The Box Appears on ‘Gossip Girl,’ Officially Jumps the Shark -- Grub Street: New York Magazine's Food and Restaurant Blog

The bar.Courtesy of CW

We thought the Box lost its remaining counterculture cred when the Times, of all things, called it out on being pretty much any other club. Not so! The real point of no return came last night when it appeared, in the guise of club Victrola, on teenybopper drama du jour Gossip Girl. The place must’ve loosened its rules against interior photography, because the first scene has Chuck Bass (a son every bit as wayward as Simon Hammerstein) explaining why his father should support him by investing in the burlesque club: “No judgments. Pure escape. What happens at Victrola stays at Victrola” (until the Health Department shows up, anyway).

Chuck’s dad isn’t convinced at first — “You want me to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into an excuse for you to be around booze and women?” — but he eventually comes around when he sees the show: “I love the idea of being a patron of burgeoning talent.” (And here we thought the owners only wanted “simple, dumb, totally gross anthems”!) Our favorite part? When the normally prissy Blair takes the stage and shows off her “moves,” prompting a teenage make-out sesh during the show’s most realistic nod to a night at the Box — the cab ride back to the Upper East Side!