MIOBI: National Selection (Survival of the Fittest)

Make It Or Break It: "All That Glitters"

While I have continued to watch MIOBI on a weekly basis, I abandoned blogging about it because it was exhausting trying to point out every ridiculous thing that happens on this show. Especially when the ridiculousness is not limited to misrepresentations of gymnastics but also stretches to misrepresentations of the real world (like when Emily's mom went somewhere to pay her electricity bill or people ride a bus from Boulder to Boston and arrive in less than a day or when the girls scared off the creepy guys by doing flips or any number of other inane moments).

If you know anything at all about gymnastics (or the real world), it's best to just try to put it out of your mind as much as possible while watching MIOBI. If you can shut your brain off a bit, you can focus on things like how cute Carter is and how the second Pizza Boy is kind of creepy but also kind of funny and that the Kmetkos are still pretty likable despite being annoying and that Payson is pretty amusing in her own way. In honor of the finale of the first half-season, however, I'm going to keep my brain on and give blogging a go for this episode. Please bear in mind that I couldn't write down all of the inaccuracies and fallacies due the the sheer number of them.

Highlights and ridiculousness:

• I'm still not buying that Kaylie's dad took diamonds out of his World Series ring and put them in a necklace for Kaylie.
• Those are some rather un-fancy looking warmups the Rock girls are sporting.
• I don't think the press goes this crazy for gymnasts arriving at Nationals (maybe at the Olympics though). It's not the Oscars.
• Guy in the lobby with a camera: "Kaylie Cruz, let's see what's in your gym bag!" WHA? That's horrible! Keep the camera out of the poor girl's gym bag!
• Pizza Boy 2 calls Emily "Tumble-ina"
• Seriously, what happened to the other pizza shop guy? He's been gone for a very, very long time. It doesn't even make sense storyline-wise to bring him back at this point, since Emily's been through so much more with Pizza Boy 2 now.
• Nationals isn't on a podium?! Are you kidding me?
• Pizza Boy 2's going to take Emily's brother to Boston from Boulder on Radiohead's bus?! That's supposed to going to Atlanta?! Did anything in that sentence make any sense at all?
• Lauren: "And that would be our team captain."
• Carter came to Boston even though he got suspended? Hasn't he been enough of a distraction to Kaylie? Just cool it off for a while, dude. You're coming on a bit strong.
• If Kaylie doesn't want him anymore, I'm sure Carter could pick up a few other girlfriends here in Boston with all the gymnastics groupies running around.
• Wow, Payson looks gorgeous marching out into the arena in her competition makeup! I didn't even recognize her. I'm usually not a big fan of over-exuberant eye makeup on gymnasts (example: Nastia Liukin at 2009 Nationals a couple weeks ago), but it looks amazing on Payson.
• How does Lauren get all of her hair (it's seriously almost down to her waist) into that tiny little side bun thing?
• No, commentator, the judges aren't going to be looking for "more personality" from Lauren; they're going to be looking for some actual gymnastics skills. (On the bright side, it seems that having annoying commentators was the one part of the Nationals experience that MIOBI got correct!)
• Wow, Payson and Kelly are still trash-talking mid-meet! That's intense.
• Payson's uneven bars routine would be so much more impressive if she actually did a release move.
• Why are the Rock's gymnasts all competing on different events? How is Sasha supposed to coach gymnasts on four different events at once? This is asinine.
• Wow, Payson really solidified her lead with that Gainer full twist dismount. Yes, that was a beam dismount with just one twist. And, look, Kelly Parker did a beam dismount with just one twist too! How impressive. Yep, these two have "National champion" written all over them.
• There should be a lot more hugging at this competition. Do the people who make this show ever watch any gymnastics competitions at all?
• How does Kelly Parker know all of the Rock girls' dirty secrets? Does she have spies?
• The gymnasts have to go to a cocktail party after the competition? Whose horrendous idea is that?
• Payson: "We are tanking in there because we're all acting like a bunch of petty little bitches!"
• If Emily just keeps visualizing herself falling right before she starts each event, she's actually doing surprisingly well.
• Pizza boy: "You strike the bars like a cobra."
• You strike the bars like a cobra?! WHAT?! That's quite possibly literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my whole entire life. Including the time the girl in front of me in line in the dining hall at college confused okra with orca and told her friend that the dining hall was serving us whale.
• I guess Pizza Boy should be a sports psychologist. He spouts out some completely random, irrelevant, illogical nonsense and suddenly Emily's right as rain.
• Emily: "I can't believe you came this far."
  Me: "I can't believe Radiohead let you drive their bus to Boston when they were trying to go to Atlanta!"
  
