Awesome return to form! Sparkling dialogue, vibrant performances, convincing/insane wrap-ups to both the Eyes Wide Shut and To Die For storylines, and more overwhelmingly layer-on-layer metafictional tricks and glosses than Michel Gondry taping himself in reverse fucking Charlie Kaufman and reading aloud from Charlie Kaufman's biography of Michel Gondry entitled The Autobiography Of Michel Gondry By Charlie Kaufman To Be Read While Fucking Charlie Kaufman Backwards, By Michel Gondry As Told To Kristen Bell.
The thing this show has always done really well -- reinterpreting classic romance works and tropes in an absolutely modern soap opera framework -- becomes the subject of the show: at its heart a parable about the construction and protection of social roles in a grossly oversurveilled culture that -- by virtue of the Gossip Girl blog -- puts them always already "onstage" anyway. So the first metafictive jump implicit in the story, then, has the characters interacting with the blog directly, in order to change the narrative flow of the story itself. That's the first thing you tell people so they'll watch the show, of course, but then comes this episode, which makes all that seem like child's play.
All the senior classmen -- including the Plastics -- are in a play based on Age Of Innocence. Of course, our kids find themselves falling under the spell of the play's story and their chosen roles, leading to direct commentary on the melodrama in which they are constantly embroiled, and how it echoes classic romantic works, for two seasons now. Midway through the episode, Dan pushes through another fictional wall, playing with his lover Ms. Carr the scene in the play that he'll immediately be reiterating onstage, and which in turn itself becomes a mise-en-scène feint when it's performed: an act of lovemaking being repeated back onstage as a cover for a quiet fight about the very events happening off-stage. That's like two scenes, but the whole fucking episode is like this. It's like a party for your brain.
Nate is quite perfectly perfect in this episode, funny and unrehearsed, pissy and sexy by turns, and sweet as hell. He gets wigged out by the third romantic iteration -- Cyrano de Bergerac -- being played out by Vanessa and Serena with the play's director, Julian (a serious waste of serious hotness), but eventually comes around and learns to read because he loves V so much. You know who else loves V? Serena van der Woodsen. And you know who else loves Vanessa Abrams? This guy. They took what was wrong and made it so, so right.
Meanwhile, Rachel Carr has completely lost the thread and is obsessed with taking revenge on Blair, even though if you'll remember, the whole Mrs. Robinson scandal was resolved with no ill effects for anybody at all -- and she got bonus Dan's ass out of it. (BTW, Dan Humphrey is hot as hell in this episode. Deal.) She spends the whole episode secretly sending out GG blasts and calling in anonymous tips, getting Nelly Yuki into Yale and Blair tossed out, embarrassing S, etc.
This causes Blair to attack each member of her posse, and the cast, in increasingly crazy ways, shifting the focus and intensity of her ire about twice every act. ("Do you know how hard it is to get revenge when your enemy is changing every five minutes?" she literally complains to Dorota at one point.) So Blair's going nuts over here, and attacking Dan onstage, while Nate has the wrongheaded idea that it's Vanessa, not Serena, with the crush on Julian, whose main goal of course is taking advantage of Nate's giant gorgeous gayface by parking on it.
This quadrangle love rhombus throws off a surprising amount of heat before it all comes down. Add to this the serious chemistry between Dan and Rachel, the absolute fun of seeing Nate acting unfettered and normal, Serena palling around with Vanessa, Blair's loss of her moral certitude, and the enjoyable inclusion of the other Humphries, and you're looking at one of the high points of the series, even given the lack of Chuck in the main plot and Lily/Eric in the story at all.
With Dan alienated, Blair rabid, and Nate being totally awesome, the second act of the performance falls apart massively and amazingly, scandalizing the audience and exciting the Times' Isherwood to a startling degree. Dan guilts Rachel into leaving town altogether, Julian informs Serena he's queer, Nate storms off to watch a film of Age Of Innocence, etc. Though all is forgiven with Blair -- the cast's increasing lack of patience with her antics is very much appreciated -- she's having trouble forgiving herself, because she realizes how paranoid, childish and vile she's become. It's more heartbreaking than expected to see this character, who's 99 pounds composed entirely of willpower and lipstick, questioning herself even momentarily, much less heading into the Dark Night Of The Soul she seems to have aimed herself at now.
Having lost Yale for like the third and final time -- and unaware that Chuck has jumped through his entire Sex Cult storyline in three easy steps of not being that interesting to begin with, and is now ready to settle down and be in love with her -- Blair sets her sights on downwardly spiraling, in a deliberate and blunt-force fashion that only Blair could muster. And her first step? Carter Baizen, the hobbit trustafarian/Sex Club member last seen taking Nate to a dangerous poker game... And played by Leighton "Blair" Meester's real-life boyfriend Sebastian Stan. Is your brain broken yet?
"On the Upper East Side," Gossip Girl explains as though it's not the entire point of the show, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. But once a year, Constance/St. Jude's students shed their usual roles and take on new ones for the senior class play. This year's pick? The Age Of Innocence." Nate and Dan are being silly backstage, gadding about while everybody gets dressed. Nate complains that it's a senior requirement and Nate laughs in this hilarious mincing way -- and Dan giggles approvingly -- about how Chuck got himself diagnosed with acute stage fright to get out of it, but should have gone with mercury poisoning.
I miss the sexy little place Jeremy Piven's brain used to be, before it shit the bed. I don't even know if I can watch Cupid because I loved the old one so much. Man, all I watched on TV that year was Cupid and LA Doctors, and nobody remembers either of them. Now, my favorite shows are this one and Battlestar Galactica. I think the UN could learn a lot from Blair Waldorf, don't you?
In case you have been watching some other show, this week has decided to get real on your ass in the most awesome way. The show's always worn its literary references pretty high on the bodice, but this week is like, "LOOK MOTHERFUCKERS." You have the whole thing in the recaplet about the book Age Of Innocence and the movie and the play all informing each other, and then our kids playing themselves as characters from the play onstage and off, and the fact that they're all playing characters anyway because that's what you call high school, and then on top of it you have the characters playing out parts of the play and casting and recasting each other in scenes from the play, and it's like this... literary teabagging.
But not content to just come out and say, "This is how the show has always been, here's your decoder ring and maybe time you can play along without having it explained to you in bright colors and unsubtle references and actually engage in your entertainment so that it doesn't rot your fucking brains," the episode also adds a whole other set of references -- to Chekhov's The Seagull -- which are really sort of breathtaking and scary. So you get the over-the-top demonstration of the idea of the show, and the other metafictional references to the way the characters on the show are referenced outside it (Nate can't act, Vanessa is annoying, Serena is retarded, Blair is an alien visitor from Planet Scary), but you also get the part that I like best: the sad, ugly bits of the characters being exposed through entirely other references.
They do a good job of explaining the way Age Of Innocence works, but here's some more food for thought: just like in this show, May (Serena) is totally faking everything, pretending to be stupid because it's easier and pulling off majorly manipulative bullshit only when necessary. The empty anima blank slate she's perfected pretending (contrast with Daisy from Gatsby, also mentioned here, for another primer on how very, very far this sort of thing can get you: she explains it outright, hoping that her daughter will learn to be just as stupid as she's forced herself to be) is so attractive, in fact, that Newland (and this is just so Dan) spends a whole lot of time actually worrying that he's somehow going to damage her "innocence." So the whole story is actually a great big satire, in one way, on how fake the innocence in its Age actually is: May knows what's going on more than anybody else -- just like Serena -- and pretends not to care, because it gives her power.
