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.
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.
Apropos of nothing, Blair strides up and starts screaming about "Enough with the blackmail!" and chasing away the young lady he was currently seducing. Slow as slow, Chuck takes off his sunglasses and looks at her like she's a crazy person, which is what she both is and is acting like. Her point is that she's doing her best to ignore Nate until Chuck calls off the attack -- which, as it would for B herself if she didn't have a hockey stick or implement of death handy, amounts to lying in wait, leering, and generally letting her drive herself crazy. He gives us the backstory that in fact the "avoiding" she's been doing is part of the blackmail: "I didn't say forever, just until the sight of the two of you together doesn't turn my stomach." She asks when that will be, and the entire viewing audience is like, "Never!" (Beat.) "Unless Nate gets naked again!"
Chuck encourages B to practice "patience and restraint," lest he come down on her like a sack of rapists, and she begs him to torture somebody else. He'll find somebody, but until that point -- about five seconds, I'm guessing -- she's the lucky winner of The Chuck Is Shadowing My Every Move Creepily Sweepstakes. I'd be creeped out, I guess, but the fact is that he's playing the Blair game really well, whether or not he's in love with her. She's a power player just like him, and vicious just like him, and he's probably playing this nicer than she would. Actually, she was way worse. Blackmail was like Day One back when it was Serena on whom she was constantly going apeshit: she hurt him, so she has to be broken, and once she says uncle, they can reevaluate. Given sufficient money, time and energy for drama, and no legal recourse, and we're all playing by Blair's rules anyway: he's admitting she's the one in control by playing this weak card, because it's the only card he has, and every shitty thing he does in this episode just exposes that weakness more and more. This kind of behavior would be totally gross if she was a delicate flower, or he had the upper hand, but in fact she is Blair: she's more man than he could ever be, and she's holding all the cards, so it's all actually like totally feminist. You say in the Metro Fourth Wave all the boys are turning into girls? No way, man. All the girls are turning into boys. And that is fantastic.
Serena strips down to a totally adorable black one-pieced...garment...you know I don't know clothes. It's like, black, with a big Kirsten Cohen industrial metal ring in the middle of it like J. Lo, and she looks totally hot. Chuck strolls up and offers to "turn that one-piece into a no-piece," and I'm fine admitting that, dressed as he is, as a landed gentry taking a bathing weekend to the coast after hunting on a safari, that it would be hard to say no. She tells him to find a "floatie" to bother. Where is Vanessa Abrams? He chuckles creepily and suggests that if Bart and Lily come back from South Africa tomorrow engaged, they'll be brother and sister. (So Anguilla was a lie, but then they went to South Africa. I bet Lily was totally like, "PSYCH!" and nobody ever heard her laughing about that.) "You know what they say -- the family that plays together stays together," he queasily intones, and Serena smiles about how now he's into incest, "the universal taboo." She imagines that it's one of the only ones that he hasn't violated -- and she doesn't even know what he got up to in Imaginary Monaco with Nate! Either way, I'm so sure, Chuck. Three episodes from now he's going to be like, "Actually, I was a virgin when I slept with Blair, and this has all been a madcap game of switcheroo, because I am the gayest gaywad that ever gayed." He offers to break one more rule with her, and she predictably is grossed out, but honestly I don't think she's buying it any more than we are. He leans in for a kiss and she smacks his drink into the pool.
Currently neither smacked or drowning, sadly enough, we find Vanessa Abrams, bothering Dan Humphrey as usual in his palatial DUMBO loft. She's got her goddamned video camera trained on him and she's talking some bullshit about how he's so fascinating with his "exotic meal of Cheerios on an exciting Saturday night in." She begs him to be interesting. I don't have to tell you that this is one of those planets-aligned moments where I'm like, "Word, Vanessa Abrams. Don't go fuck yourself for a sec." "You don't want me to move back to Vermont, do you?" YES. If by "Vermont" you mean "hell," then by all means, let me bore you. Dan says somewhat wearily -- in his Target-sponsored club-dude shirt -- that if her "whole future depends on getting this grant" for her documentary, then she should find a new subject. AND a new line of work. She puts him off, talking about how it's this eternal story where "the outsider goes inside" -- GG-esque turn of phrase there, Abrams -- because it's "a likable everyman's pursuit" (I'll point out that one word of that phrase is factually true) "of his dream girl begins his descent into the bowels of Hell. This is mythic stuff!" Mythically boring. It's fucking Dan Humphrey. That movie is ten minutes long and it goes, "I am better than this whole situation I'm not invited to!" And the person's like, "Can you be happy or cool for like five seconds?" And he's like, "Not until socialism!" And they go, "Okay, then, whatever, kid. Have you read Catcher In The Rye? Because don't. Ever."
