Jenny's birthday is like Chrismukkah, only instead of feeling wonderful feelings, you get to watch everybody cry and have sex. This year it's Jenny's Sweet Sixteen, so Serena and Lily decide to throw her a picture-perfect memorable event. Because she's a Humphrey, Jenny turns this down in favor of board games and catching rats for her dinner. Too bad that Serena's bumped into Poppy Lifton the Supermodel, who once again reminds Serena that acting her age is like keeping down dinner: déclassé and totally childish. When the Plastics twist the knife, Serena realizes that even her mythical It Girl status is drifting away, and goes a little party crazy.
Meanwhile, Rufus learns that Dan's not qualified for the amount of Yale financial aid they were thinking, and starts stressing out about it. Lily, continuing her onslaught of shitty ideas lately, invites him to sell the DUMBO loft and move in. Which is fine, except Dan and Jenny find out about the idea and it makes Jenny even more excited about being an individual, so she sabotages the sabotaged birthday party by announcing it on GG. Hell is, of course, unleashed -- although it does afford us the opportunity to meet adorable Vanya, a cute young doorman with the sneak for Dorota.
When Lily and Rufus come home -- to a Palace riot and a PRADA catastrophe -- they of course assign the lion's share of blame to Serena, who technically did amp the party up to the supermodel level, before Jenny went wildin' on it. Between the talking-to, the grounding, and general ennui about being treated like a teenager -- after, admittedly, spending the last four years being treated like a glamorous forty-year-old starlet -- she runs off to Poppy, who whisks her away to Spain arm in arm with this weirdo S met a year ago when she was hanging with Georgina.
Speaking of sparks, there are none between Blair and Nate; he's fine with that because he's Nate, but Blair feels like the butt of a joke, because what else are you supposed to do with a Nate, besides fuck it. Noting her newfound insecurity about Blair's relationship with Nate -- and the way she's consciously trying to imply they're dating without saying it, which is classic -- Chuck pulls Vanessa into the drama. Nate half-lies to V that their breakup is unrelated to Blair, so she allies with Chuck against the imaginary idea of Nate and Blair at Jenny's rager and fake-kiss, which turns into a real kiss, which causes Blair to club Nate over the head and drag him upstairs cavelady-style. He tells her he's not interested in getting boned just to satisfy her internal propaganda and ongoing existential meltdown, and she runs off.
Nate is all hurt and tells Vanessa that she's turning into Blair, which if only. This does cause her to sleep with Chuck, who looks delicious in the morning, which is a nice development. Blair and Chuck have the conversation about how she's been fighting for him since before his dad died, and she deserves some rest and eyebrows. Of course, Vanessa and Chuck have been hot for each other for awhile, and Vanessa has zero dignity, so it all makes way more sense than it might seem on paper. Mostly, they're hot together, and it's nice to see Vanessa getting her hands dirty in the UES for once, instead of scrabbling around desperately in the background. Or Williamsburg.
Then, just as Blair is realizing the importance of Nate's friendship, versus their dud romance, he appears and says that he's into her after all, and they kiss at the duck pond. So it's back on. Blair bent over backward during the Bart stuff, so it's more Nate is like her forty thousand virgins, but he seems happy. And after the shit Vanessa pulled last week, he's got a point: why wait for an obstinate and judgmental partner to understand your familial responsibilities when you've got an obstinate and judgmental partner who already does?
In the end, Jenny apologizes for her outburst and the riot she threw, Lily and Rufus realize that they have fallen into the trap of another terrible one-episode idea, and we learn there's a reason (over and above his essential nature) that Dan's been talking nonstop about a New Yorker fan letter he got: it was written by none other than Rufus and Lily's mysterious dead '90s baby, Pilot Inspektor! Coincidences are just nature's way of getting things going, I guess. XOXO, and we'll see you back here on 4/20.
"Mornings are simply more fun on the Upper East Side. Our favorite things to wake up to? The sun in the sky, the Nikkei on the rise, and a wake-up call from your latest lover... Or your best friend." Serena's on the move, getting pastries for the Bass der Humphrey breakfast and checking in on Blair, to the latter's consternation. Between the momentary curve to the dark side with Carter, and this latest thing with Chuck, S assumes that B is in meltdown.
Blair lies that she's in her pajamas, eating french toast with Dorota. What she's actually doing is way worse than the usual meltdown, because what she's doing is replaying the Lord Marcus fantasy over again, this time with Nate, who was once her arranged marriage. She's plying him with breakfast and coffee and trying to get him bent back into shape around her future: now that Yale's gone and Chuck's gone, all she's got is the van der Bilt millions to look forward to.
"As much as I appreciate the concern, S, my downward spiral is on the upturn." The music is, fittingly enough, by a band called the Handcuffs, "Baby Boombox," about listening to vintage music you know you've outgrown, on equipment unsuited to the current time: "A crazy relic that plays a cassette for the connoisseur on the go." Her hope is that if she does all the Blair stuff, plays the songs they use to dance to -- "It's good music but not the latest" -- he'll forget how much they've all changed, and settle back into their comfortable old ways, like a jacket on a screened-in porch. She knows it's gross, so she lies even as she's walking out into traffic.
Serena hears them yelling at her to get off the phone, and the honking horns, and figures she's just hearing it on her end. In fact she is: they're both at 73rd and Madison. Blair lies that Dorota's using her handkerchief at the breakfast table -- "It's disgusting!" -- and once she spots Serena on the move, she hides lamely and hilariously behind a small topiary outside a hotel, staring past it at Serena as she sends Dorota her best wishes and ducks into the bakery; Blair trip-trops away, nervous about lying and even more embarrassed that she's out in the morning, but neither of them know they're on the same errand: supplying bribes to the family they are trying to create.
Jenny's settled into this awesome dowager neck thing, I don't know what you call it but it's like a ribbon choker that crosses once under your chin. Dan comes out into the loft waving his "first fan letter," which in fact he did not write himself, but was forwarded from the ever-indulgent New Yorker: "Some kid read my story, he loved it! Sent me his own story, I mean, he wants my opinion, but I figured it'd be good practice for Yale since they make you do a crit with your classmates..."
So Poppy's only in town for about 48 hours, and basically they play out every conversation between Whitney and the perfectly perfect Olivia on The City, sans switchblade. (I honestly do just adore Olivia, which you probably could have guessed if you've seen the show; she's the reason I watch it, because she's this monstrous Cassandra who is always, always right, but you can't even handle how right she is because you are blinded by the inhuman force-of-nature way she does everything. She's like if Simon Cowell were the prettiest girl in the whole world.) There's a beautiful crest where the scheming music of this show kicks in just as Serena's realizing that all these cues she's expecting -- "Oh, you broke up? That's so sad!" -- are not forthcoming, because Poppy couldn't care less. "Wow. Well, it sounds like everything's exactly the same as it was last time I saw you..."
