Dancing Barefoot

S01E13

Spotted: Serena van der Woodsen, buying a pregnancy test after finally swiping Lonelyboy's V-card. But before anybody can bring her down, a chance mention of Blair's affair with Chuck hits GG.net, and pretty soon everybody knows it's B that's having the pregnancy scare -- and that she has no idea who the father might be. In short order, Nate and Chuck break up and Blair gets dumped by everybody, from her boyfriends to Serena herself.

Rufus tries to hit the dating scene with that art buyer Bex Simon, and almost screws it up badly, but eventually rescues himself as charmingly as ever. No other parents make an appearance, besides the very worried Eleanor, but Jenny and Eric are both pretty mesmerizing this week, and Kati and Iz play the vindicated vultures better than you could have imagined.

Jenny and Chuck's gossiping causes a radical shakedown of Constance Billard Girl Nation, resulting in a new queen named Hazel (who looks exactly like Blair and Chuck's imaginary kid would have) and a new second-in-command: the powerfully frightening Jenny Humphrey, finally coming into her own. It's really brutal and pretty heartbreaking, watching Blair go down; she and her mother finally arrange for a midnight extraction to Lyons with all the solemnity of Rushdie's travel agent.

Dan tells Serena he loves her, but it takes the benefit of Eric's time as an in-patient to explain why this creeps her out so bad: she's afraid of turning into her mother. She gets over it, and Dan explains that one of the reasons he loves her so is her fierce devotion to Blair, which sends her to B's helipad at the last minute. The season ender inverts its beginning: Serena talks Blair out of leaving town, and they agree to stand and fight together. Even Gossip Girl is like, "season: Blair destroys the entire Upper East Side one bitch at a time." You know you love it! XOXO.

Someone calling herself UES4Ever, implausibly, has written to Gossip Girl, implausibly, to ask the following question: "What's the difference between gossip and scandal?" And I think that GG attempts to answer this question, but she goes to that vague Carrie Bradshaw place she sometimes goes, so I don't know. "Anyone can commit a minor indiscretion and generate a day's worth of buzz, but in order for gossip to birth a true scandal, it requires the right person to be in the wrong place: take one It Girl on a pedestal..." Some bitch standing like three inches away snaps about a billion pictures of Serena, who is fully comparison shopping for a pregnancy test.

Serena doesn't notice, of course, even though she keeps throwing sneaky looks all over the place as if she doesn't want anybody taking pictures of her comparison shopping for pregnancy tests, but doesn't investigate the twitchy tweener right in front of her, taking pictures with a nasty TMZ glee in her eyes. This is the kind of thing I am talking about. She's so pretty but she just doesn't get it. The news passes from phone to gadget to object, and various scenarios play out: some girl is like, "That guy almost made me spill my coff-- S is pregnant?" Some prep dudes are getting stoned in Central Park and stoner-laughing at their cell phones, people are colliding into each other seemingly at random, so perturbed are they by Serena's pregnancy, the usual: "...Add a crowd eager to see her fall, and give them the means to knock her down."

Meanwhile in DUMBO, Little Jenny Humphrey is screaming like somebody just stabbed her literally in the face. It's a pretty awesome scream. Because they all live on top of each other in a rathole, of course, Dan and Rufus come running all two steps into her room. Spotting Rufus, Jenny adorably regains her composure and explains: "I was just testing my screaming? To see its screaming efficiency." Dan's hands flutter with some vapors or something, and Rufus is like, "What are you hiding?" They try to crack her security parameters, which consist mainly of flailing, and she protests that they're invading her privacy, which Dan points out is nonexistent, because they all live in a single tiny room full of waffles and self-righteousness. Dan and Rufus lock eyes and then carry her bodily away from the screen, while she levels with her brother that he's going to regret it, and Serena's pregnancy is revealed. Rufus and Dan commence freaking out and Jenny bounces.

Meanwhile, Serena and Eric are trotting down the lane when he gets it, and asks if there's anything she wants to tell him. She tries to bring up his bizarre highlights, but he's like, "My total gayness is funny. Your pregnancy is not."

Dan sits in his sister's bedroom, begging Rufus to say something instead of just transmitting his silent disappointment. Rufus gives him a speech about how he and Alison always knew Dan was "special" and that he has some kind of amazing destiny that they have always planned for him, but that this plan did not include having a baby. Dan agrees that this is quite a plot twist, but realizes right that second that he loves Serena. He does a good job of being seriously freaked out, but also self-absorbed in his own romance, and neither of them are very comforting to his father, who suggests maybe Dan should talk to Serena and find out if it's even true before he starts buying diapers and how-to books. Although it's Dan, so probably he would go to the obscure video store and purchase some kind of Danish parenting movie from the 1960s about nudist colonies or something. Dan's like, "Screw reality, did you hear my declaration of love? That's way cooler than actually responding rationally." Rufus nods, and gets very worried, because jumping off the deep end for no reason at all is kind of his MO.

In the courtyard at Constance, everybody's laughing and whispering as Serena walks by. "Yes, I'm pregnant, and it's yours!" Serena is so cool. Dan comes up and they get super-awkward for a while, and then just as Serena's about to explain that she's not pregnant, and sometimes gossip is not true, he's off! "No, wait, wait, wait. Me first. I'm sorry that you didn't feel that you could tell me, and no matter what you decide, I want you to know that I'm here for you. Because I love you." Serena's like, "Great, but I'm not pregnant. So you get points for being a good boyfriend or whatever, you are the moral compass by which we all captain our ships on the stupid ocean of life, whatever, thanks. You love me, that's adorable." Dan continues to wig out post-fake-partum, and she's like, "I need to go see Blair right now. I'm sure you'll still be shaking and stuttering on this exact spot when I get back?" He shakes and stutters and nods, and she gives him a harried little kiss and runs off. But mostly he's freaking out because he said "I love you," and she didn't say it back, so now he's going to get so totally annoying you won't even believe it.

