Hamlet-like realization in Dan. You see, in the previously-discussed Joffe-Undressed threesome taxonomy, Dan-Olivia-Vanessa was a catalyst threesome: Olivia detected a strong connection between Dan and Vanessa, and ended up being the unwitting conduit between the two. Of course, a catalyst is prone to generating an unstable reaction; both Blair and Nate warn that “the third person is always supposed to be a stranger.” Dan has the moment of realization, but Vanessa doesn’t. This is interesting, if only because it’s an inversion and resurrection of long-forgotten plot elements that were buried in the first season.

But this episode was should have been all about Lady Gaga. When you have a musical performance artist that’s the psychic fusion of Warhol, Hitchcock, Bowie, and Madonna, you let her take the reins, damn it! I know I give the coma/alternate universe episode of The O.C. so much grief, but if there were any time to go entirely off the rails and into crazy uncharted narrative territory, it’s when you’re collaborating with LADY FUCKING GAGA. She has one of the strongest visual sensibilities and authorial signatures of any popular artist today; she even had interesting things to say about the nature of television guesting:

“I really sat down with the writers,” she said. “I was like, ‘Look, I want to do this, and the reason I want to do this is because I am trying to say something that is not mainstream in a mainstream capacity. So, if I can say it on your show, that would be, like, a real coup d’état for me as a performance artist.’ “

The result sounds like an elaborate music video. “I am the narrator behind what is going on with the characters and make the song part of the moment,” she explained about the “crazy performance-art piece.” “We used these ladders, and I’m falling off ladders. Ladders are kind of a monster symbol about bad luck. And I have this 35-foot-long dress on and these X’s, very gothic-inspired. It was great. They let me do whatever the hell I wanted. It was amazing.”

Unfortunately, at this point the budget of a single one of her videos is probably more than an entire hour of Gossip Girl, and it shows. Her performance serves as a mere capstone to the episode, as a needle-drop to underscore the Serena-Trip, Jenny-Ambassador’s Kid, and Dan-Olivia couplings. Because they’re all “bad romances,” get it? I suppose my hopes of “Gossip Girl the musical, a satirical commentary on fame, glamour, and our society’s obsession with the shiny new thing, directed by Lady Gaga” were a bit too high.

At least the episode spurred someone to post this video of Gaga from her NYU days.

It isn’t even really the centerpiece of the episode, as the main plotline revolves around Jenny Humphrey and her power struggles over cotillion. There are a lot of backward-looking and cyclical references in the episode: cotillion, the Lost Weekend, Serena getting trapped in an elevator. (In that regard, it’s amazing how often Gossip Girl synopses read like they were cut and pasted from Screenwriting for Dummies and they actually manage to end up quite good — most of the time, at least.) Jenny’s fixated on her debut as the final erasure of Jenny from Brooklyn and replacement with Jenny, Queen of the Upper East Side. To that end, she’ll do whatever it takes to make cotillion go off without a hitch.

The writers haven’t fully justified Jenny’s internal psychological shift to reach this point. It wouldn’t take much; they did a fantastic job of redefining the Chuck-Jenny relationship in a few short scenes in Season 2. I mentioned before that Gossip Girl seemed to have some of the strongest female voices on television; I’m not so sure that claim holds up anymore. True, the men on the show are rather one-note, but they play their single notes well. Nate is good-natured, dopey, and charming in a leading-man sort of way. Dan is good-natured, dopey, and charming in an artsy-hipster sort of way. Chuck Bass is, as always, Chuck Bass. Blair Waldorf is at the very least a coherent character, but Jenny and Serena transparently move at the whims of the writers, making the characters so flighty and schizophrenic to the point it seems they’re playing to stereotypes. It’s sad, especially when they could be doing so much more.

What’s interesting about the Jenny plotline is the other threesome of the episode: the triple alliance against Jenny consisting of Blair, Eric, and another Constance girl, Kira Abernathy. The pattern of attack fits into the model of power transition theory, which attempts to explain the organization of states in the international system. In this model, there are three kinds of states: the hegemon is the most powerful and has the greatest capacity to shape the system in its own interests. Dominant powers are states who have bought into the hegemon’s system; to them, the disruption that would be caused by unseating the hegemon is outweighed by the benefits they enjoy under the status quo. Then there are the challengers: those who are marginalized under or are dissatisfied with the hegemon’s system. What keeps them from unseating the hegemon (or foils their attempts to do so) is their lack of power to effectively mount a challenge. Therefore, the hegemon’s continued dominance relies on keeping the powerful elements satisfied and the dissatisfied elements powerless.

