"What if there was this gay serial rapist who accidentally fell in like with his best friend's girlfriend, who was kind of his best actual friend, because they were kind of rapists together, and they got together in the seamiest, creepiest way...but you were cheering them on the whole time, and kind of got teary when they sealed the deal, even though it was presented in weird '90s Nine Inch Nails jumpcuts played against weird '00s emo-punk-rock crap? Like their creepiness cancels each other out and it's kind of...sweet? Like, 'Way to lose your virginity to the gay best friend of your shitty boyfriend'?"
"That would be interesting."
"Okay, so what if this girl, let's call her B, did it because her boyfriend was kinda gay and kinda into her own BFF, so it was like karmic justice?"
"I would root for that, constant rape be damned. Karma, man."
"And so what if plus, everybody had dirt on their dads, but had to fake it for some reason, and maybe Nate's dad got put in jail for hitting Nate, and for being a cokehead, and for being a creepy embezzler, thus endangering their arranged marriage?"
"I guess I would get all slutty with the gay best friend too. Although I love Nate every week and he's actually kinda great this week."
"Um, sure. Right, so especially if the rapey guy made friends with Lily van der Woodsen, the best character of the whole show, and then what if she acted like finding a 16-year-old gay rapist dude drunk in the gutter outside the Palace Hotel at 2 PM was like, totally awesome, because at least now she has a friend, finally."
"Even if he looked like a wax model of the Jerry Maguire kid's head?"
"...Whatever, I'm not your therapist. So meanwhile, this is catalyzed by the young innocent girl who's being slowly tempted into sedition, while her older brother -- who is also being tempted into sedition -- is getting freaky with his girlfriend, who is aforementioned B's best friend who got screwed over in the first place?"
"Why you gotta go and make things so complicated? I just want to see Penn Badgley with his shirt off. You had me at 'Lonelyboy gets freaky.' Don't care how, don't care who. I don't really think you have to try that hard, dude."
"But it's like very romantic, S and Lonelyboy. Candles. And also their parents are very romantic, because they are adorable. Plus true love, and Vanessa Abrams feeling like raw shit but being actual cool instead of 'tell me I'm cool' cool."
"Fuckin'...stop talking about...parents and this shit, whatever whatever, Vanessa Abrams kills all boners and buzzes, I don't care, shut up and start talking about Penn Badgley, shirtless. Are we talking about the whole episode, or...?"
"A lifetime's worth of episode is how shirtless he is this week."
"Cut and print. The strike can suck it. America needs this."
None of this cutesy whimsical gossip today, no. Today we're bookended by total NIN crackly pics like back in the early '90s when it was simultaneously the '80s and Lily and Rufus were living their very complicated time-traveling lives and appealing to multiple generations with their lunchbox purses and whatever, it's quaint. So quaint are the sexy ladies bumping and grinding on the screen, in fact, that I'm reminded less of Reznor and more of Manson. Marilyn Manson, to be exact, whose stupid ex-girlfriend decided a few years ago that it simply had been too long since burlesque shows last annoyed us. Now, you know I love this show and God knows I desperately want Gossip Girl's approval, but burlesque is one of those things about which we're going to have to agree to disagree.
"Have you heard, Upper East Siders? Burlesque is all the rage again!" Really? Does that mean we're going to be dealing with fucking swing dancing again week? I cannot deal with that reality. "And sometimes a little raging is exactly what you need," GG continues, and I can't disagree, but I fail to see the connection, unless the "rage" you're talking about is the rage you feel when you realize you've been sold a bunch of crap as far as what is and is not sexy, and found yourself acting like an idiot in public. You know what broke burlesque? The Pussycat Dolls. And not when your girlfriend was a freak like them, but way before, when it was all the Hollywood abuse survivors like Xtina and Carmen Electra being like, "I am no longer defined by my sexuality! Look at my breasts! My sexuality is a beautiful flower! Its petals unfold in your face!" It went from being just kind of sad to being super-creepy, and it never came back. You don't stop being objectified just because you've decided to do the objectifying yourself, and the difference between burlesque and balls-out raw-ass stripping is the same imaginary difference that says Blair can go down on Nate from now until graduation and still stay a virgin: it's missing the point entirely.
Cue Chuck gaping creepily and GG talking about how he's always "ahead of the curves." Which is, you see, a double entendre, because he wants to have sex with you, with or without your consent, but also because GG has apparently just discovered the concept of burlesque, which in reality has existed as long as ugly girls have desperately needed attention. Some drag queen is all, "¿Quién es esa niña?" And Chuck can't take his eyes off one girl in particular, whose bewitching twitching has captured his heart and his pants: "I have no idea."
Two days earlier, Blair and Chuck are walking through the burlesque club, which is called "Victrola," and of course it is, because Chuck is adorable and this show is adorable. Say what you will about burlesque, but as an objective correlative for the show's approach to sexuality, both within the story and speaking of the story itself, it's totally perfect. The show's carefully managed scandal is equal to the way the kids carefully manage their scandals is equal to the point of burlesque: putting so much layered insecurity and exhibition that you forget about actual sex altogether, because it's not the point. If any of these people had sex in the woods and nobody was there to see it, would they go through with it? Why have sex if it's not on GossipGirl.net two hours later? Chuck's attempts at hypermasculinity are the most obvious, but Blair's is the same thing. Serena's the only healthy sexual being on the entire show, and that's down mainly to the fact that she's the only one that can have sex without either crying about it or constantly giving jazz hands toward it. "Sexual jaded youth over here! Yoo-hoo, are you looking? I'm a grown-up!"