At the Met steps, Jenny joins Blair, Kati/Iz, one of the blonde girls from the Blair Army, and a soldier we haven't seen before, named Hazel. Hazel is interesting in that if, for example, Blair and Chuck had a baby, it would look exactly like her. It is supremely freaky how much she looks like both of them at once. Blair points out that Jenny's late, and she protests that she had to drop some books off at the library. Which you might notice she spends most of the episode doing. I can barely believe that Jenny can read, but she sure does spend a lot of time carting books to the library. Maybe it's like a part-time job so that she can support her busy lifestyle of ass-kissing. In order to demonstrate her displeasure, and generally to enjoy being a bitch, and also because Blair does one weird and shitty thing to each person on the show in the first half of the episode so that they will turn on her halfway through, asks her to move down a few steps. My friend Wyatt noted that it's so totally high school that the social order would be signified by where you're sitting on the ground. That's so arbitrary and silly, I love it. Jenny casts her eyes around for some kind of help with this situation, but the rest of the army ignores her. Hazel sips her coffee and stares with her big creepy Chuck eyes. Jenny suggests that "this whole hazing thing is getting a bit old," which is kind of like asking for more hazing. I don't think I could avoid abusing Jenny Humphrey, if I were in Blair's situation, frankly. Blair points out that Jenny's in no position, and also tells her not to call her "B," because that's reserved for friends only, and Jenny is less a friend and more of a punching bag right now.

Jenny takes off after brief and weak protests from Hazel's giant face, and doesn't even stop to say hello to Serena. Blair laughs it off and explains that Jenny will be back. Serena stands there, staring at the Army who are staring at her, and finally gives an ironic jazz hand: "I'm not pregnant!" Kati and Iz are hilariously deadpan: "Cool." "Congratulations." Blonde girl suggests "celebratory drinks after school," and the free-radical bitch energy of all of this is truly astounding, it's great. Like it actually mattered if she was pregnant at any point during this scandal; it's enough that it was a false alarm, and it would have been enough if no part of it were true. Which is in fact the situation, we learn, as S pulls B away and attempts to make the case for reality.

"Did you get my text?" Blair's like, "Oh yeah, totally." So then, Serena pushes a little: "You know I told Dan I'm not pregnant." Blair smiles in a panicked way and gives her a supportive little wave about how happy she is for Serena. Serena sighs heavily, because so far in the championship of Reality v. Blair, reality has yet to even qualify. B protests at length that Serena's weird code-talking and inferences are falling on deaf and infertile ears. "Whenever something happens that's not a part of your plan, you pretend like it doesn't exist. You act like you're in this movie about your perfect life. Then I have to remind you the only one watching that movie is you." Serena, you've just described everyone that was ever in high school. If we didn't have those movies playing in our heads, we would freak. She points out that B's period is late, by her own admission, and even B scoffs at the idea that she's menstruated twice in the last year. One of the many benefits of a raging eating disorder. "And you're acting like a total bitch because you're not hormonal?" Blair suggests that Serena catch up: "Maybe I am a total bitch. Did you ever think about that?" She smiles sweetly and Serena rolls her eyes and tries to pass her the test, but Blair begs in a whisper for her to stop doing this. It's one of the first heartbreaking moments of a very upsetting episode, that little whisper. "Just take the test. You need to know if you and Chuck are gonna have a baby." Blair squares up her shoulders for another pissing match with God, and Gossip Girl giggles nastily. "And for a scandal to really blow up, all it needs is an unexpected turn."

Later, Blair and Nate are canoodling in the courtyard at Constance and he asks her to come with him to visit the Captain in rehab. "Yeah, it's just... It gets really awkward when I have to go alone now, and I don't know what to say anymore. He loves you, you always know how to make him laugh." Blair turns inside out with joy, both for the distraction and for the fact that Nate's finally asking her for something. The one thing he ever held strong on was keeping her, along with everybody else, out of the snakepit that is his family. I knew he kept her in the dark about most of it, but it just occurred to me to wonder how much even Chuck knows, at this point. "Here you are, officially leaning on me!" They nuzzle and kiss and talk about how perfect their relationship is going to be, now that they're on version 6.0 or whatever we're on. She's wearing this sweet black patent leather jacket that makes her move -- kissing Nate with one eye on the creepily watching Chuck, who is wearing a preposterous hat -- even weirder and meaner. It's like she's kissing him in the Matrix or something, and meanwhile Chuck is freaking the hell out, and she's loving it.

Dan and Jenny arrive back home after school, or because it's the middle of the day, or because everybody got tired of walking back and forth between the courtyard and the Met and the library, or whatever it is that these kids do all day. He points out that at least now she knows. "Know what? That I've wasted half the year trying to be friends with someone that's never going to like me?" In a word, yes. Rufus appears on the scene trying to be smooth, and Dan tells him about the false alarm. Rufus tries to be cool, and then loses his cool in a major way, and it's way embarrassing to watch. Everybody laughs, because nobody knows that Serena's false alarm never happened and that this is all an elaborate mistake on the part of the UES. So Dan can be forgiven for turning the conversation back to himself, and how he said he loved her, but she thought that it was only because of the pregnancy scare. I like the drama mechanics here, because most of the characters still think there was an actual pregnancy scare, and are reacting like it's the end of the episode and not the beginning. Rufus takes this opportunity to suggest that Dan apply the brakes to his relationship with Serena, because he's only seventeen and whatever, and scoots.