Apply this template to Gossip Girl, and Jenny Humphrey is the current hegemon; she’s the United States. (Yes, I said Jenny was Hitler last time, but the transitive property doesn’t apply here.) In the status quo, Blair is content to assist Jenny as her cotillion mentor, and Kira is content to be part of the established social order, where she is somewhere in the middle or bottom. But Jenny pursues a dangerous path of unilateral action and shuns both girls; she thinks she can achieve all of her goals on her own. This turns Blair and Kira into challengers who wish to see Jenny taken down. But their combined power isn’t enough — it requires Eric to bring a credible challenge to fruition. Eric’s been a challenger for most of the season; he sees Jenny sliding into corruption and darkness, nearing a point of becoming irredeemable; after suffering several humiliating affronts at the hands of the hegemon, he has been radicalized to the point where he believes only a direct attack will have any results. (Take a guess who he’s supposed to be.)

The triple alliance’s plan to steal away Jenny’s escort succeeds, but she is saved by the deus ex machina of Nate being at cotillion and ready to go for absolutely no reason at all. With the alliance defeated, Jenny’s response and their individual counter-response varies. For Jenny and Blair, it’s an attitude of mutual respect; once Blair is beaten, she makes a negotiated disengagement from the system, content to return to the status quo ante. Kira, on the other hand, feels the full force of the hegemon’s wrath; although Kira may have her own ideas, Jenny makes it clear that any further challenges will be met with massive retaliation. Then there’s Eric — Jenny at least makes a surface gesture of a peace offer (which is easier to do when victorious) but Eric will have none of it. He’s too radicalized at this point, and nothing but Jenny’s destruction will satisfy him. His breakup with Jonathan may have been a little pat, but it makes a good parallel in that the bloody game of realpolitik and geopolitics often forces actors to pay high prices; once you’re locked in, you’re in for a long haul.

There are no grand political parallels in the Dan-Vanessa-Olivia threesome, or at least I don’t think there are. It’s not very shocking either, regardless of what the Parents’ Television Council thinks. Two interesting things about it, though, are its categorization and its display. The ménage à trois is an attempt to collapse the love triangle into a stable entity. Because it’s an order of complexity above a standard coupling, the threesome is often deployed as an element to complicate and create friction in a plotline. The threesome comes in many flavors, most of which I learned from Roland Joffe’s Undressed. (Seriously, Undressed is one of the most overlooked and bizarre gems to ever appear on television. You would never expect that the Academy Award-winning director of The Killing Fields and The Mission would work with MTV to make a series that’s basically a porno with all the sex bits cut out. And if that ever happened, it would be awful, right? Well, that’s Undressed. And it is awful — but in that low-rent “it’s bad enough to become awesome” kind of way. It’s also probably subtly influenced the past ten years of teen sex comedy.) There’s the wedge or V threesome, where the arrangement is the supposed end of competition between two people going after the same object of affection. There’s the T-shaped threesome, where it’s a couple bringing in a third party to breathe new life or expand horizons. There’s also the catalyst threesome (aka the Y tu mamá también), where one person purposefully or inadvertently bridges the gap between two people. It’s murky on what they intend do with Dan-Vanessa-Olivia.

But a thing to consider is how Gossip Girl has mapped the portrayal of same-sex romance and its different portrayals between the sexes. As great as it may be to see Hilary Duff and Jessica Szohr make out, and although the show’s characters seem to have no issue with the concept of gay couples in their midst, there’s a double standard. Eric and Jonathan, for their vaunted relationship, behave almost neutered and platonically in every scene. The show doesn’t revolve around their relationship, so perhaps that’s fair. But consider that the most specific moment of homosexuality depicted on the show was when Dan basically stumbled into a back alley to see Eric getting groped. It’s seen from a voyeuristic angle and depicted as transgressive and wrong — exactly the same way Vanessa stumbled on a scene of incest a season later. Somewhat of a double standard there.

