The mysterious G is revealed: Georgina Sparks, who has been in Switzerland since whatever it was that sent Serena packing. She talks S into having a drink, which turns into a hellish night out, causing Serena to call Chuck for help.
While everybody's stressing out over the SATs, including Vanessa who's not even going to college, Blair takes on her fiercest Yale rival, Nelly Yuki. Things end poorly for old Nelly, although rapper/singer Flow from the books is now working with Timbaland. (That made me laugh, I always imagined Flow as Crazytown.) Blair and her Bitches bring Nelly's ex-boyfriend Todd into her situation the night before the test, then steal her batteries.
Also that night: G asks S out for a drink, just to apologize, and TOTALLY SLIPS HER A ROOFIE, leading to a tequila-fueled night on the town and missing the test altogether. Yet again, S calls Chuck instead of Dan, because she doesn't want Dan to know the mysterious evil stuff, while all Chuck has in life in mysterious evil stuff. Without her knowledge, Chuck buys a pretty redhead to take the test for her, which would have worked except for how Dan's standing right there as she checks in.
The good news: somebody finally noticed that Nate is totally awesome. The bad news: it's Vanessa. The good news again: she's not that horrible after the teaser, and their relationship actually makes a groovy kind of sense. They kiss after their first date, and Nate kidnaps her romantically and makes her take the SAT.
Completely confused by all the lying and ditching and Chuck involvement, Dan heads over to 1812, where he finds a contrite but tight-lipped Serena. Angry that her relationship is threatened, she tells G to back off and never speak to her again -- but G responds by finding Dan and meet-cuting with him under a fake name.
Meanwhile, Jenny and Rufus are still at loggerheads, especially when he tells her she's still grounded regardless of how hot her new prep-school beau Asher is. Eventually, Asher comes to the house to charm Rufus as well, and they all eat hotdogs.
Gossip Girl has some things to explain to you this evening, over shots of worried and hurried and frantically studying Serena, Dan and Blair: "There are three things we do alone: We are born, we die, and -- if we're a high school junior headed for college -- we take the SAT. And while the test is said to measure our best traits, preparing for it inevitably brings out the worst. Humility becomes self-doubt..." Dan, for whom "humility" is a relative concept but "self-doubt" a constant, "Striving becomes obsession..." That's Blair -- whose middle names are "Striving" and "Obsession" -- shouting answers as Dorota flips her gorgeous stationary-quality flashcards one by one, "Some are driven to self-medication..." Serena, on her bed in a pile of books up to her chin, gulping coffee, hair gone wild, "While others cling to the security of being part of a group." And of course that's Hazel, Isabel and Penelope, as always, hitting a chess timer, testing themselves together. "And anyone who's used to bending the rules will find themselves breaking them." Chuck pays off a dude for nefarious purpose, and the music goes crazy.
Serena despairs in Manhattan while Dan studies wildly in DUMBO, and Rufus walks into his room without knocking, freaking Dan out on top of already freaking out. "Ugh! Dad, don't ever do that again!" Rufus is confused, because he was supposed to tell Dan when his time was up, but I think the inference is that Dan is worried that this will set a walking-in-without-knocking precedent, seriously cutting into her future furious masturbation time considerably. Whatever, it's like seven in the morning and you're studying for the SATs; focus, Dan. "The manner in which you went about it...it was like you were deliberately trying to humiliate me." He admits that he only finished half the practice test in the allotted time, and throws his pencil across the room. Rufus assures him that he's smart, but Dan is worried about his choking habit: "I'm a choker! I choke!" Rufus knows chokers. I miss Rufus's sill old choker. "T-ball. First grade. Remember this? Bases loaded, and I struck out." He was only six, but it was after all T-ball: "The ball was on a tee. Not moving." Rufus assures him that he'll come through, based on blind faith at least, and Jenny scoots toward the front door with a hurried goodbye. "Wait," Rufus says without looking, and she stops in her tracks.
"I'm coming with you," he says, and she gets preemptively embarrassed: "You're walking me to school?" He says he needs the exercise, and Little J protests that one mistake does not a "human ankle monitor" require. "You used to beg me to walk you to school! You'd cry if I didn't walk you to class," he says, but everybody knows that was Dan. Dan, already dishabille in half his uniform, admits that it's true while he gets dressed, but qualifies that this was during his post-t-ball emotional crisis. Man, I love thinking about sensitive little Dan as a kid. How cute would that be?
"Jenny, what you did was wrong, and really out of character. Grounding you is not just about punishment, we need to spend some time together. Reconnect." Jenny honestly admits that she wants that too, but not necessarily in public, and not at all in front of her quasi-friends. He sees the wisdom of this objection, but demands family dinner tonight. She protests that she's the alto, and has group rehearsal, but he decides that their reconnecting over lasagna will wait for no a capella Fergie cover. Jenny vanishes as Dan's offering to ride with her, and in the quiet after the door slams, Rufus and Dan look at each other. There's implied shrugging all around, because Jenny's still right about this stuff. She's kind of an asshole, but she's right about this, and Rufus is being a dork, and Dan still thinks being an outcast is a sign of character.
S and B are in the courtyard at Constance, doing practice tests on these cute little branded review computers. B finishes hers with a 2200. "Fair," she coughs, and Serena rolls her eyes because it's at least 90th percentile. (I want desperately to know what Serena's average practice test score is, don't you? I bet it's like 2250 and nobody will ever know, because her magic powers depend on people knowing she's smart, but not too smart, because her whole life is about balancing the accountability she demands of herself and the complete consequence pass everybody else gives her.) "Which means Nelly Yuki probably got 2300," Blair fumes, and Serena points out that B doesn't talk to Nelly Yuki, who we've never even heard of, so who cares? "Nelly Yuki has her sights set on Yale, too. What are the odds of them accepting two girls from Constance? And have you seen Nelly Yuki's extracurriculars? I need to kick her well-rounded ass." Heh. Serena grins and laughs that B hasn't lost her bitchy edge, but B's barely even looking at her, so focused is she on the threat of Nelly Yuki. "Nelly Yuki must be destroyed."
There's a very cool, very O.C. bit here where Serena points out that B keeps calling Nelly Yuki by her whole name, which makes Blair sound even more deranged, and B's like, "Duh, it's 'Nelly Yuki,'" like, why wouldn't you say the whole thing every time. That's so adorable I can't even handle it, but what I really like is the breezy way the show goes there without explaining it, just assuming you get it, the way you get why Seth says the word "pudding" over and over, or Taylor Townsend does ... everything Taylor Townsend ever does, or why Mini Cooper loves freakshows and trainwrecks most of all. It's a friendly gesture that makes the show cooler, and B way cooler. Serena laughs lovingly, but B spots Chuck approaching and starts gathering her shit. S says she's going to hang around in the courtyard a bit, because she knows how stressed Dan is about the test, and B shows some teeth about Dan's performance anxiety, and bounces with a viciously mean look at Chuck.
