Gossip Girl Stuff

Catherine Celia "Cece" Rhodes

Lily van der Woodsen\'s grandmother and mother to Serena & Eric.

Ah, the wicked grandmother. It\'s a time-honored archetype — think Flowers in the Attic I, Claudius, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. But none of those old broads were as nakedly manipulative, as fabulously coiffed, simply as stone-cold awesome as Celia "CeCe" Rhodes, Serena\'s Cotillion-crazed, cancer-fakin\' granny. Drunk with power (and loads of cash), CeCe stole the shit out of episode eleven. It made us wish that someone would put her in an updated version of The Golden Girls so we could see her and Blanche face off over a man and a pair of shoulder pads. But we didn\'t love CeCe simply because she revived the class tension between Dan and Serena, reminded us that even old ladies can be catty bitches (it could happen to you, Jenny!), and wore eyeliner that reminded us of a demure Amy Winehouse. She also put to rest a question that we have been turning around in our tiny minds since the show began in September.
Previous episodes have led us to believe that when Serena left for boarding school after she slept with Nate, it was in the middle of last year\'s school year, at some point after Thanksgiving (since last week\'s Thanksgiving show included happy flashbacks of Serena, Nate, and Blair from the previous year). So, okay, we\'re to believe that Serena spent the spring semester at boarding school in Connecticut and then returned to Constance Billard and New York this September. Which makes sense, because the timeline of Gossip Girl has been generally parallel to our own lives (LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE SHOW). But hold on! Where was Serena all summer? What is up with this break in the space-time continuum? Thankfully, Nana needs to be filled in, too. "I still didn\'t show you pictures from my summer abroad!" Serena shrieks to her, running for a photo album. Yes, it\'s clumsy — because why would she have been arriving at Grand Central Station after a summer in Europe? In a winter coat and neckerchief? With no luggage? — but we appreciate the effort nonetheless.