Newland/Dan has these protofeminist sort of pandering ideas about "freeing" her that are really about his own freedom, and when the book has finally just completely broken him, he realizes that Serena's the freest of us all, because everybody else runs around constantly kissing her ass and making sure nothing disturbs her sanctity or sanity. She's transformed herself into a sort of goddess. In fact, the class stuff in the book is pretty close to this show, as is the emphasis on the meaning of clothing, décor, all that, and one of the coolest things is the way the van der Woodsen and Archibald types in the book are constantly being referred to as these ageless sort of inhuman monstrous angels. They are so far removed from reality that they don't have to take part in it: just look pretty. I mean, that's the book.
And then just like in this show, it matters less in Wharton's NYC what things actually are, and more how we've agreed to treat them: the only reason Ellen (Blair, on this level) isn't stoned to death on live television is because there are people with influence who adore her, and simply by saying she's okay -- Serena's role in her life -- make her okay. Ellen is on one level a complete maniac who rightfully terrifies and horrifies everybody... But on another level, the most human and complex and loveable character of all. It's only the reputation she gets from May's family and her other friends that allows anybody to even consider the fact that her outré behavior might be acceptable.
What I think I love best about all this, though, is the way that Dan is so caught up in the story they're acting out that he plays every scene in the episode literally as a scene from the play, down to the dialogue and blocking. As Ellen is introduced in the book -- to titters at the opera house, which infuriate Newland -- so too does he cast Rachel as this forbidden and transgressive delight. Their chaste conversation about what they can't do, in the clothing closet, turns into something physical -- just as in the play, in the carriage scene with Blair. Only it's not just Dan who can't tell the difference between Blair and Rachel: they've spent the last few episodes mirroring each other, bringing out the worst and more Blairish in each other, and it's destroying them both socially and personally. I think that Blair's change of heart -- and immediate downward spiral -- has more to do with the way Rachel has set herself up as this mirror, and the way Rachel has consciously been testing and crossing the lines of intimacy and privacy since she showed up: first with Serena, then obviously with Dan... And all along, Blair.
Blair's a child who pretends she's an old lady, Rachel an adult who acts like a high schooler. Blair who can game every system meets a nemesis that is the system, an entrenched authority, who not only won't stay on her side of the fence but actually comes across it and starts using B's weapons, like Gossip Girl herself... That iniquity in power is the thing that is killing Blair right now, I think, because it's dreadfully unfair and entirely inescapable. Rachel wins, because she's a grownup, end of story. And anybody who spends any amount of time under Eleanor Waldorf's thumb eventually gets a mullet or bulimia and violently rejects all authority... Rachel recapitulates Blair's relationship with her mother: arbitrary, unfair, incestuous and uncanny. Not to mention the fact that Rachel's little hissyfit last episode drove Harold out of the country. There's no revenge sweet enough for all that pain at once. I think that in the final analysis what we're seeing is that Rachel isn't on the show to have a relationship with Dan: she's there to draw Blair's true craziness out once and for all.
Which is where The Seagull comes in. It's one of those romances where everybody goes to a country house, like in all of Wharton and Austen, but it's Russian, which means somebody is going to be dead by the end of the play. (In fact, it's the origin of that Chekhov Law about how the gun better go off by the end of the play or else why have it onstage.) Kostya is in love with Nina and brings her this seagull he shot, which grosses her out because A) it's gross and B) she's in love with this other guy, who is in love with somebody else. So she basically doesn't even really see Kostya. Anyway, she goes off to be an actor and has a rough time of it, and everybody eventually comes back years later because it's a Russian play and they need to watch this old man die.
Everybody's like playing Scrabble and she gives Kostya this weird speech about how she's the seagull, like some random sacrifice for something unworthy, and then changes her mind and says no, she's an actress. And then gives this sequel to the weird speech where she's like, "And I'm happy with my life, and I have all this belief in myself and you have to keep going and never give up," and takes off. And then because Kostya is totally depressed and can't even think about being that strong, plus he's in love with her and can't handle the fact that she still doesn't really give a shit, all the people playing Scrabble hear this big gunshot, and that's the end of the play. It is a corker.
But if you consider it through the lens of this show, and the fact that Chekhov was constantly writing about Mays and Serenas, and whether or not it's possible to be Daisy from Gatsby without killing yourself, and who invents your personality if you don't, and how nasty it is to be constantly onstage about shit that should stay private... To be an actress and to be a seagull in this context are not that different, is all I'm saying. If you don't know when the burlesque ends and you begin, you're a seagull either way.
"Before Gossip Girl , there was Edith Wharton... And how little has changed. The same society snobs still reigned, only in corsets and horse-drawn carriages..." In case you still don't get it, a sepia picture of old-timey Plastics turns into the real Plastics dressed all old-timey, and Nate and Dan are still dancing around and being giddy with each other, and then Serena puts on lipstick for the entire rest of the scene, for like ten minutes, while Blair is acting manic and Dorota's pinning fake hair to her head.
First Blair talks about how she always pictured herself as May -- of course she did -- but now that she's been handed the Ellen role, she sees how perfect it is for her. After all, she's the "stronger, more emotionally complex female lead." And see, this is a thing that I've always loved about the show because it's not like Blair's subtle about anything, but I also think that Serena is awesome, and gets no credit at all -- I don't know if I have mentioned that a thousand times before -- so it's like Blair's giving you the elementary school reading of this show ("Besides," she says to S, "You're so much more suited to play May, who's so... Pretty!") but it's Serena who is giving you the graduate version, because she just shakes her head and smiles kind of ruefully, because May knows how to get shit done, Serena knows that it's invaluable to have "pretty" and the low expectations that come with it, and neither of them really give a fuck about anything anyway.
(Or to say it another way: nobody will ever disagree with you that Blair makes shit hard for herself. In fact, I can't think of a single problem that she didn't create for herself with her eyes wide open and glowing with the fire of an actual insane person burning down a hospital. So what's the opposite of that? Serena. There's picking your battles, and then making the Serena choice, which is: no battles at all. And that's how she's the freest one of all, because she's actually right, and unlike Nate doesn't have to get stoned to realize it because she just naturally is (both right, and sort of stoned): None of this shit matters.)
So Serena's grinning like, "Thanks for saying I'm stupid and pretty, that means my plan is working, you dick," and B says the one thing B should never ever say: "At last, my life is perfect! My only problem: How to relate to my character. Countess Olenska is a ruined woman with no prospects, and let's face it, I have the world on a string! Of course, there is the odious task of playing opposite Dan Humphrey..." Which is loopy anyway, in the most terrifying Blair way, but is also just asking for it. She nearly smacks Dorota away from her head so she can concentrate on pretending to care how things are going with Serena, and Dorota responds by awesomely trying the fake hair on in the mirror.
