Plot-heavy, touching, funny and scattered: lots of pieces get moved around, characters (Eleanor and Jenny particularly) show colors we've not really seen before, Blair/Serena and Nate/Chuck have much-missed scenes together, Dan is awesome some more, and Jenny comes up with a storyline of sorts. All in all, a good showing -- even if it's 90% setup -- that makes the upcoming episodes feel monumental in a way the story hasn't since Bart's death midseason. I actually didn't realize how much had happened until I tried to write it all down.
Serena returns from España having stolen Poppy's weird-looking boyfriend Gabriel, whom she met in her life as Bad Savannah, and to whom she may or may not be married. She spends Cyrus Rose's entire Passover meal freaking out and pretending she's back with Dan, who is working the dinner as a waiter in order to help pay for school. This latter development freaks Rufus out so much that he decides to sell his art gallery, because what you should do when you don't have enough money is make less money. I can't wait to see how Lily gets her grubby hands all over Rufus's newfound poverty; on the upside, she finally realizes that telling Serena that she's turning back into Bad Serena is the quickest way to make that happen, as we've seen multiple times, and instead just tells her that she got into Brown, and to stop acting psychotic.
Meanwhile, the Grandfather gets Nate into Yale, which freaks Nate out because of the whole dynasty thing and because he's learned that the Grandfather is the one who got the SEC to investigate the Captain to begin with. It also freaks Blair out, because she's as desperate to get into college as she is to pretend she doesn't even want to go to college, and the ease with which the van der Bilts do these things is both a goad and an enticement. Her new plan -- becoming a career socialite and pushing Nate into ambition and alcoholism -- really upsets Eleanor, who knows Blair deserves to be the dictator of an actual country and not just the Whitney. Cyrus's offer to get her an interview at NYU is brutally rebuffed, which Eleanor and Cyrus don't even have time to worry about due to the intense tension of having Cyrus's wedding at the totally doomed Seder. As usual, Blair spends most of the episode fucking things up for everybody, but spends the last act in a truly unprecedented orgy of apologizing to everybody she can track down.
So van der Bilt puts Blair into a terrible spot, which means advancing her social position by manipulating Nate into taking the Yale position. Of course, since this is everything Blair wants (right now) tied up with a little bow, it explodes in her face. She ends up losing whatever social cache the Grandfather has given her when Nate gives a hateful little speech at Trip's wedding, thanks to Trip telling on her; both van der Bilt and Nate blow her off. She runs to Serena's arms while she's making up with Gabriel, and they cuddle and S tells her everything is going to be fine. It is awesome.
At exactly the same time, Chuck and Nate are having a little cuddle of their own. Chuck explains that Blair is full-on fucking nuts right now, but trying to at least appear human for the first time in her left, and seriously needs somebody like Nate in her life right now. So for the eighth episode running, Nate and Blair end up in each other's arms out of stark fear, and once again it's bizarrely romantic.
While all of this is happening, Jenny tells Chuck straight up that she's not interested in being a part of any family that includes his rapist ass, and he ends up apologizing for the pilot and promising he'll be gone long before she and Rufus ever move in, if they ever move in. This is awesome: because maybe people will drop it now, because it's smart to make that a plot point in itself rather than just a weird scary dropped thread, and because it somehow shifts the narrative accountability to Jenny, who now basically has the power to decide whether Chuck stays a Bass der Woodsen or kills himself.
So: either everybody is changing or they're not, everybody else spends the episode trying to decide if anybody else is really changing and then discussing it with each other, and the proof of those changes comes about in radically unrelated ways that nobody notices. Which is probably the best narrative evocation of senior year I can think of. Serena's in at Brown, Dan and Rufus are still working on paying for Yale, Nate is going to Columbia and Blair hopefully to NYU, and everybody's happy for a second. Except of course for Poppy Lifton, who it turns out is using Gabriel against Serena in some unknown way.
week: GEORGINA SPARKS is in a motherfucking CULT. What else do I need to say?
Well, it looks like we're heading into an unbroken five-week run that will take us to the end of the season, so whatever momentum we've got here is only going to get stronger -- especially when you assume we'll get revelations about Blair's post-funeral activities, the Poppy Lifton thing going nuclear, Pilot Inspektor, Chuck's relationships with Nate and Blair to get fabulous, and the Lily Rhodes flashback episode, which should include Gia Goodman and Dick Casablancas, God willing, because you know how much I love Dick. XOXO, and see you week.
Our vlogger takes on Gossip Girl and we've got spin-offs that we'd really like to see.
Grieg's "Anitra's Dance" from Peer Gynt plays over the scene; it's nice because it's recognizable classical music, but interesting given the whole roaming-the-desert Mosaic theme Blair presents us with later. Even more interesting is the fact that you can pretty much throw a dart at the collected works of Ibsen and hit some part of the Archibald-van der Bilt-Waldorf story. The music cues of this little Blair/Nate folly are all pretty great: after this, they're all remixes of Jazz Age classics. So even though we've got poor little flower girls and Eliza Doolittles facing off against each other in the dream, it's no wonder that Nate's looking more like an Atlantic City Amory Blaine. Well, maybe that's just his face.
So Cockney Blair is wandering some classy joint selling flowers when she sees Nathaniel, sitting with a glamorous figure whose gigantic hat obscures her face. She gets all excited and tries to sell him a flower for her, but then the figure raises her head: it's post-Higgins Doolittle Blair, looking ravishing and more than a little disgusted at the intrusion. "Please, Oi'm tryin' to earn money so as Oi can go to Yayo. It's moy dream, it is! Always 'as been!" As Nate gestures the maitre d' over to remove her, Blair laughs at her: "Yale? You foolish little girl. That dream is over. Time to wake up."
Normally the Audrey Hepburn dream sequences are either so vague they don't make sense, or so literal they are bullshit, but in this case it's interesting, because Blair's ongoing madness is getting so bizarre. She wants to go to Yale, but she can't get in, so she's blowing it off and saying she'd rather be a society wife, but specifically the society wife of Nate. Who is also at the end of a parallel journey she's been on, if you substitute "Chuck" for "Yale," and in both cases it represents the lazier and less terrifying choice.
Because every character in your dream is you, of course, but especially right now: they're both right. She really is making fun of herself. She really has given up one dream for another while simultaneously knowing better, and refusing to give up her dream. But most of all: both Blairs are selling out. From deep inside the post-feminism given her by both her parents, in different ways, she knows that "flower girl" is just as much a metaphor for "prostitute" as marrying Nate.
One thing Blair Waldorf has never had to contend with is being an object, the way Serena and Nate are: she's too prickly and too stubborn for that. (And Serena's in there too, being played by Blair: "The Rain In Spain" falls mainly on drunk highschoolers.) Which means she loses a lot of ground, not having the ability to hide her selfishness and intelligence as well as those two, and lacking the shapelessness that gives them such a leg up in fulfilling everybody else's desires. (This is, of course, the point of Peer Gynt, and why most Ibsen women eventually shoot themselves in the head.) But, she gains the ground of at least knowing that it's two sides of the same problem, and that she hasn't yet found the elegant solution for both -- how to get what she wants, without giving up who she is -- which is what the dream is asking her to do. Which is, after all, a lesson not even Lily's mastered yet.
