This week’s episode of Gossip Girl, "Woman on the Verge," had me on the verge, as well – on the verge of slapping Dan upside his head and kicking Georgina’s behind all the way back to the gates of Hell from which she apparently escaped.

Serena’s "I killed someone" revelation last week left us eagerly awaiting the who, the why, the how, and surprisingly, it was all answered. Not surprisingly it was a tad anticlimactic. Isn’t that the case sometimes in life—the anticipation is more fun than the reality?

The episode starts the day after Serena tells Blair her secret and Serena is nowhere to be found. Georgina calls her a trillion times (getting angrier with each new voice mail), Dan calls her (sounding more desperate with each new attempt), and Serena’s mother (Lily) is annoyed because she’s waiting for Serena to get home and be helpful as it’s the day of her wedding rehearsal dinner. (Recap: she’s marrying Bart Bass, Chuck’s father, even though she still has feelings for Dan’s father Rufus. It’s all so complicated.)

Blair asks her two exes, Chuck and Nate, (who now hate each other) to meet at her place and she arrives home with a horribly hung-over Serena. Blair’s housekeeper secretly calls Serena’s mother to tell her that Serena seems to have fallen off the Good Girl wagon and has been run over by it.

Dan arrives at Blair’s and, when confronted for the umpteenth time about why she’s being weird, Serena tells Dan that she slept with some guy the night before because lying about that is better than telling the truth about being a murderer. (She has a point.)

Heartbroken Dan announces that he’s "done" and walks away from Serena as their friends look on. I mourned the loss of their relationship for 4.3 seconds and then wondered when Serena would begin mulling over Blair’s "I love you," from the night before. Fine, Serena had other things on her mind but she’ll get around to mulling, I just know it!

Dan, feeling all rejected, agrees to meet "Sara" (AKA Georgina’s alter-ego) for some quality crying on the shoulder time. Poor Dan is getting played like a nickel slot machine at a Vegas mini-mart. An all day sucker, that Dan.

All photos by Patrick Harbron/The CW

After Dan leaves, Serena finally opens up about the details of the secret. We have been lead to believe that Serena left town because she couldn’t deal with the guilt of having slept with her BFF’s boyfriend, but we learn that the night drunken Serena had sex with Nate , she met up with Georgina afterward to get even drunker and more drugged out of guilt. … continue reading

Uh-uh. Nope. Don't even pretend you knew all along that the big secret was that Serena thinks she killed somebody! Naw. I ain't hearing it! Heh.

Was that reveal fun or was that reveal fun? Goodness. Blackmailing with plain ol' sex tapes is so last year. The rage this year is sex tapes and suspicious deaths. But come on, she didn't really kill anyone, did she? Georgina has her believing she did, right? Right? Fingers crossed?

All photos by Patrick Harbron/The CW

This week's episode of Gossip Girl , "All About My Brother," was sort of about Serena's brother — her feelings for her brother and her guilt for leaving her brother as she fled town under mysterious circumstances. Oh, and also about her brother coming out as gay.

And it was sort of about Jenny's general assery toward her brother … and her father, too, for that matter. And who knows? Maybe he's somebody's brother, as well. … continue reading

At last the infamous Georgina Sparks (Michelle Trachtenberg) has hit the Upper East Side, and frankly I'm anxiously waiting for the Upper East Side to hit her back! I knew that I was going to love to hate Georgina, but I haven't quite mustered the love just yet. OK, maybe a little.

All photos by Giovanni Rufino/The CW

In this week's Gossip Girl episode, "Desperately Seeking Serena," Dan spends his time looking for Serena, who is not showing up where she's supposed to (like her college exams). Once again, Serena has desperately been trying to find herself, and when all the dust clears, the SAT review board is going to be desperately searching for Serena, too. Heh.

In contrast, Georgina — who I thought might be the one desperately seeking Serena — seemed to spend no time in looking for her, and what little searching she did appeared to be more calculated than desperate. She just sort of supernaturally appeared out of nowhere at Serena's school as if this episode were a spinoff of Buffy.

See, that's just it: Evil just shows up. And evil is never desperate. … continue reading

Gossip Girl, welcome back! This week's episode, "The Blair Bitch Project," was fun. Watching how Blair got back on that proverbial horse that had thrown her smug, conceited but oh-so-vulnerable ass to the turf was masterful. But wait — is that Jenny Humphrey wearing a princess tiara? Is it stolen? Heh.

All photos by Giovanni Rufino/THE CW

The episode picks up three weeks after Serena convinced Blair to stay in New York to fight for her reputation and status as queen bee. I'm glad Blair decided to stay, because we got to see the fight! Oh, and we got to see Serena and Blair be all cute and cuddly together.

The battle is clearly shaping up to be between Blair and Jenny Humphrey. I know, Jenny Humphrey, right? That can't even be a fair fight, but, uh yeah, turns out it is. … continue reading

Some TV shows you love. Some TV shows you hate. It's pretty simple. But then there are those shows you love to hate, and others you hate to love! Well, dang it, I hate to love Gossip Girl. But I do. I have fallen for it.

