A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

XOXO, MARILYN: Your new Smash showrunner for next season?  Joshua Safran, who's been running Gossip Girl for the past few years. The bad news is that this certainly suggests that they're quite serious about increasing the Karen/Ivy drama, even though both the characters have become pretty unlikable.  The good news is that Gossip Girl has not hesitated to pretty unceremoniously dump characters who have become useless (Vanessa) or annoying (Jenny) and manages to use New York well (seriously, a driving plot point in this week's episode was a character's desire to change her positioning on New York's Approval Matrix).  Also, Gossip Girl has continued to (kind of) work despite the fact that pretty much every character (save Dorota, who's awesome) is kind of despicable at this point.