It's Thanksgiving time on Gossip Girl, a time for all families to embrace and give thanks for all of their blessings — unless all their blessings have been seized by the government, which was the case of the Archibalds.

Captain Archibald’s back in town to ask Nate and Nate’s mother to join him on the lam in Dominica. Nate’s hurt, annoyed and skeptical of his father, but his mother wants the three of them to reunite and move out of the country together. Nate’s father is hard selling the idea, so you know it’s not on the up and up.

Poor Blair not only has to accept that her father won’t be there for Thanksgiving, but her mother’s new boyfriend, Cyrus, has moved in and laid out the welcome mat for his eccentric relatives. Blair’s determined to have as traditional of a Thanksgiving as she can and at the heart of that tradition is the baking of a pie that her father usually bakes. OK, so she’s not really baking the pie — she tosses that labor-intensive chore to Dorota.

The biggest insult comes when Blair sees Cyrus eating a slice of the warm pie then suggesting a better combination of ingredients to satisfy his palate. To compound matters, Dorota slips and tells Blair that Eleanor and Cyrus will be announcing their engagement at a restaurant Thanksgiving dinner. It’s too much for Blair to handle, so on Thanksgiving, she flees the house on a mission of mope dragging the adorable Dorota with her.

Blair and her accessories friends plan for her 18th birthday party. Blair’s legal! Serena’s there and wants to help, but she’s horribly pre-occupied with text messages she gets from Aaron directing her to his favorite spots around the city. Even Blair’s distracted, because Eleanor has a new boyfriend and Blair’s dying to meet him and envisions tall, dark and handsome — so of course we know right away that he’s none of the above.

Serena skips out of the party planning and follows a text that sends her to the middle of Times Square, where Aaron meets her. Aaron manages to get a live shot of Serena on the gigantic screen! Wow, he must really be in love to do something so ridiculously grandiose, huh? This gesture is grander than grand, and he and Serena kiss for all of NYC — or at least those stuck in Times Square — to see. Aaron asks if she will be his muse, and after a Jumbotron-size show of emotion, how can a girl resist?

Dan’s sell-out of Chuck, aka Charlie Trout, seems to be paying unusually high dividends. Not only does Dan’s story get him a Yale recommendation from his previous mentor, Noah Shapiro, but his high school writing is so incredibly awesome that New York magazine gives him a shot at an article for their fine publication regarding Charlie Trout’s real-life father. They want an exposé of Bart Bass. Dan agrees to do it, because apparently self-righteous only gets you to community college but ruthless gets you Ivy League recommendations.

Finally, Blair meets her mother’s new boyfriend, Cyrus Rose (yeah, Aaron’s father), and is grossly disappointed in his looks, his height and what seems to be his annoying personality. She tries to be mature about it until she learns that Cyrus and her mother are skipping her birthday party and heading to a Cyndi Lauper concert. Blair decides to search for skeletons in Cyrus’ closet to end the relationship once and for all. Over dinner with Cyrus, he tells Blair some long, sad story about a lost love when he was in Vietnam.

I believe what Jenny did, by crashing Bart and Lily’s boring charity event, is called making a fashion statement. Her statement was so loud that it screamed at Dan that he’s too cautious and yelled at Rufus that he’s not in charge.

Last week's episode, “There Might Be Blood,” had most of the characters’ blood either racing or boiling. Jenny and her new BFF, Agnes, plot a guerilla fashion show. This should not be confused with a gorilla fashion show where large hairy beasts walk around in Jenny’s dresses (which might have been more fun than the actual show), but rather it’s a plot to hijack an already planned event and have an impromptu fashion show.

Dan and Nate stumble upon Jenny’s plan early on, and Jenny begs her self-righteous brother not to spill the beans to Rufus. Dan’s not sure what to do so he leaves to consult with Vanessa while Nate stays behind to do what exactly? Oh, right, to drive Jenny and Agnes to the event they’re not invited to.

Vanessa admits to Dan that she thinks it’s great that Jenny is taking a risk for something she’s passionate about. Rufus overhears the conversation and the three go back to the loft to talk with Jenny. When they arrive, Jenny is leaving with Agnes and Nate. Rufus and Dan feel good that at least Nate is there to talk some sense into Jenny. Vanessa still has feelings for Nate, but she also knows that Nate’s not always on the correct side of moral judgment.

