Pretty great. Eleanor Waldorf, now played by Sebastian Cole's mom, chooses Blair to be the face of Waldorf Designs for a new Bendel's line. Blair's obsession with Audrey Hepburn finally makes an appearance...as does her stiff and poised perfection, which scares the photog something fierce. Contrast, of course, the wild free whatever of coltish Serena, who -- in a very sweet scene -- tries to get Blair to loosen up on a test shoot. Lots of secret shit goes down such that Eleanor chooses Serena over Blair, but doesn't tell Blair this, so there is total fashion meltdown à gogo when she arrives at the shoot itself to see Serena, looking if possible even more fabulous than usual, stealing yet one more thing.
The real gold is the Nate/Chuck story, in which Nate goes on a date with a Hobbit, causing Chuck to become too gay to function, breaking up with him outside an Irish-themed pub. Chuck also acts out by dressing like a gay breakdancer from the 1980s, which is so excellent. The Hobbit turns out to be a con man, and Chuck saves Nate. From what? Oh, the fact that his dad totally wiped his trust -- gives that whole prostitute angle a much more intense vibe, doesn't it?
Meanwhile, Serena is trying desperately to have a real live non-vigilante date with Dan Humphrey, whose father accidentally sells Lily van der Woodsen a painting by his estranged wife Allison through a sexy cute buyer named Bex, and it's all even more boring than it sounds. No Jenny this week, but that sweet circumstance will apparently be remedied week when Blair begins The Quickening. Dan spends the whole time running around getting dissed for Blair, which suits Blair just fine, but in the end they reach a détente, as do Serena and Blair, who steal all the fashions and do their own shoot on the streets of NYC.
To repeat: Dan, Blair, and Serena are all friends at the same time at the end of the episode! Bet that lasts forever.
"Moon River" plays as a taxi pulls up outside Henri Bendel. Yes! Finally the Audrey Hepburn thing! In the books, Blair is obsessed with Audrey Hepburn. It is one of the bizarrely numerous things we share. Like, did you know she grew up in Nazi-occupied Belgium and danced in secret for money for the Dutch Resistance? And the reason for her weird body was that she spent the first half of her life eating shit and garbage and thus had no nutrition, and always felt weird about it? So she's a fashion icon because she's weird-looking; she deserves to be a fashion icon because she took what her body handed her and made sexy lemonade out of it. So it's Bendel's and not Tiffany, but whatever, you know she's wearing the LBD and diamonds and a tiara when she hops out of that car. In the shop window, Serena is sitting at an ice cream table, dressed provocatively and attended by Kati and Iz, laughing uproariously at a secret joke. She tries to get in and the cute doorman is like, "Not so fast! Not on the list!" and she protests that it's her dream. Your dream is to have a creepy Halloween party in the window at Bendel's? ...Yeah, actually, okay. It's Blair. The guy tells her it's not her dream anymore, but he's talking in Eleanor's voice.
Blair wakes up and dashes off her sleep mask, hearing Serena laughing downstairs. Gossip Girl tells us that her mom Eleanor came back from Paris (in a whole other person's body, having switched actresses) and is now brunching with Serena. Blair says hi to them from the landing and her mom tells her to shut up, then tells her the awesome news that Bendel's is going to do a Waldorf line. Blair sits with them and takes a croissant identical to the one Serena's big old teeth are tearing into, and congratulates her mother, the queen of mixed messages. She's like, "Isn't it awesome! I love you! You're a fat whore!" Blair puts down her croissant and tells her mom she lost two pounds since Eleanor left. "You look marvelous! I mean it! But the gravitational pull from your enormous ass is giving me a facelift! But you're gorgeous!" Serena escapes from the gravity and starts going through the clothes, admiring them. They look like...clothes. Eleanor somehow forces her way past her daughter's horrifying bulk and kisses Serena's ass some more, then invites Serena to give her thoughts on the collection later. "You do have such great personal style," she...quips? I mean, Serena always looks great, but I wasn't aware that Serena's "Hogwarts-meets-Petticoat Junction" look was so in demand. Serena's like, "Love to, but I have a date with Blair." Not even Blair is aware of this, but Serena has decided to take the relationship into her own hands before Blair decides she's ruining her life in some new way.
Gossip Girl's like, "Speaking of surprising dates, Chuck and Nate are not on one." They break off nuzzling each other like inbred puppies long enough to get together a massive Piaget watch and Babe Ruth's "called shot" home run ball. I don't know what that means; in my world that means double Stolis. I think it's about baseball but it could be about World War II for all I know. I must Google Babe Ruth forthwith. So they get their crap together and go to some party at a cheap-looking suite, where Chuck makes a speech about how after Ivy Week they all feel so jaded and whatever that they have to get drunk and fuck hookers and live by Chuck's rules. Dude, if I was locked in a room and Chuck was like, "You practice what I preach," I would jump out a window. No means no! But these boys are jaded, so they're like, "I call the twins! Please do not rape me, Chuck!"
A wee sexy little Hobbit with intense bedhead appears, wearing a Mexican pullover like on and smelling like hash and Arabica. This episode is brought to you in Smell-O-Vision and what you're smelling is hippie Hobbit. With whom Nate is apparently head over heels in love, which drives Chuck to distraction. Chuck babbles hatefully on and on about how horrible this Hobbit must be, and Nate's all googly-eyed, and finally Nate just wanders off and starts licking the Hobbit's sideburns and cupping his fanny pack. Chuck is, understandably, icked out. "Anyone who trades their trust fund for a fanny pack flies in the face of all that is holy to Chuck Bass!" Gossip Girl is like, "Bitch fight!"