Left alone, Jenny calls massive bullshit on the whole scenario Rufus just painted, where we're all relieved because his "I love you" doesn't count, even though it totally does, because he does love her, and he already knew that like five years ago, so what Rufus is suggesting is actually a totally idiotic move. Surprisingly enough. "Why are you taking his advice? He's old and alone." That is like the awesomest thing Jenny Humphrey ever said! Jenny explains that he needs to give it a hard reset and tell Serena again, without the distractions of biology or whatever, because it's the truth. Good call. Dan agrees, and there is a sweet moment between the two of them that lacks all the usual Humphrey grossness and sunshine. Live it up, though, because Dan is about to spend ten times that amount of goodwill getting this task done.

Serena surprises B, who's writing on her bed and does not wish to be disturbed. "Can we talk later? Despite your best efforts to ruin it, I'm actually having a good day, and I don't want anything to spoil it." She tells Serena about the rehab visit as though it's going to be enjoyable or whatever, and starts to lecture Serena on how this finally means that their relationship is real. Serena tries to empathize about how B doesn't want to burst the happy bubble, but S is like the one person on earth who can actually get through to her at any time, so she has a duty to burst this bubble. "Well, I'm sorry if, unlike some people, I haven't been on the pill since I was fifteen." We've talked before about the times that Blair does this, just strikes out with whatever nasty shit she can come up with, and it's always when she's feeling trapped and Serena's on her case about it. Serena knows about free-fall, she knows how good it can feel to stop holding up that wall between the ugly reality and the pretty lie, but whenever they talk about it, they're talking across a gulf so wide that Blair can't do anything but shoot back with everything she's got.

Some people say that all the cultural echoes and the stories of Eden and the Fall, that removal of God's love, come from the first moment in every single person's life when they call for their mommy, and she doesn't answer. If it takes ten seconds or ten minutes for her to come and put the world back together, you spend that time screaming, and you never recover. Not completely. So the reason Blair gets so gross at these times is that her world is composed entirely of appearances, what she wants to portray, the woman she desperately wants to be -- and Serena, whom she knows to trust implicitly. And if Serena's the one destroying the world, asking these questions, knowing that she's going to catch hell for it, then on some level Blair knows that it's serious, and it's true. And in the long term, she knows, Serena will be proven right. But that doesn't mean the walls aren't falling down right now.

Dan has prepared romantic spaghetti and there's zany Italian music playing, like in Lady And The Tramp. Which is hilarious, because my grandmother hated that movie, and wouldn't let me watch it, because she couldn't abide a well-bred lady like that marrying some tramp and ruining her family. She was totally offended by that, and you know what, my grandmother would hate Dan so much! That's hilarious. So they eat his dumb spaghetti and Dan kisses her, and Jenny comes out of her bedroom to "get some juice," adorably, and Dan enforces her removal from the situation and goes back to the mood lighting and sad romantic teenage spaghetti. Serena can feel him getting revved up and weird for take two, and it bums her out, so he stutters and changes course. "Let's try this. Why don't you tell me what's on your mind? Then it can be on our minds, and our minds can worry about what's on your mind together." Which is pretty much exactly like saying, "I love you," but Dan's a literal-minded fellow. He's performing love, the actuality of it, but he still needs the actual words and the drama moment of it, when all they've ever done is be really good at loving each other. "I don't know what I said either but, um, what I'm saying now is talk to me." She explains about how the test was actually for Blair, and Jenny listens at the door just like Vanessa would want her to.

Dan's confused: how can B suddenly be pregnant if she just recently got back with Nate? His face falls, in sympathy: "...Oh. Then who?" And kids, nobody in that room is prepared for the answer, which is Chuck. Jenny just about falls over sideways, and Dan's spaghetti repeats on him a little bit. "Chuck? And Blair? Blair and Chuck? Then why isn't he the one buying the test?" Dan assumes that it's because Chuck is disgusting, and Serena doesn't disagree exactly, but assures him Chuck has no idea about any of this. Dan points out that, although he does hate Chuck, Chuck deserves to know what's going on. "He does have this weird influence over her," Serena nods, and wonders if Chuck can talk her into taking this seriously. Their relationship has always been like a mysterious black box or grotesque carnival, for Serena, and she doesn't know too much about how it works, but she does know the balloon-popping routine she usually tries with Blair isn't working this time: she's dug too far in. "I just...I'm so worried about her." Dan embraces Serena and their minds worry together, and Jenny slumps away.

Rufus is chatting up some young lady at his gallery, and she tries several times to get him to ask her out before just boldly declaring her intentions. He gets distracted by Bex Simon, Lily's lovely art dealer from a long time ago that accidentally sold her the Alison painting. The other woman, Bryn, notes that he's completely out of it, and tells him to call her later when he has it together. Which concept is ludicrous, but she doesn't know that. She leaves and Rufus commences flirting with Bex. He points her to a wall opposite, calling something that is neither beautiful nor mixed-media a "beautiful mixed-media piece," and honestly I don't think he's ever correctly identified a piece of art in his gallery that we've seen. As usual, Bex does not call him on his total ignorance, but changes the subject to Alison. Who is gone, along with his hopes of reconciliation, not to mention his romance fantasy affair with Lily. They agree to have a date tomorrow night. Awesome, because I love Bex and I'm happy to see her again, but also because I love Lily too much to hand her Rufus until he's done cooking.