"When you lose hope in a dream, sometimes all you're left with are sleepless nights," says Gossip Girl, with the weariness only a teen blogger can summon. Blair's eyes fall on the Tripp/Maureen wedding invite, and the sudden light in her eyes is almost authentic: "While some call the doctor for a refill, I find the best solution is a full social calendar..."
Downstairs, Cyrus Rose is wearing an apron reading Schmutz Happens, and is sweetly looking at every single picture of the last few weeks that Blair's perseverating on -- "And here Nate and I are at the Young Fellows Ball, and here we are with his grandfather, William van der Bilt" -- with flagging enthusiasm. Eventually, she nearly claps her hands that way she does. "Cyrus, focus! You missed a lot while you were gone!" I don't know if I'm happier that he's back, or to see Blair so overjoyed to have him.
Cyrus is distracted because he's cooking Seder -- and oh, they shamelessly do that hilarious Dora The Explorer thing with every single word (e.g. "The Passover supper tonight, the Seder!") in this episode, because of course there are no Jews in New York City, so the target audience just isn't going to get it -- but Blair doesn't give an eff about that. How dare you celebrate Passover when there are fifteen shots of Nate making that one face he knows how to make?
Eleanor enters, all excited about dinner, and Cyrus is positive his brisket is going to blow minds left and right, and Blair says -- in a fluty voice not unlike the dream-Doolittle's -- to save her some. Eleanor tells her she's not going anywhere, she's not even in Tripp's wedding so what's she thinking, and Blair assures her that she has received a text from Nate. He's got a surprise for her, probably a spot on the Whitney junior committee, which Maureen is on. (Which only complicates the whole van der Bilt/Vanderbilt fiasco further, but whatever.) While Cyrus chops bitter herbs and whatever, Eleanor tells her to get real about her future, and B explains that Tripp's fiancée is already on like fifty committees and all that crap. Not even Cyrus is impressed, and usually Cyrus is ready to act like everything Blair does is wonderful, because that's how you keep her from biting and scratching.
"Being a socialite was good enough for Jackie O," Blair twitters, and runs away before Eleanor can tell her to cut it out. Which is another facet of the dream, because think about how Eleanor is independently wealthy, both an artist and a cutthroat businesswoman, who married for love twice -- once to a homo and once to a Jew, neither of which are words the Archibalds can even spell -- and how it was her new money the Captain was pimping Nate out after last year. The Bass and Waldorf names don't amount to a whole lot, but they do amount to money, whereas the van der Woodsens of the world seem to be always running around penniless and marrying New Money so they don't starve. And then you've got poor Nate, who's like living proof of the fact that class has nothing to do with money, and acted exactly the same before the Captain as when he was homeless, and is still acting that way now that the van der Bilts are after him again.
But part of the reason Eleanor didn't have Jenny killed, after all, is because of all Blair's friends she's the only one that gets it. And she raised this sincerely intimidating, powerful girl on like this big gay Themiscyra island with Horace so that she could turn into Heather Locklear, not so she could be the big celebutante. If any part of Blair understands that this is a seriously degrading step for their family to consider, it came straight from Eleanor, and the more Blair sinks into this weird Senior Year fog the angrier she gets.
Cyrus jumps in, offering to pull some strings to get her an interview with his friend JR, a "big mugwump" at NYU, which Eleanor loves, but Blair's mind is firmly set on this new stupid plan: "Well I'm sorry, but just because I lost Yale does not mean I'm wasting my time at a non-Ivy, reading Beloved six times and experimenting with lesbianism." She stomps off with a snotty "Nate is waiting," and Eleanor basically gives her whole socialite plan a huge classy middle finger, but it's too late.
Serena comes home to smarmy morning Chuck asking how Spain was, but she's not exactly overflowing with details. At this point in the day, the story is that she read and ate and swam on the beach while Poppy romped with her weird-looking (but real life socialite) boyfriend Gabriel. She looks around for Lily, to apologize for the sudden jet-set, and Chuck goes on and on about some ho he brought home. "She's a synchronized swimmer. Can hold her breath for five minutes." Don't try to figure out what that means, because it doesn't mean anything, because besides Blair and Nate Chuck Bass is a total virgin and always says incomprehensible shit like that.
Serena's duly impressed, and he scoffs about his "detour with a boho barista," which is sort of funny except for THEN WHY EVEN GO THERE, except maybe now Vanessa will go crazy like Blair did after fucking Chuck, and finally be interesting for good instead of just in fits and starts. In a nod I guess to the bitterness of their love affair, and the constant whiff of coffee beans that accompanies her everywhere, he spends this whole scene smirking and sipping from a tiny little espresso demitasse, which is remarkably ungay for once. And his explanation for dumping V is pretty perfect -- "...Then I realized I'm a seventeen-year-old billionaire with tremendous stamina" -- and then he mentions his date with a Bolshoi ballerina tonight, sip sip, before dropping the bomb that he saw Poppy Lifton at the Rose Bar last week, which means Serena's lying. Sip.
Nate meets Blair on the steps of the church and kisses her, telling her how beautiful she looks, and she laughs and creepily asks him if he's trying to seduce her on church property before they go inside. She natters at him about not getting seated behind Sweet Caroline Kennedy at the wedding, whom she unfairly describes as a "giraffe," but it makes Nate laugh, because he has no idea who that is. Or what a giraffe is.
Nate's got some knowledge to drop: first, he's having lunch with Tripp (which is where he finds out that Granderbilt William was the one that called the SEC on the Captain) and second that he got into Columbia. Proving that Nate sometimes really is just that retarded, he goes, "I wanted to see if I could get in without any family help, you know. I mean, all my grandfather had to do to get me into Yale was just make a phone call, and..." Her face is sad, his is sadder, and he apologizes for being a dullard. But I mean, suck it up, Waldorf. That's what happens when you only apply to like one school.
(Not to mention the only things Nate's done are have sex in public with both cougars and women his own age, once while drunk and underage, defraud the FBI, take illegal possession of seized property, gamble illegally with known drug distributors, break onto school property, and commit multiple counts of assault in public. I mean, it's not like he invited somebody to the opera at the wrong time or anything really heinous like that.) But whatever, ass, he feels sorry, Blair fake-smiles in that heartbreaking way where it's like she's actually grasping the idea of other people and being happy for them, and then he manages to go even further with it, saying he's "torn" between the school she's wanted to attend since birth and the school he was able to get into all on his own.