Rufus sits in his sad little cave of sadness playing three sad chords over and over in a desperately sad song of sadness, and even Vanessa is like, "Whatever movie he's scoring sounds depressing." ("...Unless it has subtitles, and then it's motherfucking on.") Dan pronounces it a "biopic," and I don't think I've ever heard somebody say that out loud: "Try listening to that for three weeks straight. But before Christmas, my dad hadn't finished a song in years, so I really don't have the heart to ask him to stop." Vanessa stands up to tell Rufus to stop -- playing his own guitar in his own house -- because she's got her own creative outlets to pursue -- in Rufus's house, which is not her house, because she lives on the streets, by her wits ["don't forget 'in an alley,' like Rayanne Graff" -- Sars] -- and Dan's phone rings, and of course it's Serena, because Dan has no friends, unless you count Vanessa, which I really wish you wouldn't.
Of course Vanessa shoves her stupid camera right up Dan's left nostril the second he answers the phone call from his girlfriend, because God forbid, and then Dan and Serena have a gross little, real little exchange of the "Were you missing me?"/"Were you missing me?"/"Shmubby-blubby-moo?"/"Skeezle-beelze floo?" variety. Serena invites him to the pool party, which would apparently "be a lot more fun if you were here," and Dan notes that, in his big notebook about what Serena's doing at all times and where, he had her scheduled for a "quiet night with Blair." I submit to you that nobody but Dan Humphrey believes in such a thing. It's apparently the last night before Eleanor comes home, though, so they were going to live it up, quietly I guess. I love how with the whisk of a pen they can have Eleanor in town, back in Paris, over there, up the flue, in the kitchen with Dinah, and it never, ever matters anyway. "We were, and then Kati and Iz showed up, and we all went out, and we ran into some people and then ended up here." Which is? "719 E. 82nd Street." Which is? The Constance Billard/St. Jude's School for Young Hooligans and Ill-Advised Young People. Of course. "Bring your bathing suit!" she yells exuberantly, and hangs up. "So what will it be, Dan -- Cheerios and Chaucer, or..." (Like that sentence ever ended with, "The first one, totally!") "... An illegal party at your prep school pool with your high society girlfriend and her nasty cohorts?" Without even thinking, Dan calls out to Rufus that they're going out, and drags V along.
Dan gets to the party and, predictably, everything goes to shit immediately. Breasts are being bared, chicken is being played with martinis, everybody's having a great and awesome time, and then: "If you wanted to get the perfect shot of me feeling like an outsider," he says, but I mean. Who cares how that sentence ends, either. "If you ever wanted to catch Dan Humphrey acting like an outsider, wait three seconds, because boy is he invested in that concept." Then some chubby kid won't leave some other kid alone, and gets pushed in the pool, and Nate's left pectoral muscle twitches in slow motion and he dives in and rescues the kid, who is bleeding and concussed. Dan and Nate deal with the kid and administer CPR, which Dan learned at the Y while his parents were discovering themselves instead of parenting. Everybody's totally worried and the cops show up and Chuck snags the silk-beribboned key, but misses the cell phone chock full of pictures of hot teenagers doing hot teenager things.
Which on Monday (the party was Saturday, mind) is presented to the uniformed denizens of the Constance Billard/St. Jude's School for Swim Party Shenanigans with a bunch of speeches from the new headmistress, Ms. Queller. "It's unfortunate that we had to meet under these circumstances, but I look forward to getting to know each and every one of you," she says. She does not know these people at all, does she? The consequence of them totally going nuts and having fun like monster Communists is that she's calling all their parents, and demanding a ten-thousand-word essay. Awesomely, it's not an essay about how to be better Americans, like you might assume, but in fact all about what the fuck is wrong with them and how they ended up at the party. She will also be interviewing them one-on-one, which works on all shows really awesomely, but especially this show. The person who broke into the pool and started the party will be expelled! And if they don't turn each other over to the Queller Gestapo, everybody will be. The worried glances bouncing all over the room like a madcap tennis ball apocalypse are, actually, the most unlikely part of this whole scenario. These people are in high school, I'm so sure they're worried about this. Well, Dan probably will be.
After a thousand and one voicemails, Dan hyperbolizes, he is finally returning Rufus's panicked calls about the expulsion scare. Not that he has anything to report, really, which is generally when I don't return calls. Which makes me kind of a Humphrey, actually. Rufus is like, "Now is the time in January where I parent!" And Dan is like, "That is a drag!" He needles his poor kid some more, and Dan fervently and honestly wishes he hadn't even left the house on Saturday, and then Rufus gets...totally shitty. "If you know something that could keep you out of trouble, then you need to cooperate... Don't think for a second these other kids aren't gonna be looking out for themselves. You need to do the same. All right?" NO! That is never all right! Categorical imperative! Your behavior is not contingent on the behavior of others! He just explained more in one freaked-out phone call about his relationship with Lily than a thousand awkward run-ins and delicious salad-makings could do. It's not that I mind the advice to do the right thing, of course. It's the follow-up: "And remember, they will eff you, because they are effers, so you eff them first." No wonder Dan can't remember how awesome Serena is from one week to the . Every time she demonstrates her total awesomeness, you get Rufus irrelevantly screeching about how Lily broke his heart by...having nothing to do with his awful marriage. Trust nobody! The truth is out there!