Blair and Serena giggle their way down the street in consumption mode. Two suits ogle Serena and act not very forward with them, and Blair's like, "You are a curse." Serena protests that they were looking at both of them, which it's obvious they were, but Blair's not having it. She compares the entire population of Manhattan wanting to tap Serena with how even her own mom wants to tap Serena, and Serena's like, "Dude, shut up, your mom thinks you're great." And also that you suck! Blair continues to grouse about it, having a legit point, and Serena continues to smile in the face of dysfunction, also having a legit point: "You are her daughter. She doesn't like anyone more than you. She just...doesn't know how to show it sometimes." Blair's like, "Your logic means nothing! I'm going to Nolita! You're so pretty you don't need it! Stand on a corner and dance for money! Or just stand there for money and people will throw it at you!" Serena thinks about how sad it is that Blair hates herself so much, but how directed and driven and awesome it makes her, and if only somebody could make her feel that bad about herself... Like magic, Dan Humphrey appears.
"Humphrey! Dan! Hey!" He crosses the street to her, smiling, and Serena cuts loose with some awesomely hysterical, freakish horse laughter. "OMG this is what I love about this city! You're always bumping into people!" He tells her he just got back from taking Jenny to their mom's house, and now he's bringing his dad a sandwich. Even Dan realizes that this is a boring story, so he...stares into space. She's like, "You know how eleven times in the last episode we made that weird 'talking or not talking' semi-joke about going on a date where nobody gets assaulted?" Before she can invite him to ask her out for the fourth time, Blair reappears and Dan puts on his martyr face. "That was disgusting! The DOH should shut them down! It's called Nolita, not Noshowers." Blair first smells, then sees, Dan: "Do I smell pork? And cheese? Okay, well, when you're done with your charity work, why don't you come find me? I'll be at Tory Burch looking at...ponchos?" Heh. If you ever choose ponchos over me, I don't care who I'm dating, you're in trouble deep. Blair runs off down the road to harass shop attendants.
Dan's point is valid: "Isn't that the girl that told the entire school -- and, oh, several colleges -- that you had a drug problem?" Has Dan ever been friends with a teenager? That's not even weekend drama, that's, like, something to do before the party. His threshold is really low. Serena's like, "Blair can be a little...Blair." She chuckles, as impressed with Blair's destructive capabilities as we all are, and explains that they're working it out. Starting today, hanging out for the first time. "Alone." Dan gets it and relinquishes her without much more pleading. She makes him promise to call her later so they can "do that thing you didn't ask me to do," and then as though to highlight what she's talking about, presents her admittedly amazing ass to him and does the slow-walk away in giant yellow boots. I swear I do not understand these two. They date when they don't date, they talk when they don't talk, they "unpromise" when they're promising each other stuff, they talk about sex by "not talking about sex"... It's like, I realize it's easier to be friends with Dan if you're not friends with Dan, you know I'm on board with that, but it seems kind of on-the-nose to bring that explicitly into the conversation. Lord knows Opposite Day is the only day of the year they would actually work as a couple.
Nate slobbers all over the Hobbit while Chuck seethes at the table to them, crushing glasses with the force of his squeezing and generally shooting lasers and lizards and I don't know what out of his eyes. What would be awesome right here is if he wolfed out and you could have Hobbits v. Werewolves, which is like the eighth best imaginary battle of all time, right after Olsen Twins v. Ninjas. But instead he just cries into a perfumed handkerchief while Nate picks bugs out of the Hobbit's dreadlocks and eats them like caviar while he tells them at large about how amazingly freeing it is to be a trust-fund hippie and rebuild after Katrina and take videos of yourself smoking pot on Machu Picchu and meet really vaguely amazing people and have really vaguely amazing adventures and see really vaguely amazing things. Have you ever been to Austin, Texas? You have rubbed shoulders with them. Here's how you know if you're dealing with a Hobbit: ask them a question about what it was like, or what they did, or a single person they met. Go for detail. If they answer any question with "It was just amazing," stop asking questions, because you're being mean: they weren't really there, they're not really ever anywhere, they're empty. But they do bring you kick-ass presents from all over the world which really brighten up the place. I have a Ganesha collection that rivals that of actual Hindus, because I know when to keep my mouth shut and buy another round. Chuck's like, "You're the guy who gave us our first joint, snuck us into our first club...you invented the Lost Weekend!" Nate and the Hobbit are like, "But it's so much more meaningful to do drugs and have anonymous sex on other continents!" Chuck points out the irony of how the Hobbit is managing to be both Nolita and Noshowers and still talking about the Zen of doing nothing with your life or having possessions, then snaps a couple of hos up to the table. "This party is about excess, not exposition!" I wish that was the logline for this show, but it would be a lie. Chuck saunters off with the two girls, like Nate's going to get twice as jealous, and then climbs back into the Hobbit's lap, where he is invited to some stupid high-stakes poker game back at the Shire. Or in this case Queens.