Thank God for Maureen, who comes up to tell Blair she's "too new on the scene" for the Whitney committee, because after all, "when it comes to these things, it takes a while to start to matter." Between these two saying this shit, I can't believe Blair didn't just produce a machine gun from under her skirts somewhere and mow down all these fuckers. Even worse, they chose one of Maureen's bridesmaids, and Blair's not even gotten that. "Hey, if it makes you feel any better, Maureen had to pick her bridesmaids from a list provided by my grandfather." Um, no. It doesn't. Because any list your grandfather has in his hand, I mean to be on it: Bridesmaids, hitmen, Pinkertons, whatever. Can I remind you of the list of "future wives for Nate," which as recently as two weeks ago contained VANESSA ABRAMS? How exclusive is this shit?
Blair shoots him another fake-ass smile and goes to sit alone in the pews, "with the commoners," to watch a bunch of people who apparently don't give a fuck about her rehearse their wedding. Blair Waldorf, I mean, I wouldn't have wanted to invite her to my birthday party when I was little. Not because she's scary and mean, but just because the idea of other people getting presents would probably have killed her. I still have a little bit of a secret problem with that, and I've been pushing thirty for a long, long time.
Hey, it's Jenny. Hey, it's Jenny's rich-kid mush-mouthed new love interest, Wes. What are they talking about? Who cares. Science or something. Because sometimes Constance and St. Jude's are like this, but other times they're like this. Wes leaves after like five seconds of Dan's company, and Jenny seems poised to do the same, but then Rufus comes out complaining about how in a recession people don't buy overpriced art by gimmicky children like Aaron Rose -- Who, by the way, is where? On Passover he's doing what? Not that I'm complaining -- because they have to do things like pay rent so they have somewhere to go when they're not pounding the pavement.
Dan throws around the "I'm the one with the expensive Yale tuition" thing a million more times, and asks to help. But since having a job or a modicum of responsibility would be a priceless character-building exercise for Dan's entitled too-good-for-money ass, and might actually turn him into a worthwhile person as he approaches manhood, Rufus is like, "Under no circumstances."
Rufus runs off to help Lily shop for lamps and shoes and whatever rich ladies like -- ponies and diamonds and expensive Yale tuitions and washed-up rockstars in chokers -- because Dan's job for now is school and writing shitty fiction and harassing writers up and down the coast. And just briefly, consider the fact that we spent about eighteen million episodes on Rufus actively quashing Jenny's legitimate career for the same reason, rendering her effectively homeless in the process, because he was jealous. But then, thinking about the dipshitty move he pulls at the end of the episode, maybe Rufus is just becoming a metaphor for how the recession happened in the first place and week he'll default on some subprime loans and daytrade some derivatives and then ask the government for a bailout.
Either way, the second Rufus is out the door Jenny's on top of it like, "Wes's mom owns a catering company. Get some capital together and get the fuck out before he renders you effectively homeless. I had my chance." Dan turns up his perfect button nose at this -- he was thinking more along the lines of checking Craigslist for "Poet Laureate" positions, I'm assuming -- but accepts somewhat gracefully. Plus, this means Jenny can put more moves on Wes. Who, God bless him, he's a cutie pie, but Jenny's track record is such that he'll probably turn out to be one of those thirty-year-old sex offenders going all 21 Jump Street through the benefit of his small stature.
Granderbilt ambushes Blair in the cheap seats and, through a menacing and somewhat enticing advance-and-retreat-and-imply dance that's above even her head, gets her to understand that she needs to talk Nate into attending Yale, in order to get everything she wants. Which at this point is a seat on the Whitney committee, now that she's publicly blown off school for the year and her brain is now suicidal. Blair speaks on Nate's behalf like six times about how proud he is of getting into Columbia on his own, and how these decisions should be made by Nate himself, and I seem to remember this same exact conversation going on in Season One, only it was Dartmouth the Captain wanted, and Nate wanted to go to USC, but whatever. All of these storylines are sort of built around the idea that Nate will do something interesting -- in the future -- and since I love him no matter what time it is, I don't mind. I'm sure he'll be great one day.
Granderbilt finally gets Blair to understand what he's saying, and tells her he'll clear up the "mistake" with the committee head because Blair's such a good friend. She searches his face and makes the call, grossed out by herself just a little bit but terrified to lose this dream also, and notes that Nate would look "dashing" in Bulldog Blue. Granderbilt stands, done with her weird ass, but she demands also a place in the bridal party. He's startled, but impressed, and sticks out his hand. She stares at it like a mean dog, but finally takes it, and he leads her to the front, to put her on the list.
Eleanor rushes around yelling -- and tossing us a bone -- about how Dorota and Vanya have fallen in love, and now Dorota's all about Dorota, and has the night off. I remember Vanya being crazy hot but that's all I remember and now I wish I'd taken better mental notes. Meanwhile, Serena calls Cyrus, because she needs a lawyer for the mysterious thing she's lying about, and just like he's the only Jewish person in Manhattan, he's also the only lawyer. Which is such a coincidence considering he's also the stepfather of her best friend, and she was an attendant at his wedding, but whatever. Serena keeping a secret is like Vanessa respecting your boundaries, or Eric van der Woodsen tolerating your shenanigans: maybe for a week or two, but then everything's going to explode at once, because it opposes their basic natures. It hurts.
Rufus enters the house of PRADA loaded down with shopping bags like some kind of editorial cartoon about God knows what, and he and Lily almost talk about how shoes are art, but Rufus obliquely whines about Dan's tuition instead, and she asks what's up, and Serena comes in looking hangdog before Lily can pull out her checkbook. She sends Rufus out of the room and he welcomes Serena quietly before going to wherever it is that he considers his place in that giant apartment. He's probably got like a big pillow or blanket on the floor that he can walk around three times and then curl up on.
Serena starts to apologize, but Lily nails her for first "trashing" the apartment -- which she did not do, and we all know she did not do -- and then "running away to Spain." Which, yes, she did do, but the first rule of Bad Serena is you don't motherfucking talk about Bad Serena because if you say it three times, she shows up like Bloody Mary. And if you say it five times, then just like in Candyman you will summon Georgina Sparks. These are facts. So Serena tries a halfhearted but not entirely disingenuous "I've been feeling really lost" speech, which sounds faker than it really is (consider the whole Jenny Sweet Sixteen thing happened because Penelope lapped her as the It Girl, and the whole Spain thing happened because Poppy kissed her like Chevalier kissed Gigi, and you see that she's not really lying), and Lily just about barfs.
"Spare me, Serena. The only thing that is lost is your sense of responsibility and consideration." Good line, and also not untrue. Serena's insulted, however, when Lily says that Bad Serena's not welcome to return for the billionth time, and tells her she's grounded. She takes off with her fifty shopping bags to go toss Rufus the Kong a few times, and Serena dials the phone with extreme prejudice. She calls Blair, who's getting fitted at Reem Acra for the wedding, to make sure Blair's out of the house so she can go talk to Cyrus.