• It is still creepy to no end that Naomi from Lost is the sports agent. I wonder if she's still working for Charles Widmore in some capacity.
  
• Ha ha! Who wants to bet that this "what's in your gym bag" segment isn't going to be around much longer? You just can't show a box of condoms on the jumbo-tron at a gymnastics meet. There are far too many little children around.
  
• It's weird/cool that the Rock girls all get to wear different leos in the same color scheme.
  
• Wow, Kaylie should just set up a give-back-the-necklaces booth right there at the edge of the stands. This is ridiculous.
  
• Kayle scores a 16.2 on vault for a Yurchenko half?! ARGH!!! That score is literally not even possible for that vault. There are girls who do vaults with 1.5 or even 2 more twists than that who don't get scores that high in the real world! It annoys me that MIOBI tries to appear legitimate by using the new, non-10.0-based scoring system but then award obscenely high scores for the skills they show the girls doing. If you didn't know anything about gymnastics and you watched an actual competition after watching this show, you wouldn't be able to understand why the gymnasts were doing skills that looked so much harder and still receiving scores that are so much lower.
  
• Candace (Summer) can just walk down out of the stands and onto the competition floor?! Where is the security in this place?
  
• How is Payson going to pass Kelly Parker when she's just going a Yurchenko back tuck on vault? Oy vey.
  
• Yeesh! Actually Payson's horrendous fall is probably what "hitting the bar like a cobra" would actually look like. I mean, a cobra has no hands! It wouldn't go well!
  
• Ouch! That was a nasty fall from Payson on UB! It reminds me of the time Kerri Strug took that really nasty fall off bars and injured her back (and they showed that clip in all her documentaries).
  
• I can't believe Sasha let Emily do her old floor routine. That was a bad call. How she didn't get laughed out of the arena is beyond me.
  
• Payson does have three years before the Olympics, people. I'm sure she can find a doctor doing some kind of crazy experimental back surgery by then.
  
• Lauren: "Come on, Kay! You've got her whipped!" (Lol, that is so not something an actual gymnast would say.)
  
• At least Kelly Parker can do a double pike on floor. Actually it looks like she did two of them, unless that was supposed to be a full-in and I missed the twist. That's probably wishful thinking though.
  
• Yea Kaylie!
  
• Oh yeah, I forgot that Kaylie's brother liked Emily too. For someone who is supposed to have no boyfriends, she's got like three.
  
• Wow, Emily makes one National team and suddenly the rules don't apply to her!?
  
• I usually detest the music on this show, but I have to admit that this Mika "We Are Golden" song is darn catchy.
  

Argh, this show in infuriating. And yet I still watch it... Luckily, MIOBI is going on hiatus for awhile so Greek and come back and I can stop hanging my head in shame for awhile.

(photo: abcfamily.com)

Make It Or Break It: Falling Off the Beam

Make It Or Break It:
"Pilot"

I love gymnastics. I also tend to love ABC Family original shows (The Secret Life of the American Teenager being the glaring exception to that). So, therefore, I should love Make It Or Break It, an ABC Family original show about gymnastics, right? Mmm, not so much. Turns out, I kind of hated it. For both its complete lack of knowledge about gymnastics and its complete lack of the elements (humor, witty dialogue, interesting characters, etc.) that make/made shows like Greek, Kyle XY and (to a lessor extent) Wildfire so enjoyable.