Going crazy for approval, Serena says she's throwing a party this weekend, cocking her head at Poppy needily, but them admits it's for her friend's Sweet Sixteen. Poppy mentally crosses Serena off of every list there is in the world, and Serena half-heartedly invites her, begging for the conversation to end and knowing she'll never see Poppy again. And knowing too that she'd do the same, because it's the right thing to do. Poppy distractedly tells her to have fun with her "little party" and "take care" of herself, and pats her hand, and entire parts of Serena's soul go skittering off into the road, and it's over. But consider how what Poppy just did was the equivalent of kissing Serena's forehead -- like Poppy's a woman and Serena's just a little girl -- and you see how this whole episode works.
And not just that, but the Yale stuff too, because it was Poppy Lifton that got Serena on Page Six, which got her into Yale if she'd wanted it, but which she turned down because she didn't earn it, and to save Blair, and neither of those things really worked out either. So even though we haven't seen Poppy in a while, she's been here, implicit every time anybody mentions Dean Berube or that damned press release. I would say that what separates the Great episode of this show, or most shows really, from the merely Good ones is the fact that everyone is real: nobody's serving as a prop in anybody else's scene. Like how Dan was often more of an irritant or plot factor for Serena's stuff, in the first season, than a character in his own right, or how Rachel Carr was only ever a mirror for the person -- Serena, then Dan, then Blair -- that she was molesting.
So this episode is Great because you can follow both Serena's story and Jenny's story all the way through, and they totally make sense, because they're both being strongly written characters whose stories happen to intersect with everybody else's. And so even Poppy, and I really like this, is just being herself, and acting like a person would if she were real, and it just happens to spiral into everything else that happens, which is exactly how this show works when it's working best: everybody's a pinball on their own vector, careening madly into everybody else's shit, and you just watch them go.
Dan and Rufus fall all over themselves being gracious guests at chez Lily, while Jenny continues to perseverate on the jam issue. Eric sweetly congratulates his mother on her commitment to making the family work -- "I'm proud of you, Mom," he says in that no-nonsense voice he has -- and Chuck comes breezing through, snatching bacon off the plate Lily's offering, the not-even-stepchild orphan part of the family they have to all accommodate. Dan asks where he's off to at eight in the morning, considering he clearly does not work out, and Lily barely rolls her eyes as he claims he gets his cardio in the evenings. "Morning is for business. For which I am late." Eric compares their lives to a sitcom, blended family-style, and Dan says it's more like a reality show. (Although less so since Bart died and stopped secretly taping their entire lives.) Chuck growls that he's happy about that, since he can vote Dan off, and Dan returns the serve: "It would almost be scary if it wasn't wearing plaid." Jenny laughs; this is how families happen.
Serena comes in yelling with the pastries, and Lily indulges her with a funny squeal: they have a secret to share, namely their extravagant Sweet Sixteen at the house of PRADA that Poppy wouldn't be caught dead attending. Caterers, flowers, DJ -- "the perfect guest list," Serena points out, which is important -- and we revisit what I hope will become a perennial theme, which is the Buffy Summers-level suckiness of Jenny's birthday. (Last year, remember, her cake had her face on it, and it was totally embarrassing, and the Plastics were there talking about how hot Rufus was, and Jenny got caught smuggling Hazel's mother's Valentino, having stolen it twice in one day.) Of course, it's a nice way to bookend Jenny's wild journey over the last year of her life, since that's when she decided to stand up to the Plastics in the first place, which has echoed through every episode since it happened, from playing house with Gay Asher to the raccoon eyes, to her current thing of being totally awesome.
"Oh, Jennycake," Eric says hilariously, as they remember the hell of last year's party, and Rufus admits that he is no expert party planner, and so has handed it over to giggly Serena and desperately trying Lily. Jenny laughs nervously and Dan points out helpfully that she's not at all feeling this plan. She stutters a bit before trying to explain: "Okay look, last year I would have killed for a party like this..." (Lily and S both give the exact same hilarious The Fuck You Say look, like mother like daughter) "...But this year, I don't know. Things just... Things just seem different. Like... Like, okay, I was just kind of hoping that it would be us. And Vanessa and Jonathan, and then I don't even..." She says some weird thing about maybe inviting some girls from Chemistry that didn't set her hair on fire, and Lily shoots a confused look at S, who just shakes her head like they shouldn't even bother, and Jenny throws an ankle-dip on there for old times' sake: "I'm sorry. Is that okay?"
Serena and Lily react with varying levels of acceptance: Serena tells her to try the cake first -- because she's sold on the idea of being Jenny's wiser big sister -- and Lily overrules her, saying it's Jenny's day -- because she's sold on the idea of being this Earth Mother type, with five adoring kids she can give everything to -- so Serena adjusts her course quickly and says she'll cancel everything. Blake Lively is absolutely amazing in this episode, and I'm not just talking about her still-great crazy hair: there's a lot she has to play in every scene to get through the episode without looking like a total bitch, and if you keep your eyes on her face the whole time she totally pulls it off.
Awkward smiles all around, and then the Humphreys "help" by suggesting, like, homemade chili and boardgames. Lily's no more impressed than anybody reasonable would be, and Jenny thanks them again. Serena's so disappointed she absconds with the pastries, and shit gets really weird, so they run off. Alone, Rufus opens the Yale stuff and learns that Dan has been denied financial aid, which is possibly the most boring thing that ever happened on this show, and pulls out his phone.
At Constance, Serena's whining at Eric about how "every culture in the world has some version of a Sweet Sixteen party" because it's "like a universal rite of passage," which is so perfectly the opposite of what she's trying to say that it means the same thing. Eric's hair is now completely dark, without even a little bit of highlights, but it's hard not to think of him as the other blonde van der Woodsen nonetheless. He points out that Jenny has no friends because she's weird, and posits that maybe she was nervous about throwing a huge delicious party that nobody would come to, and then the Plastics show up to demonstrate that he is totally correct.
"Serena," says Iz, with a scary smile, and there's a whooshing sound and just like a spinning hubcap where Eric was just standing, because he has no time for Mean Girl shit. They needle Serena about how her party died so quickly, and Hazel congratulates her on accepting "defeat" gracefully. Nelly Yuki explains that Jenny and Penelope were both having parties on the same night, and they agree that they weren't going to really consider it, but at least now they don't have to pretend to be sorry about missing Serena/Jenny's party. Serena gives them that awesome look she has for Mean Girl shit, the one eyebrow of reflexive arrogance that serves her so well usually, and they rush off to crawl all over Penelope about her party.
Serena calls Poppy up immediately to ask for help crushing Penelope's party into dust, ironic because she wants to make her party a grownup party for total high school reasons, and GG throws some Marie Antoinette on those bitches: "Spotted: S, learning the answer to the age-old question, 'What if you were throwing a party, and no one cared?' When that happens, don't cancel. Make them eat cake!" Which is the second oblique reference to Marie in this latest batch of episodes, but it makes sense: she pretty much patented that Serena mix of wanting everything to be awesome while not giving a shit, and paid for it.
