It's been two weeks since Georgina left the UES ... and went to Brooklyn, and was immediately adopted by Vanessa and Dan as her only friends. "Sarah" seems open to meeting Serena, but scheduling is a nightmare. The mysterious packages start up again, including a sex tape from the wedding that sent Serena running off in the first place, and eventually it's G, and not Sarah, that Serena has to deal with some more.
Blair and Jenny are using Gossip Girl to trash each other, which is fine until Dan spots Jenny's boyfriend Asher making out with a dude. Jenny tears him a new asshole for mentioning this, so he puts it on Gossip Girl instead -- but because the signal/noise ratio of Gossip Girl has gotten so lousy, it falls to Blair to actually make the accusation stick. This leads to some fairly offensive chatter from the Bitches, including Nelly Yuki who is now in. The chatter doesn't really matter, because the other fellow? Eric van der Woodsen.
Jenny asks Asher if she's really -- as Blair calls her -- "the new Katie Holmes," and he says she totally is, because she's too sucky for anybody to actually date, so she might as well use him the same way he's using her: to be popular. This is Jenny we're talking about, so her eyes bug out of her face and then she okays it, up to and including letting Gossip Girl tell everybody he swiped her V card.
In Lily news, Rufus randomly -- and adorably -- accompanies her on a day of wedding shopping, and they discuss not being shitty parents and what that might be like. Lily is put to the test -- when Georgina totally outs Eric at dinner with all three blonde van der Woodsens -- and receives a solid "C," but makes up for it later when Rufus gives her permission to feel okay about herself, as Humphreys often do, and she and Eric work it out. It's messy and sad and scary, but honesty wins the day.
Unseen Chuck gets a total "A," though, as he spends the episode worrying about Serena, and to whom Eric proceeds directly for comfort and therapy when things get bad.
Blair must decide whether or not to out Asher and destroy Jenny, but once she finds out Eric is the mystery boy, she decides it's worth saving Jenny as part of the bargain, and crashes a Jenny/Asher party wearing an awesome outfit. Eric beats her to the punch, upstaging everybody with his own outstanding gayness, so once again Blair wins without even really trying, and Jenny gets into total trouble with the Bitches for lying about sex, so she finally concedes the war, and goes home to make things up with Rufus.
Serena goes to Brooklyn to finally meet "Sarah," who threatens to show Dan and Vanessa the sex tape unless Serena loves her again. And now that Dan's involved, Serena has no choice but to play along. She tells Dan she doesn't trust Sarah, and Dan thinks it's all jealousy, and before you know it the cracks are showing big-time in both New Serena and her perfect relationship. All a mess, she runs to Blair, who finally gets her to spill her deep dark shit: Serena killed somebody!
First of all, can I show you something totally awesome?
I know, right? And that song, which the site calls "Lily's Theme," sounds like Lily for sure, but it seems mostly to play when B's doing her headband/Mary Janes chic powerplays. So I don't know, but right now it's playing, and there's two sets of Bitch feet tromping up the steps at MOMA from two different directions (it's interesting to see how the Army breaks down while both B and Little J are power-players): Blair, Iz and Nelly Yuki from one direction, and then Jenny from the other, leading Penelope, Hazel, and unfortunate little Elise.
"Spotted: Jenny Humphrey wading in the Met fountain, fishing for change... Blair Waldorf, seen dallying with an off-duty doorman at the Blarney Stone on a Monday night..." The two groups face off, and then all flounce down at once. "It looks like the battle between the Queen B and Little J has moved from the streets to the blogs. Who's sending this debasing dish? I have a feeling..."
Blair flips a dime into Jenny's lap for her collection, and Jenny asks why she's noshing on fruit cup: "Lost your taste for yogurt?" All the Bitches laugh, because this is their version of Celebrity Poker Showdown and they get to watch it every day. Blair turns to Penelope, the memory of dairy in her hair just a tad too close, and asks what's up tonight. "Asher's parents are in Cannes, so he and Jenny are throwing a party at his house." Jenny cuts her a glance: "It's a really small get-together with just our closest friends. Sorry, Blair." I'm not saying I want every episode to be forty-two minutes of half-clever, obvious bitchy barbs, but: isn't this fun?
Nelly Yuki offers Blair her invite -- or evite, as we'll sadly soon learn -- and Jenny snots, "Invitations are nontransferable?" And even though Nelly Yuki is now B's sergeant (I like to think it's in recompense for the SAT thing last week, which makes a certain Blair Waldorf demented sense), Jenny has the balls to breezily inform B that Nelly Yuki's "new to the group." Blair rolls her eyes and, cornered, growls that just because her name's on the invite, it doesn't mean she's a hostess. And the thing about Blair is that she capitalizes that word, "Hostess," and all the breeding and preparation and glory that it means, pride in home, the particularly Blairlike fame that attaches to the craft of partygiving, how we treat our guests: all that stuff that -- before feminism and Martha Stewart -- was shitty and only for girls, and is now completely awesome. And the thing about Jenny is that she has no concept of any of these things. She knows what Blair's saying, but she doesn't get the actual visceral meaning of it. Luckily, her phone rings.
"Oh! Then why is the party planner calling me? Excuse me, girls." She goes off to take the call while the Bitches squeal and gossip and OMG about Asher, and a few steps away, Jenny reveals that she is once again being awesome at lying: "Hey, Dad? I'm kinda busy. What's up?"
But the sad thing is, Rufus is reading the evite on her laptop, having opened her email, which means every conversation they have is a lie, so he gets into this trap of asking her to lie to him, and she obliges, and he gets sadder and madder, but he keeps doing it, because he is in way over his head, as usual. "I was just wondering what time you want me to serve your favorite home-cooked meal tonight. Maybe around eight?" Just laying it on. Jenny reminds him of "that choir thing," and how she's been good enough that he let her go. But Rufus is not letting anything go right now. "Oh, right. Well, maybe we could wait to eat till after you got home, then. You're gonna be hungry after all that singing..." Strrrretch! "Yeah well, I mean, they have food there, and it's probably gonna go pretty late. So, um... tomorrow? 'Kay, love you." She hangs up without a reply, and Rufus is sad, all, "Love you too, even though you have broken your father's heart." But I mean, he's an asshole for setting up imaginary tests and then letting her fail them. That is terrible parenting, because it's inconsistent, and she's a kid: she needs it on the table.
"Unless you stop lying and being a horrid little asshole, you are leaving Constance Billard and heading to George Westinghouse, where you will be jumped and forced into a gang. Eventually you will succumb to crack use and die in a hail of bullets. And allllll that money I'll be saving will go directly toward my Three Stooges DVD collection. Do you copy."
Jenny flits back to the girls, pleading a "floral emergency" but updating them that the entire Unity Lacrosse Team RSVP'd. Always-horny Penelope is like, "Hell yes!" Blair's car rolls up and Jenny squeals and drags her set of Bitches over to say hi. Blair stares bleakly. "How did little Jenny Humphrey become the Brooke Astor?" (Like things went so well for that grand lady.) Iz: "The same way they all do," and Nelly Yuki continues darkly, "Marry up." There's lots of giggling, and Blair goes nuts on her fruit cup, staring holes in Jenny's cute yellow outfit.
Leaving the Palace for school, Serena asks why Eric's got the long face. The reason he has the long face (SPOILER ALERT!) is that he's going to have to have a serious talk in a little bit with the person he's dating, and he already knows the person he's dating is going to talk him down, and talk him back into keeping their secrets, and he knows he's going to do it, even though all he wants -- just like his sister -- is to be honest all the time. Love makes you do the wacky. "Still sad Mom wouldn't let you go to Monte Carlo for the bachelor party?" Eric says he's cool about that; Bart and Chuck and Prince Albert can have their fun. "Oh, that didn't come out like I meant it..." They laugh, and his phone dings. "Um... Gossip Girl ... Looks like ... Jenny's been spotted at Gap sewing Stella McCartney labels into pocket tees." Is there anything better than up-market T-shirts? That is the soul of America, the $100 T-shirt, that right there.
Leaving the Palace for school, Serena asks why Eric's got the long face. The reason he has the long face (SPOILER ALERT!) is that he's going to have to have a serious talk in a little bit with the person he's dating, and he already knows the person he's dating is going to talk him down, and talk him back into keeping their secrets, and he knows he's going to do it, even though all he wants -- just like his sister -- is to be honest all the time. Love makes you do the wacky. "Still sad Mom wouldn't let you go to Monte Carlo for the bachelor party?" Eric says he's cool about that; Bart and Chuck and Prince Albert can have their fun. "Oh, that didn't come out like I meant it..." They laugh, and his phone dings. "Um... Gossip Girl ... Looks like ... Jenny's been spotted at Gap sewing Stella McCartney labels into pocket tees." Is there anything better than up-market T-shirts? That is the soul of America, the $100 T-shirt, that right there.
Serena's like, "Okay, now the GG rumors are getting stupid," and Eric's like, "Such as the one where I'm Gossip Girl?" Serena laughs and ribs him that at least it made sense at the time. Then her phone rings, and Eric runs off to his meeting and says to tell Chuck hello.
"Salut, Chuck. Yes, I'm still fine. I haven't heard from Georgina in two weeks, so, if you'd stop calling me, I'd finally be rid of all of my monsters. Bye." The meaner the stuff she says to him, the more love is behind it. How great is it that even when he's not actually in the episode, they still manage to make him awesome over the phone? I love that Serena is all, "Thank you so much for being such a caring friend, you are a fucker, leave me alone, I love you."
Vanessa leans over the counter and tells "Sarah" to stop reading her NYC guidebook and start living. Which is just ... so Vanessa, because it has nothing to do with Sarah and everything to do with how authentic Vanessa is. Sarah complains about getting lost on the train every day, and Vanessa corrects her: "Subway." (Which is totally, and hilariously, about how authentically pretentious and stupid Vanessa is.) "Click those heels all you want, you're not in Portland anymore." Sarah thanks her and Dan for condescendingly-yet-sweetly adopting her: "I'd be a mess without you guys! Well, more of a mess than I already am." Not possible, nutsack, although congrats on spending the last two weeks lying low with the two hugest losers in all of Brooklyn without snapping.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Dan comes in all crazed and hurried, wearing his school tie, and Vanessa offers him a red-eye (the caffeine obsession begins!), but I don't know what's up his ass. School starts in like four hours, and he has first period free anyway, so maybe he's in a hurry to meet up with Serena, who's had trouble scheduling him, and frankly I don't know what's up my ass either because why am I even trying, but so anyway he thanks V for the coffee and apologizes to Sarah and V both for yakking their ears off last night. "He tends to ramble, as you'll get to know," mentions V (which again: obvious, and more about marking your territory than actually adding anything substantive to the conversation, but Dan did the same thing with Nate awhile back, so whatever), and he nods: he rambles. It's like the one cute thing about him. Besides the other cute things about him, I suppose.