Chuck's suite at the Palace is Room 1812. That makes me laugh, did we know that? Serena enters after a creepy moment where he asks her to call him "brother," and she shrugs it off: "I need to talk to you." He sympathizes with her pregnancy scare, and admonishes her a little bit about safe sex. Seconds later, she's sitting at the bar in the suite, talking to Chuck through the mirror behind the bar in an awkwardly symbolic little moment that clearly has meaning: "Chuck, I really need to trust you. I'm hoping that deep down inside, you're actually a decent person and won't make me regret this." He considers them both, in the mirror, and checks in with himself: Is he a decent person today? The answer is no. He's been hurt too badly. He had plans too; he had a world that included Blair, and when she went back to Nate, that was an attack on his most basic stuff. He risked a lot just loving her. "You're here for Blair, aren't you? Look, I'm not going to tell Nate about us. I tortured her, got bored and moved on." Serena explains about the pregnancy test, and how it was for B, but she's refusing to take it, so Chuck's got a baby, because Serena doesn't know about Nate. "I handle my business. Apparently, Nate doesn't. They slept together just after we did. It's him you should be asking for help." It doesn't take a genius to figure out why Blair would have left out the Nate part of that equation, but Serena is yucked out anyway. Just when you peek over the edge of that wall and see how far Blair's slipping, you get the news from Chuck of all people that she's getting even more erratic than you knew.

Rufus approaches Dan about the concept of him dating Bex and possibly other ladies, and of course Dan thinks that it's all about him and his life, but once Rufus clarifies, he just tells him to change out of the purple plaid shirt he's wearing. Jenny enters and immediately starts bitching about the shirt as well, and Dan laughs that Rufus was planning on wearing it on a date, even. Rufus begs her permission for the date, but she also could not care less: "Whatever, it's awful." Dan and Rufus laugh about how Jenny's complete disinterest in her father's love life, though it came a bit too late, is as good an answer as any. So for the record, Rufus, and I could have told you this ten minutes ago: NOBODY CARES.

Serena enters Chez Waldorf to greetings from Dorota, who's sitting in the parlor with Blair. "Anybody notice the weather today? Take a look outside, B. my First Response would be that the sky is a...Clear Blue Easy." Blair rolls her eyes ferociously and dismisses Dorota. Serena worries at her about finally hooking up with Nate, and admits that she went to Chuck, to see if he could talk some sense into her. She's still shuddering about the whole Deal With The Devil vibe of that, and Blair just gets pissed that she went around her total oblivious denial like that. "I was trying to help you, B. I took a public bullet for you, let another rumor about me run rampant. The whole school heard!" She tears up: "Even Dan." Which caused problems so tangential to Blair's actual problems that Serena's not even about to address them right now. So again, you have somebody performing the behaviors of love and trying not to say it out loud, because the truest answer is the one that Blair would never buy: "You are hurting, which is hurting me, because I love you, so you have to fix this so we both stop hurting." So Serena has to just keep throwing random shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, because she loves her friend and still hasn't figured out a way around Blair's weird coping mechanisms.

Eleanor enters and Serena takes off, telling her to ask B what's going on, because her version of the story is always better. There's almost a kind of jealousy here, throughout, that's really fascinating: from both sides, they know that Serena doesn't have the option of denial anymore. She went into free-fall and realized that actual life is just like the burlesque that Blair's dancing now, only harder. You cannot talk someone into introspection, or self-reliance, because that shit doesn't sell -- so what do you do when somebody you love just turns off reality altogether? Irresistible Serena has reality and a complete lack of fear on her side, but immovable Blair has the strongest will we've ever seen. Eleanor and Blair smile: Blair's never been better, but Serena sure has. Eleanor perches and asks point-blank if they're fighting about Blair's illness, which she knows firsthand is back. "I'm very stressed. And with you and Serena down my throat," so to speak, "I can hardly think straight, never mind keep food down." Eleanor offers to send B on a mini-break to Lyon, to visit her father, and Blair's will towers, intensely: "Maybe this summer." Eleanor orders her daughter to finish her breakfast, and Blair reluctantly pops a grape in her mouth.

Serena could have kept pushing forever, could have gotten mad, could have enlisted Eleanor and Chuck and the whole UES, and Blair wouldn't have moved. She would have laughed, and gotten mean, and engineered a shitstorm to distract everybody, or taken somebody else down. But the second Serena gave up, stopped resisting, her disappointment was too real. It stopped being a fight and started being something altogether worse. So we find B, minutes later, standing in the bathroom with an egg timer chiming, staring herself down in the mirror. This is hands down my favorite moment of the episode, and in fact the whole season. If you don't get why people love Blair, you've never stared yourself down in the mirror and said anything this ridiculous, or wonderful: "I'm not pregnant. I command myself not to be pregnant." I admire nothing more than will; I could easily be convinced that just the words, applied correctly, in her steely stare-down, could transmit back to the beginning of the episode and make her not be pregnant. I believe that Blair Waldorf can move mountains.

Serena's phone rings, and Blair spills. "Hey S, it's B. Two things. First, I'm sorry about Dan, about the Gossip Girl blast, and about not telling you about Nate. You were just so hard on me about Chuck I didn't want to be judged for sleeping with them both." Serena understands, of course, and accepts her apology immediately, knowing that the storm is breaking. "That was fast. If I were you, I would've made me work for it a little bit harder." Serena laughs, because truer words were never spoken, and she grins that Blair's suffered enough today. We'll see. "...And second thing," Blair rushes, over Serena's protest that they're on like thing five, "I took the test. I'm not pregnant." They get goofy, in their separate locations, and Serena almost weeps with joy for her. "Oh, I am so happy. I would have had no idea what to wear to a paternity hearing!" They agree on a clean slate, and Serena sighs hugely, relieved.

Blair breezes past Chuck, smoking outside school, and he makes a show of dropping the butt. "Oh, don't stop on my account." He smirks that secondhand smoke is bad for the baby, and she tells him the good news. "So goodbye, mistake so far in my past I can hardly remember." He reaches out for her, and she orders him not to touch her. "Look, if you were gonna tell Nate, you would have done so in Monaco. But you don't want him to hate you, and you know he would. Game over." He protests weakly that the game's not over until he says so. "Then have fun playing with yourself," she says, and stalks off. Chuck actually looks fairly bereft, for the second it takes to produce his phone. "GG. S not pregnant, covering for Blair. Same B whose sheets were rumpled by two guys in one week." And he heads inside.