"She really needs to tone down on the social niceties," Chuck says as he sits beside Serena. "It's embarrassing." S says he's eventually going to have to work out his issues with B, but from where he's sitting, he's issue-free. As is Serena, because the mysterious G, Georgina Sparks, is nowhere near the "fair isle," of Manhattan. "She's in Switzerland, dating the prince of Belfort." Serena's giddy about the near miss, and Chuck suggests it's an opportunity to enjoy the gifts of G with peace of mind ... "And maybe Chuck in the room?" She pushes his face away, giggling, and reminds him they're brother and sister now. He ruminates for a moment. "Georgie always brought out the devil in you. Part of me is a little disappointed she's not here." S is like, "Yeah, the dick part of you," but Chuck admits to missing Old Serena.
Which is key to this whole episode, because the further S slips this week, the more she depends on Chuck. And I don't think it's that they're suddenly friends, I think it's more about the fact that before she left, Chuck was a huge part of her life and possibly the only person that could keep up with her, and the reason we haven't seen them together much before now is that she had drama and he had drama, and she and Blair have A stories every week basically, so when would they spend time together? But also that coming back, she made a concerted effort to avoid that part of her life, which meant avoiding Chuck and the associations he evokes. Which is even more interesting if you think about the last fourteen episodes and the ways they have interacted, because that means he had all of the Blair issues with her disappearance, plus the fact that he was too dirty for her to deal with when she came back sparkly and new. So now Chuck's resentment of Dan, which looked originally like Mean Rich Guy high school shit, has this extra flavor of Dan being a symptom of Serena's rejection of Chuck.
So if you trace the whole story back to this point, and Chuck's newfound obsession with family and being a man and being a good brother and wanting to connect with Serena, his shit last week and this week makes so much more sense. I think we assumed that Blair was implicated in Bad Serena behavior, but B has always been what she is: an anal-retentive control freak who wants to control the school and to excel in everything. The first time we saw her get truly drunk, she cashed in her V card. You know what I mean? I think we're going to find Bad Serena has less to do with Blair -- beyond covering for her ass, as we saw at Thanksgiving -- and more to do with G and Chuck and the things they would get up to. And then there's poor Blair and Nate sitting at home being beautiful nerds while Serena was out blowing shit up. I think the show avoided Bad Serena and the reasons for her leaving so well that we forgot there were questions, so I'm really interested in going back and filling in the blanks, and so far my favorite part of it is this whole thing where Chuck is a fixer and dependable in certain ways, and the only reason you don't automatically go to him is not just because of the raping possibility, but that depending on him is a habit. So once S feels herself slipping, Chuck is the only person she can possibly go to, because he understands that world, and he can be a friend to S whether she's Good or Bad, while the propaganda of Good Serena means -- until today -- he's the enemy. And I mean, if you've ever been Bad and tried to go Good, this whole bit between S and Chuck will make total sense.
Anyway. Thanks to Bad Serena, "The new one has to break 2000 on her SATs. So if you could just go smarm elsewhere..." He giggles, and reminds her of his offer to send a "lovely little redhead" to be Serena van der Woodsen for the day, so she doesn't have to take the test herself. "Oh, I'll leave the cheating to you, Chuck." He takes off, and she stares, kind of wildly relieved, into space. So clearly Georgina is in the shadows, waiting to strike. I've said it before, but my favoritest thing about The O.C. was how you would see one side of somebody and they were a villain, and then before you knew it you'd see more sides of them, and be able to integrate it until they were just a person. Like, B was always scary, but in a high school popularity way. She'd never kill anybody or put drugs in their drinks or do actual real-life mean danger stuff. So now there's G, and a link back to Bad Serena that only Chuck really gets, and finds just as terrifying as she does, even if it's just on her behalf because he knows she'd break before he would, so he's more scared for her than he is of G, who plays with the same range of weapons he does. It's exciting.
Jenny towers over the Bitches in the hallway at Constance. I knew she was super tall and I knew Hazel was super short, but seeing them all at once -- even gigantic Isabel -- it's like Snow White. Penelope and Hazel chorus that Little J's so lucky to be a freshman and not worried about the SATs, and Penelope minorly bitches that Nate never called her (I wondered how that would work out!), and Isabel muses aloud about joining Kati on kibbutz. Jenny, seeing two birds she can kill, invites the girls over to her house for lasagna and cramming. That way she won't have to deal with Rufus, and she'll be vaguely helpful in some way, even though honestly a schlep to Brooklyn plus another round of talking to Rufus, I'd rather raise chickens in the desert too. B appears out of nowhere, grinning fiercely. "That won't be necessary, Little J. You girls are all taken care of, courtesy of Blair Waldorf SAT Prep & Spa. ... If you're gonna sweat the test, it better not clog your pores. This evening at my penthouse, you'll find personal tutors, hot stone massages, mani-pedis and an amazing acupuncturist who specializes in mental acuity." Jenny's like, "That is more awesome than my dad's lasagna, you are correct." B offers to flickr her some photos, because she is not invited. Which Jenny accepts. Everybody stands around for a second, and then the Bitches all flock after Blair. "Spotted in the halls of Constance: Little J, realizing that age really does come before beauty." Gossip Girl, I love it when you make sense, but when you don't? I love you a little bit more.
Dan bumps into Nate coming up the steps. Nate is wearing casual gear and holding a soccer ball, Dan is in full dress. Of course. Because that is how time flies at St. Jude's: for some of us it's the weekend already, for some of us it's still Friday morning like it was a second ago. Dan blabbers about how Nate's playing soccer in the middle of the morning when soccer season doesn't even start until October, and then catches himself Danning out: "No, no, you know what? I have to stop doing that. I'll just focus on myself, and my test, and my prep. What other people do or don't do is about them, absolutely." Thanks for that, Daniel Humphrey. Thank you for that. I'm going to set this egg timer here and see how long it takes you to get judgmental and weird, but I'm guessing that you'll finally have a point. So Nate's like, "So you're crazy right now, yes?" Yes.
S runs up being Lonelyboy and covers his eyes, kissing him. "Oh, Chuck! I had no idea you felt that way about me." Foreshadowing for their total makeout session in Season Three? Who knows. S beeps his nose and congratulates him on being "at least still kind of funny." Which is the perfect description. They talk about how she's been all tied up with becoming a van der Bass and they've both been busy with the SATs, and Serena invites him over to "study" and make out, and he's down. They are totally adorable as he walks away, turning back like five times to be cute some more, and once he's out of range, wolves howl in the distance and all the rabbits and squirrels in Central Park begin to scream and birds fall out of the sky and the shadows of Constance Billard coalesce to form a cloud of darkness blacker than black, our of which steps the eerie beauty of Georgina Sparks. "You always did know how to leave them wanting more." Immediately before barfing, S shivers and says, without turning: "Oh my God. Georgina."
Serena finally summons up the courage to ask what she's doing there, and ... You know, I love Trachtenberg. I loved her on Buffy, loved her on Six Feet Under well after I'd stopped liking the show. And although I'm slightly hoping she gets a bit firmer handle on the character in subsequent episodes, she has a real gift for body language that I've noticed before -- she's a dancer, maybe that's why -- and if you look at this scene on paper, she has all the lines. Serena says like two things the whole time, and the rest is just reacting to G's physical presence, which is saying completely opposite shit to the things she's saying out loud, so it's at least two and maybe five simultaneous conversations happening at once, and they all work because Trachtenberg knows what her body is up to, and that's really cool. I always forget what that's called -- kinesthetic sense? -- but it's a thing you're born with, the ability to see the lines your body's making from the outside, and it's a total dancer thing, and when you're also an actress it makes up for a lot of other stuff. And what's cool -- and missing from the scene at the end of the episode -- is that Blake's right there with her.