Serena says this latest breakup with Dan is going the same way as all of the other ones -- which is to say, boring and not worth talking about -- and goes into her crush on the play's director, a Juilliard senior who directed Bogosian off-Broadway. His name is Julian, and he's maybe the hottest guy ever on this show, in addition to being completely laughable in every way. Blair blows off his accomplishments, employs the word wunderkind in a gratuitous SAT-word way, and asks if Serena will ever tire of her brooding artists. Which we can agree to call Dan, and although I think "brooding" is a bit of a stretch because he's showy and petulant I defy you to call what he does "art." Serena lays the big gay gun right there on the table -- "He broods in the sexiest way. That is, when he's not looking right through me" -- and B totally goes, "Oh, my life is so bountiful I don't need a boyfriend to feel fulfilled." Bountiful here being, I suppose, in the sense of "No parents, no friends, and they even took away my dog."
The Plastics start screaming elsewhere and B -- needing "silence to emotionally prepare for the stage" -- stomps over to murder them. Turns out that Nelly Yuki got into Yale early, and Blair is hilarious: "Uh, that's impossible?" They only take one Constance girl a year, blah blah, and Penelope shows her Nelly Yuki's email from Berube himself. Blair runs off to harass Queller, leaving Dorota to get into a throwdown with Penelope about their matching maid's outfits and who looks cuter. Advantage Dorota, obviously.
Jenny shoves the big gay gun around on the table a little bit, notifying Julian that she's added the fur collar to Olenska's Act II dress, and he spits out "Add fur to the cuffs!" before yelling at Humphrey to get backstage because it's time. Dan stands up, obviously exhausted from the way Julian keeps nattering at them, and Jenny's like, "This is even worse than working for Eleanor... Maybe."
Rachel comes in and reenacts the opening scene from the book: Dan's vision is so focused on her at first, coming down the aisle as he's reaching the stage, that he doesn't immediately hear the other teachers laughing at Rachel and what a fucking loser she is. He gets totally lost in a dreamworld of magic where nothing is as it seems and pedophilia's just another word for nothing left to lose, and the horrible drama wheels of romance in his brain start turning once again as he wonders, "How can I make this all about me?"
(There's a funny little moment here where Siouxie's "Hong Kong Garden" comes in -- which is hard to explain because it's sort of Sarah Silverman-esque in that it comes off racist unless you know it's about racists -- and I was all set to go off on how it was just like that string quartet version of "Time Is Running Out" from the original Yale episode, that gave me all the dorky literary chills, because it starts out in one scene as an orchestral arrangement and then bridges to the scene as the actual song. It's pretty fitting, not in words or time period -- is Rufus lurking somewhere nearby? -- but in tone, because I mean, don't you think lo-fi goth-punk when you see Jenny these days? I mean that as a compliment.
But then I remembered that the strings/actual song part of this song happened on the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, which -- intended or not -- actually makes a whole other set of points entirely: firstly that the forced shallowness of society and aristo politics was not exactly invented by Edith Wharton and the French have been acting like dickholes longer than there's been a New York City, and secondly that the curious steampunky "time as a color" thing I love so much about this show didn't start with this show (Julie Taymor and Sally Potter, Antoinette and of course Cruel Intentions, which pretty much invented the genre) and God willing won't end there, and thirdly there's, well, I don't know if you remember what happened to Marie Antoinette, but it was not that awesome for her personally, and if this show and Age Of Innocence have anything in common, it's the overhanging fear that this has all happened before and it will all happen again and eventually the revolution will come down and Serena's going to pay for being rich just like Dan always wanted: with her blood.)
Nate looks so dazzlingly fine in his costume that you don't notice the blatant expository nature of his speech, which answers the question: "I get why Jenny's here, because she's this clothier brownie that cobbles shoes all through the night, but why the eff is Vanessa here?" Because she's making a documentary about the staging of the play. Which is just so Vanessa it makes me want to bite through my own tongue, but her thinking is basically sound: mainly that this episode is an ever-reflecting house of mirrors in which children of privilege who live and die by the sword of gossip are in a play about the same thing, and we're watching a television show in which beautiful rich young people are doing a play about the same thing about the same thing about the same thing.
"Wealth, privilege, atrocious acting," Vanessa says about the play within the show within the thing, and the infinite regress blows his mind so bad he's like, "Turn off that camera!" and bats at it like a kitten, and then changes the subject to how The Age Of Innocence may well be "one of the most beautiful books ever," but is more importantly the most boring book ever, and Vanessa gives a straight-faced gross Vanessa speech about how "the simple act of unbuttoning a glove expresses the character's inner passion" -- because she doesn't even know how gay they both constantly are, in different ways -- and he's like, "I'll express some passion all over your face" just to shut her up. And meanwhile, your boyfriend is watching you watch this show and going, "All they do is try on clothes and unsuccessfully try to get with the same people over and over and the guys don't even know how gay they are..." It's like The Mouse And His Child up in here, which leads me to wonder: are we in fact a TV show for future people?
Chuck is having lunch alone with his stage fright -- because consider that diagnosis vis-à-vis Blair and that's another gun on the table entirely, that goes off at the end in a surprising way -- and runs into an old friend of his father's, a Mr. Campbell, who pays his respects about Bart and Chuck is very cool with him. Then he sees Carter Baizen, who is played by Leighton's boyfriend in real life Sebastian Stan (and doing a fucking fantastic job on Kings, although Jack's sickly coked-out bitterness seems to just have taken up permanent residence on Stan's face in this episode), just to add another level. You may remember him as Sexy Hobbit in the first season, who took Nate to that poker game and tried to screw him out of a bunch of money and then Chuck had to save him with that baseball. And who's that having lunch with Carter? None other than the stunningly blank Elle, who I swear to God is on every TV show now for just unfathomable reasons. Chuck gets snotty about it, because he's soooo emotionally into Elle because of that time she was a nanny-slash-prostitute and roofied him. Which, let's be honest, makes sense as one of the more probable ways to Chuck Bass's heart.
Elle pretends her name is Hayley and that she doesn't know Chuck at all, which is so ballsy to do with somebody you actually know, and yet in my experience always works. I guess because it's so random and fucked up people think you would never do it. Elle beats it out the back window while Chuck and Carter compare penises, and Carter says he just got back from Singapore, whence he had to leave in a hurry and come back to America, where he immediately "rolled into" what I'm told is a characteristic destination for Carters, Apothéke, and met whatever her name is. He's pretty high on himself until the maitre d' comes back all, "Your chick just ditched." Poor Carter! I would hate to be shown up like that. In front of Chuck, of all people! But instead of being like, "I guess something fishy is going on and she's having some kind of crisis like you said," he just tosses money down and disappears embarrassedly. Like there's no causal connection between Chuck showing up and her going, "I have to get out of here the back way." And a few tables away, Mr. Campbell quietly vanishes too. Chuck's face is so intense at all times that I don't even really know what he's thinking about that, honestly.
Dan's still freaking out about the Mean Girling from the other teachers, and Costumer Jenny dumbly agrees to take a note to Rachel in the audience, where she's sitting all alone in the pedo section. Jenny does this in the most obvious way possible, fiddling with a scarf and admiring Rachel's bracelet and then gabbing at the Stage Manager -- a strange tense girl we don't know -- long enough for Rachel to send back a reply... And a key to her house. Which she just happened to have in her purse in case there were any gross teenage boys around to prey on.