Dan stutters and wriggles and acts insane, trying to get Serena situated in their romantic picnic in the park. He covers her with a blanket: "This will be better to keep you warm," he says, weirdly, and offers her some...ginger ale. "I brought this for us. We can have a nice little drink." He's so adorable right now. She makes the talk-talky hand at him, and notes that he's babbling, and he goes in for take three. "I'm sorry. I... It's just... I don't know. In the short time we've known each other, you've become really important to me. I've been struggling to find a way to tell you... Struggling now..." He looks great, actually, and of course her notebook flies open in the wind, scattering her lit paper all over the place. She goes running all over while Dan stares, and some random dude in a Burberry hat helps her out. Of course, she gleams at the guy and gives her best Serena van der Woodsen smile: "I love you! Thank you!" Dan chokes, hilariously, and she comes back to him, but he backs down again, offering to proofread it for her. Of course, nobody ever "struggled to find the words" to say this, but she has a vested interest in not pursuing the truth, so they dig into their picnic instead.

The music gets super-scary as Chuck's little gossip bomb finally hits. Kati and Iz are scandalized and can't wait to show Jenny. "Looks like the virgin queen isn't as pure as she pretended to be. Who's your daddy, B? Baby daddy, that is. Two guys in one week? Talk about doing the nasty... Or should I just say being nasty?" Nate loses his mind, although whether it's due to GG's torturous syntax and puns, or because his girlfriend totally dogged him, I don't know. Jenny watches Blair walk through the courtyard crowd in slow-motion, watches her phone go off, watches her read the news about herself. The background chatter is kind of amazing: "Oh, my God. You know she's right about this. Oh God, there she is. What a total hypocrite. Who does she think she is? Pot calling the kettle black much? I never thought she was a virgin anyway. Oh, I can see a bump! What a bitch. Oh my God, she is such a whore. Try keeping your legs closed for a change, Blair. She cheated on Nate? Does Nate know?" Blair gets smaller and smaller, but rallies herself sufficiently to ask Kati and Iz if they've seen Nate. They can barely meet her eyes; she continues to search for him.

Jenny spots Nate in the hallway and admits that she's seen the GG alert. "Yeah, Blair's gonna freak out. I mean, this is a total lie." Jenny does the ankle-dip of passive-aggression. I've been waiting for her to bitch out for so long I can't even be grossed out. This is awesome. Go, Jenny Humphrey! Skank like the wind! "Jenny, look. I know you're friends with Blair, and you'd never want to do anything to betray her. But if you know something..." Jenny admits that Blair was never really her friend, which is her perspective even though it's not true. She only thinks this because B was a bitch to her yesterday morning, and the only reason B was a bitch to her yesterday was because she was dealing, or rather studiously not dealing, with just this stuff. But you can't really blame Jenny for hitting back, or any of them, and that's why this episode is awesome. On one level, it was all plot massage to get us to this point, but it also fits so well with B's entire way of being that it kind of doesn't matter. Of course she would act like an asshole, and of course she would do it to those exact people, and of course it would rebound on her in precisely this way. To explain is not to excuse. "So...yeah, there's something you should know."

Nate comes flying out of St. Jude's directly into Chuck's solar plexus, moving easily five times as quickly as Nate usually moves, and scaring the shit out of Chuck. "Did you sleep with her, huh? You son of a bitch! I could kill you." Chuck asks, with as much sanguinity as he can manage, if they can continue this conversation without Nate's hands around his neck. "Did you get what you wanted, like you do with all those other girls?" Chuck shoves him off and tries to take a stand of some kind: "Yes, Nathaniel. I took what Blair kept throwing at you and you kept throwing back." So he screwed B for sport, but that's Nate's fault? And if this happened a week ago, he would have told Nate he was in love, but the world changed on him, so he changed shape to keep up: he was never in love, he never risked or dared, he never gave in. "She needed someone, and I was there."

Nate asks if that means Chuck cared about her, and Chuck can't admit that for anything, so he changes tack again: "You guys were broken up!" Nate points out that they weren't broken up very long, at that point, and storms off. Which Chuck can't have, because now that he retroactively doesn't and didn't love Blair, the only thing he actually loves is Nate. "Look, I am sorry, all right? I know how long you and I have been best friends, okay?" He touches him, easily, trying to rescue this, and Nate throws him off, screaming. Well, it's Nate, so it's like a vague mumble, but there's some animus behind it for once: "No, it's not okay, Chuck. From now on, you stay away from me." Chuck keeps trying, and Nate explodes again. "You stay the hell away from me, Chuck!" This is a story about how for thirteen episodes Blair's been setting up her own fall, and that's what we're focused on right now, but Chuck's been playing the same game in parallel; what he's losing right now is the only thing he started the season with. Something goes out of his eyes and he takes off in his limo.

Blair's posture is perfect, sitting in the study at Nate's house when he enters. "What are you doing here?" She tells him Anne Archibald let him in, and he shows a spark, finally: "I didn't ask how you got in. I asked why you came." She wants to talk about them, about their relationship, but there's no "them," anymore. "We finally really have a chance to start over," she says, and he...walks kind of an iffy line. I get where he's coming from, but there are things you don't actually get to stop apologizing for, sometimes. "You know, all this time I felt so bad for everything I've done, and when you said you wanted to leave the past in the past, I didn't know we were talking about your past." She tries to explain, how he broke her heart on her birthday and she went crazy and made a decision she was "in no condition to make." He asks if she's feeling clear-headed right now: "Then you'll understand perfectly when I say I want nothing else to do with you, Blair. You and Chuck deserve each other." She points out that Chuck would do anything to stay on top, would twist the truth and say whatever he had to, to keep from getting hurt by this. "But Jenny wouldn't," Nate grumbles. Which takes the wind out of her sails, finally, although it made me afraid for old Jenny. "And don't go blaming any of this on her, Blair. I would have found out eventually. I said I'm done. It's over. Now would you please leave?" His face looks completely different right now; he leaves.

