Vanessa and Nate play out Gift Of The Magi, but unsurprisingly get each other the same retarded thing: tickets to the opera, where of course the entire cast is going to be, including Blair's gay dads. Of course Nate's tickets are like a hundred billion times better than V's, and of course she makes a mess of it, and of course nobody cares and nobody ever will, although Dan and Nate are back to being bros. (Sweet!) Meanwhile, Lily formally debuts Rufus into society, and he does even worse than you think, but with both better hair and funnier ignorance shtick than you might hope; best of all, Chuck calls Rufus Lily's mistress.
Mes deux papas français Harold and Roman come bearing Yale colors and a Yale bulldog for B, talking about Gilmore Girls and giving B the opportunity to talk shit about Rory Gilmore before dragging her off to the opera. Meanwhile, she's become obsessed with the new English teacher -- to the negatory, while Serena is girlcrushing all over her -- who stupidly gives her like a 99% and thus gets herself blood vendetta'd. At the last second, after a painfully hassle-tastic two hours, B apologizes sincerely for the first time since her unholy birth, but it's too late: Miss Carr has reported her minor inconvenience to the new fake Headmistress "Queller," and B is put under some mysterious "detention" thing that sounds like she's going to be picking up trash on the highway or spearing beavers for their fur in Quebec or, I don't know, saving the Brooklyn Inn with Abrams.
Which would be fine, except for how this show still doesn't exhibit a fucking quantum of knowledge about college admissions, and apparently "detention" is enough to put your early admission on hold, because major universities are really just waiting calls about whether or not you falsified dinner reservations for a dumbass teacher on her second day at work. The early admission, BTW, Blair only got because suddenly Serena van der Woodsen doesn't feel like going to Yale -- where Dan Fucking Humphrey is going, because watching Lily and Lily's mistress Rufus is stomach-turning -- but rather Brown. Not that she tells the violently insane Blair Waldorf that she got in when B was just wait-listed, and anyway Brown is where she wanted to go in the first place, and where her patchouli stink won't stick out, but Dan throws a big fucking fit about everything. Which: whatever, he was going to do that anyway.
Mainly, given the total downer of last week: Lily finally realizes that she can solve both her resented-by-Chuck problem and Chuck's cheated-by-Uncle Jack problem by finishing up the adoption procedure she and Bart started before his death. She signs it easily and joyfully, Chuck is grateful and she becomes his legal guardian, freezing Jack out. (This is only after Lily shoots down Chuck's hilarious bad-taste suggestion that they John-John the Bass jet into a mountain.) This causes Jack to get wicked coked up and pretty far down the checklist of raping her before Chuck saves her and beats Jack's head in. It's like To Catch A Thief! But with rape! This is all happening BTW while Lily's mistress Rufus is accidentally putting the moves on some random dude at the opera, and never the wiser. Later, despite Chuck's protestations, R and Lily are all about how much they love each other, and Chuck finally moves back home, and it's amazing. I can't wait to see Eric do an actual loop in the air like a poodle.
Not week: B goes after Shakespeare teacher in a huge way, tossing around terms like "black ops" and "long-term engagement"; said teacher goes after Dan just as vigorously, and hopefully S's beloved Slutford-on-Avon shoves the stake through Dan/Serena for good.
"True love and betrayal, revenge and more revenge, a heroine with an impossible goal... If only Mozart had lived on the Upper East Side." Oh, good. I don't like opera, it makes me feel like I'm being scolded, but one thing you can trust about this show is that even if the whole episode has an opera theme, it's not really going to make you listen to the horrible sounds of opera.
Blair's gay dads Harold and Roman have randomly shown up at Chez Eleanor to present themselves as a sort of life-sized gift basket of Yale crap. They even got Dorota a giant white lace "Y" for her usual maid costume. "But you can keep your Magic Flute, Amadeus. All this queen wants is a golden ticket to Yale." Harold's creepy face welcomes B to the concept of breakfast, while Roman points out the obvious Yale colors of all the breakfast food, blueberries and the like, and then randomly they talk about how Blair's been nervous about early admissions day for a bit, but went all-out last night watching Gilmore Girls ("Oh, I am so a better fit for Yale than that Rory!") and there's a whining sound, and B assumes it's D groaning like a bulldog, but in fact it's a real bulldog, whom Harold has named "Handsome Dan" in deference to the Yale mascot. B is not feeling that name, hilariously, and decides to just call him "Handsome."
I want to marry the internet and have little wikibabies! Check it. Handsome Dan I (1889-1897) was the past life of Blair Waldorf: "He would bark ferociously and work himself into physical contortions of rage never before dreamed of by a dog." Handsome Dan II died of a broken leg; Handsome Dan III was retired due to emotional instability; Handsome Dan IV got run over by a car; Handsome Dan V was called Bull until IV got hit by that car, then became V and died of old age; Handsome Dan VI "died mysteriously at age two," either from fear of fireworks or "of shame from seeing Yale lose to both Princeton and Harvard in the same year"; Handsome Dan VII and VIII were also retired due to emotional instability, being a rage-oholic and agoraphobic, respectively; Handsome Dan IX fell off the dock at the Yale Boathouse and drowned in the mud and then was resuscitated, only to die of acute kidney disease; XI retired due to arthritis, "loved football but had a tendency to doze in the sun during games," and "was frequently sighted on Martha's Vineyard during the tourist season"; XII got kidnapped; XIII was retired due to old age twice, and is regarded as the "most noteworthy of the Handsome Dans" because he did lots of weird tricks; Handsome Dan XIV was the descendent of a prizewinner named Hetherbull Arrogant Frigott but had the inbreeding overexcitement issue and died of a heart attack; and before the 1908 Harvard-Yale Game, supposedly the Harvard coach Percy Haughton strangled a bulldog to death in the locker room to motivate his players. Which is harsh, but nothing is as harsh as Wikipedia's eye for the cold hard facts: "Whether this is true or not, Harvard did win 4-0." If you told me all those stories were about generations of Archibalds I would believe you.
