"What are friends for?" Vanessa asked Dan during a pivotal scene of tonight's Gossip Girl. Well, in a good episode of this show, like "Enough About Eve," friends are for deceiving, manipulating, and using to score a major blow against your political rivals. The political was personal—as was pretty much everything else.
It speaks to the relative moral depravity of Gossip Girl that the best episode of its still young third season is the one with the most backbiting, but it also proves what I (and you, dear commenters) have been saying since "Reversals Of Fortune": The show kind of sucks when the characters aren't behaving badly. And we're not rinky-dink misbehaving like Serena stealing a polo horse or even seemingly large scale stuff like Georgina's attempts to get back with Dan—what we've been asking for, and what we received in "Enough About Eve," is some evil action from Blair. And, surprisingly, that evilness was met and possibly exceeded by an unlikely foil: Vanessa.
I definitely had this season's best rivalry incorrectly pegged, but with Blair and Georgina pitted against one another as roommates, who didn't expect great, bitchy things? Meanwhile, this whole Waldorf v. Abrams thing has been bubbling up under our noses for five episodes, and tonight it came to an entertaining head. The clues were all there, I've just been ignoring them out of my disinterest in the Vanessa character: She's a mentor to Jenny (the only other character who's stood down Blair and won), and, starting her nondisclosure of Nate's letter to Jenny last season, Vanessa's been one of the show's savviest traders and holders of secrets (which as we all remember from "The Lost Boy," are the true currency and source of power in the Gossip Girl universe.) It took a prized speech at an NYU parents' weekend dinner to bring to bring out the rivalry.
But as the episode showed that Blair and Vanessa are more alike than they'd like to admit, different motivations led each to desire the speech: For Blair, it was another rung on the NYU social ladder, while for Vanessa the speech symbolized a big "I told you this private university isn't corrupting me," to her difficult-to-please mother Gabriella. Played to a one-note tee by Firefly alum Gina Torres, Mrs. Abrams seemed perpetually two seconds away from a lengthy discussion about why she doesn't watch TV (most likely reason: shallow salacious shows like Gossip Girl)—that is until her mouth was left agape by Vanessa's confession that she wished her parents were Rufus and Lily. (PS Vanessa: Your mom's awful, but you could find better parents than Mr. and Mrs. "Starpower" in the garbage. Or on a Seth MacFarlane show.) Still, swiping the mic before the speech so Blair can out herself as a terrible human being in front of several of her classmates and their well-appointed parents: Classic. Sorry, V, but this private university is corrupting you.
Vanessa's microphone trickery was a move worthy of Blair herself, though, to save face, Blair would probably argue that she had it planned all along. "Enough About Eve" played like a more or less smooth go-round on Leighton Meester's Wild Emotional-Range Ride: vindictiveness toward Vanessa, disappointment after being passed-over for the speech for Olivia and then Vanessa, heartbreak after a more heartbroken Chuck dismisses her for a fake business meeting, and an indignant haughtiness during her accidental speech about how she was "bred" to not only address the dinner attendees but to push people around as she pleases. It was nice to see a return to Blair firing on all "Queen B" cylinders, but such extreme behavior was bound to be met with a tremendous fall—especially after she admitted to using Chuck as sexual bait in order to secure her spot at the podium. At the end of the episode, she entered the coffee shop, sad and alone, only to end up sitting across a table from Vanessa, who had just been ditched by her mother. They met at potential turning points for their characters, points where, feasibly, they could switch roles. Feasibly, not hopefully: Because as much as "Enough About Eve" benefitted from Vanessa acting like Blair, this season won't be helped along by Blair acting like Vanessa. But the fact that Blair wasn't playing an Audrey Hepburn role in her Turner Classic Movies-damaged opening dream sequence (instead, she found herself as an erstwhile Bette Davis to Vanessa's Anne Baxter in All About Eve) signals a big and permanent change for the character some time soon.