"You want your dad to invest in a strip joint? How midtown." Chuck, of course, corrects her: "A burlesque club." Blair is wearing an insane red bow as big as her head, and a crazy valet jacket with yellow and blue stripes. She looks amazing. "A respectable place where people can be transported to another time, where they can feel free to let loose. No judgment. Pure escape. What happens at Victrola stays at Victrola." It's not bad copy, and more important, it's everything you have to believe to even come near this place. Blair pronounces Victrola as having "franchise potential," and notes that Chuck's many years of underage boozing and womanizing have finally paid off. He's sixteen, B. Notice the pattern here? She's proud of him, which makes him happy, because she is his second-toughest critic, after his dad. Which august personage, Chuck is sure, will love this: "It is exactly the kind of innovative thinking upon which the Bass empire was built. It is the perfect thing!" Aww, so sweet. He's going to bring strippers to his dad like a cat with a pigeon head, and then his dad will finally love him. Blair bounces with a sweet squeeze: "Don't be nervous. He's gonna love it." Chuck hops around, nervously.
Nate's mom Anne is trying to make him go to rehab, and he's like, "No, no, no." She assures him that he's going, right after their celebration of the Waldorf deal. Anne leaves Nate alone with his dad, and Nate immediately starts whining at him about how he totally sold Nate out and made it seem like they were his drugs. "You're not gonna end up in one of these places. Let me talk to her. You know how your mother overreacts." Nate is not buying any of this, so the Captain spins a little tale about how "the old man doesn't wear the hours as well as he used to," and how a "young viper" at the office named Frank Meltzer offered him a pick-me-up, which he didn't really enjoy. Because cocaine is so unpleasant. Nate is looking amazing in an off-white yellowish top with a school tie and tousled hair; the Captain offers to flush the bag immediately. Nate tries to turn this into a father/son moment about honesty and family values, but his dad is like, "Later, I have to go detail my Bentley and the Bentleys of my friends and then try on sixteen different outfits and then make sure all of the clocks in the house are synchronized and then learn to fly a jet plane and then make some scrapbooks and then clean the entire house and then kind of cry for awhile, but thanks for taking the drug rap and then following it up by whoring around with your estranged girlfriend who you don't even love but do you need me to pick up any dry cleaning or snacks or anything else because I could totally pick up a Humvee with one hand right now so if picking things up is what you're looking for I am your man because I am a picking-things-up champion of all time look I'm going to do some push-ups and then clean the refrigerator because I haven't eaten in six days and so let's have some drinks later -- non-alcoholic of course -- but the first thing I'm going to do is buy a shitload more coke and so do you like this tie?"
Little Jenny Humphrey is...acting kind of similar to the Captain, to be honest. She's going nuts looking for the glass slipper bracelet that she left in B's hot little hand at the Masquerade Ball, which means we're still on the 24 schedule where every episode takes place immediately after the last episode, which is awesome. Vanessa is on the phone with her, still pretending to care, and J explains to her about how the store lent it to her for the ball, which she wasn't supposed to attend, so by losing it she has created two problems, because it was on Blair's account. Outside, Rufus is having some boring fight with his soon-to-be-ex wife Alison, and totally ignoring Jenny's huge problem. So much so that he drops some bread crumbs about how Alison's having an affair, but when Jenny presses, he changes his mind. Somebody knocks and then outside the door, there's Vanessa, still on the phone with Jenny, like a fucking creepy lurking creep. The call is coming from inside the house! She's like, "Where is Dan?"
Somewhere in the twisted time and space of this show, Dan's at school with Serena, making out. At the same time that his little sister is running around the apartment, Vanessa is making her daily assaults on etiquette, and his dad is lounging around the house being vague about his dissolving marriage. The Humphreys are like wild animals, man. Dan and Serena are devouring each other against a brick wall, and instead of finding somewhere more private than the Quad, they complain about how uncomfortable it is, making out against a thousand-year-old building, in public. "You'd think all the money that we spent on this private school, they could at least give us a comfortable spot to make out," giggles Serena cutely. A bunch of people start razzing them and paparazzi-ing them, and then Dan and Serena remember that they are being raised by wolves and obviously at some point one of their apartments will be empty, and they can make out secretly.
Kati and Isabel upload pictures of the uncomfortable make-out session to GG.net immediately; S and Lonelyboy take their time saying goodbye. Serena laughs, "Or we could just get it over with in a broom closet." Dan is immediately uncomfortable, because the thought of Serena fucking in a broom closet is a little too close to the slutty reality that he secretly harbors against Serena, still, and once he takes off, Serena realizes she just played right into his insecure, misogynist protocol. Because, of course, Dan is a virgin, but he's also a guy, so he takes all his fear of losing his virginity and puts it in the broom closet of Serena's whoredom, thereby making it her fault. "But can Brooklyn keep up with the Uptown Express?" wonders Gossip Girl, and you know what? If he could, for even a second, we wouldn't really have a show. I don't hate him, he's just too real.
Nate approaches Jenny in the hall: "Oh. Serena, right?" She pronounces this queasily cute, and he agrees it's not that funny. I think it's awesome. Nate is a class act. She asks what he's doing in the Billard part of school, and he admits that he's looking for help: "You know, I really didn't mean anything I said about having feelings for Serena," he blurts, and Little J knows this is a pile of crap. She's like, "I guess so. I've been agreeing vehemently with men telling themselves lies since I was first born into the Humphrey family." She floats the idea, lackluster kiss aside, that she's not actually that interested in his love life, that maybe this is a relationship issue having to do with Blair, and not Jenny. For example, any weirdness in Nate's relationship with Blair is automatically the butterfly of the apocalypse for Dan, herself, Serena, Waldorf Design, his own Archibald fortunes, and the entire Upper East Side. He's like, "Yeah." Nate -- cute! -- offers her a box of chocolates and asks for her help re-securing Blair. Who appears out of the shadows from nowhere with a thousand bright teeth! Everybody screams and Nate's like, "Um, I was just asking Jenny to help me come up with a better excuse than these chocolates I brought you." Jenny's fourteen, so she's kind of secretly pissed off that he just gave away her candy. B and Nate make up, and of course Blair's like, "You know I prefer the Gold Collection, but thank you." Heh. I love those little boxes too, but why spend the money when you're just going to barf it up anyway?