But whatever the faults of this episode, staging a threesome backed by an acoustic cover of T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” is one of those tiny stars-aligning tremor-like strokes of genius that makes you glad the American pop cultural hegemony is good for something. Although they really should have featured the best lines of that track, with Anya Marina crooning, “Shawty you da hottest, love the way you drop it / Your brain’s so good, could’ve swore you went to college.”

Other plots in this episode are the typical Gossip Girl filler: Blair makes a new friend in a hooker, Serena’s publicity job makes her act like a hooker, and Dan wonders if he can play “hooker” on the Scrabble board for the triple word score. Dan and Olivia get the thankless “contractually obligated filler plotline” about Olivia telling an embarassing story about Dan to Jimmy Fallon on his talk show, and then trying to keep that secret from Dan. Considering that Dan’s previous girlfriends’ dark secrets have been “I KILLED A MAN,” “I HELPED COVER UP KILLING A MAN,” and “I THINK I’M COMMITTING STATUTORY RAPE RIGHT NOW,” I don’t know how this Mad Libs plotline is supposed to even register, regardless of the cutesy anniversary ending. Honestly, the ups and downs in terms of writing quality this season are especially jarring. If the characters two episodes ago were in Bringing Up Baby, in this episode they’re in Blue’s Clues.

Take the A-plot about Trip’s election campaign. Perhaps the show shouldn’t have invoked the name of Mr. Michael Mann (blessings be upon him), if only to avoid reminding us what actual political intrigue looks like. The crux of the matter is that we can accept and even enjoy the petty and unrealistic schemes of the teenagers on this show — like Jenny sending her mean girls to throw eggs at her stepbrother’s boyfriend. But it just falls a little flat to do the same with some low-rent bizarro inversion of Chappaquiddick as the turning point for Trip’s campaign, and the oh-so-telegraphed moral dilemma for Nate and Vanessa over whether to reveal that the incident was a setup. This isn’t The Insider — I don’t think anyone expects The Insider — but it’s about as subtle as that episode where the mean girls rigged the election of prom king and queen. And yes, I’ve considered that this may be an actual commentary on the politics, but it doesn’t hold water. We’ve been conditioned to believe that Blair or Chuck or Jenny will embark on some ridiculous scheme, but to place that in the context of real, non-abstract politics, “not some high school thing with Blair and the mean girls,” as Vanessa puts it — it makes the seams on the show’s premise not only show but burst wide open. It’s “Chuck Bass and the Trilateral Commission” all over again.

To examine the faulty writing of this episode further, let’s go beyond the fact that the themes of the various plot strands fail to weave together; even the premises and conclusions of the individual stories to fail to line up. For example, the election is supposed to follow Nate’s descent and redemption: he initially tries to cover up the faked Chappaquiddick, but when that fails, he sacrifices himself and falls on his sword, taking responsibility but saving the election with a stirring speech.

Bullshit. First, the element of sacrifice is overblown. Nate is just some teenaged college freshman playing at being a political fixer. What real risk did he incur in doing what he did? What kind of damage would it really cause? Second, even if Nate claims responsibility, the dirty tricks still come from inside the family and the campaign; mere protestations will not be enough to prevent tainting the candidate. Chace Crawford is supposed to sell that Nate is such a political force that he can sway the election with his words, but he’s no Jed Bartlet. He’s not even Jeff Bridges from The Contender (a movie which did the reverse Chappaquiddick too.) Crawford, for all his charisma, simply does not have the gravitas to make what’s asked of him work. Finally, to have an effective moral dilemma, you need to have the characters’ moral compasses calibrated beforehand. If Trip’s main goal was to run a clean campaign and not take advantage of dirty tricks like the ones his grandfather sets up for him, why do Nate’s actions assuage him? It’s just another layer of political cover-up and lies disguising the fact that it’s Trip’s wife, who we’ve seen for all of sixty-two seconds, channeling Lady Macbeth and orchestrating everything. It’s like the show wants to telegraph something something about “power corrupts” or “politics is dirty,” but it can’t even find the footing for that.

