Be on the alert, people! Cougars are a-prowl in the Upper East Side!

That's right! According to Entertainment Weekly, Madchen Amick will be making a splash next fall in the second season of Gossip Girl as a sexy cougar named Catherine Mason. She will be tempting young Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford) with a May-December romance. How very Mrs. Robinson!

This is great news, as far as I am concerned. It's time the silly young boys of Gossip Girl learned a thing or two from a lady of a certain age. Honestly, I'm surprised that Catherine Mason isn't going after Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) first. Chuck would have been my personal choice (though mum's the word on my own advancing age), and I'm sure there are puh-lenty of naughty things one can do with a set of matching cashmere scarves... I'm just sayin'.

But actually, I'm glad that Nate is getting this storyline. Chace Crawford is such a beautiful specimen of a young man and I know – I just know! – that he has more potential than being the one-dimensional, over-privileged slacker-type he has been portraying lately. I don't want him back with either Blair (Leighton Meester) or Serena (Blake Lively) because Blair is so much more entertaining with Chuck, and revisiting the Nate-Serena relationship just sounds so...yawn! Plus, I don't know about you, but I thought that Nate's short-lived relationship with Vanessa (Jessica Szohr) came out of the blue and then went nowhere. Nate would definitely benefit a lot from being seduced by an older woman.

When last Madchen Amick appeared on television, it was for the unfortunate CBS musical/drama Viva Laughlin that barely registered a blip on the public consciousness. That's not to say that Amick hasn't had a successful career prior to that. She played Shelly Johnson in the acclaimed drama Twin Peaks, and I rather enjoyed her stint as Christopher's flighty baby-mama, Sherry, on Gilmore Girls. A quick perusal of her television career shows that her talents have been wasted in sad, canceled shows like Jake in Progress and Freddie, so it's nice to see her moving up in the world and acting in a quality show like Gossip Girl.

Madchen Amick will join the cast of Gossip Girl when the second season premieres on September 1 on the CW.



-Debbie Chang, BuddyTV Staff Writer
Source: EW.com, MadchenAmick.net
(Image courtesy of MadchenAmick.net)