Vanessa's insults to fashion, they number three: skin-tight acid-washed-looking pants, going into oversized rawhide boots that look like a cowboy shit out Fizzgig, all under what would be a cute black peacoat if it didn't have these giant silver balls barfed all over it but ends up instead looking like a Batman villain, and a vinyl puke-purple diaper-bag purse as big as a VW. Any of these things alone would be okay -- except the jacket, which is just insupportable -- but all together like this, she looks like she's about to chase Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore through the forest of Stupid-Ass Toys.
Even GG is confused about why V's even on the UES, as she spots Blair and Nate hugging good morning, or what looks like goodbye, and he's wearing his uniform. So the Brooklynites made it to the UES by eight AM, and I guess nobody has to be at school until at least a leisurely 8:30, okay, but then why were Eric and Serena and the Plastics already at school when everybody else is fucking around? I have go to stop caring about this. So Nate sips his coffee and goes inside, and V's looking like a dead person until Chuck drives up in his limo and admits that he sent the invitation email from Nate's account -- hilariously, he can do this because Nate's password has been "soccer" since fifth grade -- so that she would come running and see what he believes is Blair and Nate hooking up.
"Look, Blair leaves his place at this time every morning. When you're ready to do something about it, you know where I am." Which is where? What does that even mean? What does effing Vanessa even do all day besides sneak around and sell artsy coffee? GG even feels a little bad for Vanessa, whose day was so sad she showed up at Dan's house to whine about it before the school day began, then good, and now is bad again, and for once the stalking and spying isn't even her fault. But of course we know, or will soon, that Blair's just trying to tempt Nate into thinking they're already dating, so again you have the pinball effect going into overdrive in the most delicious ways.
At the end of the school day, Chuck worms up to Blair at the Constance lockers, calling Blair + Nate "A bit Been There Done That, Got Dumped Twice." (You know what's a bit "Been There, Done That"? Using the phrase "Been There, Done That." Wait until week, when Chuck instructs someone to Talk To His Hand. That shit is going to sweep the nation, I guarantee it.) Blair tells him their relationship is "purely platonic," and Chuck whines, hurt, that he sees her at Nate's every morning. B says if he were any good at this newfound stalking hobby he'd know that she's bringing Nate breakfast. Not even a kiss, yet.
Chuck grins triumphantly, with his good boy hair, that "friends" is perfect, because she and Nate have no "spark." (Actually, the way that he phrases it is incredibly smart, writing-wise -- "There's no spark between you two, never was" -- because it brings it back around to the thing she and Nate kept saying last season about how they've always loved each other and always will. Isn't that clever?) He calls the pairing "a green twig and a soggy match" and "a rusty hammer and an icy nail," and B kind of loses it, yelling that she and Nate have had in the past not only spark but fireworks even. Chuck nods, pretty sexy for a second: "That was us." Well done. She slams her locker and gets real.
"Chuck. Don't act like I didn't fight for you. I did. Hard, and for a long time. So please, forgive me if now that we're over, I'm exhausted." Seriously. I mean, she's doing this because she needs to know how things turn out, and she's planned her life with Nate so many times over the past decade, watched that movie so many times she dreamt about it, and because she's still staring right into the abyss, but she does make a solid point nonetheless. Of course, from Chuck's viewpoint this is all crap, because in fact she's just being lazy and hidebound after last week's flirtation with minor rudeness, and he knows that she will only come back to him if he pulls the right Jenga piece as far as the support (or belief) system she's so hastily putting together, because that's always when she comes to him: when she's got nothing else to hold onto.
Chuck asks if she's with Nate because it's easy, then, and she shouts that she's not "with" Nate, but "easy" is a good enough reason if she were, and maybe sometimes things are easy because they are right. Which is true for some people, but will never be true for Blair, which is why she and Chuck will be Postman Always Rings Twice-ing around each other until they are elderly. Chuck points out that Nate hasn't officially pulled the trigger on his relationship with Vanessa, and gives that button a nice solid push before wandering off, leaving her totally thrown.
Rufus and Lily act adorable/gross in the loft kitchen, cooking together like they do, and Lily watches Rufus totally lie right to Dan's face about having left the Yale paperwork at Lily's house, and asks him what's up. Rufus explains about the financial aid, and Lily takes big swigs of red wine as she goes into Fixit mode, offering advice and then money and then telling Rufus to sell the loft and move to the Palace with her, so she can have her whole family in one place and can I guess start thinking about adopting. Rufus is all about how if they keep coming up with ideas this disastrous that eventually there won't be any bad ideas, or survivors, left. "Look, why don't you just talk to an agent and see what they say?" He thinks about it, but it's Rufus: you know he's going to call a broker immediately, and do whatever they tell him, and then whatever happens he'll act like life is this huge surprise.
Back at that Bethesda fountain from the very beginning episodes, Blair is walking with Nate, segueing obviously and hilariously out of nowhere: "You know what I was just thinking? Jennifer Aniston is totally fine now. I'm sure Brad doesn't even feel bad anymore." Nate laughs at her, because although it's possible he doesn't even know who those people are, he knows when B's up to something -- and she continues. "I mean, I'm sure that there was some collateral damage, which is always sad. But his fate lay with Angelina, and he knew that." Of all the people in that triangle, Blair is least of all the Angelina, but you work with what you've got. She turns on him her kindest Be Brave Young Soldier face: "So he had the tough conversation and moved on," she says, ending on a smug smile. Nate nods and immediately explains that her subtext is showing, and that she might as well just be telling him to dump Vanessa.
Blair calls this embracing fate, and Nate shakes his head because she's crazy but soooo awesome, and says in fact that since Vanessa finally pulled it together enough to call him, he's going to meet her for dinner and close the deal. Blair, nervous there'll be sparks or fireworks, tries to dissuade him -- "Can't you just text?" -- but Nate reassures her that it's over with Vanessa. As it should be, after the crap she pulled last week. "On their first trip to Africa, Brad and Angelina's lovemaking was so intense the guards thought they were being attacked!" Blair yells, to entice Nate in her unfathomable Blair fashion into coming back from dinner, and he goes, "How about I just start by talking to Vanessa and see where all this goes?" Blair looks at the ground with her fake smile that she does when she's disappointed, but it's good enough.
"Money Honey" by Lady Gaga -- "It's good to live expensive/ But my knees get weak intensive.../ Baby when you tear me to pieces/ That's money, honey" -- plays Jenny and Serena into Missoni, where they meet up with Poppy for some shopping. Serena explains that Lily wanted her to have her dream dress for her party, and Poppy suggests a gorgeous glittery champagne gown, which Jenny does like, but she protests that she's not exactly going to be partying like a grownup this year. She runs off with a very Jenny dress, some kind of Holly Hobby trim along the bottom, and it reminds me: did you know Taylor Momsen doesn't use a stylist on the show? That's all her idea, the stuff Jenny's wearing this year. Isn't that cool? I think that's really cool, although there's a double edge there having to do with mullets and eyeshadow, but barring those it's way more hits than misses, I think.
