It’s been a while since we last saw out favorite Gossip Girl Upper East Siders in action, but now that the city is back in session, there is sure to be lots of drama. To catch up, here’s a quick reminder of where we left off last season. Dan told Vanessa he loved her, Serena and Nate give dating a go, Rufus found out that Lilly may have cheated on him, and Little J was stuck in the middle of a high class drug deal. Now that we’re all up to speed (no pun intended) let’s get down to business. 

The first scene opens with Serena on her cell phone (what else) talking to the Queen herself, Blair Waldorf. B gives S her blessing to go ahead and try to make it work with Nate, but she warns S that they should take it slow. Not too long after, Nate meets Dan for coffee and Dan also advises Nate to take things slow, especially since him and Serena were “friends before lovers”. Both S and Nate seem to shrug off the advice and continue to move pretty fast (considering that they had sex as soon as Nate got back to New York after being away with her Grandfather). After considering the advice of his dear friend, Nate tells Serena that he wants to slow things down, and informs her that it would be best if she didn’t go with him to the state dinner he had invited her to. Serena, of course, is angry because the dinner would have been their first “real date”. In true Blair fashion, S calls up Damien (Little J’s drug dealer friend from last season) and asks him if he would like to go to the dinner with her (which I find to be funny because she wasn’t even on the guest list, so essentially she is inviting herself to go with him). In a last ditch effort to live out his boarding school fantasy, he accepts Serena’s invitation and off to the dinner they go. Meanwhile, Damien has more than just Serena on his to do list. Him and Little J are responsible for making a deal between him and the French Ambassador’s daughter, but there is just one catch; Jenny needs to come up with a creative plan to get the pills past security and into the dinner. 

Jenny comes up with a brilliant plan; she creates a jacket decked with grommets and places a pill inside each one. After all her hard work, Damien tells her that she no longer gets to go to the dinner with him and that he is taking Serena. Little J is disappointed to say the least, but no queen would take that kind of treatment lying down. She conveniently shows up at the dinner at the same time as Nate and “comes to his rescue” by posing as his date (for her own selfish reasons, but nonetheless). Little does Serena know she has been recruited to wear the (ugly) pill hiding, jacket and she becomes part of the deal. When she refuses to take the jacket off to check it, Damien’s plan goes out the window. Lucky for him, Serena and Nate “kiss and make up” and of course the jacket (and shoes and dress) come off. Little J tells the coat check to make sure that the Ambassador’s daughter goes home with the grommet coat, and saves the day! Serena and Nate head home together (so much for taking it slow) and things are back to normal, except for Chuck. 

Mr. Bass find himself in the middle of his own, real life ghost story. Believing that the woman he saw at his father’s grave on the anniversary of his death looked very much like his mother, he tried to track her down. Using the locket she left behind, Chuck is able to figure out that the woman’s name is Elizabeth Fischer. He follows her from hotel to hotel and finally is able to confront her, but once he does she offers little information. She tells him that her and Bart “shared a few months a long time ago” but that is all. Chuck walks away disappointed, but when he is not looking B tells Elizabeth that she knows she is hiding something (after all, she is the queen of secrets, she should know!). In other news, Rufus and Lilly find that they have hit a rough patch in their marriage. She confesses that she was scared and thought her mother was going to die when she was sick, and asked for help from her doctor ex-husband. She admits that she did spend the night, and that they did kiss but that was all. Rufus is super upset, and walks out on Lilly. The last scene of the episode closes with Elizabeth holding the other half of the locket she left at Bart’s grave, which holds a photo of a woman and a baby. Next weeks episode looks enticing; I’d stay tuned to see if Chuck saw a ghost, or if his mother is really alive! 

–Stephanie Vacchio, Union College