Lily comes bombing into Rufus's gallery in Williamsburg like she was shot out of a platinum lady-cannon from Tiffany, all, "Did you hear? Our kids are in some kind of trouble I didn't even hear about because the second somebody mentioned the fact that we both have kids, I threw my phone onto the floor and loaded myself into my lady-cannon! Did you know we both have kids? Did you know in every episode something happens with our kids and then you and I just kind of ignore it and snuggle and wait for it to get better? Can we do that right now?" He's like, "The details are these..." And she's like, "Oh, and I'm marrying Bart Bass! SUCK IT!" He points out how, on Christmas Day, he totally crawled on his hands and knees to Manhattan in the softly falling snow and a sexy henley and declared his love without actually going upstairs or anything, and Lily gets very vulnerable but also very Lily: "Oh, if you're referring to the message you left me...I didn't get it until we were already on the plane. It was very...endearing, though." ("SUCK IT TWICE!") Her words, I love it. "Yeah, it was endearing, Wonder Years. Not in a grownup way, but like a freshman with vomit on his sweatshirt, hanging out in the stairwell of the dorms, singing Sarah McLachlan tunes."
Rufus just about starts cutting himself right there, but she's awesomely not done, and actually says it in a way that makes her look good: "You 'miss me.' That's great. I miss you, too. You kiss me at Eleanor's party, and then you say you can't see me anymore because your wife came home, and then you call and say you should've never let me go, and then you're back with Alison again." Succinct, damning, well-spoken and unassailable: Lily is the best. Rufus gives the obligatory and ever-so-Rufus answer: "I didn't plan any of that!" Lily's like, "I know, you're a total Sagittarius and it's really hard to deal with." Rufus points out that she is now a total whore for marrying Rich Husband Number Five, and without even dropping the act for a second, she sweetly says goodbye and takes her leave. Seriously. I don't care if your awful wife is the best person on the planet, which she most assuredly is not, but even if she were, that was some bullshit to pull on old Lily. I'd marry three dudes for that. Three skanky dudes. Republicans. I'd marry the Bush administration. I'd marry Lisa Schwarzbaum is how bad I'd hurt Rufus, when you put it like that. I'd mail him an envelope with my panties, Tucker Carlson's bowtie, and a meanly worded note.
In the elevator Chez Waldorf, Vanessa busts out her video, which specifically is of Chuck grabbing the mysterious and magical and preposterous key. Which I love so, so much, because it looks like a prop from one of the fifteen movies coming out this spring where an arcane book opens a doorway to another world of unseen wonders and terrifying adventures, and you shouldn't read it and there's even a warning label, but then you totally read it and have adventures. Have you seen the ads for these movies? Magical volumes that make fairy magic happen are like the Jude Law of 2008, they're in everything. And that's what the key looks like, even though the door it opens is to a state-of-the-art Olympic pool at a private school where even the multimedia center enjoys its own high-def entertainment from the future, and that is exactly how I want this show to be. They head inside, Dan wondering WTF with the key Vanessa just had to tell him about, and inside Blair's house they're not exactly chained to the desks. It's the usual drinking and chatting and laughing and mischief, and Dan's got his usual, "Oh hell, people having fun, the bell tolls for thee," and Serena's like, "Let's write some essays! Here's some peyote!" or whatever. Blair explains that they're learning all about this "Ethics" thing people always talk about from some graduate student dude Kati and Iz boned at Le Bilboquet. I love how they were all sitting around before just now, like, trying to figure out how you pronounce that word "ethics," and then decided to go through their little black books and find somebody who could tell them all what that word means.
V tapes B and B tells her to suck it, and then takes Serena aside to explain the obvious, that "Michael Moore" over there is, as usual, just using this non-event and videotaping hijinks to get close to Dan. Serena explains that she actually needs grant money, and is hoping to score with this scintillating footage of Dan's furrowed brow. Blair rolls her eyes hugely and Serena -- knowing that Dan can't afford a laptop here in the twenty-first century -- asks if he brought his "legal pad." She runs off to clear a quiet spot for them to get ethical on some shit, and Dan makes a cute face. Dan and Blair both spot Chuck toying with the key, and Blair grabs it faux-guiltily. She heads upstairs with it just as Nate's getting off the elevator, and Dan crosses to bother Chuck about the stupid key. Without even rising from the fainting couch or even really opening his eyes, Chuck explains once again to Dan how regular basic things work.
"Whatever happened to 'Don't speak until spoken to?' ...Poor little Humphrey Dumpty. Look, let me clarify something for you: regardless of who you're currently sleeping with, you and I come from different worlds. In my world, if I'm suspended or expelled, a wing is donated in the Bass name." Dan's like, "Your world is stupid! I am chock full of integrity!" And Chuck's like, "Great. But one thing it does offer in spades is security. My family can take care of me. What do the Humphreys have to offer? Used Metrocards? Your dad's cassingle?" YES! Yes he did! "And in case you were wondering, you narc, I only took the key from the party to hide it so we didn't all get blamed. Including you." Dan's heart does not grow any sizes at this time.
