The last episode of Gossip Girl continued the show’s return to form, and thankfully contained various acts of wanton cruelty.

try to humiliate her best friend, crush an innocent underclassman, thwart her mother’s crucial fashion show not once, not twice, but three times

(that’s from NY Mag’s weekly breakdown of the show’s finer points).

We can debate (and they do) whether any of her assorted misdeeds was effective at getting her friend back, a point I’ll take up later. But we don’t need to argue about her motivation: her best friend has rejected her and her mother is neglecting her in favor of a younger, blonder, protegé.

This is actually a hallmark of Blair’s character, and of one style of drawing a character in general: Psychological transparency. Her motivations are intelligible, and her actions are related to them in a straightforward way.

On the other hand, there’s Chuck, whose relationship to his motivation changes in this episode. A brief examination of how will shed light on how the show is written, and what it means to write (and read) a character.

Aside from ethnic stereotyping that didn’t even skirt the issue (Mariachis are sexy! Indians are crass capitalists! Chinese are pandas!), there was an overriding theme to this year’s Super Bowl ads. It started with the Audi Godfather spot.