Which, see, this is why I like Serena: her face says vengeance, but I can't figure out what's vengeful about this. Just, "Okay Mom, I'm totally not grounded but whatever, I have to go talk to my lawyer and fix the problem you don't even know about. Because while you're going on and on about how I'm a child and grounding me, I've got some intense responsibilities, that I more than likely brought on myself and may or may not exist, that need taking care of." God, I hope she unkilled somebody again. I hope every time she makes that face, she accidentally failed to kill somebody on another continent in the middle of a drug-fueled threesome. Carter Baizen, sorry I left that corpse in your bed. Gabriel and Poppy Lifton, I have some explaining to do, but I'll have Cyrus iron out the details.
B's all excited because she's going to the rehearsal dinner, which is weird because I have all these strange mental hiccups about weddings that I still haven't figured out, like sometimes instead of the word "mother" I write the word "wedding" and whenever I dream about marriages it's only ever the rehearsal dinner. Even after the desperately "interesting" shitstorm that was the wedding in Rachel Getting Married all I dreamed about was ice skating and rehearsal dinners. I hate psychological shit that seems really meaningful until you look at it closer and then it's like, "No, that's just weird. I'm weird. Doesn't help."
"S, I'm one of the chosen ones. I was wandering the Bassian desert, and now I've reached the van der Bilt promised land." That's a reach, both for Blair and for the show, but the girl's nuts and she's said dumber stuff, on occasion, so we'll let it go, awkward wording and all. Serena's like, "That's nice but I'm not actually calling to talk to you" and hangs up, which raises no red flags for B, and then B assures her seamstress that Maureen's meant to have six bridesmaids, and raise the hem, and she raises her eyes to God with that scary, scary joy she gets right before the sky goes dark and the frogs start falling.
You know what's an even more adorable and annoying tic than Dan Humphrey's nervous word-vomit habit? The fact that the writers feel the need to point it out every time it happens. The first time it came up -- at the VITAMIN WATER VITAMIN WATER VITAMIN WATER -- it worked, because we were just learning about how Dan is sort of awesome sometimes, he doesn't take himself that seriously, he has a cute thing he does, look how cute, and also coalesces a thing viewers and writers have noticed, looking back, which makes us feel like we knew something about the character we didn't even know until they pointed it out, which makes us feel smart and affectionate toward him. Basic writing trick. But point it out every successive time -- especially by having other characters remark on it, which makes it entirely a writer thing and not a Dan thing at all -- and it just slides on over to the other side of the list.
So he does that thing, and it's adorable, and the cater-waiter girl he's working with points it out, also in an adorable way -- "Are you gonna do this nervous talking thing all night? It's cool. I just need to know" -- and it becomes nails on a chalkboard. They get out of the van as he's wondering about his tray-balancing skills and learning curve, and then he's explaining about his horrible father, and whatever. He looks up at the building mid-babble and realizes they're outside of Blair's building, and hysterically shits himself. Of course, Eleanor shows up and unselfconsciously complains to him about the lighting situation before vaguely sort of recognizing him.
Later, after they've renewed their acquaintance and Dan's begged her to let him blow this assignment off, Eleanor tells him he's stuck. "Dorota has the weekend off, and I absolutely need two servers." (Which is interesting, because notice how easy it was for Dan Humphrey of all people to jump to the "Why can't Dorota do it?" place.) "Cyrus's mother's coming, and she hates me. I have never thrown a Seder before, I don't even know how to say half the words in this ... prayer book that's named for Lieberman's wife." Awkward, but funny, and allows Dan to explain (Hadassah/Haggadah), which allows Eleanor to point at him and say that's proof that she needs him. It's a nice little comedic domino effect, but it starts in an awkwardly worded place and I don't know how you could clean that up.
Dan comes clean that basically, though he respects and fears Eleanor mightily as the woman who nearly ate his sister whole, he's uncomfortable serving knishes to his frenemy Blair. "Blair won't be here. And you don't serve knishes at Passover!" Eleanor shouts triumphantly, before doubling both their pay. Corinne loudly, and hilariously, tells Dan she needs the money, and he cutely agrees. I swear he's got more chemistry with this girl than any other girl he's been in a scene with, but I don't know if she's weird looking enough to be on this show regularly. Meanwhile, Eleanor runs back out into the house yelling, "Cyrus, I think the brisket's burnin'!" Watching Eleanor break down is, in some ways, more fun than watching her daughter freak out, although points off for the predictable Jewish Mother thing, true or not.
Blair, just getting off the phone with the committee head and thus having gotten both of her Granderbilt demands met, swans into Nate's room as he's dressing for dinner. He's distracted and distant, and very insistent that he's going to Columbia. It's neat, because she's being very subtle, and I don't mean in a "for Blair" way, but his firmness is coming from the thing he learned today that we don't know yet -- about Granderbilt calling the SEC -- and yet has the same effect, paranoia and sneakiness, because of Blair's guilt at being in cahoots with Nate's van der Destiny as it would if that were the case. So it all comes out the same in the end, only once again Blair's in a drama of one and Nate's having problems he doesn't feel like talking about.
"Yale only accepted me because of my grandfather. I don't want to owe him or my family anything. After tonight, we're done with them," he says, taking her hand and kissing her forehead. She's like, "Aw, fuck." Gossip Girl's happy, because she knows "whatever happened," it's Blair that's paying for Nate and Tripp's lunch. But not even B can see that far ahead, so just like with Serena we're the only ones in suspense. Which, given that this is a show entirely about surveillance and celebrity, disclosure and shame, is a trick they should pull more often, because it's always awesome. Remember Serena's black eyes of death?
Eleanor's voice reaches unknown pitches as Cyrus's mother arrives, and she keeps running around with that brisket's burnin' idiom, like she's in a Chekov or Ibsen play ("God, where is that man [of mine]?"), until Serena and Cyrus come out of the random side room where they've been discussing her latest secret disaster. He tells her to talk to Lily -- who, after all, was the only person with enough good sense to fix the Pete Fairman issue in the five seconds it took -- but Serena is unsure. And why? Because of Lily's little speech earlier, which was uncalled for and only managed to make a somewhat lost Serena into a very lost Serena: "We're not in a good place right now. I don't think I could go up to her and say, 'Sorry, but I sort of got married in Spain. But don't worry, Cyrus is helping me get a quickie annulment.'" That's awesome! Yet again, I am jealous of Serena's entire life. Cyrus tries to help some more, but Eleanor calls him away, and there's Dan looking smoking hot in that vest he always wears. And that look of judgmental shock he also always wears.
"Two days into the trip, Poppy and Gabriel get in this huge fight. And then she just leaves, abandoning me and Gabriel. And so I stayed around to keep him company..." Dan, who has no fucking room to talk and is only invited to this conversation because A) he's family and B) he was eavesdropping, can't help but get a little snotty about how she kept him some good, good company. "Dan, please. Gabriel and Poppy were over, and it's not like either one of us planned this. This thing between us just happened, and we couldn't stop it." Dan, willfully misunderstanding and thinking that reality is the point, thinks the "thing" she's talking about is a marriage, and then asks what she was thinking.
