['Gossip Girl' - 'It-Girl Happened One Night']

Roses are red, violets are blue ... a quiet night on the Upper East Side? Too good to be true. Poor S. just wanted a low-key date with her blu-ray player (really?) to celebrate V-day, but when you're BFFs with Queen B., the only valentine you should expect to receive is a bloody one.

It's second verse, same as the first with Blair and Serena, and their default jealousy argument is way overplayed at this point, but considering some of their other altercations have ended up with hair pulling or dips in the fountain, Serena handled herself quite admirably. Are our heroines finally growing up?

We'll reserve judgment on that until we see how Serena handles Dan and Blair's burgeoning friendship. The show took a detour from their flirtation last week, but we're fairly sure that watching movies in bed together (albeit over the phone -- very 'When Harry Met Sally') definitely counts as a step out of platonictown and into flirtationville.



And though B. couldn't resist the opportunity for a little Lonely Boy torture, she did submit his article to 'Vanity Fair,' which should qualify her for sainthood, let alone amicability. If only life really was as easy as our Upper East Siders make it look ...

The love-hate relationship is certainly is creator Josh Schwartz's wheelhouse (lest we forget 'The O.C.', lord knows I've tried) and since Dan and Blair are pretty much the only 'Gossip' couple that have yet to hook up -- without frolicking fully into incest territory, anyway -- we're slowly becoming more amenable to the idea of "Dair" (there must be a less heinous nickname, right?).

At least until Chuck comes to his senses, anyway, if only because the rest of the storylines have seemed a little too repetitive this season, and we can only find Humphrey even vaguely interesting when he's bantering with Waldorf, who can add sizzle to even the most lackluster dialogue.

Elsewhere, Chuck found himself falling deeper for Raina Thorpe, who has an unfortunate case of integrity (I hear there's a cream for that) which makes her highly incompatible with the company she keeps. Raina puts family first, which meant that when Chuck walked right into Russell's Machiavellian scheme to oust Lily from the Bass board of directors, our resident Basshole had shot himself in both feet and sabotaged both his love life and his business in one fell swoop. We've got to admit, as yawn-inducing as the power struggles and business maneuvering may be, Thorpe Sr. has definite style -- it's not every day that one can beat Chuck Bass at his own manipulation.

Kudos to the writers for attempting to make Nate and his new accessory dad relevant to the plot this week, but they're both kind of beyond help at this point -- Nate still looks pretty, and it's good to see him giving the pool table some alone time, but the boy is utterly superfluous, especially when we have Damien around to fill our eye candy quota.

Speaking of Damien, the shallow part of me is very glad that he didn't go down without a fight after Dan and Nate outed his drug dealin' shenanigans to daddy dearest, but the soft and mushy part of me feels terrible for poor Eric, who keeps getting dragged into everyone else's messes and doesn't even get a date out of it. Forget Jenny, Juliet and Vanessa vs. Serena -- Dan, Nate and Eric vs. the hottie sounds like a much more satisfying rivalry to me.

Ben and Serena are still dull as dishwater, but at least Serena's hair was looking perky today -- it's seemed kind of flat in recent weeks, and I was starting to worry that it might be depressed. I also adored the fashion this week, especially Serena and Raina's sparklicious dresses. Yum!

I wasn't too impressed with the quality of the one-liners this week, it seemed to be missing the zing of recent weeks. I think my favorite line of the week has to go to Blair, as always: "I'm an arbiter of taste - if I were to stand behind some lame Humphrey lamentation, it would be like showing up at an accessory shoot in Crocs." Truer words have never been spoken, B. -- there's no excuse for Crocs. Ever.

XOXO

Gossip Girl' airs Mondays, 9PM ET on The CW.

Are you warming up to the possibility of Dan and Blair? How do you think Chuck will recover control of his company now that he knows Russell wants to split it up out of spite? Does Chuck really care about Raina, or is she just a distraction from Blair? Sound off below!

Follow Laura on Twitter @LauinLA.