Gossip Girl Recap: “You Idiot! You Don’t Surprise Someone Standing On the Edge of a Building!”

Last night’s long-anticipated return of Gossip Girl featured a new year, new relationships, new secrets, and an unusually large amount of comic relief.

Jenny’s resolution, apparently, was to finish high school…but she’s dropped the “Little J” business and makes it her goal to save Nelly from Blair’s Queen Bee squad. She recruits Eric and Nelly to take over the “cool” table, and, since Blair’s having a Bass-induced breakdown, J manages to win the upper hand. Ironically, when Nelly realizes that Jenny has no hope of stealing Blair’s crown, she runs back to the popular kids. Ha, ha, ha. What satire!

Meanwhile, the writers took advantage of GG’s break to make a clean break from Serena’s art-beau, Aaron, who doesn’t even get a sappy break-up scene. (Thank God.) Instead, it seems that S. just flat out left him in Buenos Aires when she realized that Lily and Rufus weren’t shacking up and that she could bang Dan without feeling incestuous. Rufus, of course, is less than happy to find Serena and Dan blissfully happy. Remember last month’s cliffhanger? “Was it a boy or a girl?” We find out that it was a boy, and that Lily put him up for adoption and relinquished her rights to ever search for him, much to Rufus’s dismay.

Chuck, still wallowing in the aftermath of his father’s untimely death, has become a zombie that not even Blair can seem to crack. So, he brings a joint to school and breaks the news to Dan that he has an illegitimate half-brother out there somewhere. Blair remains faithful to her shell of a man-crush, and even tries to act as his guardian when he’s summoned to the office for smoking hash in the hallways (how cute), but then the mysterious new character, Uncle Jack, interrupts and takes responsibility. What does Jack have up his sleeve?

Just before her party, it seems that Blair is ready to wash her hands of Chuck, though she insists, “I’m not abandoning Chuck. I’m just saving myself.” I actually believed her. But I guess when someone almost falls to their death in a drunken stupor, you have to let yourself care again, at least a little.

The ending was sweet, I think, when Chuck finally climbs down and into savior-Blair’s arms, but to me, after all of the “say the words” games we had to suffer through last semester, it was anti-climatic. Especially since a dramatic tension still lingers between Blair and Uncle Jack. Of course, this is the GG style. Wrap up some of the old loose ends (the explanation of Lily’s first kid) and leave a lot of room for the drama to snowball into the inevitable avalanche that will be the season finale.

Welcome back, Upper East Siders. My Monday nights are back! Although…my Chace Crawford cravings have yet to be satisfied.