So Gabriel's story, which we know is at least partially untrue, is that he met Serena at Butter on the night that Georgina roofied her, and fell in love with her at that point. He hooked up with Poppy, but now is caught because he needs her social connections to fund his project. But you know -- from the second the previews bite his "I want to meet everyone in Serena's life" from Seder -- that it's going to fall apart, and of course it does, grandly, thanks to the superteam of Blair and Chuck, who needed only the paper-thin excuse of destroying Serena's relationship in order to run around being sneaky and gross like they do. Of course, this romance/alibi taunts the junkyard dog deep within the soft heart and delicate cheekbones of Nate Archibald, and he gets a jank apartment in Murray Hill so he and Blair can go to Columbia and NYU respectively, but still live together. So yes, he asks her to move in with him, but spends most of the entire storyline trying to explain to Chuck that in fact it's all about him and Chuck, of which Chuck is already aware, and how he's declaring his ownership of Blair in a fashion so creepy that even Chuck literally goes, "Why not just pee on her?" After all, it's what Chuck would do.
So Serena, piqued, brings Gabe to Lily's Palace co-op meeting, where high school girls are always invited apparently, and Blair and Chuck produce Poppy, who goes off on Gabriel in an obviously manufactured way, and he fake-chooses Serena over Poppy, thereby losing investors in his scheme to bring wireless internet to Africa or some shit. In the end, Gabe skips town and Poppy plays wounded bird, but not before Rufus drops off a check in the amount of All Rufus's Money, which Gabe talked him out of by playing on his class issues. Which is nice, because it brings Rufus into the storyline in a way that will fuck up his brain hopefully, which is second only to watching someone physically beat him.
While all of this is going on Nate asks Blair to stop running around spying on Gabriel and Serena with Chuck, because it's going to lead to backseat fucking, and she says that he has to trust her, and would he mind going back to their new apartment and christening it solo, so she can drive out to God knows where with Chuck to track down Georgina Sparks so that she can confirm that she didn't take Serena to Butter once she roofied her. This is treated like the one clincher clue by B and C, who are just ravished by each other's presence, but otherwise played as this continually more desperate game on the part of Chuck and Blair to spend time together while solving a nonexistent mystery. In the end, though, Blair is vindicated, as Georgie knows full well they weren't at Butter that night, so suddenly the fake mystery becomes a real mystery.
Meanwhile, Serena does some tricks of her own and realizes that Gabriel is lying about certain things, but Gabe and Poppy are playing this whole other game where Poppy acts like he took her for a bunch of money too, so now Poppy -- who has morphed into some bizarre cat burglar/supermodel megazord of awesomeness -- seems like a good guy, but is actually a bad guy, but actually kind of rules for taking all of Rufus's money along with that of the entire UES.
This episode felt three hours long, but like in a good way. All the people who are supposedly really close -- Serena/Blair, Chuck/Nate, Dan/Vanessa, Jenny/Rufus -- actually get some screentime together, which is awesome. Serena and Blair have a little bit of a fight about how it's ironic that Blair's obsessing over Serena's boyfriend when her own current boyfriend spent a year or two obsessing over Serena. (We're cleaning house left and right on those pilot continuity issues, I guess, but then Passover doesn't have to come but once a year.) Jenny analyzes the shit out of her Dad, gives him a hideous ring like a palm or Tarot card reader would wear to give to Lily, and basically hounds him into various decisions. Dan and Vanessa get drunk and come clean about various things, but as usual these days Vanessa's stuff -- fucking Chuck twice, for e.g. -- is way better than Dan getting a blowjob from Georgina, which everybody already knew, and plus who cares.
Blair scoffs about Chuck, obligatorily, comparing Nate to the kind of boyfriend you can hold hands with; when they end up at Georgie's location, they sleep until morning in the back of a limo and wake up holding hands, so that was awesome. But not as awesome as where they are, which is a place called OMJC, and is basically one of those creepy camps for kids who have gone all True Blood on themselves and think they've found the answer. Chuck spends his time shoving aside gay kids praying themselves straight and young women praying themselves back to virginity long enough to get fully scared to death by Georgina's intense rehabilitation/cult-like stare and smile, but it's his mention of Blair -- who's fled back to the city, realizing the Georgina thing was at least partially an elaborate plan to divide her from Nate -- that really gets the fever going. Georgie hops in a cab, "URA Fever" starts playing, and they head back to save Serena and the UES from whatever Gabe and Poppy are up to.
Is this show really just about awful people saying awful things to each other? Our vlogger thinks so.
"Eventually, every queen finds herself in unfamiliar territory outside the castle walls. In Blair Waldorf's case... The Village." Blair's walking with Nate, who has a sweet double-breasted jacket on, and bemoaning her random decision to go to NYU. "You know how I feel about ironic facial hair!" Nate tells her that the proper mindset is being happy to get into school at all -- So is she actually in? Because that was fast -- and happy that she's "super lucky" enough to have a fantastic boyfriend going to school in the same city. Which is hilarious, because really what's going on here is that she's compromised so much of herself -- and sandbagged herself so dramatically at every opportunity from Dean Berube to Rachel Carr -- that she is now being presented precisely the life she did not want, all tied up in a bow.
"I've been coming down here for years, and I'm gonna teach you everything you need to know," says Nate, who is a seasoned drug purchaser, to a suddenly terrified Blair. "The best latte, the best slice, the best pot dealer... But first, the most important lesson of all: How to ride the subway." She stares at the sign, gives him a quick icy fake smile, and then explains that the subway is "full of Mole Men and middle-class professionals," and no place for Blair Waldorf: getting from NYU to Columbia is what car service is for. He explains that they'll be on "opposite poles" of Manhattan, and plus traffic. He shoots her puppydogs as she laments, "Please don't ask this of me." It seems like she's going to relent, maybe, a little bit, but honestly at this point either choice would be fine: either she braves the tunnels and becomes the Mole Queen after some discreet screaming, or actually stops talking in that baby voice and tells Nate to go suck himself. Any of this, in any combination would be so awesome, don't you agree?
Instead, we cut to the Humphreys. Inside an antique store, presumably lured there by a vintage set of Lincoln Hawk LPs or Victrola wax cylinders or whatever they had back then. Papyrus. Rufus is going impressively nuts about buying Dan and Jenny antique things, because the tremendously riveting rollercoaster that is Rufus's finances has crested once again. Dan catches him checking out a truly hideous ring that on Buffy would be possessed by something lovely and soulless, with suspect motives. Well, Rufus wants to give it to Lily, so that's not far off.