Harold mentions a personal letter he wrote to Dean Berube -- Who would Harold's person alive or dead be? Kevin Spacey, Michael Rosenbaum, and Gene Hackman walk into a French country house -- and how it will help her chances, and Roman goes, "We will celebrate your acceptance tonight at the opera, with champagne at all intermissions. We will be so drunk, by the time someone dies, we'll just laugh." It is time to reevaluate old Roman, because that is an awesome thing to say. Harold asks if Chuck's joining, since like all grownups he loves Chuck, and because Chuck famously "loves a good tragedy." I feel like every word on this show now is in code; I see signs everywhere. Dorota, worrying about B, seconds Harold's suggestion that they find Chuck, and B is self-consciously disinterested: "He's as dead to me as his father is to him. More blueberries."
At the house of PRADA, Dan has come to walk Serena to school because it's "Yale Day," because we all know of Serena's history of anxiety that she doesn't have, and how supportive and stable Dan always never is, but really because he needs Serena around because she's everybody's valium and all he cares about now is getting into Yale. Dartmouth is like, "Getting our English department poached seemed like a downgrade at the time, but that was before we met Dan Humphrey. God closes a door, he opens a window." Serena is so not interested in listening to Dan worry over it, she literally goes pffft: "Forget you, what if I do and Blair doesn't?" Nice! Weirdly abrupt, but I'm in. Dan offers: "Fire and brimstone and a lot of bitchy asides?" Oh, come now. You're assured of that anyway. "Death by Dorota?" Better. Dan assures her all three of them are getting into Yale, enumerating once again all the reasons we're supposed to believe that, and Serena talks about how one day things are actually going to be fun and cool.
Dan nods at her reference to "the recent not-fun event, uh, also known as the You Two Share A Brother Oh Wait No You Don't rollercoaster," which she links also to the Tiltawhirl called "Discovering This Fact Has Only Served To Bring Rufus And Lily Closer Than Ever." Dan thinks that Yale will somehow change their lives and he will be reinventing himself into somebody who's not... Who knows what he thinks. Nobody has realistic ideas about college in high school, especially not the Dans of the world. Then Lily and Rufus come sneaking down the stairs, and it squicks everybody out for some reason, and they get all nervous and Serena spends the rest of the scene staring at the kitchen island, and Lily goes, awesomely, "Well, now that this is all out in the open, maybe we can stop sneaking around. I mean, we've had the awkward run-in, and it isn't so bad. I don't know why we thought this would be so weird!" Which is exactly what I like to do when things are weird. But not because it makes things better.
Rufus and Lily, they would like the empty kitchen to know, are having the sex. And tonight, they will be having the charity gala at the opera. Rufus is trepidatious about it, because it is going to suck, and because he's so sweetly Brooklyn earnest that he thinks people who go to these things actually enjoy them. Whenever I think about this, like how the Goonies called money "rich people stuff," I always think about how it's like, "What happens when I marry the millionaire, actually?" and the best thing Kit De Luca can come up with is, you buy some horses and like a diamond. So whatever, they make out some more, and Eric comes stalking in and hisses, "I would say get a room, but yours is right above mine. Please try to remember that." They laugh and kiss and are secretly horrified. I like any old Eric, of course, but "bitchy opera queer" Eric is a whole new thing. It's sort of thrilling, but also kind of boring. Regular Eric is good too.
Chuck's ordering mysterious under-18s, imported: "I want them young and unstable." Scary, like how if you never know what the monster looks like it's twice as scary as if you did know. Jack laughs and says to cancel the order ("I already ate," he says, which is also mysteriously chilling), and they talk about how Chuck's been doing childish things to get him fired, like "having the freshman class of Brearley hold their annual sleepover" in his hotel room. They discuss how Jack's transition to leader might involve a dip in Bass stock, and Chuck tells him to go to hell, and they bitch at each other for awhile, and let us know they'll both be at the opera. Because what if every single character on this show were not somehow in attendance at the big Fourth Act event, no matter how twisted the narrative explanation, and the world therefore ended? Best to eliminate that suspense right up front: they're going to be at the opera. And in the spirit of this kindness: every single character on the show, just like the last 34 episodes of this show, is also going to be there.