Photo credit: The CW/Andrew Eccles

I'm sure it'll break my heart, though. I know that Gossip Girl could so easily slip and slide into the trite and predictable vortex of suck that has swallowed up many of its teen drama predecessors. But the show, in its first year, is still trying to find its way, and it's actually doing it with much more skill and poise than I would have ever imagined after watching the pilot.

But rather than be concerned about the future, I will live in the now and simply say Yay! to the return of the show tonight on the CW on a new night (Monday) and at a new time (8:00 p.m. ET). Yes, I have a show crush!

There are five new episodes in store, and I'm as joyful about this as a 14-year-old who's been given an iPhone with a free unlimited text plan! The show stars Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Taylor Momsen, Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford, Ed Westwick and the voice of Kristen Bell as Gossip Girl. Oh, and for Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, you may like to know that Michelle Trachtenberg is hitting the Upper East Side of Manhattan soon for a few episodes, and it should be fun to see what damage she may cause. … continue reading

Anyone (if there is anyone) who has been following my blog regularly over the past few weeks might have noticed that there have been, well, rather a lot of references to the totally trashy teen soap Gossip Girl.

Now, I will readily admit that a large part of my interest in this show comes from the relationship between the main two female characters, Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen (played respectively by Leighton Meester and Blake Lively, pictured below in a shoot for this month’s issue of Vogue).

But even if it wasn’t for all the chemistry between Blair and Serena, there’s a reason I might still be watching. Sarah and Lori may have declared themselves in favor of Blake, but for me it’s all about the lovely Leighton (who, although she plays a teen on the show, fortunately turns 22 in April): … continue reading

I’ve often thought that there’s a Ph.D. thesis to be written on the overarching effect of the internet on the gay and lesbian community. On the one hand, there’s the fact that the net potentially exposes the gay user to homophobic hate groups spewing more bile than (hopefully) he or she encounters in the real world on the average day. On the other hand, there are communities like ... well, like AfterEllen.com, which mean that you no longer have to live in a big city or be a bar bunny to gain some sort of feeling of belonging to a lesbian community.

And then there’s the phenomenon of the lesbian (or lesbianish) fan video. Fed up with searching for nonexistent out lesbian characters in TV and film, some people just get hold of a film editing program and create their own story lines and emphases out of the raw material provided by the networks.

Which means if I want to see a video that focuses on the subtexty bits between, say, Serena and Blair on Gossip Girl, then it doesn’t take me very long to find one:

And a well-made one at that. Admittedly, there’s a bit more of Blair rolling around with various interchangeable boys than I need to see, but I think this video does a great job of capturing the fact that the most powerful emotional relationship on the show is really between the two girls. Which makes a nice change after all the shows — from Starsky and Hutch to Nip/Tuck — focused on male pairs who secretly seem to need each other more than they really need the inconsequential women who pass between them.

Then there’s this video centered on Andie (Anne Hathaway) and Miranda (Meryl Streep) from The Devil Wears Prada: … continue reading

I think I remember the first time I really, really wanted to look like somebody on TV. It was the late 1980s; the show was Saved by the Bell; the actress was Tiffani-Amber Thiessen; and the relevant monstrosity was this:

Now, you might be saying, that isn’t really so bad. I mean yes, the top is mauve, the jeans are floral, the hair is big and static ... but that Tiffani-Amber Thiessen is a pretty girl, right? No wonder at eight years old you wanted to look like her.

Well — yes. I mean, I’m sure the fact that Tiffani-Amber Thiessen is pretty had an impact on it — but I’m afraid I can’t excuse myself so easily. It wasn’t just that when I watched Saved by the Bell, I wanted to have Kelly Kapowski’s hair, or Kelly Kapowski’s smile. No, I wanted to have Kelly Kapowski’s look, her whole gloriously '80s pastel-and-neon wardrobe — complete with a pale orange T-shirt with rolled up sleeves that I remember particularly coveting. And — since it was the '80s — I think I more or less got it.

Fast-forward five years, to the premiere of a show called My So-Called Life in 1994. Jordan wore plaid flannel. Danielle wore plaid flannel. Rayanne had a plaid flannel shirt that reached the ground. And Angela ... well, Angela had red plaid flannel shorts that she wore with black tights. To quote a poster on TelevisionWithoutPity.com, “I can’t believe how normal I used to think these outfits were [...] Today, it looks to me like she’s wearing cutoff pajama pants over leggings.”

Did I run from this sea of flannel? Did I say “no plaid for me?” No. I had a pair of plaid green shorts that I hoped would make me look like Angela (they didn’t).

Plaid got a different, less grungy and more preppie twist the next year, when Clueless hit the movie theaters: … continue reading

By the end of today, the writers' strike should be officially over. I think we can all breathe a deep sigh of relief that the nightmare scenario of MILF Island, America’s Next Top Pirate and Are You Smarter Than a Dog? never came to fruition. Can I get a halle-freaking-lujah? Sure, the strike’s end means we’ll no longer get to see adorable shots of Tina Fey and others on the picket line. But I’ll gladly sacrifice a little photogenic solidarity for fresh episodes of my favorite shows. Pending a final vote today from Writers Guild of America members, scripted shows could begin production Wednesday. Of course, now you’re all thinking, but when? When will my show be back?

