Mah mah mah Gossip Girl mah mah Gossip Girl had a Lady Gaga cameo last night!  Otherwise, same ole confusing shizz.  Read on…

Jenny Humphrey
So Jenny’s semi-stepbrother Chuck Bass had to entertain this dude named Damien, the son of an ambassador that was staying at his hotel.  He was easily able to pawn off the duty on Jenny on account of she’s soooo bored now that she’s soooo popular.  Jenny takes Damien out on the town and soon finds out he’s a drug dealer, which seemed to somewhat interest her.

That night, they go to a club to pass of some drugs (ecstasy, I believe?) to a customer - then Damien suggests that Jenny go into the bathroom to “test the merchandise.”  Just as the round li’l pill lands in her hand, Chuck walks in to bust up the scene.  “Dude, I’m Chuck Bass,” he tells the Belgian. “Even Europeans must know what that means.”

Saved by Chuck Bass!  Which is funny, because Li’l J had to be saved FROM Chuck Bass back in the first season (remember how he like, tried to rape her?!).  Jenny later admits to Chuck that she’s bored now that she’s Queen Bee.  He warns her to watch out - acting out out of boredom is trouble (he should know!).  Jenny retreats to her room and sends Damien a text: “That was fun.  Let’s do it again some time.”

UH OH!  Foreshadowing!  Jenny’s spiraling out of control!  FINALLY, some excitement.

Serena van der Woodsen, Nate Archibald, and Trip van der Bilt
Serena is STILL crushing on Trip, and goes to Nate for advice.  She doesn’t think she can control herself around Trip (a married man!) and is too stupid to realize cutting of contact with him is the simplest solution.  Nate decides to help her out by taking her on an epic bar crawl (wtf?) to keep her busy until Trip leaves on his trip (ha!) to D.C.

In the meantime, Trip finds out that it was his wife Maureen who staged the Hudson River rescue from a few episodes back and is super upset.  He turns to the bottle and then goes out to find Nate and Serena at the Brandy Library, where they are reminiscing about the time they did it at the Shepherd wedding and about to smooch.  Trip explains how upset and confused he is with the Maureen sitch, and asks Serena to go on a walk with him.  Nate warns S that if she leaves with Trip, they’ll definitely cross the line. “That line just got a little blurry,” she responds, which totally isn’t true, cuz dude is still a married Congressman, after all.

Blair Waldorf and the Post-Threesome Trio
Things are kinda awkward between Dan Humphrey, Olivia Burke, and Vanessa Abrams after the three of ‘em did it last week.  Dan and Vanessa are awk, Vanessa and Olivia are avoiding each other, things aren’t right. Tsk, tsk!  “The third person is supposed to be a stranger,” Nate scolds Dan.

Meanwhile, Blair is trying to dominate another social scene by getting in with the Tisch theater kids by participating in their cabaret event.  She enlists Olivia to help her out, and Olivia enlists Dan to write the play to help him get involved in teh creative writing program.  The cabaret turns out to be the same night as the Morrissey concert Dan and Vanessa are supposed to go to, and Olivia lies to V and tells her they had been planning to participate in the cabaret in the past month.

Vanessa later finds about the lie, and weasels her way into directing the play.  This leads to rivalry/aggression between the two girls, and both end up quitting.  Sneaky Blair, however, figures out that they’ve just had a threesome (“The third person is supposed to be a stranger!” she scolds Dan) and blackmails the girls into participating in the play, unless they want news of their threesome publicized.

The show must go on!  It’s cabaret night, and Dan’s crappy play is LIVE!  His modern retelling of Snow White apparently casts him as a hot shot record producer/Prince Charming, Olivia as an aspiring chanteuse, Blair as the evil stepmother, and Blair’s minions as a boy band.  Seriously, you guys, how embarrassing were the minions as the boy band?  Oy.

At intermission, Olivia confesses to Dan what’s bothering her: whilst threesome-ing, she realized that Dan and Vanessa love each other.  Dan totally denies it, but it seems like he’s taken her words a bit to heart - he now sees Vanessa through fresh eyes.

When the play returns, Olivia purposefully misses her cue on stage, knowing that Blair will push Vanessa on stage for the final scene: Prince Charming’s kiss with Snow White.  Vanessa indeed steps in for the rest of the play.  Dan plants a kiss on the babe, and…. sparks fly?  I can never tell with these two. They’re such losers.

The episode ends with a goodbye: Olivia has decided to take a role in The Bitches of Eastwick (Olivia: “It’s like Heathers, but with witches”), and will be gone for the rest of the semester.  Vanessa tells her that she doesn’t have feelings for Dan and that one of the more pretentious Tisch dudes likes he so whaeva.  Obviously, O doesn’t buy it.  Bye bye, Hilary Duff story arc!  And Lonely Boy stands alone?

