You know what? If you told me, "Blair manages to turn Serena's caring, delicate probing about the Chuck sex into a violent assault on Serena's character," I would say, "That sounds really contrived." But somehow, the writers conspire to make this episode's first few moments, in which precisely this scenario plays out, bizarrely effective. And honestly, the whole episode is similarly complicated and multivalent. Once again, out of the park. Best show ever.
WATCH as Lily barfs with horror after being roped into a Humphrey Thanksgiving! ENJOY seeing just how nutty and drunk and slutty -- and happy -- Blair and Serena got on Thanksgivings past, not to mention how Serena totally went after Nate once upon a time, freaking Blair out! WONDER at Blair's Dad's total gayness! ENVY the clothes everybody is wearing! CHECK OUT good old Eleanor as she totally gives her gay husband away to a male supermodel like he's yesterday's smoked turkey! LOVE awesome Dan as he charms Lily out of three quarters of her mind and all of yours! REMEMBER how boring the Humphreys were even before Alison left! EXPERIENCE how boring the Archibalds will always, always be, even after the Captain succumbs to a sucking-related infarction and then refuses to die! RELIVE the time Blair ate something! Plus ERIC!
Alison, Rufus, and Lily do a complicated pretense at hiding their history, which lasts five seconds before Alison finally shows some chops and shit gets real. Blair throws predictable but enjoyable fits about her gay dad, and then throws the Mia drama. (And props to Meester, as usual, for making flesh-and-blood of something we all got bored with around Season 8 of Diff'rent Strokes.) Equally real and wonderful Serena comes running at the first sign of relapse and drags B to DUMBO for Humpsgiving, being rewarded with a very sweet little kiss. Aww. Then, gay dad asks for a divorce, the Humphreys do a bunch of footballing and smiling, and the music hits an all-time lameness low. Also: slim-to-zero amounts of Gossip Girl herself. Ugh. But week? Looks like Blair nails every boy...in the whole school! SLUT SPIRAL! YES!
GG leaves us to our own devices over autumnal shots of, one presumes, Central Park: "As per Gossip Girl's Thanksgiving tradition, I'm trading my laptop for Stovetop, and for the 16 hours, the only thing I'm dishing is seconds. When the cat's away, the mice will play. Have fun, little rodents." And as long as we've got the room to ourselves, let's talk about the strike for a second, because this show -- in addition to being, in all likelihood, the best television series ever created -- is also an object lesson in why the strike is necessary. This show gets abominable ratings, by the old system. As lately as last summer, this show wouldn't have lasted six episodes. It can't even hold onto its lead-in, ANTM (itself another object lesson in why strikes matter), by the old measure. And yet it was the first freshman show of the season that got a full pickup. Why? Because it's overwhelmingly downloaded, DVR'd and watched en masse or online. It's from the future and it comes to us in future ways. I myself watch it live, then again twenty-four hours later at TV Night, a tradition stretching back at least five years that usually includes somewhere between ten and twenty of my closest friends, week in and week out. The fact that this wonderful show gets to continue is proof of the suits' developing sensitivity to the online model. So you've got me, getting paid to talk to you, about a show we both love -- a show that shouldn't even exist, by all measure. All of us on the internet.
When we talk about the strike, we're talking about shows like this, or Battlestar Galactica, or The Office, shows that grow and flourish precisely because the networks and their systems of measure are slowly adjusting to the realities of technology. The amount of money generated from timeshifted and online viewing is ridonkulous, but because the internet is so "new" and "magical" -- and let's be fair, also because the RIAA fucked themselves so bad back when the internet changed everything about the music industry -- the AMPTP gets to have it both ways. They get all the money from all those diverse ways we have of watching this show, so they keep it on the air -- but at the same time, throw up their hands and say they're taking a bath on it, while giving no money to the writers that created these stories we love so much. This show lives on the internet and outside the Nielsen standard, but because the AMPTP chooses to dismiss the new models as witchcraft in their rhetoric, they get all our business without handing anything over to the people who made these wonderful characters live and breathe. Make no mistake: if they weren't making cash hand over fist on this show, we wouldn't be watching it right now, and you and I would have nothing to talk about. Come the fuck on.
["Preach it." -- Sars]
Anyway: "Promiscuous." The music in this episode sucks, but in a particular and coolly deliberate way: besides servicing the plot even more deliberately than usual, it's also all music from a year ago, last Thanksgiving. Which is where it starts: Serena was whooping and hollering on the street, with Blair looking on, simultaneously delighted and irritated. "I mean, who gets wasted on Thanksgiving?" Serena put forth the characteristically selfish-yet-expansive theory that her exuberance was just an antidote for the holiday blues, and continued to giggle and dance around. Blair noted that a stressed Lily meant a stressed Eleanor, who had a lot on her plate. Serena demanded Blair do shots with her, and realized she'd lost her purse. Blair stood her, akimbo, on a street corner, and told her not to drink -- or hit on -- anything until she found it the purse came back, because Blair's life was taking care of Serena, because without that, what could Blair be?
Also on a pie errand was Dan Humphrey, calling in to the home base to reassure his mother that dessert had been secured. He saw Serena wandering out into traffic and, as he always will, wandered the fuck into traffic behind her. He whisked her out of the way of a Typical New Yorker and offered the possibility that she might need a crossing guard, or a cab, and lost his pie in the process. He introduced himself to the damsel, and she shook his hand drunkenly; she didn't remember the year before, when they'd met, or the year before that, or the year before that. Blair jumped between them, pulled rank, told him to keep his hands off her; Serena wrapped her ridiculous limbs around her greatest friend like a big drunk octopus. Blair ushered Serena into a cab with a poisonous look at Dan, but Serena lightly said goodbye to him, and called him "Dave." He said goodbye, after they were gone. Saving Serena meant never having to save yourself.
S rides to B's house in a taxi, laughing that this might be the first Thanksgiving she remembers in a while. Dan smiles ruefully, and allows as how that's probably true. She didn't get the joke. Serena's excited for Blair: her dad's coming home, for the first time since he left for Europe with Roman. Dan's having a reunion too; his mom's going to be in attendance. I wonder if she's even gone home. Serena smiles, happy for him as she is for Blair: "It seems like your mom is really trying." Dan's not incredibly impressed, because when is he ever? "Better Thanksgiving than never." She offers to be on call: "Call me between every course?" Gross? He agrees, and she makes kissy noises into the phone. I don't think it's necessarily gross -- from what Serena knows about moms you could retro-engineer Martha Stewart's entire Entertaining back catalog, but not a shitload of comfort, and she knows how ambivalent Dan is about Alison. As we all are.