Dan observes the new Shakespeare teacher, Miss Rachel Carr, who is child-tiny and he thinks may have "Benjamin Button Syndrome," but turns it around immediately when she uses her first line of dialogue to talk shit -- in front of Serena -- about how shitty and self-absorbed and entitled Upper East Siders are. Dan's like, "Girl, I hear you. Don't they all just suck shit?" Serena's more than happy to introduce Dan to Miss Carr, her "favorite new teacher." Dan tells Miss Carr that she looks like Benjamin Button, and she's like, "I'm even worse than you think. Have you ever heard of something called Teach For America? I've never even been to New York before. It's a lot different than Des Moines. Don't you just feel this quiet sense of the innate goodness of people? I'm thinking of starting a book club with homeless people!" Serena, whose family as of five minutes ago is "in the hotel business," tells Miss Carr to come chill in the Palace lobby, and Dan offers the chill-out use of the Bedford Gallery Café & Spazzerie. Miss Carr goes, "Brooklyn. That's, uh, the place across the bridge, right?" Dan laughs disproportionately at this, and they say goodbye, and Serena just loves Miss Carr so much, and you realize Dan is totally going to fuck her in about a minute.
"Refresh! Refresh! Refresh!" B yells at her minions, because apparently she's incapable of getting a text message on her own; she inspects Nelly Yuki's phone and notes that it's not her email account Nelly Yuki is checking, but her own. Because the whole reason Nelly Yuki is on this show is because of how she had the audacity not only to have applied to Yale too, but to take the SATs. "Yes, but your application was merely a formality to appease your overbearing parents. You know very well there's no way Yale is going to accept someone who got a 2360 on her SATs, so give up and go for the gold. My gold. Refresh." It's funny as a setpiece, but it falls apart if you think about it at all, because WTF is any of this really: Having four girls checking your email on your behalf isn't expedient, it's just weird and sort of dumb and clueless.
Nate and Dan confirm that they, yes, will be at the opera. Together? Sort of but not exactly. "You know, for a while, I couldn't take Vanessa anywhere really nice, because of the whole no money thing?" Class. Exactly. I love you, Nate Archibald, and your complete lack of weird emotional shit about money. He saw a DVD box set of Der Ring des Nibelungen at her house, and thought that might translate into her enjoying a night of champagne in his family box. This is because of the same Rich People Stuff Goonie mistake, but from the other side of a more intellectual poverty: It's not that Vanessa likes opera, it's that she likes incredibly long, boring shit that she can sternly force herself and others to experience for hours at a time. The "P" in "NPR" doesn't stand for "passion." Dan says that yes, she made him watch the whole thing, without subtitles. That's like sixteen hours. Even if he's kidding that just makes me hate her so bad.
"If you've ever seen A Clockwork Orange you know how that ended up," Dan says, which is actually funnier than you think, because Anthony Burgess also wrote a book called The Worm & The Ring that is about the Ring Cycle at a prep school, the same way this show is all about classic romance literature at a prep school. Meanwhile, Nate's a few steps behind and looking great as usual: "Wait. What's A Clockwork Orange?" Dan rolls his eyes at the curious holes in Nate's brilliance, gets a text, and loses his balance, reaching out instinctively for one Archibald deltoid before he drops.
Lily's looking at a beautiful red dress -- when you're going there, go large; "this is my boyfriend Rufus, and this is my awesome slut dress" -- when Chuck comes in, feeling stymied and acting even more Heathcliff than usual: "I'm trying to do something. I really wanted to do it on my own, but that's not working. I'm thinking you're the only person left who can help." Her face is like, "That's almost sweet, how you view me as a tool and an object and nothing more. How I have missed you."
Serena watches the Plastics refresh for awhile, spurred on by the pretty-much-insane-now Queen B, but then they all get the news at the same time: Nelly Yuki and Serena were accepted, but they don't say anything; everybody else is horrified by Blair's results: waitlisted. Even though it's on Penelope and Isabel and Hazel's phones clear as day, B still has the Blairwithal to go, "I'm sorry. I... I simply can't read it. The font's too small. I have to check it on a real computer." Nelly grabs it and puts her on shout, and just as B is trying to figure out her move, Dan comes running up squealing and moaning and smelling like Nate's cologne, because he got into Yale too. Worst case scenario! Serena lies and says she got waitlisted, and Blair goes totally 'round the bend, all, "I need to see the Headmistress... RIGHT NOW!" This last so loud and shrill and scary that somewhere under a full Parisian moon, Agnes raises her head to the sky and just howls along with her.
Chuck explains to Lily that he is just getting cockblocked like crazy as far as bringing Jack Bass down, because they are too much alike. "He thinks too much like me, sees me coming." That right there is a red flag, Lily. Pay attention. "And the way he's running the business, I worry everything my father had worked for will be lost." Chuck says he thought, now that she has a stake, she might care about that at least, and she shakes her head, refusing to pretend to hate him the way he's pretending to hate her. "I do care, Charles. But my concern is for you, not the company." She begs him to move back to PRADA, but he just recoils and gets nasty about it, of course.
Lily's like, "I'm down with your issue and your cause or whatever, but you have to shape your game up. "Planting coke in his gym bag? Ambushing him with a transsexual hooker?" Two, actually. But really? Plus the one he picked up in Thailand? Seriously? Is this a numbers thing or what, like, if I went out and got a hundred random hookers, how many of them would have dicks? I have to ask my public defender friend about this, because at this point Jack constantly getting surprised by this exact thing is looking sort of disingenuous. Fool me once, okay. But fool me three times, including two times at the same time, maybe the only person fooling me is me. And where did Chuck get two transsexual prostitutes? "They owed me a favor." I... don't want to know what kind of trouble a transsexual prostitute can get into where Chuck is the better option.