Sarah puts a sweet 'n creepy hand on his arm and assures them both that she's a great listener, "as he'll get to know." And I love it, it's so true, because she wants all the information, because she is crazy soup: not just stuff for the S agenda, but anything at all. She wants B's shit, she wants Little J's shit, she wants it all. You never know what will come in handy when you are the Devil Herself. "Any new developments?" No, Jenny and her boyfriend are still inseparable, and Jenny has spent two weeks becoming quote "even more insufferable." Vanessa begs him to give her a break, like we all are: "Asher's her first love!" Dan corrects that it's "infatuation," not love, which is pretty much not his call, and Sarah works both sides of the equation, gesturing toward her friend Vanessa and accreting sisterhood girl power: "Yeah, but to a 15-year-old girl, I mean, there really isn't a difference." Vanessa nods at her for the assist, and Dan concedes the point. Except the biggest current or past 15-year-old girl in the room is, of course, eternally Dan, so maybe he shouldn't give up so easily.
Case in point: Vanessa mentions how it took Dan exactly one second at a ninth-grade birthday party to fall in love-or-infatuation-who-can-say with Serena van der Woodsen, and he counters that yes, but it took him two years obsessing over it before anything happened. Which, I do love this knight-errant side of his personality, like, "If I sit in my bedroom quietly yearning and not masturbating or eating or sleeping for two years, I will earn my lady. If I write her name one thousand times in this diary, she will be mine. If I change the name in every song to 'Serena,' it will finally happen." That's the awesomeness of Dan.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Eric watches Asher and Jenny, kissing in the Constance courtyard, and his face is noncommittally miserable. It's like a fever. The Bitches watch from a foot away, but he's standing in shadow. Jenny screams and giggles with the Bitches, and by the way her hair is totally cute in every scene this episode, even when she's acting wildly crazy, and Eric appears, and asks her if she has a minute.
"Something wrong?" That was his opener, actually: "Where have you been lately? You haven't returned any of my calls..." She stammers and apologizes. This is what it's like for Serena, every day, with her brother: "It's been harder than I thought to keep up with schoolwork, and the new spring social calendar, and my new boyfriend..." Eric plays the same card as Sarah: "Yeah. Asher, right?" He knows his name, he watched him leave. "Yeah! He's cute and smart and basically perfect!" And I know that Vanessa and Sarah just explained this to us, but I can't stop thinking about how Jenny was like, "Nobody has a boyfriend, I am going to invent boyfriends." It's only been a week for us, and two weeks for the older guys, but for Jenny it's been a lifetime. I mean, think about it. First love is like cramps: We can watch you have them, but we don't really get it.
"And the best part is, I think he really likes me!" Eric -- talking just like his mother throughout this scene, which I love, because this is exactly how Lily would approach this, and how she'd fuck it up, and the fact that he's emulating her not just in his words but in his affect is just so tight -- is like, "Then he has good taste! But... how well do you actually know him?" She squeals and OMGs about how he's being protective, and Eric's already tired of this conversation about Jenny, and topics like Herself, so he denies it, but then catches himself and realizes that's exactly what he's being. "Yes. Yes, I am. I've got nothing against him, I just... Something about him makes me feel maybe he's not the right guy for you." Jenny and Herself are all, "OMG you have a crush on me!"
Eric's face -- a mixture of being truly shocked and being amazed at how fucking ridiculous Jenny has become -- is awesome, and he stammers out a very firm denial, but it's Jenny's movie right now. "-- Don't be embarrassed! It's cute. I mean, and not so unexpected, actually. I'm flattered. It's just... My heart belongs to Asher." Is any sentence in the language more perfectly Jenny? I still hate her, but the frightening amount of sense she's been making lately goes completely overboard in this episode, in the saddest ways possible. "... I actually gotta go, but um, text me, 'kay?" She kisses his cheek and runs off, doing the "'kay?"/hang up thing now twice, with a fake kiss on top, and runs off. Eric's like, "Um, great. Later." I dunno, I think there's an angle on this whereby Little J was the first person he told about his scary stuff, which kind of makes her the Blair for him, and I think we're supposed to be just as grossed out as we are by this fakeness. Because Blair has never said anything that she didn't mean, like, ten times more than mere mortals mean things, but Jenny hasn't said one true thing -- or one thing that approached reality, or Jenny -- in this whole episode.
Eric watches Asher and Jenny, kissing in the Constance courtyard, and his face is noncommittally miserable. It's like a fever. The Bitches watch from a foot away, but he's standing in shadow. Jenny screams and giggles with the Bitches, and by the way her hair is totally cute in every scene this episode, even when she's acting wildly crazy, and Eric appears, and asks her if she has a minute.
"Something wrong?" That was his opener, actually: "Where have you been lately? You haven't returned any of my calls..." She stammers and apologizes. This is what it's like for Serena, every day, with her brother: "It's been harder than I thought to keep up with schoolwork, and the new spring social calendar, and my new boyfriend..." Eric plays the same card as Sarah: "Yeah. Asher, right?" He knows his name, he watched him leave. "Yeah! He's cute and smart and basically perfect!" And I know that Vanessa and Sarah just explained this to us, but I can't stop thinking about how Jenny was like, "Nobody has a boyfriend, I am going to invent boyfriends." It's only been a week for us, and two weeks for the older guys, but for Jenny it's been a lifetime. I mean, think about it. First love is like cramps: We can watch you have them, but we don't really get it.
"And the best part is, I think he really likes me!" Eric -- talking just like his mother throughout this scene, which I love, because this is exactly how Lily would approach this, and how she'd fuck it up, and the fact that he's emulating her not just in his words but in his affect is just so tight -- is like, "Then he has good taste! But... how well do you actually know him?" She squeals and OMGs about how he's being protective, and Eric's already tired of this conversation about Jenny, and topics like Herself, so he denies it, but then catches himself and realizes that's exactly what he's being. "Yes. Yes, I am. I've got nothing against him, I just... Something about him makes me feel maybe he's not the right guy for you." Jenny and Herself are all, "OMG you have a crush on me!"
Eric's face -- a mixture of being truly shocked and being amazed at how fucking ridiculous Jenny has become -- is awesome, and he stammers out a very firm denial, but it's Jenny's movie right now. "-- Don't be embarrassed! It's cute. I mean, and not so unexpected, actually. I'm flattered. It's just... My heart belongs to Asher." Is any sentence in the language more perfectly Jenny? I still hate her, but the frightening amount of sense she's been making lately goes completely overboard in this episode, in the saddest ways possible. "... I actually gotta go, but um, text me, 'kay?" She kisses his cheek and runs off, doing the "'kay?"/hang up thing now twice, with a fake kiss on top, and runs off. Eric's like, "Um, great. Later." I dunno, I think there's an angle on this whereby Little J was the first person he told about his scary stuff, which kind of makes her the Blair for him, and I think we're supposed to be just as grossed out as we are by this fakeness. Because Blair has never said anything that she didn't mean, like, ten times more than mere mortals mean things, but Jenny hasn't said one true thing -- or one thing that approached reality, or Jenny -- in this whole episode.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
She offers tomorrow for Sarah, but Dan's distracted: Jenny and Asher are at it yet again. "My sister and tongue, two things that don't go together so well..." Serena laughs, and tells him to lighten up. After all, our younger brothers and sisters are sexual beings, and deserve to kiss in the courtyard or the street, don't they? It's not gross until around tenth grade, I think. Then you'd better cut it out. "You have been down on him since the beginning! Give him a chance and then judge. Maybe he'll surprise you, like I did?" She kisses him again, and he wonders how it is that she's always so right. (I know, Dan. Thank you.) "It's easy when you're always wrong!" He makes a super cute face, and I have to say: this conversation has been a long time coming, and it's so Gossip Girl that it would occur in the one episode where Dan Freaking Humphrey is right about every single thing.
It's not a mistake that Serena just drew an allusion between herself and Asher, either, just like Jenny did last week: there's nothing wrong with either of them except for their secrets, eating them from the inside out. It's those secrets that cause all the behavior soon to be freaking everybody out, and it's sad, but that's it: Dan and Jenny are doomed not because of the money thing, but because their very first loves -- just like their dad's -- are people with secrets and because of the UES, the lines they have to draw around those secrets are scary as hell. Serena's a girl, and G is her girly secret, connected to serious stuff: she can do the Serena thing and just cry and stare and refuse to answer questions. Asher's a guy, and his secret is a guy secret that puts guy stuff on the line, so he has to act. Serena keeps her Georgina secret while trying to carry on with Dan, just as Asher keeps his secret while carrying on with Jenny, and every step is mirrored in their paths to honesty in this episode. (And meanwhile there's Jenny lying her ass off, and Dan doing his Dan thing, and Eric as usual just being a tad bit cooler than anybody else, and going to the right people for advice, and dealing with it. Because if anybody's love could protect you entirely from shame, it's Chuck Bass.) Serena tells Dan he's got first period off anyway, so why not beat it down to the courtyard and get to know him? She kisses him again, to make him do it, and he runs off adorably, to make friends with Asher Hornsby.
On his way down the steps and out the door, Dan texts Sarah, which is a name much like Serena, which G chose all by herself: "S - Can't meet tonight. Family dinner. Tomorrow? Dan." I'm glad they put that "S" up there, to make visually palpable what's been hanging around since last week. (Svetlana, Savannah, Sarah, lots of names that sound like Serena. Double Serena, not one G or two. Not a Georgina in the bunch, unless you count the dog, which again.) But Sarah's creepy as hell, so she's actually watching from across the street as he comes out of St. Jude's, texting her, and heads into the street to find Asher. He sees something, down the street; from her angle, Georgina sees more.
Dan runs threading through the school crowd, up the steps and down the hall, and S meets him halfway: "What? You're here!" She throws herself on him, and points out that he's late. "I know. I come bearing apologies, and an invitation. What are you up to tonight?" They head off down the hall, in love and relieved to be with each other again. "I know what I'm not up to: having fun. The SAT tutor was over for four hours last night." He gives her a sweet moue and asks if the guy's cute. "Well, if hair in the ears is your thing," she muses, and laughs. "I hate that since I'm not gonna use the score Chuck bought for me, I have to study every night. I can't even be distracted by..." He kisses her. "Mm. That." He agrees, and asks if she can finally have dinner with Sarah instead. "Sarah again, what is she? Your new girlfriend or something?" It comes out much softer and sweeter than it looks on the page. He nods seriously, and she smiles. "Just kidding, but she's new in town, and she does want to meet you." While Bart and Chuck are out of town riding unicorns over the Pyramids or whatever, Serena's agreed to a quiet family dinner in the old van der Woodsen suite. I love how that whole family just bops around from floor to floor like the biggest slumber party of all time.
She offers tomorrow for Sarah, but Dan's distracted: Jenny and Asher are at it yet again. "My sister and tongue, two things that don't go together so well..." Serena laughs, and tells him to lighten up. After all, our younger brothers and sisters are sexual beings, and deserve to kiss in the courtyard or the street, don't they? It's not gross until around tenth grade, I think. Then you'd better cut it out. "You have been down on him since the beginning! Give him a chance and then judge. Maybe he'll surprise you, like I did?" She kisses him again, and he wonders how it is that she's always so right. (I know, Dan. Thank you.) "It's easy when you're always wrong!" He makes a super cute face, and I have to say: this conversation has been a long time coming, and it's so Gossip Girl that it would occur in the one episode where Dan Freaking Humphrey is right about every single thing.