While B's stashing the key, Nate's upstairs bugging her in defiance of her blackmailing and rude behavior that he still hasn't quite grasped. He awkwardly hands her the love letter, actually calls it "a love letter" out loud, and everybody totally barfs. I love how Nate hasn't even got the wherewithal to imagine the concept of shame. "A hostess can't hide in her room," she says, and bolts. "It's unladylike." He laughs, and then does a tiny bit of snooping and finds the key. Nate's jaw drops...three times as far down as his usual mouth-breathing look of bewilderment, although either because he's putting together a false assumption or hoping against hope that this key will admit him to a dream world of magic, I cannot say. Possibly both.
Dan grabs Serena and bitches and moans about something, I don't even know, and even tells V to back off with the camera. She does, in a classy fashion. "Look, I'm all for loyalty and I'm all for sticking together, but we are not in the same boat here. I'm on a partial scholarship. My parents have no way of buying my way back into this school, or any other. And I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion with your...band of brothers...but if the person who brought that key refuses to step up, then anybody who knows anything has the right to say something." She nearly, almost, barely, rolls her eyes, but contains herself. I'd be like, "You have the right to piss your diapers," but like Dan would last a week with me anyway. He realizes that, of course, she knows who it is, and instead of telling him the obvious truth that it was her, she just asks him to lay off and be cool for the first time in his entire life. Dan Humphrey declines! She explains again that he doesn't get it, there is a thing that he isn't getting, but doesn't explain it, because if you think he's being judgmental now, wait until it's not some hypothetical rant about how his inalienable rights to be a huge snitching tattle-tale are in our nation's most sacred document. She gets a little hardness in her eyes but doesn't spill.
Chuck attacks Blair on her way downstairs looking totally nuts and creepy, and yells at her about the kissing at the pool that he just heard about earlier that day from Nate. Blair finally just says "fuck it" and tells him to tattle all he wants, she's done playing and worrying about it. I'm proud of how long she kept it going, because you had to know at some point she was going to be like, "There is not a person on this earth that is worth thinking about for this long except maybe Serena, and I am so over feeling weird and guilty and hiding from you and hiding from Nate. It's interrupting my busy schedule, and this, we cannot have." Chuck says the strange pointless thing again about how she faked her virginity with Nate. I don't get that. Well, I guess it's kind of Liaisons, in a way, like everybody has white sheets they haul out on special occasions or something, but mostly it's just awkward. "Um, I faked my virginity like this: I went, 'I'm a virgin! These sensations are new and interesting!' And he was like, 'Did you say something?' And I was like, 'Oh, I was just saying that I am totally a...' And then he made a funny sound and went to sleep, because we'd been having sex for five minutes, so I, like, didn't really worry about it. He's a seventeen-year-old boy, not a gynecologist."
Blair points out to Chuck that, besides the fact that -- though they both love him dearly -- Nate is not exactly Nancy Drew, also there are two stories here: one is Chuck's, which is disreputable and not trustworthy due to the fact that Chuck is gross, and the other is Blair's, which wins every time in every way for every reason, because she is Blair Waldorf. Chuck swears he has proof, and before you get totally grossed out, we reveal...Effin' Vanessa Abrams and her stupid goddamn camera, taping everything they just said. This girl! It's just unsuitable, the shit she pulls. "Hey, I know this is your house and I'm not invited, and the last time you actually threatened my life, and you've already asked me not to videotape you, but...I'm Vanessa Abrams. I will always be yuckier than you thought. It's my mutant power!" They both demand the tape and she tells them both to get lost. Dan comes up in a huff from having once again been a billion times better than Serena in his own mind, just as Chuck tries to rape Vanessa for the tape. Blair's in the back, like, strapping on some brass knuckles. Dan shoves him away and Vanessa is totally nasty and then they leave and never, ever, ever come back. Fingers crossed, XOXO. Gossip Girl's like, "Now that sex and lies have been caught on videotape, V's documentary just became the most anticipated new release of the year." Or it would, if anybody could possibly fathom the concept that she took the camera off Dan for five seconds, or ever did an interesting thing.
Rufus comes to the Palace and decides to take the fiftieth in an ongoing series of Humphrey Man stands, and Lily is amused, bemused, and a little touched. The speech ends up with how Lily keeps marrying grown adult men with prospects instead of riding around on the back of his Vespa and selling things out of the garbage for her survival, but that this is because she's kind of a whore, and this is her bitch mother's fault, so come get on the Vespa, and aren't you curious what that is like? Wouldn't you like to eat a day-old hamburger from behind a restaurant and then ride his childlike Vespa back to the slums and live in a one-room loft apartment with three of the most insufferable human beings in the world, plus your own two well-bred but slightly insane children? It'll be like The Brady Bunch crossed with Great Expectations, only with way more horrible music! And then we can have our own kids! They'll be gorgeous, with your sense of style and my complete lack of sense or accountability! She smiles her usual sweet and superior smile, but doesn't dismiss him out of hand. Rufus leaves and proceeds down the street to treat himself with some ice cream, because he was such a very big boy just now, and writes it all down in his diary, which has unicorns on it, and a big sticker that says ROCK STAR!