Doppelqueller's doing a walk-and-talk with a random when Blair smacks into her atmosphere with a bang and climbs right up her fake ass about Nelly Yuki, and Queller's like, "My bad, I was just talking to this random girl instead of telling you about this, even though I'm well aware that you're going to have a psychotic break about it because that's all you ever do, but yeah: you're not getting into Yale." B's like, "Fuck you because yes I am, this has already happened eleven times in every single episode and I keep fixing it and my Daddy took away my puppy," and Queller explains that Yale... Sigh, it's a lot of verbiage but basically, Yale didn't mind that she was suspended from school and then let back in five seconds later -- because why would they -- but an Anonymous totally called them up and let the cat out of the bag about why she was suspended. Which totally blew Yale's mind, because they've never heard of anything so vicious, so cruel, so outright evil-minded and downright disgusting as somebody inviting someone to the opera an hour late.
"Blair, it's over. You will not be attending Yale." Doppelqueller walks out the room; Blair's ever-dwindling sanity follows sheepishly, and GG reminds us about how B thought she wasn't Ellen Olenska but guess what, and then it's Blair's first cue... Which is the opera scene that Rachel just lived through a second ago, where everybody points at laughs and gossips about her as she's coming in. And that blonde girl Kelsey -- who isn't even a fucking senior so why is she in the play -- is all, "It's a pity! Her life is finished!" And then just in case you thought GG was on Adderal -- or what my favorite ex used to call "taskin' hard" -- she tosses you a crunk bone: "But don't worry, B. When God closes a door, he opens a play." GG what is ur damage lol.
Chuck gets off the elevator and Elle's standing there and with the curious lack of interest or comprehension or urgency that is her calling card, she begs for his help. In this case, the word "help" sounds a lot like "sandwich" -- because she's so worthless that she's managed to take a storyline about creepy anonymous sex, weird aristocratic brotherhoods and real estate fraud, and turn it into something irritating and boring at once, like a story your mom called to tell you that she's already told you three times -- and at this point I really do think that's on Elle. "Chuck. I need a sandwich."
Serena and Dan are onstage talking about how Newland needs to announce their engagement already, while down in the audience Jenny drops her purse and Rufus helps her pick it up, finding the letter before her snatching reflex kicks in. "May knows as well as I do the real reason of her cousin staying away... But I shall never let her see the least sign that I'm conscious of there being a shadow on poor Ellen Olenska's reputation," says Dan. Because IRL that's Rachel he's talking about, and he doesn't understand that he's being preyed upon because he thinks he is in love and very lucky. Both of which are also true, and good for him, but that doesn't make Rachel any less of a creeping creepazoid.
Nelly Yuki's trying to wrestle herself out of the fat suit she's been wearing the whole time, with Penelope and Iz's help -- I do miss Hazel, she got hot and got gone -- and Blair comes stomping backstage to "make a fat lady sing": "My problem? Is a two-faced, four-eyed devious little snipe in a fat suit. Did you really think you could rat me out to Yale and get away with it?" Nelly Yuki, of course, has no idea what she's about, and Penelope luxuriously rolls her eyes as Blair fully goes, "Everyone's jealous of me because my life is perfect! And you've always been the most jealous of all!"
Why did you say you kissed the ground I walked on? You should have killed me instead.
Nelly Yuki -- and what a good actor she is, I never really noticed because of the whole Flo Rida thing about her introduction -- finally just leans in, exasperated. "People aren't jealous of you, Blair, they hate you." B shrinks back but Nelly's not done. "I didn't call Yale, and good luck figuring out who did. There are about a thousand people who would relish taking you down." Then it's hilarious because there's a GG blast that hits everybody's phone so the show we're watching literally stops happening so that the entire cast can read the text message. So now you're watching girls in old-timey dresses reading cell phones, and waiting to find out what's up, which is almost as delicious as what's up.
Anonymous has notified GG about the Lord Marcus Incest issue, which is relevant because of the whole My Perfect Life scenario she keeps trying to construct, but also contains the delightful: "And the worst part? B knew, and ignored it. How desperate can you be, B?" Yeah, pretty much wow. Penelope links this up to Yale dumping her, and Nelly Yuki's almost sympathetic: "Someone's out to get you, Blair. It's just not me."
Never one to pause for breath between waves of crazy, B's immediate response to finding out Nelly Yuki's not her enemy is: "Vanessa." So then she stomps off to kill Vanessa. And normally I would make a joke about how I wish this episode were just fifteen iterations of this, Blair marching around backstage constantly redirecting her rage toward new enemies and acting crazier and crazier and finally destroying the whole theatre with eyeball rays like Carrie White, except that's what happens. Well, the eyeball rays belong to Nate, but everything else that's what happens. Every ten seconds, it's a new enemy trying to destroy her, until she's practically frothing at the mouth: her life, in miniature.
Julian calls Serena "Sabrina" and Vanessa's like, documenting how Serena feels about playing May Welland. Instead of being like, "It's just like real life only my clothes are even more awesomely fucked up," she's like, "Just like in the play and in my real life, the guy I'm with is kinda gay just not that into me." Vanessa's like, "Oh, don't you hate that? I am sure he's just distracted because his Dad ran off to an imaginary South American county after embezzling and he keeps punching him... Wait, what were we talking about? Julian, sorry. Yeah, he's probably distracted." A flatteringly soft-watt lightbulb goes off over Sabrina's head and she's like, "Hey Julian, have you met my new annoying BFF? Let's have dinner and we can talk about the show." Because he's theatre people, Julian's like, "I have been waiting my whole life to expound unendingly about my vision."
Julian runs off to grab his purse and Blair cannonballs right into the middle of shit to yell at Vanessa about the Lord Marcus thing, and Vanessa's like, "Blair, I don't know what you're talking about. And Serena, I really don't." Because integrity and Vanessa are pretty much synonymous, on those days when she's not breaking into your house or stealing your stuff. Blair yells at S, "What are you doing with her? We hate her!" Heh. Serena explains that Vanessa is her friend -- which makes Vanessa much easier to take just hearing her say that -- and tells B to pull it together. Vanessa's like, "Surprisingly, Blair Waldorf is acting insane" and walks off laughing. B threatens Serena with "collateral damage" for choosing the wrong side in this imaginary war that just started with V, and S laughs at her and wanders away too. Ouch. Blair shivers as the crazy inside her gives birth to a whole other crazy like a Russian doll of insanity, and then goes off to plot more dooms.
You don't know what that's like, to realize you're a terrible actor. I'm the seagull...
Elle ... whatever, she's been taking whore baths in bathrooms and now has taken one in Chuck's shower and then they drink tea and she pulls a whole wounded bird routine and Chuck is like, "Let's move to Brazil together" and they fuck. I would submit to you that this story isn't actually out of left field, because the last thing that happened with B was that he was like, "I give, you win," and B told him to suck it, so obviously now he's got a working heart and a love of hookers who don't talk back. So he's trying to unite the opposites by being in love with her, i.e., she's vulnerable and in trouble so she's got all the virgin/whore things happening at once, which is all he or anybody wants in a girl anyway.