"Rats go underground, not Waldorfs!" Serena follows Blair into the house of PRADA and laughs at her, mentioning Chuck's helicopter for the hell of it, and Blair sighs extravagantly. "Chuck. What a waste of time that was. You know, it's not a real relationship if you can't hold hands..." (So I don't know if you've seen TV before, but like obviously they're going to somehow ending up holding hands at some point in this episode.) Then she hops into that druggy, dreamy Nate talk that's getting so boring. Serena points out that part of Nate's renaissance in the boudoir is probably due to him being a total prostitute most of the time, and Blair's like, "But I won't take the subway for that ho either."
"Rats go underground, not Waldorfs!" Serena follows Blair into the house of PRADA and laughs at her, mentioning Chuck's helicopter for the hell of it, and Blair sighs extravagantly. "Chuck. What a waste of time that was. You know, it's not a real relationship if you can't hold hands..." (So I don't know if you've seen TV before, but like obviously they're going to somehow ending up holding hands at some point in this episode.) Then she hops into that druggy, dreamy Nate talk that's getting so boring. Serena points out that part of Nate's renaissance in the boudoir is probably due to him being a total prostitute most of the time, and Blair's like, "But I won't take the subway for that ho either."
Blair changes the subject to Serena's eponymous "foreigner" Gabriel, popping a grape in her mouth. This is true friendship, because it would take an act of Congress and six Vicodin for me to sit through even five seconds of Serena talking about Gabriel. It's like he makes her more boring than she usually is when she's dating. But if he's boring, and Serena's being boring, then where is the surplus amazing going? Georgina Sparks, I think. Serena points out that North Carolina is in fact part of the US, but Blair yells, "Not by choice!" Heh. Serena laughs and says some snoozeworthy thing about how perfect it is with Gabriel, except for how he's never around. Which for anybody else would be like a neutral-to-good thing about your boyfriend, but for Serena it's like being in space without oxygen, because Lily fucked her up good.
"Well, if it's casual like you say, no strings, then what do you expect? It's not like you're gonna marry the guy," Blair says, and then Serena admits that she "kind of did" marry him, which we already know is not true whether or not Cyrus says so, so what a weird conversation to be having at this point, and then it goes on for a little while. Basically Blair decides that Gabriel is secretly up to no good and needs to be stalked. "We can dress up, use code names, Dorota is a great help with surveillance equipment... Doesn't that sound at all fun?" Only with you, Blair Bear. Serena stares at her like she's crazy and tells her firmly but lovingly not to stalk Gabriel, tapping her on the forehead and walking off. Blair immediately begins planning the mission to stalk Gabriel, partially because Serena is an idiot right now who got distracted by the lupine teeth and height, but mostly because she's entirely bored with Nate and can't admit it without the whole thing falling down.
Chuck and Nate play a little frenemy basketball in clothes only slightly less ridiculous than usual, and Nate acts all weird about talking about Blair, and Chuck's extra fifteen pounds are like this other character in the scene you have to ignore, and Chuck acts slightly pervy about Blair but at only like a two on the Chuck scale, and Nate's all "I am setting a boundary with you" with the straight-across mouth of the truly determined, like he's at a meeting of Vanessa's sister's lesbian collective, and basically forces Chuck to say sixteen different ways and then sign an affidavit attesting to how he's given up the chase. Which immediately causes him to take up the chase, not that he ever left it, but where does Nate get off even having an opinion about Blair and Chuck? That's a totally separate issue, and you're bringing a Gummi Bear to a gunfight anyway if you get involved. Go back to Vanessa!
Not to interrupt the boring tobacco story Gabriel's telling Rufus and Lily ("...And then my grandfather says, 'If it's menthol you want, it's menthol you're gonna get!'), but the background on Gabriel is that he obviously comes from tobacco money, and has taken up a charitable pursuit in order to redeem-slash-piss off his family. Lily understands, and half-heartedly and distractedly notes that "family is so important" -- after all, just look at hers and see what a priority it is! -- and I mean, Gabriel is all fine and good, except the scheme he's putting forth, which may or may not even exist, is to "provide wireless access to the developing world." A concept which has its heart in the right place, I guess, but is so myopic and self-centered and gooshy as to be pretty much totally insulting. "Looking at this picture of Lindsay Lohan with a crude vagina drawn near her face is not only instructive, but distracts me from my malnutrition and total AIDS."
Anyway, the monthly co-op meeting is a gala affair, apparently, and Lily needs really good wine for it ("I asked the caterer for a '99 Brunello, this isn't a PTA meeting!"), and invites Gabriel to attend with Serena. He accepts the invite, because it fits into his evil plan, but there's only so much you can do in service of evil, so when Rufus invites him to take in a movie with them, he totally scampers. Which frankly, it would take way more than evil to induce me to sit through a movie with Rufus Humphrey over there alternately scoffing at and not getting what's going on in the movie.
Serena -- whose hair, I'm sad to report, has calmed down at the moment -- whisper-yells at Gabriel in the foyer for not going to the movie Rufus just decided they should go to, because family is important. Also because if Gabriel is a long-termer, then the whole already-forgotten Spain trip is even more okay, but mostly because Blair told her it was a problem, and now she's got that in her head, and she only has room for like three things in there ("It's just sometimes that my thoughts come so fast that I get confused!") and he dislodges all of them by kissing her and telling her lies, and the second he goes to get his coat Blair texts her all, "Has the BF bailed yet?" Blair is a magical wizard! How did she know? Trust Blair!
"Stop spying on me!" Serena texts back, and we see Blair skulking around outside the Palace waiting for Gabriel's presumed egress so she can follow him around instead of watching slow-motion high school wrestling with Nate on ESPN3. There's a really wonderful moment where Chuck's limo sliiiiides up in that way it has and she balks, then literally tries to will herself invisible standing in the middle of the sidewalk, so that when he calls out her name she's blushing and frowny-smiling like, "You caught me." He asks on whom -- given that she's wearing her beret -- they are spying, which is also adorable, and then the swoon kind of got me, because if I'm this relieved to see them talking to each other, I can't even imagine how they feel.