Jenny's overjoyed to have her mother home, all asking her about the healthful qualities and nutritive value of heavy cream; Alison's overjoyed to be home, cooking and cooking and cooking until her family will finally just give in and forgive her before they pass out or explode. Dan calls her on the overfeeding borne of guilt, and she's like, "You got me, but check out how much more twisted this could get, because Eleanor Waldorf is about to tie binging and purging, guilt and parental mistakes, and Blair's entire body into a barfy little bow." Gotta say, I don't hate Alison in this episode much. She's got a lot of BS going on, but ever since that whole "The price of loving musicians is dealing with musicians" speech last time, I'm kind of on her side. In a world where Lily van der Woodsen was less than the most perfect creature in creation, I wouldn't give it a second thought, in fact. Jenny draws a line in the sand and says that one side of the kitchen is positive -- that is, living in a fantasy world where Alison and Rufus belong together -- and the other is negative -- that is, full of self-importance and Dan's usual bossy bullshit. Dan offers to join the side of goodness, naïveté, and opening the cranberry sauce. Because he is a man, you see, this is the limit of his ability to cook. I wish he would just make out with Chuck already. I miss Chuck. And the Minoriteens. There's another character missing this week but if you say her name three times, she might show up, so I'm keeping quiet about her. I do not miss her. Her ass is, I'm sure, in Vermont having dinner with her no-doubt fabulous parents, hectoring them about free-range this and tofu wheatloaf that, and chaining herself to the turkey.
Blair's going wild looking for her father Harold's "famous" pumpkin pie recipe, as jacked from Mr. Bobby Flay. "Look at you!" Serena giggles. "Quite the chipper sous-chef!" Blair smiles demurely that she is, occasionally, in a good mood. "Sometimes because I increase my Lexapro, sometimes because my dad's in town." Heh. Serena does her best to poke the manic balloon, because what if the real reason is not Gay Harold but in fact because Blair is in a relationship with the devil himself. "You and Nate get back together?" Um, no, not since GG.net went public with those pictures of him and "some skank" that we know was innocent Little Jenny Humphrey and not a skank at all. (Yet.) Serena does her best impression of a sleuth and fails miserably, asking offhand what Chuck is doing today. I'm saying! "Why are you asking me?" Blair rolls her eyes with another "here we fuckin' go" as Serena attempts to be subtle. "Well, you guys are friends...and Blair, look. You know you can tell me anything. I'd be the last person to judge anyone." Go ahead and stick those giant fingers right in the tiger cage, why don't you? Blair's like, "Yeah, because you're a whore!" Serena ignores the snapping of the tiger's jaws, of course, because this whole episode is about how you can look directly at the worst thing about a person and then somehow love them anyway: "Blair, I saw you with Chuck," she says, canapés repeating on her at the thought.
B spills it all out: "I don't know what I was thinking! I mean, sleeping with him once, maybe you could understand, but twice?" Serena's disgusted and starts whisper-shouting even as Blair's hushing her. "What happened to no judging?" Serena shakes her head and tries to lower the stress level, without effect: "I'm not! But I thought you wanted to wait. I thought you wanted to make things special." Blair points out that Nate's virginity came and went in a not-so-special way, and he's still on GossipGirl shout, so isn't it kind of tacky for her Chuckly activities to earn her the slut card? Serena's brow furrows ever deeper: "Tell me you didn't sleep with Chuck for revenge." Blair then says the grossest thing anybody has ever said at any time: "Well, it wasn't because I like his natural musk." That phrase apparently does to me what the word "moist" does to most people. Gross me out to the infinite power. "And besides, nothing hurts more than sleeping with the best friend. Right, S?" Now fully in the tiger cage and face-to-face with Blair's continuing disgust with herself, Serena stands up. "Way to prove a point."
And it's that same thing as last time, where Blair is in a trap and can't back down, because she's Blair, so now she's just 100% committed to hurting Serena as much as it takes to shut her up, because if Serena's not down, then she really is disgusting. If you had sex with Chuck in the woods and Serena was like, "Whatever, it's cool," it wouldn't count, but instead Serena's managed to come up with like six ways it's gross and beneath Blair, so Serena's gotta go down. Blair's curls bounce all around: "Well, I learned from the master." Serena points out, still ruffled, "If you're sleeping with Chuck, I'd say the student's become the master." As in, a hundred Masters in Slutology from the Whore Academy. "Jealous you didn't get to sleep with him first? There had to be somebody left on the Upper East Side." Serena van der Woodsen is like whoa. If you've got a friend who's prone to self-harm and she's taking it this far in order to show how grossed out she is by herself, this behavior is what you call a red flag. Not even God could manage to chill her out about the Chuck thing, and she's slept with him again since then. Eleanor enters breezily, asking when Lily and Eric will arrive, and Serena regrets to inform her that the van der Woodsens will not be attending Thanksgiving chez Waldorf, on account of Blair has once again been possessed by the spirit of destruction. Blair concurs: "I uninvited them." Eleanor knows her daughter well enough not to engage when the adamantium's still a-snikt, and there's a powerful little standoff between the two girls. Just out of the frame, Blair gives a tight little wave goodbye. "Happy holidays, Eleanor," says Serena, awesomely not apologizing for once. Blair gives her bewildered (but not too bewildered) mother an elaborate shrug that really does manage to say it all.
Lily van der Woodsen leads her merry progeny down the road, acting crazy and poking at road stalls. "I don't know what you're complaining about. I'm just trying to provide my family with a home-cooked meal!" She's giddy and floofy and very Hot Mom at this point in time. Even looking at farmer's market pumpkins and chicken carcasses, you can tell this counts as shopping. Eric points out that Lily can't cook, and she's like, "Talk to your sister. She's the one that got us exiled from the Waldorfs!" They're all very good-natured about this turn of events, and I guess I can see the up side, because Blair is a lot to take on at any time at all. Lily's like, "Let's get constructive!" Eric points at a Peking duck, like in A Christmas Story, and Lily nearly high-fives him. Serena is not impressed with this idea, but Lily's expansive: "There's nothing wrong with having Chinese food on Thanksgiving! Jews have been doing it on Christmas since forever!" She's doing all of this so hilariously, I can't believe it. She has more Thanksgiving spirit than a hundred starving pilgrims on angel dust. She holds up a pumpkin like it's a shiny silver briefcase containing an unknown dollar amount: "This is festive, yes?"