Full disclosure: I've been a fan of Chelsea Hobbs since Beach Girls. I think I mainly like her because she looks like Rachel Melvin from Days Of Our Lives.

There was so much ridiculousness in this episode that I have to do a play-by-play account to document some of it:

• Whoa, the dude on still rings has some seriously floppy hair.
• There's going to be a Sports Illustrated cover on gymnasts before Nationals even happens? Yeah right. Did we learn that lesson after the Kristy Phillips situation?
• Why are they talking about "team order" at Nationals? Since when is gymnastics Nationals a team competition? (Answer: it's not.)
• Why is orange leo (Lauren) so worked up after seeing someone do a couple of back handsprings through to a single tuck on floor? She shouldn't be threatened by that.
• Ok, that 2.5 twist/punch front was a little more impressive.
• Emily watched "the Northern Open"? On TV?! Gymnastics can barely get decent coverage of Nationals on TV most years. Let's be honest here: if she saw this "Northern Open" anywhere, it almost certainly was by tapping into a Dutch television station's feed on the Internet in the middle of the night. (Yes, I'm speaking from experience.)
• Payson just did a brilliant Gainer layout off beam. (Please detect my sarcasm.) Lauren's back tuck dismount was also fantastic (eye roll).
• Oh great, Lauren's already barfing up her breakfast. We're less than 10 minutes in, and someone's already got an eating disorder.
• They're seriously concerned about losing to a girl who is afraid of the vault?
• Does everyone's entire family have to show up and watch every practice? Gymnastics lessons are expensive--don't these people have to go to their jobs?!
• Candace Cameron Bure! Playing someone religious. How surprising. Seriously, though, why's Candace with Lauren's sketchy dad?
• Payson is way over the top. She can't talk to her family because she's needs to "focus" during the car ride home?
• Uh, if "getting caught with a boy" gets you immediately kicked off the team, shouldn't Kaylie and Floppy Hair (Carter) park and make out a little further away from the gym?
• Emily: "How was the new school?"
  Brother: "Different dog, same poop."
• Emily's mom needs to be a little more organized.
• Kaylie: "If he finds out, he was kill you. No seriously, like blood-and-cops-and-teddy-bears and-candles-on-the-sidewalk kill you."
• Ooh, the boy in the pizza shop is cute! A little on the creepy side, however.
• Uh oh, the manager of the pizza shop is a meth-head.
• It also seems kind of unlikely that a gymnastics competition would start that early in the morning. (With the exception of NBC messing up the scheduling of some of the Beijing competitions so that they could be aired live in the U.S.)
• Ok, folks, gymnasts qualify for Nationals as individuals. Each gym does not get to send a team of a certain number of people.
• There's a PA announcer at an inter-gym comp?
• Kaylie was 8th in US at Nationals on uneven bars last year with a whole lot of nothing in her routine and a double tuck dismount?
• At least MIOBI got the flame leotards right. (The Inferno leos went into rotation in 2003, but the flame trend is apparently still alive and kicking.)
• Wow, Lauren did a double front dismount. That's actually a legitimate move.
• Emily also pulls out a (back) double tuck dismount (without pointing her feet).
• Just for the record: The UB scores were Payson 16.075; Kaylie 16.070; Lauren 15.325; Emily 15.100. (Lauren got screwed--she's the only one who did a legit dismount.) For reference, in last year's Olympic All-Around competition, Nastia got 16.65 and Shawn was pulling around 15.275. And they were, you know, actually doing skills.
• After floor: Payson: 31.450; Kaylie: 31.125; Lauren 30.125; Emily 30.050
• The floor tumbling was pretty weak too. You can usually see more impressive tumbling on the results show of So You Think You Can Dance.
• Oh, and NO legitimate competition would ever have people compete bars then floor then beam then vault. Olympic order is vault, bars, beam, floor.
• The Rock gym gets to send 18 people to Nationals?!?! 18!! That's like half the entire field of athletes! What kind of nonsense is this?
• Lauren: flip flop-flip flop-layout stepout (fall) on beam. A skill series rarely seen since 1996. And this is the unbelievable beam routine we've heard so much about?
• If Payton is soooooooooo focused, why is she so intently watching her competitors? Seems like that would be distracting.
• Emily nails her flip-flop, flip-flop, layout stepout like it's 1992. And caps the routine off with a full twisting back tuck dismount!? UGH. (Shawn Johnson did a full twisting double tuck dismount last year, BTW.)
• Payson 46.900; Kaylie 46.375; Emily 46.100; Lauren 43.875
• Why is Lauren "out" if Emily beats her?
• Payson's vault is the hardest in the comp and "has never been landed in competition before." Well, we sure couldn't see much of it, but it looked like a Yurchenko layout (no twists). Hate to break it to you, MIOBI, but girls are landing that vault with an extra 2.5 twists in it.
• I have NO IDEA what vault Emily was just trying to do. She was doing a front flip between her roundoff and touching the vault? What the hell is that? I don't care where the spring board is located, that wasn't going to go well.
• Waaaaaaait. Now they're doing their second vaults?! As in, they got warmed up (actually they didn't, but let's pretend), everyone vaulted, and then they are going to start from the beginning and all vault again after standing around cooling down for however long this process has taken? There better be room for more than one girl in that ambulance, because this is freaking dangerous.
• Kaylie does a Yurchenko pike (or tuck).
• Why does the mom from Fresno have a Southern accent?
• Noooooooooo! Don't let the girl who just fell on her neck go vault! These people are asking for it.
• Ohhhh, Emily was apparently trying to do a Tsukahara entry. She "nails" her Tsuk back tuck this time.
• Final results: Payson 62.250; Kaylie 60.925; Emily 60.800; Lauren 58.050
• I thought the two vault scores were supposedly averaged? There's no way that Emily's score for her second vault averaged with her 0.00 on the first one would allow her to have a higher all-around score than Lauren.
• Because I'm taking this way too seriously, I've compiled everyone's scores on all four events. For reference, I've added Nastia and Shawn's scores in the Beijing all-around. Going by MIOBI standards, I think Shawn has a serious beef with the bars judges. And Nastia needs to complain that she got a lower score on vault than Payson, despite doing the same vault with 1.5 extra twists.

