Gossip Girl pulled out all the stops last night! Dead kids! Mini-Gossip Girls! Gayness! Nate! Let me take a second to catch my breath. OK. OK. We're back. Let's dive in.

• Gisele is engaged. [People]
• Fur is back. Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani are among the designers leading the rebellion. [Ind.]
• Despite the recession (and a gazillion lawsuits), American Apparel is one of the few retailers seeing record profits. [WWD]
• Sass & Bide has dropped out of New York Fashion Week. [Fashionista]
• With marketing budgets on the decline, more designers are looking for a boost from Hollywood's awards season. [WSJ]
• Menswear designer Ferruccio Pozzoni is departing Valentino. [Reuters]
• As expected, vacancies are up on Madison Avenue. [Crain's]
• The worst of the worst from the Stephen Sprouse party last week. [Pipeline]
• Rumor has it Elite is cutting both models and bookers. [NYM]
• Blake Lively refuses to wear anything but a size zero. The solution? The Gossip Girl costume department cuts the tags out of larger samples. [FWD]

So you may have heard this already, but actor Michael C. Hall just married Jennifer Carpenter, the actress who plays his sister on their Showtime drama Dexter. Is that weird? Will it ruin the show?

[Ed Westwick of "Gossip Girl" on that series' set today; image via Splash]

Well Sinead O'Gossip Girl. Shock me, shock me, shock me with your deviant behavior. Deviant, I mean, for this show. Which returned after a brief hiatus last night. Let's talk about it!

Georgina Sparks returns to Gossip Girl. Plus a spoiler! [EW]

[Blake Lively, from the Frontline special documentary series "Gossip Girl," filming in New York City, NY yesterday; image via Bauer-Griffin]

The gross Aaron Rose character on teen soap Gossip Girl is just that: gross. A greasy, judgy young artist, it makes no sense that the blonde, be-titted Serena would fall for the likes of him. Heck, even Cecily von Ziegesar hates him! She told New York Mag that she finds the TV Aaron just plain old icky:

Zounds and ods bodkins y'all, Gossip Girl spin-off news to drop in T-minus now. There have been rattly little whispers circling through TV land about some sort of new offshoot project for the teen soap, and people were all up ins the Speculation Department's secret files trying to find the answers. Most people thought it would be for young Jennifricka, following her to boarding school like that The It Girl book series. But no! Instead the new spin-off will focus on our most useless and wrinkly demographic, old people! Horrible, horrible old people which I will never become (I've my Goldie Hawn wig and Isabella Rossellini to thank for that.) Read more by clicking —>

["Gossip Girl" actress Chace Crawford in New York last night; image via WENN]

♦ Haven't seen Giuseppe Cipriani around town lately? There may be a reason for that: He's believed to be outside the U.S. since he's on probation and because Andrew Cuomo is investigating how the family managed to keep its liquor license earlier this year. [P6]
♦ Angelina Jolie has been undergoing secret fertility treatments in the hopes of becoming pregnant with twins within the next two years. At least that's what Star says. [Star]
♦ Everyone on Gossip Girl may be hooking up with each other, but at least one relationship isn't going so strong: Blake Lively was spotted making out with a guy who was not Penn Badgley. [E!, P6]
♦ Leonardo DiCaprio lost his wallet at Rolf's on Third Avenue, and Tom Cruise lost his Blackberry somewhere in Toronto. [P6, P6]

I find myself at a bit of a loss this morning to describe the Sturm und Drang that was last night's half-season-ender episode of Gossip Girl. O, Stephanie Savage. You giver of hopes, you taker awayer of those same hopes. What began as something that felt almost, almost like the sweepy melodrama this show should regularly be going for, eventually just yawed sideways and no one seemed to know what was up and what was down. So we were left with Aaron Rose and Serena's grandma getting more airtime than a lot of the principals. Ah well! We'll sift through the wreckage after the jump. Let's see what treasures we find!

Which of Gossip Girl's little crew of over-made-up drama queens would you like to see on their very own show? Apparently the CW is planning to make a spin-off of the series next season, but no word yet on how it will happen. Our wild guess: Nate at Yale! Given that the producers must be grappling with how to continue the plot beyond everyone's graduation from Constance Billiard, and that Nate is no actual use to storylines now he's been of sexual service to all the female characters except Lily (and there's still time for that), it makes perfect sense. So long as it's not Jenny the Fashion Designer, we don't mind. [Reuters]

Nobody died last night! I don't mean in the world, of course people, too many people, died in the world last night. I mean, more importantly, on Gossip Girl. Two long weeks ago, the "on the next..." clip made it seem like old Barty Crouch Bass would be saying hoof to that bucket and bending it like BeckHamm (the super soccer robot made from parts of David and Mia). And maybe he did, far off in the Chekhovian outlands of unseen action, but we didn't get any confirmation one way or another. Just late-breaking word of "the accident." So, ah well, I guess we'll have to wait til next week. For now, other stuff happened! Come read about it with me, won't you?

