Gossip Girl: What Was She Thinking?

A new day is breaking over the Upper East Side, and Blair is doing some hard detention time in the park, picking up trash to atone for her teacher-ditching sins of last week. Except actually, Dorota is doing all the work (and making some rather hilarious put-upon expressions). Blair’s gay dad turns up with a picnic basket for his little girl and some doting fatherly words about what a responsible, considerate young lady she’s grown up to be. Clearly Blair’s dad has been spending too much time being gay in France, because those adjectives don’t describe any Blair that I know.

Meanwhile, Miss Rachel Carr of Dubuque, Iowa is having a completely inappropriate breakfast with her young pupil, Dan. They’re talking about his stupid writing career, and she offers some lame litcrit about the sense of isolation in his work and how much she relates to it because she grew up in a cornfield, or whatever. You must all know by now that I can’t really stand any kind of Dan, but Serious Writer Dan has got to be the most insufferable of all, and I just cannot wait for this scene to be over. Miss Carr goes on to prove her professionalism and good sense by snitting about all her other students at Constance. What a dedicated, inspiring educator this woman is! First of all, no teacher who’s interested in keeping her job would be even be caught alone in a classroom with a student, much less sharing breakfast with them, and second, teachers are allowed to talk all kinds of crap about their students to other teachers only! So, Serena walks in and catches them together being all intense and literary, and there’s a moment of extreme awkwardness. More blather about what a brilliant writer Dan is, amazing Cordelia reference in his work, blah blah I’M NOT LISTENING.

Blair’s finished her detention and eager to get started on some sweet, sweet revenge against Miss Carr, but she can’t get the minions to care. That is, until the school is struck by an evil Miss Carr-sponsored scheme to take away everyone’s cellphones, because that will teach them to be good, responsible citizens who take contemplative walks in the woods like Thoreau and have meaningful, romantic discussions with their students’ marble-mouthed writer boyfriends over breakfast. Naturally, the minions go catatonic at the loss of their devices. Dorota, awesomely wearing dark glasses, recovers the phones and sneaks them to the girls in the washroom. Someone please give this woman a spinoff! Blair orders the minions to get dirt on Miss Carr, except she’s as clean as a corn husk, so she tells them to make something up. And then! She spots Dan and Rachel in mid-flirt, and sends off an alert to Gossip Girl that they’re having an affair. Again, Blair, is this really the best you can do? Too many witnesses, no evidence… a B-minus scheme at best.

So somehow the whole school hears the rumour despite not having their phones. Dan finds out, tells Serena it’s not true, and confronts Blair. And then Serena tells Miss Carr about the rumour and Gossip Girl, and Miss Carr gets a “this horrible new technology must be stopped!” look on her face. Nelly Yuki turns Judas, Blair gets busted, and she’s expelled from school, which means Yale is on the line. Gasp!

Next, poor put-upon, enabling Serena goes to plead Blair’s case to Miss Carr. I love Blair and all, but the girl should face some consequences, for her sloppy scheming if not for her malicious lying! But Miss Carr will not budge, and actually, rightly so. Do you think we need to get Serena some sort of self-help book? Boyfriends Who Make You Feel Bad About Being Totally Nice and Awesome? Or Best Friends Who Are Only There for You When They Need Something, and That Something Is Usually Immoral, if Not Completely Illegal? There’s got to be some sort of 10-step plan to recovery.

And then, what do you think stupid Miss Carr does? What would you do if you were accused of impropriety with a student? Would you stay as far away from that student as possible, and make sure that from now on you only meet with students on school property, with plenty of people around? Or would you meet that student at a romantic candlelit coffee shop, alone, at night? If you answered the latter, you just might be someone who doesn’t want to keep her job! So, Dan and Miss Carr are having another intense, schmoopy conversation. She gets upset over her career which she is totally responsible for allowing to be ruined, and Serena comes along and catches Dan stroking her cheek and trying to hug her in a rather un-studentlike manner. But, see, Dan is one of those people who will be able to justify any of this behaviour, because it’s research for his writing or something, and also because he is Dan Humphrey, and he is right and good, and therefore all his actions are entirely pure. At any rate, Serena snaps a photo of her boyfriend and teacher looking less than innocent. She wanders over to Blair’s, now torn between protecting her selfish, emotionally unfaithful boyfriend and saving her selfish, psychotically manipulative best friend. How much does this girl need to find a new crowd? She decides to give Blair the photo.

While all this is going on, Chuck is having a strange little subplot, which starts with him waking up in a hotel room with weird, sexy Story of O flashbacks of a night he can’t quite remember, involving masks and underwear and stuff. (Actually, Chuck references Eyes Wide Shut, giving me horrible, unsexy flashbacks to Tom Cruise angstily clutching his head and that one plinking piano note played over and over.) After a bunch of mysterious, boring sleuthing, he ends up tracking down his mystery woman “Elle.” It turns out that Chuck got an invitation that was meant for his dad, and Elle had to seduce him and drug him because there are things he cannot know. Old dead Bart was apparently involved in some top-secret powerful society that sounds sort of like the Illuminati, but with sex. I wonder if he knew Client 9? Then Chuck finds out that Elle has disappeared, presumably because she said too much! Dun dun dun. This is really silly.

Ok, back to the hot teacher-student sex plot. There’s a meeting of the parents’ council; Blair’s poor deluded gay dad defends his daughter, Humphrey père defends his son, and Lily defends every teenage girl’s god-given right to spread rumours and gossip about other people. The debate is put to an end when Blair shows up with the incriminating evidence of Dan “comforting” Miss Carr. Miss Carr is fired, and Blair gets back into Constance, and Yale, but loses her father’s trust. Blair makes sad faces, but I don’t feel very bad for her.

Somehow this all gets turned around to be Serena’s fault for assuming the worst about Dan, when all he was doing was innocently caressing his teacher’s cheek by candlelight. So they break up again, for reals, and they don’t seem all that upset about it.

Next, Dan goes to Rachel’s to comfort her some more, this time with his penis. She kisses him, because she’s not his teacher anymore, so all bets are off! Meanwhile, the headmistress is telling Lily and Rufus that they’ll have to let Miss Carr have her job back because there’s no evidence of anything, and Serena calls Dan and leaves a voice mail asking if they can just forget the whole Hot for Teacher thing. Too late! We end with the silhouetted outlines of Dan and Rachel disrobing, as the ominous electro-punk of Uh-Oh, They’re Totally Going To Do It takes us out of the episode.

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