Eleanor is bashing models for the Bendel's launch -- "This one missed her cue at the Chloe show because she was throwing up a pear" -- and her assistant, the awesome and beautiful Laurel (one of the many minority counselors at Harbor) reminds her that she's still heading too up-market, and tells her to think more like American Apparel. Which Eleanor hates, of course. "If this person is supposed to represent Waldorf Designs, you have to find me someone...worthy of the clothes. Someone like me." They look over at Blair, and Eleanor thinks. "Someone like...my daughter." Blair rolls her eyes, but Serena's on it. So is Laurel. "Well, why not her? You want your line to represent the Waldorf lifestyle. Who better to represent you than one of your own family?" Laurel can roll with the punches, I love her. Eleanor muses that B was her "first dress form," which tells you eeeeeeeverything you need to know, and S shoves her toward them. "She'd love to!" Everybody agrees to it so fast, B's head spins. "Eleanor Waldorf, meet the new face of Waldorf for Bendel's." B practically does a back flip, and her beautiful smile is blinding. Even Gossip Girl's like, "How awesome for her! And S helped!" So immediately everybody, even people who'd never see the show, were like, "And Serena is going to fuck it up somehow, of course." But of course!
Serena, B, and the Rainbitch Coalition lounge around upstairs at the Waldorf's house, where Serena is maxing out on excitement about Eleanor's..."clothes"...and Blair's trying desperately to protest and not get her hopes up. It's heartbreaking and nothing has even happened. Kati and Iz catfight in the seashore susurrus that is their contribution to the show, and Blair tries to show them how it's done, and it's actually cute and unforced for once, and finally Serena jumps up and she's all, "You're missing the key! Look, look, look. You gotta put the hand on the hip and pop. That's how you gotta do it!" This last line said in freakishly perfect Tyra diction. We rewound it like a dozen times. It's so weird, it's like when Xtina did Kim Cattrall on SNL that time and it was spooky like The Ring. The other girls are adorable while S's phone rings ("Pop." "Pop." "Pop.") but just as she's answering, Blair whisks the phone out of her hands.
"Who dares interrupt the van der Woodsen as she teaches? I said, who?" They wrestle over the phone as Blair tells Dan the number is no longer in service, and tells Serena she's doing her a favor. I'll say. He gets more and more put-upon: "Look, I can hear you. Can I just please talk to Serena?" She tosses it over: "Apparently you can, Cabbage Patch." Serena giggles and apologizes, unaware that, as usual, Dan's velvet hammer of judgment is about to come down on her life. "I'm so, so sorry about that." "And I'm so, so ready to hang up." And I'm so, so about to punch you in the box. I mean, wow. You know what happens if you say that shit to me? My phone forgets your number. This kid is unbelievable. Serena, what are you doing? "Blair was just playing. You have my full attention, I promise." He asks her to "not talk" to him at a movie later that night. Blair starts stabbing her dolls and purging right then and there.
Some totally cute lady who looks a bit like a dark-haired gamine version of Lily van der Woodsen is staring at what would appear to be a child's primary-color Spin Art rendition of a Rorschach blot. We run into another iteration of the Black Tie/Black Eye problem, where the director apparently didn't realize that dialogue and image, in this business we call show, should coincide in some manner, because what they're saying is how "complicated" and "difficult" and "enigmatic" it is; and then we head into the Early Faulkner iteration of the same issue, where this lady compares the stupid painting to "early Bacon" and "Schnabel." Bring your A game, people. Like it's not hard enough selling this show as glamorous when it's on the CW, you gotta fuck up simple stuff like black tie and art collecting? Rufus, who is looking delectable, flirts with the lady all awkward, and she tells him she's a buyer for a private collector, but that she didn't think she'd find "a piece like this" in Brooklyn. Perhaps at the Ostroff Center or other in-patient facility, but certainly not at a successful gallery. He acts all mysterious about the artist, so I'm guessing it's the ex, and she snaps a picture, promising to come back later. Luckily, she doesn't make him unpromise to "stay closed" so they can "not make a transaction" and he can "not take her money," or anything stupid like that.
The boyz come piling out of a limo to shoot some hoops at Roosevelt Park, which is adorable of them and I hope they get murdered. Nate is clearly not wearing a bulletproof vest under his sports gear, and it's working for him; Chuck looks like...it's a Billionaire Boys Club jersey, which does not explain the Robin Sparkles retro-print or the turquoise...fuchsia...I don't know...the gay-colored headband he's sporting on top. He looks like the most amazing person ever to audition for American Idol. What would he sing? That song about missing you like the deserts miss the rain, I think. Or "Milkshake." Yeah, "Milkshake." But right now he's singing "Unbreak My Heart" to Nate, because guess who's there? The Hobbit. The Hobbit's going to play basketball with them. All eighteen inches of him. He is dressed as a troubadour from Planet Forest, with this Byron and Shelley lace-up blouse that makes you think, "They still get International Male in Middle Earth?" Chuck throws down about how the Hobbit is a deadbeat and a hypocrite, but Nate just wants to play some b-ball, and whine, and Chuck tries to rape the Hobbit, but Nate's not having it, and then the Hobbit runs off to hatch some schemes or something. Chuck even tells him to "go jump in a volcano," because even Chuck knows that he looks like a Hobbit. "This is the Lost Weekend for juniors, not senior citizens! He's an older brother bringing everyone down." Nate cries into his cashmere emptiness for awhile but then it's game on.