At the very least, the Blair and Serena story helped form an interesting riff on the nature of moral accountability and ascribing judgment to someone based on labels. Blair’s new friend Brandeis may be an escort by her own avocation, but what about Serena, who may have a different title but fulfills many of the same tasks (except for perhaps the one that truly defines the job?) It’s a question of definitions, and there are some interesting philosophical questions half-raised about what defines an action or person as good or bad; is it intent or the action itself or the results? One suspects we’re supposed to link this to the election plotline, but the two fit together like mismatched jigsaw pieces; it just grates uncomfortably, and with Serena dropping the publicity thing and apparently chatting up Trip, it looks like they’re going to go the Eliot Spitzer route. Just great.

Chuck Bass is the one to have the poignant lines of the episode (and thus the only one to act like they have a three-digit-IQ) when he tells Serena that friendships are going to take more work as they all grow older, and the petty spats aren’t going to fade away like they used to — they’re going to fester, and it’s the friendship that will fade. The sentiment touches on things that are actually within the show’s reach, and it’s emblematic of the problems that the show is having in its transition between high school and college — away from the bubble where, for all their vaunted maturity, the characters were insulated and protected from the consequences of their actions. It’s the same chasm that The O.C. tried to traverse and fell into (God forbid Gossip Girl ever does an alternate-universe coma episode.) Perhaps the writers should turn a cultural landmark that made it to the other side — of course, I’m referring to Saved by the Bell: The College Years.

In all seriousness, the writers do grasp that they can’t extend this bubble of fakery forever — it’s just the characters and the plotting haven’t caught up with where the narrative is taking them. The characters (save for Jenny) can’t rely on the petty bullshit games of Constance — now the rest of world around them needs to behave like it.

It’s Halloween on the Upper East Side, and no holiday fits our characters better. Slipping into the cover of night, hiding behind masks and costumes, tricks and treats: the omnipresent themes of subterfuge and identity come out in full force. This episode’s lynchpin is the Halloween opening of the Gimlet nightclub; its owner, Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick), still smarting from Blair (Leighton Meester) and her manipulations in the previous episode, attempts to cut her out of his business affairs. Blair, on the other hand, tries to scheme her way back into his heart. Meanwhile, Serena (Blake Lively) solves problems in her publicity job and with her friends by bringing celebrities and paparazzi to Gimlet — and one of those celebrities happens to be Olivia (Hilary Duff). These events add another layer of awkwardness to her relationship with Dan (Penn Badgley), already complicated by Gossip Girl posts and Hollywood baggage. Then there’s the Jenny plotline, along with a runner with Rufus (Matthew Settle) and Lily (Kelly Rutherford).

That’s right: we have A, B, C, D, and E plots. That’s a lot of knives to keep in the air for forty minutes, and the writers actually manage to pull it off; even the forgettable Rufus and Lily story has a choice line about Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift costumes. (I can immediately comprehend what the Lady Gaga look is, but what the hell does a Taylor Swift costume look like? Something involving cowboy boots?)

In keeping with the holiday, one can divide the characters in each storyline into “trickers” or “treaters”. You can gloss them into any dialectic you want: idealists versus realists, negative liberty versus positive liberty, neoconservatives versus sane people. The trickers are comfortable with accepting some level of falsehood or deception into their lives if that’s what it takes to make things work smoothly. Blair is capable of all sorts of double-dealings to get what she wants, including calling in favors from a guy who’s her boyfriend’s mortal enemy and who attempted to rape her best friend’s mom. Serena, flipping around from her role in the last episode, pulls her fair share of machination as well. At this point, Jenny is practiced in casual deception, as is her stepmother. And Olivia the actress lies to Dan (and herself) about her previous onscreen/offscreen relationship and its meaning. “It’s all acting,” she says — while she and Brando might disagree with me, good acting is all about lying; great acting is all about telling the truth. The perfect deception is one you come to believe yourself.