Dan calls for no real reason, and Serena manages to tear her eyes off the spectacle of her mother, who looks likely at any minute to lead the shopkeepers and stall merchants in an improvised rock tribute to Thanksgiving pageantry. She tells him about getting the boot from Blair but rolls her eyes instead of telling him why, and then chuckles in a disarming, ironic way: "Good news is, my mom is gonna slice us up a pumpkin. Oh, and there's a duck!" Dan doesn't get the train-wreck humor because he is incapable of irony or letting anybody live their lives, and tries to swoop in once again and save her from Thanksgiving's evil. "No, no, no. You can't eat duck and raw pumpkin on Thanksgiving. Uh, you know what? I'm the guardian of Vanessa's sister's van for the weekend, and we here at the Humphrey Manor have an oddly large kitchen table." Of course that character's sister has a van. It smells like Cheez Doodles and failed aspirations and dusty amplifiers. While Lily and Eric continue planning their depressing Thanksgiving -- "we can starve in a fragrant hotel room!", Eric giggles -- Dan offers to pick them up and bring them to DUMBO, where the Humphreys live this week. Serena gets off the phone and turns the crazy eyes on her family: "We're not starving! Look, I got us into this mess, so I'm gonna get us out of it." Lily, already dreading this plan, begs her to elaborate. "Thanksgiving at the Humphreys'! Dan invited me, and Eric's friends with his sister, and his dad's really cool." Eric punts the pumpkin, and Lily swallows a whole mess of horror about Rufus and how "cool" her daughter finds him. Then she and Serena laugh terrifyingly into each other's faces, like so: "Ha ha ha! Ha!" and "Heh heh? Ha?" And you know, even if I weren't secretly dating somebody's married father, I would still be loath to have Thanksgiving at the Humphrey house. Of the two forced, creepy kinds of cheer, give me Lily's desperation and fakeness over whatever the cheesy fuck goes on there any day.
Serena was gorging on potatoes and Blair was doing her best to avoid them. Carbs and all. Harold located his pie recipe and summoned his daughter, and Serena managed to avoid about sixteen faceplants in the process of just sitting in a chair. Harold welcomed Serena sweetly to dinner, and she grinned backwards and upside-down at him, arching her back, sending out a mighty hooting "Woooo!" Eleanor offered her daughter a canapé and was rebuffed, but soon learned that Blair ate fifteen of them that morning, sending Eleanor's worry ping-ponging back across the table. It was scary when her daughter purged and it was scary when she binged, because it's the same illness either way. On a related note, Blair covered for Serena, shaking her awake at the table; Harold promised his wife that Blair was fine: "She has been for two months. What did the doctor say? Don't drive us crazy, okay?" Like what Eleanor needed was perfect Daddy stepping in once again. She kissed her husband's cheek, and he smiled warmly, and I don't think any of us are in a position to judge anybody else's family, not really.
"We're going to need to set another place at the table. Laurel brought one of the models I'm working with." He asked her name, if he'd met the girl before, but it was a man, named Roman, that Laurel was bringing. "Ah," he hummed. "Roman." She shook her head: "Not this one, Harold. We have to work together." They grinned at each other and he squeezed her arm; they made it work until it didn't work anymore. Blair looked at the food she wasn't going to eat, and Serena eyed the drink, and Eleanor smiled at her husband, and everybody covered for everybody else, and they made it work. Nate entered, so much happier and more energetic a year ago. Harold cheered him and Eleanor kissed him hello, and the Waldorfs sent Nate upstairs with Serena, to get her sobered up in a warm bath before her mother could see how far she'd gone. Serena put a rose in her teeth and danced out of the room on his arm, tossing a napkin at Blair as she was going, and Blair turned back to help her daddy, laughing and happy and well.
Blair is bemused by the caterers; Eleanor is bemused by her daughter's adorable choice of outfit. Somebody's missing, and it's Harold. "I thought you knew! Your father isn't coming. He didn't tell you? Ugh. He decided to stay in Paris. He's got either too much work, or Roman is too much work, or...who knows?" There's a trick to Eleanor, I'm not making this up, where you can just tell she's pulling something. She's behind the scenes somehow, like when her daughter was a bookcase. Maybe the reason Blair's so addicted to her dad, in addition to him being awesome, is because they're too much alike: she's way too much like her mom, and the downside there is that she never sees it coming; why wouldn't he call and tell her himself? Why don't Blair's men call her when they have something to say? (And why do they keep making out with dudes?) "Darling, you should know by now that your father is not a fan of the difficult conversation. Now why don't you run along and change into something a little more...enchanting!" That sneaky, loopy smile into space, and Blair's gone, and Eleanor goes dark again.
Dorota stares bleakly at Eleanor, and if you could speak Silly Made-Up European, this is what she's thinking: "We've always agreed that Grey's Anatomy is the ne plus ultra of the family drama concept, with Meredith drawing every single person into her hideous family drama, turning her boyfriend into a cheating husband like Webber, turning herself into the retreating ice queen like her mother and Finn into Thatcher, forcing everybody into those roles even when they don't really fit; closing her eyes and screaming when they behave outside them. But man, this show. You got Blair eternally waiting for her dad and disinterested Nate to call her, and Serena and Dan replaying their parents' whole history, and Jenny trying to combine Serena and Blair into the perfect Alison substitute, and no matter how they recombine and change it up, those echoes are always going to be pulling at them, one way or the other. Seems to me that kind of layered, brilliant meaning would indicate that two and a half percent of the gross for new-media sales and distribution is not a lot to ask when the AMPTP is suggesting, um, zero, much less eight cents on every DVD sale when the current four-cent rate is based on the originally criminal VHS formula, which was bullshit when it was signed in the first place, considering that people will be watching this show in particular on DVD for the rest of time, because it is so awesome, which wasn't even really a sales outlet back in the day of VHS and is now the way most people watch serial television." Or...something like that, I'm paraphrasing here.