Says: "I told you I was coming. Didn't you get my gifts? ...Haven't you missed me?"
Means: "If you don't lie to me right now you won't live through this."
Serena: "...How could I not?"
Says: "Okay, you don't want to throw me a homecoming party, I get it. But let's have a cocktail, Catch up."
Means: "Come to the party or the party comes to you. I've already sabotaged your family and your permanent school record without even trying, and that was just a prelude."
Says: "S, you're really gonna hurt my feelings, and you know how I get when my feelings are hurt."
Means: "Submit. Remember and submit."
Their eyes meet, and Serena submits.
Says: "Great. I'll see you tonight!"
Means: "Remember what I need, and what I'm prepared to do to meet my needs."
Says: "It's so weird seeing you! It's almost like I never left."
Means: "I know you're lying, and I know you're scared, and I don't care. It's delicious. But the fact remains that I have needs, and you will meet them. I live in the dark."
She leaves with a scary bright smile, and Serena is rooted to the spot. "Spotted in the courtyard: Serena, looking like she's seen a ghost. The ghost of parties past."
Elise runs up to Little J, adorable in pink, as she's buying a street vendor hotdog. "Why did you want to meet here?" Jenny explains that she's been thinking. That's never good. "I've been thinking. What's the one thing that no one in our group has? I mean, not even Blair?" Elise correctly guesses "compassion," and they laugh as hard as we do, but Jenny explains that none of the Bitches have a boyfriend, and that's the edge she needs. "You know, if I'm gonna make it to queen, I need a king." They look at the prep school boys Jenny's tracking, and Elise -- who really doesn't seem to understand boy/girl at all -- points out that Queen Elizabeth never had a boyfriend. (Except for Ralph Fiennes! God grant me the kind of celibacy where I sleep with Ralph Fiennes, please.) "But she only had the Spanish to conquer, and I have Blair Waldorf." I love it when they make the whole High School Is Epic Drama In Your Head thing explicit. In high school, it's not even a metaphor to say you're emulating Queen Elizabeth, because in high school, your movie has its own soundtrack.
"Let's talk qualifications. He has to be cute..." -- one hottie bends down to check his reflection in a car's curbside rearview -- "...But not full of himself. He has to be from the right kind of family..." -- two dudes get grody with a passing lady -- "...Ugh, but not disgusting." A totally cute, totally weird-looking dude is pulled along by a million little dogs, right into her, and she drops her hotdog. "Whoa! Oh, oh, aw... I'm so sorry. Are you okay?" She notes her lunch, now being devoured by a little pug named Linus, and the boy digs around in his pocket, coming up with ... his last dollar. She tells him to save it, because she knows how weird it is to walk around the city with no money, and he offers her an IOU instead. Having already crossed his hot ass off the list of contenders, she blows him off, but he cutely explains that he was actually just trying to give her his number. She's wearing an intense patterned scarf, like Pier One condensed into the form of a single scarf, over a cute double-breasted purple jacket. "Thank you. I mean, it's fine. I mean, I'm really not even that hungry." They are delightful some more, and he looks back at her over his shoulder, and the second he's gone she trashes his number, freaking out Elise. "He's a dog walker. I need a king, not a jester. Come on, let's go lurk outside Dalton." I really do love the new Jenny. She will blow your mind and then immediately blow your mind again. And every time she's cruisin' for a bruisin', and you think she's finally cashed out, she just gets back on the pony and rides off further into crazy. Excellent.
Nate comes into Vanessa's coffeeshop, where she's working at her laptop. He tries to come up with her name, and she grins up at him without standing. "Vanessa. You're Nate, right? You play a very small but crucial role in my video project." Nate's like, "Yeah, right, your art or whatever. I remember you following Dan around with your video camera." Or, you know, lockpicks, depending on how weird you are at any given time. Dan walks up and greets him, and Nate explains that he's there pay it forward, having taken "every SAT prep and review class in the five boroughs." He plops down about ten inches of study materials, and Dan's impressed. Nate explains that he's already taken the SATs anyway. "My parents don't want me going to USC, so I had to make sure my scores were good enough to get in without their help. Which, thanks to these books, they were, so I'm done." I love Nate Archibald. He's got a plan. Vanessa is unimpressed, of course: "While we all love hearing about the struggles of the idle rich, Dan's got a fine tutor right here. I ace every practice test I take. So we don't need your hand-me-downs." Dan explains that in fact Nate is doing something awesome, and you don't piss on gifts like that, ever, because sometimes Dan actually does need to explain basic shit to Vanessa Abrams.
He thanks Nate profusely for being such a sweetheart, and Vanessa makes mean faces. "Is there a reason you insist on looking so desperate and needy?" And, as if to make her less of an asshole by being more of an asshole himself, Dan explains to Nate as though Vanessa's not sitting there that she's been horrible since birth: "Venomous without provocation." She replies immediately that she'd rather be venomous than a charity case, and Dan and Nate consider her like a science project: "She's rude, too." Nate's distracted by her for a moment, and then takes off. He's so cool. Dan sits down, like, "What? That was totally nice, and it will help!" Vanessa broods, but then notices a handwritten essay on spiral paper, sticking out of one of the books, and because she's Vanessa, she snatches that bitch immediately and starts reading.
Now it's nighttime! Serena wonders if a bar is really the best place to chat, and Georgina reminds her that, as she well knows, "Nothing gets me talking like a Cosmo." Every time either of them exposit that they know each other inside and out, drink. Two guys toast them from across the bar, and G's feeling it, but Serena explains that a lot has changed since they were together. "I know. I get it." Serena explains that this is untrue, because if she did understand New Serena, she wouldn't have sent all that illegal, trouble-causing shit last week. "Oh, come on, sweetie. Those were funny. Get over yourself, I was just trying to make you laugh. How about this? How about for one night, we hang out like old times -- but unlike old times, I won't get out of control. Unless you want me to, I mean, I can totally..." Serena laughs in spite of herself. "No, okay. I won't get out of control, and I totally respect that. Please, stop me any time you feel like answering. Any time. Come on." Serena laughs aloud, for real, and is adorable. "One drink. But only one." Serena's smile, and the way she stirs her drink, says that she thinks she can do this: balance New Serena and the kindness that G needs right now; that she can stick her pinkie toe in the pool without getting wet. That this is a test, of her best qualities and not her worst, and that she's capable of doing it. Georgina's smile says it's bliss, but her eyes say something else, and they toast.
The Bitches arrive at Chez Waldorf, where as a chorus they notice the lack of tutors and masseuses and smoothies? Isabel's straightened hair looks totally hot; B is wearing a huge red polka-dot shirt/scarf thing you might see on Lily van der Bass, with a similar black thing over it. "All that I have promised you is waiting. And while it gives me great pleasure to think of us crossing that SAT finish line together... Before the race can begin, you need to be made aware of one little thing." She fully pulls out like this entire PowerPoint presentation on the evils of Nelly Yuki, starting with her MySpace page.