In the gallery, Rufus is looking good. Which is funny, because he's wearing a ladies' rollneck cardigan and looks like a crazy old man. Bryn enters and immediately confesses that, "at the risk of being forward," she's there on a dare from her friends to ask him out. Which sounds about right, given Rufus's own emotional maturity level. He's impressed by this, of course, but just then Bex comes in for their date. He tries to introduce them to each other, gets the names backwards, and doesn't even have the courtesy to blush. Bex figures out the whole deal, which actually is not that huge a problem really, because it's not his fault this girl just randomly showed up to ask him out, but she takes off anyway. Bryn offers to go on their date with him now, and he smiles, but still feels sheepish in some indefinable way.

Blair's posture is once again perfect as she sits in her living room, waiting for Serena to arrive. She jumps her immediately: "I can't believe you told Jenny about me and Chuck!" Which of course she didn't. "Because of her, everybody knows the intimate details of my private life, and now Nate's not speaking to me." Serena repeats that she didn't tell Jenny, but B asks if she told Dan. "...What," Serena whispers, in a thrilling non-answer that manages to come off apologetic, confused, and horrified all at once. "You did! You told your low-rent boyfriend, and he told his social-climbing sister who wears my hand-me-downs, and she blabbed to Nate." Awesome. Awesome! Serena's like, "I cannot believe you're attacking Dan and Jenny," but has no comeback regarding her discussing the situation with him. Which really, I don't see the problem, because if Blair had her way, Dan would still think Serena was pregnant with his child, and that's hardly fair. ["And I'm sorry, but this is the non-legal version of spousal privilege. Your friends tell their significant others things about you and you just have to live with it." -- Sars] Serena protests that she told Dan only because she needed advice on how to manage Blair's complete break with reality, and figured that Dan's chronic need to tell everybody how to live their lives all the time might actually come in handy this time.

"I can't believe you don't get it. The rules are different for the Serena van der Woodsens of the world! People expect you to party and be wild, sleep with whoever you want, run away, come back..." The price you pay for being in free-fall is everybody seeing you're in free-fall, but there are benefits. It feels real, it feels good even when it hurts, it feels like a certain kind of grace when things look like they really are: when the burlesque stops and you're just a girl, instead of a towering paradigm of willpower and chastity and perfection. Serena gets to do whatever she wants, and Blair hates that; Blair gets to coast on appearances because all her very scary shit takes place behind closed doors, and Serena hates that. You're always one or the other, because reputation is everything, so you have to make a choice: live up to the reputation, constantly getting scared and damaging yourself in that pursuit, or drag the rep down to a manageable place, and end up constantly apologizing for yourself.

Any system has rules, whether it's gender roles or heterosexuality or rich-dad/poor-dad class structure, and your option is to learn those rules and perform them properly, in order to be rewarded by that system. Get good grades and get into a good school and finish at the top of your class, and you'll be rewarded with money, for example. But any system, social or otherwise, still operates in terms of game theory. Step out of the game altogether, reclaim your space, and you forfeit the right to those rewards, because you're no longer in the running. So the deal that you're actually making, when you agree to quit the team or come out of the closet or admit aloud or publicly that you're a sexual being -- a whore, by the rules of the game -- is what shame was invented to contain and administrate. Shame exists in society for one reason only: to keep everybody playing the game.

But the reward and the price of being in free-fall, as Serena can tell you, is that the whores of the world don't really care about any of this, so they get to make their own rules, because they're playing a different game altogether. By any recognizable, mature measure, Serena is a great person: compassionate, kind, understanding, and fiercely loving. But we're not in a recognizable or mature world; we're in high school, and the rules are different: "Wait. Are we really going back there?" Always. There are things you never get to stop apologizing for. But that's not B's point: "You shot your reputation to hell a long time ago. It doesn't matter what you do, but I'm a Waldorf." Waldorfs play the game: they run to France when it gets scary, they hide their eating disorders with the help of their servants, they smile and grin with their down-low husbands, and call it love. How could Serena ever explain what it's like, out here with the rest of us? She can't, and Blair's finally found just the right place to twist the knife: reminding her that Serena will never, ever be able to buy her way back into the game. "Well, since you and your reputation obviously don't need me and my low-rent taste, you and the Waldorf name can weather the storm alone." In the silence, Blair reviews everything that just happened, the awful abyss that Serena's free-fall means, the terrible storm that's still coming. "...With pleasure," she says, but she doesn't mean it. There's no pleasure here.

Jenny approaches the Met group fearfully; Hazel welcomes her warmly and Blair gets aggressive, so Jenny tries to leave, but Hazel steps up. "No, stay. Blair, given you can barely manage your own messy affairs, surely you're not in a position to tell anyone where they can and can't eat." Blair asks if Hazel knows who she's talking to, if she gets the Waldorf thing: "You mean a self-righteous bitch who always sat on her own high horse judging everyone else?" says the blonde girl, and Hazel takes a step toward her: "Pregnant little hypocrite." Heh. All about the delivery. Blair informs them that she isn't pregnant, and the Army glares down: "Nate must be thrilled. Chuck, too." Blonde girl informs her about the big throwdown between Chuck and Nate, over Blair's "cheap ass," and she and Hazel point out that "the boyfriend and the best friend" is a pretty classy move. Free-fall. Hazel gets one last line in before they stalk away: "Consider yourself dethroned, Queen B." Jenny hovers, and Blair speaks very quietly and very intensely: "Jenny. It is highly unlikely that I will ever forgive you for going to Nate. But if you walk away from me now, I will also ruin you." That is easily five times closer to begging than Blair's ever done, with anybody but Serena, but Jenny's not getting it. Or is just a bitch, I'm willing to consider that. Brighten up the loft a bit, anyway. "How are you gonna do that?" she sniffs, in her ugly pink Bedazzled hat, and takes off. B is alone and very tiny, and the music is scary, and her headband is fucked-up-looking.