Jenny skedaddles because Blair is scary every day, but especially when you've earned it, and B follows her like a wolf in the night: "Hey, Cinderella. I think you dropped this at the ball?" Jenny does the ankle-dip of Oh Fuck, and Blair smiles with a terrible beauty, then drops it completely: "I hate secrets more than anything. You know that. Friends don't lie. And we're friends, right?" This last nearly silent like the mighty cobra. Jenny's like, "...Yeah," and then goes to change her shorts. B returns to N's side and they cuddle, while Gossip Girl evinces some small amount of worry about Jenny's total doom coming down the pike: "Jenny Humphrey's rise to the penthouse has been short and sweet, but if she crosses Blair Waldorf, it's straight back to the basement. Looks like this little lamb needs to stay silent...or else." Seriously. I wasn't worried about Jenny before, but now I've seen what lurks in that basement, which is Vanessa Abrams, and she's got a découpaged hatbox covered in Ambrose Bierce art nouveau sylphs and Van Gogh sunflowers, and I would not willingly consign anybody to that musty lair. Stay quiet, little lamb!
Bart and Lily, Round Fifteen, talking about how they have to keep quiet about their love affair until such time as Lily's kids are not insane, which will be approximately never, and Chuck enters. My favorite thing about this episode is the way Lily treats Chuck, because it's exactly the way you (and Dan) want her to treat Dan, which is this wry mix of a meeting of equals plus a quasi-maternal kind of affection. I totally buy the whole UES thing when I see Lily give Chuck that smile. She might as well have her finger on the side of her nose. They bumble around in front of him and then Lily leaves goofily, and as she's leaving Chuck gestures toward her shirt, which has gone awry, and she practically winks at him before fixing it and leaving. So cute!
Alone, Chuck allows as how Lily is not the best actress to ever grace the stage, and Bart orders him to stay quiet about it, especially with S: "Lily would like this to play out in a certain way." Chuck looks...very great, actually, in this scene. He's wearing a black pinstriped suit with a purple striped shirt underneath and a gold tie. He gapes that Bart seems to be actually serious about Lily, and instead of answering, Bart is awesome: "What's with the business formal? Are you being arraigned for something?" Chuck smiles and takes a breath, and almost entirely contains his shakes: "I have an investment idea I think is utterly unique to your company. Something avant-garde, yet nostalgic." Note, please, that it is neither. "It is the perfect way for you to loosen the top button of Bass Inc. like you've been wanting, sir." Bart is very impressed, which knocks Chuck off his feet: "Do you how long I've been waiting for you to be interested in something other than partying?" Chuck loses control of his limbs, flailing his portfolio onto the table: "You should come see the place. It sells itself!" Bart, still interested, protests that he has meetings, but they agree to talk about it afterward. A tiny breath of wind taken from his sails, Chuck's still overjoyed. Aww, so happy! This is going to end in devastation.
Over in the Billard School Quad, Blair tells Serena about how her little session in public with Dan made it onto GG.net. S: "Ugh! God, Kati and Iz filmed us?" Blair rolls her eyes: "Oh, it's all very High School Musical scandalous," which is exactly what it is. "They haven't streamed it yet, but I heard it was...aggressive." S admits that, against all reason, Dan has been "surprisingly good" at everything they've done. "Which is everything?" grins Blair, and Serena's like, "No? But feel free to invade my privacy." Blair asks if they've talked about sex, because Blair is very wise about sex, because her whole life is trying to have sex with Nate without him knowing about it, so as you can see she's all about disclosure. "May I remind you that this is your first real boyfriend, S, and in relationships, you talk about stuff." Heartbreaking, right, but part of Serena's awesomeness is that she always takes B at face value, even when she's talking out her ass: "I know, but...I don't know, sometimes talking about it or planning it can ruin a good thing, you know?" Blair, who has been planning on having sex instead of having it since the Reagan administration, is like, "Girl, I hear you." S admits that she's totally over worrying about it, but that seemingly Dan -- existing at the corner of Virginity and Misogyny as he is -- might be the better part of valor here. "Is it possible for a guy to want to slow things down?" Only if he's gay, I say, and Blair agrees: "Only the guys we like!"
Dan is sweaty and breathing hard on the dismount, and looks over at a very bored and spacy Serena. "How was I?" She points at the doorway: "I don't know. Let's ask the judges." Kati raises a scorecard, upside down, with a 4 on it, and hilariously breezes, "I was gonna give you a 3, but since you're a virgin I gave you an extra point." Kati and Iz are so much cooler in Dan's sick little noggin! He whines at them that his virginity is a choice, which is never true, and that "sex is meaningful, like art," and one "shouldn't rush art." God. I just threw up an entire box of Godiva Gold Collection Chocolates, Dan. Iz attacks Kati all, "Who's Art? Did you sleep with him?" She repeats the question a few times, her voice slowly morphing into Rufus's voice, and Dan wakes up to his dad yelling at the phone outside. "Yes, Alison, I did encourage you...to do your paintings, not the -door neighbor. Hello? Hello?" Dan comes out all sleepy and cute and Rufus apologizes for screaming infidelities like that. Dan puts all the pieces together and Rufus tells him it's complicated...just as Jenny sneaks into the house, eavesdropping tools at the ready, like big sis Vanessa taught her. "Mom's having an affair," Dan protests: "It's easy when you just say it." Rufus says it's harder when you're talking to your son, which is sad and sweet, but Dan's like, "No, because now I know why she's never, ever coming home." Jenny loudly shuts the door and calls into the apartment. Rufus vanishes to go grocery shopping, and Dan goes back to doing "homework," and Jenny's all alone with thoughts of her mom and how everybody around her is so sexually dysfunctional that her obsession with her would-be rapist is starting to look normal.