Little Jenny Humphrey is all grown up — and she dyed her hair and put black circles around her eyes to prove it. She also kisses Nate, tells Eleanor that her designs would be on the sale rack without young, hip Jenny’s eye for fashion, parties till the break of dawn with grown people, dances in her underwear while creepy grown men take her picture, has no job and doesn’t go to school. So take that, all you regular 15-year-old Stepford kids!

If you can't tell, this episode was all about Jenny.

Surprisingly though, the episode, “Pret-a-Poor-J,” doesn’t start with J at all; it starts with B. Remember how Whitney Houston sang it so beautifully: "Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all." Sing it! Yeah, well, um, Blair was learning to love herself one morning before school when Dorota interrupts Blair’s lesson.

I thought that we have been watching “Chuck In Real Life,” dating back to last season. Turns out we haven’t. This week we see Chuck’s vulnerable awesomeness shine so brightly that it even blinds Vanessa for a while and acts as a shimmering beacon of lust to Blair. Can it be that Chuck in real life might actually care what people think of him?

The newly blended Bass-van der Woodsen family is set to host a housewarming extravaganza. It’ll be a family coming out party complete with perfect children and wonderful parents! But where are they going to find such children and parents so quickly?

At breakfast, Lily and Bart dole out a few new family rules. On the surface, curfews and no martini drinking on school nights seem to be perfectly fine rules for the under 18 crowd but Serena bristles at the idea not because its not appropriate but because she’s convinced it’s Bart’s idea and that Lily is yet again drinking some new husband’s kool-aid.

Eric (who has a new boyfriend — yay!) tries to convince Serena that Bart and Lily seem sincere about wanting what’s best for the family. Eric asks Serena to play nice. Chuck shatters the peace when he tells Serena that he assumes the rules are a way for his image and business conscious father to rein in Serena’s unflattering (to Mr. Bass) tabloid celebrity. Chuck’s take on the new family rules re-ignites Serena’s overt rebellion to following them. Did you see that dress she wore on her way out the door to break a little curfew?

Over in Brooklyn, Vanessa’s leading a petition drive attempting to save an old building from being bought by developers and renovated into another soulless gentrified trendy nightspot. Since she’s home schooled and apparently has no friends other than Dan and Jenny she decides to go to Constance Billard and bark up Blair’s tree for some help in getting signatures of the well-to-do.

Oh no she didn’t. Oh yes she did. Blair threw her purse at the back of Serena’s head and all heaven broke loose! Come on, we all know the best part about a good fight is the making up afterward. This episode might have been titled, “New Haven Can Wait,” but I sure couldn’t! Wait, that is.

It’s college visit weekend and the gang heads north to New Haven, Conn., home of Yale University. They each have their own motivation for going. Chuck wants a secret society invitation, Dan wants someone to think his writing is Yale-worthy rather than yawn-worthy, Nate wants to think he’s anybody other than the son of a notorious embezzling loser, Blair genuinely wants her dream of gaining early admission as a legacy and Serena wants to make sure that Blair’s dream turns into a nightmare. The good news is most everyone got what he or she wanted! But as the saying goes, be careful of what you ask for.

Blair, still smarting over Serena’s declaration that she’s not going to play second fiddle to Blair’s insecurities anymore, snidely tells Serena all the reasons why Serena was not Yale material. What Blair doesn’t know is that Serena, who had planned to visit Brown for the weekend, has already been invited by Yale’s Dean of Admissions to attend the weekend event there. In deference to Blair, though, Serena was not going to accept the invitation. But after Blair’s insinuation that Serena was simply too stupid for Yale, Serena smartly decides to skip Brown and charm Yale.

At Yale, as Blair waits outside the dean’s office (how cute was she in her green cardigan and tie?) surprise! out walks a laughing, enchanting Serena and an obviously celebrity-smitten dean. Oh no: Blair’s Eliza Doolittle nightmare where she remains the clumsy Cockney lass as Serena emerges as My Fair Lady seems to be coming true.

The new episode of Gossip Girl is called “The Serena Also Rises," and she certainly does! Serena rises from the ashes of Dan’s smoldering smugness to take her place among the elite, Jenny Humphrey becomes an incorrigible force to be reckoned with, Dan and Chuck become boyfriends and Blair becomes the odd queen out.

It’s Fashion Week in New York City, and Blair, stinging from losing Chuck to his insecurity and Marcus to his step-mama, looks to reclaim her footing. She’s thrilled to be in charge of the seating chart for Eleanor’s show. As tradition, she and Serena watch her mother’s show from backstage, so she assigns her fawning posse prime seats in the second row. Since Marc Jacobs' show will be taking place at the same time as Eleanor’s, Blair knows that the in-crowd won’t fill the seats so she might as well get cool points from her friends.