Rufus leaves a lame message on Bex's voicemail about how he's "new at this," and that's his whole excuse. "At forty-something years of age, it has occurred to me I'm not very good at doing normal things or behaving in an appropriate fashion, and the whole world is very new to me."

Dan's reading in the courtyard at school when Serena approaches -- still worried about Blair and her relationship with Blair, mind -- and asks if he told Jenny about the Chuck thing. He says no, but she points out that he's the only one she told. Dan gets very awful. "And I didn't tell anybody. ...I gave you my word. Because I love you. I love you, and not just because I thought you were pregnant, and not in the way you love some random guy who picks up your lit paper, or some girl who likes your hair." And yes, this is the hottest Dan has ever looked, and it's a nice little speech, but obviously right this second, it's not about him, so, like, what are you doing? He's making this huge stand that obviously makes Serena uncomfortable, and he's doing it for the fourth time, in the middle of a conversation about Blair's complete breakdown? That's just so Dan, I can't handle it. I cannot blame her at all for being like, "Okay?" But boy, Dan can. He spits how that response is "NOT OKAY," and stomps off crying and moaning and sucking. Meanwhile, Serena has actual drama happening.

B wanders the city at random, looking like a million very screwed-over dollars, and it's totally hurtful to watch. She flashes back to cuddling with Nate after she found out about Serena, and fucking Chuck in the limo, and feels horrible some more. The funny thing about balloon popping is that they're going to do it anyway, but that doesn't stop us from ignoring it as long as possible. This was always going to happen, it was just the time frame and the circumstances that changed every week. And I know you'd make fun of me for bringing up Joseph Campbell right now, but this has always been a classic story, with the classic symmetries. Frivolous, feminized, fluffy or not, this show is at the very top of its game, and technically speaking, it outperforms most other dramas regularly, even outside its genre. I do honestly believe that, as a writer and as a fan, and I count us lucky to be playing outside the game by watching it.

Eric lies on a couch at the Palace, listening to his iPod, and Serena yanks the earbuds out, complaining to him before he even opens his eyes, "I'm such an ass!" He immediately guesses, correctly, that she's talking about Dan, because God knows there's not a person on earth who can make her feel awful about herself like Dan can. "He told me loved me, and all I did was stand there like a stupid mute. I mean, why wouldn't I want to hear those words come out of his mouth? But it's like it made me trust him less, which is crazy, and even if he is lying about telling Jenny even though I told him not to tell anyone, I should have come up with a better response to 'I love you.'" He doesn't even pause: "Not that I even know what you're talking about? But why would you think he was lying?" Because he's the only one she told. "Do you know how many times I was listening in on your conversations when you thought I wasn't?" She makes the hilarious yee face: "Ohhh. None, I hope." Nope. "I'm a little brother. It's what I do." He goes on to demonstrate the utility of his time in the booby hatch, using Ostroff words to illustrate her story for her: "You don't have to be a genius to figure out the trust thing. I mean, every time Mom brought home someone who said 'I love you,' they would end up married." Serena nods. "And then divorced. Didn't leave us with a strong sense of trust, huh? But that's Mom's issue, not ours. And Dan's not one of those guys." Lily's great at the game, and pays the price for playing, but it's not the only game in town. Serena gets up, pointing out that Eric's getting dangerously close to being smarter than her, and runs.

Blair sits down heavily to Chuck at the bar, and considers him at length before speaking. His crazy face is impassive. "I came to congratulate you in person. You ruined my relationship with Nate, Serena, all of my friends..." He takes a drink and won't look at her. "Even Little Jenny thinks she's too good for me. So...bravo. Just like you wanted. I have no one to turn to but you." And a week ago, that would have been enough, but she hurt him down too far this week: "Actually, you don't even have me." She shoots him a come on face, but he's not faltering. He looked himself in the mirror and he said, steely-eyed, "You are not in love. I command myself not to be in love." And then he wasn't, and he never had been. It's all about willpower; it's all about defining exactly what the story's about, no matter what anybody else has to say about it. No matter how much it breaks your heart. "I'll try to be more succinct. You held a certain fascination when you were beautiful, delicate...and untouched. But now you're like one of the Arabians my father used to own. Rode hard and put away wet. I don't want you anymore, and I can't see why anyone else would." Just putting the knife where it will do the most damage, just like she always does, when she's feeling fucked up and wild. She backed him into a corner, and he doesn't have a lot of options anymore. There was relief in her back and in her eyes when she sat down; she looked him in the eye and said, "You are my free-fall. I can be with you now, because I have no one else. Tell me this is a secret plan we hatched together, all alone: the two of us, finally together without anything else between us. Tell me that I've fallen just enough to love you, and I will love you forever." And he told her she'd fallen too far even for that. And that's when she did.