What she was thinking was, "Marriage is something I thought I should try, and he did all the heavy lifting, and Rioja is even more delicious in Spain." Dan, she was thinking what anybody would be thinking, especially a teenage girl. Especially you. God, I could get you to fight a bull or blow a dude with like one well-placed Hemingway quote. And you know it, which is why your 'tude here is so ridiculous. She's like, "Well, much like when I murder people, I might not have done it and it might not actually have happened. So Cyrus is going to figure it out."
"How does one not know if one is married?" asks Dan, arms crossed. And one tries to explain, about the Rioja and the dancing and the Rioja and the ocean skinnydipping and the knocking on the church door in the middle of the night screaming "I love you!" over and over and over. I mean, what is mysterious about any of this? It is awesome. I will make excuses for Serena van der Woodsen until the end of time, but this time I don't have to, because that is fucking rad. Did she say "I do"? She said sí. The whole thing was in Spanish. She giggles, and Dan still can't understand why. "You ran off to Spain with a guy you barely know, you got married, and you're... A little bit, you're smiling."
And if I say for a third time that of course she is, it would take away from the absolutely wonderful chemistry in this scene, where S is trying to keep a straight face and ends up looking like she's high and maintaining in front of her parents, and Dan's taken with her and playing this role where he's the conscience, and they both know how ridiculous it is, and it's maybe the best scene in the episode, technically, because it's fun and light but with a lot of pretty mature stuff going on underneath.
"No," she lies, she is not smiling, and the proof is that she woke up, realized she was acting insane, and hopped on a plane, came home, apologized to Lily, and called Cyrus, in that order. "You're like... You're a wife," he says, amazed, and she tries to blow it off, but then realizes she can't just give that away: "No, I'm not. Maybe I am." Why the change? Listen: "Are you ... jealous?" Oh, high school. Dan spits out some ludicrous thing about how they dated for a year and didn't even get to junior prom, whereas she married this guy after a few weeks. So he's sort of insulted, which makes a certain amount of sense as far as the fact that they are rapidly becoming adults and somehow missed each other anyway. He takes off, and she asks if in fact he's serving at Eleanor's Seder. He screams NO! like a little kid, then admits it.
"Yes. You're the wife of the landed gentry, and I'm a cater-waiter at a Seder." Which in addition to being a lovely rhyme calls back to the Doolittle dream: he's the flower-seller, she's the girl in the hat. Smiling down at him and telling him his dreams will never come true, because he still doesn't know what they are. And because in order to find out, he's going to have to come up with money, the one thing she'll never have to worry about. Once Gabriel enters the picture, the triplet will be complete, and we'll see what happens.
Because if the logic works out, and I have no idea if it does, but if it does, the drama between the three of them at the Seder should provide us with a clue as to how Blair -- who's nowhere near this house right now -- can solve her own crisis. I won't hazard a guess, because I have no idea what Gabriel's game is, which is the main part of this we still won't have, but I think it'll be something further up and further in than just telling the truth, because that's always the answer but rarely the entire answer. Anyway, lovely little parallel, and the kind of thing that makes it easy to blow this show off because it's operating on such a higher level than most things that you don't even know to look out for it.
Serena tags after Dan, to start up a new scheme so they can help each other out, and a Dinah Washington remix ("Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?") plays us to the wedding. I can't tell you how much I love these cues, not just because they play on the basic anachronistic time-as-a-color thing that this show is built on, and in just as sneakily and meaningful ways as the Muse song in the Yale episode, but also the fact that we're expanding our scope beyond classic drama and Brit Lit and into the New Romantic. Blair is so what would happen if Fitzgerald let his women be as strong as his antagonistic men ("Bernice Bombs Her Enemies"), and Serena is of course a pitch-perfect Daisy, but it's songs like these that so beautifully connect the van der Bilt legacy back to its history.
The MGMT song performed its melancholy duty during the football game, but only a jazz remix could evoke so easily the cage Tripp's walked into, with Nate following dumbly after. Tripp is a nickname, obviously, for the third first son, William III, and I love the way he's used in these van der Bilt stories to provide the messages about Granderbilt's intentions. It's not that he doesn't dig Nate, because who wouldn't, and it's not that he's jealous of Nate's life, because who could be. He's accustomed to his life, he's been molded beyond recovery, and just wants Nate to know all the things he doesn't, just like Maureen is able to run fifty committees and still find time to subtly warn Vanessa to get the fuck out of there. You know? I'm sad that they'll never be real characters, but the way they're used as tools is dreadfully original and sympathetic. Of course, I say that and probably week will be a closed-room mystery where they figure out that Tripp poisoned Granderbilt to get the family millions or something.
The lyrics apply equally to Blair and to Vanessa ("I've got a man who's always late/ Any time we have a date/ But I love him.../ And I'm gonna have him...") whenever the van der Bilts are involved, but of course here it's a way of having old people music and eating our cake too, in not being driven crazy by actual old people music, and a way of illustrating the creaking inability of our generation to get it together for the silly shit our grandparents think is important, in enough time to understand why.
Nate's still checked out, but treating her well. She tells him not to bother his grandfather with Columbia talk, and he shoves past Granderbilt, promising he won't talk to William about that, or anything else for that matter. "Is there a problem, Blair?" She fairly salutes, shooting William a reassuring smile, grabbing a champagne glass, and launching herself after him. If she's got the family all she needs is Nate, and she's had him forever.
Lily and Rufus randomly show up for the Seder at Eleanor's, so that Lily can pimp Rufus to rich people who like to buy art, without of course telling him about it because he's Rufus, he'd find a way to object, and Eleanor thanks her for inviting herself, mentioning once again that Cyrus's mother hates her. "Another friendly face is always welcome," she says, and turns a mutually not-so-friendly smile to the very wary Rufus, blowing him a hilariously disinterested kiss and prancing past his offered coat. She almost tells him that his son is a servant at dinner, but takes her tiny revenge at the last second. I'd be wondering if he had any other kids I could buy at some point. How awesome would it be if Pilot Inspektor turned out to somehow end up employed by Eleanor Waldorf?
Rufus, of course, knows and hates the rich-people art collectors on sight (one of them apparently "put a Monet in his bathroom"), which is ridiculous because he's always sold to rich people, it's how he hooked up with both Bex and Lily in the first place, but whatever. Dan runs down the stairs and sees them, and panics, but Serena appears and says -- I guess coming off that last scene a while back -- that he's with her. Lily's none too happy to see grounded Serena running around the Waldorf apartment, but Serena apologizes immediately and says she was invited, and then invited Dan. Even though they all know that Blair's not there and isn't coming. I don't know, this middle part seems more complicated than it needs to be, just so we'll feel like it's very complicated, or else this is just the one scene where the seams are showing in order to pull off everything else.