"Nelly Yuki: Top in our class, summer schooled at the Sorbonne..." Penelope notes that her well-rounded ass also summered at Sorbonne, but B's got that. "True. Penelope, you may be a National Merit Scholar, but Nelly Yuki is a Merit Scholar, a Peabody Scholar, and an Intel Science Talent Search Finalist. Isabel, you're a concert pianist, but Itzhak Perlman himself gave Nelly her very first violin. Hazel, you're ... just along for the ride, 'kay?" Heh. Hazel is not amused. "But if any of us wants to live out our college dreams, we have to find Nelly Yuki's weakness and exploit it. So what's it gonna be. Aromatherapy? Or annihilation?" The three of them share a psychic look, and agree. "What's the plan?" Zoom in on Nelly Yuki playing the violin, and Blair's scariest face.
More than one drink later, Georgina is doing the Thousand and One Nights routine, filling Serena's head with memories as they both wheeze and laugh hysterically. "It was like the worst thing ever! And then! And then, do you remember? Do you remember when we ran out of money? And then I had to flash the bartender! Because we ran out of money... Wait, wait, oh my God, remember when we were Savannah and Svetlana?" Serena does, and laughs hysterically -- she'd blacked that one out entirely. Georgina corrects herself, in a valley girl voice: "Wait, no, I think we were Tiffany and Angel that night..." Serena nods, charmed. "Oh, you could talk me into anything." All the girls they could be.
The two cats from earlier approach, offering to buy them another round, setting off a giggling siren from G and a composed "No, thank you" from Serena. Georgina brightens immediately, taking on a shitty Russian accent: "Oh, my American girlfriend! So uptight, they think the drink lead to the sex!" Everybody laughs, and Serena becomes another girl, Nadine the Beauty Queen, crappy Southern accent out to here: "No, no, no, Ah wasn't being rude, Ah just didn't want to take anything if Ah couldn't offer anything in return." They assure her they'd be happy with just a dance, and Nadine begs off again, but Svetlana drags her to her feet. "Aw, this is what is the practice for. Come on, lady." On cue, they both shout, "Opa!" It's still just fun, just playing at being these girls; everything else was just paranoid fantasy, Georgina's not that scary, they have such a great history together, she understands her. It's just dancing and fake accents. And then G's phone rings.
"I'm so stupid, so so so so stupid," she whines into the phone. Chuck's at home in the bathroom, putting on his watch, in a totally cute green and white rugby stripe v-neck, and says the sweetest thing he's ever said: "You don't sound stupid, you sound drunk. What have you been into?" Georgina. "Good news is, she doesn't want anything except to party... bad news is, I partied." He smarms a bit, wondering if the party involves clothes, and Serena, as usual, which I love because it's so key to their relationship and to them both, doesn't even pause to respond. It's just noise. "I'm supposed to be at Dan's studying. I called to tell him I'd be late, but not this late. I...I just have to call him and say..." That instead of studying with him, you're out with your old pal Georgina? I don't think Chuck really means it, but it gives her the opportunity to explain why she's alone with this: even Chuck can't stand Georgina, and the fact of her is such an ugly blot across New Serena, the history is so scary, that "Dan, of all people, cannot know Georgie." Neither the girl nor the fact of her. "Say you need me," he says, but he's already mobilized to take care of it. She screams his name, wounded, and he chuckles. "I'll take care of it, and pick you up in ten."
Dan's phone rings, and it's a Palace number, so he answers with a smile. "Hey! I've been wondering where you were." Chuck smiles and breathes. "You mean, all of your life?" Dan sits down again, deflated. "Uh, don't take this the wrong way, Serena? But you sound just like this jackass we know." Chuck tells him she's got food poisoning, and can't come to their "playdate." Dan stands up again, demanding to talk to her, unsure Chuck's not running some creepy game. "The bathroom doesn't get reception," he says boredly, he's constitutionally incapable of doing anything without teasing, picking at it, making it burlesque. "Somehow I don't believe you," Dan says, which gratifies him a little bit. "My poor sick sister has asked for my assistance in the matter, so I'll leave it at this: She's not coming. Don't try calling. Humphrey," he says, right into the mouthpiece, like a kiss: "Always a pleasure."
It's daytime! So yesterday was either Thursday, or this show has invented a day between Friday and Saturday! Both equally likely! There's thunder as Dan arrives in the St. Jude's courtyard, and little black raincloud over his head. Chuck's wearing the most awesome red military peacoat in the world, with a wide black collar. Red is my favorite color but I'm super Welsh and Irish and if I wore that without some kind of self-tanner getting involved, which I'm not even going to experiment with, I would look like a plague victim in that. I must love it the way you love fine art: from a foot away and without touching. Dan strolls up on him, all worried about S, and Chuck rolls his eyes and gets off the phone. "Beautiful day you're ruining, isn't it?" Dan asks him to leave Serena alone, as a favor, and Chuck says again -- as slowly, as mysteriously and dramatically as possible -- that it was S he was doing the favor for. Chuck doesn't understand how serious this is, because where Serena's at right now is where he lives, so he thinks he can joke and make Dan feel weird for his own benefit, but it's not without consequence. "All I know is, before spring break everything was great. It was good. Now, break's over, she's not quite herself, and I'm trying to think, what has changed in her life? Oh, the Bass family moved into it."
Serena runs up and kisses Dan, and he asks how she's feeling. Not picking up Chuck's worried twitch signals until it's too late, she says her migraine's gone. Dan's confused, because a migraine is not food poisoning, and she says she had both. Dan asks for a full rundown, and Chuck tries to interrupt, but Dan is steely, holding out a palm toward Chuck without looking away from her face. "I'm asking you." She stammers that she got food poisoning, and Chuck helped her. "Okay, where exactly did you eat that you got this killer food poisoning/migraine?" She tells him to drop the interrogation, he realizes he's pulling a Humphrey, and goes right to the puppy-dogs: "As soon as you tell me where my girlfriend is!" She swears she's there with him, in the light, she wants to believe it, but already the smell of Georgina is getting on him. The bell rings and he stares at her, angry and justified for once. "I can't... I can't do this."
Chuck approaches again, having finished his call, and Serena's sick. "This is exactly why I didn't want her to come back. She's been back a day already and look what's happening." Chuck asks why, if it's that bad, she can't just tell Dan about G. But say what you will about Chuck and his penchant for theatre, he's at least authentically Chuck. He honestly doesn't get that there are secrets and faces that people put on. He's Chuck Bass. He doesn't know dick about New Serena or Old Serena or what it means to date a boy like Dan. I honestly don't think he would understand the words coming out of your face if you tried to explain it. Which is how, once again, he can be Chuck and still kind of be the hero here. Because it's not that he doesn't see the depths and depravities of the G situation, he sees them just fine: he just doesn't know why it's a big deal. S sighs and tells him they'll talk later, but there's no way to tell Dan about Old Serena and Georgina without losing him, and Chuck stares after her.