Lily sort of convinces Chuck that vendetta thinking is not the greatest idea right now, and maybe he should be thinking about doing this like a grownup, but clearly he doesn't know how to do that yet, so she offers to take care of it like they would on TV, and maybe he'll reconsider his living situation. "Don't hold your breath," he says, nodding, and takes off. She smiles and nods because whatever, at least he's alive and in the U.S., and quietly asks if he'll come back later.
Blair screams at some woman they're trying to tell us is Queller even though she is plainly not Queller, all how Berube said Yale could use a girl like Blair Waldorf, and now apparently they've found a girl like Blair Waldorf elsewhere, and Fake Queller tells her to chill out and that B is in line: if the student they accepted turns them down, she will be in. "Dan Humphrey? He's like a cafeteria lady who won the lottery. You couldn't pry that acceptance from his hands with the jaws of life." Queller, clutching at her coffee mug to avoid laughing hysterically at how awesome Blair is, says she was not talking about Dan. "Someone from Constance got in?" B asks in a hush, sitting quickly. Queller gives her a short speech about how her transcripts and everything are perfection, and most waitlisted students eventually get into their college of choice no matter how much freaking out they do in the meantime. "I know that patience and trust aren't necessarily your strong suits, but you'll just have to rise to the occasion, hmm?" I like Queller, but I don't trust this replacement lady -- although extra point for refusing to tell B who the lucky girl was, no matter what corner or shadow she pops out of to ask.
Miss Carr congratulates S on getting in, but Serena hushes her. Neither Dan, who got in, nor Blair, who was waitlisted, can know that S got in without even trying, and doesn't even want to go there. "It sounds like you're worrying about other people when this is a decision about you. Do you want Yale?" Serena, amazed as she always is when people give her the benefit of an opinion, which is rare, realizes she was only interested in Yale because B was being a bitch, and then because Dan was going, which is lame but not as lame as how she's only getting into Yale because they want an It Girl onboard. "I would never advise anyone to turn down a great opportunity, but going to the right school for you is the most important thing."
Blair runs up and immediately starts babbling at Serena about how a Constance girl got in, and probably it was "that little Nelly" Yuki, who is now marked for death. B finally winds down and stares at Miss Carr, who seems to have missed the part of the conversation where she fucks off. It's a fairly hilarious combination of that "Blair just realized you exist" face crossed with the "Blair needs you to not exist" face, and she finally grits, "Hello?" Miss Carr hands over Blair's paper from first period, and finally takes off.
"If you're on a witch hunt, that means you can't be too upset, right?" Serena is awesome, and Blair knows it: "Witch hunts are my valium, Serena. I'm just trying to stay calm. What about you? I have to say, I'm totally surprised Yale passed up the PR of accepting It Girl Serena van der Woodsen. They have more class than I thought." Serena thinks for a second about not letting this one fly by, but decides she might as well ignore it altogether, reminding B that she said all along Yale didn't really want her for her. Blair laughs about how Serena's waitlisting means that Dan's automatic campus cachet is shot to hell: "Now he'll just be lumped in with the rest of the financial aidiots and poets," she randomly limp-wrists, but before she can start insulting the rest of Serena's family for no real reason, she notices a horrible blemish on the paper Miss Carr gave her and takes off.
Serena stares at the total craziness of Blair disappearing down the hallway until her phone rings, when a person with a truly insane speaking voice calls her, pretending to be Shirley from Dean Berube's office. We met Shirley and that's not her, and the way I know that is that the person pretending to be Shirley can't possibly exist at all. She sounds like Mrs. Doubtfire and Julia Child in one of those two-person horse costumes, going on safari. But much like with Queller, apparently that's Shirley now. Anyway, "Shirley" wonders if Serena can just accept her invite already, so Berube can send out a press release about it, and Serena says she'll have to call her back. Miraculously, she does this without putting on a bizarre mock-Auntie Mame accent of her own, but you know she was thinking it.
Lily hangs out at a conference table with the board member Peter from last week. Peter feels bad about how Lily should have been in charge of it all, but once Charles started doing blow off hookers during brunch, they had no choice but to follow Jack's lead. "Short of being able to prove he's completely negligent, all we can do is our best to temper his actions," Peter says, and Jack enters all demonically and acts spooky enough that Peter leaves with a fond farewell to Lily. Jack is all coked up and jumpy and weird and hitting on Lily, who notes that he's doing a horrible job. "I'll right myself eventually. I just have to get my legs under me," he snorfles, and puts on a total drunk cokehead sex face: "Maybe the two of us could come together in some way, help me find my strength... Or use it all up." This last as though he might have to explain to her that he's talking about fucking. She pulls out a hanky and hands it to him so he can wipe off the huge snot bubble of coke in his nostril, but he's too vibrate-y to do much more than stand there angrily buzzing and standing in front of her when she tries to leave, and then after she's gone, he smiles in that self-satisfied weird smug way people do when they are high and inappropriate but still think they're the one in charge.
