Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Fated To Pretend
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 19 | Aired on 03.23.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Vanessa's all about bumming around Europe with Nate this summer, but Nate's cousin -- on the Vanderbilt side -- shows up to convince him to reconcile with the family. Dan and Vanessa talk him into it, and accompany him into a world of privilege. Nate accepts an internship with Bloomberg's office, which freaks Vanessa out for somewhat valid reasons, but mostly acts like Dan 2.0 for a minute, which is just long enough.
Meanwhile, Blair's "meltdown" -- after Serena chases Carter away in seconds -- leads her to shoplifting and a freakout at the Vanderbilt party that sadly never goes anywhere. She gets drunk on champagne, calls out a few people in a hushed voice, lowers herself to trying to get into Sarah Lawrence, tries to have aggressive nihilism sex with Chuck, and then cries softly on a porch, all while looking particularly stunning. Nate comforts her, reminding her that her essential Blairness is awesome, so she pulls it together and decides he'll be spending the night. If anybody deserves Nate, it's Blair, and what is awesome is how it's taken two years for that sentence to make sense.
Bex the Art Dealer tells Lily she dated Rufus, which causes a silly and ill-advised comparisons of Sex Lists, which causes Serena to almost barf and call her mom a ho, which causes Lily to hide the half of the list Rufus doesn't know about, which he finds and of course causes him to act like Rufus Humphrey, which causes Lily to have a total flashback to what a giant fucking baby he is.
Chuck, Serena and Dan don't have a whole lot to do, but it's fairly awesome. Chuck and S chase around the city playing Where's Waldorf, and getting into hilarious conflict with Dorota, before they find them at the Vanderbilt party. S hilariously slaps Dan ("That was invigorating!") for sleeping with Rachel, then giggles and becomes his bestie again. Lovelorn Chuck, after getting slammed up against a wall and freaked out by Blair's fling with madness -- and openly explaining that she's totally turning into him -- realizes that he's lost her because she's chosen darkness or whatever. Serena sends him to try again, but he finds Nate's jacket there: B's hooking up with Nate again. But weirdly? You're kind of happy about it. Next week: Chuck/V try to disrupt B+N any way they can.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Fashion being so harsh, and Gossip Girl being so in charge, it should come as no surprise that even seasons go out of season: "Spring on the Upper East Side, where the winter chill is supposed to be so last season." But it's Groundhog Day for our little Upper East Siders, and they're still bundled up in mittens and scarves.
It's one of those regrettably sad and unfair circumstances one often encounters in life: that the cold can't just be shoved along to Brooklyn, where the people are hardier and more suited to disappointment. It snows on all the boroughs, or none; quiet acceptance of this fact is just another form of the noblesse oblige required of us all in these inexact times. Vanessa Abrams, exhibiting that curious educational insecurity that only the homeschooled can truly understand, offers her best friend a list of some other gloomy places where it snows sometimes. "Budapest, Bucharest, Dubrovnik..." her companion, Dan Humphrey, often draws from her the appreciative laughter of the idiot with the determined application of bon mots just such as these: "Oh, there's nothing like summer in the Eastern Bloc. Just a Eurail pass and a backpack full of failed socialist policies..."
Vanessa laughs, pointing out that her trip will also encompass -- not to say be entirely financed by -- the heavenly Nate Archibald. "Vienna State Opera one day, pierogies in Poland the next." (The dutiful reader will note that, to Vanessa and those like her, these experiences are equivalent.) "No map, no reservations, just total freedom." It is part and parcel of Vanessa's ways, this: to see homelessness and squalor in a foreign nation as some sort of glamorous escape from her life of absolute, pointless leisure. It is a truth universally acknowledged by those above such petty attachments that we devalue what we cannot have.
"And Nate is super excited, too!" The dutiful reader will note that, to Nathaniel, inhalation and exhalation are every bit as "super exciting" as traveling to the Eastern Bloc with a Williamsburg blockhead, but Daniel -- never one to let a greedy opportunity for comparison of any kind slip by, most especially when the subject is the affections of one Mr. Nathaniel Archibald -- awkwardly segues to Nate's probable increased excitement with regard to the college basketball game they'll be watching together shortly. Now now, girls.
Nathaniel stands on the sidewalk, lending an ear to a tall man's vociferous exclamations as they approach, leaving behind all thought of their jealousies: who is this stranger speaking to their Nate? Why, it is his cousin Trip (as in III, to wit: hasn't even a proper Christian name to call his own), attempting desperately to entice Nathaniel back to the ancestral manse (known more properly in these parts as Aunt Helen Rosemond's house from Cruel Intentions) for their family reunion. Nathaniel introduces Trip to his friends, and they inform the terrible twosome of their dilemma: While Trip is assured that their grandfather, William van der Bilt (as in Vanderbilt, to wit: couldn't get Anderson Cooper to guest star), would be overjoyed to see Nathaniel at the reunion, the younger cousin retains certain reservations relating to his previous destitution, in which the van der Bilts took little to no interest until the boy's near-kidnapping at the hands of his father, the Captain. He shines his cousin on with the natural God-given gift of his vagueness and near-oblivious hangdog expression, and Trip reluctantly leaves them to their pursuits. While Nathaniel attempts to continue their day's entertainment smoothly and gracious -- as a good host should, and as such, is his wont -- Vanessa and Nate worry and pry endlessly. As is theirs.