Military drums attend the Bitches' first attempt to acquire and destroy Nelly Yuki. "Look, I'm not stupid. I know you're not really interested in how my family owns half of TriBeCa." Hazel scoffs: "Of course we're interested! You're the newest member of our little club!" Which, Penelope explains, is only for the very smartest junior girls. "Our junior class only has thirty girls. We're already an elite club. Can I go now?" Blair nails Hazel to the wall from down the hall with a single look, and she sputters and tries again: "You what would be hot? You, us at G Spa." Nelly Yuki does not drink. "Saks Fifth?" asks Penelope, but Nelly Yuki does not shop. "Yogurt on the steps?" Nelly Yuki is lactose intolerant. "Look, I really don't want any friends." Blair gets worried, because without a desperate need for popularity, her magic won't work. "All I want is to be alone. And to never listen to Flo Rida, ever again." B sniffs something in that, and nods to Penelope.
"What happened? A little backstage hit it and quit it?" I was all excited because I misheard the name and I thought they were talking about Flow, who was this bizarrely superfamous rap-rocker in the books that I loved, and I was so excited that he might be involved that I kind of lost track of myself and didn't connect it to the song or anything in the real world. "What? No, my boyfriend broke up with me at a Flo Rida concert." Penelope makes a fake sad face. "One minute we were waving our hands in the air like we just didn't care, and the ..." B starts downloading a track immediately, in her usual Blair way of starting chaotic shit and then figuring out how to spin it once the screaming starts, and shares a devious and triumphant look with Penelope and then, a moment later, Hazel gets that something has happened, and makes the mean face too.
Elise and Jenny are on the loose again, wandering the streets on their own, this time with cute umbrellas. "Since the Dalton guys were a bust, how about collegiate? The boys' Lacrosse team is working out just around..." She spots the dog watcher boy, and stops in her tracks. Little J, in pink tights with yellow or orange Mary Janes, goes very Blair for a second: "What did I tell you about that dog walker? There are no kings on craigslist." But as Elise watches him hand the dogs over to an older woman, realizes that he's not the walker after all. He sees them and waves, surprised, and Little J moves in for the kill.
B spots Nelly Yuki studying on the floor of a hallway, backs up a few paces, and starts the song playing on her phone, then walks nonchalantly past Nelly Yuki, who immediately gets hysterical about Flo Rida some more. "Nelly Yuki, what's wrong?" B says, breathless and wonderful. "It's like it's happening all over again. That song just reminds me of my boyfriend...My ex-boyfriend, I should say..." She shuts the song down almost immediately, as though it's suddenly an insect now that it's attacking her friend Nelly Yuki, and crouches at her side. "Oh! No! ...Did he dump you? That's horrible. What was his name? Brad? Bill?" Todd. Jansen. Blair gives a speech, all in one breath, totally awesomely: "There's nothing like the fresh, sharp pain of a breakup. Believe me, I've had my fair share of heartache. But this is about you. Tonight you're gonna come over to my house, and just cry till you get it all out of your system." Nelly Yuki protests that she needs to focus for tomorrow, and B sweetly reminds her, "You can't focus when something's on your mind, now can you? Come, come, come." She closes Nelly Yuki's book with a tender smile. "Tell me all about it." Nelly Yuki smiles gratefully, and makes her first friend.
Vanessa's sitting alone at a booth in a Greek place in Brooklyn, getting bored, and checks her watch. She finally asks for the check, but Nate comes running in and tells the waitress to wait. "Daylight Savings moved to March," Vanessa says. "Maybe no one told you?" He apologizes, and the waitress offers him coffee, by name. "Thanks, Cora." Vanessa's confused, but Nate explains that he comes here when he visits Brooklyn. Which happens more than she thinks it does, because his Dad's rehab is, for some reason, in Brooklyn. Which is also why he's late. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..." He points out that it's not a huge secret, his dad's famous breakdown and suicide attempt and failure. She looks down, embarrassed, and he explains that he sometimes has to decompress between visiting the Captain and returning to his awful mother at home. So he comes to the Greek place to rest up, and drink coffee, and ... "Think about how hard it is to know whose side you're supposed to be on? Mom versus Dad, kid in the middle? Confession: I read one of your practice essays. You left it in a book that you gave Dan. And that's why I called you. To apologize." Nate asks why, and lest you think Vanessa has become a completely new person, it's not to apologize for rudely reading what must have been immediately clear was a pretty personal piece of writing. No, Vanessa still doesn't understand personal space, but she does have a minute understanding of her own greatness of spirit: "Because I judged the cover. But now that I've read the book, I figured you were owed some apologetic souvlaki at the very least." He grins at her, and as usual his smile is so bright and lovely that they both start giggling. Well, he giggles. She titters, more like.
S is walking down the street when her phone rings, and after quick breathing exercise, she pastes a fake smile on and answers. "Hey, Georgie! It was good to see you last night. When did you say you were going back to Belgium?" The breeziness of an old friend who enjoyed catching up, and will now be returning to previously established continuity. The girl she chooses to be. "Um, Switzerland, actually. And I'm supposed to leave tomorrow, but I'm not going until I get a chance to make it up to you first." Serena lies, and rolls her eyes at herself as she's doing it: "Oh, nothing to make up! I had fun." G is self-effacing and epiphanic: "Until after you left, I don't think I really heard what you were saying. I didn't get it. You've really changed." S agrees with that. "I don't mean to sound corny, But... It's a real inspiration to me." Serena's as surprised as we are, but I don't think G's lying. I think G's got two girls inside her, too, so what was at first a dark mirror and temptation gets more interesting: Georgina is what happens if you can't come up with New Serena, if you don't have the strength and wisdom enough to really make the jump. Which makes her scarier as a story element, and much more desperate as a character, and much trickier to deal with. I think in order to get G, we're going to have to agree that everything she ever says is true. Maybe not the whole truth, but the truth of at least one of the girls she can be.
"I mean, look. I've always thought that I am who I'm going to be for the rest of my life. And even those times when I ... maybe don't like myself, well... You can't decide to be somebody else." And this thread of truth, the sad sincerity behind the bared fangs and viper twists, comes across the line loud and clear, and Serena's sad for her, but just as desperate to help. "No, you can..." Not in a starry-eyed rainbow way, not as something to hope for, but something that's possible if you're willing to bleed for it. Like standing on the tarmac with Blair before the break, promising that she would return and become queen again. She knows you can change your life, because she has done it, and if she can be good enough and strong enough and fast enough, if she can care enough, she can help Georgina come back, too. And then there won't be anything left of Old Serena at all, and that little thought in the back of her head, that Old Serena's just waiting for her chance to come back and spoil everything again, and take away Dan and all that sunshine, that'll be gone too. If she can save Georgina, there won't be any question at all about Serena.
Which means Serena is going to ride this particular boat into the rapids as fast as she can, and never let go, because it's her last and best shot at peace. And the really scary thing is, Georgina knows that, and has just said the magic words, so now in this chess game that Serena's playing with herself, New Serena's gotta carry Old Serena and Georgina, both, on her back, all the way across the field, through enemy territory, so everybody can get out alive. Either way Georgina wins: if she drowns, they both drown, but if New Serena's as strong as they both hope, then they'll both reach the other side. Georgina's going to do some weak shit in a bit, and we'll see she's afraid to choose the stronger choice, but at this moment in time I believe every word, and so does she. And so does S.