Blair ambushes Miss Carr outside her class, brandishing the paper in her face and how it carries the scarlet B. Miss Carr's like, "Yeah, it's a B paper, so..." She grips the tiny wee teacher around the arm and escorts her in a brittle, fast fashion down the hall. Miss Carr tries to be blasé about it but you can tell B scares her senseless, which just proves she's smart enough to teach Shakespeare to the likes of Serena van der Woodsen. "You're new here, so you don't know how it works. Second-semester seniors get a free pass. Like pregnant ladies, or fourteen-year-old Chinese gymnasts. Constance wants their students to get into the best colleges. That's why this free pass exists. The headmistress... If she knew about this grade, she'd rap you on the wrist!" Miss Carr explains that she will start inflating grades when she's told to start doing so, but for now her grades will be based on merit. Blair tries to explain about Yale and her GPA, and Miss Carr is all, "You should have thought of that before!" before leaving, and taking my provisional regard with her. What a snotty fucking thing to say, no matter how true it is.
Blair runs over to Serena at her locker with tears in her eyes and throws arms around her. "I think I might have just lost Yale. What am I gonna do? I didn't apply anywhere else!" (I am so sure, but on the other hand girlfriend is crazy on a good day.) Serena's like, "Chill out here in your puddle of crazy while I solve all our problems with one simple phone call. Not that anyone will appreciate it."
At the Palace, Lily takes Chuck by the arm: "The bastard is untouchable!" She admits she's willing to get dirty, and we skip to a few minutes later, after Chuck's explained some of the other stuff he's been up to, like trying to buy anthrax with Jack's credit card ("Black market isn't what it used to be") and getting him on Megan's List ("If only his apartment were a few blocks closer to a playground"). Lily suddenly reverses her position and goes back to wanting to do this legally. "I've put calls in to Jack's business associates in Australia. He's not the most upstanding citizen. I'm sure we will find something." Chuck's still quiet. "You know, I... Um, I thought I lost you the day of the funeral, and... I'm sorry that Jack's the one to bring us back together. But I'm glad that we're doing this."
Chuck gives her the Wrap It Up gesture, like to Stop Having Emotions, and suggests crashing a plane with Jack in it. "The Bass jet is kind of expensive, Charles," she laughs, and he brightly reminds her that it's insured. She grins at him while answering her phone, but it's Rufus, and even though she starts off strong ("Yeah, that would be fine, I can't really talk right now") soon enough her love feelings get the best of her, and she calls Rufus by name. Chuck busts a 180 and starts yelling about how both she and Rufus are whores ("You're actually going to take your half-price hustler out on the town tonight!") and how insensitive she is to be taking her "mistress" out in public a month after Bart's death, and then wraps it up himself: "You say you want to be family, but if you really meant it, you wouldn't parade your mistress in public. You'd have some tact, some respect... I should have known from your history I couldn't count on you. You think of yourself. Your kids and my dead father are proof of that." He buttons his jacket officiously on standing and takes off, and Lily's sort of bummed? But not as bummed as she would be if he wasn't sort of ... right about all of it.
Dan's talking to some St. Jude's boy, spots Serena and comes running over so he can geek out about Yale, but she's too busy watching B and her girls plotting darkly against Miss Carr, so she just wanders away -- obviously preoccupied -- in the middle of the big self-obsessed nothing he's yammering about, and she's like, "Excuse me a second," and he fully goes, "Not really!" Like she's not excused. "I know that look," she says to B: "You're up to no good." Blair informs Serena that "good" is subjective, get a dictionary, and Serena realizes that this is about Queen B's B paper.
"A new teacher's like a child," Penelope explains, "It has to be taught." "And spanked!" Hazel adds delightedly. Blair says that Yale is now hanging in the balance as well, so "it's open season on Miss Iowa: Time to shuck the corn!" Serena finally fills us in on the conversation she left and had when Blair was crying in the hallway, where she called Berube and told him she was withdrawing her application altogether, so that B could get in on early admission and bypass Miss Carr and their last term altogether. "You're the Constance student? Cancel the Nelly Yuki project! Now!" she screams at Hazel, who nods in perfect, terrified agreement. I'm glad we don't know what it was, because I bet it was effed up.
"S, why would you turn down Yale? And don't say for me, because even I wouldn't believe you." Dan is also curious. Blair runs off to be cosseted and adored by the Plastics, and Serena apologizes to Dan for just now having figured out that she doesn't want to go to Yale with him. He wanders off and she tries to stop him, but of course he's too busy throwing a fit. Serena asks if Blair's going to leave Rachel alone now, and B agrees that there's no point. Even as Dan's walking away with his butt all hurt, yet again, by her exercise of personal agency, mostly she just worries about Miss Carr. I hope that kindness isn't repaid in misery and betrayal!
Nate tries to invite Vanessa to the opera, but she already bought crappier seats because she feels weird Dan feelings about dating Nate now that Nate is rich again, so she's got something to prove. Nate hides his way better tickets and distracts her with kissing, and they laugh for no reason because sometimes when you're in love, you just do that.
Eric is telling Rufus the story of The Magic Flute, describing the Queen of the Night's "Der Holle Rache Kocht in Meinem Herze (The Vengeance Of Hell Boils In My Heart)" as "kick-ass," and tells Rufus to talk to somebody about how it reaches a high F that is rare in operas, and that this is all great luck because The Magic Flute is opera for amateurs, which is what Rufus is. Eric says to just tell people "Ist war wunderschien, danke. Und sie?" if they ask what he thought, because that's what Klaus always used to say, but never to say "geh zum teufel," which Klaus also used to say. When he was coked up. Jenny points out that Lily knows Rufus is not an opera person, so why are they even doing this, and Rufus tries to explain that this is different because it's his debut.