Back at the Palace Hotel, Lily has come down with a case of the Humphreys in a major way, and changed into a dressing gown. Eric and Serena promise to stay home with her if she's not feeling well, and there's a knock at the door. Is it Dan? No, it is room service! Guess Lily's appetite was only pretending to have disappeared. That's a real "Lady Or The Tiger," isn't it? Room service at the Palace, or Dan Humphrey? They both come with a lot of doilies and hidden costs. "I lied," she admits. "All I care about is that you two are together. I don't want to be an imposition." Serena protests, and Dan shows up with his stupid van. "Bold choice of attire, Mrs. van der Woodsen!" he cutes. Either he's getting better at it, or I'm getting some kind of aversion-therapy Dan threshold. "Um, unless it's what they're wearing on the runway these days?" Serena scornfully blows her mother's spot about "sicking out" because she doesn't want to be imposing, and Lily promises she's fine curling up with a "good book." Dan points out that Nicholas Sparks is not only not family, which is what Thanksgiving is all about, but also implies that Nicholas Sparks is not worth reading in the first place. Far be it from me to side with Dan Humphrey's teenage snooty concept of literature, but when the kid's right, he's right. "I'm not taking no for an answer. In fact, I'm not even asking. You are coming with us. I'm adult-napping you!" This last said with such charming self-congratulation that I am just completely confused. He's doing the same horrible shit that he always does, yet both Lily and I are without defense. Must be hunger. She grumbles and goes to get herself dressed, and he pushes it over the line: "Make it snappy, I'm double-parked. Thanks!"
Since the invention of voicemail, there have been five voicemail messages that were rated the most adorable, the most awkwardly vulnerable and sweet. Lily leaves them all behind: "Rufus, it's Lily. Um, your very persistent son insisted that I join you for dinner. I want to remind you that my kids do not know that we are friendly, and I would like to keep it that way. That said...I look forward to seeing you."
Dorota dresses Blair as she commits herself to yet another soliloquy about how Thanksgiving is her ritual with Harold, and how unbelievable it is that he didn't even call. Dorota's like, "Um, call his ass yourself. Your mother is a vicious and chronic liar who will do literally anything to control you in the mistaken belief that she knows best, and because she desperately needs to exert control over her surroundings, just like the bulimic she turned you into. Also, I'm thinking pearls with this outfit."
Nate compliments his mother on their Thanksgiving, which is of course from some incredible restaurant I don't know the name of: "I had to improvise," she snits, "since we've been disinvited from the Waldorfs at the last minute." The Captain clears his throat, but she keeps going. Anne Archibald has had quite enough, thanks. "Just like I was asked to step down from the committee for the Snowflake Ball, and how I wasn't asked back to the Lincoln Center Foundation. I thought at least your father's lawyer might join us for dessert..." Nate begs her to stop it, pointing out that Li'l Miss Shoegaze was cool with denial until it threatened her philanthropy. The Captain warns him, and Anne continues complaining: "I forgot to call the bail bondsman, maybe he has nowhere to go." I cannot think of anything worse than eating Thanksgiving with a bail bondsman. No, tow truck drivers. I would rather eat with a bail bondsman than a tow truck driver. "Mom, no one is more mad than I am," Nate says quietly -- and word, for good reason -- "but this is not the right way." The Captain tells him not to stick up for him, and Anne stares at the floor, and they are all gripped by the horror of their family. Nate finally checks out and the Captain and Anne feel very guilty, as they should, because they are horrible people.
Humphreys: Alison, Jenny, and Rufus, all wondering where Dan is, all smiling in that weird Humphrey way when he shows up with not only Serena but also Eric...and Lily. Dan introduces her to his parents, and things get very bizarre. Lily straightens her back once again, and wishes everybody a happy Thanksgiving, and reminds herself that Dan will always fuck everything up and make it weird and awkward, no matter how limpid the puppy-dogs get, so it's her fault for even giving an inch, and one day he will pay. But for now, Rufus is going to pay, and before that, she is going to drink the shit out of some Rioja.
"Here It Goes Again" was playing, because nobody yet knew how Jenny was going to end up in a cast by Christmas trying to replicate those Stairmaster moves. Alison noticed that Dan was pieless, and he admitted that the pie was roadkill due to his heroic saving of a certain girl. And since the Humphreys were and are the kind of indigent and destitute poor people that live in a top-floor loft in DUMBO -- a hair's-breadth from homelessness, really -- he could not procure another, even by batting his eyelashes and cheekbones at the alarmed piemaker, and so the Humphreys had to go another Thanksgiving without pie. Alison put a brave face on it, calling him a "real-life hero," and Jenny pointed out that Dan has never seen a girl, much less saved one, but soon figured out that he was stalking the usual blonde he stalked at school. "A thing for blondes? You are your father's son," Alison laughed, shaking her lustrous blonde locks and giving everybody the shudders. "Not just any blonde. Apparently, I like the ones who get drunk on Thanksgiving and almost die." Alison pointed out that this was also his dad's MO, back in the day, but takes pains to point out that the dangerous and troubled blonde she's now brought up and discussed at length for no reason was a troubled blonde other than herself. Dan's solipsistic little mind was blown by the fact that his parents not only persisted in their existence when he went away or closed his eyes, but that they even discovered and had relationships that did not include him. He never recovered.
Lily, Alison, and Rufus do a little one-act play called, "This Is Very Awkward." It goes like this: "This is very awkward." "No, it isn't!" "I kind of feel like it is!" "Well, that's because you're being weird!" "You're being weird!" "Your blonde mom is being weird!" "Children, it is your blonde mom who is being weird!" "My name is Rufus Humphrey and I have no accountability!" "My name is Alison and I am unwelcome!" "My name is Lily van der Woodsen, and I am worth my weight in Humphreys! I will put our coats in Dan's room, even though I don't know where it is located, because I have never been here!" "I will snatch those bitches and put them in Dan's room, because I am his mother and I vaguely remember where his room is located!" "I have been a bad little rock star! All of the children in this room may or may not be my children! Get to work! Eric and Jenny, napkin duty! Serena and Dan, water glasses and candles! Blonde ladies of my acquaintance, now we are alone! Let's get weird!"
After the intermission, Lily does her damnedest to stop everything from being awful, welcoming Alison back to New York. Alison flips out all rabid on her about "Why would you even know where I was or that I came back? I will cut you with my scary bones!" Lily's like, "Um, Dan didn't say when he dragged me here? Obviously?" She hisses at Rufus about how she totally called for something like this very reason, and buries her head in her wine glass. Alison goes all "blessed be the peacemakers" about how "You know what? It's fine. It's fine. Let's just have a great time. This holiday's about sharing." Like she's the one whose ass just got jumped up. Although kind of it was, but at least Lily tried to be cool about it. Lily asks, off the "sharing" tip, that nobody "share" the details about how the three of them are a big old mess. "I haven't exactly told my kids about my past. Well...our past." Dan summons them all to the table and Rufus says off-handedly, "Grab the mashed?" Which nobody ever said except for a Humphrey, as far as I personally know. They both, of course, reach for it like it's his very own junk, and Lily relinquishes the carbs like always, snatching her wine and holding it like a baby. Rufus is like, "Happy Thanksgiving! Yay!"