Blair presents her pals with the tickets and they’re OMG happy until they see a picture of Serena in a newspaper and then that becomes so much cooler than their tickets. Chuck rubs Blair’s nose in the fact that Serena is now palling around with Poppy Lifton (sounds like Paris Hilton without the mug shot and jail time) and that the gang is in awe of Serena’s good fortune and even better connections. Blair is becoming more jealous of Serena’s meteoric rise.

That same morning, Dan and Jenny have a bro-sis talk about how it feels to be invisible on campus. Dan says that he likes it because now he can concentrate on his pedestrian awesome writing (he has a new mentor) and Yale application. Jenny mumbles something about school, and Dan rushes to Italian class while Jenny rushes from her classes over to Eleanor’s dreaming of Italian shoes.

“The Ex Files” finds the gang back at school and back to ruling the world. Fine, not the whole world, just the teen world of the Upper East Side.

Serena takes back her throne as queen of the school, the Humphreys are back to being nobodies, Nate’s back from being a ho, but — most importantly — the tension between Blair and Serena is back — not quite in full force yet but it’s coming, and I can’t wait.

Now that Serena and Dan are broken up, they have to figure out how they are going to co-exist at school: Should they be mature and be friends, or should they be passive-aggressive with each other until a direct confrontational show down? Well, they tried the former and quickly dissolved into the latter, and boy, was it fun to watch!

The unwritten rule is that the first one to date after a break-up is the winner, and whenever you have a winner, there’s bound to be a loser. But we all know that Dan is really the loser so how did he score a date before Serena? Because of Chuck, of course. Chuck’s trying to get Serena back to the top of the heap to dethrone Blair. I’m still not sure why a dethroned Blair is of any value to Chuck so please post your understandings of this.

There's a new girl at school and she's takes a shine to Dan’s literary brain. Blair and her posse care more about how bad this looks for Serena than Serena herself. Blair tries to befriend the new girl just so the new girl will have to follow the you-can’t-date-the-ex-of-one-of-your-pals rule.

Serena tries to stay above it all so she apologies to Dan for how Blair is behaving. Dan gives her the "you weren’t immediately put-off by it” nonsense and, rather than smacking him upside his head and leaving tread marks on his face, Serena suggests that the three of them hang out together at a popular club so that she and the girl can get to know each other and be cool with each other. (Why does Serena try so hard with this guy?)

First things first: Yes, Dan, sometimes people are treated differently because of who they are. Pout, shout, get a picket sign and protest, but please, get over it. Just because Serena knows this reality doesn’t make her a snob. It must be hard for Dan to stand up straight with that huge chip on his shoulder.

The latest episode, “The Dark Night,” features insufferable Dan and his bruised ego as the joker. Yet again, we see that Serena doesn’t have a superiority issue but Dan obviously has an inferiority one. Dude’s a drag.

On to more delicious topics like Blair. How cute did she look in all of her outfits? But what’s the deal with Marcus? He better recognize fire when it’s burning next to him. First Chuck can’t tell the girl “I love you,” then Marcus gives her the not-tonight-honey-I-have-a-headache blow off? Are the guys on Gossip Girl nuts?

Nate, the prostitute, acts like he’s nuts because, not only does he find himself stuck with a rich royal bully rather than an empathetic free spirit, but he told the bully the name of the island his father escaped to. I can’t fathom any of the girls being that dumb, not even Jenny.

These are the last days of summer and there’s a heat wave in NYC. On TV, this means a black out. Blair plans another party, and she’s still worried that Marcus isn’t in to her. She tries to get sexually cozy, but he gets all lordly, calls her a flower and says he wants their first time together to be special. Shut up, Marcus.

As predicted, the finale of Weeds was excellent TV drama! Oh, wait — it’s a comedy? Well, ain’t that funny? Heck, I was too scared for Nancy to notice any humor.

The title, “If You Work For a Living, Why Do You Kill Yourself Working?” is the question of Nancy’s story arc. Remember those carefree days when Nancy was crossing the border, thinking she had drugs in her Prius, or crossing the border with an illegal immigrant and drugs in Guillermo’s truck, or waiting with Andy in the desert for a drug drop made by the Mexican police? She felt she owed her family for what she had put them through. She wanted to work to live and live well. When Guillermo asked her to be a retail store manager, she was disappointed. But it turns out by doing something less dangerous (retail) for even more money, she winds up doing something that’s equivalent to suicide because it was the right thing to do.

