Gossip Girl Season Three Premiere: A Review

The season premiere of Gossip Girl aired last night and after a summer of high hopes for the show, I was left a tad bit disappointed. It was a rollercoaster of high and low points, but not as much for the characters as it was for me. I had a hard time buying a lot of the explanations behind some of the kids actions last night, namely Serena (Blake Lively), Chuck (Ed Westwick) and Blair (Leighton Meester), and Dan (Penn Badgley). I pray that Josh Schwartz and crew pick up the pace soon, because what I saw last night was crazy TV and not good crazy TV at that.

At the end of the second season, Blair and Chuck finally got together and simultaneously calmed the nerves of a million teen girls screaming for the event to happen, Jenny (Taylor Momson) was bestowed the crown of new Queen Bee of Constance by Blair, Nate (Chace Crawford) and Vanessa (Jessica Szhor) were on their way to Europe for a backpacking trip, Lily (Kelly Rutherford) and Rufus (Matthew Settle) got engaged and moved in together to form a modern Brady Bunch, and Carter Baizen appeared to tell Serena that he had located her father overseas. Oh and bad girl Georgina Sparks (Michelle Trachtenberg) retrieved the money that was stolen from Poppy (Tamara Fieldman) to Dan and enlisted in NYU as Blair’s roommate.

Season Three opened with everyone immediately revealing what they did on their summer vacations. Some were mundane while others are a bit far-fetched which is why I screamed “Shenanigans!” at the screen or rolled my eyes in disdain a couple of times.

First, I didn’t buy for one second that Rufus or Dan didn’t know about Serena’s partying in Europe. I am sure they watched TV during the summer or used the Internet for something that could have displayed some sort of inkling about Serena’s exploits. Their ignorance on the subject was baffling at best.

Serena’s reasoning behind all the mayhem she was causing was childish at best and her giving advice to Blair at the beginning of the episode about growing up was like the tea calling the kettle black by the end of the episode. Speaking of Blair, the ‘game’that she and Chuck were playing was so outrageous that it could only be seen on TV. It’s laughable, but not necessarily in a good way. Also, Blair and Chuck’s story line demeaned their characters a bit in my eyes and was a slap to the face for all of the Chair fans out there aching for their coupledom.

Poor Vanessa was ever so slowly being weeded out of the group last night, which is sad because she was the only sane one during the entire hour.

Dan was still a pompous ass-bag; a wannabe who has finally achieved what he secretly always wanted. But Dan has his head so far up his butt that the fumes he is breathing has deluded him into lying about the most tedious crap. It was kind of painful to watch at times.

One of the two story lines I see working now is Nate’s upcoming battle with his family. While I don’t agree with the way Nate is handling becoming independent from his folks, I can’t wait to see what it will take for him to realize what Bree is trying to tell him about the dark side of rebellion. Hopefully, Bree will knock some sort of sense into Nate’s head, which is long overdue in my book. The second storyline I see working is that of Scott Ronsson (Chris Riggi), Lily and Rufus’s love child. He seems a bit young to be older than Serena and Dan, but his presence is a good jolt of mystery and intrigue that would be sorely lacking if we were left with Serena’s daddy issues and Chair’s parlor games. I pray that Jenny and Eric (Connor Paolo) get more screen time this season, because I feel that they (or just Jenny) would have been great anchors for a spin-off rather than a younger Lily. The more they separate Jenny from the main cast, the more it would be apparent that ‘The It Girl’ should have been on the fall schedule this year. The explanation for Lily’s absence made a lot of sense as well due to Kelly Rutherford being on maternity leave at the moment.

All in all, this is the first episode of the season and maybe GG will progress in the next couple of episodes. I can’t for Jenny to take on the new mean girls and for Georgina to come in and wreck everyone’s world when school starts back for the gang. I still have faith that Josh Schwartz and crew can steer this ship out of the mine field of inane ideas that were exploding all over the place last night. And even if they don’t I will still be there watching every second of crazy they throw at the screen.

Gossip Girl airs Mondays at 9/8 central on The CW.