Since When Do We Like Blair?

Wow. Serena (Blake Lively) gets unfairly blamed for burning off the hair of Dan (Penn Badgley)’s new girlfriend, and ten seconds later she goes from the put-upon upper eastside maven unfairly burdened with gorgeous blonde hair, mile-long legs, and an inconceivable fortune to the face of pure over-privileged, under-parented teenage evil. Turns out she really was that simple.

Blair (Leighton Meester)’s self-loathing was a background theme to last season, but all the elements were put into play: her bulimia, her father’s abandonment, her mother (Margaret Colin)’s willingness to throw her under a bus to further her career, the list went on and on. And yet she was just so vile that no one cared. We watched her cronies throw yogurt on her when she passed them at school, and it did nothing but make us feel a little bit better about the standards of teenage girls (even the mean ones). Turns out fashion does nothing to beautify sociopathy.

But with Serena gone glamurderous, sympathetic viewers need an object. Suddenly poor, dejected Blair, whose mother still seems to prefer every dysfunctional teen girl she comes in contact with over her own daughter, looks a little more… well, normal. And hey, she did eventually forgive Serena for sleeping with her boyfriend. We watch as Blair gets thwarted at every attempt to win her friends back by, her mother, the once thought vanquished Jenny Humphrey, and… Serena. It’s hard not to feel bad for the kid.

And then it gets laid on her. Serena has one of those “Gee… I really seem to be pissing everyone off right now. Maybe it’s me” moments that Gossip Girl writers have been so good at cooking up for her. She feels marginally bad that, yet again, Eleanor Waldorf has decided to use her daughter’s best friend to model her designs, instead of her equally beautiful but slightly more conservative (Blair doesn’t appear to do coke like Serena used to) own daughter. But fortunately Poppy, the new it-girl that has taken Serena as her sidekick, has the solution. Poppy says that sisterhood is way over-rated. Particularly when you have sisters with self-esteem issues. Serena agrees and tells Blair to feel worse about herself.

When Jenny gives Blair a pep-talk in : “You might be privileged Blair, but you’ve worked for every single thing you achieved. Just like me.” This just before she announces that she’s quitting her fancy prep school to become an unpaid fashion intern high-school drop-out. Don’t worry B, all is not lost!

I’m not willing to read this show for much more than it is: the latest teen psychodrama fueled by our wanting to peep in on life without meaningful financial restrictions. But there is an unspoken heroine of Gossip Girl: Serena’s mother, Lily van der Woodsen-Bass-would-be-Humphrey (Kelly Rutherford). The newest revelation that she posed for a Magelthorpe nude portrait is the latest piece of a puzzle that’s a revealing a woman in charge of her sexuality, who doesn’t care what other people think, and wants to instill the same in her children. It’s too bad that she likes money so much that she stays married to a man that treats her like one of his many possessions. But on this series, only time can tell…