It's not a mistake that Serena just drew an allusion between herself and Asher, either, just like Jenny did last week: there's nothing wrong with either of them except for their secrets, eating them from the inside out. It's those secrets that cause all the behavior soon to be freaking everybody out, and it's sad, but that's it: Dan and Jenny are doomed not because of the money thing, but because their very first loves -- just like their dad's -- are people with secrets and because of the UES, the lines they have to draw around those secrets are scary as hell. Serena's a girl, and G is her girly secret, connected to serious stuff: she can do the Serena thing and just cry and stare and refuse to answer questions. Asher's a guy, and his secret is a guy secret that puts guy stuff on the line, so he has to act. Serena keeps her Georgina secret while trying to carry on with Dan, just as Asher keeps his secret while carrying on with Jenny, and every step is mirrored in their paths to honesty in this episode. (And meanwhile there's Jenny lying her ass off, and Dan doing his Dan thing, and Eric as usual just being a tad bit cooler than anybody else, and going to the right people for advice, and dealing with it. Because if anybody's love could protect you entirely from shame, it's Chuck Bass.) Serena tells Dan he's got first period off anyway, so why not beat it down to the courtyard and get to know him? She kisses him again, to make him do it, and he runs off adorably, to make friends with Asher Hornsby.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Dan arrives in the Unity courtyard, finds Asher grabassing around with his lacrosse buddies, and asks for a minute. Since it's now noon, Asher says he can only spend a minute: "Jenny and I have a lunch date." There's no easy way to say it. "Look, there's no easy way to say this, honestly, so I'm just gonna... I'm just gonna say it. I... I, uh, saw you this morning," he stammers, totally uncomfortable. "Saw me what?" asks Asher. ("This morning!") "I saw you ... You know, I ... Saw you kissing that guy." Asher denies, of course, but Dan's fairly certain that striking profile is one of a kind. "Are you calling me queer?"
Dan is, of course, horrified: "That's... Not at all what I said." But we're in the shit now, so Asher gets in his face. He has to act, throw knives at it like Blair, say the worst thing to stop the words coming out of Dan's mouth: "You wanna know how queer I am? I'm so queer, I'm gonna pop your sister's cherry tonight." It's funny in a way that has nothing to do with the actual sexuality of the actors, but anytime anybody says the words out loud in this episode -- even Eric, who is a total fucking champ -- there's this weird little actory hitch in the throat, like it's too big of a thing to say out loud about anybody, especially their own characters, in front of the crew and the other actors. Super uncomfortable and super, super real, like to the point of being hard to look at, so it works in the story, but it's still funny, watching actors work. Anyway, you know what's totally queer? Saying you're going to pop somebody's cherry. Kissin' dudes or not, that is queer as hell.
Dan grabs him and begins to throttle him, and Jenny appears out of nowhere and starts yelling at Dan, because she has a vested interest in having no idea how queer her boyfriend is. ("Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?" Heh.) "Jenny, I need to talk to you in private." She snots -- and remember this line for later -- that Dan can bloody well say it in front of her big gay boyfriend. "Really? Okay. All right, fine. Your boyfriend is not being honest with you." Asher slides into it and explains to her that he was planning on taking her to the country house this weekend, which charms her, but that Dan thought they were moving too fast, and got upset, which turns her back into Demon Jenny. "Dan! Can't you just let me be happy for once?" Um, can you let yourself? No? "Jenny, I want you to be happy. Just not with a guy who..." Jenny stops that one dead in its tracks too (almost like she knows what's coming, wouldn't you say?) with a Blair-magnitude rapid-fire takedown: "Yeah, I understand that you're threatened by him, because clearly he's everything you wanna be: He's good-looking, and worldly, a legacy at Dartmouth? But even you should know that jealousy clashes with LL Bean pants." She grabs Asher and drags him off by the hand. Dan is, of course, flummoxed.
On the steps, yakking over lunch, Serena's completely over B being uninvited from the Asher/Jenny party: "You don't even like Asher!" B replies, impressing S, that she didn't like last season's Louis Vuitton patchwork bag, but doesn't need to see it all over town on Jenny Humphrey's arm either. Blair asks for a girl's night, tonight, and S begs off again because of the family dinner. "Let me remind you of a little promise you made: 'Don't go to France. I'll be there for you.'" Which, B has had her own tiny stories the last couple weeks, but we've been shown that B felt neglected, to the point of being worried, the same way that Dan did. "I'm really sorry I've been distant, but things will be better soon, I promise." B's like, "Yeah, starting tomorrow, as usual."
Dan runs up all sad, and kisses Serena's cheek. "Hey, what's wrong? You look stressed, even for you." He confesses to still being worried about Jenny. Blair brightens: "You mean because she's self-obsessed, self-serving, self-centered, self..." He cuts her off. "No. No, I wish it was about her, and her... self... but it's more about who she's with. I can't get through to her. I tried, and she just completely blew me off. And she dissed my pants!" Blair's impressed, and Serena tells her to cram it: "She's just going through a phase. We all went through it." B nods sagely: "All that matters to someone like Jenny right now are the four Gs: guys, girlfriends, and Gossip Girl." (How much do you love Leighton Meester? Because instead of pronouncing it like the four C's, she totally just goes for broke and says "fourgies." So all Jenny wants is fourgies, and if you've not heard that word, you -- like Jenny -- are too young to have one.) Serena agrees, and plants a horrible idea in the fertile, fevered mind of Dan Humphrey: "It's true. Don't feel bad. Unless it's coming from one of them, she's not gonna hear it." And he's not her girlfriend, and he's not technically a guy, so that leaves two G's.
Rufus again thanks the person in the jewelry shop who brings them wine, while Lily smiles at the guy instead. "I tell her she can't see Asher, she calls him. I take away her phone, they're on iChat. How do you keep them from growing up when they can have a full relationship from the confines of their own bedrooms?" Lily tells him you cannot: they grow up no matter what. Because our sons and daughters, even at fifteen, are sexual beings, and if they fall in love, that's just fine, right? It's going to happen anyway, you might as well be prepared. Usually Lily is the total winner of this whole show; I wish this week she'd listen to herself. Rufus is totally grossed out by how he read Jenny's email this morning, and Lily gives him permission to put Jenny's safety over her privacy. Which is dicey in some ways, because you should just be honest, but sometimes things are big enough that you can get away with creeping about and apologizing later. That's like 90% of everything that happens on this show anyway. But I'm glad he knows it's appalling.
"Especially if you think they're lying to you," Lily says, and there's a Gossip Girl glint in her eye when she starts getting into it: "Was she?" He nods: "Right to my face." He brings up Serena's phase of going crazy, and Lily says -- and I think the actress is at odds with how to say the line, because it's a pretty shitty thing to put in a beautiful woman's mouth, if she's over forty, and not hugely in character for Lily either -- "...If Serena's indiscretions were as PG as Jenny's, I wouldn't have needed the Botox."
Rufus whines that Dan was so much easier, which you know he was, like, all he wanted to do was play sick and stay home from school all the time and sleep beside his parents until he was twelve. I wasn't terribly impressed by the unnecessary retcons of the "L'il Newport" story on The O.C., but every week I get a little more impatient to meet Baby Dan. He just seems like the coolest little kid. "Raising girls is different. Serena would be a horrible monster for a hundred days... And then on the hundred and first, she'd be my little girl again." (If this show had a timeline that wasn't out of Escher's portfolio, wouldn't it be cool if tonight was the 101st? That would be cool, but it doesn't fit, because Jenny entered the game officially between "Dare Devil" and "The Handmaiden's Tale", which were set in September, and now it's Marchish, given the weather and the date of Lily's wedding. Still. Wait, it's probably been three months since "Thin Line," which is when Jenny really started becoming empowered to be a bitch, right?) Anyway, sorry. It just seems like they're trying a little harder post-strike to make sense on this stuff -- not that I need them to, I love the magic of UES time and space -- but I want to give them credit. Lily drinks her drink and tells him to trust that he's done his job: "She'll come back to you." Even Serena did, after all, and Eric is the most well-adjusted person on the show, now that he's not trying to kill himself anymore. So she can be trusted.
They are too quiet for too long, too loving and enmeshed in each other's lives, for a moment, so Lily takes notice of a bracelet in the case they're leaning against, and gasps. Rufus agrees that it's perfect, and puts it around her wrist. "Mark Ingram, it's beautiful. You've outdone yourself." The guy nods, and she stares at the diamonds, willfully intent. I want expensive sadness. "Oh, wow..."
On the steps, yakking over lunch, Serena's completely over B being uninvited from the Asher/Jenny party: "You don't even like Asher!" B replies, impressing S, that she didn't like last season's Louis Vuitton patchwork bag, but doesn't need to see it all over town on Jenny Humphrey's arm either. Blair asks for a girl's night, tonight, and S begs off again because of the family dinner. "Let me remind you of a little promise you made: 'Don't go to France. I'll be there for you.'" Which, B has had her own tiny stories the last couple weeks, but we've been shown that B felt neglected, to the point of being worried, the same way that Dan did. "I'm really sorry I've been distant, but things will be better soon, I promise." B's like, "Yeah, starting tomorrow, as usual."
Dan runs up all sad, and kisses Serena's cheek. "Hey, what's wrong? You look stressed, even for you." He confesses to still being worried about Jenny. Blair brightens: "You mean because she's self-obsessed, self-serving, self-centered, self..." He cuts her off. "No. No, I wish it was about her, and her... self... but it's more about who she's with. I can't get through to her. I tried, and she just completely blew me off. And she dissed my pants!" Blair's impressed, and Serena tells her to cram it: "She's just going through a phase. We all went through it." B nods sagely: "All that matters to someone like Jenny right now are the four Gs: guys, girlfriends, and Gossip Girl." (How much do you love Leighton Meester? Because instead of pronouncing it like the four C's, she totally just goes for broke and says "fourgies." So all Jenny wants is fourgies, and if you've not heard that word, you -- like Jenny -- are too young to have one.) Serena agrees, and plants a horrible idea in the fertile, fevered mind of Dan Humphrey: "It's true. Don't feel bad. Unless it's coming from one of them, she's not gonna hear it." And he's not her girlfriend, and he's not technically a guy, so that leaves two G's.
Rufus again thanks the person in the jewelry shop who brings them wine, while Lily smiles at the guy instead. "I tell her she can't see Asher, she calls him. I take away her phone, they're on iChat. How do you keep them from growing up when they can have a full relationship from the confines of their own bedrooms?" Lily tells him you cannot: they grow up no matter what. Because our sons and daughters, even at fifteen, are sexual beings, and if they fall in love, that's just fine, right? It's going to happen anyway, you might as well be prepared. Usually Lily is the total winner of this whole show; I wish this week she'd listen to herself. Rufus is totally grossed out by how he read Jenny's email this morning, and Lily gives him permission to put Jenny's safety over her privacy. Which is dicey in some ways, because you should just be honest, but sometimes things are big enough that you can get away with creeping about and apologizing later. That's like 90% of everything that happens on this show anyway. But I'm glad he knows it's appalling.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
"Especially if you think they're lying to you," Lily says, and there's a Gossip Girl glint in her eye when she starts getting into it: "Was she?" He nods: "Right to my face." He brings up Serena's phase of going crazy, and Lily says -- and I think the actress is at odds with how to say the line, because it's a pretty shitty thing to put in a beautiful woman's mouth, if she's over forty, and not hugely in character for Lily either -- "...If Serena's indiscretions were as PG as Jenny's, I wouldn't have needed the Botox."