Nate confesses immediately to Queller, without prelude. She points out that his family is totally this close to becoming the Coopers, so why would a good person fuck it up, but also that he is totally boring and useless in every way, which cancels out even the fact that he is a ridiculously nice kid. "From what I can see, you always seem to be toeing the line of mediocrity, Nathaniel. Your grades are average at best, almost as though you're not committed to school or your future." He's like, "I am not committed to school or my future, so that makes sense. I am quietly going more insane than any person has ever gone, and I do thank you for noticing, but mostly my girlfriend finally slept with me and is now treating me like shit, which makes me feel dirty, so I have to play out these escalating romantic scenarios until I actually blow something up, but first I thought I would throw myself on the grenade of a pool party, because when it comes down to it I am deeply unoriginal. Punishment please." She grills him for like five seconds about even the basics of this confession, and he produces the key, but its ribbon has gone missing. For Queller, that's a key point of evidence, weirdly, so she asks him to describe the ribbon, and he can't, so she's like, "I AM NOT KIDDING RIGHT NOW."
A smiling Blair approaches Vanessa, who says to fuck right off and not even mention the tape, because it's all this big secret thing that makes her super-special and interesting and gives her a toehold into the Dan and Serena world that she just cannot seem to tear herself away from, and she brattily says that this tape is going nowhere, no how, no way, because her intention is to suck as long and as hard as it takes to get her ass murdered by Blair. "I wasn't going to grovel, and the fact that you even went there makes it clear you have no idea who you're dealing with." Vanessa actually scores a palpable and hilarious hit: "What are you gonna do to me, blackball me from eating yogurt on the Met steps?" That was tight!
Blair grumps and grumbles some more, and Vanessa explains her totally believable and not at all retarded plan of getting -- not a distribution deal, you see -- "just a local arts grant," so she can pay her rent. Go to high school and graduate from high school and stop being a freak! Have some parents! Stop creeping around the entire world at your leisure! Why is she like this forty-five-year-old homeless woman in crazy person clothes that runs around constantly serving coffee and spying and breaking into things and coming up with plans and filming people at weird times and "paying rent" and...how old is she, in all actuality? I realize this show plays ever so fast and loose with the time/space continuum, but it's like Vanessa is the embodiment of that. Like she could also be in another scene at this exact same time, in DUMBO, taping Dan at home and being greasy with him like always, and then the screen would split and the two Vanessas would wave at each other and then turn to the screen and wink at us through the fourth wall like some kind of Patty Duke nightmare scenario and then all the clocks would start turning backwards and water would flow uphill and she'd just be there, grinning with her crazy-lady eyes, and the last thing you would see is a kaleidoscope of infinite Vanessas like at the end of The Manchurian Candidate and then they put you in the Ostroff Center and it's all Vanessa, all the time.
Which is kind of like what happens, because B takes off smiling creepily and then all of a sudden Chuck steps up to try and get the tape away from Vanessa too. He flashes a mega-giant wad of cash at her -- "What's that, your stripper money?" -- and he explains to her the thing I can't even bother to try to explain to Dan anymore: "I know girls like you. You act like money's not important, but the truth is, money's important to everyone." And simultaneously not important at all, which is why the Abrams/Humphrey Coalition Against "Things" is so goddamn insufferable. Vanessa says, "And I thought Blair was manipulative," as though that speech was manipulative at all, and he claims that B's an amateur: "She thinks you're just like her. To Blair, this money is a couple pairs of Manolos and a Chanel bag. But I know that this much cash can make a real difference in your life." Which he learned from his dad, who grew up poor, which is why Chuck's the only person who ever sees both sides, even though his response is to be incredibly nasty about it most of the time. She pops out the tape from her camera and calls him sick, he pronounces her "welcome." Um, like she was taping over the tape she was keeping secret and it just happened to be the one and she just happened to have it right there. Chuck, you effer, she obviously just played you. GG points out that, in addition to sucking in most ways, Vanessa Abrams is a total hypocrite. Word.
Lily's a little unsteady in her conviction at lunch with Bart, and out of nowhere starts daydreaming during a business call Bart apologizes and excuses himself to take. She fiddles with her silverware for awhile, and there's a long, slow pan across all the rich people doing rich lunch stuff. The pianos of too much emotion start playing, and she dials Rufus with a quickness. I knew that second Chardonnay with lunch was a bad idea! Get her phone away from her! She tells Rufus she actually wants to see what they are, and what they could be. Cutely, Rufus is like, "Who is this?" She giggles, and they plan a meet-up at the completely ass-random location of 90th and Fifth that night at 6. Instead of asking why there, and yes, I'm sure there is a good reason but my maps are confused by this part, he just gulps and tries not to cry or something. Lily -- proving just how far down-slope she has slid today -- totally goes, "I'm scared, Rufus...in a good way." Oh, gross! I just punched myself in the nuts! In a bad way!