"Yeah, listen, let's have dinner. I mean, I want to hear about your life. And if you can change, maybe there's hope for me, too." She's holding a big old glass of vodka as she says this, but all through the scene she doesn't take a drink, and that's why I believe her. It would have been easy as hell to have her choke some of that down mid-sentence, and we'd know what kind of story this is. But I don't think that's the intention: I think G's trying to make a choice, and knowing that either way it goes, she needs Serena. Who protests that she's got the SATs in the morning, and can't do dinner and catching up part two. "It'll just be an hour. We can time it. I promise. The hardest drug on the table will be... Perrier." She shrugs at the glass in her hand, and as the camera whirls around Serena, Gossip Girl explains that New Serena's not as sound as either of them think.
"Spotted: Serena van der Woodsen, being given a real-life multiple choice question. A) go home and study, B) get a good night's sleep, C) call your boyfriend, or D..." Serena finally gives her an hour, and Georgina smiles. "...None of the above. Hope that wasn't the wrong answer, S. This test doesn't grade on a curve."
Dan's studying at the coffee table in the living room; grounded Jenny does her homework at the kitchen island. "All right. Capacious. Looks like ... spacious. What does it mean? Roomy. Oh yeah." Jenny rolls her eyes and he practically gives himself a high-five. "Captious. Looks like... That looks like capacious. Oh. I can't concentrate." Jenny finally asks if maybe the constant monologue is distracting him, and Dan -- oblivious of course -- starts to tell her about his fight with mysteriously ill Serena, but Rufus comes home just then.
"Oh!" squeals Jenny, running to him, playing it masterfully but also being true and cute: "Lookit! Trig identities are memorized, my Latin is resurrected, and my Lit paper's finished." He looks through her papers, and hums. "Impressive. Seeing as you've returned the Valentino, and you've logged ten hours of volunteer work with Betty at the shop..." She burbles, "...I'm not grounded anymore?" Nope. But he did buy her a new sewing machine, to replace the one she pawned, which for a moment is almost enough. She giggles and hops around, and gives Dan a great WTF face when his contribution is that he's glad as anyone: "Do you know how much it costs to get a zipper repaired?" From around her suddenly multiplying octopus limbs, Rufus explains that he thought it would be especially good, given how she'll be continuing to spend so much time at home. "So I guess you're still grounded," Dan snots, and Rufus gives him a great look, like "Come on, Dan." He nods: too far, gotcha.
"Dad, wait. I met this really nice guy, and I'm supposed to meet him in the park for lunch tomorrow." Rufus is like, "You'd still be too young to date even if you weren't grounded," and she backs up to say that it's barely even a date. Dan asks who he is, and she tosses over her shoulder, "You don't know him, he goes to Unity." Which Rufus recognizes as an Upper East Side prep school, and Dan corrects that it's Upper West Side, and he's all, "How are you helping?" He reminds Jenny that she was going to take a break from that whole crowd, and she asks him to clarify his meaning. "The [whole crowd] that made you feel like compromising your character was a prerequisite to hanging out with them?" But it's okay for Dan to date a rich girl? Dan reminds them that he's having total drama with migraines and food poisoning and mysterious possible incest, but as Humphreys, it is their prerogative to keep talking like Dan didn't even say anything.
"I thought you said it wasn't a date," Rufus notes, justifiably proud of himself for doing a parent thing that parents do, and Jenny kind of violently shakes all over because he's got in her a cage, so she screeches and runs off to slam the bedroom door behind her. And if this show was really hardcore, they would have celebrated the arrival of Georgina Sparks with a tiny scene of her throwing Dan out of her room by screaming, "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!" But maybe that's too on the nose or whatever, so instead there's a wonderful two-second bit where Dan and Rufus, shattered by her amazing screaming, stare blankly and then poor tired Rufus goes, "...It was nice there for a minute," and Dan smiles to himself. "Yeah, It was."
Remember that Blair has no idea about any of Serena's stuff right now: every lie and omission S hands Dan, she must have been working doubletime to fool B, who can smell fear like dogs and bees. Which, even more than the Dan stuff, strikes fear of G into my heart, because he's just Serena's boyfriend, while Blair is her sister. So the singsong mean-girl tones with which Blair graces S's voicemail tell us two things at least: "Hey, S. I'm just sipping a gingko biloba blended smoothie and wondering how your stomach-migraine is. Call me so I don't worry." She looks over at Nelly Yuki, who is facedown in a massage chair: "How you doing, Nelly Yuki?" Nelly Yuki moans that, apparently, her upper trapezius "seems to hold a lot of sadness," and Blair gives a great fake awww before assuring Nelly Yuki that she'll be better soon. Nelly Yuki tries to leave, to go home and study for the SATs, but one fierce look from B and the masseuse shoves her head back down with astounding force.
Dorota announces Todd Jansen's arrival, and Nelly Yuki jumps up, scrambling for her glasses and asking if she has cushion face. (Isabel tells her she does, a little, and B shoots her a glance, earning a terrifically cute "What?" face. I always preferred Kati but this new Iz is pretty awesome.) Todd tells Nelly Yuki that Blair said he was welcome to come. "...For a siberian ginseng pedi?" Oh, Nelly Yuki. B sends him a magic face over Nelly Yuki's head, and he frowny-faces that he feels bad about how things ended. "Can we talk about it? In private?" Nelly Yuki shivers with anticipation, such that she doesn't notice B raising her drink just a bit to Todd, or the look on his face in response: there's been some kind of deal. I love this shit so much! Nelly Yuki thanks Blair sweetly, calls her "B," and Todd puts his arm around her, and they leave. "Lucky for us, mental acuity and common sense rarely come in the same package," B snarks, to a round of giggles. "Oxygen facials, anyone?" Queen B is back!
Nate and Vanessa walk through Brooklyn, back toward the coffeeshop. "time your sister's band is in town, I want front row seats!" Considering her stupid sister lives in Brooklyn, at Vanessa's house, I think that will be soon. "You don't strike me as a lesbian punk fan," she laughs, and he pretends to be insulted, then pretends he didn't even notice the "punk" part. You can't start an adverbial phrase with the word "lesbian" and hope everybody makes it to the end of the sentence, I guess. He asks why she even does the practice tests, if she's not planning on taking the SAT herself, and she admits that, as usual, it's all about Dan. "I'm a filmmaker. Best education for me is making films." Nate's astounded that there are people in America who consider college optional, and just by saying that, he's giving us at least one very good reason for him and Vanessa to be friends. I do like this little relationship a whole lot, because Nate's the only really authentic person on the show, and if anybody could cross the bridge without even thinking about what it means or who's watching or what happens , it's him. He likes Vanessa, he's going to be friends with Vanessa: that's how far down he goes. "My parents are artists, my sister's a musician. Just like going to an Ivy is your family's way, not going to college is mine." He asks if his parents would adopt her, and she takes out her keys. "So..." Nate starts warming up the hotness hot plate, all, "I guess this is good night, then?" She laughs: they're standing on the stoop of a coffeeshop, not her parent's porch, but it still feels like that moment. He turns it up to smoldering, and then finally achieves total hotness, kissing her, and she invites him inside, and they don't break contact the whole time.
