Recently in Gossip Girl Category

The suds will be rising as three of The CW's prime-time soaps - Monday's "Gossip Girl" and Tuesday's "90210" and "Melrose Place" - return this week with a fresh batch of episodes.

Of the three, "Gossip Girl," the story of Upper East Side teens living large in the Big Apple, generates the most critical attention and ratings heat, but that doesn't mean that the other two, revivals of Aaron Spelling hits from the 1990s, are taking it easy.

In "90210" (an updated version of "Beverly Hills 90210"), lesbian teen Gia (Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore) shares a kiss with Adrianna (Jessica Lowndes), who's overcome drug addiction and had a baby that was given up for adoption. No doubt her "bucket list" is shrinking fast.

In "Melrose Place," Amanda (Heather Locklear, at left) tosses a party at the home of her billionaire boyfriend, where she has a confrontation with young Ella (Katie Cassidy) over an alleged flirtation.

Well, it's a party thrown by Heather Locklear - something had to happen. With any luck, they'll pull off the classic soap-opera move of somebody being hurt at the shindig, meaning everybody has to hang out in the ER in their party clothes.

But we'll see.

Meanwhile, a CW trailer for the new episodes of "Gossip Girl" includes hints of hot romance between social lion cubs Nate Archibald and Serena van der Woodsen (Chace Crawford, Blake Lively), the return of Chuck's (Ed Westwick) supposedly dead mother (and it doesn't look like a Hallmark moment), and trouble for Humphreys young and old.

(Click here for a trailer.)

Speaking of Nate, Crawford took some time at New York's JFK airport before hopping a plane to Florida to see the Super Bowl (the former teen quarterback was rooting for the Saints, so he probably had a good weekend) to answer a few questions.

An extensive interview last summer with the Texas-born-and-raised Crawford (in picture, below) showed him in pictures with a wealth of tattoos, including letters spelling "America" on his fingers and stars on his hands, appropriate for a Dallas Cowboys fan. But in real life, Crawford is unmarked.

"My mom said, 'Keep them on!' " he says. "I said, 'Mom, that bird on my neck is getting weird looks.' I didn't like having something creeping out of my shirt. That's the one thing about tattoos; those neck ones are the most b---sy ones.

"It took about four hours to do them all. They made me shave my arms, so I was like, 'This better come out good.' My arms felt weird for about a month.

"I contemplated (getting tattoos) a lot, actually. But I'm the type of person that, if I got one, I wouldn't stop. I don't want to have to sit in the makeup chair for four extra hours covering them up. I'd start with the neck one, and then possibly all the way down my side. I'm totally kidding.

"I never will, but I like the idea of being pure and clean. The thing about tattoos, everybody has them. They don't make the same statement as they used to. My statement is no tattoos."

As to how things are going this season, Crawford says, "I got to do some fun scenes with Penn (Badgley). That was a good time. Finally got some humor, not so much intense brooding conflict.

"Nate is so conflicted over doing the right thing or the wrong thing. You just never know what to do. He's like the moral backbone of the show, so I finally got to play in an episode that was fun."

Speaking of moral backbone, it was Badgley, not Crawford, who shot the show's infamous "threesome" scene late last fall with Hilary Duff and Jessica Szohr.

"It was a little anticlimactic, I feel," Crawford says. "But you can't really go all the way with that one. That's what they were really trying to do, a little ratings hype."

Crawford is a graduate of Trinity Christian Academy, so how does he feel about the charge that the show is a bad influence on youth?

"I don't know," he says. "Of course, I think about that, from time to time. I used to, more. It would weigh on me a little bit. Whatever happens, happens. I'm just an actor.

"I heard some superstar actors say, in a completely unrelated deal, 'Hey, I'm not an expert on parenting, on counseling.' We're just actors. We're not writing it. We are the face of the show, I guess. We're going to get the blame. What are you going to do?"

At least his character is now in college and out of that Manhattan prep school.

"We're allowed to mature a little bit," Crawford says. "The second half of the season, I'm starting to have a lot more fun for different reasons. It's good. I like it. Anything to get me out of that godawful uniform."