Left alone with Poppy, Serena thanks her for coming and admits that she's in a total rut, but is winsomely embarrassed and sunny and It Girl enough about it that it's okay to talk about. "A girl like you should be on the arm of a designer at the costume ball one day and yachting around the Maldives the . Not making up and breaking up with the same high school boy and feuding with your frenemy." The completely unimpressed disinterest with which she says these things is very telling, not hateful at all but just pitying enough that it strengthens Serena's resolve. They agree that the party is a good start, but Serena points out that Jenny's tastes have been diverging from normal for about a year now.
Poppy, still wearing that fucked-up vest I'll point out, tells Serena that any kid, even Jenny, would be happy to have the kind of party they're thinking about: "Adult, elegant, the right notables in attendance. And you saw the way that she looked at that dress, she loves it. She wants a party like this, she just needs someone to hold her hand a little." And I don't even think Poppy's wrong about that. A super party is super fun, no matter what the occasion, and I think Jenny could have a lot of fun just seeing what happens. But I also know the last time she was a guest of honor at a party, it was the Asher Hornsby debacle, and her stock hasn't exactly risen since then, so there's not really a way to change her mind about any of it. Not that Serena, closest friend and companion to The Unstoppable Force and former girlfriend of the Immovable Object, would understand that, because moving those mountains is sort of her entire job.
Jenny comes out in a black smock dress, off the shoulder with a Holly Hobby hemline, cute but too Jenny, and Poppy smile squints and straight up says they prefer the other one. Jenny, feeling railroaded and/or tempted, agrees to try the other one on, and Poppy laughs because she feels vindicated, and tells Serena to start making calls. So Serena does, wearing a complicated mass of chains around her neck, because she will do anything you tell her to do as long as she knows it's the step in being the girl she wants to be.
I mean, I don't think of her as a lightweight, because what happened was, she called up Poppy and said, "Fix this," and now Poppy's fixing it, which is to Grownup Page Six Serena as dating Dan was to Good Girl Serena. And of all the high school/grownup/identity crisis parallels in this episode, I think Serena's is the best because she's totally doing it with her eyes open: how do you make your life look the way you want it to? Ask an expert, follow their advice. That's way better than Dan trying to get control by condescending to the poor misguided fan letter guy, or Nate dumping Vanessa for being the Marxist free-trade cricket on his van der Bilt shoulder, or the Lord Marcus/Colony Club redux shit Blair's pulling for the eightieth time, or Jenny thinking that you're only an individual if somebody's watching you nonconform, or Rufus and Lily blindly groping their way toward parenting and adulthood as usual.
Vanessa comes into a diner where Nate's waiting, looking sad. She's all about how grateful she is that he agreed to meet her, and how great it is to see her, and he's like, "Not so fast, cowboy." She gives him the puppydogs, for some reason, and he reminds her that she's the one that left. She begs with her eyes, hoping that things aren't the way they appear, that she's not been sitting around waiting for him to call while he's been quite happily moved back to Blair. And of course, he has no idea that she's sitting there with his morning coffee burnt into her retinas, so he is playing it straight: they broke up, it was essentially her choice, and he's not got a lot of regrets about it.
I feel for Nate even more than usual in this episode, because he honestly is trying to do things the right way, but there are all these factors he doesn't know about, so nobody's reacting right. Nate knows Blair's laying in wait around every corner waiting to pounce, and before he can even deal with that he's got to clean up these loose ends, plus the fact that the life he's now returning to always had Blair in it, which is kind of a downward slide, but also easy. So he's got two problems, which to him are completely separate except in the most vaguely conscious way, but everybody else believes -- because Chuck is playing both Vanessa and Blair in different ways -- that they are the same problem. Which means whether he likes it or not, or understands it even, they have become the same problem, because Vanessa can't dig her way out of it and Blair doesn't want to.
So Vanessa's like, "Well, we can at least be honest with each other," which he thinks he's doing, and she makes him say this is about him and Vanessa, and not anybody else, and he answers, practically honestly, that it really is, and she's just disgusted and very woeful and it's heartbreaking, and then he goes over to Blair's house -- where she's terrorizing Dorota nervously -- and tells B the same thing. Blair plays along with what she thinks is an elaborate existential ass-cover, very wink-wink about how of course this was just the natural end of things with Vanessa, gotcha, but then to keep it from becoming its own punchline he has to do the honorable thing, which is get the hell out of there and offer to "hang out" over the weekend. He kisses her on the forehead, as her face scrunches up adorably and the music goes "What?", and then he's gone.
Dorota comes in with champagne on ice, because of course high schoolers should always celebrate their awkward breakup/makeup discussions with a '96 Dom Perignon, and Blair yells, "Pour that Dom down the drain, Dorota!" She realizes the vintage and snatches it away instead, and Dorota asks what the heck happened. "He kissed me on the forehead, like Chevalier kissed Gigi. Like he was a man, and I was a little girl!" Like he was Poppy, and she was Serena: "No passion, no spark. Maybe Chuck was right, maybe all Nate and I have together is just... History." Dorota is stricken, because that's sad, and GG sort of gloats about how it can be hard to turn up the heat with an old flame, and B heads upstairs with the whole bottle. Meanwhile, Chuck's sitting on that couch where Lily always sits, and Vanessa's like, "I am ready to be evil now."
DUMBO. Dan's back on the Urban Decay lipgloss again and still nobody says anything. He sniffs the chili and Jenny comes up with every board game ever invented, because of course the Humphreys have every board game ever invented, and Dan's like, "We're going to a birthday party, not a bomb shelter," which proves he's not thinking straight because on this show those are the same thing every single week, and Jenny asks if Vanessa's coming, so they can at least have even numbers on their Brooklyn side, and Dan tells her about the breakup, which Vanessa is going to be flipping out about forever and ever. Jenny's like, "Oh, Nate dumped Vanessa? Poor thing." I would have just laughed my ass off and asked if it was Blair or Chuck that pulled that one together. The real estate broker calls and Dan answers, but blows her off because he doesn't want Jenny to know what that probably means. I guess he thinks Jenny didn't get the memo that their dad is a total flake.
Serena and Blair chat on the phone while getting dressed and trying on awesome dresses. Blair tells her about the breakup, and Serena asks if Blair's cheating on her with Vanessa and that's where the information is coming from, but Blair admits she's been spending "a lot of time with Nate." Her dreamy, seductive voice puts Serena on high alert, and she laughs and asks if this trip down memory lane might not just be another Chuck thing. You can tell Blair's in a good mood and thinking this fantasy is going to come true, because if she were at all nervous or anguished about it she'd be like, "What, are you going to fuck him again?"
There's a neat little thing here where Blair keeps trying on different dresses, all wildly different styles, as they talk: flowery yellow dress for her future with Nate, sophisticated scary red dress for her relationship with Chuck, etc. "I thought Chuck was my future, Nate a part of my past. But now I'm thinking Chuck was just something I had to get out of my system in order to realize Nate was my destiny all along." Serena indulges the little crackhead like always, all, "Sounds great if that's what you're thinking this week," and sweetly admits she wasn't exactly "rooting for Chuck." Which is not true, exactly, because all she does is root for Blair, and Chuck is good for Blair in some bizarre way.