Everybody's trying to desperately to get Blair to stop posing and start modeling, and the cameras are snapping and the lights are flashing, and she's beautiful, very beautiful, but very awkward, and the photog's like, "Okay, Blair, relax, chin down, hold it there, you ready? Okay, one more. This time, let's exhale. Jump around, loosen up. Now really loosen up on this one. Let's relax into it." Like a billion times and it's not happening. He bitches to Assistant Laurel and says awesome things: "She's so prim and stiff! Like a bookcase! It's unnatural." They agree that she's totally gorgeous -- and I like that the show lavishes that on Blair, because she deserves it, but also because that's not the problem and they really need to make that clear in case the signals get mixed because of her eating disorder, so if you're paying attention: the problem is not Blair's physical appearance, ever, but only her complete inability to drop her defenses for one single second -- and she gets more and more stressed out. "Bleh. Like a statue! This is retail, it's not editorial! She needs to let go, have fun, loosen up. How's the client going to like the dress if the model doesn't even like herself?" Ding. Serena goes cross-eyed with worry and rushes over to get the bookcase to loosen up.
"First of all, you look amazing!" Blair is well aware. Serena offers to give her a little tip, and Blair's like, "Here we fuckin' go." Serena sweetly bypasses that one and begs her to chill out. B notices Laurel and the photographer watching, and whispers, "Help me." She looks into Serena's eyes. "Help. Me." So now everybody's on the same page. S jumps around, all, "Act like a tiger! More tiger! More tiger! You're a savage!" Blair starts giggling and getting more into it, and the whole time Terry the photographer is snapping away at both of them. "Let's do a prettier one this time, okay? You're Venus on the Half Shell, right? So just look up..." It's so awesome, this part. Serena is totally, utterly focused on Blair, and it's like you can see her trying to vibe all this confidence and oblivion into her, and it's not happening, because they are at the very center of the thing that makes them opposites and they can't get across the bridge: Serena is beautiful because she doesn't care about anybody but Blair, and Blair is beautiful because she is so completely self-conscious that Blair is the last thing on her list. (Guess which one wins?)
So Serena's getting more and more into it, trying to muscle Blair into unselfconsciousness, all, "Let's do something crazy like Britney with the umbrella! Rawr! At the car! Posh Spice in America. Ready? Go! Hand on the hip! Strike it and pop! Give me more, give me more!" She calls her a sexy beast. Blair finally starts fully getting into it, giggling and laughing, and I kind of teared up, I'll be honest: "Oh, it looks so good! You're doing so good! You got it! Look how good you are!" I mean, that's love. Blair deserves Serena 24/7 just telling her she's wonderful, and Serena wants to be there 24/7, telling Blair she's wonderful. Like if she says it enough times, she'll fix her. And if you think about that, then the whole lost year thing is like ten times worse, because that means for a whole year, Blair didn't know she was wonderful, and she got less and less wonderful. But now Serena's back, and she's saying, "You're doing so good! You got it! Look how good you are!" So of course Dan calls.
S picks up and B's like, "The fuck you are. I can't let my mother down." Serena looks guilty and finally tells Dan she's "stuck" at the photo shoot, and I will tell you that no matter how much I hate Dan from time to time, dude looks so great all the time, it's nearly forgivable. He's standing in line at the movie theatre in a perfectly charming vest and a very long, pouty face. "It sounds really superficial, I know, but it's important to her and...she's important to me." END OF STORY. Do not apologize for your life! Ever! It only sounds "superficial" because Serena's buying into Dan's gross Humphrey concept of what's acceptable and real and what is not, and I get it: Serena has to, because he represents the kind of purity she's after, so really she's turning him into just as much of a blow-up doll as he's doing to her. It's not so much that he's putting her into a position of having to beg for his approval as that she desperately needs the approval of a Dan figure in order to prove that she's changed. So turning it into a "controlling boyfriend," boy/girl thing is really disrespectful to Serena, so I'll stop bitching about Dan. Even though, really, it's being disrespectful to Serena's own sense of finding herself appalling, which I totally don't respect, because Serena is fantastic.
But so is Dan, and if you look at them as both culpable for the creepy thing Serena always does with him, and the creepy thing he always does with her, they're at least on an equal plane. And it's dumb to say "always" with this show anyway, because I guarantee that in a month these allegiances, B/S/D and N/C and whatever, are going to be a distant memory anyway, because that's how Schwartz and Savage rock it. Anyhow, Serena promises to make it up to him, or unpromises, or will anti-make it up to him, or whatever happens in the negative space of their love. And then he stares at the ticket guy for a long time, pouts, whines, and wanders off in his little vest.
Bex Simon, the art buyer, shows back up to buy the painting, and tries to bone Rufus, who is still looking stupid hot, and it takes forever and ever and ever, and yes, the artist is the ex-wife, which means that Bex's client is obviously Lily, and who knows what else happens, they rebuild Machu Picchu and clean up post-Katrina, they do some more shitty "art," I don't know, I was asleep. Wake me when one of two things happens: Lily arrives in this C-story plot, or Rufus loses his shirt. Or even just the leather choker.
Time for Phase Three of the Lost Weekend: a pub crawl through the boroughs. At apparently only the tackiest Irish-themed bars the city has to offer. Chuck, sweetie, you're really not pulling your bon vivant/rapist weight this week. Irish pubs where the prostitutes are wearing shamrocks and shit is, like, my great-grandfather's idea of cutting loose. And you know you need to dance, bitch. "Remember, don't dip your shillelagh in the wrong pot of gold," he brogues, which is so lame in so many ways that it somehow went all the way back around to awesome. He tries to get Nate into the bar, showing the bitchy heart on his bespoke sleeve one more time: "You can think about your boyfriend inside." Nate makes a stand and says he's leaving, and Chuck repeats for at least the sixteenth time that the Hobbit is not on the up-and-up. "I don't know what spell he's put you under, but he's not your friend. He can't be trusted." This is five inches from turning into the ending of Prick Up Your Ears, his eyebrows suggest.