Queller welcomes all the kids back to their unending meeting hall discussion about pool safety, and then totally expels Nate for lying about how he was the guy who broke into the pool. "Although I appreciate his self-sacrifice, I don't abide dishonesty." She fully admits she's really just putting his head on a pike, though, and then awesomely is like, "Mr. Archibald, you know where to find the exit." Wow. Gossip Girl says something dumb about how St. Jude's new policy is "an eye for a lie," as though that makes a lick of sense, but she does love her rhyming puns and stuff. Queller...continues to get awesome. I wasn't sure about her at first, but man is she cool. "Watch him go, students! Who wants to be ?" I would have loved for the actor playing the headmistress to have leavened her gravitas with some, you know, fun, because that is some kick-ass shit she gets to say, and instead it just sounds creepy and bombastic. Too bad. She continues: "Until one of you comes forward, we'll keep going until every last one of you has walked out that door!" Everybody rolls their eyes except for Dan, who starts whimpering and crying again.
Serena begs him to man up for like the eighth time this week, and he desperately moans through the tears and violent shaking that his future rides on not getting expelled, blah blah, we get it, you're the only person who ever appreciated anything ever and that's just so ironic because you also are the only person who was never given anything at all that you didn't wrench from the soil with your rough hands, whatever. Finally Serena's like, and I'm paraphrasing here, "It was me, you idiot. And the only reason I didn't tell you is that you are a douchebag of truly staggering proportion." He's like, "What? Me judgy?" Um, every moment. He fully goes, "Aren't we past that?" Um, past the part where you totally keep tabs on everything your girlfriend does and inform her at ten-minute intervals, chest puffed out, where she's scoring on your big fat stupid legal pad of ethical behavior? Wouldn't that be a scream. And again: don't get mad at me, I don't hate Dan. She's in it for the exact same reason, and it's even grosser: what she wants most is a big fat legal pad of ethical behavior, because they didn't give her one when she was a kid, because she was raised by wolves, and if she's ever going to stop hating herself, she needs to know she's measuring up.
Serena puts a really gentle, loving spin on this, about how she didn't tell Dan because she didn't want to put him in the position of choosing himself or her. He's been acting like a wolverine and begging for a reason to snitch the whole time, because those UES kids will fuck you over if you don't watch yourself, but now he's in an eff-or-get-effed position, because he does love Serena. And that is...pretty good story, actually. They talk about how she got them into the pool, and of course he's totally accusatory but at least she calls him on it this time, and she explains how freshman year she dated the swim team captain, and he gave her a key so they could fuck in private. Dan, of course, nearly runs shrieking from the entire concept that Serena dated before they met, but manages to keep his seat. So Saturday night, Blair and Serena "ran out of places to go," which is an awesome and useful turn of phrase for this situation, and Blair remembered Serena's key. And the rest you already know: like every party that ever happened to teenagers since the invention of television, two became four became a billion, and somehow this means that Serena attempted to murder a boy in cold blood. Which again, that's so totally Serena; all she wanted in the entire universe was to wear a cute swimsuit, flirt with her boyfriend, and not get raped by her stepbrother, and now she's killing sophomores without even trying. Every week this happens, and every week she's like: "Isn't that so crazy?"
Dan provides the compass that he is called upon to provide, and says that she still has the chance to do the right thing and tell the truth: he even suggests Queller might respect her honesty. "Um, like Nate's?" asks Serena, which is correct in spirit but does evince a troubling misconception Serena has about that word "truth," which Dan points out was not what Nate was telling, which was the problem. Serena's eyes just about cross with the lies and not-lies and up and down and black and white of it all. Dan, touchingly, floats the opinion that she's totally safe in that classy UES way, because she's "Serena van der Woodsen," and she's like, "Um, Bad Girl Serena? The whole concept of this show? Giant whore? Girl makes good? Just because we started hanging out post-rehab doesn't mean I actually sprang into existence. People actually do remember stuff from before we started dating, and it actually does count against me." And so it's his eyes turn to cross, because what? He breathes out and is like, "Ain't this a bitch," and they both think about how they're going to get expelled and there's not a damn thing either of them can do about it (plus the obvious fact that S going back to a boarding school means Blair and Eric will both probably kill themselves some more). So of course Dan is summoned to Queller's office to star in the Passion of the Humphrey some more. What will he do? I'm on the edge of my light doze!
Blair approaches Nate and commiserates with him about how expulsion from school -- which he hates -- means he won't get into college -- which he doesn't want to attend -- and so actually this just gives him more time to smoke pot and talk to his therapist about his gay tendencies, but also that it's so great because it was a totally worthless romantic gesture that wasn't at all self-destructive. She's like, "Well, if you consider how bad I want to go to Yale, I see what you did there, and I think it was awesome instead of futile and stupid. I guess we're in love." He's like, "Of course! You had that key in your room so I rifled through your shit and stole it like Vanessa would tell me to do." She is touched by his Lenny-like gesture for a sec, but then brutally rebuffs him and bounces before he starts petting her hair, because she loves him and doesn't want Chuck to ruin her in his eyes. That's pretty awful, actually: "I don't want to be with you." On the other hand, how awesome that Chuck's eyes are literally everywhere. I think he's got her beat this week.