This year's edition of People magazine's hugely popular "Sexiest Man Alive" issue (Hugh Jackman takes top honors) will feature... um... scratch 'n sniff photos of famous dudes, like Gossip Girl actress Chace Crawford, TV show kryptonite Taye Diggs, Law & Order: SVU brute Chris Meloni, and young god swain of the oceans Michael Phelps. Each of the guys chose a scent that makes them feel sexiest, from fresh cut grass (Mr. Crawford) to L’Homme YSL parfum for Mr. Phelps. We'll take a look at each fellow's preferred odor and analyze what it's supposed to say about them and what it really says, after the jump.

[Michelle Trachtenberg and Taylor Momsen from "Gossip Girl" holding shoes; image via WENN]

It was Turkey Day yesterday on Gossip Girl, and sort of turkey night for us, as a series of flightless bird storylines gobble-gobbled and feather ruffled uselessly before us. No murders, no sex, no drugs, no drinking (well not really), no gay stuff (again, not really). Just old pumpkin pie in a can family dramz, from Jenny the quite literally mop-topped rebellious fashion designer to Natalie Archibald, a young girl whose daddy did some mean things and now everyone is sad and yelly all the time. Put on your buckle shoes, buckle hat, and pantaloons, grab your musket, and come a'huntin' with me after the jump. Where we started: Jenny was mostly a hobo who was staying with gravelly-voiced Erik; Blair was mad still about her mom's new main squeeze, Wallace Shawn; Serena was still inexplicably drawn to little Fievel the mouse; and Nate was poor and having the-police-are-after-papa problems. Luckily EVERYTHING was resolved by the end of the episode (well, almost everything) because that is the way that Thanksgiving ends: with everyone happy and loving each other and not sitting alone in a darkened room of the house, gulping wine, still reeling from when your brother-in-law smacked your nephew right at the dinner table and your mom threw the fucking turkey out the window and your father yelled "all right! all right! all right!" as he banged the dinner table, which made your nephew cry more, and your sister wouldn't stop shrieking and shrieking and shrieking and somewhere in all of this your younger brother disappeared and for some reason you feel like he might be gone for good this time, I mean he took his guitar, and fuck your flight is going to be delayed if it snows and you can't believe you'd rather be at that miserable shitpile you call work than be here right now. That's never how Thanksgiving ends. Anyway! Jenny was trying to get legally divorced from her parents, because her crusty old rockstar dad just didn't understand her love of fashions and irresponsibly stupid haircuts. Erik was at the meeting with her because I guess they are best friends now and Jenny was shocked—shocked!—to hear that she'd have to, you know, like tell her parents that she was dibborcin' them and not just like mewp off into the fashionz sunset with nobody's feelings hurt. Well eventually Pa Humphrey found out that Jennifer had been staying at van der Bass Acres and he and Lily hatched a plan to get her back into the comfortable fold of warehouse Brooklyn where she belongs. Erik got dinged by the 'rents for harboring a fugitive, but not before Bart Bass ominously (and cattily, meow Miss Thang!) said that Erik best to check up on his mans, who may or may not have been jeepin' with the captain of the swim team. Were I a high school geigh, I'd probably have to stick with the captain of the swim team rather than a little Christmas elf who consistently scores highly in the Overly Earnest Voice Olympics. But that's just me! Erik was sad and curious as to how/why Bart knew such bitchy info, so of course he gushingly went to stepbro Chuckles, who showed him Bart's safe, which was full of gold bullion and richly embroidered hats and strange potions and elixirs and eye of newt and the lost Shakespeare play and Snow White's heart in a little wooden box and a single red apple and, most importantly, secret files. Ever the curious kitten, Erik read his and was shocked. "I'm gay???" he bellowed. On the other side of the same side of town, or somewhere downtown who the eff knows, Serena was feeding bits of cheese to her mousy little friend Aaron Rose. He had big news for her. He had decided to make it exclusive. This was good news for women everywhere, because previously Serena had been spouting some seriously messed up stuff about how she couldn't win him if she wasn't in the fight and all this stuff and you just wondered why this particular creature was so worth it and then you found out why: because he's a boring, super judgmental, Sober prick! Whee! Yeah, he doesn't drink because it really helps his "work," because, oh yeah Aaron. Because it must be completely impossible to put random shit in a pile and then play a movie on it when you're canned. Good on you. So Serena decided that she would lie and say she was a teetotaler when she is, in fact, anything but. So, awkward! Luckily for no one involved, Dan ran into Aaron at a little gourmandy Brooklyn greengrocer's, and like the big-mouthed idiot his character has never been on the show until this episode, he started gabbing about how Serena is a total drunk and probably killed a dude and how Aaron's mama was like a hardware store, three cents a sc— Whoa whoa whoa! It was all to much for Aaron. He looked puzzled in a "sometimes TV writers think that