Nate whines and bitches and trust-fundies about how the money, drugs, and privileges are "keeping us numb so we don't know it's better out there in the real world," and Chuck rightly asks him to fucking define the "real world" anyway. Nate has no answer. Chuck says that the mad scramble of life in the real world is to become them, so why go all the way around past lame when they're already there? Nate whines some more about how he is essentially unknowable and has the soul of an artist or whatever, and Chuck's like, "I hear you talk about how you don't want to go to Dartmouth, and how you don't want to follow in your father's footsteps, but what exactly do you want?" Nate's already lost, because he is totally vague about how amazing. "You better discover what it is before you throw everything away trying to find it." Nate huffs off and gets the address for the stupid Shire poker game.
Rufus sits Chez Humphrey, playing the guitar and continuing to look fine, when his son comes home crying again. Before he can even ask Dan what Nate did to him this week, he busts into a long and not-untrue speech about the evils of Blair Waldorf, whom he calls "basically everything" he hates about the UES, "distilled into one 95-pound, doe-eyed, bon mot-tossing, label-whoring package of girlie evil." Not bad, Dan. He then ruins it with some Dan-talk: "I would barely be exaggerating if I told you Medusa wants her withering glare back." Don't start that Edith Hamilton bollocks with me, you annoying high school junior. Rufus explains this show, The O.C., and every other show where people do awesome, awful things: "Usually there's something beneath the surface with people like that, to make them act the way they do." Is there something beneath the surface of Rufus to make him explain basic shit to the audience? In fact, can we say with certainty that there's anything beneath the surface of Rufus at all? No? Take off your pants, Rufus!
"Like what, the OJ in her mimosa was from concentrate, not fresh-squeezed?" Heh. Dan's up again. And then right back down: "And what, and what does this say about Serena, that this is her best friend?" NOTHING THAT IS YOUR BUSINESS. GOD. It tells you that Serena loves Blair, warts and all, and is well aware of her faults but can see past them because she is committed to supporting her friend, because that's what friends do. You know who else told you that? Serena! In every goddamn scene on this show! What's underneath the surface of you, Dan, that makes you hate and mistrust women so much? Rufus helps supply the answer to that one: "I dated a girl like Serena once...actually, a lot like Serena." Same last name, even. "And girls like that are challenging, it's true. They're complicated and enigmatic [!]...and usually worth it. And the only way you'll know for sure is to jump in with both feet." I love it when Rufus explains the rules of manhood to Dan, like they're both not big old girls. Dan asks what happened when Rufus jumped with both feet into Lily van der Woodsen, and he admits that after swimming for a while, he drowned. Dan thanks him for the shitty talk and goes back to making a list of people to judge, other people's lives that he can turn into his own personal burden, and clothes he looks smokin' hot in.
Eleanor tucks B in for the night, sweetly. Blair's like, "You haven't done this since I was little," and Eleanor reminds her that she hasn't actually been in bed by ten since she was little. (That reminded me of Paris Hilton's parents watching her dance on the tables at 1 AM and being like, "Problem? I see no problem with this." Funny and creepy at the same time.) "You looked beautiful tonight, you know?" Blair's lovely, innocent smile. "Really?" Eleanor pats her and heads off without even saying anything horrible or hitting her in the head with a shovel, so Blair puts on her sleep mask and drifts away.
Dan's wandering his spacious Williamsburg loft brushing his teeth absently when Serena calls him to -- you guessed it -- apologize some more. He runs around the house like a judging monkey to spit before he talks to her, and she's somehow the gross one. He tells her she missed "something amazing," and he's not talking about the movie, and it's cute. She invites him to the photo shoot in the morning and he laughs and asks if she's actually calling for Jenny. "I know it's a girly offer, but chew on this: I'll be there." Heh. He whines about how that means she won't because she forgot to negativize and un-ask or whatever, and she's like, "It's Blair's shoot, so I have to be there for moral support." He goes south on her: "Blair? Well, I'm definitely not going now." Serena nods, says, "Okay," hangs up the phone, and goes to buy herself a vibrator and some Cherry Garcia.
Just kidding! She hates herself. "Look, she's really not as bad as you think. Besides, she's gonna be so busy with the shoot that you won't even have to see her, and since it's so boring on the sidelines, you'll have my full attention." He lets her twist in silence and so she offers to buy him anything he wants from craft service, and he reminds her that craft service is free, and just like that they have one more irritating in-joke they can bring up in every conversation for the rest of the episode. Serena is cool: "I'll see you in the morning at eight I'm texting you the address I'm hanging up before thou dost protest again!" All in one breath like that. "Both feet, Humphrey," he says to himself, and somewhere Blair vomits without even knowing why.