Eleanor turns from Laurel, at a big table full of industry types, to her daughter, ordering her to eat. "Well, I was going to wait until after dinner, but I guess now is as good a time as any: Did you call Daddy and say that I didn't want to see him this Thanksgiving?" Eleanor calls this a ridiculous accusation, but you can tell it's not. "So you didn't tell him that I was so angry at him for leaving that I didn't even want to talk to him today?" She sighs and tells her mom that she had no right to uninvite Harold. "When are you gonna get it through your head? He left us." Blair corrects her pronoun: "He left you." Eleanor smiles that scary smile they share, and offers to discuss this later, when the guests are gone. "Right now you either eat, or you leave the table." Blair stands, and Eleanor offers her an early dessert, to change her mind. "Where is Daddy's pie? Hmm? I don't see his pumpkin pie..." Eleanor creepily breezes that she sent it down to the doorman, since there were so many delicious choices coming from the caterer. I like a lot of things about Eleanor, but this is not hard math: Blair has an emotionally dysfunctional relationship with food, and Blair has assigned this pie to her father's love no less than three times already, so by bumping first Harold and then his pie from the dinner, she's underscoring it all in a really sick way. This is the line, she's saying, and you're on my side of it, and I don't really care what goes down after you realize that.
"What is Thanksgiving after all, hmm? Now choose one of those amazing desserts." Blair robotically grabs this huge pie, and they smile at each other. It's the exact same smile. I don't usually shy away from reading into people's shit, real or fictional, but Eleanor's relationship with Blair's relationship to food has always creeped me out to the point that I don't really...I've seen this relationship in real life, I know that. Mothers and daughters, and food, the give and take, the weird incestuous daring that goes on, under the table. And I think anorexia is about self-control, playing dangerous games with yourself to figure out your limits, and bulimia is the same thing from the other side, demonstrating your control of the world around you in a dangerous way. Blair to a tee, obviously. She doesn't have anything to prove to herself with anorexia, but she and the world at large have a lot of power games to figure out. Both are performative -- ever more so since the advent of the internet -- but bulimia's about hating the world that controls you, instead of demonstrating or regaining control of your own body. If Blair's in a pissing match with God, then anorexia is getting into a pissing match with yourself. That's what I've learned so far.
So everybody at TV Night curled up into little tiny balls, because Blair is wonderful, and watching her be disgusted with herself, while doing something disgusting, and remembering all the ways she's denied herself in every episode from even eating a normal amount, and remembering how bad it used to get when it was bad, and staring at herself in the glass of the refrigerator when she's done with the entire pie, and then heading out of the kitchen altogether and into the bathroom...I think I didn't curl up because I was fighting it my way, which is drawing all these parallels and comparisons, like doing math or running sports scores, because if you stop to think about it at all, bulimia is really...hateful. Not just to the person herself, but to everybody else in the world, because what the world is getting, is getting chewed up and barfed up again, and that's what you and I look like to Blair right now, and no less so herself. It's as scary and ugly and full of rage as a toddler shitting herself, in rebellion against her potty-training. And that's not how Blair looks to me, because I love her. And it's not like we didn't know this, and it's not like I don't crack jokes about it every week, and it's not like I don't hate eating disorders just as much and for the same reasons as I hate suicidal people, but all the judging and disinterest and shame just go away when it's Blair, so then all you can do is think about math and psychology and run sports scores, because just by watching it happen you become a part of it, and this isn't the Blair I want to know.
Anyway, did you have any awkward exposition that could be used as plot-caulk to get us from point A to point B in this scene? Because Little J is so your girl. I don't feel like recapping the tortuously bad writing that gets it going, so I'll tell you the facts. Lily grew up on a little (well, huge, Alison laughs not unkindly) ranch in Montecito, CA. Blair calls Serena, and it takes about one and a half seconds to get the story of what just happened across, and Serena kisses Dan and her mom goodbye, and whispers enough words that Lily closes up like a fan, because this is how families work. Serena shoots across the sky toward Blair like a comet, and Alison offers that Lily might want to follow her. Back to the awkwardness of the scene and not the story, Lily had a horse named Rosewood. Rufus, turns out, had a song titled "Rosewood." The family myth is that this song was named after Alison's signature scent, rose and sandalwood. (As an unabashed nerd of the books, I will say that Serena's signature scent is sandalwood and patchouli; as an unabashed and devoted fan of Serena, I ask that you not hold this against her.)
Dan and Jenny wow about how the song and the horse and the perfume are all the same thing, and Alison says, deathly quiet, "I'm a fool." Rufus assures her she isn't, and everybody goes silent. "Um, raise your hand if you're over 30 and acting really weird right now," Dan finally says. Good old Dan. Lily smiles sweetly and assures Alison that she never told Rufus about her Rosewood, which is the best you could do under these circumstances, but is also an alarm call to the progeny, because why on earth would Lily tell Rufus, a man she met an hour or two ago, about her horse? And how could he have written a song about it? Given this show's tenuous relationship to time and space, I guess they could be forgiven for thinking that's somehow possible, but these are sharp kids. They quickly deduce that Lily and Rufus know each other, and that this bothers Alison, and then it's just a hop to exactly how Lily and Rufus know each other, and the guilty faces of their parents fill in the sexy blanks, and Alison leaves for a nice long bony walk, and Dan follows behind her, and Eric and Jenny -- hoping they're not brother and sister -- run away and hide elsewhere in the loft, and Lily and Rufus are all alone, and Lily cracks her fifth bottle of red. And in all these different places, there are van der Woodsens and Humphreys this close to barfing, but not in the awful way. Barfing in the funny, metaphorical way.