Lily says she doesn't want to cause a scene at Eleanor's -- demonstrably untrue, as we'll see -- and they talk about Dan's cater-waiter outfit, which he says is a "classic look," and it's stupid, and then Eleanor yells at him to get the kosher wine and make himself presentable, and Rufus finds this only mildly intriguing, which is also stupid because obviously Dan walks and quacks like a duck and eats duck food like a duck at the duck pond where there are ducks, but then Rufus never figured out about the Nate Archibald bromance either. He and Lily immediately start drinking, which maybe that's just how he deals with his son's secrets.
Jenny is all about playing Monopoly at PRADA -- "I would have invited you to the loft, but the only chef we have there is my dad, and his specialties are waffles and embarrassing me" -- for her date with Wes. Dammit, Jenny. I know you're innocent and whatever, but "Come back to my palace at the Palace, I have it to myself and we can play some hot Monopoly" is so not date behavior. Especially not Monopoly, which takes seven hours to play. Wes is sort of hot, in a dumb-looking kid way, and he can't believe that this boring Monopoly player is the same girl he used to see "hanging out on the steps of the Met," like that's somehow badass. She says people change, but then Chuck comes out, bumping his ho into the walls and stuff, putting that claim to the test. Jenny tries to ignore him, even as he's smarming all over the place.
Bathroom Monet tells Rufus that Williamsburg is "already over," and Rufus huffs and puffs like Brooklyn people always do, and Cyrus gets everybody together for the Seder. Serena tries to apologize to Dan for some reason, I guess for having a life or thoughts independent of him, and he literally goes, "Serena, being Eleanor's bitch boy is about all I can take right now, so I... really don't need your pity."
Which is fine, except of course Serena understands the concept of money and as usual doesn't really care how much money Dan has or where it comes from, and would never be so crass as to apologize Dan for his manner of employment in the first place. (God, nothing pisses me off more than when people apologize to the cleaning lady, like, "I just wanted you to know that your job is totally beneath me, so I'm really sorry that you have to do it -- clean up after me, I mean -- and I just wanted to you know that I'm sorry you have a job. Better luck in the life!") So she explains that she's talking about his unearned and judgmental hissyfit, about the thing between he and Gabriel that is none of his goddamn business, and then just as we're heading into Season One territory he flips into being the good friend he's been lately, and points out that normal people don't just go off and suddenly get married, so clearly she's going as crazy as the rest of them are with toxic senioritis, and needs to figure out what she's avoiding or being weird about. Nicely done, Dan.
A remix of Sarah Vaughan's "Whatever Lola Wants" gives a wink to Blair's self-negating attempts at manipulations against her own best interest and Nate's -- whatever Blair-Bear wants, Serena gets -- but is also of course a reference to Damn Yankees, in which Lola is sent into seduce the main character into a Faustian bargain but is eventually rebuffed, and punished with a trip to Limbo, where she performs with the other damned souls and nobody ever gets to chair the really good committees.
Blair asks Tripp immediately what's going on with Nate, and Tripp gives her the stinkeye of Granderbilt collusion, but she swears she's changed. In that moment, she does, and realizes that she absolutely cannot sell Nate out, especially for such dumb stuff. The way Tripp reacts ("Well, be good to him, okay?") scares her to death, but Nate's stepping up to the microphone right then. Tripp gently grabs her elbow, to chill her out, and he gives a patented Nate speech.
"Most of you know me. I'm Nate Archibald, Tripp's cousin. When Tripp asked me to be the best man in his wedding, I was a little bit surprised, to say the least. But I guess Grandfather told him to choose me and that was that, so..." The crowd laughs, because they have no idea what Nate's like sober. "...We all know how important family is to William van der Bilt. But what we don't know are the many secret ways he helps us all out. For instance, today I discovered he was the one who had my father investigated by the authorities." Blair stares, William's smile falls, Nate laughs. "If he cares so much about family, then why did he destroy mine?" I so wish he'd stomped away right then, so he could charge back a second later and start yelling again. AND ANOTHER THING!
"So I guess the lesson here, Tripp old buddy, is watch your back!" Tripp almost smiles; maybe it's a kind of freedom. Maureen looks like her wedding has been ruined, which it sort of has; on the other hand, what a great time to have an expendable bridesmaid, so you don't have to worry about kicking Nate the fuck out. Nate toasts, and drinks deep, and Gossip Girl watches Blair's stock drop yet again. Right at that moment, I guess, Dan greets Gabriel at the door and Gossip Girl goes... Well, this is what she said. I have no comment on it, because it's one of the more retarded things she's ever said, but also I'm not sure if it's even like okay to say: "Baruch atah ay dios mio! This Passover is gonna get its own Spanish Inquisition!"
While Cyrus explains Seder ("the Passover supper!") Dan tries to get Serena to come to the foyer. "Not a good time. Cyrus is about to pray," she whispers hilariously, as Cyrus lights the candles, but Dan's insistent. The family stares at her and laughs politely at Cyrus's Passover humor, and she leaves as he finally begins to pray. Eleanor is impressed with exactly zero percent of this tomfoolery.
To her credit, Serena spots and recognizes Gabriel almost immediately. We've heard the story before -- you wake up in a foreign coastal country, lean over and Serena's gone -- but it never gets old. "I called your apartment. The guy who answered said you'd probably be here. He also asked me if I had any hash..." That's my Bass! Dan tries to scoot, but Serena snatches him back and tells Gabe to get out of there, because she's back with Dan. Dan finally gives in, with a loving kind of "this crazy girl" affection, and Gabe's not buying it, but before Serena can force him out, Eleanor shows up and invites him to Seder for literally no reason whatsoever, in order to set up another unnecessary stupid joke: "There's even an empty seat. It's for Elijah, but you can take it."
I was just bitching about the "Right Round" song by Flo Rida, but I kind of like it here, because it hearkens back to Nelly Yuki but also because of the way it's used, which is across and uniting every scene here with a driving, enlivening beat. I mean, there's a vague thread of redemption and whether or not it's earned or even accomplished that goes well with the "right round like a record baby" sentiment, but I don't really think that's why it's here. It's weird, not exactly the sort of music you expect on this show, but I'm reminded of that Rihanna song waaay back a long time ago that was similiarly weird, but did the same energetic binding of situations together. Where was that? Lily had Dan backed into a corner at some function and was reading him the riot act, and somebody was hiding behind a pillar or something, and that song was playing, and it worked. [Though it is a little odd that a song about oral sex/strippers is playing over a seder... but whatever. -- Angel
So anyway, Blair stands up to Granderbilt, and he tells her she's fucked because she can't get into any school, and stop interrogating him about the Captain because she's going to end up "sewing buttons at [her] mother's atelier" for the year if she doesn't fix it. She realizes, as he's breathing down her neck, that she just got Blaired by a master, and goes off to I guess do his intense bidding. Meanwhile, Cyrus is still explaining everything that's going to happen at Seder, which to be fair is a good half-hour of logistics even if you leave out the reasons for everything, and Eleanor figures out that they haven't even started yet, and almost cries.