Photo Terry and Asst. Laurel show up at the Waldorfs' even later that night, causing Eleanor to complain at them while her daughter's asleep. Laurel pulls out the shots from the fashion shoot and Terry says Blair is not what they really want to be, saying she is: "unapproachable," "controlled," "perfect." Not untrue. Eleanor suggests instead that she is "poised" and "regal," also not untrue, and Terry says more awesome stuff: "Your girl is rigid like a twig...she's afraid to let you in, so your works of art and she...fail to achieve..." Eleanor nods. "Symbiosis." Terry shows her the inevitable shots of Serena: "Your daughter is beautiful, yes. But this girl...this girl has It. She is warm like sunshine. She has fun. She will make the clients think if they buy these clothes, then they will have fun, too." Laurel, knowing her ass is now completely covered, is like, "Oh, but it's your decision, Eleanor." I love Laurel. I hope she makes some kind of power move, that would be so kick-ass. Eleanor smiles down lovingly at both girls and chews on her dilemma.
GG points out, pointlessly, the "rules for a model the day of a photo shoot," noting how similar they are to "those of a patient, pre-surgery." She then tries to make this analogy work, and fails miserably. "No food or drink twelve hours prior, wear comfortable clothing, and make sure your affairs are in order -- you never know what could go wrong in a flash." S leaves an excited voicemail on sleeping B's phone, and later B wakes up and runs downstairs, terrified she's overslept or something. Eleanor's like, "No, but we're going a different way." B's face is already about to fall, but she's still hopeful: "With the theme?" No, honey. With the model. Eleanor starts trying to explain and apologize, and B immediately shuts down completely with that scary smile that says somebody's getting the horns: "I'm glad I don't have to go. I hate shoots. They're so boring. You should have Alessandra Ambrosio, not an amateur." Aww. Eleanor promises a lovely dinner afterwards, which I assume B would not be allowed to eat anyway, and takes off. B calls Serena with the bad -- for her -- news, and offers to meet up at the shoot anyway just to make fun of "the skinny bitch" that replaced her. Which is I think another script v. director issue that should have been changed, because while B the character creation is concerned with her weight, on paper, neither of the actual live girls on this show are all that horribly skinny, compared to lots of girls on TV, and lines like this -- where B is calling S a skinny bitch without knowing it -- are jarring, because you're like, "But Serena's a hoss, though." Which she isn't really, but that's where you go with it.
Lily! At Rufus's gallery! Bitching at him for no reason! All mad that he sold his ex-wife's painting to an art buyer for an anonymous client! Reason for outburst: Allison despises Lily and does not want her art in Lily's renovated house, or so she said twenty years ago, wearing Doc Martens and a slip dress! Why can these two old fuckers not tell time? Twenty years ago was 1987. Docs and lunchbox purse was ten years ago. 1997. I don't care if you were living in San Francisco or some other future place like that twenty years ago, the only people wearing Docs in 1987 were militant lesbian cartoonists, and meanwhile, your children are 17! Years! Of age! How can you simultaneously be fucking Trent Reznor, be hauling around a seven-year-old daughter, get married twelve times, sell out and become a UES trophy wife, and also be having lunchbox purse fights at CBGB's? Is Lily van der Woodsen a TIME TRAVELER? Are there many copies?
On the other hand, her pretexts and excuses for getting all up in his sexy presence are falling apart! week she'll be like, "I saw heirloom tomatoes at the Fresh Plus and I knew you were using them to get close to me! How dare you!" And when they finally put her away, perhaps in the room to her son's, she can make some "art" too.
Chuck notices the Babe Ruth ball is gone and texts N, who texts him back, angering the Hobbit. N is up five grand, and wants to drop out, because somehow N has become the smart, disciplined character that Dan wants so badly to be on this show, and the Hobbit is like, "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave! I was just about to tell you the secret of being fulfilled!" So N's like, "Fine, I'll keep playing. But only until I am in way over my head and I get murdered in the back room of a buffet restaurant in Queens, and no longer. I mean it, Sexy Hobbit: you can manipulate me with your luxurious eyelashes and pert little mouth only so far as Ray Liotta's trunk."
Lest you think Blair might enjoy a single moment of happiness in her life, "Moon River" starts playing again as she makes her way to some roof somewhere and spots Serena modeling. Serena looks outstandingly fierce: hair all big and up, eye makeup all wild and crazy... One cool thing about this show is how the youngsters are beautiful, but even cooler is how many different kinds of beautiful they get to be, because all of their faces are really complicated. They have five times the amount of features that normal people do, and also their bodies are stupid good. Like, "You liked Nate in a tux and all those sweaters, but he does sportswear too!" Or this, with Serena in the high fashion "clothes" of Eleanor Waldorf Designs before she heads back to the shooting range or enchanted forest or whatever. Chuck even looked hot in a few scenes this week. I know it sounds like I've never seen a teen drama before, but this one is special because everybody is so weird- and awesome-looking that you don't ever get bored looking at them. Blair, of course, shits a brick and storms out. Serena's all golden-retriever excited to see her, but soon notices that Blair is on a wobbler, so she runs after.
Dan comes upon them converging in a stairwell and makes with the stealthy as Serena begs Blair to explain what set off this latest thing. "Why am I mad? You mean why aren't I furious?! I can't believe for one second I thought that it'd be different this time!" Blair goes into depth about how Serena takes everything, everything away from her, all the time, like Nate and Eleanor and the modeling and being pretty, just by existing, and nods in the direction of how that's not really her fault but doesn't fully grasp the concept, just keeps screaming and screaming. "When you glanced at the call sheet, did you see my name on it? When I wasn't in hair and makeup, didn't that seem strange? When the dressing room only had your name on the door, what, did you think they just forgot?" Serena swears that they were just doing test shots, and she thought Blair was just running late: "Look, Blair, I encouraged you to do this. Why would I try to steal something from you that I pushed you to do?" Because, again, that's how you roll, Blair tries to explain.