Chuck says he's not really turned on by Gabriel either, and immediately points out that this is all trumped-up suspicion based on her getting the fuck away from boring old Nate, and she stares all angry as though she's never manufactured one jot or tittle of drama in her whole life and is not in fact all drama's country of origin with rich drama resources to export. She fake-yells about how she's really just concerned about Serena, which is also true -- and keys into the whole weird thing about Blair, which is that even if she's lying and even if she knows she's lying, it always turns out to be true -- and tells him to scoot. "And besides, it's good for couples to have different interests," she says, because I guess Nate isn't into spying and invading people's privacy, which makes me wonder just what he and Vanessa had to talk about.
Blair spots Gabriel and shoves Chuck back behind the limo, and he drinks in the proximity of her, and then they note Gabriel getting climbed all over by Poppy. They are canoodly! Blair takes a picture with her phone and the evil couple drives away! "And when a queen discovers her best maiden is with a dragon in disguise, the only thing to do is pull up the drawbridge and trap him... Metaphorically, of course." Sometimes I think that Gossip Girl has shit for brains. Metaphorically, of course.
morning Blair is drinking coffee, which is fueling her craziness, which is telling Serena to dump that bastard, and Serena is brushing her hair or looking at dresses or whatever she does all the time, and has completely checked out to the point that she's like struggling to comprehend why the photo evidence of her boyfriend kissing the girl she stole him from is even a problem. She deflects and tells Blair to deal with her own shit and let Serena be Serena, and then Gabe comes into the room out of nowhere to tell her more lies and weave some more of his uncomplicated magic. Serena needs more connectivity in the undeveloped country of her brain, I don't understand the equivocating here at all except to relate my friend Karen's insight that being the BFF of everybody on earth, which is like Serena's main ambition as long as she doesn't have to actively do anything, leaves you open to brigands and their ways.
Blair continues to play the angry friend role, yelling at Nate about what a "philanderer" Gabriel is, and of course whenever you accuse anybody of anything that intensely it's because you are the thing, so Nate's like, "...And you still haven't mentioned that you were spying on him with Chuck, the love of your life." She tells him it was a coincidental not-big, and they have a ten-minute session of "I'm so glad we can trust each other so much and aren't we glad we're not Serena." Which, I've said before, Serena carries more bullshit for everybody else on the Upper East Side than is tenable, but seriously. "I know that our relationship is not real because neither of us are Serena van der Woodsen" is about the nastiest bullshit. "I'm throwing up ten times a day and you're a gay prostitute, but look at Serena slightly tipsy on champagne once again! Poor thing."
Serena puts on some kind of power suit so that this looks less like what it is, which is a grown-ass man playing a remarkably young girl for a fool, and he reassures her. The way to reassure Serena is really simple: you just tell her what you want her to think, and then she thinks it: "I am not cheating on you." Really? Because check out this photograph of you cheating on me. "That is not a photograph, it is a figment." But my best friend saw you. "Your friend is imaginary." But Poppy lied and said she stayed in Spain and didn't come home with you, and yet she is town. "That is her cousin. They are identical, isn't that so weird." Yes, yes it is.
Dan and Jenny tell Vanessa about the awful disgusting ring that Rufus didn't buy, interrupting her "big secret" of having fucked Chuck Bass, and she's only too happy to trade their irrelevant boring gossip for her own irrelevant boring gossip, and Dan surmises that Rufus chickened out because Jenny said she wouldn't move in with "the v-d-dubs," and Jenny says maybe it's the quasi-incest of moving Dan and Serena in together, and Dan admits that it would be weird to share "bunk beds with Chuck," especially after their ecstasy-fueled blowjob party back in the days of Charlie Trout, but Vanessa tells them to shut up and support their father in overcoming his innate wussiness for once in his entire life. Meanwhile, and I know this whole recap is just the silence between the notes that comprise the symphony of Rufus's fascinating bank account, Rufus's finances begin once again to fluctuate.
Serena's wearing a Serena-type toga in a lovely emerald while Blair berates her for being so incredibly stupid about Gabriel, who at this point has admitted that he's sort of still with Poppy, but only for material gain, and somehow managed to shame Serena into going along with this plan for the time being, implicating her in more grossness than Serena's ever been amidst whether it's all a huge lie or not. She puts her hands on her hips and yells at Blair that she doesn't need proof that he'll eventually break up with Poppy after using her for his own purposes, because he's so trustworthy. Because, see, he fell in love with her the first time they met. Which Blair points out was en route to España with his girlfriend, and Serena says that no, it was last year when she went out with Georgina.
"Don't tell me it was that night. That night that you blacked out and don't remember anything?" Blair actually laughs at this one, because it's just so Serena: "He fell in love with you while you were roofied, how romantic!" Serena says that no, she's been assured even though she cannot remember it that she was completely lucid at the time he fell in love with her. This is so dumb. Serena tries on a lumpy dress that looks weird on her even though she's worn lots of Vena Cava in the past, and Blair won't fucking leave it alone, and just keeps going and going, and oh she and Nate just trust each other so perfectly and you don't have what I have, and he's having Poppy's cake and eating yours too, and finally Serena's eyes go hard and she decides to push back: "I hope so, B. Because no offense, but we both know that that hasn't always been the case." Why do people do this shit to Blair? Anybody else, they'd know they crossed the line and would calm down, but front on a rabid animal and your ass gets bit. Blair's never even heard of the line.
Things get gradually less and less awesome, and right before Serena just hauls off and punches her, Blair figures out the disconnect -- and stupidity of comparing their faulty relationships -- and waves it all away with her hands, chilling herself out. "No, that's... I love you. I just don't want to see you get hurt, okay?" Props to Blair for jumping tracks on a fight for maybe the first time ever, but on the other hand she now knows that something really is going on. The compulsive obsession with Serena's relationship started out as a pastime and a distraction, became a front to avoid thinking about having Chuck back in her life, and briefly became a competition, but Serena didn't react properly, or in character, to any of it. Therefore Blair's intuition knows that Serena's intuition is picking up on something, which just equals a very bad feeling in Blair's stomach, and she is introspective enough to see all the red flags at this point.
Vanessa and Rufus have a weird coffee moment, and she learns that she is not losing her job for a while, because the unending pendulum of money has swung back another way. How bad? Well, he can't sell the gallery at all, which means he has no money, which means either Dan doesn't go to college or Rufus sells off the Lincoln Hawk catalog to a music publishing company. Vanessa, of course, takes the pointless-integrity Vanessa stance ("You're gonna sell your life's work?"), and of course Rufus is exactly and precisely as stupid as she is, so he starts crying.