Specifically, Chuck forces Blair to be actually present for her life instead of trying to climb into every movie she can think of, which is something Serena totally gets because that's her whole thing: actually being yourself for more than just a moment at a time. And no matter how much she explains it to Blair, and no matter how many times Blair understands it for a sec before reverting to her perfect fantasies, it's only Chuck -- or more properly, the uncontrolled and abject sense of falling that he symbolizes for Blair -- that actually can get her there.
So you have both girls trying to be grownups tonight, because somebody they thought was their equal -- and a prop in their story -- pulled the rug out from under their self-conscious belief that they were mature and in charge of their lives. Which is really what leaving high school is about, and it's a screaming mimi of a trainwreck but really fun to watch. It's so weird to see Serena and Blair in the same emotional place at the same time, because suddenly nobody is driving the bus. Add to that Jenny's whole thing, and this newest Rufus/Lily wrinkle that's about to drive her crazy, and add to it Dan's minor complications and Nate's ongoing van der Bilt crisis, and the only stable people on the show are Chuck (as usual) and Vanessa (for the nonce). Which is just so scary! Even Eric is getting middle-childed hardcore in this episode, because he loves Lily, Jenny and Serena equally, and not even his supernaturally perfect ass can figure out a way to keep them all happy, so he ends up fucking things up worse by trying. When even Eric van der Woodsen can't fix the problem, you know you are in trouble deep.
Serena tells Blair that Nate's good for her, because there's no drama, and Blair of course can't have that, because conflict is romance to her, so she's like, "Drama! Sparks! Fireworks!" Serena's like, "Whatev, when are you coming to my party?" because Nate couldn't generate any of those things even with the supplies laid out on the table in front of him, because he's awesome, so clearly Blair is going to be manufacturing some bullshit on her own. Blair points out that in fact it is not her party, but before S gets the talking-to she needs, Eric comes in, worried about how grandiose the party is turning out to be. She says goodbye to Blair, and promises Eric that Jenny's going to love it, and chucks him tenderly on the chin in such a Lily way that it could give you goosebumps.
Serena-as-Lily is just about the most terrifying thing, in a way, because the secret to Lily is never letting on how bad she actually is at it. But if Serena's mandate is to be a grownup right now, then it makes total sense that she'd flip into Lily mode and start bumrushing everybody and having the perfect party and looking everybody in the eye and saying, "You enjoy this. You are having fun." Which is why Old Serena was an alcoholic and Old Eric was suicidal, but also made them society-ready in a way Jenny apparently will never be. And you know what I was thinking is how awesomely and smoothly they've turned TV Jenny into Book Vanessa, because we still get all the good things about Book Vanessa without Jessica Szohr having to mar her beauty with a shaved head, plus they can do whatever the heck they want with TV Vanessa, which this year has turned out to be really fun and compelling stuff. I like it when things work out.
Jenny and Dan greet cute Vanya the doorman -- who I guess is from heaven by way of the webisodes? -- and Dan needles him for reading Ann Coulter's book, but Vanya explains that he's only reading it to satisfy Dorota, who says he should know the enemy. I love this moment so much because Dorota deserves an admirer exactly this hot (and she's mentioned him at least once in the last couple episodes, come to think of it), and I love the Upstairs, Downstairs thing of staff in different parts of the city having these random relationships due to getting pedagogued around town by their charges, but mostly: I swear if anybody's going to lead the revolution it should be Dorota. Maybe week the Palace restaurant busboys will all have matching tattoos of like a fist, or Eleanor Waldorf in a Ghostbusters symbol, or a fist going into Eleanor Waldorf's face in a Ghostbusters symbol.
They leave Vanya behind, adorably WTFing at the bitchy madness of the prose, and on the elevator Jenny waxes excited, Eric-style, about the way their families are sort of finally blending. Dan bites his lip for a single second before spilling about the phone call a second ago. Jenny points out, drawing on her rich experience as a homeless person, that if Rufus sells the loft they won't have a place to live, and Dan's like, "I'm going to be living at Yale, but I assume you'd be moving on up? To the East Side? To a deluxe apartment in the sky?" Jenny awkwardly-topically notes Dan's obsessive watching of old sitcoms on Hulu, but worries at it. She swears Rufus wouldn't leave Brooklyn, but Dan's like, "Hmm, though." Jenny complains that they're... She searches for the word for what they are, and Dan's like, "Humphreys?" I love this scene because they're so natural and funny and affectionate with each other that for once it doesn't sound like an insult. She gives him a damn straight, and he says without looking at her that she grew up good. He looks at her after he says it, and it's really sweet, and she is very cute, like, "Um, yeah? Duh?"
They come out into Lily's apartment, where the party is in full swing, and the Plastics immediately swarm. Isabel congratulates Jenny on the party, and she dorkily shuffles the million boardgames around, asking what the hell they're doing there. "Once I heard Poppy Lifton was coming to your party, I canceled mine," Penelope explains. "In the last twenty minutes, I've been hit on by two Bronfmans and a gay designer. It was so worth it." Isabel's loving it; Hazel offers Jenny kudos on "rising from the social grave," and Nelly Yuki casts aspersions on the chili Dan's carrying before they run off, Hazel snorting at him hatefully as she brings up the back. I'm very happy to see her! "I liked my social grave," Jenny snits awesomely: "I dug it myself, and I was happy to lie in it. What's going on? Why are they here?" Dan goes looking for a caterer so he can get rid of the chili, and Jenny spots Serena in the thick of things.
Jenny's wearing a black jacket over the Missoni dress, so basically she looks like Jenny Humphrey, and Poppy and Serena hop up and down. Jenny's like, "Poppy, how great that you're so unexpectedly here," shooting meaningful eyeball lasers at Serena, who sends Poppy off to grab drinks so she can do damage control. "Surprised?" she asks, by which she means, "Please tell me that you are not going to get mad, and just follow my lead here." Jenny admits she's more confused than anything, and asks about Rufus and Lily. "They're at Billy Elliot, fifth row center. I told them that a girl only turns sixteen once, and she needs to spend it with her friends. And friends of friends. My present to you!" Her whole face is just this open letter to the editor begging Jenny to be cool and fit into the plan -- and I mean, at this point it's the sensible thing to do, after all, because like it or not theoretically, it is actually happening -- but being cool and going with reality are not what Humphreys do, duh.
Jenny swears she was clear about not wanting this, and Serena recasts history in Poppy terms, saying that probably what Jenny meant was that she didn't want a "social fiasco where you planned something and people didn't show up" -- which is of course what sent Serena off on this tangent to begin with, because she was always the hostess of the party even when she and Lily were planning it -- and she wraps up with the huge lie that "all of these people" are here just for Jenny. Which is just patently and patronizingly untrue, as demonstrated by Patrick McMullan -- this utterly famous photographer-friend of Andy Warhol whose pictures of celebrities and Beautiful People basically invented parties -- who Serena calls over by name to take her picture with the birthday girl, and who excitedly asks, "It's a birthday?" Jenny quits that particular scene immediately and Serena stares after her like, Busted.