It's awesome because this is the whole dynamic: Blair instinctively knows, correctly, that she deserves to be loved, which makes it so confusing that Serena's "it" makes everybody give her stuff instead. We came into this at a weird time, but it's their whole relationship: trying to hold onto each other in the constant onslaught of this narrative unfairness. A friend emailed me, before this episode, like, "Why do you care about this show? Why do you care if Serena and Blair work it out?" And I was like, "Because Serena will always get the thing, and Blair will always lose the thing, and they will try to love each other anyway, and it's riveting. Blair is going to want a thing this week, I promise, and whatever it is, she will almost get it, and then Serena will get it instead, and they will both want to die as a result. And if you've never been on one side of that relationship at one time, and on the other side of that relationship at another time, what have you been doing instead of having friends, because you always feel one way or the other, and you have to recognize how gross it makes you feel to be on either side of that, because it's nobody's fault, it's just how it happens. There's a totem pole, and you're on it, and there's always somebody above you and somebody underneath you, and you have to be kind to them both or else you're in an uncomfortable position, and learning this is how we get ourselves under control." It occurs to me that this dynamic also perfectly describes the show's relationship to wealth, our country's frighteningly widening class gap, the Ski Trip Conundrum, even the whole Hobbit/Chuck thing this week, but lest you think I'm going off on a thesis, I will tell you that really, it's because I like watching very beautiful, moneyed people doing very naughty things, to be quite honest.
Blair storms off and Serena chokes and heads upstairs, and Gossip Girl gloats as Blair spits in Dan's direction: "Spotted: Lonelyboy's rude awakening. Upper East Side queens aren't born at the top, they climb their way up in heels. No matter who they have to tread on to do it." Which I'm glad she said, because it's not like Serena's innocent in this either, because if she was, that would be stupid. I would estimate that she spent about 40 percent of the morning, and 60 percent of that fight, playing dumb. And that's on her, but it took Blair's nineteenth nervous breakdown to get her to realize it. So she heads upstairs to get mad at Eleanor about it. All the assistants and people throw themselves into her path, but in those shoes they do not stand a chance. She quits, and Eleanor's like, "Because of Blair. I know that she will support my decision, once I explain it to her. You know you love the spotlight, you always have! It's part of your charm. There is nothing wrong with that..." But Serena's gone, somehow leaving Humphrey in her wake: "Who are you? What are you doing here?" He stares at her, delicious and vacant and somehow put out: "I have no idea, actually. I..." Good! Take your broke ass home!
S changes out of her "clothes" behind a screen; Dan peeks a bit, heh, and then knocks lightly: "Hey, I kinda overheard you guys in the stairwell there." Her silhouette is awesomely overwhelmed and cute: "Dan, look, I really can't go there right now." Valid, he nods, and then offers to stand there "mute," and blinking. Not talking, I get it. I like Dan better when he's not talking, and I don't mean that in secret creepy dating code: I mean as in actually literally not speaking words. She asks for her jeans, and he stammers a bit after handing them over. "It's just, uh, I thought you wanted to be on the sidelines here. I thought you wanted to be here for your friend Blair." He brings up the craft service, and how she keeps promising him her "full attention." She steps out, still looking radiant: "Say it." He postures that he doesn't really think he has to, like "you know what you did," and she nods, but explains her side really well: "Look, Dan, Blair's mom basically tricked me into coming here, because she didn't want Blair. How do you tell your best friend something like that?" For the fourth week running, Dan is shocked to find that Serena is walking a very fine line, and doing an awesome job. Admirable, in fact. She tosses him out of there so she can change and get out.
Blair sits in a hallway, looking tiny. Dan approaches, looking huge. "Serena send you here to talk to me?" No, he admits, it's all him. "Normally I wouldn't be this close to you without a tetanus shot." Word. She looks away without protesting, and he slides down the wall, sitting so he's facing perpendicular to her, and tells her his life story, because apparently that's how we solve problems on this show. "My mom kinda left us a couple months ago, only my dad and my sister don't really see that. Because she told us she had to go away for the summer to follow her dream of being an artist. But it's not summer anymore, and she's still up there, and that's all she seems to care about right now. Every time I go to see her, I tell myself, this time I'm gonna tell her what I think. This time, I'm gonna look her in the eye and say, either come home or leave for good. And so there I was, just the other day. I was sitting across the table from her, looking her straight in the eye, and I didn't say anything." Blair's like, "I don't understand your logic. Why didn't you destroy her?" Her confused face is awesome; she really doesn't get it. "I don't know, but I wish I had, because even if it didn't change anything, she'd know how I felt." Blair looks at sixteen different places on the ceiling and nods, because on this show we fall on our knees before biography, every single time.
Some poker things happen with Nate. I don't know what they are. There's a "bullet," and then there are numbers, and something called a "marker," and that means the old Archibald IOU, and then there are more "bullets," and Nate is sad, so...I guess he lost. You could be like, "In poker we have a sudden-death round where they bring out a goat," and I'd be like, "I think I saw that on television this one time." The Hobbit keeps looking at the Eastern-European-looking mean guys so you realize that he's totally in on this, all, "Just call your Daddy, snap your fingers," and eventually Nate figures it out. Since the Hobbit is the only person on this show that Nate could ever conceivably drop, counting the girls, counting Jenny probably, he attacks him, and all the scary men get scary. Then Chuck shows up out of nowhere, because this is the kind of scary Hobbit poker where anybody can find it. Maybe Chuck has a tracking device on Nate, just like the rest of his bitches. Things are tense but not, like, Ryan Atwood-tense, due to how most of the tough guys are wearing ascots during the fisticuffs, and Chuck finally tells the Hobbit to cash in the Piaget watch and the Babe Ruth ball and pay the guys himself, and that Chuck and Nate will leave Queens without telling the cops what's up. Everybody stares at everybody for a million years.