He was totally dramatically obsessively in love with her before he ever saw her face, remember: she makes the pieces fit for him by being a blank slate without a consistent personality or persona, because that means he can take the entire anima of himself and stow it there without worrying that it's going to bite him on the ass later, because she doesn't exist anyway. Which Elle knows, because we all learn this eventually. Especially prostitutes. Being May Welland is to prostitution as Microsoft Office is to administrative assistance.
Serena and Nate are drinking and snoring at dinner with Julian, who quotes Scorsese saying something very close to something I've said about this show a hundred times, which is that Age Of Innocence is more violent than a hundred Scorsese films full of guns and blood. Then he calls him "Marty," which is not a theatre assholism but a film buff assholism, and Vanessa goes to the film buff asshole place with him, but remembers why they're there and says that S forced her to watch Little Foxes like three times because she's obsessed with Bette Davis. Serena: "Yeah, Bette Davis. I, um... I love her eyes. Her hair is Harlow gold..." Before she can think of more lyrics to that song, Nate's like, "I'm 'bout to bounce," and Vanessa wants to leave too, but Julian tells them both to stay because he still needs to tell them his "take." S is all over it, so V has to stay, but Nate is more bored than he's ever been in his life and takes off anyway. Julian makes a startlingly telling face once Nate stands up, and quickly begs off too.
While he's gone to pay the check -- which why would you do that if you're a college student dining with the two richest children in America, plus Vanessa who deserves nothing -- V is like, "Serena! He is AWFUL!" Serena, again, knows this and rolls her eyes like why is it even worth talking about, and points out that Vanessa and Julian have much more in common than obsessing on Nate's high school dick, and Vanessa laughs gorgeously that she, too, is totally annoying. Points for insight, but how is that better? In TV land we call this "hanging a lantern" on the problem, and it's fine, but even better would be if there were not a problem. He comes back and S says she's been thinking about Bette Davis and wants more coaching from him before the show tomorrow. He agrees to meet her and says to text him her address, which as a Constance faculty member should just get him fired right there, because enough already. S shoots V a hilarious sneaky grin, and V's like, "What are you up to?" But no, because in yet another literary -- if hackneyed -- flourish, S wants to play out Cyrano and use Vanessa's powers of annoyingness to get her freak on.
Jenny is reluctant to tell Dan about Rufus finding the letter, and though she stalls valiantly he eventually gets her to admit it. Meanwhile, Rachel is setting up a whole queer dinner with candles and the whole nine, obviously lost in some kind of bullshitty mind game with herself, and when she hears the purloined key turning in the lock, her cheeks get red like a primate, and then Rufus comes in and she turns white as a ghost and is like, "Oh, shit." But she has no idea just how good Rufus is at being simultaneously self-righteous and yet wussy about confrontation or else she would just pick up a glass of wine and stare him down, which is what you should always do with Rufus. He's all, "I believe this is yours!" and hands her the key, and she falls apart just a little bit more.
The only interesting diagetic thing about this story is the acting of Laura Breckenridge (also the only thing that made her character possible to stomach on Related, which you may remember I alone in this world loved, because it coincidentally starred nearly all of my favorite TV actresses). Like, all the parallels with Blair and the way-gross way she crosses lines and the way in this episode that he twists the narrative around her, all of that is fine. But within the show itself, watching Rachel be increasingly and unendingly horrified by herself -- which again, is Blair's hallmark as well -- is really affecting. I like the chemistry between Rachel and Dan, because you can actually for once posit that he has working parts and the desire to use them, but mostly I just admire Breckenridge's acting, because I feel like she's doing the work to show us Rachel's conflicts about all of this, and her gradually dissolving ideals and all that. I think if she'd started out a bit more falsely authoritative it would be nice, like, she's clearly been playing the Serena and in-school scenes as a blowfish puffing up because she's scared, but I think a bit steelier in the beginning would lend her even more weight now. Whatever, I think she's marvelous, and good at playing completely murder-worthy useless characters sympathetically. You almost want to be like, "It's okay, sometimes it happens this way" even though really it doesn't because it can't, ever, and she should be imprisoned, but that doesn't mean she doesn't need a hug.
morning Rufus tells Dan that they need to talk and Dan says no they don't and Rufus says he went to Rachel's and Dan says no he didn't and Rufus says Dan is being stupid and Dan says Rufus is stupid and Rufus says that Dan is getting played and Dan says that he's a big boy blah blah blah. Just imagine the scene when Jenny ran away and that's the exact same scene about how Dan is not a child anymore and Rufus is just dumb and Rachel is Dan's fashion career. And the whole time Jenny's in the corner like, "This is so embarrassing from the outside. Damn."
Serena and Julian practice on her couch, but she's so into Julian and trying to kick this stuff up a notch that he thinks she's even more confused about her role than she is, and brings up The House of Mirth, and we learn that V is living in S's ear right now in the form of a bluetooth. So she talks her through some ungodly conversation about how shitty the Great Gatsby movie was, which is like the most unoriginal critique ever because people have been saying it since the second the movie opened and it's less like a conversation between film buffs and more like the idea of a conversation between film buffs. Which for once is not a failing of the writing, but actually right on target. Vanessa goes off about all the reasons people hated the movie -- which, do you have that one friend who gets their opinions from the vile mire of hate and idiocy that is imdb? Why would you ever go there or post there, honestly -- and finally the onslaught of other people's opinions coming into her earhole is too much and she goes, "Whoa, slow down!" in the middle of a sentence. Julian is of course confused by this, and Serena is totally awesome: "It's just that sometimes my thoughts come so fast that I get confused."
Word! I love Serena. So he shrugs it off and goes back to harping on Gatsby, and Vanessa is like, "So just say whatever I say." Of course this immediately goes to a place where Vanessa is flirting with Julian on the phone -- which is exactly what's happening, via S -- and Nate arrives at the gallery and overhears this, and gears up to throw a massive, awesome fit at a later time. Serena is just about ready to pounce on him when a GG blast comes up, and this time Anonymous is talking about the whole press release issue with Yale which never actually went down. Which makes it worse, because it's like, "The only reason she ever would have gotten in is this thing, so it's good that she didn't." I don't understand Anonymous at all, at this point: why would you come after S too? Wouldn't that make it more suspicious? I mean, I understand narratively that it creates drama between S and B because now S has an imaginary reason to hate B back, but why would Anonymous care about that at all? She's never been particularly against S, and knows that S and Lonelyboy are broken up. I feel like we missed a scene where Anonymous got confused about the relationship status, maybe. You know?
Anyway, Serena's flipping out about this, and it's time to go to the show, and then meanwhile Chuck is handing Elle over to Carter so that he can get her a fake passport for Brazil, but then just as you're lightly drowsing Carter rolls down the limo window, exposes his Brotherhood tattoo on his wrist, twirls a mustache and disappears with the loot that is a girl. Because what this storyline needs is a little randomness, to break up the everyday nonsensical commonplace nutsoid nature of it.