"And apparently, now that we're not touring it isn't even worth what it was last year. You know, I stopped touring to spend time with my family. It turns out it might've been the worst thing I could've done for them." Instead of telling Rufus to dry his eyes and sack up and shut down the pity party, like she would anybody else, she jumps right in. After a second Rufus realizes how incredibly inappropriate this conversation is, and abruptly shuts it down. Which of course leaves Vanessa to stare into space and think about how many people she can tell this information to immediately, and who is likely to get the weirdest about it, and decides to go find them and tell them immediately, because the girl literally cannot help herself.
Nate drags Chuck to a one-bedroom in Murray Hill ("Even your mother's too hip for this zip code!") and explains to Chuck that the place is halfway between NYU and Columbia, and thus perfect for his wonderful new life with Blair that doesn't involve Chuck in any way, except for how it's all about Chuck and not really Blair at all, for either of them. Soak that up for a second, Chuck. He does, and gets all kinds of grossed out, finally asking why Nate didn't just tell him that on the phone. Well, obviously it's because Nate wanted to rub Chuck's face in it, which to his credit he pretty much owns, and Chuck's like, "Okay, fucker." Nate has no idea what an ass he's being, even as he's explaining unnecessarily to Chuck exactly what an ass he's being and why, and Chuck's getting more and more... Hurt. Not sad or angry, exactly, and maybe getting off on it a little bit, but mostly he's hurt.
"What place is that? Some tacky apartment where you can keep your eye on her? If you needed to mark your territory so badly, Nathaniel, maybe you should just pee on her." Word. Which makes this a parallel to the Serena/Blair conversation a moment ago, and he fights back in as Chuck a way as Serena did a Serena thing before: by telling Nate over and over not to worry about it, while getting angrier and angrier about just how bald and obnoxious Nate is being. He's just... bereft, because if Nate can't live in the real world and show a little adaptability then things will never be okay with Nate, and he really will die alone just like Jenny said, because Nate's the only person he loves in the world that loves him back without a bunch of hoo-hah. So of course, when Blair calls him to discuss developments with the Gabe issue, he's more than happy to leave Nate's little love nest and take the call outside. Nate just stands there vibrating, unable to figure out exactly how or why he fucked that up so bad.
Blair says that Gabriel's business responsibilities are "monkey business, more likely," and Chuck makes an unsubtle banana joke that maybe a not-so-bright seven-year-old would find funny, and Blair's voice gets serious. "I'm really worried, Chuck. You know how Serena is, she gets in over her head." Chuck smiles, because neither of them know how the percentages are already shifting, between that being totally a lie and totally true, and Blair's all excited: "So what do you say, Bass? One last mission?" She grins when he asks for Poppy Lifton's phone number, and Gossip Girl goes off the chain once again: "Queen of hearts, or queen of heartache? Careful, B. Cut off the head of one love triangle, one of your own might grow back in its place." I motherfucking defy you to explain that sentence to me.
Lily cracks some joke about wrapping up the co-op meeting so they can get to the real attraction, the refreshments, and to their polite laughter makes the most horrific mincing gaywad fake-ass patronizing prance of a face she has ever made. Lily, I swear to you if you ever make that fucking face again I'll slap it right off you, pregnant or not. What on earth were you thinking? Never again, Lily! Bad move! Then Blair runs up like she just did a bump, babbling at Gabe, grabs him and drags him through the apartment talking a mile a minute and attempting to give him a tour of Serena's house, where he's spent a fair amount of time already, and S just laughs because Blair is wonderful, and if she weren't barging and stomping and barking orders, what would she be? Not even a headband, these days.
Downstairs, Chuck drags Poppy into the building to "play the peacemaker" and she suggests that Serena, a day after the incriminating photo, might not want her there in the middle of her mother's stupid party, but Chuck's like, "I promise this is going to be awesome." I love how quickly he snaps into action when asked. When he's not raping you he's a really good friend. Upstairs, Blair and Chuck make hilarious faces while Serena starts off taking the high road, is shut down by crazy Poppy, and then just watches her attacking Gabriel. It's a testament to what good actors they are that they're being such bad actors: even if you'd never seen this show before you'd be like, "Why is that doofy dude having a fake fight with that girl with the hairdo?"
Not our kids, though. Chuck sits expectantly waiting for the fireworks, and Blair reaches toward the knife in her boot in case it gets exciting, and Poppy threatens to pull her connections if Gabe doesn't leave with her. So then Gabe chooses Serena over money to fund his incredibly retarded project, and Poppy can't believe it and fake-stomps off, and Serena can't believe it and bounds over to him like a giant golden retriever, and he's all, "I just need some air" and takes off, and she can't even keep the grin off her face when she tries to shoot Blair and Chuck very chastening looks. Blair's like, "At least now we know!" and Serena grits out, "I'll deal with you later" in a very hilarious half-smiling, exasperated, half-pissed way, and Blair and Chuck commiserate over how "wrong" they were.
I don't care how hot Jason Schwartzman is, there's something I've never liked about Coconut Records. I don't know what it is, except that if you're going to play it on this show, you might as well play it over a Dan/Vanessa scene. I don't know if there's a clearer way to explain it. So Vanessa is sitting alone in Dan's house with a six-pack of obscure Argentinian beer, of course, and I'm sure she could give you ten minutes on hops or whatever boring beer thing we're talking about right now, and Dan notices for the first time in his life that Vanessa's totally in his house alone, without permission.
She tells him Rufus and Jenny let her in, a likely story -- and what, like Rufus congratulated her on the obscurity of her beer that she is about to give his teenage son? -- and she decides she wants to play I Never. Dan acts like she's wasted even though she's had less than half a beer, but doesn't question the random party games. She says she never slept with Chuck Bass and drinks her beer like it's the most interesting story ever told, and it's totally sad and desperate. Dan mushmouths his way through a speech that may or may not have been funny, but I've listened to a dozen times and still can't understand or manage to care, and meets her pathetic uninteresting gossip with some of his own, namely that he got a hummer from Georgina a year ago and that's been it for him with the ladies since then, besides Serena. Neither of them care about any of this, so Vanessa goes back to talking about how she had to get an STD panel FYI and BTW did you know you're SOL and not going to college? Oops, that slipped out. WTF.