Rufus whines that Dan was so much easier, which you know he was, like, all he wanted to do was play sick and stay home from school all the time and sleep beside his parents until he was twelve. I wasn't terribly impressed by the unnecessary retcons of the "L'il Newport" story on The O.C., but every week I get a little more impatient to meet Baby Dan. He just seems like the coolest little kid. "Raising girls is different. Serena would be a horrible monster for a hundred days... And then on the hundred and first, she'd be my little girl again." (If this show had a timeline that wasn't out of Escher's portfolio, wouldn't it be cool if tonight was the 101st? That would be cool, but it doesn't fit, because Jenny entered the game officially between "Dare Devil" and "The Handmaiden's Tale", which were set in September, and now it's Marchish, given the weather and the date of Lily's wedding. Still. Wait, it's probably been three months since "Thin Line," which is when Jenny really started becoming empowered to be a bitch, right?) Anyway, sorry. It just seems like they're trying a little harder post-strike to make sense on this stuff -- not that I need them to, I love the magic of UES time and space -- but I want to give them credit. Lily drinks her drink and tells him to trust that he's done his job: "She'll come back to you." Even Serena did, after all, and Eric is the most well-adjusted person on the show, now that he's not trying to kill himself anymore. So she can be trusted.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
They are too quiet for too long, too loving and enmeshed in each other's lives, for a moment, so Lily takes notice of a bracelet in the case they're leaning against, and gasps. Rufus agrees that it's perfect, and puts it around her wrist. "Mark Ingram, it's beautiful. You've outdone yourself." The guy nods, and she stares at the diamonds, willfully intent. I want expensive sadness. "Oh, wow..."
"This just in: Asher Hornsby spotted locking lips before class... but not with his girlfriend. Looks like gentlemen don't prefer blondes, Little J... They prefer other gentlemen."
Nelly Yuki, Elise and Hazel walk through the halls, reading, Jenny taking up the rear. Nobody really believes it, but it's still pretty scandalous of GG: "Now you know how Vanessa Hudgens feels," snorts Hazel. (Which made me laugh especially hard because the moment I realized that when Connor Paolo was awesome was at the beginning of the season when he offered to punch Zac Efron.) Jenny shifts even further to the back, behind Penelope and Iz; everybody's still reading.
"Is this just another round of blanks fired between B and Little J? I'm tired of being the bearer of bad grudges. This is the last item that goes to press without proof."
Isabel is relieved that Gossip Girl "finally got her balls back," and Penelope excellently agrees: "Yeah, she was totally turning into the new Page Six." Blair comes shooting around the corner, toward her class, and Jenny hisses, "Low blow." B does not even slow down: "Wasn't me. Wish it was!" Awesome. Jenny keeps her head down, exasperated, and follows after the crowd.
Out in the courtyard, Serena gets another package from G, and tells the concierge to hold onto it, freaking out -- so of course Dan appears from nowhere and asks what's up, so she can shiver and act weird and squirrelly and take off, tossing a hello to B over her shoulder. B presents herself to Dan thus: "Dan Humphrey, just who I hate to admit I was looking for. You're dirty!" He is weirded out, and asks what she's on about. "Cheating, drinking, drugs, it's all fair game, but outing your sister's boyfriend is dark. How did squeaky-clean Humphrey even come up with that?" I love Blair, she's the only person who pays as much attention to this show as I do, so of course she knew that S told him to out Asher on Gossip Girl in their last scene. He sighs that he wasn't making anything up, so Blair pounces on him, shining brighter than a Christmas tree.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Blair hits Waldorf House with Nelly Yuki and Isabel, arms full of shopping bags. "Whoever said that money doesn't buy happiness didn't know where to shop. Lucky for me, I may have to go out tonight after all." (Lucky for me.) They all drop onto her bed, and Iz produces Asher Hornsby's cell phone. (Lucky for you.) "Lucky for you," Nelly Yuki exposits, "Iz knows five ways to sneak into the Unity boys' locker room, and six to sneak out." (Was it Isabel that had the magical stealth powers before? The pool party episode, maybe. I hope so, I love the idea that the things Isabel brings to the group are "concert pianist" and "cat burglar.") Blair clicks around the phone as Iz notes that Asher takes abnormally long showers after practice, and Blair crinkles her nose while Nelly Yuki unnecessarily translates that what Iz means is, "maybe his lacrosse stick isn't the only thing he likes to play with," and what Nelly Yuki means is that sometimes teenage boys masturbate. Got that? It's pretty subtle. Isabel wonders why B even wanted his stupid gay phone in the first place, and Blair portentously intones, "It was once said that a person's eyes are the windows to their soul. That was before people had cell phones." While Blair busily and crazily downloads all of his emails into her laptop with a wildly destructive grin, Nelly Yuki and Iz stare at each other and wonder what the hell that meant, what she's up to in actuality, and why she suddenly thinks she's Gossip Girl.
(Some choice cuts from Asher's email subject lines: "Miss You," "Wish You'd Been There," "Dinner Tonight," "I Wanted You To See This," and the heartwrenching "Call Me ASAP I Need To See You.")
Asher's tapping away on his laptop when Jenny comes clomping up the steps, knowing she's pushing it, hesitant about showing up early and uninvited, but in love. They buddy kiss -- oh, Jenny -- and he's surprised she's there: "Party's not for a couple hours." She responds by acknowledging that a lot can happen in a couple of hours, and then starts to climb him like a big beefy mountain. He nearly shrieks, and laughs nervously instead, and starts peeling her off him: "Uh, Jenny? What are you doing?" She asks what's wrong, begging him to say nothing, and he does, but: "This... It just isn't what we do. Are you suddenly... Not happy? I'm holding up my end of the bargain." Ouch.
You know, if this show keeps dumping on Jenny, I'll end up in love with her. It's called the Baltar Effect. But this one's particularly rough, because there are two stories here: One's about a girl who met a cute boy on the street who brought her a million hotdogs, and fell in love, and finally got popularity, and finally, after a year of shit, her life started turning perfect with a little bit of sunshine on top, because she was in love. She could finally have it all, and be safe from B into the bargain, and her dreams would start coming true.
Lily, still perseverating on the biggest of her fantasies, has dragged her "friend" Rufus to a bridal shop so she can try on dresses. Lily, girl, you kill me. From behind the curtains, she can't quite believe her perfectly shaped ears: "Really, Rufus, what were you thinking? You threw her a surprise birthday party and had her face painted on a cake with a tiara?" Because that's how queer Rufus is, yes. He blushes and admits it seemed like a good idea at the time, and she points out that in the '90s, we said the same of flannel and acid-washed jeans, but they weren't too flattering either. Speaking of flattering apparel, the curtains whoosh open on Lily in a white wedding dress, looking fucking stunning. His jaw actually drops.
"What is it? Is it too much?" No response whatsoever. "Uh, not enough?" He can't tear his eyes off her, and his voice is soft. It's not the dress: "It's you in it."
She clamps down on her delight and turns, looking at him through the mirror. "I'm sorry. I thought... Um. I didn't mean... We're here as friends, right?" Right, yeah. He takes his time raising his eyes from the floor. "No, we are friends." She looks at him through the mirror, gone soft and sweet, and everything is perfectly perfect:
"It's just how you look."
The Bitches make their way down the hall, having heard not a peep from Gossip Girl in three hours. "Guess she wasn't kidding about her new standards." The whole "people use GG as a weapon of war" idea is a sweet one, but you can't really keep going there, so it's super cool that they introduced this idea and then dropped it. All six-foot-ten of Serena van der Woodsen comes barreling down the hall, grabbing Jenny and twirling her around: "Hey, Jenny! Sorry I can't chat, but have so much fun at your party tonight!" And then she's gone. What a magical moment! I love her so much.
Horny Penelope fully goes, "...Totally running to a booty call with your brother," and Jenny just about gags that she went there, and Hazel asks where-all Jenny's been going. Penelope -- who is way too invested in all this, I think, but in order for the story to work, one of the Bitches has to be, to speak it aloud -- is all, "You and Asher..." And Jenny tells them far enough. Penelope's suspicious, and Hazel thinks her coyness means maybe Asher's gay after all, which is kind of the thing creeping up through Jenny's hazy, weird little brain anyway, so then Jenny gets super awesome.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Home from school, Serena opens the package. There's another Georgina note: S - memories can fade, a video is forever - ♥ G, and a USB drive on an ivory silk ribbon. Only on this show would blackmail come in the form of a USB key on an ivory silk ribbon, resting like jewelry on a bed of cotton in a jewelry box, and that is why this is the best show ever created.
Serena plugs it in, shaking, and a video pops up, from the night of the Shepherd wedding. Georgina says, "If you put the camera over there, she'll never know..." and she and man share a kiss, laughing. "Are you sure she's gonna be down for this?" Georgina grins, you can hear it: "It's Serena. She goes down for anything." Serena enters the suite, and Georgina calls out, "Hey, baby! How are the new Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd?" Serena giggles. "I just did something so stupid..." (Named Nate Archibald!) and Serena fast-forwards the video, to herself, struggling weakly: "It's hot. I'm too hot..." It was like a fever. Her skin goes hot. The man agrees: "You are too hot," and soon enough either S or G is moaning, and then he joins in. Serena slams the computer closed, and goes to her dresser, confused, out of her mind with it, slipping the drive between the pages of a book before jerking it out again and shoving it into a drawer, and runs.
...Smack into Lily van der Woodsen, pissed as hell, just on her way to Serena's room. "Where do you think you're going?" Serena tries to get away, promising to explain later, but Lily, face tight and angry, stands her ground. "If you invite an old friend to our quiet family dinner, I expect you to stay and eat." As Georgina comes around the corner, the anger drains from Lily's face; she buttons up, and speaks softly, smiling. "You know how I always loved when Georgina came around," she spits, eyes flashing. Georgina pretends to oblivion as usual, burbling, "I ran into Lily in the lobby. You totally forgot to tell her I was coming over for dinner!" She kisses Serena's cheek, under the hateful eyes of Lily, and S, distracted, kisses the air. "Did you get my present?" Serena just stares at G's totally insane smile and tries not to pass out.
"Breaking news: Asher Hornsby overheard bragging that Little J swiped her V card at his register..."
Jenny tries on clothes in DUMBO, reading about herself on Gossip Girl, feeling appalled at herself and taking strides to ignore it. She's doing okay until Dan comes running, brandishing his phone, demanding to know if it's true. "It's private?" she scolds him, and he responds that, actually, it's on the internet. "Yeah well, it's none of your business. And since when did you start reading Gossip Girl blasts anyway?" Since about the time she became the subject of them, Dan explains, which is at least three-quarters true. "You're fifteen years old, and I'm your big brother. It is my business." She assures him it's not true, but all that does is confuse him more, and she turns suddenly: "You can't tell anyone, though. Everyone has to believe it." Dan is so confused that his question makes no sense at all: "Are you saying that you actually want your friends to think that you're sleeping with a guy who's gay?" I can't even parse that one. Jenny asks if he always believes GG, and he admits that he didn't just read the Asher tip, he submitted it.
