But were I to be drawn into a conversation about the merits of this show, and should my little lecture about how women's narratives and children's narratives are historically undervalued in our culture go unheeded, my greatest fear is now that this episode would enter the field of play, and I hate it for being future ammo against my sense of self more than anything. As much as this is like some dullard Gossip Girl fan's idea of what an episode of this show might be like, it is also -- and this is painful to realize -- a non-fan's idea of what this show is like: bombastic music, people scheming to themselves like they're on Passions, ridiculous momentary situations and conversations that don't pass simple BS tests, everybody a cartoon, every joke telegraphed and underlined and not that funny to begin with. For like the fourth week running: Too much soap, not enough opera.

Everybody high-fives Dan Humphrey in the courtyard for finally doing something admirable, and Jenny brings over the GG post written on her hand, and Dan makes fun of her old homeless makeup habits so that it's like the show winking at us and pretending to be our friend, and he gets all defensive about how he's not sleeping with Rachel yet, and then Serena comes up and gives him a chance to explain himself, and they figure out that the only person on the Upper East Side that's not in love with her -- because if both S and Lonelyboy think she's great, and they're the center of the universe, then it must be so -- is Blair Waldorf. Dan makes like he's about to murderize B in Rachel's honor and throws a self-righteous hissy fit about how this time, "she's gone way too far."

What are Vanessa and Nate doing? What do you think? Giggling inanely for no reason at the piano in the house where Chuck met the most beautiful woman he still hasn't seen. I keep wanting to bitch about how he said that even though she was wearing a mask, but I can see defending that line in a better episode, with some kind of high-flying metaphor about masks and burlesque and the girl inside the thing inside the mask or whatever, so fuck it. Once we see her -- bearing a fucking candle like this is the moors of Scotland and not a huge apartment in Manhattan -- we will see that she's pretty, in the way that girls in L.A. are pretty on their way to being hard. Then he finds a picture of her sitting on the piano with a kid in her arms, and it takes Nate's brilliant steel-trap mind to point out that, since this house is for sale, they could call the realtor.