Rufus invites Jenny to the co-op meeting, but she rightly points out that that is stupid and boring, especially with Eric "out of town" (Where did he go? What did he do?) and then tells Rufus to stop pussyfooting around and propose to Lily, and let her make the bridesmaids' dresses. He tells her there's no shortage of pussyfoot in his foreseeable future, and then probably swings the conversation back around to his finances some more, I don't know, I fell asleep and while I was sleeping I dreamed and what I dreamed of was Georgina Sparks burning down a building with Gabriel and Poppy and Rufus inside it, screaming softly and disinterestedly while their paper-thin personalities crinkled and curled in the intense burning heat and all they found in the smoking wreckage day was that butt-ugly ring from the antique store and a sooty ragged check for five dollars from a music publishing company with the memo line "For Your Life's Work."
Chuck watches Gabriel on a secretive phone call that he disconnects when Serena walks up, and then he spins a Rufus-esque tale about how he's going to pick up the pieces and go back to being a fabulously wealthy child of leisure without a single problem in his entire life, and Serena practically weeps, and he tells her that the project was incredibly important. "The project is incredibly important!" Serena decides. "Without you, how else will all of the African teenagers send in posts to Gossip Girl?" They giggle, but it's so not funny.
How do you say that out loud and not slap the ever-loving shit out of yourself? "Spotted: my entire family dying of the easily treatable and avoidable scourge of malaria." "Spotted: flies walking all over my face and I don't even care because I'm fucking hungry." "Spotted: everybody's favorite glamour girl splashing around in the open sewage and on the prowl. Look out Upper East Siders, looks like somebody's recovered from her clitorectomy!"
Serena runs off to get all of Lily's money and Chuck jumps Gabe, asking for details of the night they fake-fell in love; Blair's stuck in a corner like a Roomba talking to herself. I can't figure out if she's critiquing Bex's art sense or trying to explain threesomes to imaginary Nate, but whatever it is it's giving her a hell of a time. Nate runs up all excited about the new apartment, and Blair asks WTF he (OR ANY OF THEM) are doing at this party.
"I thought there was a Mets game, I saw Dorota wearing a hat..." He says he'll watch it on Sportscenter and she apologizes for letting "him" talk her into Operation Gone With The Weasel, then gets ahold of herself. "It's a long story, and ... unimportant." Chuck walks up as Nate produces the keyring to the Murray Hill apartment, which scares the shit out of her for one second before she remembers to act charmed and excited. Chuck's like, "You're moving in?" And she whirls, stricken, because Chuck didn't need to know that. Nate gets all firm and says they're going there now. Chuck wishes them well, but says B should know that Gabe claims to have met Serena at Butter the night before the SAT's. Which Blair knows, as do we, is impossible. The camera frames her between both of them as Gossip Girl wonders whether she'll run off to Murray Hill or back to the spying game: "Sometimes a queen has to make a choice: A castle with a white knight or a quest with a dark prince. So, B, what'll it be? Netflix night with Nate or battling a beast with Bass?"
Gabriel talks that mad venture capital nonsense about his inane project, and Rufus tries desperately to be a part of the conversation about profiting off charity ("Doing well by doing good!" he parrots) and whatever, Lily randomly commits some ungodly amount of money -- hers, Bass Industries', there is no difference apparently -- and totters off with Rufus. Serena and Gabriel kiss and hop around, and Blair shows back up looking wild and insane and drags Serena off again. She laughs and shrugs at Gabriel, somehow managing not to look grateful for the distraction.
In Serena's bedroom, Chuck immediately tells her that Gabriel is lying, and she gets very bored very fast. "Seriously, you two. Enough." They tell her about the LYING ABOUT BUTTER, and Blair is simply incandescent for a moment: "I know for a fact that Butter was closed that night because I used their bartender for the Nelly Yuki SAT Sabotage Party!" That is some advanced callback continuity there! Awesome! Serena reminds them that she was with Georgie that night, and she knows the manager of Butter, so maybe she got them into a private party, or maybe Gabriel just plain misremembered. "Well, Chuck also saw him making a secretive phone call!" Blair, says, and it even sounds like a desperate straw-grab to her. Serena stands up very tall and strong and tells them to fuck off.
"Blair, I support you in all of your crazy choices. Case in point," she says, gesturing at Chuck, who of course loves that one. He only ever had her when he was a fever. "Why can't you show me the same respect? Gabriel is a good guy. He's trustworthy. Even my mom trusts him, or she wouldn't have invested in his project just now." That hits Chuck's ear wrong too, but she keeps going. "Just face it, you two. You're using this as an excuse to get together again." Awesomely, they don't even deny it, just make stubborn faces, and she tells Blair to go find her boyfriend like she's going to do. At the door, she turns in that classic Serena way, but for once actually has something to say instead of just wobbling: "Butter? Really?" I love Strong Serena, Lively does it so well; I hate it when she's in the wrong. Blair admits to Chuck that it did sound stupid out loud, but Chuck's not giving up yet, because he's enjoying himself and B's company. All through this they play the tension between the real reason and the underneath reason so well, both of them. A more cynical performance would have them looking like they don't care about Serena at all, but both actors manage to put a little bit of concern on it the whole time, and it's lovely.
Chuck suggests they speak to the "only person who knows what really happened that night," but refuses to speak her name because of how she's Bloody Mary and once you invite her into your house that Kills song will start playing and somebody will go insane or fake-kill somebody every single time. Blair gets a little scared, because she's always been jealous/afraid of Georgina. As close as she and Serena are, and as unbreakable as the Core Four always are, Georgina has a piece of Serena that nobody else has.
There's a thing in Serena that not even Chuck can handle looking at, and Georgina knows it intimately, because she embodies it. She's the chaos on the other side of Serena. Serena kept that part of herself away from Blair even before Pete Fairman died, because that thing is what would destroy Blair if she ever looked right at it. Abandon -- the gift Serena gives her -- is only nihilism from another angle, and you could say that now Georgina Sparks is a living signifier of the thing that Yale, and Nate, the momentary flirtations with the Colony Club and the van der Bilts, have all been about avoiding. What controlling her food used to be, before Cyrus Rose took that away, and told her she was enough, and loved her enough to make her believe it. That thing that used to be Chuck, until he fought a dragon of his own and became too real to attract Blair without scaring the shit out of her, and became one of the poles that keeps her in alignment, for the time being.