Little Miss "I Would Never Cause A Scene At Eleanor's" Lily Bass then causes a scene at Eleanor's, jumping all over Gabriel about the Spain trip and trying to get to the bottom of Serena's recent behavior in the most Rufus way possible, and S goes right for the wine like she always does, and Cyrus sweetly tells her to go ahead even though it wasn't supposed to be drunk yet, and Bathroom Monet asks if Rufus has any artists he would like but in an asshole way ("Do you represent any artists worth my attention?") which causes Rufus to get predictably bitchy, while Gabriel is asking why Dan is serving the wine and S is lying more about it, and eventually drags him down beside her -- "That's where we just moved Elijah," Cyrus moans, but lets it slide -- and Eleanor's like, "I don't fucking care what happens, because we are never eating," and Lily then has a separate freakout about Serena and Dan dating again, and Cyrus is trying to say the Kiddush and Rufus is yelling about Dan and Serena, and Chuck realizes when she bites his shoulder that he's already had this particular ballerina, and kicks her out, and it's all very messy and complex and giddy and awesome.
And there's a point to be made, if maybe not by the show itself, directly, about the world that they, and we, live in, which is that spirituality is so very difficult to find a place for in your life, and so many of these traditions seem incredibly pointless, that the fact that class warfare and romantic secrets and bad parenting and missing kids and earning money and future dreams and a hundred cell phones ringing and text messages coming in and late-night office calls and the commodification of art and Rufus's future and Eleanor's hunger all sort of converge as this unbelievable din. They're too busy trying to figure out how they all fit together as a family to think about what brought them all to that table to do so. Life is too hard and too fast and too bright to stop and listen to the words of the prayer, or think about their meaning, or see how it might help. But above it all, rising above them, is Cyrus's voice, clear as a bell, and it's never quite drowned out.
Well, Cyrus and Flo Rida, who's still singing. Chuck climbs down off his lady friend and heads downstairs for a drink, where Jenny and Wes are still playing Monopoly. "What a shock, the girl from Brooklyn's a renter," he snorts when she lands on Marvin Gardens. When he starts into the details of his Russian guest, Jenny sends Wes to wait for her in the elevator and explains to Chuck the following things. First, that Chuck's boredom and existential misery are not an excuse to crap all over everybody else. Secondly, that she wouldn't even consider moving into PRADA, Lily and Rufus be damned, as long as he's living there. Third, that he's very lucky she never told Rufus about the quasi-attempted rape at Kiss On The Lips. Fourth, that Rufus would pull rank on Lily and get Chuck kicked out if she did. And finally, that this matters.
"You lost Blair, and now she's dating your best friend, so therefore the only human contact that you have -- that you don't pay for -- is the people in this house. Knowing you, you'll screw that up, too." He doesn't move at all, just stares at her paralyzed, because every word is true. He sends the girl away. But this is also true: they left the door open for Elijah, but between the two couples, there are at least two children who deserve a place at the table, and they're still out wandering.
The other one, Blair, approaches Nate with at least two kinds of worry in her eyes. He apologizes for pulling that drama queen act without warning her, and she's of course not at all interested in that, asking him if he's okay first and foremost. She's already picked her team, and the only person she's told is Tripp and he didn't even believe her. "Yeah. I mean, no. I'm not. You know, I trusted him." B's stung, but meets his eyes and assures him he's wonderful. She smiles, a bit sadly but proud to have chosen, and kisses him, heading off to grab her coat.
So of course Granderbilt shows up to hedge his bets, explaining that he only ratted the Captain out after begging him to stop doing his shadowy stuff and being a drug addict. "When he denied it to my face, I warned him that I would take action." And finally he did. "And I'd do it again." Nate's stricken, and a little embarrassed, but at least he's on the ball enough to ask why William didn't just tell him that. (Side note: why didn't William just tell him that?) Nate complains that he's tired of people going behind his back, and William decides to get his revenge on Blair by telling Nate -- just as she's sashing up her brown Holly Golightly trench -- what went down today. "Watch out, B. Seems like just when you got it right, William van der Bilt is going to do you wrong..."
Cyrus proceeds into urchatz (which if you're keeping track at home is step two of like twenty in the Seder), "also called the 'Title 88 of the New York City Health Code,'" he jokes, to fading laughter. Eleanor laughs, and hopes that the step they'll get to eat. Poor Eleanor: "Oh, yes!" Cyrus says excitedly, "Parsley!" Heh. Rufus grills Dan and Serena some more, and Cyrus tries to keep everything together, and Gabe jumps demanding to know what's going on, and Serena flashes him huge, hilarious baby eyes: "Shh. There's praying about to happen!" (It's in that Tyra Banks voice she uses sometimes that I think is how Blake Lively actually talks, which is always adorable.) Whatever, it's complex, Cyrus's mother looks like Madeleine Albright and yells, "Eleanor's friends are talking during the Seder!" and Cyrus quickly reminds her that the van der Humphries are his friends too, which touches Eleanor.
Rufus doofily tells Gabriel that his son's not dressed like a waiter, it's just "a classic look," and they go on and on about this, and Lily keeps apologizing to Cyrus but interrupting on and on anyway, and finally Dan explains that he really is a cater-waiter tonight, and the whole thing was an elaborate... Whatever the hell it was, but Serena was just being nice, and he cares about her very much, and in the middle of this all Cyrus finally just drops his parsley, totally exhausted by these people. Lily snags Serena and Cyrus desperately skips over about half of Passover while they talk outside.
Meanwhile, Nate is being truly standoffish with Blair even as she's congratulating him on standing up for himself. "I'm proud of what you did back there. I thought you were, too." Nate asks if it's true that she agreed to convince him to go to Yale just so she could be a bridesmaid, and she realizes she's screwed and tries to explain how she totally changed her mind without telling anybody, but Nate is in no mood. He pronounces her the same girl as ever, and she promises she's not. "I was just scared, about year, and us... Nate, please give me another chance." He tells her he can't think of a reason why, and sends her home in the towncar.
Meanwhile, Lily and Serena have the exact same conversation, all about how this huge disaster that Lily basically caused is all Serena's fault for sneaking out to attend a dinner tradition with her closest friend's family, "right out of the Old Serena playbook," and says hilariously and elliptically that if you just threw in "a few boys from the lacrosse team" you'd have an instant replay of the Constance Mother-Daughter Luncheon two years ago. Which I'd love to see someday soon.