The day starts as Cesar tells Esteban that the agent gave Nancy’s name. Esteban knows it’s true, but declines to fully entertain the thought because he knows what it will mean. He tells Cesar that he can’t trust the word of a tortured man and tells him to keep looking for the real culprit. It’s not that love is blind; it’s more that love is hopeful.

Captain Till questions Nancy. Her legal counsel is Dean Hodes, a true indication that Nancy knew she had a solid deal with the DEA. The faux questioning session is interrupted when another agent summons Till.

“Till We Meet Again” was fantastic TV. Wow. Was anyone else as speechless as I was by the end of the episode? I had trouble sleeping after seeing it!

Weeds has always found a decent balance between its no-apology, take no prisoners satirical style and its dramatic points but clearly, it is a comedy — until this episode. This was fine drama with a few laughs tossed in.

The primary plot point was the fallout of Nancy telling DEA Captain Till about the tunnel. She struck a deal asking for complete anonymity. I guess if Esteban wasn’t the mayor, the plan probably could have worked. But he is, and it didn’t.

Till agreed to keep any type of focus off of Nancy. He was getting a chance at Guillermo and seemed happy with that prize. He sent his own gay boyfriend, Agent Shlatter, into the maternity store acting as a married man looking at maternity clothes with his wife. Nancy casually tapped the door of the office to alert Shlatter to the room with the tunnel.

The following evening, when Sanjay is closing up the DEA enters the store, guns are drawn. This scene was juxtaposed with Nancy at Esteban’s having a sweet and intimate evening. Nancy sees pictures of Esteban’s daughters and asks about them. Esteban speaks with such sincere care and concern about them that it becomes harder to accept that he did know about the underage girl trafficking in the tunnel. He tells Nancy that such trafficking of girls will not occur again. As they start to get more intimate, Nancy asks Esteban if he loves her. He smiles.

At the maternity store, the DEA and Guillermo’s men are engaged in a gun battle, bullets everywhere. Guillermo and Ignacio, the man who has been guarding the tunnel in Nancy’s store, smartly flee down the tunnel and run to the Mexican side where the Mexican federal agents are waiting. There’s confusion as to whom has jurisdiction and where exactly Mexico begins and the U.S. ends. That scene ends with Guillermo and Ignacio in Mexican custody.

I can honestly say that, no, I had “Never Been Marcused,” prior to this Gossip Girl, but now that I have been, my head is spinning. There were more twists in this episode than an Agatha Christie play. (Not quite as clever, of course, but, hey, it’s a teen drama.)

At least the confusion over what fad term of female sexuality best labels Catherine, Nate’s summer fling, has been resolved. It turns out she's a step-MILF with major cougar tendencies. The big news this week is that Catherine is Marcus’ step-mama, and by the end of the episode, she became more than just Nate’s Mrs. Robinson — she became Nate’s sugar mama. Well, she is a pretty hot mama so I guess it’s just Mother’s Day all around.

Things happen quickly in this show. Blair, who thought Marcus was a tool until she found out he had blue in his blood, is now professing her love for him to anyone that will listen (which means Serena). Blair is upset, and assumes that Marcus doesn’t like her all that much because he doesn’t seem to want to introduce her to his parents, the Duke and the Duchess (or if you’re a Fergie fan, The Dutchess).

As we watch Blair worry herself silly over Marcus, Serena has confusing issues of her own. After spending the night on the beach with Dan in what can be assumed to be pure sexual bliss, Dan and Serena awake and agree that they should move more slowly in their reconciliation. Huh? Haven’t they spent an entire summer thinking about this? I’m already bored with Dan and Serena. Ugh.

Though uncertain about their relationship, Dan and Serena are so attracted to each other that they can’t keep their hands to themselves, leading them to begin a series of sexual encounters in public places such as the aforementioned beach and the bathroom of the bus that is taking them back to NYC from the Hamptons. What’s next — the courtyard at Constance Billard during an all-school assembly?

Oh, boy! Oh, boy! I mean, oh, guurl! They are back. If you have to ask, “Who’s 'they'?” then where ya' been? They are the most lesbian-subtextually-obvious-pairing-that-will-probably-never-get-together-on-TV-because-TV-screens-would-explode couple in teen drama history, that’s who. Gossip Girl has returned along with my smile and the hyperbole! (OK, so, it wasn’t the most OMG to infinity episode ever aired but it sure felt nice to have Blair and Serena back being all Blair and Serena-y. Blake Lively and Leighton Meester bring the show its life.)