Because every time you think Blair's about to give in and just have her crisis, she's been secretly setting things up to be even more shallow and unemotional, or find another way around the obstacle, and it's always a surprise. So what happens when she really does let go? Because it's not about Serena, this time. Serena fought that dragon, and won, and her prize was that she didn't have to be with Dan anymore. Her prize was the gift she gave Blair, at the end of last season: not falling, but dancing. Georgina let Serena's spirit go, because she passed the test; Blair has no way of knowing that this time, Georgina's coming after her. The song is going to play for her; her bubbling craziness has been working since New Year's Eve to get Georgina back here, pulling sparks along a secret thread. She's earned her fever.
This is my favorite non-Georgina scene in the whole thing: Dan lies on the living room floor with Vanessa, totally blitzed on three beers, feeling weirded out about how he's suddenly not going to Yale again. Vanessa fake-apologizes for "letting it out like that," but covers her ass by pointing out that at least poor Rufus won't have to tell Dan himself. They lie on the rug in playing-card alignment, arms at opposing angles, beautifully composed; Dan's necktie lies artfully askew on another parallel, as the camera pushes down on them and Xu Xu Fang (last heard playing more than one song, note, in accompaniment to Chuck's post-funeral meltdown about winning his father's posthumous approval) melts everything into a soft drunken sinister dream.
"I blame the financial aid office. And the recession. And a certain imbecile former president. My dad has got be the only person in the world who's more upset about this news than me." Vanessa hums sympathetically, because you know she doesn't really give a shit and is just kind of hoping he'll kiss her. "He was so excited about... Selling the gallery and moving on," Dan says, and she hears what he's not saying. "You think he'll still propose?" They consider that. "He's got a lot of pride," Dan says. It's the most grownup thought he's ever had.
Everybody's writing Gabriel checks, even the head of the co-op board, and Rufus pulls him aside. And right then, I think you are either one kind of person or another, Beatles/Stones style. Because you know he's going to get all proletarian and try to get in on the scheme so he can triple his investment and save his family without letting Lily help. (And now I would point out the like-father-like-daughter of it all, because this is exactly what Jenny was all weird about last year, more than Dan even, stealing dresses and abusing underclassmen.) And either you shrink back in horror at the thought of naïve crappy Rufus Humphrey losing all his money once again... Or you lean forward with giant wolf teeth and pray that Gabriel doesn't suddenly gain a conscience. My own reaction vis-à-vis this character-defining moment is ... unrecorded.
Gabe smiles kindly -- not condescending in any way, but scared to pull a nice guy into his scam -- and tells him he'd be happy to help Rufus set up a more secure investment, like city bonds or mutual funds. Of course, Rufus gets snotty immediately and delivers a most amazing disquisition. "My money is just as good as anyone else's. It's how the game works, isn't it? Opportunity arises in the private rooms of restaurants, and on exclusive golf courses, and the rich get richer, and the guys in the middle are never there." Which: yes. That is how it works, and it's gross, and we won't even talk about how the same system games everything from higher education to tax shelters because whatever, work with what you've got, but who besides a Humphrey would ever, ever make a speech like that? Not to mention that a kindergartner could make the same speech about getting a driver's license and it still wouldn't really apply to the actual situation in reality; Gabriel stares at Rufus and feels bad, but I'd be like, "How much money you got, then? I'd hate to be accused of patronizing you."
Blair snags Nate and tells him that she and Chuck have to run away together because Serena isn't picking up what they're putting down. "You mean she didn't just dump her boyfriend because you two told her to?" Awesome. Awesome, Nate. I love you again. She flips the script on him, inviting him to come along, which is such a commonsensical response that I'm surprised he didn't go along with it, and he's like, "None of this is real anyway, it's just Chuck getting you into his weird games nobody ever understands." The number one thing Chuck and Blair have in common, of course, but also that's the problem. She pulls the "trust" card for the fiftieth time, rendering him speechless, and Chuck shows up with her awesome yellow riding coat. She kisses Nate sweetly, hurting Chuck a little, and they head out.
Once safely outside, Chuck lets Blair in on the fact that this is actually a night trip, because Georgina is not with her parents post-bootcamp, but some other place. "Yes, hello," Chuck says, "What time are your visiting hours? We're coming to see Georgina Sparks." Blair shivers; they haven't said her name yet. We've heard her name all through the episode, and the last few, but they haven't actually said out loud what they're planning to do, which is stop waiting for the dragon to come to them. "Get out your brooms, kids. We're off to see the Wicked Witch of the East Side."
Sunrise in a forest, where as predicted Blair and Chuck's hands have found themselves enlaced while their owners were asleep. You know, it's not a real relationship if you can't hold hands. The driver knocks on the window and they both jump up, startled, stare at their hands for a moment and immediately start separately preening. Blair moans, "I can't believe I have to see my sworn enemy with Nancy Pelosi hair!" Chuck grins, and says he should probably go in by himself. "You just said it, you're enemies. Why would she help you?" He swishes and spits into a champagne glass while Blair explains her plan to terrorize Georgina with threats of yet more bootcamp, and Chuck shakes his head. "Blair, Georgina and I go way back, we have a special bond." Yeah, ESPECIALLY GROSS.
Blair shakes her head, because Nate was totally right about the whole thing, and this was just a game to get her away from him and their first night as an apartment-having couple. Chuck doesn't deny this obvious truth, but points out that Nate is being if anything more sleazy than Chuck ever would, because this is no longer about Mole Men, it's about Chuck and it always will be, because Blair and Nate are both totally afraid of life. The fact remains, however, that Blair chose to spend a night in a car with Chuck over a night in her "honeymoon suite with Nate." Beat. "I guess we all knew your weakness for limos." She whispers it, begging him to agree, begging it to be true: "I came here for my best friend." He nods and leans in, eyes locked on her: "Is that the only reason?" They've been through so much, over and around, that the burlesque if permanently over: he's not pulling punches and she's not lying to herself any more than the automatic amount, and she knows it. She searches his face, wondering if he'll kiss her, and he jumps out of the car. She bashes her head against the limo seatback, all alone and screwed.