• Wow, Lauren's a peach. Selling out Kaylie to get back in the top three was real classy. Of course, she learned her tactics from her father, who hired a PI to dig up dirt on Emily.
• Not surprisingly, the PI found found more juicy dirt on the head gymnastics coach than he did on the teenage girl.
• Scores of media are now camped out on Payson's front lawn. Uh huh.
• There are no other coaches in this gym? And now there's no electricity either? This place is a disaster.
• Seriously, the girl in the Playtex Sport commercial just did more bona fide gymnastics skills in this 30 second ad than all of the girls in MIOBI did in 60 minutes.

Um, I'm not impressed. If they are going to make this show this gymnastics-centric, they need to do a hell of a lot more research about how things work the world of gymnastics today. If they made the show more of a teen soap, just with some gymnastics in the background, they would have a better chance of pulling this off.

A good example of what I'm talking about is Wildfire. Yes, it was a show about horse racing. A lot of the drama and plot points came from events involved with horse racing. And, yes, Wildfire's depiction of the world of horseracing was probably no more accurate than MIOBI's depiction of gymnastics. But, when Wildfire was at its most entertaining, it was a show about Junior, Kris, Matt, Dani, their parents and the supporting characters (and sometimes the wind turbine) and horse racing just served as the background. After all, if I want to watch a horse race, I'll watch a horse race not a television show on ABC Family. And if I want to watch a gymnastics competition, I'll watch a gymnastics competition (even if I have to get up in the middle of the night and queue up the Dutch channel on the Internet). MIOBI needs to bring something else to the table.

