Gay TV Recap: Gossip Girl

When I first checked out Gossip Girl, I wasn't expecting much. However, the surreality of seeing high schoolers sipping martinis in posh hotel bars and otherwise taking the 'acting beyond their age' thing to an extreme got me to stick around for a few episodes. Then the complexities of the friendship between Serena and Blair started to become clear and I was hooked.

Gossip Girl has turned out to be a solid character-focused soap and one of its more interesting characters is the focus of our gay storyline: mean girl Blair Waldorf, played by Leighton Meester. Unlike many a soap villain, Blair isn't unapologetic about her controlling, scheming ways; she doesn't enjoy being bad. Meester makes it clear that Blair's bad behavior is driven by her insecurity, a desperate need to feel loved.

When we catch up with Blair at the beginning of the episode she's rushing home to meet up with her dad, Harold (John Shea). When her parents divorced, he ran off to France with his boyfriend Roman (William Abadie), but now he's returning to New York to see her for Christmas. While trying to hail a taxi, Blair tells Serena that she plans on getting Harold to move back to New York.

Serena reminds Blair about Roman but Blair brushes him aside:

"Roman is a phase. My father belongs here with me. He only left New York to ride out the scandal. Time to come home, don't you think?"

Serena, knowing that there's no stopping Blair once a bad idea has gotten into her head, doesn't answer and quickly changes the subject. I'm left curious about what Blair means by "Roman is a phase." Is she saying that her dad is going though a short period of being gay or that Roman is just some short-term fling who'll be quickly forgotten?

When Blair arrives home, her enthusiasm to see her father quickly fades when she realizes that he brought Roman with him on his vacation. Interesting that she seems to have never considered that her father would want to spend the holiday with his boyfriend as well as his daughter. Roman is all sweetness, playing the new stepparent eager to be part of the family. Blair has to be prodded into bring nice to him.

Later, the Waldorfs head to Central Park for some ice skating. After eagerly waiting for the chance to spend time with her father, Blair would rather spend the time sulking than share him with Roman. That's very much like Blair, but it's also not uncommon behavior for kids whose parents recently split up. When she finally gets Harold away from Roman, he excitedly tells her that he bought a chateau in Lyon, prompting Blair's second disappointed face of the day as she realizes that he's planting roots far away from her.

Blair's mother, Elanor (played by the amazing Margaret Colin), is approached by a man asking directions to the skating rink. Now, I'm usually terrible at spotting flirting but even I know that when a handsome stranger asks for directions to sompleace you're standing right next to, he's hoping the next set of directions will be to your favorite spot for a first date. Roman knows this but Elanor dismisses the entire idea.

When they finally get to ice skating, we see Harold helping Roman skate, and Roman's looking a lot like Bambi on that frozen lake. Blair, again, stays off to the side. Dad tries to bring Blair into the fun, sending Roman to stumble in her direction. Blair smiles, extends her arms welcomingly and ... trips him. Roman pretends the accident was his fault, saying that he must've tripped over himself.

The pleasure in hurting Roman doesn't last long for Blair, however, as it costs her the chance to have tea with Harold, who decides to spend time with the injured Roman. She's complaining to Elanor who suggests that Blair appreciate that they had a good time together, instead of dwelling on how she still didn't get the daddy time she wanted. There's not much chance of that happening and Elanor knows it. Elanor lets it slip that Roman isn't the good guy he seems to be ... she once rescued him from a destructive affair with a bad boy model named Freddie. That breaks Blair from her sulking, since she now sees a way to attack Roman.

Cut to Elanor's big Christmas party and guess who turns up for the party? It's the guy who asked for directions to the "You are here" point on the map. It turns out Roman sought him out and invited him to the party. Elanor is a bit annoyed at the idea of an uninvited guest but Roman pushes Elanor to get to know him a bit. When Elanor tries to insist that she doesn't need to find a new man, Roman reminds her about their long friendship. "Friends don't steal other friends husbands." she retorts.

That's my favorite moment of the night because it becomes clear that Roman's not the chipper guy he's been pretending to be during this vacation. He's been apologizing for finding happiness in a situation that's caused so much hurt for Elanor and Blair. Sometimes, there's an economy of language to Gossip Girl's scripts that give actors like Colin a chance to really shine.

And then another surprise guest arrives to the party ... Freddie. For a few seconds, it looks like Blair's plan might have worked. Harold is angry at the idea that Roman contacted his ex, but Elanor quickly figures her daughter's scheme out, calms Harold down and sends Freddie away.

Harold is furious to learn of Blair's scheme but Elanor talks him down further, finally getting him to realize how much it disappointed Blair that he didn't make the trip solo. Harold's been clueless all along, admitting that he hoped that by getting Roman and Blair to spend time together they'd start getting along and that all the parts of his life would come together effortlessly. "Blair learned scheming from her mother and unrealistic dreaming from her father," Elanor explains to her ex-husband, "She tries to act all grown up but don't be fooled, she's still a little girl who needs her daddy." It's another moment that makes me love this show, as it speaks volumes that Elanor knows her daughter well enough to realize this, but has failed again and again to make her daughter feel loved.

The episode heads towards a happy Christmas ending when Harold makes it clear to Blair that she'll have a space in his new life in France. It's not Gossip Girl's best work, since the show is its most compelling when these people are fighting their demons and this is your basic child-of-divorce scene. Still, it's pretty cool that it is just a divorce storyline and that Harold's having left the marriage for another man isn't treated like an added reason for angst.

However, while I liked that these gay characters equally messed up as the Gossip Girl regulars (the interesting ones, at least) the lack of physical intimacy between Harold and Roman was frustrating. If not for some strong chemistry between Shea and Abadie, it'd be hard to tell that Harold and Roman were a couple. When Chuck sent Blair a taunting photo of him on vacation with Blair's boyfriend, Nate, they looked more like a couple than Harold and Roman ever do.