Back at the Palace, more staring. Nate finds that his trust, formerly in the 200K range, is at zero. Chuck's like, "You don't have to pay me back...with money," but Nate feels bad about almost getting murdered in a buffet restaurant, so he calls his banker, who tells him the Captain, Nate's dad, liquidated his benjies earlier this week for nefarious purposes, meaning that the direness of the forced marriage to Blair is even more important than before. "He said he discussed it with you?" Nate stares out the window, Chuck stares at Nate, I stare at Chuck and wonder why his face is like that.
Strengthened by Dan's pep talk, Blair heads back into the fashion space to yell at her mom. Laurel tosses herself in her way, offering the job to Blair smoothly and awesomely, but Blair's in no mood. "Did you choose Serena over me? You could've picked a stranger, you didn't have to choose my best friend. What, did you think that I wouldn't find out?" As usual, Blair's tone-perfect: vulnerable, pissed, outraged, and kind of begging the world to not fuck her over in this precise way at this precise time. Eleanor promises she was going to explain: "There was no right decision. There wasn't any time! I know you can understand all this, it was mishandled, the whole thing. From top to bottom." She's not wrong, but Blair's your daughter, dude. Get real. "You actually want me to agree with you?" Word. "Bendel's will legitimize this company. It will take everything to the level. You know how hard I have worked for that. You've always been my biggest supporter, my biggest fan." Blair points out that more importantly, Mommie Dearest, she's her daughter. "And as my daughter, I knew that you would forgive me, in time. But if my company had lost this deal because of you? I'd never forgive myself." Blair wishes fervently aloud that she hopes Eleanor never does. Gossip Girl utters the truest words she's ever said: "You didn't hear it from us, but in every girl's life, there comes a moment when she realizes her mother just might be more messed up than she is." Word. That's like my mission statement. Not just girls, and not just moms, but it's an important moment in a young person's life.
Dan brings -- you guessed it -- craft service food to the roof. Serena's like, "Whoa! You're still here?" She's happy to see him. He apologizes, again, for judging her, again, and she stupidly apologizes for having "given him a reason to." Shut up, Serena. She hops around for a second and then tells him to ask her out again. Aww, she's so sweet. They're really sweet, if you forget the gross stuff. Like Dan would ever let you: "How about you actually show up?" Serena nods, goes, "Okay," pushes him off the roof and he falls thirty stories to a grisly death, and she tears into that craft services meal because she's been on heels all day, then treats herself to an afternoon at the spa. I'm kidding! "Okay. No drama, no disruptions. I promise." He throws one hand up to his forehead and screams, so she quickly unpromises, because beautiful women are untrustworthy and must be tamed. He names a time and place: Friday, at eight. Blair appears out of nowhere: "I think we can agree to those terms, but you can't wear those shoes. Mmm...or that hair." Serena blurts, "Blair!" but it's clear from the look Blair and Dan exchange that they're cool right now, and it's very cute. Serena kisses Dan on the cheek (Blair: "Ew!" A bit much, Blair) and he takes off, floating on air.
"So. You were right," Serena mumbles. "I know." Heh. "When I got that call, I should've known you had nothing to do with it. And I should never have pushed you to do this whole thing in the first place." Blair gets introspective: "Actually, I'm glad you pushed me. It ended up being a very important day for me. I just thought it was gonna be more fun." Growth! Change! Compassion! They lean in for a very "you know you love me" hug and that song about the guy being suicidal suicidal suicidal suicidal suicidal suicidal suicidal about the beautiful girl comes on. Serena promises Blair "more fun," and they go downstairs and steal all the "clothes." "This just in: S and B, committing a crime of fashion. Who doesn't love a five-finger discount? Especially if one of those fingers is the middle one!" I love you, Gossip Girl! Yeah! Eleanor comes in with Laurel and an even more prim model girl and shouts, "Where are my 'clothes'?" like in a sitcom about wacky hijinks.
"Everyone knows you can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends, and in a world ruled by bloodlines and bank accounts, it pays to have a pal." The girls run around the city while the song plays, posing against the cab for each other, against the skyline, a thousand landmarks and a thousand different smiles, taking pictures of each other. Which is why the show rocks -- as long as they're focused on each other, everything is okay because it's S&B World: looking at each other and loving every minute and holding each other up. It's when they look at anything else that things get shitty. So...if Nate's the Marissa, then...Serena is totally the Ryan and Blair's the total Seth of life! OMG you guys! That's it! I have solved the equation of this show! And then there's the empirical fact that an actual photo shoot is horribly boring and demeaning, but running around in designer clothes taking pictures of your friends, just as empirically, is the most fun you can have. "As much as a BFF can make you go WTF [Yes she did!], there's no denying we'd all be a little less rich without them. And Serena and Blair...they do besties better than anyone. No, that's not a tear in my eye. It's just allergies. Without you I'm nothing. Gossip Girl."
XOXO. up: Blair hazes the shit out of Jenny Humphrey.