"Look, I'm sorry, but I tried to tell you. You wouldn't listen to me, I needed to get your attention somehow." She pushes past him and tells one-quarter of a lie: "Well, I knew about him the whole time." Dan says that means Asher's using her, but she clarifies that in fact, she's using him back, so what is the problem? It's Dan: it's all a problem. She finally begs him to stop judging everyone on the entire show for once in his life, but again: this is the one time he's not Danning all over everything. He is actually just scared to death for his sister. "You think that you're so different, and so good? Well guess what, Dan. The minute that you start sending tips to Gossip Girl, you're in the game with the rest of us." Yeah, that part's true. Ouch. "Get out of my room," she says, and shoves past.
They're just sitting down to dinner in the old suite when Blair calls, almost crying, having just discovered the truth about Asher's secret boyfriend, desperate to tell S before things get out of control, desperate to save Eric. And once again, the mere presence of G ruins everything: "B, now's not a good time. I know I told you I'd be more available, but I just can't right now." No matter how many times B swears it's important, urgent, can't wait, S has more pressing apocalypses on her plate, and hangs up.
Serena apologizes, and G asks how "Snow White" is doing; Eric starts to tell her about Chuck and Snow Not-So-White, but Serena cuts him off: No information for Georgina. Ever. She has to contain it. Eric just grins, and Lily asks what G's doing back in New York. "I just had some time to kill," she says, and Serena fills in the blanks about how she was at boarding school in Switzerland. Desperately trying to keep it going, be a hostess, while her quiet family dinner is being ruined, Lily suggests that the Sparks parents must be glad Georgie's back, but no. "Actually, they've moved to the country full-time. I'm just in the city to catch up with some old friends." She changes the topic to Lily and the wedding, and Lily makes bored conversation about that, fake laughing and trying not to let on how annoyed she is. But G knows. "There must be love in the New York air! You're engaged, Serena's found a new guy, Eric found himself a boyfriend..." Everything stops moving. "Excuse me?" he asks quietly.
Serena stares at her, and Lily coughs: "I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you right." She waits for Georgina to correct herself, but G starts playing with them: "What? You haven't met Serena's new guy?" No. Not that: "A ... boyfriend?" Breezy as anything: "Oh, you mean Eric. You didn't know he was dating someone? I didn't think it was a secret, I mean, I saw them kissing in front of St. Jude's this morning for all the world to see..." Eric's face falls even further; he's terribly sad. "Well, don't look so embarrassed, E! He is a hot piece! Well done." Serena jumps her: "-- Please, Georgina. That's not funny, okay?"
Georgina checks with Lily, but Lily's looking at her plate, gone all white. "Oh. I'm, um. You... didn't know Eric was dating a boy." Lily chokes the words out, what that would mean. "He's not... He's just. Not." Eric tries to be strong; his lip quivers but he won't lie. "...Are you?" She whispers, and his mouth forms words but no sound comes out. That creaky old voice of his is just warming up to tell her, to stand up and be a man about it, when she collapses in on herself, covering her eyes. "Oh, God." He runs.
"Eric!" Serena tosses a withering glance at Lily -- "Great, Mom. That's just great." -- and a hiss at Georgina -- "How dare you?" -- and runs off. She came home to save him. She came home to keep him safe. She heads toward his room, and at the table, there are two quiet things going on. Georgina is realizing that the world is full of infinite eggs, and the omelet she's making is going to involve breaking more than that one. She shrugs and sips her wine. And Lily is realizing that she just failed one of the big ones. Like the SAT, parenting tests our best qualities and often brings out our worst. But it's not about who you are, in those fast moments, in those pop quizzes: it's about what you do. The second splits, on your word. There are moments where things could go one way or the other, and her son is balanced on a tighter tightrope than most. They almost lost him, before. She remembers. And this might have been the biggest test he'll hand her, in his life, and she failed it.
Jenny launches herself at the front door as Rufus plays guitar: "Dan went out with Vanessa and I'm going to choir practice like we talked about don't wait up!" He stops her: "Where were you gonna change your clothes?" No uniforms at rehearsal. Tell him another one? No, he's done fucking around. He's done playing this particularly idiotic game. "Well, unless the choir is entertainment at Asher's party, you have some explaining to do." He pulls a totally cute dress out of her bag, explaining he knows more than she thinks. But she can't know how much you know, Rufus, if you're constantly lying to her and playing dumb about what you know, because that makes you stupider than her. And "stupider than Jenny Humphrey" is a rough motherfucking place to be, my friend.
Jenny, awesomely, explains to him that if she had asked permission, he would have said no, so she lied instead. And he admits that she's correct, but not his culpability there, and tells her to call Asher and tell him she's not a hostess after all. She explains that it's too late, that everything's been ordered, that all the guests and friends are on their way, but he is not feeling this. She explains that she made a promise, and can't break it, but nobody expects him to get that one. "All that good behavior from the past few weeks just got wiped out from that lie." And then Jenny explains some more shit to Rufus. "You can't stop me, all right?" She walks toward the door, begging him to understand this fact. He threatens, "If you walk out that door..." but like what? What. "What, Dad? What are you gonna do? Are you gonna put bars on my window, or chain me to the kitchen counter? I'm not your... I'm not a little girl anymore. You can't make me do anything." He asks if she wants to lose his respect, along with his trust, but she's past that. He just can't see it. She apologizes, and means it, and leaves. And he's sad, and nods to himself, and has no idea what just happened.
Serena plugs it in, shaking, and a video pops up, from the night of the Shepherd wedding. Georgina says, "If you put the camera over there, she'll never know..." and she and man share a kiss, laughing. "Are you sure she's gonna be down for this?" Georgina grins, you can hear it: "It's Serena. She goes down for anything." Serena enters the suite, and Georgina calls out, "Hey, baby! How are the new Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd?" Serena giggles. "I just did something so stupid..." (Named Nate Archibald!) and Serena fast-forwards the video, to herself, struggling weakly: "It's hot. I'm too hot..." It was like a fever. Her skin goes hot. The man agrees: "You are too hot," and soon enough either S or G is moaning, and then he joins in. Serena slams the computer closed, and goes to her dresser, confused, out of her mind with it, slipping the drive between the pages of a book before jerking it out again and shoving it into a drawer, and runs.
...Smack into Lily van der Woodsen, pissed as hell, just on her way to Serena's room. "Where do you think you're going?" Serena tries to get away, promising to explain later, but Lily, face tight and angry, stands her ground. "If you invite an old friend to our quiet family dinner, I expect you to stay and eat." As Georgina comes around the corner, the anger drains from Lily's face; she buttons up, and speaks softly, smiling. "You know how I always loved when Georgina came around," she spits, eyes flashing. Georgina pretends to oblivion as usual, burbling, "I ran into Lily in the lobby. You totally forgot to tell her I was coming over for dinner!" She kisses Serena's cheek, under the hateful eyes of Lily, and S, distracted, kisses the air. "Did you get my present?" Serena just stares at G's totally insane smile and tries not to pass out.
"Breaking news: Asher Hornsby overheard bragging that Little J swiped her V card at his register..."
Jenny tries on clothes in DUMBO, reading about herself on Gossip Girl, feeling appalled at herself and taking strides to ignore it. She's doing okay until Dan comes running, brandishing his phone, demanding to know if it's true. "It's private?" she scolds him, and he responds that, actually, it's on the internet. "Yeah well, it's none of your business. And since when did you start reading Gossip Girl blasts anyway?" Since about the time she became the subject of them, Dan explains, which is at least three-quarters true. "You're fifteen years old, and I'm your big brother. It is my business." She assures him it's not true, but all that does is confuse him more, and she turns suddenly: "You can't tell anyone, though. Everyone has to believe it." Dan is so confused that his question makes no sense at all: "Are you saying that you actually want your friends to think that you're sleeping with a guy who's gay?" I can't even parse that one. Jenny asks if he always believes GG, and he admits that he didn't just read the Asher tip, he submitted it.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
"Wait, you're the mystery guy that Asher was spotted kissing? I know this isn't how you wanted this to happen..." Eric shakes his head, because Gossip Girl could always go fuck herself: "Yeah, I guess the important thing is that it's happening." Awesome. The total calm with which he says this, the strength of the kid. Apparently therapy is good for you. Serena just shakes her head at him, impressed, in awe. "I'm so ... proud of you." Not like a big sister, like a person. (And she'd never admit this, but once again Eric's just told her what to do, how to be wonderful, and strong like him, without doing anything but being honest.) She throws her arms around him. "I love you. No matter what you do, who you like... Whose boyfriend kisses you..." She laughs. He throws her a smile. "The people who care about you will always stand by your side. OK?" (Say it a couple more times, S. Maybe then you'll believe it.) Eric decides to drop by Asher's party: "There's one more person I have to talk to." She nods, sweetly, and doesn't ask, but it's her Oh, Blair face. She already knows what he's going to do: tear it down, stop everybody lying, and get things healed, one way or the other.
Hornsby Residence, where one finds a truly astounding amount of plaid and madras. Madras ties, madras shirts... It's madras soup! The Bitches slurp their neon martinis, and hit on lacrosse boys, and the whole time the happy couple are laughing, and flirting, and sharing secrets. But here's what the music's saying, as they drink and put on their show: "I hold on so nervously / To me and my drink, I wish it was cooling me / But so far has not been good, it's been shitty / And I feel awkward, as I should ... You'll probably move right through me / On my way to you."
Blair Waldorf comes up the stairs, looking like a total sex goddess combo of Jackie O and Audrey Hepburn. I know I said last week was the best she ever looked, but I think I was wrong. Even the camera slows down so you can look at her for longer. Elise squeals and runs off to tattle to Jenny, but Isabel just looks her up and down: "You look..." Blair nods: "I know." Nelly Yuki laughs about how bad Jenny's going to freak, but Blair just tosses her jacket to them, Asher's phone in hand: "Watch and learn, ladies. The most important parties to attend are the ones you're not invited to. Where's the host? I have something for him."
Serena, scared as hell of telling the truth but more scared of lying and losing Dan, taking Eric's example as gospel, desperately needing some comfort after G's latest two -- concurrent -- assaults, runs straight for the coffeeshop, dropping beside Dan and breathing hard: "Oh, thank God you're here! I'm so happy to see you." She kisses him, needing him to hold her, and he just smiles: "Hey! I'm happy to see you, too. You can meet Sarah!" She tries to tell him it's not a good time, but guess what Georgie's been up to since the "quiet dinner" went so quiet it died? Yep: "Well, she's here, so uh... Sarah, Serena, Serena, Sarah."