(It occurred to me that this show would have worked soooo much better if they made it about a college gymnastics team. Then all this "team" mumbo jumbo would have made sense. As would having a "scholarship kid." And it would be cool to have some girls on the team be famous former Olympians and other girls be unknowns. But in that scenario, you wouldn't get to have the crazy stage parents, but that's no big loss in my opinion.)

Update:
After watching episode 2, "Where's Marty," I'm feeling a little better about MIOBI, because ep 2 focused more on the drama and less on the actual gymnastics. The show is still nothing to write home about, but I did enjoy Lauren's dad getting all excited about her two-foot half turn on beam. I mean, yeah, it would have been impressive if she were age 2 or 3 at the most. And the girls scaring away the creepy guys via roundoffs and back handsprings was just too ridiculous.

(photo: abcfamily.com)

SYTYCD: Bad Judge, Good Judge

So You Think You Can Dance: "Auditions #3 and #4"

I wasn't planning to blog this episode, but Tyce Diorio was SO annoying during his critique of the opening performance by that Tony guy that I had to start a post just to say: Holy crap, Tyce is annoying!!! Like he's so annoying that there has to be a word stronger than "annoying" to explain it. I don't think "obnoxious" covers it either. (Brief recap: Tyce: "BAAA-aaa-AAAA-aaad.") I now long for the days of Napoleon and Tabitha...


Continuing on with the Miami auditions:

• Priscilla's a great dancer and she's really adorable too.
• Oh, I didn't recognize Janette without the blond streaks in her hair. This routine is just one insane lift after another! Ok, now they're doing footwork and that looks good too. And holy heck, that flip/split lift thing is beyond awesome!
• Can you learn ballet by reading books? I'm thinking no...and this performance is doing nothing to convince me otherwise.
• Did Tyce always have so much attitude? I'm assuming he did, but somehow I've never noticed before. I think Nigel is regretting putting him on this judging panel, and I don't blame him. Sweet mother of mercy, I wouldn't want to have to listen to this guy talk for two whole days.
• Here's a plan: how about we get rid of Tyce and all of the Broadway numbers on this show completely?
• I kind of love this Joseph guy. He's reminiscent of Twitch with the combination of hip hop and effervescent personality. And I love his tongue-sticking-out face.
• Cat is so cute learning everyone's catchphrases.
• "I feel like I should be throwing up in the bathroom, but that's not my style. I need all my nutrition."
• I'm enjoying the tap performance by Eric ("Silky") more than I normally enjoy tap performances. I like it because he moves around the stage more than other tappers and he has incorporated other styles of dance (hip hop, breakdancing). And anyone with a forward AND backward worm in his routine gets a thumbs up in my book. Between this guy and the muscly dude from last week, I think there's going to be a tapper in the Top 20 for the first time!
• Paris, the former Miss Washington, isn't bad. I think she could stand to lose the tutu though--I don't think it's doing anything for her and it's kind of distracting. I liked the eerie version of "Toxic" that she performed to as well.
• Megan (I think that's what her name was...she was the girl in the purple shorts) was cool too. I liked her Terin Humphrey-esque backbend/split thing.
• Alex Long did one heck of a leg-up pirouette (there's probably a more appropriate ballet term for that move, but I can't come up with it). Marta should make all the gymnasts who try to do that move in their balance beam routines watch a video tape of him.
• Talia's story (her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident) is heartbreaking. She's a good dancer, but her routine is kind of NBA cheerleader-ish.
• Whoa, I totally fell for Nigel's "I'm sorry...to disagree with Tyce" fakeout. He shouldn't try to dupe widows. That's not nice. The poor girl has been through enough.