acceptable relationship obstacles are when someone thinks that their lover has done something bad in the past and they would completely break up with them if that was in fact true and that's supposed to be totally OK when it is in fact shitty and judgy and like, you should never date someone who is that condescending and boringly principled" kind of way. But whatevs, Dan took the blame for lying to save Serena's narrow, blonde little behind but then she felt bad. So—after Lily confronted Bass about the secret files (she was in a mental institution!! why??? we don't know!!) and the van der Woodsens left the manor—S took her secret file to Aaron because it is never weird when your girlfriend hands you a dossier of her life and says "read." In the end they had a talk and everything was OK. Much like the other two plot points that involved Blair being upset about her moms shutting her out of the whole I'm-dating-a-Sicilian plotline of her life. So she dragged dutiful Dorota (who is so sweet and pretty in real life, I met her this weekend, she's fab!) around town when all poor Dorota wanted to do was go feed the ducks. She understands simple pleasures, ones that don't involve oyster stuffing (ick, oysters) and fancy fancy gay dudes from Paris who just happen to be your dad. Anywayyyyyyy, Blair's mom ended up caring in the end and her dad made a surprise visit and new, happy, awkward family traditions were formed and everyone was so happy for these mind bogglingly wealthy people. Nate's dad came back and Nate was going to run away with him to a magical island where no one arrests you and the Archibald family has money and maybe, just maybe there is a SCUBA instructor from Australia with a nice toned, tawny physique and crinkly blue eyes and hair the color of hay and maybe his name is like Legolas or something and maybe he and Nate could be, uh, friends. But no! All was a lie! The Captain was going to hold Nate and his weak, dimwitted moms for ransom money! Which is the silliest thing I've ever heard! What was he going to do? Hold them at gunpoint? Tie them up? Bah. So instead Nate ended up asking dad to turn himself in, watched wistfully as he was carted off , and thought about how lucky his dad was to be going to a place where men to do each other what they do. Then he made up with Vanessa and had fun limo drinks with Chuck and he was happy again! Jenny came home!!! Storyline over!!! She was tired and poor and didn't want to divorce her parents because divorce means having to say you're sorry and that your parents were negligent when, in fact!, they were the opposite. So the Humphs and the van der Snitsens (minus artist-boning Serena) all had dinner at the Brooklyn brokedown palace and were joined by sad minority orphan Vanessa, who made up with Jenny... but then found an unread letter that Nate had sent that said "Jenny, I totes love you! What should we do, omigod!!" that had hearts over the i's and a picture of a bumblebee doodled in the corner. She stole the letter! Wicked Vanessa! Meanwhile Bart lurked outside and said "yes, bring me the head of Lily van der Woodsen." Or, rather, just the history of her head. He wanted to know why she was in that asylum. Um, because, yes, oftentimes it makes sense to ask a PI "give me only half of the information. I want the what, but ohhh mercy no, I don't want the why." Sure. So there this week's tale ends. Happy disjointed families eating meals and entertaining and feeling warmly dulled by wine and the crisp air whipping its way around the corners of the buildings all here in this big twirling glittering city, so brimming with love and mystery and all the other pearls that form the rich adornments of their lives, and meanwhile the rest of us will be choking down dry turkey somewhere cold and unpleasant while the steady whine of family members fighting in kitchens and living rooms and porches and guest bedrooms fills our ears and drowns out what we're saying to ourselves over and over again in our heads to make us forget: "xo, xo, xo, xo, xo, x....."

In yesterday's New York Times profile of playwright and actor Wallace Shawn, an executive producer for Gossip Girl, the teen soap that Shawn is guesting on for a spate of episodes, said that the diminutive chrome-dome brings to the series a level of smarts and sophistication that "that was way beyond [the writers].” He's referring, we guess, to Shawn's artsy intellectual pedigree—he's the celebrated writer and star of plays and films like My Dinner With Andre and the son of legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn. And we agree! Seeing Shawn on the occasionally sharp but mostly silly series is like a breath of fresh Bordeaux-scented air. It got us thinking about some other ways that Gossip Girl can fancy itself up, which we'll list after the jump.

What could be a nicer way to ease into the week than seeing Chace Crawford's adorable face pout in pseudo-concentration as he applies himself to a fashion quiz put to him by a kindly patronizing lady from Grazia magazine? Chace doesn't get many of the questions—Which are the world's fashion capitals? What is the difference between a wedge and a stiletto? Who is Alexander Wang?—right, which should establish his heterosexuality once and for all. Even if the snugness of his t-shirt and the prettiness of his bangs might beg to differ.

["Gossip Girl" actress Taylor Momsen on the New York set today; image via INF}