Nate dragged Serena into the bathroom and started taking off her shoes; they grew up together. They've all known each other forever. Serena, tipsy, complained that Blair was not the boss of her, and Nate laughed ruefully: "Oh, are you new here? 'Cause Blair's the boss of all of us." He choked on the signature scent: "Seriously, Serena, you smell like the floor of a brewery!" She flopped around and protested, then goofily smelled her hair, and realized he was right: "Brewery floor with a hint of secondhand smoke?" And a pint of Old Spice, he chuckled, and turned on the water. "Blair's a bossy genius," they agreed. It's how she stays alive. Serena held up the spigot and spoke into it, interviewing him cutely: "So, what about you?" He continued to undress her, rolling his eyes: "What about me? I don't smell like an ashtray." She turned the water on him, laughing hysterically. "But you look like an ass tray!" He laughed for a second and then squeezed his eyes shut, playing the victim, and she let down her guard, worried she'd taken it too far somehow; he laughed and tackled her. They screamed and played in the water, like kids, and for a second they were. Blair answered the call of her paranoia, and for a second maybe it was going to fall apart, but then they both jumped on her, and she was a kid too. They were a family, covering for each other. Blair doesn't get to be a kid very often. Bad Serena's never quite so charming as when she's twirling, soaked through, shouting: "I got you both! I'm king of the world. I'm king of the world!" She always did, and she always will be. I am thankful that Blair got to play too.
Nate scrolls through his phone to Blair's entry, but he knows GG screwed him again. He goes down, past Chuck to Serena, and then flips it closed altogether without calling anybody at all.
Blair's first words when Serena comes into the bathroom are ashamed: "I didn't mean for it to happen." Serena sits beside her and strokes her hair while she cries. Trying again to tease it out, without getting the tiger excited: "I...didn't see your dad downstairs." Good guess, but not the top problem right now: "My mother just decides everything, you know? Everything in the world is just totally up to her." Serena pulls her to her chest and kisses her forehead: "I know." She holds her there, on the floor, and finally tells her they need to get out. Blair refuses to go back to the party, and for the first time in history Serena refers to Chez Humphrey as "a place a little more sane." Which, comparatively, it is; which anyplace would be, Blair points out. She's not really exaggerating. They smile at each other, and Serena wipes her tears, and holds her close.
Dan and his mom walk along the waterfront, discussing Alison's historical throwdowns with Lily van der Woodsen. Alison is fairly awesome at this time: "I focused on transforming my anger into art. I made some collages. I wrote a trilogy of one-act plays about her. Named the character Milly, to try to be, you know, subtle." Heh. Dan can be forgiven for siding with Alison, considering she's his mom, and also Lily is a total bitch to him all the time: "So what was so bad about her? And I mean aside from the superior, fluttering eyelids and punishing sarcasm." You get the Lily you deserve, kids. Alison, now that she's out of the house, gives a very measured and intelligent response: that Lily was Rufus's first love, and brought it up as often as possible, and that's hard to deal with. Especially when you're Alison and you get Cs on every area of the Lily report card by which all men and women should be judged.
Back at the loft, it's a half hour before Rufus summons up enough to courage to go talk to Lily about the coincidental-yet-awful exploding Thanksgiving 2007. She of course starts in about how dare he allow her to just walk into the minefield like that, and he rightly points out that he had no idea she was coming. "At the very least, you knew that Serena would come home and tell me all about the wonderful Thanksgiving she had with Dan, his father, oh, and his mother. Is this really how you think I deserved to find out?" Which I thought was bullshitty, but I see now what she's saying: that Rufus would be using their kids to give her the kiss-off the same way he used their kids to woo her, which is by not actually actively doing so, because he is so very Rufus in every single way.
She rolls her eyes at his dramatic protestation that he is completely lost at this point as to what he does and doesn't owe her: "I mean, we haven't actually defined what we are to each other." Lily points out that every minute is an opportunity, and this particular one is a perfect one, because everybody's freaking out anyway, and Alison's on her hypocritical stroll. Rufus tries and fails to say how much he's been enjoying their secret friendship affair, grossing her out, but he tries to split the difference in a very Dan way: "Look, for better, for worse, you're one of my oldest friends..." Which is just so Humphrey, like, why should there be jealousy or territory or even rational thought when we can all just be friends and kick rocks, because one thing Humphrey men are is unequal to the task of surviving the social jungle that is the UES, Brooklyn, the state of New York, or humanity at large. I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to come up with a realistic scenario in which Blair Waldorf is obliged to compete with Rufus on that field of play. That is so delicious to think about. "Hmm. Oldest friends. That's certainly not how it felt when you kissed me at Eleanor's party." Which is Alison's cue to have overheard all of this, and start stomping her skinny ass around the place some more, because all she did was have a real affair, actual intercourse, with somebody who has the balls to be named "Alexander Bancroft," so how dare Rufus be friends with somebody he's known for twenty years?
Nate comes back home, having figured out that none of his girlfriends is the person to talk to, and that in fact he needs to talk some sense into the Captain. How lifelike and appealing is Nate this week, by the way? Love it. Anne starts in on Nate the second he comes home about leaving in the middle of dinner, and Nate -- ignoring her altogether -- finally gets to his dad's study. Where his dad is lying very still, having just attempted suicide after losing the respect of his son and being hounded to it by the unceasing bitching of his wife. OMG with these people on the Upper East Side, I swear.
Serena smelled much better, after her bath with her two best friends, but had to be reminded that constantly asking people if she smelled less like a brewery was less than subtle and kind of blew the whole jig. Lily was coming, and it was Lily they were all afraid of, because Lily would put a stop to it. Nobody told S not to call Dorota "Dorito," but, you know, baby steps. Harold complimented Serena and Nate on the shirts they'd both changed into; the shirts were his. The whole tableau was frankly adorable, with Harold complimenting his taste via complimenting their dinner attire. Serena was still wobbling, grabbing at a tray of champagne as it sailed past; Nate and B, and her dad, laughed hysterically as they blocked her from snatching one. Everybody laughed and Blair headed off to help Harold with the potatoes. Everybody thought this was normal, and everybody waited for Lily to arrive and overlook her daughter's obvious drinking problem, because there was a time when Serena was the fucked-up one, and Blair never did anything wrong. And now Blair's sleeping with gay rapists and backsliding into a disease she thought she'd clocked, but once upon a time, every fucked-up thing Serena did was another reason Blair didn't have to indulge, because being stronger and wiser and more mature than Serena was as much proof as she needed. Covering for Serena meant they all could relax for a second from covering for themselves, and being their scapegoat meant never having to think or stop or do anything at all, because they'd be there to catch her, and in this way she helped their families go on. But now she's back, and she's not fucked up anymore, and everything she touches goes to hell because she's not there to be fucked up for them anymore. I love Blair the most, but it's not Blair I want to be when I grow up.