In opposition to the trickers stand the treaters, who instinctively recoil from subterfuge and are perhaps more idealistic and less compromising; the most surprising character to fall into this category is Chuck, who previously invited comparisons to the ultimate trickers, the CIA. Unlike them, Chuck appears to have some baseline of scruples; some things aren’t games to him, and he tells Blair that when he says the reason he found it difficult to tell Blair he loved her was because “I couldn’t trust you.” His big turn in the episode, which is usually the culmination of a grand deception, is actually a grand truth — he calls the cops on himself to shut down his party because of his club’s lack of a liquor license. It’s part of a bigger scheme, of course, but the fact that there is any truth there at all is surprising.

Even Serena, in a stunning display of character consistency, finds it acceptable to manipulate strangers but draws the line in playing games with those close to her; she reveals her plans to Olivia and lets her make her own decisions. (Serena is Bukharin, and Blair is Stalin?) In this whole story, Dan once again serves the role of surrogate for the public. He is a spectator, watching Olivia’s performance in her films, watching her in Gossip Girl blasts, and watching her as she tells him her story in person. He has to take all these elements and collapse them into a cohesive narrative, which is difficult when you can’t tell what’s true and what’s false. Decisions are made for him, and he goes along with the ride Olivia and Serena have set up for him because events roll forward beyond his control.

This lack of control emanates from the publicity machine that dominates this episode. Chuck needs publicity for his club. Serena needs publicity for her job. Olivia needs publicity for her friends. There are many shades to this machine, and call it what you like: publicity, propaganda, espionage, dogma — it’s all about constructing a narrative that, when consumed, facilitates someone’s goals and agenda. In the end, publicity is nothing more than an elaborate costume or mask. This is where we get to Jenny Humphrey.

In the episode, Eric (Connor Pablo) and Jonathan (Matt Doyle) comment that Jenny is wearing a mask: she is friendly when interacting with them and her family, and cold and domineering when in her role as Queen Bee of Constance. Jonathan says that she’s been wearing the mask so long, “the mask is becoming her face.” Besides recalling a really good Twilight Zone episode, it puts deception into the context of leadership. The military historian John Keegan examined the nature of leadership in wartime, which is when it’s put to the test — after all, you’re asking for the greatest sacrifice, people’s lives. People may be easily led, but you have to prove that you are fit to be the leader. Although flawed, Keegan created an interesting framework, defining that proof of leadership as heroism; to him, leaders have to put on “the mask of command” in order to lead; in other words, they had to create the image of being a leader. It’s publicity in a different guise. Keegan classified leaders into different types: Heroics like Alexander the Great who lead from the front, lead by example, and claim authority by their own bravery. There are Anti-Heroics like Lord Nelxon, who take leadership as a mantle of privilege that few are qualified for; then there are Unheroics like Ulysses S. Grant, who view leadership as a burden and responsibility to shoulder for the sake of others.

However, Keegan has a fourth category: the False Heroics, leaders who create a grand illusion to drive and and motivate the people while the leaders themselves remain in secrecy and without accountability. His main example? None other than Mr. “Godwin’s Law” himself.

Leaving aside the surface parallels (creatives who abandoned their craft for the sake of power, and who took command after an earlier failed attempt to usurp control from sitting leadership), the closest link is that Jenny believes she can maintain her regime by projecting an aura of invincibility. If this means betraying and deceiving everyone around her, so be it. She says one thing while doing another; one can imagine “Operation Dillinger”, in which Jenny’s minions egg Jonathan, as the equivalent to the Reichstag fire. Such a regime is consolidated by visiting violence and marginalization on those who would challenge it, acts of violence which cement the bonds of those in the power structure. The critical problem with such a setup is that it is entirely built on lies and deception, and gargantuan effort must be exerted to maintain the fiction. As Jenny says herself, “As soon as those girls see me hesitate, I have a full-blown rebellion on my hands.”

Which is, of course, what will happen. At the end of the episode, Jenny destroys her creative identity by abandoning her sewing machine; remember what happened the last time she did that. She’s going to have her “cornered in the bunker” comeuppance eventually; the only question is what form it will take.