Meanwhile in Manhattan, New Serena and Ambiguously New Georgina tell the waitress they have no need of cocktails: they are high on life and Diet Coke. "So. Tell me about Dan." Serena, anxious to keep the lines drawn as thick and dark as possible, shrugs: "I did!" Georgina's like, a last name and zip code are scintillating details, but come on. "He's part of Serena Second Edition!" Serena -- without even knowing, as is her way, how damaging what she's about to say will be -- explains that she likes it when he looks at her: "Like I wanna believe in myself." Georgina's struck by that, and Serena thinks she's making fun of her, but really she's just realized she's losing this fight by more than she thought: "Uh, no. No, sweetie. I think it's...It's incredible." Because if Serena believes in herself, then she won't need anybody at all to tell her who she is.
"Look, I know I may not be your most trusted friend right now, but...I think I know the old you pretty well." Better than anyone. "Well, from where I sit, it would take a lot to bring that person back." Serena is quietly proud, more beautiful even than usual in this moment. She loves New Serena as much as she needs everybody else to. "Um... I'm gonna call him, actually. He's pretty nervous about tomorrow, so I wanna wish him luck." She leaves the table, and G's sweet smile drains off her face slowly, and she makes a deal with herself. Once the phone's dialed she sits back, fully in business mode, with a quirk of smile decorating one side her mouth as she pulls out a vial of GHB one-handed, and slips it into S's drink. Serena comes back, having gotten no answer, and G proposes a toast. "To the new me," Serena blushes, proud, and they drink. They slam it down, thirsty, quenching it on life and Diet Coke, these two new girls they're learning to be.
S wakes up still in her clothes, moaning and fuzzy, in G's bed. Georgina, of course, looks fresh as a daisy: "Ooh. You don't look so good. You okay, S?" It quickly dawns on her: SAT day. "Oh, my God. I'm supposed to be at Hunter College." G points out that they won't let her in if she's late, and S freaks out more. G hurls herself across the bed, reaching for the phone: "I'm thinking eggs. Do you want Florentine or Benedict?" S remembers how she was only drinking soda, so things stopped making sense. Yeah, until you switched to Patron. Look, don't worry. I called Lily and covered your ass. So... You're welcome." S doesn't trust this: "You knew I had SATs this morning." Yeah, G breezes, "Which is why I brought you here instead of letting you go home with one of your many suitors. You know the guy with the ironic mustache? You two took over the DJ booth..." S flips back through her mental Rolodex and can't come up with him. "I guess you haven't changed as much as you thought," Georgina says, and even though none of this really makes sense, S is scared nonetheless, and calls on the Black Knight again.
"Chuck? Chuck, hey. I'm in trouble. Look, I think I can still make it, but please go to Hunter, try to keep the doors open until I get there..."
When Vanessa arrives at work, Nate's sitting on the bench outside, and they laugh. "Last night was strange, but very fun. Still, didn't we just say goodbye like five hours ago?" He explains he's there to take her somewhere, and she does a total Vanessa double-take: "I'm going somewhere: to work." He tells her to get a sub and she protests that she can't just run off when he shows up. "I'm not asking you to. This is a one-time offer, and there's a clock ticking." He opens the towncar door, and makes No. 114 in a series of adorable faces created specifically for this episode. "Fine," she says, and gets in, admitting that she's intrigued.
It's a quiet breakfast Chez Humphrey this lovely Saturday morning. Make that silent. Rufus is wearing an embarrassing band-collar shirt, working up the courage to speak to Jenny, who's sitting on his right playing with her eggs. "...You wish your brother good luck today?" She barks an answer and sits sullenly, then asks to be excused. "No, you may not. And we are not gonna walk around this house all day and not talk to each other." So if you want Jenny to speak, she'll speak. "You've completely and entirely prejudged the Upper East Side," is the first thing out of her mouth, and Rufus regrets asking her to speak, immediately. "Dad, I learned my lesson on my birthday. Asher's not like those girls. He's different. He's nice and polite and he likes animals. Please let me go today?" He's grossed out that she didn't even cancel, assuming he'd change his mind if she played him right. He's more angry because he knows that she can, and that he didn't see it coming. Dadding is hard! He throws down his fork in a tres Humphrey manner, and hands her the phone.
Vanessa gets nervous outside the doors of Hunter College, and I ... this show can't even understand concepts like time and space, I'm not going to call bullshit on the various senior year scholarships getting awarded to juniors and I'm really not even going to talk about how Nate managed to reserve this girl a seat at a random SAT administration in the city with no notice in the last five hours. "I didn't even study," she says nervously, and he points out that she's been acing the practice tests. How cool would be if she were like, "Actually, that was a lie." He tells her it's cool to keep your options open, and that only Nate's parents are ass-backward enough to get mad at you for studying your ass off in order to attend the college of your choice. He zaps her with those eyes again, and she is toast. "Okay. Right now I'm going inside, and I'm not looking back, or I might change my mind."
Queen B and Bitches catch Nelly Yuki on her way in, looking busted: "Rough night?" Nelly Yuki admits that it was, and not in a good way, and she and Todd spent the whole night fighting the same fight as before. The girls all chorus an awesome "Awww!" and she drops her calculator, which B retrieves quick as a snake and hands back to her. Blair is wearing one of her best outfits of all time: an amazing cream-yellow suit with white trim, and grown-up lady hair. She looks like the Chief of Staff for Satan, it's amazing. She looks so crazy good. "Unbelievable. I can't believe it. Crazy," she deadpans, and Nelly Yuki starts to go into a whole story about how she couldn't study because she cried all night, and B cuts her off: "-- Okay. Well, good luck." Nelly Yuki shambles off, looking all a mess, and Isabel's like, "I still don't understand how your plans work, but they always work, like, all you did was play a song on your phone while walking briskly, and then give her a massage, and now Nelly Yuki is a crackhead. How do you do this shit?" B shows them the batteries from Nelly Yuki's calculator, and they all laugh: "Yes, but I also believe in insurance." Isabel asks how she got Todd into the plan, and B lightly asks what she's doing tonight. "Uh, not Todd?" B smiles. "Okay, well, I guess I'm gonna have to come up with something else." And nobody, not even Penelope in her cute pink suit, knows if she's kidding.
Blair and Dan run into each other at Registration, checking in about the mysteriously vanished Serena, who has barely been heard from since Thursday, you remember, and Dan's like, "No idea where she is, but I bet Chuck does." B nods, making the obligatory Chuck-is-scum face, and offers to save her a seat. Dan dials her phone again, leaving a very cute and very Dan message ("Hey, Serena, it's me--a very worried me, concerned about a very missing you..."), but breaks off as a lovely redhead checks in at the desk: "Hi. I'm Serena Van Der Woodsen?"