The Captain was running around on his cell phone, out in the hall, a mile a minute about some Dutch company, and no matter how mad Anne got, he had to put forth the concept, the propaganda, that he took business very seriously. Right now he's lying on the floor, dead or dying, and that's just another kind of burlesque, but a year ago, he was yammering into the phone and they were yammering back, and Anne was getting very tired with the constant performance. "Forget the commission," she hissed. "I'll write you a check myself. Sit. We're just about to eat." And suddenly the Archibalds, the power and the money and where it comes from, and the corners he's painted himself into in the year since, make a lot more sense. No wonder he needs Nate to believe in him so badly; no matter he needs Nate to succeed so badly. It's kind of exhausting to be the Captain, especially when you're the captain of nothing and nobody, and your son is just as trapped as you are. Grossed out by this violation, by Anne saying the thing their family depends on not saying, he lost his appetite and took off.
"Your father and his headaches," Anne says, shaking her head. "Probably took the Vicodin and forgot, had some whiskey, and the thing you know..." She's trapped too. I should really stop judging people. Nate gets upset with her scary ability to lie and believe herself lying again, and yells about how it was enough Vicodin for thirty headaches. "Mom, he's got a problem, and ignoring it almost killed him." She immediately goes to a scary place, facially and in terms of tone: "Oh, no. This is not my fault. You can blame whoever you want, just not me. All I'm guilty of is trying to make his life easier." Nate explains how, when you're a man, having things handed to you while pretending to still be a man produces such dizzying cognitive dissonance that sometimes you just stare blankly through entire episodes of this show, but she's not getting it. "My father set him up with his own firm. He gave us the house that we live in, the Hamptons, the boat. He's never had to earn a dime!" Nate's like, "And then he turned crazy, see?" Anne -- finally, finally -- turns on her real face, her real voice, clear eyes, more anger than fake sadness, and it's kind of awesome and very hilarious, considering the dude just attempted suicide: "All he had to do was sit behind a desk, put on a suit and not get arrested, and he couldn't manage to do that. You want me to give him more responsibility in the family?" Okay, I kind of love Anne Archibald. That was awesome. Nate admits he has no idea how they give the Captain an actual life to replace the fake life they've been giving him, but he does know they have to try something else, because he was dying all this time and nobody even knew it. A doctor approaches, and the Captain's awake, and before Anne can go in to see him, Nate stares her down and heads in without her.
Rufus, demonstrating where Jenny gets her occasional moments of being a dipshit, is actually trying to explain to Alison how she's not "overreacting per se, just having a reaction that is above and beyond what is appropriate." Which is not at all untrue in any way, but is dumb to say. Nobody ever heard that shit and went, "You know what? You're right. My feelings at this moment are not valid." Alison whines about how she's been cooking and looking at people with her big beady eyes very intensely in an attempt to somehow make up for ditching them and fucking around on him, only to find out that Rufus has been "making out at theme parties," and Lily's like, "Come on, we didn't make out, and also it was a ruse to convince this gay rapist kid's creepy father that we were... Actually, I don't even remember why we made out. And by 'made out,' I mean 'barely even kissed.'" Before Alison can even get her head around the real deal here, which is that she's right by being wrong, because Rufus + Lily 4EVA, even if they haven't acted on it, Serena comes walking back in with Blair, and immediately A) notes the totally weird vibe, and B) goes looking for Dan, with Blair in tow. Man, I thought having Lily in the DUMBO loft was weird, but now Blair? It's like looking at an Escher painting. It's like Roger Rabbit!
Dan's praying none of them are related, and Jenny points out that Eric's hair is naturally dark brown, "kind of Rufus-like," but before anybody can ask why, then, a fourteen-year-old boy who is a member of neither a boy band nor the touring company of Love! Valor! Compassion! requires such intense highlights, Serena enters, freaking Dan out with Blair's presence. "Explanation to follow, but first, what's going on with our parents?" Jenny gets her up to speed on the parental dating, and Dan explains they're not related -- "Ignore my roots," Eric helpfully suggests -- and Blair points out that, porny Brady Bunch effect or no, Dan and Jenny totally have a garage door in the middle of their room. She then notices Cedric the Cabbage Patch Kid in the corner, and says hello. Dan tries to smother himself with a pillow, and Serena probes deep enough to hear about how their parents totally had sex. "She was a groupie, and he was Almost Famous." Blair realizes that this makes her the product of the healthiest family in attendance, or on this show, and then Serena and Dan shepherd the group out through the fire escape to go get some food untainted by incest.
Alison is trying to suggest that Rufus's barely-there "emotional affair" is equal to or greater than her total whoring it up in Hudson after abandoning her family, and Lily calls bullshit: "Oh please, nobody's buying that. Emotional affairs are necessary to keep a marriage alive." Alison scores, though, by pointing out that Lily has been divorced several times, and Rufus stupidly goes to the "this is not about Lily" place, which seems gallant until you realize that it opens the door to the obvious parry that it shouldn't ever be about Lily, to the point where they are grounded from each other. Lily wonders if Alison is insane in addition to being pointy and a bitch, and Alison is like, "Seriously. I am a big fuck-up, I own that. But the problem is still that you and Lily are messy, and times three that is too much messy, and you have to get over her." Man, if this were Nip/Tuck she already would have slept with Lily twice in the time it took these people to get all kindergarten with each other. (Best season ever, BTW.) Alison hands him an ultimatum, and Lily is totally grossed out by even one second of his silence. Lily, forget him. Marry me!
Serena and the rest of them sit at some expensive French-fry parlor talking about how no wonder Lily was always up Serena's ass about her terrible behavior, because it turns out she was just mad at Serena for turning into her. And Dan is weirded out by the fact that Rufus has been giving him this great Serena advice (which he never follows correctly), when it turns out Rufus is also pretending that Serena is her mother. Blair pipes up with her bizarre opinion: "When you think about it, it makes total sense that your mom was a groupie. I mean, only a woman that had completely satisfied her sexual appetite in her youth would ever marry your stepdads." Everybody at the table, their hair stands on end. Lily comes walking up and orders a nonstop French-fry buffet, and the Humphreys and Waldorf catch a cab so that the van der Woodsens can deal with their shit. Blair kisses Serena sweetly, whispering that the sandwich Serena made her eat was delicious, and she's calling Dr. Sherman in the morning. Serena smiles so sweetly up at her you could die. After the extraneous children are gone, Lily takes a napkin and starts wiping down her chair, making this hilarious crazy grossed-out face when Serena asks if that's necessary. It's awesome, like Serena just asked her to eat a bug. Serena points out that, as a groupie, Lily must have only lately come to value hygiene. Lily instantly asks herself leave to level with the kids, and instantly gives it: "Please. Try spending nine hours with Jane's Addiction on the Ohio Turnpike. Then we'll talk about dirty." God. Sorry, Pamie, but just listening to Perry Ferrell's yowly little voice makes me want to take a shower. Serena laughs, impressed and pleased, and Lily sits down.
