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Gossip Girl Season 2 Episode 1 Recap: Summer, Kind of Wonderful

Season Two of Gossip Girl opens in New York’s Hamptons region of Long Island. Summer fun – and romantic drama – for all involved.

When we first see Nate (Chace Crawford), he is in the process of getting pawed feverishly in the car by a cougar. In other words, an older, married woman. He’s clearly more into her than he’s letting on, and relishing the role of boy-toy.

Nate has been masquerading that he and Serena are together, but really, she is just playing along so that he can do whatever he wants and people will leave her alone about her messy breakup with Dan.

Speaking of Lonely Boy… he’s been far from lonely. He’s got a summer job assisting a well-known writer in the Hamptons, but rather than writing, he is focused more on his endeavors with the opposite sex.

To be exact, he’s dating two chicks at the same time. Go Dan!

The younger Humphrey, Jenny, is working at the fashion design house of Blair’s mom, Eleanor. She’s getting abused by her big-shot supervisor and told she’s not good enough. What she really needs is a friend. A friend named Eric.

Chuck Bass is being, well, Chuck Bass, lounging on the beach and keeping company with three bikini-clad babes all too eager to provide “caretaking” of whatever he requests. But what he’s really fixated on is Blair.

He wants her back even though he ditched her in the first place. One gets the sense she would be open to it – but first, she’s coming to the Hamptons with new boyfriend James. A boyfriend she’s using to make Chuck jealous.

Chuck sees through this right away, but at dinner with Blair and her family, he’s annoyed at how interested “James” seems to be in his girl.

James then catches on that he’s being played by Blair and calls her selfish. She admits to using him, saying he’s boring. He says she’s only interested in herself.

The cougar, Katherine, invites Nate to her house for another mauling – and apparently for the first time at her actual resident. Her husband is out of town, so that’s cool. Well, that is until he comes home early from wherever he was, and nearly catches them in the act.

Nate is forced to flee out a window and run through the streets of East Hampton half naked, where he’s almost run over by Serena and the hot lifeguard Blair convinced her to go on a date with.

Nothing came of their date – except the priceless look on Nate’s face as he looked at Serena and the dude asked her “What’s that guy’s deal?!”

The Hamptons “White Party” is coming up and lots of things are happening. Jenny apologizes to Eric (Connor Paolo) for the way she treated him, and he agrees to get her an invitation somehow.

Dan is also going, having been axed from his summer job. So are faux couple Serena and Nate – who wants to get a look at Katherine’s husband face-to-face.

Chuck has been doing some recon on Blair’s boyfriend, and is growing more and more suspicious that he’s not the Georgetown stud he says he is.

At the party, Jenny runs into her boss, who is none too pleased to see her – but Eric saves the day by introducing J to Tinsley Mortimer, a real-life socialite and apparent friend of Eric and Serena’s mom.

Tinsley loves Jenny’s designs and they totally hit it off. Thanks to Little E’s connection, Little J was able to show her boss up somethin’ fierce!

Nate becomes insanely jealous seeing Katherine with her husband. Serena helps him retaliate with some serious PDA in full view of everyone.

The move works well for Nate, who is later tackled by a jealous Katherine. But it backfires on Serena as Dan sees them. He’s not pleased when once again, his dream girl can’t or won’t explain her strange actions.

For once, though, Dan is knocked off his moral high horse when BOTH his summer flings corner him at the party as he’s talking to Serena. They’ve figured out that he’s been two-timing them and douse him in cocktails.

Humbled, Dan admits to Serena that he can’t get her out of his head. They agree to leave the party together and talk some more.

Just as Chuck is about to uncover James’ true identity, he finds Blair and says he has a confession of his own. It turns out James was also being dishonest with her – he is actually Marcus Beaton, a British Lord. With an accent and everything!

Most girls simply want him for his title and money, he tells Blair – so he has been pretending to be an average American this whole time. Suddenly Queen B finds him a little less dull than she used to.

As she’s about to leave the White Party with Marcus, Chuck corners Blair and begs her not to. She says if he will say just three words – eight letters – she’ll be his. Chuck wants to, but stutters and just can’t.

Spurned again, Blair leaves with Marcus. Dan and Serena meet on the beach and embrace under the fireworks. Fade to black.

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