Gossip Girl: Revealed

Revealed? More like Gossip Girl Wearing A Padded Bra. In an attempt to both lure new viewers and get repeat business from those of us already hooked, the CW repackaged the pilot with a bunch of "bonus materials," including unaired tidbits, interview segments and outtakes, stretching the typical hour into a solid ninety minutes of fab fashion and gabbiness. The biggest reveal to me was how much I'd missed the snotty little suckers.

Since I already wrote a full Pilot recap, I'll just stick to the new material.

Highlight -- Oh, hands down, hearing Ed Westwick using his real British accent was the best thing that happened all night. I also loved seeing the costume designer, who looks like he could play a stowaway on a pirate ship. The actors rattle off the names of every guest judge ever from Project Runway as the sources of the show's fashions, and no, they don't get to keep the clothes, though Leighton Meester seems to have adopted Blair's style as her own.

Lowlight -- The herky-jerky camera angles and cuts to grainy black and white while the actors were talking into a camera at a different angle drove me nuts. I guess they were trying to jazz up the "writing," since they were apparently using interns receptionists network presidents non-WGA "writers" to "write" the lines the kids were reading. Instead, the actors looked like they didn't know which camera to look at, which I'm sure wasn't the CW's intention. Anyway, all the quick cutting and black-and-white crap distracted from the loveliness that is all our principals (especially Chace and Ed…YUM).

The producers coughed up two deleted scenes from the Pilot, including one that helped make a later scene make much more sense. Remember the scene over sushi, where Nate tells Blair that he won't ever speak to Serena again, and it'll be like she doesn't even exist? At the time, I remember feeling like that was pretty damn cold, and kind of out of left field. Well, what they left on the cutting room floor was a phone call between Serena and Nate, where she explicitly tells him to do just that. Of course, later, in the scene at the Palace where Nate and Serena go up to Chuck's suite to talk and Blair finds them there, Serena says, "Why would you say that?" about Nate telling Blair he'd never talk to her again, so obviously, they went in a different direction. Hence the phone call being cut. It still makes more sense to me, characterizationally speaking, for Nate to do it because Serena told him to, rather than for him to have come up with the idea on his own.

The second deleted scene is a nice brother/sister scene between Serena and Eric. It doesn't really add anything, so I'm not too surprised that it ended up being cut, but it was nice to see the sibling vibe at play. The cutest bit is a wordplay from Eric, who talks about Lily's latest ex, Klaus, and how after he left, they had to "deklausify" the apartment, leading to the renovation that brings them to the Palace to live. Eric got kind of short shrift this season; let's hope we get to see more of him next season.

My favorite part of the special was hearing each actor talk about his or her character:

Penn Badgley admits that Dan's self-righteous! Hee!

Ed Westwick says he knows Chuck is "the bad boy" and kind of arrogant, but thinks Blair brought out a softer side that will come out even more as the story develops. He says all this with this incredibly sexy accent, in that deep voice, with his hair all mod and tousled. *slurp* Of course, it may just be that he's not wearing his signature scarf and is therefore ten times more sexy than usual. Or, it could be because he's not actively attempting to rape anyone.

Taylor Momsen tells us that Jenny is a little naïve, and is still trying to figure out how far she'll go to compromise her values. She says Jenny's learning the power she has. Uh-huh. Okay. That's a nice spin on it.

Chace Crawford describes Nate as being torn between "the love of his life" and "the girl of his dreams." He says Serena represents a certain freedom for him. I guess that would be the freedom to have sex on a barstool? He also says that at the center of who Nate is, he's a really good guy. I concur!

Leighton Meester gets to the heart of Blair's character when she says, "She's afraid to be alone." She says Blair's always trying to get approval and love, and that down deep, she's really a good person. Isn't it funny how they all think their characters are good? Of course, I guess we all want to think we're good down deep at the center of us; I can't really blame her for not going on national television and describing her character as a self-centered, narcissistic bitch.

Blake Lively says something about something, but I didn't catch any of it; instead, what I have written down in my notes is my husband's enthusiastic exclamations about a certain golden girl's cleavage: "She doesn't bring those out on the show very often. Damn. Is that dress leather? Silk? Good googly moogly. Why don't they let those loose now and then? Let them be free!" So. That's what I took away from the Blake segment. Sorry!

The best news I heard all night came from Matthew Settle and Kelly Rutherford, who play Rufus and Lily. Kelly says of Parental Subplot #1: "I think he was her real love. They would have been great together." Awww! I so agree! 

The special ended with some outtakes, mostly flubbed lines and mugging, but it was nice to see that however often the characters fight, the actors themselves seem to be having a fine time together. I get the sense from listening to the actors that they have a good feeling about the show's future potential; specifically, that it will have one. Let's hope they can get back in front of the camera -- with real writers writing real lines -- real soon.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Gossip Girl: Revealed

British accents make anything sound sexy.
Brooklyn is "downtown"; the UES is "uptown."
If you go out for a role on the CW, avoid the one labeled "suicidal little brother" -- it's hell on your screentime.
If you're young, single, and have a starring role on a TV show, life is good.