Nate calls his dad from ten blocks away so they can continue to discuss the Captain's unstoppable vampiric destruction of his son's life, but the Captain is of course all, "I'm going to need a raincheck on that conversation we are never, ever going to have because [coke talk] and Jesus I'm so tired I wish I could just sleep but how can I when there's so much to do?!" Nate puts on his resolved face, which looks a lot like his other face, and Gossip Girl's like, "See? All parents are liars. Don't trust them."
Chuck feeds a cherry to a burlesque whore, she ties the stem in a knot, and he takes it off her tongue, and he's very drunk: "You are...really talented." OMG, Gossip Girl, my dad can do that. Jenny Humphrey can do that. Cherry-stem knots stopped being sexy around the time L.A. Law went off the air. It's not even that tight a knot. Bart comes in just as Chuck is all over the girl, which is too bad, and Chuck's like, "Oh, um, see? Investment potential all around you!" Bart starts yelling about how apparently this is Chuck's latest scheme whereby Bart pours "hundreds of thousands of dollars into an excuse" for Chuck to be around booze and women, which he was already doing anyway. Chuck's like, "No! I'm being gross on my off time right now! Didn't you read the proposal?" And Bart did, and was duly impressed, which is why he came down, but Chuck and the cherry stem ruined it: "You want to impress me with your commitment to something? Try getting a few As in school, or maybe a part-time job." Aww. And Chuck's back to looking heinous as well. Bart storms off and Cherry Stem is like, "Whaa?" Chuck tears off after Bart, who is getting into a limo with some Asian lady to have lunch. Chuck is vindicated, because as far as he knows, a limo is just a wheeled staging area for rape attempts. "Looks like the pot calling the kettle black has young Bass boiling over, and if we know Chuck, he's not one to let things lie. Someone pour that man a drink!"
Blair is looking amazing as ever in a green-and-white-striped polo; Eleanor is being all nervous-lady adorable as usual: "You need to look elegant for the Archibald dinner tomorrow night, so what do you think?" She holds up a lacy number that looks like it was designed by Milla Jovovich in one of her gypsy phases. "Yes, it would be very nice. If I was sailing up on the Mayflower." Eleanor's like, "Your grandmother did, and she was wearing this dress." Just kidding, she instead brings up the giant Cornelius Vanderbilt diamond ring that got flashed around last week, and how she was "going on and on" (not especially, really) about how it would end up on Blair's finger. Blair goes all old-school Jane Austen, as she usually does in these moments: "Nate spoke to his mother? About our future? He actually asked for the family ring?" AWE-some. Because you're sixteen years old, Blair, and dressing like that and acting like you do, I can understand why you'd be confused on this point, but: SIXTEEN. Years of age. You can't stop Blair, though: Her grin is a thousand megawatts of joy with a target on it, directly at which all the bombs and weapons of the world are pointed. You know what's scarier than Blair with a fake smile? Blair with a real smile, because it's just an invitation to get herself smacked down again.
Nate takes a page out of Vanessa's Riot Grrl Notebook and skulks around while his father tweaks out and then goes to buy a bunch of coke, and because Nate has the memory of a goldfish in a goldfish bowl, his sweet weird little face falls once again. "Looks like cold, hard cash can get you the cold, hard truth. Didn't anyone tell you, N? Be careful what you fish for..." I can honestly say I don't know what the fuck Gossip Girl is talking about this time. What?
Location shots, driving across a bridge. By the smell of horror and the sense of decrepit doom, I can only assume we're headed into Brooklyn. S falls onto Dan's bed, overjoyed at having the apartment to themselves. "You got downtown pretty fast," Dan says with wonderment. "With an opportunity like this, one needs to take advantage!" She giggles and climbs atop him, like Victorian ladies of yore. He estimates that Rufus and Jenny will be gone somewhere between sixty and twenty minutes, and she assures him twenty minutes is plenty. He's a teenage boy, Serena: even if he's gay, take off ten minutes to get it up and you've still got two rounds in the barrel. I miss high school. S pulls his shirt open and he enjoys it for five seconds before he starts with the "it's bright in here, we should get blinds or a Clapper or something," and she's like, "Stop interior decorating and check out my total hotness!" Just as she's ripping her own bodice -- the things we do for these boys -- he...hurls her to the floor. And why? Because Vanessa Effing Abrams has, once again, let her ass into the house without knocking. Awkward. Everybody says hi to everybody else, and Dan, finally, goose-steps her rude ass out the door. Heading back to S, he forgets to lock the door, and what happens ? She cracks the front door open and stares some more. Deal-breaker! I'm done with you, Abrams. Once again!
Serena sits chastely on Dan's football sheets, grossed out by their Brooklyn ways. She offers to discuss the situation, and he's like, "No, see, actually, her busting in here while we're trying to bone is exactly the reason you shouldn't worry about her, because she's like family. She's like a creepy sister that appears out of nowhere and ruins everything all the time and is obsessed with me in a sexual way. See? Totally under control." S clarifies that she was talking about Dan's fear of flying, and puts forth the theorem that maybe they were going to have some sex. He's like, "We cannot talk about sex, ever, but let's make out." So they do. Five seconds later, Rufus and Jenny come home, with "breakfast." I am so confused by the timeline of this show because sometimes they're at school and it's the middle of the night and sometimes half of them are at school and the other half are at a strip club and sometimes they're having dinner before or during breakfast. The snow is constantly coming down in June on this show. Dan's like, "Are you hungry?" And Serena doesn't answer, just blows her hair out of her face and crams all of her dissatisfaction and feelings very deep inside.
