I dont even see it as S1 because at least in S1 it was balanced. But now Chuck is just being a jerk and Blair is just taking it. Another thing I dont get it. s1 Blair would never let Chuck treat her the way he is in 4x05. Things would be so much better if Blair was being a cold bitch and not just taking everything.

He's doing something crappy, yes. But, it's not a literal life ruining, like what Juliet is attempting to do Serena.

Well, Im actually glad Vanessa is back

Yep. I agree. It's NOT S1 when you consider Blair's reactions. She's not engaging in the War, she's just counteracting his measures. She's simply trying to go to school. She's not going with the "eye for an eye" route. She's actually trying to be above it all.

So while Chuck's actions aren't any worse than what he's done in the past Blair's response makes it look VERY bad. Especially, but not exclusively given what happened after last season.

I'm not 100% convinced. But one reason I'm really suspicious about Chuck looking SOOOO bad in these early episodes is something LiveLaughLearn told us. She said the show was shocked by the hit Jenny took in terms of popularity with the post-finale focus groups. They concluded that any character, even a main, that got between Chuck and Blair would suffer badly in terms of popularity.

So I wouldn't be shocked AT ALL if the reason they regressed Chuck in the first part of the season was to essentially prop DB and try to protect Dan as a character. They may be overly relying on Chuck's popularity to see him though.

Frankly I was SHOCKED by how badly they wrote him in 4x5. He looks incredibly cold. Usually you get a sense the writers want you to empathize with a character but I didn't get that sense at all.

I may be incredibly PARANOID but it simply does not make sense to add more bullshyt on to Chuck's sins if they want us to root for CB right now. It feels like they are seriously VILIFYING him for a reason. (Just to be clear, I'm not talking about CJ and IP. I'm mainly refering to how Chuck is being written with this War).

I guess my issue is I lie in between the emotional side of the writing where it is Chuck being horrible to Blair over and over which angers me and makes me want her to just stay away from him, however then I have the other side that sees that while Chuck is being a dick they are not portraying her to be miserable about it, she seems to understand every single thing he is doing and the hurt is coming from her not wanting to forgive him even though she loves him, she probably wants to help him too so that in a way might be her killing the masochist side a bit bc she refuses to go back there. Sometimes I feel we are so invested we take everything to heart 100x more than we need to. I think casual viewers will probably eat all this up, what they won't eat up is a long dragged out chase again.