On to Memphis:

• Lil C!!!!!!!! I guess having him on the judging panel for the second hour is our consolation prize for having to listening to Tyce for the first hour.
• Police officer Marico's Memphis Jookin' (Ok, that can't be how you spell it...sweet goodness, I just looked it up and that is how you spell it!) is pretty buck, to borrow a term from Lil C. (I so can't speak hip hop.)
• Holy cow, this is quite an intellectual conversation we're having about jookin' here. I'm not really following it, but I appreciate it. Lil C always elevates the proceedings.
• Wow, look at that: Lil C just gave a weak performer constructive criticism (suggesting a dance style he should try) instead of just saying that he was "b-AAAA-aaaa-AAA-aaaaaaad" and ruthlessly insulting him.
• Is it just me or have we had to watch a lot more of the bad/ridiculous performers tonight that we did last week? I'm so over it. Let's just watch the good ones please.
• Ok, this dude just lost all my respect: He doesn't want to stick around to hear what Lil C has to say!
• Argh, now we're watching a montage of bad auditions from a variety of cities! I said I wanted to see good dancers!
• Caitlin, the sister of Purple Shorts (Megan, I think) from Miami, is here! That's cool. And Caitlin is awesome. She has gorgeous, Nastia Liukin-esque flexibility and extension. And, wow, she's only been dancing for 5 years (but she did gymnasts before that). Goodness, she's had hip reconstruction surgery! (I bet she has gymnasts to thank for that.)
• Anna's a winner too. She displays some very creative movement and positions. It's looking like it's going to be hard to pick the Top 20--I think we've already seen at least 20 great dancers, and there are still plenty of auditions left.
• Travis, the son of a football coach, is cute. He has gorgeous facial bone structure. Aww, the poor kid got teased a lot. ...Well, wait, was he wearing shorts with one leg that is longer than the other one when the teasing occurred? Because that is kind of silly.
• Oops, I don't remember this Evan kid at all.
• Ryan (to his little brother, Evan): "My whole life I've been waiting for you to grow up so we could be best friends."
• Boy are they pushing Glee hard tonight.
• More twins! These girls (Lydia and Lauren) are actually good though.
• I loved the look on Lil C's face while Ryan was performing. He was like, "I can't believe I'm watching a guy tap dance with a whoopee cushion." It was exactly like how my face looked during that routine too. Oh, but then Lil C goes and says the routine was delightful! That did not look like an "I'm delighted" face to me at all ;-)
• Previews for tomorrow: I was wondering when "Sex" was going to show up. There should be a rule that you can only try out for three cycles (without making it to Vegas) and then you're banned forever.

I began the blog to complain about one judge, but I'm going to conclude it by raving about another: I adore Lil C. His critiques are intelligent and nontheatrical, and that's just so nice.

I'm excited to see Mia tomorrow; she's always good for some weirdness and some brutal honesty. And, heaven help me, I think I'm even kind of excited to see Adam Shankman. (See what happens when this show goes away for such a long time? I even start to miss the aspects of it that annoy me.)

Gossip Girl: Nastia and a sequined Chuck

Gossip Girl:
"It's a Wonderful Lie"

Two weeks between new episodes of Gossip Girl is rough. It was such a relief to have it back.

The big news of the episode for those of us for whom watching gymnastics is a way of life was that Nastia Liukin made a cameo. The big news for those of us for whom watching Gossip Girl is a way of life was that this episode was pretty fantastic.

Nastia's cameo: For a second there, it looked like she was about to land herself a Bass, but then Blair showed up to abruptly shove her aside. Only Blair Waldorf would have no qualms about pushing away a five-time Olympic medalist... As far as cameos go, at least Nastia's was decidedly less creepy than poor Shawn Johnson's appearance on The Secret Life of an American Teenager. And at least no one did cartwheels down the hallway after Nastia left.

Fantasticness: The Chuck and Blair scenes were awesome as usual. The Chuck, Blair, and Dorota scenes were crazy amazing. And I think I even enjoyed the Nate/Vanessa/Jenny/Mean Girls story line too.