"URA Fever," the song at the end of the episode, starts playing in the background as Serena looks up to see Georgina, shoving her hand in her face: "Hi! I'm Sarah. It is so nice to finally meet you." Serena shakes it off and sticks out a hand, but the key is in the lyrics, again: "You only ever had her / When you were a fever." Because when Georgie was a fever, she burned with Serena, and they were whoever they wanted to be. She was the other side of Serena, the bad girl, Blair's opposite, and they burned with each other. She only ever had her when she was a fever. They could go out to the edge and always bounce back, when she was a fever. They could get out of control, or not go out of control, but at the end of the night somebody would catch them.
But that night a year ago, something happened. I don't know exactly what it was yet, but something broke. They crossed the edge together, and Serena just left her there. And now she's a fever all the time, but she burns alone.
"Wow! I mean, Dan told me you were pretty, but he didn't do you justice." Serena asks to talk to Dan privately, but Sarah talks a mile a minute: "Hey, no, no, no, wait, don't go. Vanessa was just about to show me one of her movies. I'm a filmmaker, too, of sorts. Actually, I brought one of my short films, I was hoping to get your opinion. Maybe you wanna see it, too, and tell me what you think?" She plays with a USB drive, looking in her eyes. Vanessa runs off to grab her laptop, and Serena asks Dan to get her a coffee. He doesn't move fast enough, because time's slowed down for her, so she repeats her request, sharply: What she says is "please," but what she means is "now." He leaves, resenting it -- wanting to see Serena and Sarah become friends -- and Georgina smiles at her, and leans closer.
"What the hell are you doing, Georgina? Put that away." It wasn't just Georgina she left in the dark that day; she's spent every day enduring all manner of shame and Dan Humphrey bullshit to forget it ever existed. That's why Georgie's back now, on one level of the story: Serena can't be whole until she reconciles her Blair side with her Georgie side, and stop pretending it doesn't exist. Right now she's trying to be Dan, which isn't going to work. Eric's a step in the right direction, because this is the part of the story he's figured out, he's dragged himself out of the dark and all his shame stuff came out with him, turned to gold. It's why you can trust him with Chuck, because he can see it without being scared of it. But not Serena, yet, so you got Georgina right up in her big old face, demanding to be noticed. To not be ignored. Lighting every type of fire, in every location, to get Serena going again: Dan, Eric, the sex stuff, the drugs, whatever it takes, to get her back and let the fever burn.
Jenny launches herself at the front door as Rufus plays guitar: "Dan went out with Vanessa and I'm going to choir practice like we talked about don't wait up!" He stops her: "Where were you gonna change your clothes?" No uniforms at rehearsal. Tell him another one? No, he's done fucking around. He's done playing this particularly idiotic game. "Well, unless the choir is entertainment at Asher's party, you have some explaining to do." He pulls a totally cute dress out of her bag, explaining he knows more than she thinks. But she can't know how much you know, Rufus, if you're constantly lying to her and playing dumb about what you know, because that makes you stupider than her. And "stupider than Jenny Humphrey" is a rough motherfucking place to be, my friend.
Jenny, awesomely, explains to him that if she had asked permission, he would have said no, so she lied instead. And he admits that she's correct, but not his culpability there, and tells her to call Asher and tell him she's not a hostess after all. She explains that it's too late, that everything's been ordered, that all the guests and friends are on their way, but he is not feeling this. She explains that she made a promise, and can't break it, but nobody expects him to get that one. "All that good behavior from the past few weeks just got wiped out from that lie." And then Jenny explains some more shit to Rufus. "You can't stop me, all right?" She walks toward the door, begging him to understand this fact. He threatens, "If you walk out that door..." but like what? What. "What, Dad? What are you gonna do? Are you gonna put bars on my window, or chain me to the kitchen counter? I'm not your... I'm not a little girl anymore. You can't make me do anything." He asks if she wants to lose his respect, along with his trust, but she's past that. He just can't see it. She apologizes, and means it, and leaves. And he's sad, and nods to himself, and has no idea what just happened.
Eric ran straight to his bedroom and called Chuck. When Serena comes to find him, he's muttering, "...Yeah. Okay." He feels better; Chuck told him how to feel better. Chuck told him to feel better, so he does. Serena comes in, and he says goodbye. "You ... called Chuck?" Eric's been talking to him a lot lately; makes total sense, but I love how this episode makes Chuck totally awesome without him there to fuck it up and be smarmy all over the place. "Guy's got his faults, but he's never judged me." He's family, now, too. "I'm your sister," says Serena, sitting on the bed. "We're us." The wise, sad, strong, vulnerable blonde children of Lily van der Woodsen, now on her first marriage: the only thing they can count on, when the wind starts up again. "You can tell me anything."
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
He wanted to, it wouldn't have been a problem, but some things are too true, and some words are too big to come out; they stick in your throat. "It's not the type of thing you blurt out on the way to school. I was waiting for the right time." The opposite of which, of course, is dinner with Georgina. Serena apologizes for G, and for herself: she came back just for him, to save him and keep him safe, and then abandoned him all over again. He looks her in the eye and speaks slowly, so she'll know he's telling the truth, that it's not a lie or a gloss: "This isn't like before. I'm fine. Really." And she's here now.
"When I was at Ostroff... I met this guy. We were going through a lot of the same stuff. And now that guy is dating Jenny," he says, this last so sad I got a little misty, I won't lie. I mean, maybe this is a part that's hard to get to, because when you're queer you get used to being a commodity -- symbolizing, more than actually existing -- but: his boyfriend was kissing a girl in the courtyard of Constance Billard. His first boyfriend. His first love, that he met at the bottom of the well, in a place where you either come out okay or you don't come out at all. He came out of the cave with this guy, the one guy who understood what he was going through, and actually cared about him enough to share it.
I mean to say that it was a dream come true, a fantasy: It was a story about a cute boy, found in the unlikeliest place, and how after a year of shit, his life finally started turning perfect, because he was in love. He could have it all, and somebody understood, and his dreams could start coming true. And out in the real world, Asher couldn't hack it, because it turns out he's a coward: only brave at night, and in the dark. Never in the real world. And that's how Eric van der Woodsen spends this episode heartbroken, in a way that has nothing to do with being gay at all: because he's smart, and brave enough to tell the truth, and because it's fucking exhausting waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
"Wait, you're the mystery guy that Asher was spotted kissing? I know this isn't how you wanted this to happen..." Eric shakes his head, because Gossip Girl could always go fuck herself: "Yeah, I guess the important thing is that it's happening." Awesome. The total calm with which he says this, the strength of the kid. Apparently therapy is good for you. Serena just shakes her head at him, impressed, in awe. "I'm so ... proud of you." Not like a big sister, like a person. (And she'd never admit this, but once again Eric's just told her what to do, how to be wonderful, and strong like him, without doing anything but being honest.) She throws her arms around him. "I love you. No matter what you do, who you like... Whose boyfriend kisses you..." She laughs. He throws her a smile. "The people who care about you will always stand by your side. OK?" (Say it a couple more times, S. Maybe then you'll believe it.) Eric decides to drop by Asher's party: "There's one more person I have to talk to." She nods, sweetly, and doesn't ask, but it's her Oh, Blair face. She already knows what he's going to do: tear it down, stop everybody lying, and get things healed, one way or the other.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
"There's nothing to tell," Asher says, but Eric raises his voice: "Gossip Girl was right. Asher was kissing someone this morning. Me." There are murmurs among the madras. "He's totally lying," says Asher. "Tell him, Jenny. I was with you all morning." Jenny looks over at Penelope, who's been the guardian of Jenny's lost virginity since it happened, and she nods: "Yeah. Asher's right." And who's saddest for her? Blair Waldorf, who still loves her mother, who did this until it nearly killed all three of them. "I was with him. Eric's lying." Eric again is amazed by Jenny's ability to tell lies that don't even make sense, and shakes his head: "Why would I stand here in front of everyone we know, and tell them, if it wasn't true?"
Seeing that reality has no greater hold on the Humphreys than ever, he turns to Asher: "I'm gay. And so are you." Asher screams, again with that nervous tickle in the throat: "Get this faggot out of here!" Blair jumps back, stricken at the word. (She's thought it; she'd never say it out loud, but it's one of the ways she got back at her father. She's ashamed of that.) But what it does right here is seal the deal: Not to Eric, and not in front of Blair. Ever.
"Go ahead and do it," Eric says, finished with the whole mess, and Blair sends the entirety of Asher's texts and emails to Gossip Girl. "What did you just do?" She smiles, and gives Jenny one of a series of looks that tells her she's been served worse than she's ever been served before. "You'll see," she smiles, and hands him the phone, and makes her way back out of the crowd.
Lily sips her tea at home, freaking out over what she did at dinner. "What kind of mother does not know that her son is gay?" (Zero. Zero kinds. Come on.) Rufus admits that the people you know best are generally the ones that surprise you most (and if you're a Humphrey, no doubt that is true), and she complains: "The things that I said, the way I acted..." Not only was it, in her words, not her finest maternal moment, but -- with Rufus, who knows the whole story, who was the only person he told about the scary stuff -- the real question is: can Eric weather this? Did she do it again? Will he try again? Did she just kill her son? It feels like it. Tonight, it feels like it.
"I know how much you love him, so does he. You just need to remind him of that." And if that's not enough? "Most of the time, it's all we've got." She asks what he's going to do, about his blonde child who is also dating Asher Hornsby, and he sighs. "I'm gonna wait for my daughter to come to me, and then I'm gonna ground her until she's 25." They laugh, and Lily jokes ruefully, and honestly, about what a team they make. "Always did," he says, and she's had such a night it's no wonder that nearly breaks her. She doesn't speak, lets the phone drop away from her mouth, and he realizes he's pushed it too far again; he needs to put the walls back in place or else he won't even have that much of her. "...Good luck, Lil. With everything. I'm sure you'll make a beautiful bride." He only ever had her when he was a fever; now they drink wine and their tea goes cold. "...Thank you," she says sadly, and honestly. "Good night, Rufus." But even after they hang up, the conversation's not really over.
"URA Fever," the song at the end of the episode, starts playing in the background as Serena looks up to see Georgina, shoving her hand in her face: "Hi! I'm Sarah. It is so nice to finally meet you." Serena shakes it off and sticks out a hand, but the key is in the lyrics, again: "You only ever had her / When you were a fever." Because when Georgie was a fever, she burned with Serena, and they were whoever they wanted to be. She was the other side of Serena, the bad girl, Blair's opposite, and they burned with each other. She only ever had her when she was a fever. They could go out to the edge and always bounce back, when she was a fever. They could get out of control, or not go out of control, but at the end of the night somebody would catch them.
But that night a year ago, something happened. I don't know exactly what it was yet, but something broke. They crossed the edge together, and Serena just left her there. And now she's a fever all the time, but she burns alone.
"Wow! I mean, Dan told me you were pretty, but he didn't do you justice." Serena asks to talk to Dan privately, but Sarah talks a mile a minute: "Hey, no, no, no, wait, don't go. Vanessa was just about to show me one of her movies. I'm a filmmaker, too, of sorts. Actually, I brought one of my short films, I was hoping to get your opinion. Maybe you wanna see it, too, and tell me what you think?" She plays with a USB drive, looking in her eyes. Vanessa runs off to grab her laptop, and Serena asks Dan to get her a coffee. He doesn't move fast enough, because time's slowed down for her, so she repeats her request, sharply: What she says is "please," but what she means is "now." He leaves, resenting it -- wanting to see Serena and Sarah become friends -- and Georgina smiles at her, and leans closer.