Dan and Little J hop out of the cab and say goodbye to Blair -- for some reason it made me really happy to hear Dan say, "See you later, Waldorf" -- and discuss how weird Thanksgiving was, and is, and always will be. Jenny surmises that maybe taking a leaf from the Unmentionable Bohemian and dragging their mother back to Brooklyn was a bad idea. They discuss how it's so weird to think that your parents had lives before you existed, because self-obsession is the prerogative of the young, which is why teen dramas. They wonder if Lily's okay, and what happened while they were gone -- and I would point out that those kids could have been abducted and sold to Gypsies at gunpoint while the adults were tossing around ultimatums and barbs without even an inkling that their kids had just scaled a building to get away from them, because self-obsession is not merely the prerogative of the young, which is why TV -- Alison and Rufus come running up with the old pigskin. God, that's so Humphrey. That's so Humphrey I can't stand it. "It's Thanksgiving! Our fake marriage is real! Nobody ate anything, now let's toss around a football! That's what Americans do, right? Let's do that! Later we can go to the farmer's market and drink some milk right from a cow's teat, or whatever else is dumb!"
They talk a particularly Humphrey-flaccid kind of smack, and Dan chastens his father for keeping his Lily secret, and because Rufus is so in need of guidance that he will allow even his own son to parent him, he agrees. "Given the ick factor alone, I would say that you set my progress back by at least several months." By this I think he means, "I am gay like you always thought, but now it's your fault." Rufus, on the assumption that you can always get gayer, gives him this speech about how could anybody related to Lily ever resist a "Humphrey Man," and I swear any time either of them say "Humphrey Man," punch yourself in the nuts, because that's how it feels from over here. Rufus admits that he caved, and sucks, and that Lily won't be stopping by for dinner again anytime soon. "Your mom and I need to focus on the future, not the past. That's a lot easier for all of us without her around." They stare at each other a bit; I don't know what they're thinking, but mostly I am wishing that Alexander Bancroft would come and fuck Lily's brains out and make Rufus cry real Humphrey Man Tears. Dan runs off to join his mother and sister, and Rufus squeezes those tears back inside, because he just sold himself out in a major way and he knows it.
B finds her mom and it's awkward for a second, due to Eleanor's total emotional abuse that is killing her daughter, but she starts with an apology for lying about Harold this one time. Blair's like, "So that's one time out of the billion lies, cool beans," and Eleanor shows her the divorce papers that she got in lieu of a pumpkin pie this year. Blair understands that Eleanor is stalling on the papers, but points out that Harold is now living in Europe with a man, and they both laugh, but, like, is the divorce really a surprise? Eleanor stammers but says something that rings very true, even if you've never been happily married for twenty years to a gay dude, which is that whatever, he was her Harold. She reveals that this time, the lie was about not seeing her Harold during the holidays, because that was their best time. "Why didn't you just tell me that?" Well, B, because you would have picked Harold if you knew you had a choice, so you couldn't be allowed to have any choices, because then Eleanor would be lonelier than the Captain, and that would admittedly be very sad. Still not off the hook for the bulimia dare, Eleanor, but I feel you on this. She kind of laughs and notes how she ended up alone anyway, and Blair offers to have a private Thanksgiving with her right now.
The Captain wakes up and sees his son, who's been waiting since he passed out immediately, when they first said he was going to live. He tells his dad that Anne's going to be all right, and promises that they are all going to be all right, and before his dad can start lying about how he forgot about the Vicodin before he had his drink -- just like Anne said, just like they always cover for each other -- Nate's like, "Nope. It wasn't an accident, and we're not fucking around like that anymore. When I found you, I thought you were dead." The Captain swallows and doesn't finish his sentence: "I'm sorry. I just didn't...I couldn't..." Nate promises him that he can, and they will, and he puts his hand on his father's hand, like a blessing. And you know what, I think Nate is awesome and I think he has a good chance at bringing his dad back to life and getting his peeps in line, but if he doesn't, man is he screwed.
Vanessa Carlton comes winging our way on saccharine wings of tangerine sweetness, playing her stupid piano and reading from her dream diary. Eleanor gave Nate a covered plate for his father, still wrapped up in Amsterdam, and Harold laughed at Anne for refusing her husband his Thanksgiving gravy. Heading out to the elevator, the Archibalds met the van der Woodsens warmly. Eric's hair was what they call "Rufus-like." Lily went looking for her little girl, and found her slumped in a chair, passed out. "Too much turkey?" Yeah: Wild Turkey. What? Blair nodded and laughed and smiled and didn't think about how her best friend wouldn't even remember this Thanksgiving. The very best one ever.
Serena, Eric, and Lily laugh and talk about their mother's strange new history, chomping on French fries and smiling. Lily said goodnight to the Waldorfs, and Blair said goodbye, sweetly. Serena slept with Nate at the Shepherd wedding, and ran off to boarding school; Eric tried to kill himself. Lily tried to stay afloat, and sometimes she remembered how easy it was, once, to just be dangerous, and hit the ground running, without anybody around to disappoint her, or to be disappointed.
Eleanor brings in the ginger tea, and she and her daughter sit at the kitchen island, inventing new traditions and eating canapés. Harold and his wife, who had an understanding, sat with their daughter between them, and he massaged her feet, at the end of the best Thanksgiving ever. Blair could have gone to sleep right there. Harold ran off with Roman, deserting his daughter, but Eleanor didn't mind: she always knew he would eventually. Blair got better, and got sick again, and Eleanor always knew that would happen too.
Down in DUMBO, Dan passed the mashed and his family made fun of him, for dreaming about his girl instead of enjoying Alison's stuffing. She was so drunk she walked out into traffic, but all he could think about was how beautiful she looked that morning, and how there's something about dangerous girls; Jenny offered that one day Serena might remember his name, and then he'd have something new to be thankful for. Alison ran off for Hudson, and Rufus tried to become a man, and slipped into old habits. And now the four of them are playing football like a sack of fucking Humphreys, and falling into a pile laughing, and Alison's hip bone slices into Dan's abdomen like a spiral-cut honey-glazed ham, and they're a family for a second, as the sun goes down.