Blair, getting dressed by Dorota, teabags you again with the parallels between herself and Olenska, so that you don't notice her line: "You're right. I'm an actress. No... I'm a seagull!" Which is key to her upcoming storylines in every way, so you also have to be distracted on the other side of it by Serena clomp-clomping in yelling, "No, you're a shameless bitch!" Blair literally goes, "Now what?" And Serena lists her sins ("Spreading rumors about who I've had sex with! What alley I puked in! Telling Dean Berube that I killed Pete Fairman!") and how she forgave all because somewhere inside the Blair Waldorf matryoshka is a person, but the Yale press release thing... And yeah, I mean, it's about as harsh as inviting somebody to the opera an hour late, but on the other hand this whole episode is just a sequence of events where people tell Blair that her whole entire ego is built on bullshit -- her shit's not bountiful, nobody's jealous of her, her future is not assured -- over and over, right. And it cracks her down the middle.
I started getting petty, depressed, my acting was emptier and emptier...
But the press release issue is the equivalent for Serena, which is to say that it's all fine and good to be the Pretty One or the It Girl, as long as nobody looks you in the eye and says that's all you are, because then you're a seagull in a doll's house. And that's not all Serena is, but if she had a fear that's what it would be: empty slutty rich pretty bitch. That acting like you have a soul is just that: acting. And I've always said her strength is letting that ride, but the thing that makes you awesome is the thing that makes you suck, and admitting the possibility means that in every iteration of her relationship with Dan, where he basically did that, is now verified by an outside source -- so much the worse since it's Gossip Girl. Which equals, Anonymous just did the meanest thing anybody's ever done to Serena, again, for no real reason.
B swears she didn't do it, and Serena's like, "At least have the dignity not to lie to my face," and B swears again. S points out that of all his faults, Dan wouldn't do that shit, and Blair totally would, and they're the only ones that knew it, so it's Blair. She full-on goes, "I always want to believe the best in you, Blair. The bottom line is, betrayal's in your nature," and stomps away again. Which is fucked, because the only thing that technically keeps Blair alive is Serena's love and that's always been true. So you've got Yale, and you've got Serena, and you've got vengeance, and that's all Blair's ever had, because the world is a dry and empty, scary place for her and she scrabbles on the rocks for every grip she's got, literally. It's soapy drama unless you really think about this part, because: Yale's down, and Serena is saying that every time she told Blair she was good ("Oh, it looks so good! You're doing so good! You got it! Look how good you are!") was a lie the whole time, they were just fooling themselves.
I didn't know what to do with my hands, I didn't know how to hold myself onstage, I couldn't control my voice.
The music gets schemey and Blair pulls her version of it together, realizing that in fact her enemy is Dan, who would have heard about Lord Marcus from Vanessa, and is now getting her back for Teachergate. She grabs Dorota by the dress and screams, "Do you know how hard it is to get revenge when your enemy is changing every five minutes?" Dorota tells her to chill and drink some tea for her vocal chords, and Blair hisses and goes after Dan this time.
Dan surprises Rachel in the hallway because now Rufus actually parenting is some kind of Romeo + Juliet thing in his head, and he drags her into the costume closet so they can "talk," which means fuck, but instead of just getting down to it they play out the exact same carriage scene as Dan's about to play onstage with Blair, up to and including kissing Rachel's wrist and saying, "You know this can't last, our staying away from each other." And it's hot and whatever, her stupid charm bracelet weighs more than she does and she's probably got a tattoo of a Japanese character somewhere on her skinny ass, but whatever. Dan Humphrey macking down in an old-timey tuxedo is the third-hottest thing in this episode after Julian and Nate's upcoming hissyfit.
Serena finishes up her scene onstage with Dan and runs off to explain the abortive phone call earlier to Vanessa, who is awesomely turning into one of the stock coworkers on The Hills/The City who only comes alive to talk to Serena about her problems. Meanwhile, Dan is onstage with the most hilariously shitty Brit accent of all time, and Rachel is like enraptured: "But I shall never let her see the least signs that I am conscious of there being a shadow on poor Ellen Olenska's reputation..."
There's much busy business onstage as Nelly Yuki's character welcomes the couple to her tacky home and awkwardly attempts to fan herself. The accents, all through the play, are so disastrously hilarious that it makes me wonder if we're not going meta on Lord Marcus himself now. OMG, remember "My name is actually Marcus Beaton... I'm British. And a Lord"? That makes me so in love with the world, still. YouTube was invented for that shit. So then Chuck has a little meeting with Mr. Campbell and tries to pump him for information about the UES EWS, but he's like, "Obviously I can't talk to you about that thing I don't know anything about," and Chuck threatens him with "the authorities," which is hilarious because the entire point is that they are the authorities, and Campbell runs off and Chuck gets a text from Elle to meet him at the Eastview Hotel right then so that they can club this storyline to death already.
Julian is theatre people some more -- "The great Uta Hagen used to tell actors, give birth to the new person you are to become. Well, with act one behind you and act two looming, my friends, you are still in labor... Remember, being onstage is like standing on the edge of a cliff. What saves you is the love and trust you have in each other" -- and even Serena is rolling her eyes. Also, the renowned theater critic Charles Isherwood from the renowned New York Times is there, and any fuckups will result in murder. Then there's a brief but very embarrassing scene of Charles Isherwood attempting to have a conversation with Doppelqueller that's so awkward and deranged it sort of works. Or as Charles would say, "The classic interpretation of a living human being standing and walking, juxtaposed with the radical deconstruction of simple acts of communication like 'Hello' and 'Thank you'... The repressed critic melding with the show and aggressively expressing his autism... However did you come up with it?"
Vanessa laughs about how Nate stood her up before the show, and he's like, "Whatevs!" But before she can ask what this latest mood swing is about, Julian shows up to yell at him with his hand on his heart about how -- get this shit right here -- his character "went bankrupt, suffered total public humiliation, not that you would understand that. The characters in this play are smoldering tempests of emotion!" Even Nate's reflexes are fast enough to dodge that anvil, for the time being, and he ditches them, waving a hand at Julian and claiming he's off to work on his smoldering tempest of emotion. I know I always say that Nate is my favorite, but I do especially love how Chace Crawford has learned to act. I'm so proud of him. I'm glad they're letting Nate be a person these days. V points out that nobody talks to Nate like that, because it's like sticking a beautiful butterfly in a Chi iron and why would a person do that, and Julian shrugs: "Directors push buttons to get performances." By which he means, "Because I am running out of options to fuck this kid and my internship is almost over, so I thought I'd try abuse." In real life it would work, Nate's overwhelming hurricane of masculinity notwithstanding. Meanwhile onstage, the pivotal carriage scene is getting hella complicated. Let's do it like we do things sometimes.
Ellen: What a pretty carriage.
Blair: Elbows the shit out of him as an opening shot
Newland: Every time I see you, you... Happen to me all over again.
Irony: "Ellen, you might be the most honest woman I've ever met."
Dan, sub rosa: What the hell are you doing?
Newland: Oh no, but one of the least fussy...
Blair: You're trying to ruin my life...
Dan: You're insane!
Newland: You must know that this can't last...
Ellen: What can't?
Newland: Our being together... And not being together.
Rachel: Weeping tears of pedophiliac joy in the audience rather than being creeped out
Blair: Don't try to gaslight me, Humphrey. I know you're just seeking revenge because I ruined your chances with the simpy Iowa teacher...
Dan: And incredible as it may seem, not everyone spends their lives trying to plot revenge.
Ellen: You ought not to have come today.