"Spotted: Bass drunk off his ass at the Palace bar, drinking away his woes and investment capital." Chuck wanders drunkenly out into the Palace courtyard, calling phone numbers at random. "Nathaniel, your position in my esteem has been replaced by your voicemail. So...Bart didn't go for Victrola, but...truth is, I bought the house out already for tonight. And it's not a par-tay without my people. Or any people. I'll see you there." He drops a key -- because I guess at the Palace Hotel they have big brass keys and not, you know, hotel keys -- and crawls around in the gutter for awhile. Lily appears out of nowhere and crouches by him: "Long night?" Chuck nods sweetly: "Alfonso made me an omelet. I may have washed it down with a Bellini or two." Lily smiles and deduces that Bart didn't go for the Victrola proposal; he makes a sad cute face. She gets her arm underneath him and picks him up out of the gutter, walking him back toward the hotel while he babbles, and the whole time she's just like...his friend. I didn't really want her to get together with Bart until now, but I think Chuck really desperately needs Lily in his life. "He was born poor, I was born loaded. But if the only way to impress him is if I started with nothing, then why doesn't he just take it all away?" And the whole time, Lily's like, "Yep. I hear ya, buddy." He trips at the front door and she laughs, sitting down with him: "Because he loves you. No good parent likes to see his child go without," she offers. Chuck whines that he had the idea and did the work, and still Bart tells him it's impossible for him to be committed to anything.
"And he's the one screwing twenty-five-year-olds" -- Lily laughs, like, "Word" -- "when he's supposedly committed to you." She points out it's only been a week since they were really especially committed, so we shouldn't number those among Bart's sins, but drunk Chuck is like, "I wonder why he was pawing some Asian chick in his limo yesterday?" And he's being honest, and he does love Lily, and they do get each other, but that doesn't mean he's not loving this: she makes an intense whoa face, and then closes her eyes and nods: "How could I be surprised, really?" She excuses herself and leaves his weird tiki face there in the shade of the hotel, off on yet another revenge mission.
Nate interrupts his mother making an appointment for a blowout at Arden's, and of course her hair already looks perfect, because this show is ridiculous. She can tell from his face that he wants to talk about real stuff, so she tries to get out of there, so he's like, boom: "Mom, please, the drugs were Dad's. I mean, I guess he thought it'd be easier on everyone if I took the hit, but they were his." Mom pretends she doesn't know what he's saying, and he tells her about the Captain promising to flush the coke and then buying more, and she turns on him: "The lengths that you will go to, to get out of trouble!" Nate begs her to help him help the Captain, noting how Anne's WASP programming makes her look at the floor and pretend she doesn't exist whenever anything happens in the entire world. "Just look at me. Mom! I saw Dad buying drugs yesterday!" She is very beautiful and very poised, because she has to be all the time: "He's been under a lot of pressure. And if you hadn't been so difficult lately..." As though Nate has the energy or initiative to be difficult in any way. "Your latest rebellions have been very hard on your father, Nate: all this business with Dartmouth, your issues with Blair..." Still not the point. Nate asks again for help, and she shushes him: "Not another word of this. We have a celebratory dinner to get to! Please wear a tie." I'm so sure, Anne Archibald.
How much does Dan Humphrey suck? Well, in order to get his mojo rising and figure out how sex actually happens, he has bought the art film I Am Curious: Yellow. Because the best and least creepy sex is Swedish sex, in 1967. It's about a girl who can't figure out why she dislikes having sex with men, so she goes around and has a bunch of sex with men, and instead of living her life compiles a giant archive of all the things she would be doing if she weren't compiling a giant archive of them. So, kind of like Dan, and kind of like burlesque. Pornography is good, because: Wouldn't you rather have Lonelyboy coming at you with gross ideas about the capabilities of the human body to withstand a bunch of effin' and jeffin' than you would want Lonelyboy coming at you with a bunch of ideas spurred on by a surrealist film in the French New Wave style? But Dan's simply too good for internet porn, so he's gotta find the most pretentious, ridiculous, stylized version of art porn, as though that's going to make him better in bed. Just the thought of Dan coming at you with a bunch of concepts. Makes me want to hide under the bed.
To the sound of a bunch of Swedish humpology, Dan is sitting still, quietly not masturbating, as Vanessa comes stomping right the hell into his room, once again. He tries to explain knocking on the door to her, and she's like, "Hey, at least I didn't use the fire escape! Baby steps!" Guess what, freak: probationary period is over. Baby-step your rude ass right the fuck back to Vermont. She investigates his porn and he whines that it's not porn, and she brings up earlier that day, when she was rude that one time and walked in on his intimate time with his actual girlfriend. She reminds him about how sex is like art, somehow managing not to barf, and you know what? Dan is very hot in this scene. Whatever he says, that's what I agree with. "That was in, uh, 2005. I was more idealistic then. I was much younger, and there wasn't an actual girl who wanted to have sex with me." Vanessa flips out wildly into Season One Joey Potter territory, like she's this wise old bird that knows all about the sex, and he's just a baby virgin and isn't it so sweet, so somehow she wins because he's not having sex with her. Which is a shitty way to pull rank and even sadder when it's this obvious. And just when you think she couldn't be more annoying, she pulls this shit right here: "It's okay, I'm sure Serena knows what to do...what with her vast experiences with boarding school professors, Pamplonian bullfighters, best friends' boyfriends..." BOOT TO THE HEAD. Dan and Vanessa get to me so bad, because they're just openly screaming things that most of us learned not to say when we were like twelve, and it's exposed and scary and gross, like karaoke. Vanessa leaves with parting words to hide Cedric the Cabbage Patch Doll, get some candles, and replace the football sheets. One and three, yes. Two is kind of advanced and unnecessary, but we're not talking about me, or Serena, or even Dan, are we? We're talking about Vanessa.