Jenny runs to the gays for comfort, of course, and Eric's like, "Isn't this just a lovely, intimate family gathering?" Jonathan shows her a monogrammed cocktail napkin ("SUPER SWEET ON THE UPPER EAST"), laughing about how totally Jenny that is, and she snatches it. They realize just how not cool she is with this, and Jenny demands an explanation for this hijacking. Eric points out that most importantly Serena wanted to do something nice for her, and got carried away, but off Jenny's cut-the-crap look also admits that Serena obviously needs to prove she can still throw a great party. Which is what parties are for, I mean, throwing yourself a party is something that is kind of fun, but you can't really go balls-out for yourself the way you can for somebody else, without looking like Blair Waldorf.
But so instead of shoving the gays under one arm and the board games under the other and heading to Denny's or under a bridge or whatever Jenny crap she would have preferred, Jenny gets a crazy Blair look in her eye and texts GG: "RAGER AT THE VDW. COME ONE, COME ALL!" She slips her phone back in her purse with these funny superspy movements, and Eric and Jonathan get scared. Isn't it refreshing to see the whole "mom and dad are gone and things get out of control and somebody breaks a vase" plot rewritten in this way where instead of being surprised by it, it's actually on purpose, and done for shitty reasons? That's nice. That's really Gossip Girl, I think, that self-aware teen-story remix thing. I wish that rule got broken less often on this show than it is, but it's still pretty rare that you get a straight rip-off, and that's fun. I remember this interview going into Season Two of The O.C. where Schwartz was like, "We will never do a lab partner episode. Well, I mean, we're doing that right now actually, but we're not doing it, like, how it always is on TV. We're doing it like the lab partners are the adopted kid and the secret bastard aunt who are attracted to each other and nobody ever figures out whether it counts as incest, but then Adam Brody gives a cute speech about how he's somehow his own grandfather or some shit."
And I mean, on the story level there's overbearing and selfish that results in nothing terrible, which is Serena tonight and every day, but then there's just straight-up rude, which is intentionally ruining a party that is in progress, at someone else's house, because you need the entire world to know how grown up and unique you are. And I guess the sudden news about the possible loft sale might be causing a teenage reflex reaction, just Jenny acting out and trying to be unlovable, like, if she throws a riot at Lily's house then Lily won't make her move there, but if that's part of it I think it is a very small part. Mostly, I just think she's being tacky.
Speaking of tacky, here come Vanessa and Chuck in the elevator toward the party, and Vanessa is exasperated because all she wanted was something to do besides feeling sorry for herself, and all she's getting is "sleazy platitudes" and -- as he's doing it -- Chuck staring at her boobs. Chuck slimes that she shot down plenty of great ideas, and Vanessa sniffs that they all involved "leaking a Chuck/Vanessa sex tape to the internet." Which would stress Blair and Nate out, to the degree that Nate knows what the internet is. Chuck doesn't take his eyes off her face, offering to keep the tape to themselves, and she laughs in spite of herself. "Consistent, if twisted." He really is charming. I like their friendship a lot, because it makes total sense; what's sad and scary is if you start adding the Vanessa propaganda -- integrity, as we'll discuss later, but also self-reliance and the automatic disdain for Chuck's shit that comes with a certain self-conscious virtue -- to Chuck's thing last week about how Dark Phoenix Blair isn't "the Blair he wants." Because if you look at it the right way and sort of squint, Old Blair and Vanessa have a fair amount in common.
By holding themselves in this immaculate esteem -- whether because it's all that keeps Blair sane or, in Vanessa's case, because she was born horrible -- they provide a sounding board for Chuck's version of fun, which is to be gross and shocking. He usually gives up after awhile with Serena or Lily, for example, because they don't even pretend to be grossed out, just sort of vaguely charmed and tickled by how gross he is. You need somebody whose sense of self is tied up in being appalled in order for the ongoing chase and offensiveness to really spark for him. He only trusts people who honestly understand how disgusting he is trying to be, or how disgusting he finds those parts of himself. He needs to know he's making an impression.
The reason he got tired of Blair for a second at the van der Bilts was because she was becoming too much like him, which adds up to way too close to the abyss, even for him: "To prove that nothing matters" is exactly what he's afraid of: that it doesn't. And if that's true then he'll have legitimate grounds to actually, literally go crazy in that Less Than Zero way, and he'll end up Carter Baizen, or Pete Fairman. He needs somebody to stand at the border and tell him when he's getting too close to it, and that was Blair. Except for when she jumped in with him, which has scared him to death every time she's done it, because -- compare, if you like, to Georgina's complex dance with Serena last year -- he knows she needs him for the same reason: to show her where the edges are.
Vanessa's carrying a gift, and Chuck looks amazing in his suit; they spot Blair fussing with Nate's jacket playfully, like old friends, and when she spots them she pats Nate's shirt pocket, alerting him smoothly to the new thing. The two mismatched couples stare at each other for a second, and Vanessa's like, "Fuck! What do we do?" She grabs Chuck and kisses him; it starts out awkward and fake, but turns into something else, as Nate and Blair stare, looking like they've just been hit in the head with identical dumptrucks. "Spotted: Two people who should know better... And two people who don't know what hit them." But which are whom?
Now it's a rager indeed; some cute guy wanders past with a Lily fishbowl full of weird bead strings as some guy's harassing Serena about the lack of keg. Poppy comes up, once again disappointed in Serena's ability to play with the big dogs and asking who all these "rowdy children" are. Even if Jenny's just sixteen, these people are ridiculous. Serena apologizes a million times, but Poppy and her entourage are done. She invites Serena along, but S knows she needs to deal with the trouble first. S offers to catch up later, and Poppy tells her to really try, for her own good. Seriously, S needs a drink far away from here. Everybody could use one, I think.
Serena continues to feel idiotic as Poppy leads her beautiful crew out the door, and then snags Jenny, asking her to help herd the crashers out. "Um, they're not crashing, Serena. I invited them?" Serena stares at her in total incomprehension, and Jenny says they're standing in the midst of her guest list. Serena points out this no matter what, this is not what Jenny could ever have wanted, and Jenny -- loving every second of it, in a really unattractive but totally identifiable way -- goes, "Like you care what I want!" Serena flips into Lily mode again, saying Jenny's name and swearing she "genuinely thought" that Jenny's socks would be rocked when she got off the elevator, and if they weren't, "Then I'm sorry. But you should have just said something." Which I swear is a conversation she's had verbatim with Lily, or CeCe, or both.
Jenny points out that she totally did say it, quite plainly, at breakfast, but Eric comes running up. Serena tells him to chill -- "Jenny and I are just having our first fight," she says, which I think speaks volumes about just how close she feels to Jenny, and how excited she is about their new family, already accepting this sort of thing as a natural consequence of their lives together as easily as she adjusted to Chuck moving in -- but he's not trying to break it up: it's the party crashers boning in her bed that he's concerned with. Serena gives a great OMG before noticing a girl wearing something from Lily's closet, and charges over to grab Dan. Which again, I think speaks to a flexibility in Serena that is to be admired: even if it was a few tries before it took, she turned Dan into her brother between episodes. You could almost say that her mother's constant marriages and mixed fortunes and the generally radicalized concept of "family" in Serena's life has made her and Eric the ideal landing place for the Humphreys and Chuck.
