babydraco

"The Wild Brunch"

but instead it comes off very confusing and makes it seem like Serena has a personality disorder that causes her to go all Margot Kidder/Celestia Heche from time to time. Please don't distract me with amnesia when I'm just now finally figuring out why people wander the streets going "Penn Badgley...Penn Badgley...Pennnnnnn Baaaaaaaaaaadgley." page 7

Serena protests that they're not "traditions" if they're new, but Blair's so checked out of the conversation that she's riding a bicycle through 1859. One of those big mothers with the one giant tire. Pennyfarthing, she's riding a pennyfarthing through the foggy moors of Serena's self-hatred. It's so awesome. She's got, like, a baguette and some wildflowers she just plucked from the side of the road, and she's whistling. In an enormous hat. Little bluebirds and big kind ungulates outside are getting her car washed and ready and leaving banana peels in Serena's path, and Serena has no idea: page 8

Dan's all, "It's fine! Really! It's all for the best. Serena has her friends, and her family, her whole world. It has come to my attention their customs are too strange, their ways too alien, for this poor pilgrim to ever again be light-hearted. I'm fine. I have known love! How many among us can say that, in truth? Pray, don't worry for me. I shall die alone, of a broken heart, with only these poems and a weird desire to beat up Chuck some more to sustain me. And tomorrow I shall awake in the bright morning light and I will put on that uniform and I will tie my necktie, and I will shine my shoes and step out into the seething, vibrant life of the city, for Father -- Father, are you there? -- Father, my life must continue. There are a thousand stories out there in the city, Father, and I would hear them all. And my dear sister, please, if your older brother, who holds you so tenderly in his heart, can make one request: please do not tell bitches about Cedric, my Cabbage Patch Doll. That is private. But let us not dally too long on that unhappy thought. This heart will continue to beat; these hands will continue to work. And one day, long years from now, and probably far away from here, I will look back upon these years with bittersweet fondness. For though it was not a happy one, this weekend, still: it was life." page 20

"Poison Ivy"

The principals of the show getting ready for the last day of Ivy Week while the Constance Billard Choir sings "Glamorous" in the background. It's pretty awesome, but the long version is better. This whole act of the show is really interesting from a narrative point of view, because it skips around about six timelines the entire time, linking certain points of dialogue to certain events from earlier in the day, and it does it without ceasing, and it does it without calling attention to itself, and it does it without being particularly challenging to follow, which is craftsmanship. But if you were to actually diagram this act, like a sentence, it would fuck you up. page 1

Fergie to me is like some kind of My Name Is Earl nightmare where getting on COPS is the same thing as being famous. My hatred for her is no less real for being irrational and creepy in its own right. However, I will say that this show has made me love this song, both versions of it, and also that "Clumsy" is awesome. But the awesomeness of all this Fergie in Chapel is obvious, in terms of the heightened reality that this show keeps trying to tell you it's shooting for. In real life, choirs don't sing about poppin' champagne in a private jet or driving through Taco Bell "raw as hell." But in the UES, this is how we roll, and that is brilliant. I wish they would do that ten times as much as they do, because it seems really watered down and just kind of weird, instead of cracked-out Popular-style madness, which frankly is the only thing S4 of The O.C. was missing. You cannot say the words "heightened reality" to me without me immediately thinking about Mary Cherry, and I don't mean the silliness or even the over-the-topness of it, just the general feeling that these are not our people and they are not playing by our rules. God knows Dan Humphrey's the only person ever on television more irritatingly superior than Sam McPherson. page 1

"Who the hell is J.L. Hall?" asks Nate, just placing himself discreetly under Dan's passive-aggressive little nerdy thumb. "He's the Ivy rep? You might want to pick up his book if you blah blah blah I'm so smartypants godawful." page 8

Meanwhile, Kati is leading some alum somewhere and here's what she's saying: "So the neuroscience project I'm working on involves the cellular signaling pathway of neuronal nitric oxide synthase. It's initiated when glutamate binds to NMDARs..." Which is funny in that Kati just invented Post-Its, but also funny because -- thanks to forum posters EmpressByNature and YesYesNo -- it provoked the discovery of some long-term potentiation in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern themselves which makes this show even cooler. Nan Zhang, the actor who plays Kati, was in the pre-med/neuro program at Johns Hopkins, and Nicole Fiscella, who plays Isabel, got her Anthropology BA from Tufts and is now getting a masters in Human Nutrition. I would not make this up, I could not make this up, I did not make this up, but it does make me fall just a little bit more in love with the whole world, you know? page 13

Normally I only identify this much with the...hey. HEY! Nate Archibald is the Marissa! I have discovered the secret! Think about it! The "acting," the ethereal un-presence he brings to every scene, his placement as object of desire without giving any real justification for it...OMG this show makes so much more sense now. page 15

Whew. Anyway, so Dan's like, "Now that you are flirting with me and being self-effacing, I find that you are a dear little thing. You should mention Theodore Geisel, the man to whom the intellectually ungifted refer as 'Dr. Seuss.' He went to Dartmouth, like you will, because you are a worthless piece of gentry trash. Furthermore, The Petting Zoo was inspired by Geisel's The Lorax." Which is hilarious, because, like, I was picturing something like Freakonomics or The Tipping Point, something financial, and now you've got petting zoos and the Lorax, which makes me think it's environmental in some way, but it all mixes together and I can just see like some Furry-Faced Flurmwit going, "I will not borrow stock and sell at a lower price! I won't short-sell flax, or wheat, or rice!" or whatever. So Nate doesn't recognize Dr. Seuss or The Lorax. The latter I can see, because that's like reading Harry Potter to Falwell's kids; Nate Sr. would bust a gut. page 15

Blair Waldorf, whom I keep meaning to tell you the captioning sometimes loveably portmanteaus into "BLORF," page 17