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Another weirdly structured, complex plot without a whole lot of layers, like "The Wild Brunch," but enjoyable enough for the acting alone. Blair gets bored and commandeers Serena's school key -- left over from a affair with the swim team or something -- to throw a midnight pool party. Horseplay leads inexorably to concussion and near-asphyxiation for one roughhouser, just like momma said, and before you know it the whole cast is threatened with expulsion unless they expose the effer that brought the key in the first place.
Nate gets himself suspended throwing himself on yet another futile Blair grenade, thinking the key's hers. Chuck, Vanessa, and Blair play a complicated game of threats and bribes when V videotapes the two main effers discussing their effing behind N's back. Long story short, Chuck's going to have it out for Vanessa now, and Blair just literally paid her literal rent for the literal year, but Nate's still in the dark. Where he is thriving, as usual.
Dan sets up a straw man moral argument where somehow he is better than you over and above the usual amount that he's better than you, to the additional total of infinity. Chuck and his father work out a backroom deal to save Serena, thereby invalidating her own brave facing of the music. Why do they do this? Oh, because Serena talked Lily out of dating Rufus, so she's marrying Bart Bass instead -- which excites Chuck, because "incest" is like the one thing on his list that didn't get crossed off in Monaco. If you know what I mean.
week: Nate finds out about B and Chuck, and evinces an emotion. And oh, is it time for the pregnancy scare storyline already? Awesome! XOXO. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
I'm just so worried about Elyse I can't think. Man. Okay. So last time, Alison strapped on her broom and headed Hudson-ward, Lily was presented with the choice between Bart and Rufus, and Blair threatened Vanessa's cuticles and well-being. Now, there's this pool party happening at Constance Billard, and Gossip Girl would like you to know some true things, like how "on the UES, it's easy to think that the world is exactly as it appears -- refined, elegant, imposing." GG doesn't know we've been watching her eponymous show, I take it, because that's like her whole point: "Sometimes, all it takes is a little key to open the door to the wild side." And that little key is called waking up in the morning. Or tonight, a literal key, like a princess fairytale key on a red silk ribbon, which somebody drops on the floor before it all goes crazy. I'm talking martinis, blunts, people in bathing suits with their bare skin touching bare skin of other people...Kati and Isabel wearing those awesome rainbow plastic-flower showercaps like a Lynda Barry cartoon... It's like if your grandma tried to explain Studio 54, is how not orgiastic this orgy turns out to be.
Blair's paddling madly with her zero-percent body fat to stay afloat when the giant deltoids of Nate attack. He asks why she's avoiding him, since he returned from Monaco after his holiday getaway with their boyfriend, and she stutters to the point where it's like the lyingest lie ever told even though she's basically like, "Huh?" He reminds her about how they totally did it after deb ball, but she classily avoids pointing out that she only had sex with her boyfriend, him, in order to prove some kind of point having to do with their shared boyfriend Chuck, who ruined everything to prove some kind of point to Nate and Blair that they should not be together. Chuck is like that bisexual girl in every apartment complex anecdote that turns the girl gay so that she can have the boyfriend, only in this case, he gets it all. Blair's turned on and kisses him back, and the music is pretty happy about it, because this show believes in them. Meanwhile in the background, Kati or Iz is twirling around in the pool like she hit her head.
Chuck looks possibly the greatest he ever looked. Which is funny, because he's wearing some kind of red-striped seaside "bathing costume" with printed shorts and a skinny-strap tank like some old guy in the background of Babar's Day At The Beach. He looks like somebody's French dad. Also, he is wearing sunglasses not only at night but indoors, which is a double shot of Chuck right there. It is utterly, madly perfect, and about twice as hairy as a child their age deserves to be, which note me not at all complaining, but on the other hand if you put the whole Sur-de-Francois look and the total body hair onslaught together with Blair's "natural musk" quote from awhile back, he's like fifty times more rapey than usual just sitting there in the lifeguard's chair.