Even Bart was taken aback by how fast they accepted him, but I love that it was never grasping for anything, never "Eric needs a Daddy" stuff: just accepting things the way they are, right this second, and kind of wistfully wondering when it will all be taken away again. It's a funny little key to Serena that she'll only give you any amount of shit at all if she's already accepted you on her team, or else it's just politeness and the occasional icy eyebrow. The only person she will ever fight back with is Blair, of course, but these things -- getting into a family argument with Jenny, screaming at Chuck in the bathroom, snottily telling Bart she wasn't wearing any underwear -- are signs of her affection: it's the politeness that's the killer.
I mean, I don't intend any of this as an apology for Serena, because I think you only need an apology if they've done something wrong, and I don't think this is a situation where anybody did anything horribly wrong: it's just stuff that happened, that makes sense. You don't need a bad guy every time; in fact, I don't think you ever need a bad guy, because morality isn't relative: saying Jenny is being tacky doesn't let Serena off the hook any more than calling Serena out would make Jenny spotless, and calling Poppy a condescending bitch doesn't really explain why Serena keeps crawling up her cooter.
But I do identify with Serena here even more than usual, because I often get accused of the same thing, and it's not out of a desire to be fake or anything. It's just that there are real people, and then there's the world out there, and it's not worth getting upset with or about people that aren't on your team, because they have no impact on your actual life. It is no skin off my ass to be polite with you, no matter how poorly you're behaving, because eventually you'll go away and things will get awesome again. If she just apologized to Jenny and left the room, that would be deadly. Instead she's willing to tussle, let Jenny in behind the mask, counsel Chuck on his momentary sexual dysfunction, slap Dan and laugh at him in the same moment: those are safe places.
Nate gets tired of the total constant pushing that is the Blair Experience, and barks at her a little bit. She asks him what they could possibly have to discuss, beyond boning and getting married and naming their kids Paul and Holly, and Vanessa -- who is standing there, on legs that are fully operable, staring at them while they have this conversation -- literally asks them to go away and talk about it somewhere else alone. Which on the one hand, Blair should really pull this shit in private, but also: that is so Vanessa. Blair points out that she's standing there gapemouthed, and pulls Nate up and away.
Up in Chuck's room -- Because where else would she pull this shit? If you really think about how gross you were in high school, doing things just for effect and using people to make points to other people, you would go insane -- Nate's like, "What up." Blair throws him across the room, onto Chuck's bed, and tells him they're not leaving until they figure out their status. She scrambles on top of him, and he looks up at her like he has a concussion or chronic ennui and can't quite fight her off, and she's like, "Do something!" He's probably just used to getting the cash up front.
Nate squirms underneath her and says something very awesome and unbeatable: "Blair, stop acting like me being your friend is some kind of plot to humiliate you, okay?" Ouch, that is such a good line. Way to turn it around on her, kid. "Did you ever think that maybe things didn't work out between us because we weren't friends?" But Blair Waldorf will not be denied! She plasters on a creepy fake smile and wiggles all over him about how he's so right, and they've become such great friends in the last week, and it's just this magnetic force of friendship that is making her have to kiss him. Nate laughs as she goes in for a third time, because she's so crazy and funny, and tells her to tone it down.
Blair pushes it just a little too far, caught up in the moment and remembering the filthy things they used to say. She suggests the party crowd -- or even grosser, Chuck and Vanessa possibly eavesdropping -- could be a turn-on, rather than a totally sad sign that desperation is alive and well in here. Which is not only a bad idea to say, but so the wrong way to go with Nate, man. He says her name, very firmly, to snap her out of it; she gets embarrassed for getting weird with Nate, so that when he touches her hair to comfort her, she jumps away and yells, bizarrely, "Only my boyfriend gets to touch my hair!" I don't know what that's about, but it's certainly a buzzkill.
Dan -- cringing hopefully that it's something his dad might say -- tells her she has the rest of her life to "throw these fabulous society parties," whereas this might be the last time she'll get to "roust naked strangers from making love" on her mattress. She laughs, and Dan admits that there was no point to that speech because: welcome to college. What the fuck is it with Brooklyn people that they think parties are the worst thing in the universe? It's not black magic, it's music, and catered food, some nice conversation, you get laid. What is the problem? Why are they like this?
Eric shows up freaking out for the third or fourth scene in this episode, and after the commercial it's all four kids rushing down to the front door, where scads of GG readers are going nuts and trying to get in. "How was I supposed to know that if I threw you the best party of the year, you would sabotage it?" Jenny tries to return the volley -- "How was I supposed to know how many kids would show up?" -- which isn't a return so much as a concession, but what a dumb rejoinder. "Come to this party at the house of one of the famous people this blog is about! You're welcome!" is not confusing in any way, it is a straightforward invitation to come start a riot. And Serena's complaint, while beside the point now, is still valid, which is: why oh why didn't Jenny just kick up her heels and go make a better party for herself, instead of fucking up what was already there, happening at her dad's girlfriend's house? It's her day, right, so but by that logic, you're suggesting that horrible parties full of horrible people are what she likes, and so she deserved to have one for her day.
Vanya screams at the crazy riot outside that they are parasites and hooligans, and Serena asks him what's going on. Vanya yells about calling the police, but just then the cops show up, and Jenny grabs at Serena protectively, pulling her back from the door. All four kids back up from the door and watch the crowd scatter... Revealing Lily and Rufus. Lily does that sly smirk thing she does when she's pissed off, and Rufus looks hangdog and disappointed like always, and Vanya doffs his cap at them, and the kids are doing awesome things: Dan looks worried like he's going to jail, Jenny's just sad and feeling like a dick, Eric is trying to think of a way to fix everything, and Serena is rolling her eyes and playing with her hair and whistling to herself.
Lily freaks out about the damage to the house, such that Rufus reminds her that while things did get out of hand, the kids are at least okay. She allows that the kids' safety is the first priority, but says that the second most important thing is the apartment, and continues to wig out. She finally focuses on Serena, who immediately puts on her game face and delivers a speech she's been practicing all night. "Mom, I admit I made a few phone calls. If you want to punish someone for the passed hors d'oeuvres, point the finger here. Guilty as charged. But as far as all the people?" Lily scoffs at her gesture toward Jenny: "Oh, and you expect me to believe that Jenny was behind this?" Serena stares at her with a total WTF, because her whole point was to show what a good grown up she's being, and instead she's being held to the standard of Old Serena: lying and causing trouble. "After she had me cancel the best caterer in town because she wanted ... Clue and a crock-pot?" Eric points out that there's a pretty obvious note of distaste in Lily's voice, and S is just pissed and exhausted: "When this family was just me and Eric, if things got out of control it was a pretty safe bet that it was my fault." Eric agrees. "But as this family grows, so does the pool of suspects. This is not my mess." Serena takes her leave and Dan speaks up: "All I did was carry the chili and prevent teenagers from having unprotected sex." So awesome. I think I might just unreservedly love Dan as a Bass der Humphrey.