Newland: I look forward to seeing you. Every thought is burnt up in a great flame.
Blair: Turns a chaste and repressed kiss into a full-on mack and climbs on top of him so she can bitch at him away from the audience; also, why do their body mics stop working only when they're being themselves?
Blair: Someone is out to get me, and all signs point to you.
Doppelqueller: Confused and mortified
Storming offstage, Blair hisses that it had to be him, because only he knew, but that makes Dan's face go all thinky, and he looks out at Rachel's creepy pervo face in the audience and gets very creeped. Back in the show, it's the party at Nelly Yuki's, so they wheel her fat ass in. Offstage, Jenny and Nate are awkward. She tries to make conversation about how Julian's so cool for letting Vanessa film everything, and V thinks he's this amazing director, and Nate's like, "OH YEAH?" Then he wanders onstage and forgets his first line, and Dan tries to help him because they are BFF, and Julian leans over to Vanessa and whispers, "He's always had trouble with this line," which is just like normal and "we love our boy don't we," but of course Nate sees this all kinds of wrong, because he can't tell Julian's gay, because if gay were a thing Nate would lose his mind entirely, so instead of seeing pink he just sees RED. He steps downstage and takes his hat right the fuck off.
"I... You know what? Whatever. You want feelings? Well, I hate these clothes, I hate this play, and I hate pretentious asshats who try and steal other people's girlfriends. In fact, I might just spontaneously punch one time you get in my face." He storms off and Blair smiles, projecting from her diaphragm: "I know just how Mr. Beaufort feels, working so hard for something and losing it because people are out to destroy you!" And then Serena just jumps in there with them: "Well, Countess, at least you don't have to go through your whole life worried your best friend will humiliate and betray you!" Nelly Yuki screams, "I hate this fat suit!" What is it that is funny about fat suits? Science has no answers.
But so then, wonderfully, Nate storms back onstage and literally yells, "Oh, and there's one other thing!" God, I love that kid. He has had it! One more thing! Because I have had it! This is exactly how Nate should be all the time, it's delicious and delightful: "My whole family lost all of our money before my father went to jail for embezzlement!" Which the audience loves, because they're characters in the play and Wharton's New York too, of course. "So I think I know more about humiliation and bankruptcy than some lame dilettante director, okay?" And the whole time Dan's trying to stop him because he loves Nate as much as I do, and B's making the mother of all bitchfaces at S, and Doppelqueller is pulling a June Allyson in the audience, and the Stage Manager girl goes OMG and Dan, sweet Dan with that retarded accent, is like, "Why don't we retire to the parlor, uh, for some port?" And Nate screams, in the most mindbending syntactical twist of all, "I don't give a damn about the van der Luydens, Humphrey!" And as the manager drops the curtain on them all, Blair hatefully waves goodbye to everyone, everywhere, with a brittle evil grin on her face. "Shakespeare says all's well that ends well... And then sometimes it just ends." I'm gonna need a minute.
So then everybody's trying to justify that travesty to Julian, including the point that Nate had already ruined the entire play before they all jumped in, and Penelope yells that she stayed in character the whole time, and Julian is screaming at them so loud when Isherwood walks up and things get all fucking awkward again. But yeah, the hoary thing where maybe it's postmodern happens, and it's a disruptive moment in high school stagecraft and Julian's a genius and whatever. Which is funny obviously because this show demonstrates that it's possible to revitalize romantic lit while telling a compelling story without resorting to that kind of lit-wank pomo art performance shit is so totally '80s, but whatever, that's awesome and anyway, you can't have artists without art school... Oh wait.
So Julian's like, "all that raw, adolescent emotion, I knew I had to use it, harness it, spin it into gold!" which is exactly the right response, and just got him a career, but of course Bastion Of Dignity Vanessa Abrams is like, "That was a whole new level of fake" (Yaaah! I'm seeing things that aren't there! Fake it so real it is beyond fake, like May and Serena! The Age of Innocence is the Age of Artifice! There is always another level of fake! Find it and eventually we will reach heaven on an Aztec stepping-stone temple of fake! Adam Lambert is your God now! You thing rike jellyfish pretty soon now! Behold the birth of a new aeon!) and Serena's all, "I can't believe I had a crush on you," and he looks at her like she's slow and fires the gay gun right between her eyes.
Vanessa asks Nate WTF that was about and he says about the Cyrano thing, and she explains it and he's like, "But we still have nothing in common except our unspoken passion for Chuck Bass's weiner. I like ESPN and you like... Books. And movies." Whole categories beyond his experience. (I love it. What do you like, Vanessa? "Books. Movies." What do you like, Serena? "Blue. Elevators.") Vanessa's like, "As if you even read the book, or watched the DVD I gave you in our dating curriculum that dorks think is acceptable. You are like a kid that says they hate tomatoes without ever eating one." Because she's reached the limits of human language, in terms of being condescending, and because she is of course correct, her entire character explodes in a nova of self-righteousness: "Maybe if you would put in some effort, you wouldn't be so insecure!" He leaves because go date the tomato-loving homosexual already, but mostly because: whoa.
In a cute monochrome block-plaid fuzzy jacket, Chuck chases Elle through the lobby where -- unless I'm wrong -- she texted him to come. Maybe it was Carter? Who knows. More importantly who cares? He's still all about running away to Brazil anyway, even though this whole storyline turns out to be actual imaginary drama -- an elegant solution, actually: none of this mattered and all pivoted on the two verified facts that Elle is retarded and Chuck is a gigantic drama queen -- and she's like, "Get crucial. I needed money, you're a child, I fucked you for money, I'm a prostitute, that's what we, like, do." His crazy face gets crazy and she's like, "The UES EWS gave me a bunch of money and I've got my exit strategy planned out, alone." He's still kind of dumbstruck, so she sweetly suggests that he's got a good heart and should apply all this sweet care and worry to the woman he's actually in love with, who is in actual danger. Out of the mouths of whores.
But also, if we're talking about radical ego reconstruction -- Blair looking at the Ellen in the mirror, Serena seeing the downside of May -- then this is exactly what Chuck needed to get himself on track after the funeral. They took away the possibility of ever gaining his Dad's approval, and they took away the one human being that activates his heart, and he's been running on Chuck Fumes since then, just like with Lily and the whole Chuck/Charles/Charlie thing. So really, finding out that this whole "brotherhood of creeps" sex/power/grownup fantasy was about transitioning from Bart to Jack to now, and realizing that he's pretty much been transformed by the experience into something way cooler and way more vulnerable than he even understood... Introduce Carter as his Georgina, and you're really cooking. I'm so glad BSG is over, because now I don't have to feel funny about calling this the greatest show on TV. Plus, how funny would it be if she got gunned down right outside that hotel and neither Chuck nor we were ever the wiser?
Dan pulls Rachel behind the carriage and yells at her about being the Anonymous bitch, and she's not backing down: "Blair spread false rumors, blackmailed the school, turned my job into a sham. With no repercussions!" Which is not really the lesson here, because your behavior and your vengeance are still your problem. And also, Rachel suffered no repercussions either. Dan realizes that she's just like Blair, but worse, because at least Blair is in high school and has about six personality disorders, whereas Rachel is just basically disgusting.