Favorite quotes and observations:

• Chuck: "Who's in the lead to play the Man With No Future?"
• Serena: "Dan Humphrey, the scourge of high society, is going to the ball!"
• Jenny: "Otherwise I'll start thinking about my future, and then there'll be a Jenny Humphrey-sized hole through my wall."
• Vanessa's such a dirty liar.
• No way can Jenny make a whole dress in one day. She must be the fastest little sewer in the history of the land.
• Lexi: "You know, I feel inspired to shop at the Gap!"
• Eew, Nate and Vanessa are kissing now? Um, Nate really does get around at a pretty fast clip.
• Ha ha ha, Gossip Girl captioned the picture of Nate and Vanessa kissing with "Ew ew ew!" That's what I said!
• Bart really is going to die soon--he's making nice with everyone!
• Serena, I can see your boobs again.
• Not loving this dress Jenny's making at this point.
• Jenny (to Vanessa): "Are you really that desperate?" Yeppers, Jenny, she is. Are you really that surprised?
• Chuck is playing the piano!!!
• Blair: "If you like your date, I get your limo for a month."
  Chuck: "And if you like yours, I get Dorota!"
• Chuck (to Dorota): "I take my breakfast in bed."
• OMG, how amazing would a spin-off sitcom with Chuck and Dorota be?
• Geez, Lexi is annoying. She's even more annoying than Vanessa.
• Serena: "Can't she just vote?"
• Ahh, good, Bart's back to being an ass. Now we won't feel so bad when he bites the dust.
• No, Blair, no. Aaron is NOT hot. Not hot, Blair!!! And what happened to Blair's "wait until you're in love" philosophy that she was spouting just a few weeks ago?
• Blair: "Don't you know that Chuck doesn't like his fruit pre-picked!!!"
• Blair and Dorota picking Chuck a date was hysterical. Poor Dorota joined Facebook groups.
• Blair's party dress is fabulous.
• Eew, whose friends like having conversations with other people about their friends' sex lives? ("Aaron told me that tonight's the night with Serena...") Gross! Way too much information. (BTW, if the dude runs to tell his ex-girlfriend that his current girlfriend said she wants to sleep with him tonight, isn't that weird on several levels?)
• I feel like Lily should be getting a big "I told you so" regarding marrying Bart right now.
• Wow, soooooo much of Serena's boobs are on display, I don't think that anyone's even going to notice Vanessa's see-through dress.
• Serena seriously needs to learn to not dress like such a skank. It's become an embarrassment.
• I'm glad Little J still dresses like the Wicked Witch of the West occasionally.
• Vanessa likes Nate better than she liked Dan? Really? Him?
• OK, you can just see the outline of Vanessa's legs. It's not that bad. It would be one thing if she were wearing underpants with dolphins on them or something, but she's not. This is no where near the Nair-tini incident.
• Wow, when did Nate get so preachy? I'm sorry, in this scenario, Vanessa looks much worse than Jenny. I mean, the see-through dress was not that bad. And why's Nate so shocked--Jenny pulls crap like this all the time!
• Blair: "But she's me. Only less--I gave her that headband!"
• Ok, we're at least finally getting some kind of explanation of why Rufus let Lily go on her wedding day. Which is nice, because it made zero sense at the time. The explanation doesn't seem to make a ton of sense either though.
• Luckily for Vanessa, Nate is really fickle.
• I think Blair's wearing the necklace Chuck gave her for her birthday last year. I love that necklace. I hope Erikson Beamon's Target line includes something similar.
• How can you say no when a boy in a sequined tuxedo jacket asks you to dance?
• Oh no, is Chuck going to blame himself for Bart's accident since he told him to come to the party?
• "Bart's been in an accident." Well, that's the worst kept secret of the year.
• Next week's promo: Wow, grieving Chuck really does look like a sexy vampire. And what the hell is wrong with Lily? You don't slap your step-son right after his father just died, no matter what he says to you. Have some compassion, van der Woodsen.

(Is it just me or in the above photo of Chuck and Blair, do they not look like they're auditioning for roles in the sequel to The Other Boleyn Girl or some other Renaissance courtesan romance?)

Headband Monday: white band with the bow.

(photos: cwtv.com)