Bring Back Chuck Bass

Today I got a new cable box. Now On Demand actually works, I can use Time Warner's Start Over feature (even though it doesn't let you fast forward), and my DVR's capacity has significantly increased. Since the big premieres don't start until tomorrow night, I thought I'd celebrate my new cable box with a post on its inaugural primetime broadcast: Gossip Girl. If you don't watch Gossip Girl, I'll try to have my TV top 10 list posted sometime tomorrow. But if you like your TV a little guiltier, read on.

This week's Gossip Girl repeated a lot of what we saw last time. Rufus is still mad that Lily had a baby without telling him and still wears effeminate turtlenecks. Lily's secret is still way lamer than she and Rufus act like it is. Chuck is still a mess over Bart's death. Blair is still making teary speeches at Chuck. It's getting kind of old. Bart's funeral brought out some unexpected emotion in Chuck and Blair, which was welcome for one episode. But the season is starting to lean way too heavily towards super sincere Blair over fun, scheming Blair. And Chuck's rooftop dance was more strange than sad. This isn't Dawson's Creek. Go back to messing with people.

We did get to meet a new character in the form of Uncle Jack, as played by Dexter's Desmond Harrington. We know he is important because "Uncle Jack" is said about twenty times in the first 5 minutes of the episode. Beyond that, I didn't get much from him so far. Mostly he just popped in and smiled awkwardly from time to time. Not too much of a character there. I'm also not thrilled by the implication that something happened between him and Blair at New Year's. Did the power go out and she thought it was Chuck? Or did she not realize he was Chuck's uncle due to the near twenty year age difference between Jack and Bart? Is there a story in that?

When not drilling the name "Uncle Jack" into our brains, the writers tried to redeem Jenny Humphrey after her annoying wannabe-hipster phase. She's back at school, she's talking to Eric, and she's helping out poor Nelly Yuki just to be a good person. It's all a bit of overkill when Jenny looks a bit better just by standing next to those ultra-annoying mean girl extras. They were always the weakest segment of the show (no equivalent on The OC), so hopefully their return will be short-lived. But what would best redeem Jenny would be to ditch the bangs.

On the plus side, all the boring characters took the week off. Serena dumped lifeless Aaron offscreen, sparing us even one more scene with him. Did you notice Nate and Vanessa were MIA this week? Neither did I. So as soon as the other characters get more interesting storylines, there will be something worth gossiping about.