Chuck walks through a weird campsite with bunks and fires and all that stuff I heard they have in nature. The people, amazingly and awesomely, are wearing t-shirts that say OMJC; the vibe is weird enough and he's so elementally out of place in it that talking to himself -- "What is this place?" -- doesn't even seem weird. A woman asks him if he's a "wayward soul," possibly "in search of direction," and he gets scared, a little bit. "I think I'm in the wrong place," he says, not only like in life right now, but also how has the skin not melted off Georgina Sparks's flesh just being around these people?
"Chuck Bass?" comes a wise, sprightly, chirpy voice, and Georgina Sparks -- looking fresh as a daisy, with braids in her hair like a fairytale princess -- comes hopping over, delightedly. "Have you been saved, too?" she asks, with a giant smile, rubbing his arms affectionately in welcome. And his face... Oh, his beautiful face right now, just staring at her with bemusement, shock, insult, and stark raving fear.
Apropos of nothing, in bed with Gabriel, Serena goes, "Blair was so wrong about you!" Why whatever do you mean by that random statement, Serena? Could you be providing an awkward segue to the scene? Was this perhaps weirdly edited and that line should have floated over from the last scene, to tie them together? Don't know. She immediately spills about the several ways Blair and Chuck totally have his number, and he gets a little scared, and goes back to the well of making fun of Savannah's terrible southern accent that says, "I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, remember?"
Serena, because everybody in every single scene is doing it, brings up Georgina, and asks Gabe's opinion. "She didn't make that much of impression," Gabe says, and she lies there in the morning with her head on his chest, listening to her mouth form lies. "Not even her hair? That flaming red?" She laughs a little: guilty, fearful, hopeful, grossed out. You know, once I agreed to Gabe's little, "I'm going to keep macking on Poppy so that I can make some money off her vulnerability" plan, I would just give in to being a sleazeball for the remainder of the relationship, so I don't know what she's getting all tender about. He says he remembers the hair, and Serena watches the dream die sadly, staring at the wall, soaking in the last moments of him. She kisses him and hops out of bed in the bra she apparently wears to bed, and takes off home.
"It's a seven-day session all about forgiveness, and at the end of it we put on a Passion Play," Georgina says, as Chuck's blown mind tries desperately to make sense of this. "You're more than welcome to come with me, I have to supervise the kids making papier-mâché Apostles for the set..." And as much as I love Chuck's essential cynicism and the way that he just mentally cannot accept this new Georgie, I love it more because it means that Jesus is the new Dan Humphrey.
Think about it: Georgie came to the UES last year looking for Serena's help to save her from the brink. She was simultaneously jealous, intimidated, inspired and terrified of Good Serena and her new life. And what the sparks showed us last time was that Serena was using Dan to keep herself in check, which made them both look bad. But Georgie kept demanding, threatening, begging for Serena to show her the way back into the light. Blowing her boyfriend and trying on her life, cutting Serena's ties to her loved ones, insinuating herself into the outskirts, essentially trying to drink Serena's milkshake. And Serena couldn't do it, because the fever was too hot and she liked it too much, and she let Georgie stay back there rather than deal with things. So now a year later, Georgina -- who is all about extremes -- has now shot past the Dan checkpoint, which was already a bit too far in that direction, right into religion, faster than you can say True Blood.
I think the answer to extremity is moderation, which Serena has learned and continues to learn; I don't think it's extremity to the other side, which ricochet Blair Waldorf inscribes on herself five times an episode. So maybe Georgina meets herself in the middle, maybe she doesn't, but it's endlessly fascinating because the other thing I learned from True Blood is that whatever you think the answer is, it only works once. The second you find the answer it stops being the answer, and we were designed that way to keep us on our toes. We get bigger, not smaller, which means moving from thing to thing and covering all the territory in between, so you can get yourself under control without reaching for things outside yourself. Especially if what you're reaching for is a Humphrey, or an Archibald, because when you use them to pull yourself upright you put on some really terrible damage that they don't really deserve.
So we can believe in this new sweet Georgina while simultaneously knowing that it won't last, because that's how people work. Half your iceberg is always under the water, quietly working against your conscious persona so that you yourself -- daytime you and nighttime you together -- stay in balance. Flipping the iceberg over doesn't actually fix anything, because that just means the old you is down there in the cold water, fucking you up and smashing every ship that sails nearby. What you have to do is get in the water -- and it's so cold it burns, it feels like a fever -- and lift that whole motherfucker up over your head, and look at it all at once. The scariest, sweatiest, angriest, darkest parts most of all. The trick is in believing you're strong enough, and brave enough, to lift the whole thing out of the water, and no matter who tells you that you are, or how many times, you still have to figure that one out for yourself. And you might find that it's the scariest, sweatiest, most feverish people that get you there the fastest, because they know you best.
Which is -- en passant and sic passim -- why Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass will never let each other go, but is also why Chuck's staring at Georgie like she just revealed a truly dirty secret. "It's brilliant..." he marvels, and she giggles, "Oh, it's not that hard, it's just flour and paste..." but he's talking about the transformation. "Getting these Jesus freaks to believe you're one of them, so you don't have to go back to boot camp?" He's impressed but she's not having it; she just grins and smiles, shaking her head. "Still the same old Chuck. Why can't you believe that people can change?" He knows they can, but her?
"You're wrong," she ankle-dips. "You know, as bad as bootcamp was, it really gave me time to think about the person I'd become. Scheming, manipulative. It sickened me. So one day I decided to do something about it. I went to church, found Jesus, and I told him all my sins." Chuck's not buying it, but has at least recovered enough to crack, "Bet that was a long talk." She laughs, it's a good one, she gets it, she remembers, she was there. "He forgave me. Look, I know it seems crazy, but for the first time in my life, I'm happy." He sighs, grossed out, and she cocks an eyebrow at him: "But if I know Chuck Bass, you're not here to be reformed." He nods, because after all that they are still equals, and he does respect her, in his way; she doesn't remember Gabriel, but confirms the LYING ABOUT BUTTER. "I've been praying overtime for that one," she ruefully grins about how she roofied Serena that time," but in any case they were back at her hotel by midnight, "Watching The Hills as Serena drooled on my shoulder..." (God, I can't think of anything more wondrous in the entire known universe than watching that show in bed with Serena van der Woodsen. Being on it with her, maybe. But she is not real, and that show is so very real.) He nods gratefully and she shrugs, smiling.