After the test, B continues to look freakishly amazing, and Dan admits to her that, choker or not, this wasn't his finest hour: "I finished, but... I kinda had a lot on my mind." She nods, as comforting as she ever is with him: "I'll keep calling." He wonders if it's actually necessary to go to the Bass suite, decides to head over, but stops about two steps down: Vanessa and Nate, laughing, oblivious, getting into Nate's towncar. So now S is off doing God knows what with Chuck, and Vanessa's creeping around with Nate Archibald, and I do love Dan, but I mean: that's all of it. He defines himself by these relationships, and now the two most important women in his life -- three most, with Jenny also schizing out -- are prancing merrily away into other stories, without even mentioning it to him. "Hey, S. It's B. Now I'm really worried. I'm gonna go home and change, and then..." She sees what Dan's staring at, and joins him downstage, remembering the phone in her hand after a moment: "Call me. Bye." He looks at her, realizing what this means to her too, and the mysterious couple drives away. And she doesn't look at Dan exactly, but I like to think she takes a little of the warmth he's directing at her, as she goes. She accepted Dan taking parts of Serena away from her, she's Blaired that out and made it work, but every time she sees Nate it's like being slapped, and this new girl? After all that time trying to protect Serena from Vanessa, and now the call is coming from inside the house: she forgot to protect herself.
Dan knocks on the door at 1812, and S looks at him through the peephole sadly for a bit before finally opening it. And when she does, there's no interrogation and no resentment, nothing but relief; he bends into her. "Hey!" He touches her arms; she is still and afraid he'll smell it on her. Afraid he can somehow see Bad Serena, lurking around, waiting to come out, waiting to take him down. "What's going on?" She steps away, shuts it down, buttons up like Lily taught her: "Um... Nothing. I'm fine." He shakes his head, getting scared. "No, you're not, and you need to stop saying that. Hey. Come here. Where were you?" Chuck steps out of the shadows, ready to play, unaware that anybody as vulnerable as Dan even exists: "She was with me." Serena shakes her head. "What he means is, we were both at home. Um, my stomach started acting up again." Dan gets a little irritated and begs her not to lie: "Look, if you didn't study enough and you're freaked out, I can..." Because at this point, he has more parts of the puzzle than she does, because she doesn't know about the redhead, so she's playing this all wrong and making it look even worse than it is, she gets defiant: "I told you. I was sick."
Dan brings up the redhead, and she's confused; he thinks she's playing dumb. These are his nightmares coming true, too. And the irony, think about it, of her trying to keep G and Lonelyboy apart, so that he won't think she's a whore -- is resulting in making him think she's a whore. This is what happens when you button up, when you apologize so often and so loudly for your life that you start making compromises and lying about lies and compromises you never even made. "Chuck, what did you do? I told you to keep the doors open. When I got there, they were closed." Chuck goes, "Yeah, they don't keep the doors open. I was thinking on my feet, just trying to help." He is wearing, by the way, a purple sweater over a crazy-color paneled polka dot shirt, and looks awesome. Dan touches her face, tries to get at her eyes: "I'm not mad, okay, I'm just worried. I've been so worried about you. Please, help me understand what's going on here." He's perfect sometimes; in a perfect world he would be perfect. She wants it to work, she wants the pieces to fit, she wants this perfect answer to also be the correct one, and it's not: she can't fess up, she can't let him take this burden, she can't get it on him. It breaks her heart, but she's stuck in a box: "Can we talk tomorrow? I'll call you. I'm sorry." She begs him, with her eyes, but he finally sighs: "I'm sorry, too." Chuck stands behind her, hand on the door, and Dan steps back after a moment and leaves.
"Chuck, you went too far," she says, still shaking. "...And so did you, Sis. Look, I feel foolish for admitting it but obviously I've come late to this party." She asks for an English translation, and we learn there are things even the Black Knight can't know. Things Serena can't allow to be said aloud, even in 1812 where there are no rules at all. "What's Georgina got on you?" Her eyes go hard for a moment. "Dan I understand, but what's so bad you can't even tell me?" He thinks she's being silly, he thinks she doesn't know how deep he goes, how welcoming the dissolution, how much fun it is to be Chuck Bass, but it's not that: there are things even the Black Knight can't handle. Her eyes are dead when she turns to him, and walks past him into 1812 without a word.
There's a knock at Georgina's door, and she opens it slowly: "Oh hi, sweetie. Let me just, uh, call some room service..." Maybe the SATs did it, maybe that's all it takes to get S back again. Maybe if she believed in herself a bit less she'd need Georgina more. She lingers in the hallway, fists clenched. "I don't want you to ever contact me again." G laughs, but her eyes are brittle: "Just because of a few nights of harmless fun?" Serena shakes her head: "It wasn't fun waking up and not knowing where I was, it wasn't fun missing the SATs, and it definitely wasn't fun lying to Dan." G steps it up a bit, fronting forward: "And this is all my fault because...?" But New Serena knows better, and explains herself even knowing G's too far gone to understand the difference: "My fault. Because I make huge mistakes when I'm with you."
Rufus answers the door to a big goofy sexy kid, immediately recognizable as "the Unity boy," and the boy agrees, hoping he's the only Unity boy currently on Little J's dance card. He shifts his giant grocery bag to his other hip and holds out a hand: "Name's Asher, and I do go to Unity. Hi." Jenny runs up, pretty in pink, excited to see him, and asks the question Rufus is wondering about, which is what he's doing there. "Uh, since you couldn't come to the hotdogs, I'm bringing them to you. Sorry to surprise you, Sir." Jenny pronounces this "so sweet," especially given her "unreasonable father," who has grounded her for life. (Obligatory: "Standing right here" from Rufus, although he too is falling under the spell of sexy Asher.) Asher nods respectfully at him, and turns the Eddie Cleaver meter up to a billion: "I wish more of my friends' parents cared enough to ground them when they messed up." And now, you or me, we'd slam the door right there, because nothing says bad news like that ass-kissing creepiness, but it's Rufus: he just started parenting last week.
"Looks like our queen wannabe found her perfect king..." Jenny and Asher grin and act all dorky and into each other, and it is excellent, and Rufus gives in and invites the kid in, along with his many, many hotdogs. "We hear he's a Unity man. Guess big brother's been teaching little sis how to snag the ones with a trust fund!" They google-eye at each other some more, and are very cute.
Not cute: Dan, currently brooding in the park, wondering if he's actually been sold out by Serena like he always fears he might be. A big lovely retriever comes running up, and Dan grabs him, talking quietly. The girl with the dog comes running up after him: "Aw! Georgie, hey! Bad boy! Sorry he disturbed you." Dan assures her it's fine, he loves dogs, and Georgina asks if he has any. (I love the detail of calling the dog Georgie, because all this character has done since she got here is change people's names, turning them from one thing into another. Svetlana, Nadine, Tiffany, Angel... All the girls you can be.) "No. Uh, we used to have a cat, but you know... sister, allergies ... Now the cat -- Iggy -- lives in Florida with my grandma. I... He doesn't write. Never calls." She tells him she's sorry to hear it, and he's all, "It's just a cat?" Which is fairly awesome. He's doing meet-cute really well, even on such a bad day. He choked on the SATs, possibly broke up with his girlfriend who may well be a junkie this week, and lost his best girlfriend to the only male friend he's ever made. "I'm Dan. Nice to meet you, Sarah." And he notices that Sarah's really cute, and she makes the last scary face of the episode, and it's especially chilling, the end.