Gossip Girl. I do indeed love you. Or, more precisely, I love Chuck and Blair. Bluck. Chair? I don’t know, those meldings of a couple’s names seem really weird to me.

Anyhoo. Chuck and Blair. They are so awesomely wrong…but now are so very right. Gossip Girl, for those not in the know, is a tv show chronicling the lives of extremely precocious wealthy teens who attend Constance Billard (a girls prep school) on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, NY. Well, wealthy teens and the Humphreys. The Humphreys are dad Rufus, son Dan and daughter Jenny – the token ‘poor’ characters through which we, the viewer, can enter the world of the rich, the beautiful, and the bored.

Now, the other characters, including the Humphreys, I can take or leave but I love with an unholy passion the evolving relationship between Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf. Chuck is your typical rich boy – man-whorish, dissolute, drinks too much, cares for nothing and no-one, a general all-round prat, and in the first episode is obviously the evil villain of the show. Blair, by contrast, is ostensibly sweet, the Queen B of Constance Billard and well on her way to becoming a reigning queen of society. Her utmost desire – to attend Yale, as her father did. In reality, Blair will stop at nothing to get what she wants, manipulating those around her. Over time, we discover Chuck’s behaviour hides a lonely boy wanting daddy’s love and approval, and Blair is deeply insecure.

In the first season, Chuck and Blair hook up after Blair breaks up with her boyfriend, Nate, who happens to be Chuck’s best friend. Through many twists and turns, they fight and deny their developing feelings for each other, but by the end of the season, they both realise that all they want is the other. However, because this is melodrama, Chuck is petrified at the thought of commiting to Blair and, in the season finale, just as they are about to go on a romantic trip to, um, Italy?, he stands her up at the airport.

The second season deals with the fallout, and the fact that each is trying to get the other to admit their love. It’s all very competitive and awesome. Halfway through the season, though, Chuck’s dad dies and Blair is the only one who can comfort him. In fact, she is desperate to help him, to soothe his pain. In a beautiful moment, after she’s given up, he comes to her door and he doesn’t need to say anything. The pain on his face is visceral, and he has no recourse but to accept the comfort Blair is offering. Finally, he lets her comfort him, holding him through the night as he cries. But…*sigh* stupid boy, he then buggers it up by leaving the next morning before she wakes, leaving a note that says she deserves better than him.

For the rest of the season, she tries to get him to be with her, but he keeps rejecting her until she finally gives up. She hooks up with some random guy, then gets back with her old boyfriend, Nate. Chuck mopes about, has a distraction with some hooker with a heart of gold, blah blah, hijinks ensue. So after an initially great setup, Chuck kept acting like an idiot and ditching Blair. Tell you what, this was SO frustrating! It was like the writers were keeping them apart just for the sake of keeping them apart, and it appeared that they would never get them together. At least, not in a satisfactory way.

Chuck has been a massive tool to Blair. He needs to grovel. Big time. I really thought the writers were not going to give us this grovel, showing us that Chuck, through his own actions, deserves Blair’s forgiveness and love. He also needs to grow up, to realise that commitment to Blair is not the big, scary, evil thing he seems to think it is. I thought they would just, in the space of an episode, break her up with Nate and get her with Chuck, without him suffering or learning from his mistakes.

Thank God I was wrong.

This week’s episode had awesome Chuck growth. He realises he’s been an idiot! He realises his actions have consequences! His life is awful without Blair! He apologises to Jenny for crap he pulled in the first episode! He also inadvertently fixes Blair’s relationship with Nate while showing us he understands Blair. I’m paraphrasing here: “You should want her for the person she is…Blair is changing, Nate…all she wants is someone to believe in her.” Oh, Chuck, we know you want Blair as she is, that you would believe in her, if only you would let yourself. And then, later in the episode, he pours himself a drink, thinks about it, and doesn’t drink it. Huzzah! Character growth! Who knew it was so satisfying?? *sigh*

Now I’m in love with this show again. Chuck and Blair are so perfect for each other, cut from the same cloth as they are. You can just imagine that together, they could take over the world and woe betide any who stands in their way. I really hope that soon the writers get them together for good, and deal with the way their relationship will evolve. This would be much more interesting than the constant ”I love you! No I don’t! I’ll sleep around and hurt you! Fine, I’ll sleep with your best friend!” Rinse. Repeat.

So I’ll leave you with the moment it all began. In the second or third episode of the first season, there is a brief moment that gives us an inkling there may be something between them. They have teamed up for some fiendish plot, and Blair looks at Chuck. It’s a brief moment, but in her look you can see her surprise that “whoa, here’s someone who gets me”.

And a love story is born.