Lily's packing for her weekend away with Rufus so they can figure out who and what they are and are going to be and whether they're scared in the good way or the bad way or whatever the gay hell they think they're doing, and Serena dive-bombs the bed, groaning in horror. Lily assumes that she's gotten expelled, and points out that whole thing about Bad Serena being two strikes already. Serena notices the packing, even though Lily just got back from her trip with Bart, and quickly surmises that she's back on the Rufus train: "You can't. Please, Mom, not this one." Which is, to me, the point of this whole scene -- not what Serena's about to pull, or the fact that Lily gives in, but that little phrase: "Not this one." Because the shared assumption of the two Rhodes women in this room is that Lily is going to fuck it up. Whatever the relationship, whatever number wedding she's on, they're planning for the one. Not this one, but the . The rest of the dialogue doesn't really follow that, but it does make the scene make more sense, and it's also really sad, because it says so much about how Serena's been involved -- no matter how much Lily protests -- in her mom's grownup life. Which is the fastest recipe for teen alcoholism I can think of.
Anyway, so she's like, "You cannot date and then break up with Dan's dad, because that is awful, and I would rather be Chuck's raped-up stepsister than Dan's incesty girlfriend-sister, and that loft is really tiny, and he's nice but he's not rich husband material. So you tell me right now: Dan is forever, for me, right now. That's what I think when I think about Dan: forever. Which is a thing I don't even think you can imagine, and I don't think either of us can imagine it when it's you, because you are on marriage number five, and even if we could: this is Rufus Humphrey. If you don't fuck it up, he will. So put on your big-girl panties and make the sane choice, as a serial monogamist: do you want something with lasting value and real estate as the only result, or do you want something with zero value and your daughter's total unhappiness and romantic disillusionment as the only result. These are literally the choices you're making, because at the end of the road, we are right back in this hotel suite, the three of us, and I'm either happy or dead. You still don't even know what buttons you pushed to make me and Eric both go crazy at the same time, but you know damn well how this story ends."
Which is why as much as I think this scene is dumb, and kind of manipulative, and Serena's saying this in a dumb Dan-like way that doesn't really get there, and the seams kind of show on thrusting another obstacle between Lily and Rufus: that's how TV works, and that's how this family works. It's not even like Serena's holding her mom hostage or anything, just stating how it's going to go down. Lily and Rufus break up, they cry and act like the jerks they already are acting like, but you can't promise your fucked-up kids a family that you know will not ever last, when there's actually something at stake. This is the difference between love and romance: romance gives you space to breathe, and love is what you do with the breath in your body. Romance is what you are, when you're filled with it, but love is about what you do. That's all she's asking. So I find myself, very weirdly, totally on Serena's side. And somewhat less weirdly, as Serena takes her leave and heads off to prove how much she just realized she loves Dan: so does her mother.
Vanessa drops by Chez Waldorf with the tape and some patented Vanessa stuff about "this might come as a shock," but "not everyone operates from an agenda," and in fact, "some people do things simply because it's the decent thing to do," so she's so fucking real and not into "things." Um, first of all, no good unsnotty sentence ever started with "this might come as a shock," and second of all, I can't say with authority that nobody operates with an agenda, but I'll be damned if Vanessa is one of those agenda-less people. Um, sneaking and stealing and surveillance and stalking and being a jerk are on the agenda. Of jerks! She is just the worst! time I see her eating yogurt on the steps of the Met, I am throwing bows! Whatever. Anyway, she tells B that the obviously blank tape she gave Chuck was obviously blank, and then congratulates Blair on surviving even a single day in the shark tank she calls a life. "Nate seems like one of the good guys, and you seem to really care about him," she calls back over her shoulder, sticking her lovely nose into one more situation that did not require it. "Yeah, you should get in a room and be balls-out honest about it, or something."
1. Call Nate and tell him to meet you Chez Waldorf.
2. Call Chuck and tell him to meet you Chez Waldorf.
3. Drink three bottles of wine with Nate and Chuck.
4. Puckishly place one bottle in the middle of your bedroom floor.
5. Lazily spin it, as though you are in a daydream, and watch it slowly wind down.
6. When one of them reacts, say, "Guys, I've got this awesome idea."
7. Time will pass.
8. Now all of your problems are solved, and you have utterly won at life.
Dan and Serena talk about how Serena just got out of there with 25 hours of Community Outreach, on the committee of which she just happens to be. Dan goes for about ten minutes on this intensely douchey "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you" spree about how felicitous that non-punishment punishment was, whistling with like his finger on the side of the nose, and she tells him to stop it like a hundred times, because there is not a double standard. "You don't buy what she said about me being the poster child for the new honor code? Look, I know for a fact my mom didn't plead my case or donate anything, okay?" He continues to jackass around about how he's not saying a thing, no sirree bob, as though this has anything to do with him or his lot in life, in any way. I want to watch old episodes of, like, Dynasty with Dan some time when he's good and drunk so I can watch him point at the screen and be all, "See those rich people? My girlfriend's a bitch." That's literally how much sense this crap makes when he does it. Anyway, a Town Car arrives to pick Serena up, which is an offense to Dan on such a level you might think it was parked on his body, and Serena's like, "Fuck it, I'm walking," and they laugh and are adorable, but why create weirdness where no weirdness exists? As like your mission in life? He calls after her and then, with a hilariously charming grin, offhandedly asks if they'll take him to Brooklyn.