He whines that Rachel has crushed all of his ideals, and let's pause for a moment to consider for a moment the possible future parallel of Rachel and Elle, a dream girl fantasy who turns out not to be innocent just like May, okay, and what that does for a man's psychosexual development. The disappointment of the ho-bag is a hugely important step, because it breaks you out of your romantic mommy fantasies about how there's a girl who can fix everything for you by mirroring back you, just as you are, without any of the real growth or change that actual love demands. Having a blank boring girlfriend is the best possible case for a boy, but not a man.
So usually you have to have a Rachel or an Elle come into your life and act unpredictable and break you open before you can possibly understand that women are people capable of making independent and rational moral decisions; that just because when you look at them all you see is a big old mess of your own emotional bullshit doesn't mean that all they are is emotional bullshit: it's actually been you the whole time. Which is what Dan went through with Serena eighty times, and it's pretty much Newland's entire deal in the novel, and what Chuck's going through right this second. We see its effects on Chuck here, but I am willing to bet we'll see a compensatory growth in Dan, too. For now, though, he's content to be just awesome enough to grab the pissy Blair: "Hey, Blair. It's Rachel who's been messing with you. And we had sex in the costume closet, so you can do whatever you want with that."
B's like whoa and puts on her game face, and then heads over to Rachel out. Rachel is still looking like she's going to barf because of all the true stuff Dan just laid on her, and Blair's like, "Fight back!" Rachel won't, because she can't deny it. She is a gross, gross lady who managed to take the thing she loved most in Dan and in herself -- that innocence and belief -- and twist them all up in ugliness and weakness. She's done too. Blair's taken aback by all this, and she's like, "Okay, gotcha. But I'm never going to Yale, so you have to bleed exactly that much even though it won't be that fun." Rachel starts to cry: "I don't know what's happened to me, I don't know what I've become. I'm... So sorry." It's so for real that it punches Blair in the face, and becomes a mirror. She actually, physically swallows it.
It's that last Jenga piece: vengeance, gone. No fun. Won't help. Just feels worse. You can't break a woman that's been broken like Rachel, and you can't destroy anything as thoroughly as Blair wants to destroy Rachel without coming to understand it enough that it's indivisible from something akin to love. "Well, your punishment is... Just... Live with it. I should know," Blair says. "It's not easy." For a second they see the other in each other and for a second their nasty, impure closeness becomes something sweet, and bitter, and then B takes off, because fuck that.
Serena texts the truth to Vanessa, smiling ruefully about Julian's gayness, and then Dan gingerly approaches to explain that it wasn't B that was Anonymous, but in fact Rachel, and it was his fault. Serena's like, "But why would you do that?" And Dan heads, brilliantly, into a Newland-esque explanation about how he was trying to explain what's special and unique and free about Serena, and she cuts him off. "I gotta go find Blair. Thank you for telling me?" She's kind of grossed out, but glad about the info and as usual pleasantly surprised by his honesty. Then she enacts the great Serena thing of two steps, turn, and walk away that she always does, because she remembers that they are still broken up, and goes off to save B again. Edith would have loved Serena too:
There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Vanessa arrives at Nate's with snacks and looking to apologize, cuddle on the couch, and "watch ESPN" with him. He smiles super-sweetly and invites her to the couch... Where he's been watching The Age Of Innocence. So earnestly and awesomely, he's like, "It's heartbreaking!" She kisses him, because you can't not at that moment, and admits that he is too. Nate yells, "I am a way better Beaufort!" in a way that nearly avoids making you want to ruffle his hair, and they laugh because it's true, because the Julius in the movie is a hundred years old and Nate is a hundred minutes old.
Dan comes home and gets scared because Rufus is eating ice cream and just naturally looks judgmental, which is where he gets it. He apologizes and says Rufus was right about how Rachel was a bad idea, and Rufus says he's sorry in a way that suggests it's less an apology and more like, "I'm sorry I was totally right, also." He hands him a spoon and they dig into a pint of Häagen-Dazs together, because they actually are the Gilmore Girls and have basically admitted it before now. "Lucky for you, you'll be at Yale soon. You can make all the mistakes you want. With, God willing, girls your own age." Or, God willing, girls at all.
Remember, being onstage is like standing on the edge of a cliff. What saves you is the love and trust you have in each other...
Blair's having a martini in her black velvet hair ribbon, surrounded by the scary music of a breakdown too long coming. Serena approaches and apologizes for everything, and B's like, "Don't worry about it, because why on earth wouldn't I have done that for some fucked up reason, so you're right to not trust me, and I'm sorry you wasted all that attention on me when really betrayal totally is in my nature." Serena takes this like a sock to the gut, and Blair actually explains, "Spare me, Serena. I don't need a stirring speech telling me what a good person I am. I know I'm not." Her Daddy stuff with Harold rears its head throughout the speech, but it's hard to see because that episode where he told her she was evil was a really long time ago, but think about it, and how he took away her puppy! "Yale kicking me out is the karma I've earned." Serena tries to comfort her and B jerks away, asking to be left alone. Her voice cracks a little, but I don't know. I am a meddler and also I don't know B like S knows her, so maybe it's not totally ill-advised that she ditches, touching Blair's back and whispering tenderly, "You're still my best friend."
I'm so tired! I want to rest, I just want to rest.
"In life, as in art, some endings are bittersweet. Especially when it comes to love." Jenny enters, wearing some awesome painted-on skinny jeans with extra cameltoe tucked into boots, and presents him with a letter Rachel left outside the apartment. It is a remarkably pretentious work of queeritude:
Dan, I am going back to Iowa, as you must have known. I am sorry for everything. As Edith Wharton wrote, "There is no one as kind as you, no one who gave me reasons I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard."
Thank you.
R.
Oh, BARF. "Sometimes fate throws two lovers together, only to rip them apart..." GG says around the rising bile, as Dan thinks pensive thoughts about what the fuck any of that had to do with anything. If I ever got a letter like that I would kick a baby in the park and then go blow ten truckers, just to get the taste out of my mouth.
Chuck enters the Waldorf house, where Dorota in her pink fluffy robe and bunny slippers is like an Eastern European unicorn. When she says Blair's out -- omitting the part where she's out turning into Chuck Bass -- Chuck says he'll wait. She is moved. "Sometimes the hero finally makes the right choice but the timing is all wrong..."
Remember that seagull you shot? A man comes along, sees her, and destroys her life because he has nothing better to do...
"And as they say, timing is everything" Carter enters behind sad, sad Blair and sits, and she's barely able to render a proper look of derision at him. Plus, he is a very sexy hobbit, and that will get you no matter what but especially if you are the self-loathing type slowly turning into Chuck Bass, and he calls her beautiful. He just sees another girl to take from Chuck, but it won't stay that way. She's better than that, and he knows it. "Carter. What are you doing here?" she says, with a sexy nasty smile. He's also pretty sad, it seems, or just tired from the fact that he flew here from Thailand and immediately got roped into a Byzantine and imaginary storyline about sex clubs and probably hasn't even slept, and offers to buy her a drink. He puts his hand on her knee and she searches his face for that sign that he's as broken as she is, finds it, smiles.
I'm the seagull ... No, that's not it. I'm an actress. That's it.
XOXO.