Meanwhile, Poppy and Gabriel cackle and twirl their mustaches, while Serena calls Chuck to tell him about Gabriel's LIES ABOUT BUTTER, and he's like, "I'm on it, I'm coming home to save you," and then notices his limo is gone: Blair took off. "And eventually a queen realizes that a dark prince only has one thing on his mind, and it ain't slaying dragons. So she takes her pumpkin carriage, and goes back to the castle." Maybe Gossip Girl picked up a tick in the woods and this is Lyme Disease making her talk like this.
Poppy makes like she's about to tie a bandanna across her face or a black domino mask and go steal money-sign bags from a guy with a monocle, and Gabriel feels a tinge of regret and they act generally sketchy about how they're tricking everybody in New York City out of their money based on the teen horniness of like one high-schooler. Man, what if it turned out that's what happened, some high school socialite was like, "My mom's co-op board is feeling you," and boom: recession. She leaves Gabe a voicemail and Poppy gets awful prickly about it, hilariously spitting, "She's awfully needy, isn't she?" He plays it on speaker and she's like, "I'm coming back up to grill you about BUTTER AND YOUR LIES" and they fight about how Poppy didn't properly convey the totally unimportant details of this totally unimportant night for him deeply enough, and she looks totally scary for a second, and then there's a knock on the door and Poppy goes, "Cheese it, it's the fuzz!" or "The jig is up!" or whatever. "Rats!" But it's just Rufus, with all his money in his hands, coins properly rolled, oversized dollar with Santa Claus's face on it, some linty francs, a shiny button. Gabriel's face is all, please do not give me your poor-person money while I still have even one tiny heartstring for you to pluck, and Rufus sticks out his bottom lip and looks like a sullen hillbilly cowhand some more.
Blair walks into the Murray Hill apartment, to Nate's joy, and she stares around at its meager comforts. "I made a mistake," she says in her beautiful jacket. "I shouldn't have gone with Chuck." He thanks her for coming back, and she balks in the living room; tail wagging, he offers to show her around and she just shakes her head, kind of mystified by all things at the moment. "You know... I loathe Murray Hill." He feels bad; he did know that. "Why did you get this apartment?" He pretty much straight up explains, with little prompting, that he did it because they are both gay for Chuck Bass and he's having issues with that. Blair is totally grossed out that he would make such an important step just because she wore a beret in the presence of their oldest friend, and she masterfully plays the Trust card again, with tears in her eyes.
If the first rule of Bad Serena is Don't Talk About Bad Serena, what is Blair angling for here, with the constant Trust Me Trust Me? "Well, you kept acting like I was cheating, so what's the big deal?" I can almost see her going there, but she'd totally backtrack immediately because it's too passive for her. Although I can totally see Nate pulling that, if anybody ever cared enough to wonder much less worry about his sex life. I guess she's really just begging for collusion in her plot to pretend she's not lusting after Chuck, and "trust me" is code for "give me the option of trusting myself instead of holding me accountable for shit I can't even admit I'm thinking. Like if Nate trusts her, it means he agrees with the story she's telling herself, and this is the only way she can make him do that and retain any kind of moral high ground at all, because obviously it's going to make Nate feel awful, like a liar, if you accuse him of not being fully committed and trusting. Anyway, Nate cries and begs her to stay one million times and makes all manner of weird faces. Nate, we officially retract the request for other faces. Stick with what you've got, it's working just fine.
Chuck's chilling out maxing and relaxing all cool on some kind of rustic bench or something by a lake when Serena calls him back again. He stands up to take the call and Georgina is awesome some more: "Ooh, say hi for me! I have so much love in my heart for that girl." This freaks out Chuck for reasons other than its awesomeness, and answers. Serena's standing in Gabriel's room, which is suddenly empty of everything. Just then, Poppy comes running in -- possibly from the closet into which she took her loot and thief gear -- yelling about how "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE'S GONE!? I GAVE HIM ALL MY MONEY!" Serena's like, "I got bitch drama, I'll call you back."
Rufus comes into Dan's hangover -- dude is like half off the bed, sideways, groaning with a headache -- and hands him some coffee without pointing out the fact that he and Vanessa totally had a beer party. Maybe the fact that they were both totally destroyed by three beers each is so depressing for Mr. Former Rock Star that he just considers it on the same level as walking in on Dan masturbating to obscure French films. You know? I Am Curious: Lightweight. Anyway, Dan whines while pretending to comfort Rufus about the whole Yale thing, and once again Rufus's finances have pulled a trick! His thirty bucks will triple and he can buy something at an antique store or something.
Dan blabbers about the imaginary financial aid of NYU and says fuck Yale because it's "basically a big version of St. Jude's," where after two seasons we know just how hard he's tried to fit in, and whatever, he got into other schools, and can live at home. So then Jenny comes running in saying maybe they'll all be living with Lily, because guess what, she and Dan bought that goddamn ring that looks like something from Charmed as a show of "support" for the hellishly ill-conceived matrimony of the two worst parents in America. Eric van der Woodsen's still alive! Gotta call in reinforcements. "The reason I came here was not to deliver bad news, but good," says Rufus, who apparently has decided this week to keep talking like our nation's Founding Fathers no matter what, and elliptically mentions how he just gave all of his money to a tobacco baron in cahoots with a socialite cat burglar, and how awesome that's going to turn out. I won't be satisfied until Rufus is wandering around in a barrel with suspenders. You stupid, stupid man.
When Chuck's taxi arrives, Georgie's like, "Where's your limo?" B took it back to her boyfriend's house so they can be madly in love with me together. And at mention of Blair, Georgina goes bugshit crazy for like two seconds, like her hair literally catches on fire for a second. "BLAIR? YOU CAME HERE WITH BLAIR? MOVE ASIDE, BECAUSE I AM COMING BACK WITH YOU."
All week I kept saying, they're going to play that song, it's going to be so awesome, that's totally how you know Georgina's coming, and they didn't play it the whole episode, and I was feeling less than psychic, and then in the last five seconds she smiles and breathes and goes fake again, and claims she misses the city, and the second he opens the taxi door for her, the bass drops precisely the way it did right after Serena said "I killed someone," when she had the scary black Burger King eyes, when the temperature bottomed out and gravity went all insane. So awesome, so awesome, so awesome. Even Gossip Girl is like, "Ooooohhhhhh fuuuuuuuuuck."