Early in the evening Bart toasts "the merging of two families," as Eric and Serena feel gross about life, Lily feels gross about accepting the proposal, and Chuck thinks about whatever it is that he thinks about. "To my lovely bride and our growing family."
At 90th and Fifth, just after six o'clock, Rufus will be waiting. He'll see Lily coming down the street, without her luggage, and his face will fall. She will be very beautiful as she comes closer, and the love and sadness in her eyes will make it pretty hard for him to say anything at all. Her eyes won't be glassy anymore, but they will shine. "Please, try to understand," she'll say, but he will. He already knew; he was pinned to that corner, afraid she'd come to her senses one more time. She will be sorry, and he will be sorry.
Lily takes a drink and smiles at Bart, and at her children, caught in the middle, and thinks about how much she likes Chuck, and how fond of Bart she is, and how families grow and blend and split apart. She thinks about hotels and husbands. "Mom looks about as happy as Grandma at last call," Eric cracks, awesomely, and Serena compares Lily's dead eyes to Bart's total lack of affect. Maybe it's catching. "I don't even know how she breathes with her blouse buttoned that high," says Serena, and it's true: she's buttoned all the way up to her glassy eyes. She has to be. She always had to be. You button up, and that's what being a grownup is about, and that's the thing Rufus won't ever quite understand. He knows how to play the guitar, and he knows how to walk from Brooklyn to the Palace in a henley, and he knows how to show you his heart, right out there in public, shivering in the cold, but he never figured out how to button up.
Chuck approaches Serena and calls her "Sis," and Serena offers to kill his ass dead if he says it again. "I love it! Our first brother/sister squabble. I hope you're going to make yourself available for more missed childhood memories -- bathing together, for example..." It's gross, but it's Chuck. It's reflex, it's sad, he's hurting, he needs scandal, he needs something to take his mind off his mother, and his Blair, and his Nate. There's the thing that you are, and that's what guides you. Maybe Blair was just a fantasy too. She seems to choose Nate a lot, when Chuck's not there to stop her, and that's a whole lot like choosing Nate. Button up.
Blair welcomes Nate to her home, and tries to do the right thing. "You're probably wondering why I asked you here," she'll say, buttoned up tight, just as formal as ever, and he'll smile at her language, because that's how grownups talk. "Do you think it's possible for two people who have been through as much as we have to really forgive and forget?" She's asking a Lily question, but they both want a Rufus answer: "If we really want to, I think we can." Pretty as a lyric, hopeful as a child. "If you're ready to forgive me, then nothing can tear us apart." They promise, and they kiss, and she repeats him back to himself: "I love you, too. Always have, always will."
Bart sits with Serena, and -- with a sideswipe about her storied "propensity for recklessness and adventure" -- tells her that, though the new headmistress is a "real piece of work," he eventually went over her head, and got the charges dropped as much as he could. "One thing about being on the inside," Gossip Girl muses, "once you get there, you don't always get to choose where you stand or sit." Chuck sits on Serena's other side, and they grin at her: this is how families grow and blend, too. This is a Bass world. "The new van der Woodsen-Bass library should be completed for Eric's graduation." Serena shrugs Chuck off and Bart laughs. "I can see that Lily and I are gonna have our hands full with the two of you," he says, and she excuses herself.
"Sometimes you need to step outside, clear your head and remind yourself of who you are...and where you want to be." Which, for Serena, is with Dan. Rufus greets her, and she's kind, putting her hand tenderly on his shoulder for a moment as he packs up his fantasies. "It was getting a little hard to breathe, you know?" Buttoned up like that, in a Bass world like that -- Rufus gets it. She asks if he's packing up his music, and he smiles sadly. "I just...need to find something new to write about. And I will." There's apology, and care, as she leaves him and heads into Dan's room: sorry I ruined your romance, but you need to button up. Inside, all she'll tell Dan is that he was right, and she doesn't want to talk about it, and she snuggles against his shoulder. He returns to his Chaucer like Saturday never happened. "...And sometimes you have to venture outside your world in order to find yourself." (Oh, God. If Serena turns into a Humphrey I'll implode, I really will.) "As for me, I'm happy right where I am: I only wanna be with you. XOXO!" Aww, I love you, Gossip Girl. Me too.
And she's right. Sometimes you need to step outside and breathe, and remind yourself who you are, and all the things you could be and could have been. But there comes a time when you go back inside. It's not very romantic, but romance is for DUMBO. We live in a Bass world, where love is about what you do, for the people you love, and not just about who you are.
But just after six you could see a woman standing on the corner of 90th and Fifth in a cream suit, buttoned up against the cold. She knows she'll have to go back inside eventually, and all the breathing she can do outside won't help her in there. Not in a place you can see, anyway. It'll help her go on living, this moment on the corner. She will breathe it in. She'll be looking down the street as the cars go by, one by one, buses and taxis, and as they go, she'll stand still, looking down the street, getting older. Pretty soon she'll be all alone, but she will keep standing there, for all the world to see. They won't know her like you and I do; they won't love her. All they'll see is this: just some lovely woman, with her eyes shining and her heart breaking, breathing on a street corner. Just one second more, before she goes back home.