The play is a hit among the obviously stupid Tisch kids (again, isn’t this bad PR for NYU?), Dan might be getting a boost into the creative writing program, and Blair has seemingly earned their respect.  Blair then one-ups everyone by using stepfather Cyrus Rose’s connections to get the kids into a Lady Gaga dress rehearsal.  Wallace Shawn was the inspiration for “Poker Face,” btw.

The Lady Gaga cameo was totally random and out of place, but so’s everything on this trainwreck of a show.  Where once I saw art (a modern retelling of The Age of Innocence!), I now see pure entertainment.  And I’m okay with that.  I used to watch Dynasty with my grandmas, after all.

At least we got a few new plots in the mix!  A Trip/Serena/Nate love triangle, a blossoming Dan/Vanessa romance, Jenny Humphrey gone wild, Blair begins her domination and…. Chuck?  Poor Chuck has been the absent boy scout in the few episodes, and I’m tired of it!

What, is Ed Westwick off shooting a movie or something?

BRING BACK CHUCK BASS!

Does anyone even watch this Gossip Girl show anymore?  This show is getting harder to follow than Queen Mum after a few drinks (that was funny, right?)!

Let’s break it down by character; otherwise, this shizz is way too hard to follow:

Dan Humphrey and Olivia Burke
Olivia for some reason doesn’t want to show bf Dan her appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.  She goes to great lengths to keep footage of the show from him, but he eventually comes across the clip.  It seems Olivia told Jimmy Fallon the story of her first date with Dan, in which he emerged from the bathroom with his shirt on inside-out.  Fallon starts calling him “Bathroom Boy,” it’s hilarious blah blah blah.  Dan ends up not really caring, just being bummed he forgot their one-month anniversary, yadda yadda all is right with the world.

Nate Archibald, Vanessa Abrams, and the Congressional Campaign
Nate’s cousin Trip van der Bilt is running for Congress.  Nate’s helping out while Vanessa documents the whole process for one of her snoozy short films.  She gets footage of Trip saving a drowning man in the Hudson River, but when reviewing the tape before selling it off to a local news station, learns that the whole thing was set up to make Trip look like a hero.  She warns Nate ahead of time so Trip can plan his PR plan of attack ahead of time.  What ends up happening instead is Nate tricking Vanessa into forking the footage over by sending a fake journalist to purchase the tape.  Vanessa later figures it out and gives him one of her b.s. moral authority speeches about how he isn’t the Nate Archibald she once knew.  Nate redeems himself later by taking credit for the whole set up, even though he had nothing to do with it.

BONUS: We all thought it was Grandfather William van der Bilt (p.s. love it how they all call him “Grandfather”), but it turns out to be Trip’s sneaky wife Maureen who was behind the whole shebang.  She confesses this to Grandfather with a shizz-eating grin on her face, because she knows he’s underestimated her in the past.  Grandfather responds that he actually doesn’t think about her much at all.  Disssssss!

Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen
The girls are still pissed at each other over last week’s snafu with Chuck Bass’s Gimlet bar opening and whatnot.  Blair finds herself a new best friend in the form of some babe named Brandeis whose got a penchant for designer clothes.  Blair takes Brandeis to Trip van der Bilt’s election party at Chuck’s Empire Hotel, where Serena is attending with her new fake boyfriend actor Patrick Roberts, who she is dating only to keep her job as a publicist.  Patrick gets mondo drunk at the party and lets our friends know that Blair’s buddy Brandeis is not only a psych major at NYU, but a high-class call girl - she’s at the party looking for new clients!  Things get crazy, Blair gets drunk-as-a-skunk Patrick kicked out of the party, Serena tells Blair about her new friend’s actual calling in life, Blair gives her one of those takes-one-to-know-one lines, and S pushes B’s face into a cake.

Whew! Serena ends up feeling like a whore after all, quitting her job, and trying to make up with Blair - but Blair won’t have it.  Blair’s got a real life now, with school and a real relationship, while Serena’s floundering through life, alienating her family and friends.  Blair wants no part of it.  Could this be the end of Serena and Blair?!?!?!?

The episode ends with Blair crawling into bed with Chuck - she’s got no friends, but at least she has him, she says - and Serena running into newly-elected Trip at a bar and him joining her for a chat.  Both these scenes seemed foreshadowing to me.  Will Blair lose Chuck too?  Will something happen between Serena and Trip?  I certainly hope both of those questions are answered with a big fat NO.

Next week?  It’s supposed to be the big threesome episode we’ve been hearing buzz about (OM3!).  Who do you think it’ll be?  I’m half-assuming it’ll involve Olivia (you know how loose those Hollywood types are!), but I’m hoping Vanessa will be involved because maybe THEN she’d shut up.  Serena would be too obvious, no?

Maybe our girl Gossip will show up.  xoxo!