gossip girl recap!

Because of Passover, the theme of Gossip Girl was, fittingly, redemption. As Cyrus, the drama's spiritual center, prepared a brisket for an evening seder, the characters around him continued to simmer in the oily stew pot that is the Upper East Side, trying, like so many aromatic vegetables, to hang on to their individual essences while absorbing and being absorbed by others. After much mishegas, Blair was forgiven by Nate, and later Cyrus, for acting like a social-climbing psychopath. "She is changing" for the better, confirmed Chuck, who redeemed himself for his first-season sin of trying to rape Jenny on the roof at the Kiss on the Lips party by offering her a heartfelt apology. Meanwhile, Serena was forgiven by her mother, Lily, for running away to Barcelona, causing a scene at Eleanor's seder, and the general sin of being an exotic butterfly who merely wants to be free, but sometimes makes mistakes. "Oh, sweetie," Lily tells her daughter during their heartfelt conversation, which takes place in front of a glass-doored refrigerator packed with colorful produce, "I could never think of you as a bad person. You got into Brown." (nymag)