Jenny thanks B for helping her out with the broken bracelet clasp, and B is awesome: "Oh, it was my pleasure. ...Oh, wait. No, it wasn't. Game recognizes game, Little J, but you have to show more respect. This is the last time I help you. time you cross me, I won't be as forgiving." I lost count of how many times in the past five days somebody said, "Game recognizes game, Little J," where I could hear them, but I laughed every single time. Blair is awesome. Jenny shakes right down to her glass slippers and swears there won't be a time, and Blair settles down and they're friends again. "I want tell you something, something nobody knows. Not even Serena. You can keep a secret, right?" Jenny does the ankle-dip of pure bliss, and B spills the beans: "Nate is planning on giving me his family diamond. It's the most incredible ring you've ever seen." Jenny's wearing a strange polka-dot shrug like in Funny Face, and asks for clarification: "Uh, 'ring' as in engagement ring?" Blair slips into soliloquy mode: "I remember the first time I ever saw him. Maybe we were just little kids, but I knew: he's the one I wanna marry. Now it seems like he feels the same way, too." Jenny stands very, very still, attempting to become invisible, but Blair sees through it. "Why are you not happy for me?" Jenny hems and haws and blames her cheater parents and family drama, and tries to beat a hasty retreat, but B is onto her: "No, maybe you should look at me in the eye and tell me what you're hiding." Yes! I wish this was the entire show! "Are you jealous?" Jenny says no, of course not. "Do you like him?" Blair's delighted. "Do you think because you talked to him once in the hall that you might have a shot?" Jenny swears it's nothing like that, and B demands to know, then, what it is like. Jenny whines that she doesn't want to hurt Blair, who totally scoffs: "How could you hurt me?" Seriously! I love it! Jenny tells her about her conversation with Nate, when he grabbed her at the ball and professed his love for S. Her heart breaks for Blair: "He kissed me." And B cuts her dead: "That's enough." Over Jenny's protestations, she issues a decree: "You're dismissed, Jenny. For good." Jenny leaves, crying, and for the moment Blair's more sad than hateful. She just stares into space, thinking and nearly weeping.
Dinner for the Waldorf-Archibald deal. Blair stares into space, with a gigantic bow on her head as usual, but having successfully funked out the Mayflower dress with some pearls and awesomeness to the point where I barely recognized it. She comes down the stairs to the sound of glasses clinking; Nate spots her and comes running. "Hey! You look beautiful tonight." Nate, of all people, can spot her terrifying fake smile, and asks if there's something on her mind. "No. Is there anything you wanna say?"
Flash to the Shepherd wedding, Nate and Serena having sex at the bar. This part is fairly awesome. Dan comes around the outside, critiquing and asking for help: "The leg wrap. That's interesting." Serena smiles over at him, with her leg wrapped around Nate: "Sexy, right? And it increases stability." He watches them mugging down for awhile, and then asks Nate if the hair-grabbing is a winning strategy: "Oh, yeah. Every time!" He walks around some more, inspecting their lovemaking, and interrupts again: "Do I have to keep my shirt open and billowing like that?" Nate agrees that it never hurts. Dan continues to watch; in his bed, he whines, "I'm doomed!"
Rufus enters Dan's room -- after knocking, notably, like human beings do -- and sees Dan reading a book about "sensuous massage." Dan is the most nightmarish virgin boyfriend of all time. I take back what I said about missing high school. Dan mumbles about how he has tension and stress between his shoulder blades, but it's not like Rufus cares, so he drops it: "I'm headed to the gallery to test-run a 24-hour projection installation." Vanessa and J are there, as well, but Dan declines -- he's going to just "chill" at home. "Alone? On a Saturday night? With your new girlfriend?" Rufus sits down, and Dan gets even more afraid that they are going to have a sex talk, so his voice gets higher and higher, but Rufus lays off. "Well, just be safe. Don't do anything you're not ready to do...or she's not. Oh, and lose the football sheets...and Cedric."
At the gallery, Jenny has once again stupidly come to Vanessa for advice. V tells her she looks good for a dead messenger, and then hands her some bullshit line about how "Now Blair knows the truth, and she and Nate can talk about it. Honest communication is what every good relationship is based on." A) Not that you would know, which to be fair she admits, and but B) "honest communication" in a relationship kind of implies the people in the relationship, not randoms off the street spreading gossip and bullshit. Either they're grownups or they're not, but either way, that has nothing to do with you. That's like cracking open a butterfly's chrysalis and being like, "I guess that half-formed dead butterfly just didn't have the moral fortitude to be honest about its relationships!" Or, if you're Vanessa, breaking into somebody's house and stomping outside their oven so you can say, "That soufflé simply could not stand the pressures of adult romance!" When it's not even your house, and when you have never, ever baked anything in the first place.
Jenny starts talking about the horrors of betrayal, and V sniffs out that she has now changed topic, to Rufus and Alison. And sadly, it's not that far a jump: she's fourteen and so starved for maternal attention that she's going to Blair Waldorf and Vanessa Abrams for this. She's going to end up a Manson girl, I swear. Vanessa cooks up another helping of bullshit about how "maybe you don't go back, maybe you go forward," and how it's better to shove your way into other people's shit and ruin their lives for them: "Get two people in a room willing to be balls-out honest? It might get ugly, but eventually, the dust has to settle...and then you can see if there's hope." J does the ankle-dip of hope, but mostly, do not ever do anything Vanessa tells you to do, because she is a giant hypocrite and because she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about.
The Captain is surfing the snow-white wave right over the heads of everybody in the entire party, and Eleanor's trying to feed him as he makes more and more grandiose statements and refuses to do anything but perch on every surface for five seconds at a time. They get him off the subject of the partnership, then off the subject of Eleanor's awesomeness, and then he starts talking about their arranged marriage thing, and he starts in on forcing his wife to take off the storied ring (which seems to have completely changed shape in the past week) and he's all, "Put it on Blair's finger, right on her finger, no ifs or ands or buts, ring on the finger, this is great, if ever there were an occasion for a toast, that is what I'm talking about, that's magnificent, let's do another toast, what time is it right now in Tokyo, hell yeah!" And finally N's like, "Let's go smoke those cigars you brought, Father," and everybody wonders why, but mostly they're glad his tweaked-out ass is heading away from the upholstery.