Well, don’t get mad when I tell you this, but you’re going to have to be a bit more patient. According to The New York Times, it takes at least of four weeks to get a 30-minute comedy completed from scratch and six to eight weeks for hour-long dramas. So that means, realistically, it will be mid-March or early April when new episodes start to flood the airwaves again. But they are coming. While some shows have already abandoned the rest of their seasons, others will be back for anywhere from four to ten new episodes.

The New York Times and TV Guide have made comprehensive lists of returning shows. Let’s run through some of the AfterEllen.com-friendly offerings together, shall we?

30 Rock: Five to ten more shows to air April/May. Thank God; life without Liz Lemon was one big blerg.

Battlestar Galactica: The first half of the final season begins April 4. Production on the second half could start in March, with an airdate not yet set.

Bionic Woman: According to TV Guide, “No new episodes expected. Ever.” Oh, Sarah Corvus, I think I’ll miss you most of all. … continue reading

Responding to requests by readers Bex and FilmGrrl, Lori and I discuss Life (NBC), Pushing Daisies (ABC) and Dirty Sexy Money (ABC), plus Blood Ties, the third-season debut episode of Dante's Cove (here) and the new MTV drama series Kaya, debuting next week, about a teenage girl dealing with the unexpected pressures of fame when she becomes a big pop star. I also throw in a plea for you to watch Friday Night Lights (NBC).

This week’s “Best Lesbian Couple That Isn’t” designation is easily won by Serena and Blair from Gossip Girl (The CW), and Lori rolls out the new "She's Hot" bunny for Blake Lively. I can't say I disagree.

… continue reading

Watch it here now:

"Oh, lordy" is what immediately came to mind after I watched the first episode of Gossip Girl, the new teen soap-drama that premiered last week. In this context, "oh, lordy" sort of means "if you have a high tolerance for self-serving, self-indulgent, puddle-deep, cliched characters or and an even higher tolerance for not-too-clever, predictable, not-much-nuance writing, then this show is awesome! There are some very informative reviews here, here and here.

This isn't a recap, because nothing that was said in the episode is worth restating anywhere. The show stars a very charismatic Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen (I like Blake a whole lot better than her brother Eric, who played creepy secret videotaper Mark on The L Word) Leighton Meester as Blair Waldorf , Penn Badgley as Dan Humphrey, Chace Crawford as Nate Archibald, Taylor Momsen as Jenny Humphrey and Ed Westwick as Chuck Bass. In a capsule, Serena and Blair are best friends. Well they were. Serena left school and returned to school under mysterious circumstances. Blair's boyfriend, Nate, also has a thing for Serena, which of course drives much of the drama between Blair and Serena. Dan and his little sister Jenny are the "not so rich kids" at the rich kids' school. Dan has crushed on Serena from afar, and freshman Jenny is in awe of the hip in-crowd at her new school. The show moves along through the use of a voice over by “The Gossip Girl,” a blogger who has her finger on the pulse of this teen grouping from this prep school. … continue reading

With so many interesting new fall TV shows debuting now, Lori and I decided to structure our vlog a little differently moving forward. Rather than a lengthy review of each show, we're just going to hit the highlights of the week in TV and film, organized into the following categories:

Rapid-fire Reviews (kinda like The McLaughlin Report, but gay)
Gaying up Primetime (the best lesbian moment that wasn't)
Who thought that was a good idea? (the rant)
The Casting Couch (cool new film or TV casting news)
AfterEllen.com Soundbites (funny comments on the site about TV and film)
What to Watch (our pick of what's coming up on TV and at the theaters)

Among the TV topics we cover this week are the premieres of Top Model, K-Ville, and Survivor: China; our love of Bones; the revamped Bionic Woman pilot; and Gossip Girl's lesbian moment that wasn't.

We also discuss Zoe Saldana in the new Star Trek movie, what's wrong with the trailer for the upcoming movie The Kingdom, and why Lori plans to see Resident Evil: Extinction (opening this weekend).

… continue reading

Plus, a special appearance by Sydney Bristow, and Lori gets in trouble for revealing how much I like the cheesy ballet movie Center Stage (2000).

The CW's new show Gossip Girl starts tonight at 9:00/8:00c. It sure has been getting a lot of press lately, possibly simply because of its slightly salacious title. We'll have a mini review right here on the blog later this week, so watch it tonight if you want to form your own opinion before we slant your perspective. Oh, and right before that (at 8:00/7:00c), watch America's Next Top Model so you can figure out what Dara, Karman and Jill are talking about in their video blog.

Other fall premieres tonight include the misspelled 'Til Death (8:30/7:30c on Fox), the new Kelsey Grammer vehicle Back to You (8:00/7:00c on Fox) and the controversial Kid Nation (8:00 on CBS).

Meanwhile, two girls we like to gossip about stop by the late-night talk shows:

Ellen DeGeneres will be on Late Night With David Letterman on CBS. And you can watch Ellen and Dave now on the Late Show website.

And Ali Larter will be on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno on NBC. She'll probably be promoting Resident Evil: Extinction, in which she looks like this (yow):