She complains that Serena's been doing so good since the pilot, which is true, and Serena's like, "But watching my ass constantly has nearly killed me on more than one occasion, and I need to also have fun." Basically, that flipping back and forth between self-hating repentance and all-out Dark Phoenix fever is no good, but she can't find the balance with Lily constantly waiting in the wings to jump out and pronounce her Old Serena at the drop of a cokehead, and Lily assures her she knows she's a good person. Also, she got into Brown. So then they hug and it's very nice, and who really knows how that happened, but whatever. This episode is so fun I don't really want to take it apart and realize how little sense it actually makes.
So Lily changes the subject to Gabriel, and Serena protests for a second about how she's not totally into him, and they giggle because she totally is, and Corinne the cater-waiter pops up out of nowhere and says he's gone, so Lily woggles her eyebrows at Serena and she goes tearing after him. Downstairs, he laughs at her because they're totally not married -- "We were just having fun, doing something crazy," he says, which is fishy I think -- and they decide to date. But just as he's kissing her, Blair comes up running and crying about Nate, and GG is like, "Blair Waldorf is the boner killer of all time, dude."
Chuck tells the knock at the door that he's "not in the mood," and Nate comes in promising he's not either, but they fuck anyway. Later, they're having a drink and Nate asks if he was dumb to think B changed. Chuck says yes, but not like that: "I mean it's stupid for you to want her to be anything other than she is." Truer words. Plus, he explains, Blair really is changing, because after all she could have had his pudgy hairy ass and somehow chose Nate instead. "Now she just needs someone to believe in her," he says, downing his drink afterward, all seven ounces of whiskey, because it was hard to say. "Time for a refill," he says, and Nate offers to get it. But then Nate goes downstairs, and instead of getting drinks he just disappears. Which is sort of rude, but also sort of blunderheadedly Nate, so I doubt Chuck -- very drunk, wiggling around on his bureau -- will really mind.
Lily thanks Dan for being so loving with Serena, and then Rufus comes in having sold a painting to the Bathroom Monet guy. It would seem, however, that he also included free of charge his everloving mind, because he has somehow decided to sell the Gallery. Which will mean no income for him, and no income for the Boho Barista. Somehow, I guess Dan working for a living just broke his brain open and he's decided that money is just pretend, which is pretty bizarre considering he hasn't said a word that didn't involve Dan's tuition in about six episodes, but whatever. Apparently the reason they're so poor is that Rufus's business plan has always involved selling art to "young couples, kids who had no money but loved art," and somewhere along the line this retarded pursuit was tainted by THE EXCHANGE OF CURRENCY FOR GOODS AND SERVICES, and he's just realized that this is the root of all evil. It's also the root of all Yale, you perfect ass.
To their credit, it would seem everyone, including Rufus, knows that this is the most retarded thing he's ever said or done, a lofty accomplishment considering, and all smile in a sort of appalled way. Dan, a little panicked, asks what the eff Rufus plans on doing instead, and he's like, "Who knows?" Lily laughs and takes his hand, because she knows exactly what he's going to be doing: acting like the manwhore everybody always knew he was, and living off dead Bart's millions.
Or at least, that's what should happen, because in real life that's exactly -- not naming names -- what would happen: he'd get a recording studio in the PRADA apartment and make a bunch of records nobody likes, and that would be his "job." Or Lily would reopen CBGB's just for him, like those fantasy birthdays in the FAO Schwarz catalog, and every night would be Open Mic Starring Rufus Night and every night would end with that "everytime you walk away or run away" song, unplugged. But instead, I'm sure she'll create some ghoulish shell corporation and give him six figures a year for pretending he's a real person with a real job, and he'll find out and throw a massive Humphrey Hoedown about it.
B lies on her tummy, head on a pillow in S's lap, complaining that she sold out Nate just to be the Jackie O. Serena points out that this was a dumb goal anyway, because Blair's clearly more like a Hillary, and B shows a little spark yelling, "Except I'd win!" S laughs, loving that -- and more importantly believing it -- and tells her it will all work out. "Besides, who wants to be on the junior committee for the Whitney anyway?" B scoffs like she even cared about that -- except for the three days when she did, which we're going to be forgetting about now -- because she's more upset about Nate. "I deserve to be alone..." she starts moaning, and then forgets herself, pointing excitedly up at Serena: "And who was that tall snack you were devouring?" S laughs that it's a long story, but Eleanor arrives and summons Blair downstairs. "I was pretty awful to Cyrus this morning. I should go apologize." She slumps away and Serena calls out how happy she is to be home, then snuggles down in Blair's bed and thinks about how very true that is.
"Runaway," from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' new album One-Hit Wonder Our Collective Ass -- notable for not sucking -- plays over the rest of the episode. Chuck comes downstairs to find no Nate, and pours something into the empty glass. Jenny joins him, warily after unloading on him earlier, and he asks how her date went. "Good. Great, actually," she says, and stands there awkwardly. They really haven't had many/any scenes together, have they? Huh. "I never apologized," he starts slowly, "For what happened last year." She looks at him, and he does. "I deeply regret my actions of that night. If you ever do move in here... I'll make sure I'm not around." She looks down, completely unsure as to how she should take this, and he vanishes.
Which I already said is just masterful, because it puts the power back in her hands, where it needs to be, and because it puts this storyline in her area, and she can do whatever she wants with it. He just submitted, and apologized, and making this a plot point in the whole van der Humphrey house-shuffle story is brilliant, because it affects everybody without needing to be talked about. It's exactly the kind of grey-area "can X thing be redeemed," has he really changed kind of stuff that Jenny is great with. But of course, a year ago we didn't know Taylor Momsen was one of the strongest actors in the cast, so this never could have happened. I never really thought it was that big a deal, because personally I believe getting hysterical about fictional non-rape is about as trivial and trivializing, and self-aggrandizing, as getting hysterical about anything else, but it's very satisfying to see it come back around this way. I wonder what will happen there.
Blair comes down full of apologies for Cyrus, with a not-so-subtle request to take advantage of his NYU connections -- which I didn't mention are a Vietnam buddy callback, which reminds me of the Golden Lion -- and of course both Cyrus and Eleanor are all over it. He hugs her and she thanks him, and Nate's voice issues out of nowhere, "Sounds like we'll both be in the city." He's standing there, behind Eleanor, who grabs Cyrus and shuffles off. Nate looks like he's about to say something, but she throws herself on him, apologizing and crying, and his arms slowly circle around her, and he kisses her shoulder, and looks in her eyes, and apologizes too.
Meanwhile Serena's lolling about in bed leaving Gabriel a very dorky stream-of-consciousness voicemail about how she's glad he came back to the States for her and that she has high hopes, essentially, and hangs up all romantic and dreamy, but meanwhile he's just getting back to an apartment where Poppy's waiting. "Tell me everything," she says, and his look back at her is so sneaky and creepy I felt, I won't lie, that they might be brother and sister, and possibly the Carver as well.
week. Oh, week. Georgina, my sweet! We will see you so soon! Don't forget to bring the fever!