"Serena may have had her own motives, I may have helped with the crowd situation with a few inspirational words, but," Eric prods, waiting on a long silence before Jenny finally clears her throat. "...But I was the one who posted the party on Gossip Girl." Lily stares at her, and she decides to try again. "Look, I'm sorry, Lily. And I'm sorry, Dad. And I don't know, maybe Serena was just trying to be nice, but the party that she threw was totally... embarrassing." Lily can't even conceive of that, is how far outside her wheelhouse it is, and she says that from what she can tell Serena's plan was "delightful."
Jenny gives it yet another shot. "You know, at least last year, it was my face on the cake. And the people at my party might have hated me, but at least they knew who I was." Taylor Momsen is such a good actor. "I know that it's hard for you guys to understand. But I like being me. And as crazy as it may seem, I choose not to be a Park Avenue princess. On my birthday, or any other day. No matter what my address might be." Rufus is afraid he knows where she's going with it, but asks anyway, and Dan admits he took the call from the broker. Jenny says it's fine that they want to live together, but she's not done being a Humphrey, and Lily flinches just as Eric's like, "Wait, what?"
"Teenage ragers, annoying sort-of-siblings, being yelled at by my mother? This should not be my life." Poppy agrees, and points out that nobody's stock rose in the last quarter. Her hair has become totally stupid, with locks pulled forward over her ears so she looks like a seventh level elven mage. Serena asks for more suggestions, barring party throwing, and Poppy laughs and says she needs to get away. "Yes! Road trip!" Serena crows, and Poppy gives her another sympathetic look, because obviously she means coming to Spain on Gabriel's jet. Serena mourns for the days her fantasies were less prosaic, and you can still see her trying for approval and wanting Poppy to tell her she's cool, and it's just heartbreaking. So apparently Gabriel's parents' place is insanely beautiful, and Spain also has weather and food, and Gabriel's hot friends. Serena is in, but not really; when Poppy says they can leave tomorrow, Serena's embarrassed and says she's grounded. And Poppy more than makes up for the hair with her awesome delivery: "Serena. No." And that's all it takes. Serena hoists her tumbler full of vodka and they toast España, and GG shows her extensive knowledge of basic noun/gender agreement: "Uh-oh. Looks like someone's up to their old tricks, and just in time, too. Cuidado, España. Here comes El Problema!"
Rufus and Lily chat about how great it is to have "highly trained professionals" cleaning her apartment while she slums it in the loft, being secretly pregnant behind a throw. Apparently Serena called last night and said she was sleeping at Poppy's, which gave Lily time to think about how crappy it was to jump to the conclusion that Serena was acting wild, when she hasn't done anything remotely wild in like two years and Lily has remarked on that more than once. Rufus and Lily apologize to each other about it, and agree that Jenny's expressed the correct level of remorse, but decide that moving in together was too stupid to even mention. Plus, you know, Dan's gone after this year and Jenny's graduating in a couple of years, assuming she will graduate at all, so screw it. Case closed, give it two years and you know they'll have broken up sixteen times and Lily will have gotten married easily fourteen times by then anyway. She changes the subject to Dan and Yale, and then scoots when Dan overhears and comes in to ask what's up.
"Wait. Is that... Is that why you were moving in with Lily? To pay for my education?" He sits down and asks what went wrong, and then has the audacity to refer to himself as "needy." Rufus points out that it's all relative, and in no way have they ever been needy, and Rufus assures him he's going to take care of it and that he's always been good at taking care of their education before now. He distracts Dan with his fan letter, and tells him to go call the kid, and swears they'll figure it out, but Dan's still a little worried.
Blair, looking nuts, and Dorota, toting loaves of bread, walk through the park as Blair explains that Nate was right, and she really has been loving their friendship this week. "We may not have had the drama or the electricity, but you know what we did have?" Dorota knows: "Fun?" And Blair nods. "Yes, Dorota. Fun." Dorota's loving it! Blair sighs. "Nate... He's so nice. Being around him wasn't hard, it didn't hurt. Until now." Her mouth gets all sad and they stop so she can reveal that she really does miss her "friend Nate." Dorota advances the suggestion that Blair will cheer up again soon, and she nods. "True. The ducks do soothe me." She holds out one savagely adorable hand and says in the most wonderfully dorky voice, "Give me my loaf."
But no! Because Nate is standing there! He totally set it up with Dorota to be in Blair's favorite spot, so they can have their first kiss there. Oh, and he looks good in the snow. Dorota hums with joy as Blair goes to him and he explains that he does want to be with her, just not in the middle of ten miles of bullshit and her acting like a horny vampire, like last night. She feels yucky about it for a moment, and he touches her hair.
Gabriel, obviously, comes wandering over to Serena with her bags, staring at her with his big weird face and acting like he knows her. "I met you last year, around this time actually. You were with a friend of yours, and you were calling yourself ... Savannah?" Ah, Georgie times. Scary. Poppy runs up with champagne, since it's a private jet, and they officially are introduced while Poppy squeals with excitement, failing to notice that he's taken with Serena and that she's blushing. Man, his face. He looks like a Tim Heidecker character.
Dan calls the fan, and his mom picks up the phone, but is given pause by the area code. "Who does Scott know in Brooklyn?" The dad is revealed, and if you recognized one but not the other it takes both to figure out who they are: the people who lied about Pilot Inspektor, whose name is apparently Scott. The dad answers and tells Dan that Scott can't come to the phone, but his face crumples when Dan tells Mr. Inspektor his name. "He wrote me a letter, so, uh, I guess if he wants to talk, tell him he can... He can give me a call back?" The dad lies and hangs up, and they commence freaking out because, they assume, Scott's figured out about his parentage somehow. She tells him to delete the call, and GG's like, "Here we go."
Serena texts Lily, who's grinning down at Jenny and the gays gobbling balls in the age-old family fun game Hungry Hungry Hippos, which maybe Nate Archibald would enjoy after the age of six but that's it, and Lily gets the message -- that she's en route to Spain, so suck it -- and feels dreadful. Blair and Nate are still kissing at the duck pond, and then it cuts to Chuck in his Burberry pajamas, looking over at Vanessa who is totally putting her dress back on from last night. Awesome! Looking delightsome and sleepy, he congratulates her on trying to sneak out before he wakes up, and she's like, "This never happened, and I am filthy now in my soul, so you can't tell anybody." He kisses her, as long as they're keeping secrets, and she is helpless before his charms, and even GG is like, "Don't do it, Vanessa!" But she totally says her lie again from last night -- "This is just between us. It means nothing?" -- only now she's hoping it's true. Nothing means anything. That wasn't the Blair he wanted. He agrees, and they are surprisingly sweet together, and the music goes dissonant and wild. XOXO, and I'll see you in two weeks.