While Dan and Blair suffer the million slings and arrows of airport annoyances -- and eventually, cut-rate hotel stays -- everybody else swarms around like a stepped-on anthill trying to figure out where they went. Except for Serena, who could give a shit, and Nate, who is still trying to lock down that cater-waiter from Le Petit Oeuf. (Who, even after a second run-in with Lily at her house, and a long conversation about Aunt Carol, is still raising not a single red flag for anybody.)
Georgina spends the episode teleporting around New York, giving people clues and briefly imprisoning Dorota and acting a general mess, but eventually gives us the not-so-astonishing truth that she's only been GG since the accident, when Nate and Serena joined forces to take the old Girl down.
Blair spends a third of the episode crapping all over Dan's life, predictably, the second half contrite, and then -- after a comical series of moments in which, one by one, the entire cast somehow shows up at their hotel room door -- finally sells herself back into Monegasque slavery, there to await Prince Louis's future tuberculosis and/or the year specified in the prenup.
Thanks to a handy subclause in that very generous and protean document, Eleanor learns that she's liable for a sizeable dowry should Blair default on the wedding before that time. Chuck immediately offers to cover it, but Blair points out that he'd essentially be buying her from Louis, and God knows neither of them would ever sign on for something like that. ("He won't lay a hand on me," she promises, in a second unfortunate callback to darker days.)
So instead of a Dominican divorce, Blair remands herself back into the hateful arms of Prince Louis. And in case you thought this was somehow not about Serena, allow Serena to set you straight on this one: After all, running off with Dan is a betrayal tantamount to Dan looking S in the eye and basically asking her to stop stalking him. More interestingly, however, is the fact that Serena takes the heat for submitting that wedding-destroying video to GG... Despite not having done it. Will that breathtaking mystery continue for weeks and weeks to come? No, not really. It was Dan. Obviously, in retrospect.
Anyway, for a fabulously uneven season it was a fairly enjoyable, fast-paced hour of television that explored new territories -- no Big Party, interactions with the proletariat -- while bringing last week's high-flown insanity to a somewhat more grounded place. Props for finally switching out the Deal with God for the much more palatable Extortion of Eleanor, and for giving Dan some kind of story beyond not-so-secretly mooning over Blair and Lil' Abnering himself out of Serena's giantess embrace every five seconds.
Week: It's Valentine's Day, which apparently involves a dream sequence where this show stops fucking around with the possibility of actual, no-mistake Dair. We live in hope.