(I was hoping to be the first intersection of the keywords “Gossip Girl” and “Reichstag fire”, but alas, everything is on the Internet already)

The same is true in the world of Gossip Girl. It’s interesting to see how New York University is perceived. Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), who once considered even the prestigious Sarah Lawrence beneath her, considers it a mark of shame that she’s forced to attend the school and disdains it every chance she gets. Gabriela (Gina Torres) heaps scorn on the school as well, although she comes from the other side and considers the private university to be exclusionary; she believes that education should be a public good open to all. The show frames both positions as unreasonable, causing friction in the relationships between both Blair and Chuck (Ed Westwick)  and Gabriela and her daughter Vanessa (Jessica Szohr). However, the equivalence between the two positions is a false one. Blair’s disdain comes from a complaint about how the school does not comport with her own self-perceived status as an elite — it’s an argument about image. Gabriela, on the other hand, is arguing that using education as a commodity and marker of the elite is itself wrong; hers is a criticism of society. It’s a shame that she lets it affer her relationship with her daughter, but as she points out, the quest for status leads Vanessa to do horrible some horrible things. Gabriela is not entirely off-base.

The conflict between Vanessa and Blair for the coveted Freshman toast is brisk and filled with reversals, making great use of a number of open-mic gaffes: Vanessa says “I wish Rufus and Lily were my parents” right as her own mother walks in, while Blair inadvertently recounts how she manipulated her boyfriend into kissing another man in order to steal the toast away from Vanessa. The situation itself is awkward and played for laughs to great effect, allowing Westwick to deliver the delightfully enigmatic line “You really think I’ve never kissed a guy before?” (and thus ensuring the hatred of Kansans everywhere. Yeah, I can’t help it.)

In the end, the toast goes to starlet Olivia (Hilary Duff), who makes a gaffe of her own when Vanessa manipulates her into thinking that Rufus (Matthew Settle) and Lily (Kelly Rutherford) were judgmental and looked down on “Hollywood types.” In response, she plays the stereotype to the hilt, acting haughty and snooty towards them. The funny thing is that her behavior is only a slightly-exaggerated version of the attitudes that Lily’s own daughter Serena (Blake Lively) and her socialite friends hold themselves. The show attempts to paint the Hollywood stereotype as gauche and disrespectful, but the two elites share more commonalities than differences. It’s an artificial distinction.

Another distinction — it’s apparent that Gossip Girl hates the South. Just as the only Briton we’ve seen was a guy who slept with his own (step)mother, all the Southerners we’ve seen have been con men, creepy evangelicals, spies, and brutish oilmen. The Buckleys are among that group, and their feud with the Van Der Bilts is representative of another conflict between ingroups. Are we supposed to sympathize with the Van Der Bilts because they are Democrats and the Buckleys are Republicans? We’ve already seen that the Van Der Bilts are just as controlling, manipulative, and desirous of power; they only reinforce that image in this episode. (For a moment, I almost though that Gossip Girl was actually engaging in political commentary.)

The Buckleys are truly callous when engaging in what amounts to indentured servitude. But is there anything more noxious than the look of fear and disgust on Serena’s face when she contemplates that her boyfriend might have to WORK on an oil rig? Newsflash: People do that when they need money. At least when Blair is being annoying and elitist, we sense that rather viscerally. Serena, on the other hand, rarely comes off as unsympathetic even when she should be. Maybe Blake Lively is just so charismatic that she can’t sell being incorrect or unlikable — but that’s a negative. (Another lesson from this episode is to never bring Nate Archibald near a poker table. That guy’s a real cooler.)

But at the end of an episode all about factions and the boundaries between them, those boundaries become quite blurred. In their manipulations and machinations, both Blair and Vanessa burn everyone close to them. In the end, they have no one else — except each other? They break bread (croissants) together. Who knows if it actually means anything, since there are reverses in every Gossip Girl episode that rarely last, but it’s a fitting cap for the episode.