"What the hell are you doing, Georgina? Put that away." It wasn't just Georgina she left in the dark that day; she's spent every day enduring all manner of shame and Dan Humphrey bullshit to forget it ever existed. That's why Georgie's back now, on one level of the story: Serena can't be whole until she reconciles her Blair side with her Georgie side, and stop pretending it doesn't exist. Right now she's trying to be Dan, which isn't going to work. Eric's a step in the right direction, because this is the part of the story he's figured out, he's dragged himself out of the dark and all his shame stuff came out with him, turned to gold. It's why you can trust him with Chuck, because he can see it without being scared of it. But not Serena, yet, so you got Georgina right up in her big old face, demanding to be noticed. To not be ignored. Lighting every type of fire, in every location, to get Serena going again: Dan, Eric, the sex stuff, the drugs, whatever it takes, to get her back and let the fever burn.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Eric dashes into the suite at the Palace, thinking about how that could have gone slightly better, and how that's not true, it's been awful, and now he has had and lost his first boyfriend, and he won't be able to look in the mirror for awhile and say, "Somebody loves me," because he has gone from the group of people that have boyfriends to the people that don't anymore, but at least now he knows the truth about Asher, and actually and in fact, everybody does, about everything, every single thing, including things he stood in front of the world and said, out loud, when he couldn't even tell his mother, and tomorrow there's school, which is going to be weird, but he can deal with it, and I'm imagine he's wondering most of all what time it is in Monte Carlo right now, so he doesn't even notice his mother, still sitting in the middle of the sofa with her teacup, where she's been for hours, sitting, until she speaks. Babbles, actually.
"Hey! ...Um, I made... Uh, some tea, but ... um ... Look, my reaction earlier..." He tells her it's okay, but first of all no it fucking wasn't, and secondly, she shouldn't believe him this time anyway. "No, it's not okay. You just caught me off guard. I guess I ... I just wasn't ready." He admits he wasn't, quite, either, so he gets it: "It's okay if you need time." She looks at him a bit: this amazing kid. "Well. Since you're being so honest, I'm gonna, um, try as well ... okay?" He watches her as she leans back, and tears well in her eyes, and she whispers: "I'm scared." He nods and her voice gets stronger: "And life is tough enough as it is, you know? I want... the best for you. And um... I'm worried for your safety? ...And your happiness." He sits down, explaining one more time the thing that nobody else on this entire show has figured out: "I have a better chance of being happy if I'm honest."
She knows that, she does. And she wants him to know what love is, whoever it's with. Because love is awesome, as she should know -- Eric points out -- because she's getting married in May. "Fourth time's the charm?" She laughs quietly, and holds him for a long time. She is terrified.
"Ah yes, the truth always comes out. It's one of the fundamental rules of time. And when it comes out, it can set you free... Or end everything you fought so hard for."
Blair sits on the chaise in her front room, reading Gossip Girl ("J's Dream Night Ends In Disaster!"), when the elevator dings. She prepares a smile and arranges herself perfectly, to meet her guest. It's Jenny.
"My, my. If it isn't Little J, risen from the ashes." Jenny speaks like she's broken; like she finally broke: "I came to tell you in person. You win." Blair chuckles kindly, her eyes sparkle: "Oh, sweetie. We just started to play!" Jenny shakes her head with a jerk. "No, you don't understand. I'm done. With you, with them, with all of it." Just like that? Except it hasn't been just like that, no matter how much Blair's caught of the story, not by a long shot: "I lied, and I stole, and I lost the respect of my family. For what?" Blair swallows -- those are big -- but doesn't look away. "So I can be like you? You asked me before if it was all worth it? My answer is, it's not."
She turns to leave, walking slow, hunched, and Blair calls out to her: "-- I tried to warn you..." Jenny turns to her and she smiles softly: "There's a price to pay. I always knew a girl like you couldn't afford it." Jenny agrees, no pride left even for that one, and Blair realizes how far Jenny's really fallen. "Well, you put up a good fight... For a freshman." There's respect in her eyes, and respect in Jenny's when she thanks her. The game's over. "...I hope you don't expect a hug," Blair says, after Jenny takes too long gearing her tired sad self up to leave, and Jenny's eyes are totally dead: "I don't expect anything anymore." She walks away, and Blair sits in the middle of her house, and the smile fades and she goes deep, almost crying, mourning for what Jenny's lost.
Outside the coffeeshop Dan grills Serena about Sarah: "So. She's great, right? What do you think?" Serena is completely honest when she says she doesn't really like her. Dan says that she had doubts about Vanessa too, but now they're friends -- and the awesome part is how he doesn't move his hands, but somehow puts air-quotes around "friends" just in the tilt of his head and his mouth. "This is different," she says, and he jumps on it, calling her jealous. "There's no reason to be. She actually wanted us to patch things up!" Georgina must not have the information! Serena's like, "You fucking told her about our problems?" Which she directly caused? "Yes. Because she wanted to listen to them," unlike some people, "And she had good advice, too." Serena shakes her head, caresses his face. Not jealousy. Fear. "Look at me. I love you, okay? You just have to take my word for it. Do not trust her."
Which would be something else if Serena hadn't just met her -- while Dan's been friends with her for two weeks, mind -- and if Serena hadn't been hanging with Chuck all the time, and partying, and lying, and disappearing on him (or "avoiding" him, if you're the center of the universe, which he is), but still feels she's the authority on trust. It's confusing, especially if you're Dan, who never met a factual statement or opinion coming out of Serena's mouth that didn't rankle his ass and start his bitch machine running. Vanessa and Sarah approach, and Dan points out that the three of them live there in Brooklyn, so maybe it would be better if Serena grabbed her cab home from here.
And the reason for that is, your brain and your body exist on different continents, and the hormone onslaught is only the first volley of an intense 10-year war your body commits on your mind, which is why sex has driven every single one of these children completely batty, and if you're gay that's one of the weapons too: Your body starts telling you a certain thing that makes very little sense -- because sex is dirty, because everything defaults to shame, because marriage and being scared of sex and your own body are very old traditions -- which is that basically all the time, it wants to do this thing that is incredibly scary and renders you powerless, and nobody will tell you how to do right, and which involves showing your body -- which you hate -- to somebody who may or may not also hate it, while doing something complex and athletic which you have never done before. And either your body is crazy, or your brain is, and the war begins.
And if you're gay, there's a fifth column in the war you didn't even know about, an enemy inside your body, so it's two wars at once: your body starts telling you a certain thing that makes very little sense -- because heterosexuality is the default, because everything defaults to heterosexuality, because marriage and childbearing and heterosexuals are very old traditions -- which is that sometimes, or all the time, it wants to do this thing that is not the default. So either your body is crazy, or your brain is, and the war begins. And the only way anybody makes peace in this war, which everybody eventually does, is either by being raised in that rare miraculous household where you end up with the tools to actually negotiate these minefields -- lucky for you -- or by doing what Eric's done and what Serena still has to do: look that demon in the eye, and say you love it. Lucky for everybody. And the end of this particular journey is college, where you have sex constantly with everyone around you, until you are Exhausted. And then you are Old, and that's why grownups drink so much. Also why they play golf.)
"There's nothing to tell," Asher says, but Eric raises his voice: "Gossip Girl was right. Asher was kissing someone this morning. Me." There are murmurs among the madras. "He's totally lying," says Asher. "Tell him, Jenny. I was with you all morning." Jenny looks over at Penelope, who's been the guardian of Jenny's lost virginity since it happened, and she nods: "Yeah. Asher's right." And who's saddest for her? Blair Waldorf, who still loves her mother, who did this until it nearly killed all three of them. "I was with him. Eric's lying." Eric again is amazed by Jenny's ability to tell lies that don't even make sense, and shakes his head: "Why would I stand here in front of everyone we know, and tell them, if it wasn't true?"
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Seeing that reality has no greater hold on the Humphreys than ever, he turns to Asher: "I'm gay. And so are you." Asher screams, again with that nervous tickle in the throat: "Get this faggot out of here!" Blair jumps back, stricken at the word. (She's thought it; she'd never say it out loud, but it's one of the ways she got back at her father. She's ashamed of that.) But what it does right here is seal the deal: Not to Eric, and not in front of Blair. Ever.
"Go ahead and do it," Eric says, finished with the whole mess, and Blair sends the entirety of Asher's texts and emails to Gossip Girl. "What did you just do?" She smiles, and gives Jenny one of a series of looks that tells her she's been served worse than she's ever been served before. "You'll see," she smiles, and hands him the phone, and makes her way back out of the crowd.
Lily sips her tea at home, freaking out over what she did at dinner. "What kind of mother does not know that her son is gay?" (Zero. Zero kinds. Come on.) Rufus admits that the people you know best are generally the ones that surprise you most (and if you're a Humphrey, no doubt that is true), and she complains: "The things that I said, the way I acted..." Not only was it, in her words, not her finest maternal moment, but -- with Rufus, who knows the whole story, who was the only person he told about the scary stuff -- the real question is: can Eric weather this? Did she do it again? Will he try again? Did she just kill her son? It feels like it. Tonight, it feels like it.
"I know how much you love him, so does he. You just need to remind him of that." And if that's not enough? "Most of the time, it's all we've got." She asks what he's going to do, about his blonde child who is also dating Asher Hornsby, and he sighs. "I'm gonna wait for my daughter to come to me, and then I'm gonna ground her until she's 25." They laugh, and Lily jokes ruefully, and honestly, about what a team they make. "Always did," he says, and she's had such a night it's no wonder that nearly breaks her. She doesn't speak, lets the phone drop away from her mouth, and he realizes he's pushed it too far again; he needs to put the walls back in place or else he won't even have that much of her. "...Good luck, Lil. With everything. I'm sure you'll make a beautiful bride." He only ever had her when he was a fever; now they drink wine and their tea goes cold. "...Thank you," she says sadly, and honestly. "Good night, Rufus." But even after they hang up, the conversation's not really over.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
"Weekend update: A same-sex kiss hasn't caused this much controversy since Britney and Madonna. Looks like Little J didn't spread her legs after all, she spread lies instead. Asher is gay, and I have the correspondence to prove it." Blair leads the Bitches out of the party as the blast hits everybody's phones at once.
"Looks like someone needs a semester in France," she says, and the only person who knows what she means -- both ways -- is Blair. It's a joke, two jokes, just for herself and for us, and it draws a line under this victory. She puts the clef in the roman of this one, a story she told herself, and deftly turns it, smiling. And if she felt any guilt about Roman's ankle, that's gone now too, because she saved Eric, and because the world has one less lie in it, and one girl left crying and confused. Even if that girl is Little Jenny Humphrey, it was worth it.