Eleanor's sitting in the living room when Blair comes off the elevator. Even across the house, she can see something's off about her daughter. She's weak. She's near tears: "I'd be a lot better if I could spend a semester going to school in France." In the silence, Blair nods sadly at her mother: it's really that bad. It just got that bad. Mom stutters: "Well, I -- I already talked to Harold about a visit, and he was -- he was thrilled..." Blair nearly begs to go immediately, and Eleanor's taken aback: "Now?" Blair throws herself down, at her mother's knee, supplicant. Sometimes, in hell, it takes your mother to save you. And she won't ask too many questions. "Blair, I am very concerned..." she murmurs, and Blair looks up, her eyes on fire: "So book a flight." Asked and answered. Without pausing, Eleanor nods, serious as the situation demands: "We'll get you out tomorrow." She caresses her daughter's face, down in the hell she helped construct, and Blair collapses into her arms. "Thank you." Saved from free-fall once again; still a Waldorf. If you can't fix the world, and you can't fix yourself, and you're not ready to be the new Serena, a hasty retreat is called for.

The new Army, headed by Hazel, plans their night's entertainment; Kati or Iz made out with the bartender at Decibel last time and he thinks she's in love with him, but they'll figure out somewhere else to go. Hazel invites Little J along, but once again, she has to cart massive amounts of books to the library for some reason. "Elise will take them for you. Won't you, E?" The new Jenny. She looks so terribly young, fidgeting with her silly wool hat, the puffballs hanging down, her cheeks turning red from the attention. "Yeah, sure!" Jenny protests -- even looking at Elise is making her sick, like a mirror, that naked desire to be included, that willingness to submit, that complete lack of backbone; it hurts her like Dan hurts me -- and Hazel redefines the world again: "The question isn't if you can do it, Jenny. It's if you should have to." There's a three-way stare-down as Elise, tiny little innocent Elise, promises she's going there anyway. The eyes of bitches are everywhere, because this is a defining moment for Little J. She finally nods, in front of them all, and Elise begs her to let her know if she needs anything else. Jenny nods queasily, and the Army moves out. Jenny hesitates for a second, but quickly joins Hazel. "Props to Blair," Hazel says smugly. "She trained you well." Credit where it's due. Who knows when Blair would have relented; I'm guessing soon, but we'll never know. Jenny smiles, and she and Elise wave goodbye across the quad, and Jenny's grin at the last second is the scariest part of all. Elise collects the books one by one; Jenny leaves a girl behind, in the courtyard.

In the gallery, Bex isn't hearing it: "Don't act so surprised to see me. How could I not stop by after all those pitiful messages you left?" Rufus apologizes, and tries once again to explain. He does a pretty good job: "Look, Bex. I was married for almost twenty years. And before that, I was a somewhat successful musician, and I wouldn't really call what I was doing dating." It was? "A succession of women -- groupies, mostly -- whose chose me. I really don't have any experience with real honest-to-goodness dating." I like that, the whole thing about eating whatever's on your plate instead of deciding what you want, and going after it. That's so true, and it's so Rufus, and I'm proud he figured that one out. "Despite your worst efforts, I am completely charmed by you, Rufus Humphrey." She speaks for us all! "Okay. Here's where we are. Dating 101, Lesson One: In two days, you're gonna call me, and thank me for forgiving you your dating faux pas. You'll ask me out to dinner. Someplace elegant, but intimate. And we are going to have a fabulous time. You got all that?" She delivers this with charm over and above the already pretty-charming lines. I like this one, I hope she sticks around. She takes off, promising they'll talk in two days, but of course she only makes it two steps toward the door before her phone rings, and she starts to laugh. Oh, Rufus.

Serena appears at the loft with a strange, yet totally valid, request: "I need to know why you love me." He can tell she's freaking, so instead of patronizing her, he stands up like a man and takes her hands immediately. "Because I do." She promises him she wants most to trust him, when he says that -- maybe if she knew why, she'd stop being so scared of hearing them, and saying them. Not the performance of love, but the words themselves, and the words behind the words. "Okay. Well, if you want to talk about why," he starts, and she cuts in with more words and explanations, about Lily and "her many marriages," and he laughs. "There. That's why. Because I actually like it when you interrupt me -- which is often, by the way -- I love you because you make no apologies about being exactly who you are," of course, unless you're apologizing to me for being exactly who you are, but it's a nice moment and I'm not going to throw a fit except to say that he loves making her apologize for that too. But the her he's talking about is "Beautiful, smart, sexy as hell..." She gets bashful, and this too is a reason. "You're completely unaware of your affect on me. You're also completely unaware that you laugh like a four-year-old [WTF?], just like that... And I love you because you can be with someone like me and still be best friends with someone like Blair." Ugh, Dan. Gross. "I love you because you have the good taste to love me, but the charity to love somebody I'm so much better than"? You can do better than that. But it's Dan, so he saves it at the last second: "You never give up on her. That is how amazing you are." She responds that he is amazing too, but can't come up with anything in particular: "You just are." Hee! That's like the truest part. Dan is awesome in a way science cannot properly describe; I'm on board with that. "And I love you...but I have to go." One of the many reasons he loves her, she explains, and blows him a kiss. I can't disagree; the intensity of her love for Blair really does recommend her quite highly, I think.

Taxi back to Chez Waldorf, and then to a helipad, where Blair is standing in a riding helmet, getting ready to fly. "What," Blair says hilariously. "You want a lift to JFK?" Eleanor told Serena about France, the sudden-death extraction they have planned, and Blair sticks out her lip. "She has a big mouth." I love Blair through this whole scene, because every single thing Serena says is another Jenga block on this very dramatic and ever-so-Blair scheme of fleeing the country under cover of night. "B, I'm your best friend. She was shocked I didn't know." And now you do, Blair snits. "What I know is how you felt when I left without telling you." Can't really fight that, doesn't really try. "...Is there a reason you're here?" Not the words but the act, of love. Running from the DUMBO recitation of love, its symmetries and stories, headlong into the arms of what it looks like when nobody's looking.