Chuck dozes on a divan opposite the burlesque wiggles and movements of the classy lady strippers. Bart and the Asian lady sit down on his either side, and both of them seem much more impressed with the place than you might previously have assumed. Chuck agrees with the woman, saying he wanted Bart to see it "in full swing," and Bart introduces his son to Paulette Cho, who was the interviewer when Bart was interviewed for the Observer, which edition Chuck was carrying around earlier in the episode, but then yesterday convinced Bart to go to lunch -- which is what Chuck saw and told Lily about -- because she's decided she wants to stop being a journalist and start being a mogul of some kind. Which, there's something sinister in that, because TV hates journalists and moguls, especially lady journalists and lady moguls, because they are lacking in ovaries and common human feeling. So it's a lateral move, by the stereotype rules of TV, from evil to evil, but I don't know. Keep your eyes on her. Shouldn't be too hard, she's awesome. So Bart gave Paulette the Victrola proposal, as a test, and she loved it, especially the "wish fulfillment quality" of the report. If you asked me right this second what's going on with Cho, I'm thinking whorehouse. I will lay you odds that evil Paulette Cho is going to pull a Hope-Brady-on-Melrose and Chuck will end up a high-priced call girl madam without even knowing it, like happened to Sydney Andrews. Bart admits to Chuck that it's possible "some old-school thinking and fatherly bias" clouded his judgment. They shake hands like men! And hug adorably! Aww, what's going to go wrong? Paulette wants to go on a tour, but Bart remembers he needs to call Lily, and that's what's going wrong: Chuck accidentally told Lily that Bart was boning Paulette Cho.
Outside stately Waldorf Manor, N is trying to get the Captain to admit that he has a drug problem, pointing out the tweaked and embarrassing hurricane he has become. Dad's not buying it. N -- both sweetly and smartly -- calls his attention to the Waldorf deal and how important it is, to their family. "I mean, you've been selling me out trying to make it happen -- pushing me towards Dartmouth, towards Blair...Dad, you're totally sabotaging all of it tonight!" The Captain reminds Nate, for the first time in the history of the UES making this connection: "I'm the adult. You're the kid!" N is well aware; the Captain tries to push past him back inside, and Nate tries to get him to calm down, and then the Captain...fully punches him in the head! (Not the face! Not the face!) Cops immediately appear, and attend to Nate, and the whole time the Captain is telling them to fuck off, and finally Nate's like, "Sorry, but fuck it. Check his pockets while you're arresting him." They take the Captain into custody, and N bribes the doorman: "My father went home sick." But the doorman, GG notes, is not the only witness: Blair's watching through a window while all this goes down. "Spotted on Fifth Avenue: a father-and-son showdown. Too bad not all the witnesses can be bought off."
Bart is now frantic on his cell about how Lily's not taking his calls, so freaked out now that he's barely angry. "I can't believe you did this! This isn't high school, Chuck." Chuck is very sorry, and promises to explain and make it all better, but Bart's not so sure. "If she doesn't, I'm not sure that's my fault. There's a reason she was so quick to believe me," he says, which is not hugely smart, and then Paulette comes grinning out of the Ladies' Lounge, where she has discovered a fire-eater; Bart puts on a brave face and smiles, telling Paulette to set a meeting with Chuck so they can move forward; he sets out to find Lily. Chuck and Paulette continue to explore, but he feels guilty. Poor Chuck.
Blair stops Nate from getting into a taxi, asking what the hell he's doing. "I'm going to Victrola, I promised Chuck. It's important to him." Blair tells him about witnessing the attack and arrest, and asks why he didn't come to her about it. "I've tried, Blair. But every time I try, something's got your attention. A dinner party, you know, a masked ball..." She's like, "Yeah, let's talk about that masked ball. Let's talk about how, while I was waiting for you to find me so that we could finally be together, you were confessing your feelings and kissing Serena. I thought I was doing everything right." Aww. He tells her it's not her fault, like that helps, and she's like, "Do you love me?" For real! He doesn't say anything, so she hides her face for a second and when she comes back up, she's fully in Blair mode. "You should deal with your father. He needs you. You know what? I don't." He gets it, because he gets her, and she takes off in his cab, and he stares into space, because it really is very hard to be Nate! It's exhausting to be Nate.
S and Lonelyboy queer it up and giggle and she has to close her eyes before they go into the bedroom, the whole nine, and there are candles and man sheets, and of course Dan has to come on with the whole "it's not a suite at the Ritz in Paris or a chalet in Aspen" crap, and instead of telling him to knock it off, she sweetly tells him it's perfect, and he kicks the door closed. Aww, finally!
Chuck meets Blair at the limo and asks where Nate went. "I think we just broke up," she grumbles awesomely, but refuses to talk about it. "I just want to escape. That's what this place is for, right?" Well, that, and putting your sexual issues on shout for the whole city, yeah. The music kicks into overdrive. Hell yeah! Inside, Blair's drinking, and Chuck is tuckered out in his little bowtie. He acknowledges that she's not into talking about it, but before he can offer his shoulder to cry on -- honestly and nicely -- she busts out: "Relief. I feel relief." She clutches her champagne glass awesomely, like, this close to shattering it. She stares up at the girls on the stage, and employs Remedial Seduction Technique 5-B, what we call The Old Double Dog Dare Me To Get Slutty Trick. "I got moves." He's obliging: "Really? Then why don't you get up there?" Blair says, "No, I'm just saying I've got moves," but what she means is, "Double dog dare me, if you please." Again, he obliges: "Come on, you're ten times hotter than any of those girls." True. "I know what you're doing, Bass. You really don't think I'd go up there." No, he really does, and this is all weird signifier burlesque before the actual burlesque. "I know you won't do it," he says, because that's what she keeps telling him to say, and "finally" "pushed into it," she hands rapey old Chuck her drink to guard, which is awesome on many levels.