Cultural references in this episode (this one has a ton):

• All About Eve is a 1950 film starring Bette Davis as Broadway actress whose star is on the wane. Davis is certainly a contrast to Hepburn, who Blair constantly dreams herself as. Whereas Hepburn is remembered as a youthful and energetic figure in such movies as Charade, Davis was more serious and perhaps of a bygone era. I enjoyed her turn in The Corn is Green where she played a stern but caring schoolmarm who sends a young coal miner to Oxford.
• Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is another film where Bette Davis channels a fading actress well past her prime, descending into obscurity and insanity. Blair’s certainly getting all Freudian.
• Welcome Back, Kotter was a sitcom most notable for the breakout performance of John Travolta as the leader of the slacker high school students known as the Sweathogs. This episode peppers references to actors with notably checkered careers and who are memorable for their faded glory.
• J.R. Ewing from the television show Dallas pretty much epitomizes the stereotype of the evil Texan.
• Blair draws as her inspiration for the toast the works of Thomas Hobbes, Mao Zedong, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Sun Tzu. I’m sure it would have been a speech to make a neoconservative proud.

For the most part, Rufus and Lily play it straight, sincere, and serious — the screwball comedy comes from the ensemble who weave the usual Gossip Girl web of intrigue and deceit. Written by Leila Gerstein and directed by Ron Fortunato, this episode features some of the best repartee and comic timing of the season, honed to a razor tip. Everyone gets a good burn in. Bree and Blair: “We’re Southern, so family loyalty’s really big down there.” “Like slavery?” Dan and Vanessa: “You know I’ve always cared about you–” “Stop, I’m not in love with you, moron!” Serena… okay, Serena not so much; she’s really underserved. But special mention should be given to Michelle Trachtenberg’s Georgina, who finds the right grace notes of Iago/Medea/the space diaper astronaut stalker with her performance. Georgina is pure id, and Trachtenberg calibrates her tension and villainy so finely. It takes talent to make a merely funny like like “Haven’t you ever tried to get someone to dump a celebrity before?” into something sublime.

A number of other storylines are wrapped up in this episode as well, as if the platform for the “remarriage” serves as a catalyst for other relationships as well. The feud between Bree (Joanna Garcia) and Carter (Sebastian Stan) is revealed as one of deceit and scorned family, spelling the end of their respective relationships with main characters. However, both are rather anticlimactic. Carter and Serena’s relationship was relatively anodyne and never seemed to add anything to the story; its abrupt ending recalls the Serena-and-Dan drama at the end of season one. If all the writers can do with Serena is play musical chairs, they are wasting her. I seriously can’t remember the last time she did anything interesting. At least Nate was a gigolo for incestuous nobles and punched out his own father.

The “Scott is Rufus and Lily’s love child” plotline is resolved as well. In a trademark Gossip Girl inversion, Georgina’s attempt to use Scott as a nuclear option power play ends up instigating a family reunion and renewal. Chris Riggi still has the charisma of a block of seitan, but he serves as a good catalyst for the other actors. I was always wary of this plotline that lasted a good half season, but the writers manage to bring it in for a landing, earning the emotion at the end. It’s probably the most sincere and truthful this show has ever been, and it works. The episode fulfills the task of any good comedy of remarriage: for a short time, we get to hear some acid-laced zingers, have a few laughs, and in the end perhaps believe for a moment that true love is really possible in this fucked-up world. Plus, the episode ends with a nice cameo by Sonic Youth. What’s not to love?

Next week: Serena falls for a shady celebrity chef, or maybe a soulful zookeeper — who the fuck knows. Also, I find a way to name-drop the Situationist International.

Cultural references this episode:

• Arnett Mead is a shout-out to the television series Friday Night Lights, where Arnett Mead is a fictional town whose football team serves as rivals to the Dillon Panthers.
• Rachel Getting Married is a really good film.
• The New Yorker on Sonic Youth: “The band that once specialized in manhandling pawnshop guitars has become an institution.”

If we’re going to talk about identity, one go-to is always Dan (Penn Badgley), whose self-professed “outsider” status has been exploded by his celebrity authorship and impending entry into one of New York’s wealthiest families. He’s dated a teacher, socialites, and now a movie star. Hilary Duff plays Olivia, a famous teen actress who just wants a breather from the spotlight as she goes to NYU. Not a stretch for her, but she delivers a capable and sincere performance. What’s interesting is that through her, Gossip Girl explores another facet of the power elite. There is the aristocracy, which derives their power from heredity, bloodline, and tradition. There is the capital/political class, who directly control the levers of the government and economy. Then there is the celebrity, who gains power from being well-known. Celebrities cultivate and harvest fame, and use it as currency.