Eric explains that in "our world," people say one thing but they expect something else, and if Rufus can work it out tonight, he'll be better off and so will Lily. That's the first instance of a horrible motif in this episode where people constantly talk about their "world" and what "world" they are from and whether they should brush their hair with their salad forks and whether it's feminist to stop being a mermaid just because all the salad forks are on land. Rufus says everybody can geh zum teufel, because he just likes Lily, and they get back to studying. In his lap is literally a copy of Opera For Dummies. Which is fitting on every level.
Penelope lies on one side of the bed, pretending to be the devil on B's shoulder, while Iz lies on the other side taking the angel position, and B's on her tummy in the middle, loving the attention and looking back and forth the whole time. "The devil would say, you're already in Yale. You have security. Now more than ever, you can do what you want." But, Isabel points out, "An angel would say, all the more reason not to. You have what you want..." Penelope points out the smudge on B's transcript, but Isabel replies that she doesn't need a perfect transcript anymore, because she's in, and then gives up because being the angel is too hard. Which makes up B's mind, and she decides to go after Miss Carr just for the hell of it: she calls and invites her to dinner at the Central Park Boathouse for dinner with the family, and then the opera. Then she and the devil and angel lie on the bed and laugh hysterically. It's both bizarre and fake and humorless, but sort of exactly right too.
Rufus in his tux and Dan in his douchemeister "I AM AN INDIVIDUAL" tux-with-necktie, and Lily and Serena in their respective boob dresses, talk about the whole college thing, how it means they get to take romantic trips all over the eastern seaboard and get milkshakes and have it be their honeymoon and they can even take Eric and Jenny, and right on cue the son who went missing shows up and glares at Lily. Everybody feels sort of ashamed of themselves for being so excited about their nasty little inappropriate family, and Dan spots Nate and nearly does a backflip. Everybody else just stands around feeling weird.
Dan climbs all over Nate and Vanessa for skin-crawling ages, babbling about how this evening went "from Family Ties to Faulkner in one cocktail flat," and then almost blows Nate's spot about the family box, but with a single glance from Nate takes in the entire situation and helps cover for him so that Vanessa won't feel weird about her shitty seats in the third tier. Awesome, not that it works, but still. I love that Dan Humphrey, who can't ever read a room, got the entire picture from one single arch of Nate's expressive butterfly eyebrows; I love more so that making Vanessa feel less weird about their economic inequalities is something he would only do for Nate. Meanwhile, every time Serena uses her credit card God kills a kitten and drops it off at Dan's house so he can hold its tiny broken body in the air over his head and be like, "Why!"
Jack meets Lily at the top of the stairs, full of vim and hate. "Lily, didn't know you'd be here. Who's your lucky escort this evening? Someone you picked up at the funeral?" Basically. "You remember Pauletta Cho? She's head of publicity for my company," Jack says, and Lily corrects him: "Our company. Yes, hi. It's nice to see you, Pauletta. But your choice of companion? Not so nice." She agrees, explaining she's just there to keep an eye on him. Jack mutters more hooded-eyeball threats and wanders away, and Pauletta wishes them much enjoyment of tonight's opera, which is Tristan & Isolde, which totally rocks Rufus's world, because he thought it was The Magic Flute, if you'll recall. So Lily's like, "That opera ended weeks ago? And is for kids?" Rufus says kids are so great, especially when they do awesome things like teach you about things that you thought you cared about but really don't. There's so little room in Rufus's head for anything of value that I can see where he's coming from.
At this point a random lawyer literally walks up to Lily at the opera and goes, "Sorry your husband died. What should I do with those documents?" Which, this is all about the lightbulb going off over Lily's head and it's enjoyable how she figures this out, but it does seem kind of like a cheat to have this dude appear in a puff of smoke and go, "Remember those documents?" So she runs over to Chuck and she's like, "I figured it out!" He tells her to eat a dick, but she promises him he's going to love the solution, and just give her fifteen minutes to find a fax machine. Because this plan can't even wait the amount of time necessary to watch an opera, no.
Nate stares longingly at his family box and makes snotty comments asking Vanessa for binoculars, or "those cool little spy glasses," or a telescope. And -- much like Serena's line from the beginning of the episode where she told Dan "forget you" -- it's not that it's blatantly out of character, which it is, so much as the fact that parts of this episode seems to be written with a snideness, or a smallness of spirit, that we don't usually run into with this show. Like, you could say, "What's with Nate being a condescending fuck in this scene?" and half the people watching it would just say, "It was a funny line, don't overthink it." Proving you don't know me either, but ... Everybody just seems a bit cartoony. The closing scene, it works, because it's a cartoony moment, but some of this just seems sitcommy and like ... It would be easy to turn this into an episode of almost any show, with a few character changes and moving some scenes around. The jokes are all-purpose and not that organic. This whole episode is just sort of boring. And it's the first of this set of three, as GG will explain for about thirty minutes at the end of the episode, so I get that part, but generally there's a bit more sparkle and a bit more grounding of the characters. Which is essential, given the unicorny rules of this show's universe, because otherwise it all so easily turns into Rich People Saying Money Words & Raping Each Other On Cocaine, into the cliché of what people who have never seen this show think this show is, which this episode in some ways ... is.