The episode, “Summer, Kind of Wonderful,” showed the Upper East Siders venturing even further up and east in the Hamptons. The episode gets us all caught up on the summer happenings.

Serena spent the summer with Nate (solely as friends, thank goodness), wandering aimlessly around the beach trying to figure out why Dan wasn’t as happy as she was that she really didn’t kill anyone. I mean that is good news, right? Dan Humphreys are really hard to please.

Dan spent the summer being a playboy. (I know, huh?) It seems that the best way to get over Serena van der Woodsen is by dating girls that wouldn’t have given your broke no name behind the time of day if you hadn’t ever dated Serena van der Woodsen. For some reason, he seemed perfectly fine with this good fortune, though it’s a fortune that he would have pilloried any other person for engaging in. Dan was also being mentored by a well-known writer and had a chance to be published again, but he suffered from writers block because he couldn’t write the ending to his break up story.

Chuck Bass spent the summer being Chuck Ass because he was missing the B. B was in Europe licking her wounds like a kicked puppy. During the summer, Chuck had his flings and his romps but as soon as he read a text from Gossip Girl that B was arriving in the Hamptons, Chuck threw on his smirk, gathered some flowers and was waiting to make amends. Of course, B didn’t come alone. She would never do that.

In the episode “Head Cheese,” we finally come to find out Nancy’s line in the sand — child exploitation, semiautomatic weapons and non-leafy narcotics. (And all along I naively thought Doug and Andy were going to misuse the tunnel to operate their illegal coyote business. Silly me, that would be chump change.) Frankly, with all the stuff that’s actually being trafficked through the tunnel, Doug and Andy’s immigrants couldn’t even fit! It must feel like L.A. at rush hour down there.

Now, if I had to pick a cheese to represent Nancy since moving to Ren Mar, I’d have to pick Swiss cheese because the woman has been acting like she has holes in her head all season. But, viva la Ayuasca! The drug has caused some clarity.

The morning after the Ayuasca trip, Nancy tunes into Shane and the Groupies’ inane chatter over Pop-Tarts and starts asking questions about the coed slumber party. The Groupies quickly bail when Nancy gets closer to the truth that anatomy and biology were the cornerstones of the science project.

Nancy yells at Judah for leaving her alone to raise the kids. (I doubt Judah would have died if he had known that selling drugs was the Botwin future.) Anyway, Nancy in anger and frustration feebly spanks Shane with a newspaper when he tells her that her pretending-to-be-a-concerned-mother act is annoying. I’m guessing that Shane’s truth hurt Nancy way more than Nancy’s flimsy newspaper hurt his rear end.

Whoa! What’s this show about again? Bad parenting? Cocaine? Pharmaceuticals? Interventions? Ayuasca? Under age sex trade? Under age sex, in general? Illegal immigration? Cheese? It seems that marijuana is soooo season one.

“The Love Circle Overlap” had me as dazed and confused as Nancy was after she drank Ayuasca for her headache. But there were several worthwhile it’s-about-time moments this week. At last, Isabelle orchestrated an intervention for Celia. I was beyond annoyed that Capt. Till let Celia’s sorry ass out of jail! I bet Isabelle felt the same.

Just like most interventions, Celia is in denial about her addiction. But unlike most interventions, Celia was handcuffed to her bedpost while she was passed out in a drug stupor because everyone knew that when Celia woke up she wouldn’t just sit there politely and listen to the truth about herself.

Celia justifies her use by blaming her ex-husband and her own kids for her misery. Aw, what a sweet mother of the year moment. Isabelle runs down all the hurtful and mean-spirited things Celia has done to her, but gives Celia a pass because at least she wasn’t a zombie, which is what she is now. Celia gives Isabelle a “whatev, beyotch” attitude, so Isabelle pulls out the big emotional gun: She’s going to tell Celia’s mother on her. Gasp! Who knew that some one actually birthed Celia Hodes? I thought she just organically developed from mutated post apocalyptic matter.

Oh, Andy locates MerMex and plans to have her meet up with downer Doug. Yay! When Doug thinks that he’s slipped away from the vigilante guy, Andy brings Maria and a few others across the border and merriment erupts. The only problem is that vigilante guy hadn’t left, and catches Doug being a big fat traitor. Andy and Doug plead with the guy not to rat them out to the Feds. The vigilante cuts them a deal: He’ll give them a running start from the border patrol but they have to leave behind one of the other immigrants. Andy and Doug toss some dude out of the van to be hunted like a wild animal. Good times. I wonder if word gets back that El Andy is El Sellout.