But all these elements are interconnected and reinforce each other. Most Americans would claim an instinctual revulsion towards aristocracy, but see no issue with massive wealth concentration, the biggest step towards creating such an aristocracy. After all, those people earned it, right? And the concept of celebrity puts a face on the elite: a face that is always handsome and beautiful and charming and irresistable. It’s even become a cornerstone of our politics ever since we elected as president an actor who starred opposite a monkey. Bush II was characterized easily as a guy you could sit down and have a beer with, regardless of the fact that offering a beer to a recovering alcoholic is really insulting. And Obama? Of course you could have a beer with him! Right-wing commentators hurl “celebrity” as an insult, but there’s some truth there. Obama is far from a leftist; the president supports several policies that would put him to the right of several nationalist and fascist European parties. What is important is that Obama puts a charismatic and compelling face on America and its government, while the people who are hands-on with the levers of power do their work in relative obscurity.

What I’m saying is that Hilary Duff would probably make a decent president. Better than Bush II, at least. (I assume Cadet Kelly counts as military service.)

She certainly does a better job of being an actor on Gossip Girl than Tyra Banks, who plays Ursula, a tyrannical, demanding, self-conscious diva. Again not a stretch, but Banks, in some kind of Gertrude-like protestation, attempts to distance herself from the character and overplays it to the point of absurdity. Combine this with Serena (Blake Lively), who becomes Ursula’s publicist’s assistant in a bid to “find herself” outside the roadmap to college, and this is a clusterfuck of a plotline. Compare this moment to the beginning of the series, where Serena’s mold-breaking relationship with Dan was the centerpiece of the series. But they went to that well a few too many times, and now any storyline they place Serena in only paints her as more of a dilettante and dissipated heiress than Blair (Leighton Meester), whose Jiang Qing-like machinations have only become more endearing with time.

If there’s anything redeeming about this plot, it’s that they touch on publicity as one of the purest forms of image and identity control. Ursula’s publicist engineers a public meltdown for the fragile actress to boost her public profile, regardless of how deceitful and psychologically damaging it might be. Serena makes the hard decision and warns Ursula, which gets Serena fired. However, since nothing bad can ever happen to anyone rich (except Bart Bass), Serena gets to keep her job in the end. Yay.

Far more intriguing, though given short shrift, is Blair and Jenny’s (Taylor Momsen)  interactions with the students at Constance Billard, Blair’s alma mater. Blair, who is still unable to forge a place at NYU, finds herself drawn back to Constance, where her power structure still resides. Meanwhile, Jenny, who was handed control of that structure, attempts to tear it down to usher in an era of “sunshine and fairness.” However, she faces resistance, and the two girls become locked in a power struggle that only Chuck can defuse. The plot is filled with trademark Gossip Girl mirrors and inversions — who thought that Jenny and the guy who tried to rape her would ever be in cahoots? Chuck makes an incisive point when he tells Blair that her identity isn’t dependent on what other people think of her; even then, the happy ending is not without maniuplation and subterfuge, and I’m not sure comparing your girlfriend to Dumbo is ever a good idea.

Meanwhile, by the end, Jenny seems to have comported herself all Isildur-like to the top-down dominance hierarchy of Constance, embracing its privilege and power for herself. It’s certainly a sharp turn, and Blair means more than she says when she compares Jenny’s initial program to perestroika. Jenny is indeed a Gorbachev/Yeltsin figure: initially bent on progressive reform of the system, they all faced heavy pressure from external forces (neoliberals/mean girls) and had to turn to repressive tactics to maintain power. After all, if you have to bomb your own parliament building to get your way, you probably fucked up somewhere. It remains to be seen if Jenny has her “storm the White House” moment, and what she plans on claiming as her real identity.

Cultural references in this episode:

• Josephine Baker was an African-American entertainer most renowned for her singing talents. Like James Baldwin and many other African-American artists in early 20th century, she received more acclaim in her adoptive country of France than she did at home.
• Jean de Florette is a French historical film directed by Claude Berri. Heavily featuring manipulation, deception, intercepted communications and mistaken family identities, the characters of Gossip Girl could probably relate.