He tilts back as she takes the stage, with a wonderful smile on his face. I wish we saw more of them together; their friendship is so real and brittle and fun. The camera slides woozily around on her: hands, dancing, tossing her headband into the audience. He leans forward and we flip back to the beginning of the episode as she slowly unzips the Mayflower dress, revealing an adorable chemise. She looks so hot, he stands up and walks toward the stage like he's hypnotized. She smiles over her shoulder at him, and the tranny asks who she is, and he says he has no idea, but he means something entirely different and awesome than we might have thought. "You go, baby vamp," says the drag queen, for what reason I cannot say, and she does her dance, and escapes. He downs his drink and raises a glass to her, and she smiles, and the lights play across his face in slow motion. "As you might have guessed, Upper East Siders, Prohibition never stood a chance against exhibition. It's human nature to be free. And no matter how long you try to be good, you can't keep a bad girl down."
Blair's such a construction, such a performance, with her schemes and her bitches and the Psycho Baby Jane wardrobe and all of these things, that you can forget who's in there. God knows Blair spends most of her time ignoring that girl, and trying to get rid of her forever. She's scared, and everything keeps interrupting a thousand times, and the whole time she's trying to say something very simple, which has very little to do with Nate, or Chuck, or any of it. And if you want to get this thing off the ground at all, now would be the time to pay attention: She's a virgin, though she wishes she weren't. And nobody has ever looked at her the way that Chuck is looking now, regardless of the fact that she's been waiting to marry Nate since she was little. And on a stage with the lights and the music is a funny place to realize that really, nobody's never looked at her and seen her, for real. That it's the easiest thing in the world, just to dance.
Lily surprises Rufus, who's sweeping the ceiling of the gallery for the projection installation: "Still doing anything to get a girl on her back, huh?" Oh, Lily, I get what you're saying there. Funny. Rufus is like, "Cut to the chase. You broke up with Bart again?" She chuckles about this latest "thorny welcome," and he half-apologizes, citing his marriage and exhaustion with "games" and Lily showing up at the gallery "randomly -- and often!" just makes everything more complicated. Lily goes cold and smiles, of course, and offers to leave, so of course Rufus scrambles and offers her a place on the floor, because he could use the company. I guess Vanessa and Jenny have already come and left, not that I'm complaining, but I thought they were going to stay all night, which is why the candles came out, so if Dan is really really unlucky, Vanessa's homing in on his crotch as we speak, but I don't really care, because Lily and Rufus are smiling most deliciously.
Elliott Smith is playing, you see, in Dan's bedroom, because what's more of a turn-on than acoustic emo played by the most hideous man ever to stab himself repeatedly in the abdomen? Whatever, they're kissing in the candlelight, and...he is hot, though, isn't he? Little Dan Humphrey, he's got a certain something. The Elliott Smith, by the way? Totally playing on a record player. These boys and their vinyl, I swear. They talk about how they're happy to be together and about to have sex, and just as he gets ready to go, she stops him. "Did I do something wrong?" No, she says, and even though that's the one thing she doesn't ever lie about, he's like, "I knew the hair thing was too much..." Not about you, Humphrey. Zip it. She admits that she's scared, and he interrupts her a thousand times, and the whole time she's trying to say something very simple, which has very little to do with him. And if you want to get this thing off the ground at all, Humphrey, now would be the time to pay attention. She's not a virgin, though she wishes she were. And nobody has ever looked at her the way that Dan just did. And really, nobody's ever looked at her and seen her for real. Take away the stances and propaganda and all of it, the Upper East Side burlesque, take off all the clothes and all the fears and insecurities -- and Dan's best feature is his ability to comprehend these things at the last second -- and you've got a girl who really just wants you to see her. The easiest thing in the world.
Anne Archibald runs around the house like she's on her own personal coke binge, shouting at Nate that she's heading to the police station, and that bail is set at a million, so they can't pay it. "It wasn't even that much coke," Nate protests hilariously, and she's like, "No, also embezzlement and fraud. I guess they've been building their case for a while." As she rushes out, she calls back to him, "Well, are you coming?" I wouldn't bother, even if Blair was right. His dad's kind of a dick.
Rufus and Lily watch the installation, lying on the floor together and smiling, and the lights play across their faces. Up in Hudson, Jenny's ringing a strange doorbell wearing her polka-dots, and when it opens, she looks up innocently: "Mom...it's time for you to come home." Dan kisses Serena by candlelight and she snuggles his hot self. I would point out that they still haven't done it, and Dan's like, "Mission accomplished. I will be a virgin forever!" week, Blair's going to freak out on everybody's ass, Chuck and Nate will discuss some things, it will be very exciting. XOXO.
But there's Chuck and Blair, in a limo, heading home. "You were amazing up there," he says, and she crawls cutely toward him on the leather, and they kiss. Tenderly, if you can imagine it. It's like the first boy and the first girl of all time. Dan's propaganda is that he has no propaganda, and Serena's is that she used to have propaganda and now she dresses like a cowboy and has no propaganda. Nate literally has no propaganda, but nobody will believe him about that. But Blair and Chuck, now: you could watch them dance burlesque for two hours and they still wouldn't be done shedding all those clothes. More lies and veils and schemes all the time, so they can stay alive. And tomorrow is going to be hell, because nobody wants the shame of being seen, least of all these two. But that's tomorrow: tonight, it only makes sense that they could do this so easily, and so carefully, so slowly and quickly, and so sweetly. See them holding hands? See him asking, "Are you sure?" See the screen go grainy again while that pop-punk keeps playing, and she climbs onto him in her little nightgown, and they make love, and the film falls off the projector altogether and burns itself white.