Anyway, Vanessa's like, "I get it, okay! You like things that are good more than things that aren't! You are elitist and you think just because you have a better seat that nobody's using, we should just automatically avail ourselves of it. Fine." I don't know. This is all very Ugly Betty-style problems-that-are-not-problems kind of stuff. But instead of throwing herself off the balcony and blaming Nate, like Dan would, she shuts up and then these two little old weird ladies sit down and offer them candy and start making strange noises, and she cracks up, giggling uncontrollably, because A) rich people actually do have more fun but B) you're already at the opera, idiot. Moral victory doesn't apply, because there's no way to enjoy the opera from a proletarian perspective.
Dan is just literally talking to Serena's boobs now. Which, as long as they're going to the effort of shaking hands and saying How Do You Do like that all the time, I'm sure they appreciate. He explains to her the limits and the outline and the general shape of this latest total betrayal of everything he thought his life was based on, his values and his pristine perfect future of future perfection that she has once again irreparably damaged, and as usual it's so solipsistic and sulky-teen-boy that Serena loses track about five seconds in. They agree to compartmentalize everything about Lily/Rufus, and keep it all in separate boxes. Which is the opposite of how S... Yeah, see? "Things don't just go in boxes. They go all together." That's like Serena's entire life mission right there. Everything in one big box, no secrets and no trouble and nobody getting mad. Just a good time had by all. Dan laughs and says that this particular thing is going in a box with a really tight lid that you bury deep in a hole at the bottom of the ocean, just like his gay homosexual attraction to Nate Archibald. They immediately come upon Lily and Rufus talking about nothing special and making out, and Lily leaves them with Rufus so she can go do some paperwork, just like people do at charity opera galas.
B's phone rings and Harold reminds her to turn it off, citing "the Kevin Kline incident." This whole script is so elliptical and full of mysteries you'll never know, I like to imagine that they're all one thing: that somehow the Nelly Yuki Project involves Kevin Kline and two transsexual prostitutes. Otherwise, it's just a lazy script that relies on the same joke at least once in every act, and that would be sad. The phone call is Fake Queller, who is calling -- as one does -- to apologize on behalf of Miss Carr for giving Blair an honest B, and to confirm that so long as the rest of B's grades are up to the usual high standard, she'll still end up with an A. "It was sweet of Miss Carr to be so concerned, she's a good asset to the school. I think she cares about her students, she cares about their futures," says Queller. Yeah, she cares about boning their sulky teenage boyfriends, dude. Blair excuses herself to go fix things with Miss Carr, and Harold and Roman say French talk to each other.
There's this depressing but beautifully shot Cinderella reversal where Chuck's standing at the bar drinking champagne as Blair runs across the back of the frame, trailing dress behind her, into another story entirely, and he never notices, and then Lily and the lawyer man walk up and explain that until Bart died, it was going to be all adoptions all around: Bart adopted Eric and Serena, and Lily was going to adopt Chuck, but ran out of time. So just now, the lawyer Bruce Caplan has had his office fax the papers over to the opera's box office rather than waiting until tomorrow. So then Lily will be his guardian, and become the head of Bass Industries, deposing Jack Bass and putting Chuck back on top. She's so proud of this plan and he's so into it, he signs without hesitating more than a beat (although of course he can't do it without the sideways glance and a "this doesn't make us family, just even," which at this point she finds cute because she's happy to have saved the day) and Jack immediately rolls all up on him out of nowhere yelling about how Chuck can't sign anything without his consent, and Chuck and Lily shoot Jack mean looks and take off. Lily's visual suck it is particularly evocative, but scary, because it was after all a Bass who taught us the number one rule of this show: you must never eff with an effer.
Blair launches herself out of a limo at Miss Carr, full of apologies, but Rachel's not having it. "Inviting me to a closed restaurant for dinner? Telling me the curtain is 8:00 and not 7:00?" B tries to explain: "I just wanted to teach you a lesson, so you knew who was in charge around here!" Miss Carr is horrified because that's not how it works (from what she is given to understand in her Teach For America three-ring binder, under the heading "Just Who's The Boss Here Anyway?") and tries to get out of there. Blair swears she's just trying to apologize, and then attempts to explain how her insane brain works. "I feel terrible. I do. And as much as I wish I wasn't, I'm still learning. It's like you not inflating your grades: I can't not act out against people. But I'm trying. So... Please forgive me." Miss Carr accepts, and Blair tries to get her to come to the opera, but she's had it. "I'll just see you Monday?" Relieved, B jumps back in the limo and drives away, so she doesn't notice Miss Carr dialing up Queller for a big old-fashioned tattletalin'.
Vanessa whines about she hates losing and all she got were these much better seats, and Nate -- proving once again that he is a Brooklyn Whisperer on a heretofore unknown level of proficiency -- points out the other plus of a box, which is that if the opera gets boring -- CHECK -- you have just enough privacy to mack.
Lily's in the ladies', putting on lipstick, when Jack comes in and locks the door behind him. She apologizes for carrying out Bart's wishes, but assures him she's not afraid of him. When he begs to differ, she walks her tiny ass right across the room and gets in his face: "You're high, and you're not thinking clearly. You need to think about the repercussions of what you're doing." He once again steps between her and the door, shaking all over like an old sick beast that needs its batteries replaced.