"Get your things, girls. We're leaving." Penelope scowls at Jenny, who begs them to stay. "Guys, we can still have fun. Don't leave." Hazel looks at her like she's an idiot: "Kind of hard to party after the gay bomb drops." Penelope turns her gaze back on Little J. "I'm gonna do something out of character, and give you the benefit of the doubt. Tell us Gossip Girl is wrong." Hazel wants to know, too. "I... May have exaggerated a little bit." Penelope is beyond disgusted, which is her fault for getting involved in other people's sex, and also for getting involved with disgusting Jenny in the first place, but her Rulebook is hilarious: "Dating a gay guy is an honest mistake, but lying to your girlfriends about sex is unforgivable." Isabel shudders at the memory of nearly asking Jenny to dress like twinsies tonight, and even Nelly Yuki is grossed out: "You're branded now, with the L word." Elise clarifies, because what would we do without creepy little Elise: "Liar."
As one, they turn to Queen B, and Hazel asks what they're doing instead. "'We' are doing nothing. I, however, am going home." They shuffle around for a second, at a loss, like bumper boats. "Tomorrow. Dinner at the Waverly, and then to 151 for drinks." That lightning-fast Cylon vote thing they do where everybody looks at everybody else, and then they agree. "I'll have Dorota Blackberry everyone an itinerary," says Blair, and zaps another You Got Served Jenny's way before leaving. But Jenny, man. She's just dying inside.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
I wish they'd cued "Sour Cherry" again, from when Jenny brought Nate to Butter right here, actually: "Shout when you wanna get off the ride... Now I'm only sour cherry on the fruitstand ... / We could be movers, we could be shakers... G-g-g-go home, go home, it's over..." But GG gets it done: "Don't look so sad, Little J, the sun'll come out tomorrow... Even though your boyfriend did today."
Eric dashes into the suite at the Palace, thinking about how that could have gone slightly better, and how that's not true, it's been awful, and now he has had and lost his first boyfriend, and he won't be able to look in the mirror for awhile and say, "Somebody loves me," because he has gone from the group of people that have boyfriends to the people that don't anymore, but at least now he knows the truth about Asher, and actually and in fact, everybody does, about everything, every single thing, including things he stood in front of the world and said, out loud, when he couldn't even tell his mother, and tomorrow there's school, which is going to be weird, but he can deal with it, and I'm imagine he's wondering most of all what time it is in Monte Carlo right now, so he doesn't even notice his mother, still sitting in the middle of the sofa with her teacup, where she's been for hours, sitting, until she speaks. Babbles, actually.
"Hey! ...Um, I made... Uh, some tea, but ... um ... Look, my reaction earlier..." He tells her it's okay, but first of all no it fucking wasn't, and secondly, she shouldn't believe him this time anyway. "No, it's not okay. You just caught me off guard. I guess I ... I just wasn't ready." He admits he wasn't, quite, either, so he gets it: "It's okay if you need time." She looks at him a bit: this amazing kid. "Well. Since you're being so honest, I'm gonna, um, try as well ... okay?" He watches her as she leans back, and tears well in her eyes, and she whispers: "I'm scared." He nods and her voice gets stronger: "And life is tough enough as it is, you know? I want... the best for you. And um... I'm worried for your safety? ...And your happiness." He sits down, explaining one more time the thing that nobody else on this entire show has figured out: "I have a better chance of being happy if I'm honest."
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
She knows that, she does. And she wants him to know what love is, whoever it's with. Because love is awesome, as she should know -- Eric points out -- because she's getting married in May. "Fourth time's the charm?" She laughs quietly, and holds him for a long time. She is terrified.
"Ah yes, the truth always comes out. It's one of the fundamental rules of time. And when it comes out, it can set you free... Or end everything you fought so hard for."
Blair sits on the chaise in her front room, reading Gossip Girl ("J's Dream Night Ends In Disaster!"), when the elevator dings. She prepares a smile and arranges herself perfectly, to meet her guest. It's Jenny.
"My, my. If it isn't Little J, risen from the ashes." Jenny speaks like she's broken; like she finally broke: "I came to tell you in person. You win." Blair chuckles kindly, her eyes sparkle: "Oh, sweetie. We just started to play!" Jenny shakes her head with a jerk. "No, you don't understand. I'm done. With you, with them, with all of it." Just like that? Except it hasn't been just like that, no matter how much Blair's caught of the story, not by a long shot: "I lied, and I stole, and I lost the respect of my family. For what?" Blair swallows -- those are big -- but doesn't look away. "So I can be like you? You asked me before if it was all worth it? My answer is, it's not."
She turns to leave, walking slow, hunched, and Blair calls out to her: "-- I tried to warn you..." Jenny turns to her and she smiles softly: "There's a price to pay. I always knew a girl like you couldn't afford it." Jenny agrees, no pride left even for that one, and Blair realizes how far Jenny's really fallen. "Well, you put up a good fight... For a freshman." There's respect in her eyes, and respect in Jenny's when she thanks her. The game's over. "...I hope you don't expect a hug," Blair says, after Jenny takes too long gearing her tired sad self up to leave, and Jenny's eyes are totally dead: "I don't expect anything anymore." She walks away, and Blair sits in the middle of her house, and the smile fades and she goes deep, almost crying, mourning for what Jenny's lost.
Outside the coffeeshop Dan grills Serena about Sarah: "So. She's great, right? What do you think?" Serena is completely honest when she says she doesn't really like her. Dan says that she had doubts about Vanessa too, but now they're friends -- and the awesome part is how he doesn't move his hands, but somehow puts air-quotes around "friends" just in the tilt of his head and his mouth. "This is different," she says, and he jumps on it, calling her jealous. "There's no reason to be. She actually wanted us to patch things up!" Georgina must not have the information! Serena's like, "You fucking told her about our problems?" Which she directly caused? "Yes. Because she wanted to listen to them," unlike some people, "And she had good advice, too." Serena shakes her head, caresses his face. Not jealousy. Fear. "Look at me. I love you, okay? You just have to take my word for it. Do not trust her."
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Which would be something else if Serena hadn't just met her -- while Dan's been friends with her for two weeks, mind -- and if Serena hadn't been hanging with Chuck all the time, and partying, and lying, and disappearing on him (or "avoiding" him, if you're the center of the universe, which he is), but still feels she's the authority on trust. It's confusing, especially if you're Dan, who never met a factual statement or opinion coming out of Serena's mouth that didn't rankle his ass and start his bitch machine running. Vanessa and Sarah approach, and Dan points out that the three of them live there in Brooklyn, so maybe it would be better if Serena grabbed her cab home from here.
"Dan, don't. I want to talk." And this part, I don't blame him for: "Then talk!" She stares at him, says nothing, ashamed and afraid, backing down from it. Vanessa, feeling the usual tension, starts to go, and Dan tells her to wait, and goes to catch up. Seeing her chance, Georgina pretends to run back into the locked coffeeshop to grab something, but instead hovers on the stoop, clearly visible, and waits for Dan and Vanessa to start off down the street. The way this looks is totally scary and crazy, like earlier when Serena tried to put the thing in the book.
"Well," Georgina says, strolling back toward her: "I had fun. How about you?" Serena is mystified by the crazy, but Georgina's about to explain it to her. She won't hear it, but it's there. "What do you want from me?" Serena says, and Georgina goes, "I want things to go back to how they were before that night, before things got so screwed up."
I mean, I tend to take Georgina at face value because this show is realistic about how people are, and realistic about how they act when they're putting on an act, but there it is: I want things to go back to how they were before that night. I want things to go back to before things/I got so screwed up. Something broke that night. She left a piece of herself there on the other side, and she knows Serena can help her find it again, because Serena lights the darkness up. She needs Serena, because she's the missing good part, just like Georgina's the missing bad part. They're both incomplete, but only Serena can solve this equation for them both. "We were such good friends, and now we can be again!" But you only ever had her when you were a fever.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
"Why would I want to be friends with somebody who blackmails me? Who outs my little brother at the dinner table?" Georgina admits that was an honest mistake: "I would never hurt him." That's how far down it goes, she's asking: Can you believe that there are things I won't do? Will you tell me that there are lines I won't cross? Will you tell me I'm capable of getting better, of knitting myself back together?
No.
"No. I don't believe you. I don't believe you about Eric, about anything."
Okay, then. It's like a switch that flips: okay, fine. There are lines I'll cross. Fucking watch me. Maybe you we're right all along, and the feeling I have, that I'm unfixable, maybe that's right too. But you're my last shot, and no matter how I try to get you under control, to get you to burn with me, you just make it hurt more. So you want to be good and you want to be right? I'll show you how fucking right you are.
"Maybe you're right. Maybe I did it on purpose." She laughs, fakely, like a little girl trying to convince you she's a witch. "Because I can. Because I know things about you, about your family, about your boyfriend..." She leans in close, letting the fever burn: "...And I know them before you do." It feels good. "Oh, look! Cab." She hails the taxi for Serena, and looks at her through hooded eyes, on fire: "You get home safe."
And Serena stares, afraid and trapped, as Sarah runs off back toward her new best friends.
"Another way the truth comes out? When you don't even mean it to."
Rufus notes Dan's Scrabble words: angry, change (possibly chains or even chained), trust, and girl. Oh, Dan. "Something you wanna talk about?" Not really: "Who'da thought Scrabble could be so therapeutic? That last one was a triple word score..." The loft door opens, and the boys look up.
"...Or when, without saying a word, it's still loud and clear."
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
Jenny takes five steps toward her bedroom, still wearing her dress, beautiful hair still holding up really well, and then turns, looking at the floor. "Dad? ... Do you think it'd be okay if I joined you?" He looks at her a while, and smiles. "You know there's always room for you here." Cutting the tension, Dan says Rufus could use her help. She sits down beside Rufus, and leans her forehead against his shoulder. She starts to cry, pushing against him until he puts his arm around her, curling into him, sobbing hard: "Dad, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything."
"But the worst thing the truth can do? Is when you finally tell it, it doesn't set you free... but locks you away forever."
S wanders into the Waldorf house, looking busted. B comes out in her totally glamorous negligee, trying to focus. Serena's voice breaks: "Blair?" Blair's like, "It's late, what the fuck?" But once she sees Serena's face, she jumps into hyperBlair mode, touching her, begging her to talk. "Oh my God, what happened? What's wrong? Talk to me." She says she can't, she's not as strong as Eric, and Blair repeats: of course she can. "No. No B, this is the one thing I can't tell you. I can't tell anyone." But Blair is hardly "anyone," especially when it's Serena: "I'm me. You can tell me anything." Nope, still can't.
Serena sits on the staircase and shivers. "Because then that'd make you a part of it, and you can't be a part of this." Which is true, on all cylinders: this fever, that's what Blair saves you from. She'll never be a part of this. We thought she was evil, fucked up, a mean girl, when we met her. She's none of those. She's a girl who lives by rules, and requires that everybody else live by them too. But she's no part of this: this is about places where there are no rules, and those places Blair barely knows about.
"What are you talking about? You're starting to scare me. Hey, hey, hey. We're sisters. You're my family, what is you, is me. There's nothing that you could ever say to make me let go."
Serena shakes, so she takes her hand, and forces her gaze: "I love you." Serena looks away, and Blair gets even more nervous: "What is it?" How bad does it get, in the dark places? And just before the music goes crazy and the fever returns, and the camera away from the two of them every fourth beat, back and up the staircase, before everybody watching goes: "The fuck!?" and starts screaming, Serena says: "I killed someone."
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36