The Gay Bomb Drops

Hey Upper East Siders,

Last night's episode of GG sure was something, wasn't it? It was an epic, deeply flawed yet addictive episode, and once the characters are done sorting through the wreckage, I doubt much will be the same. And, by the looks of the next episode, things aren't going to get any easier.

Let's begin with that huge plot hole that is oh-so-obvious, oh-so-annoying and oh-so-delicz. There is no way in hell that Dan would ever not realize that G is, in fact, G. He's admitted to being obsessed with S since the ninth grade, and GG must have talked about the exploits of G and S together every other day, if they were as crazy as the show is saying. One of the first shots of the pilot was Dan reading about S on GG! It's a great plot device in theory, but if you take into account that S, B and G (and if your name has been reduced to an initial you KNOW you are big) were the queens of the Upper East Side for years...well...it just doesn't make any sense.

What does finally make a little sense is Eric, thanks to the none-too-surprising revelation that he is, in fact, gay. Another aspect of the episode that left me torn was the fact that the producers tried to have their cake and eat it too with the revelation: they use Eric's (and, to a much greater extent, Asher's) homosexuality as a weapon in one scene, and then treat it in a very touching manner in the next. The manner in which G revealed it at the dinner table was absolutely devastating, and later when Asher screams "Faggot!" I actually cringed. But then the scenes where Eric spoke with Serena and, later, his mother were poignant and moving, a phenomenal job with the writing by keeping it from seeming like a movie-of-the-week and a tour-de-force with the acting. Bravo.

Weirdly enough, the character who got lost in the whole subplot was Eric. We still have no idea what motivated him to attempt suicide way back in the pilot (my guess is that it had something to do with a relationship gone bad). We don't know what he saw in Asher to carry on a romantic relationship with him (though the writers get a point for addressing his sudden lapse in friendship with Jenny by having her think he had a crush on her), and we don't know why he dealt with Jenny so carefully earlier in the episode and then switched gears to having her be roadkill by the third act.

Speaking of Jenny, I'm not quite sure when she superceded Blair as the most complex, intriguing character on the show, but she has. Look at the moments when Taylor Momsen allows her character to act like a normal, quirky girl before snapping herself back to Upper East Side snarkiness. It's a brilliant acting job, and despite all the horrible things she has done and all the ways she has trampled on her morals, when she lost it with her father at the end of the episode, my heart went out to her. That's complexity.

B, on the other hand, is getting pretty tame by comparison, and might just be the most moral character on the show this episode, since even Dan stooped to sending GG a huge gay tip (again, not feeling the whole using-a-person's-sexuality-as-a-weapon). She gets the dirt on Jenny and Asher and refuses to use it because it might hurt Eric. She pouts because S doesn't spend enough time with her, and her little speech at the end would have been completely touching if not for the fact that, earlier this season, she did everything possible to bring S down. And again, I find myself in awe that Leighton Messer can play so many levels of the character while making them all seem true; that is something we never got out of the girls on "The O.C."

Almost lost in all the slam-bangness of the episode was the quietly perfect relationship that rekindled between Rufus and Lily, which began with him barging himself back into her life like a show regular looking for a storyline. Their short scenes together were nice breaks in an otherwise hectic-as-hell episode, and seeing that Lily chose Rufus to call after learning her son was gay was a nice touch.

Oh, and S killed someone. Is anyone else not surprised?

But what about you? Did you miss Chuck and Nate this episode, or could you have cared less that the boys were gone? Is there any way in hell that Dan would not recognize G? And did the producers handle the gay bomb well, or sloppily?

You know you love me.