Dan and his fucking tuxedo necktie tool around listening to Rufus talk at length about how he found a guy who thought this actually was The Magic Flute, so they talked about that and pretended that was what they are watching. "I'm beginning to get these society people. It's all a big game of pretending like you know what you're talking about." Oh God, more of that moronic "my world"/"your world" talk must be close. But first, Lily has vanished. Dan asks Chuck where she's at, and Chuck's Fellow Rapist Spidey sense kicks in, and he immediately goes over to the locked powder room door, asking the poor lady outside WTF is going on in there and why the door's locked. The lady's like, "I just need to pee, weirdo," and he runs off yelling about the door being locked.
Inside, Jack yells at Lily about how she's squeezing him out and taking away his power that he worked so hard to earn, and then shoves his tongue down her throat. For a reason I do not understand, the whole scene starts sounding echoing and strange, like it's a memory, except it's not, so you can't really understand everything that they're saying ("Who in this town wouldn't believe that the whore didn't ask for it?") and finally Chuck comes in and punches the shit out of Jack, effer to effer, and Jack's like, "You stupid kid!" so Chuck punches him again so he'll stay down. Rufus just kind of stands there at the door watching all of this go down, but I don't really feel like I needed to tell you that. She thanks Chuck very intensely on her way out with the cops and Rufus and everything, and Chuck pulls it together in the ladies' bathroom before going out again.
day in bed, Rufus is like, "My hair in these society page pictures looks more terrible than it has since 1991!" Lily's like, "Also not a picnic? Getting raped by a cokehead." She assures him she's fine, and Chuck comes in, and Rufus shakes his hand, man to man, on his way out. Mother and son discuss how Jack's on his way back to Sydney, and she didn't press charges because she just wanted him gone, and now she's the head of the entire multibillion-dollar company. She tries to link it back to how awesome it was when he saved her from getting raped by his uncle, but that's too much like having feelings, so she's just like, fine: it's all going to be his when he turns eighteen, no questions asked. HE smiles sweetly, quietly delighted, and asks her to clarify. "I don't want this job or the corporate jet or anything related to this business. Just you. As a part of my family." Chuck essentially apologizes for everything since the funeral, and asks to come home.
"The thing about new beginnings is that they require something else to end." Blair and Serena chat on the phone about how B's heading up to meet with Queller ("I figure she wants to have tea, like we did when I first applied to Yale") and S is all about reading the Brown catalog and dreadlocking her hair. Blair offers to help S get a jump start on her veganism and "have some celebratory seitan at Angelica Kitchen," which Serena says is both awesome and disgusting. They say goodbye and Serena stares at the picture of Dan kissing her on the dancefloor that one time they were happy for five whole seconds.
"Some endings take a long time to reveal themselves. But when they do, they're almost too easy to ignore." Fucking Dan, reading Updike like it's the instruction manual for being a Humphrey, which is exactly what it is, very pointedly ignores Serena's phone call, because if that bitch honestly thinks she's going to the college of her choice without any snotty blowback from her asshole boyfriend she has got several things coming, turns around and sees Miss Rachel Carr, who has come all the way to Brooklyn to get statutory on her favorite pupil's boyfriend for reasons I can't quite fathom. Not because he's the original Hetherbull Arrogant Frigott -- Dan's in his late teens, it was never going to be about his personality -- but because Serena obviously has an insane crush on her and really needs mentoring, and Miss Carr knows that and clearly likes Serena right back, so if you're the kind of dick that Teaches For America and comes from Des Moines to the Big Apple and refuses to give one imaginary pointless grade letter higher than some other imaginary pointless grade letter on principle, how do you possibly reconcile what she's clearly about to do? Dan makes her a cappuccino and looks delectable in a black-and-gray striped sweater, and Miss Carr takes off her jacket in a way that manages to say, "Call me Rachel" and "Who's mah little Vili Fualaau" at the same time.
"But most endings come when you least expect them, and what they portend is darker than you've ever imagined." FINALLY. Does this finally mean that Blair's going to go crazy, or are we just not doing that story? I hope the former, especially in these insanely long plaid sleeves she's wearing, they're like that clown at the end of Poltergeist and thus would facilitate a goodly amount of crazy just on their own. She sits down, looking up at Queller with absolute trust, waiting to be adored, and Queller drops the hammer: "I called you here this morning because Miss Carr told me what you did. You leave me no choice but to give you detention. Yale has been notified. Your acceptance has been placed on hold. If you complete detention to my satisfaction, Yale will still be possible. But if you do not..."
"Put that puppy down, Dorota," hisses Blair when she comes out of Queller's office. Not sure which way she means it. Dorota asks what happened, but B assures her that it's "what's going to happen" that should be generating the angst. "Not all beginnings are cause for celebration," GG muses. "A lot of bad things begin... Fights, flu season... And the worst thing of all..." Dorota drags Handsome down the hall on his leash, and realizes what we're looking at: War. "Yes. But this one will be different. I need to wait for my moment, and then I'm going black ops. Off the radar, no accountability. This war, I'm gonna win."
I feel as though I have waited thirty years precisely for this reason alone: to hear Blair Waldorf say those words, and feel the full-body shiver that accompanies it. Maybe there's something to opera after all? XOXO.
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