It is like 1983, and Lily Rhodes (Brittany Snow) has just been kicked out of her private academy in Santa Barbara. She heads to LA, to inform her father that she'll be moving in with him. Because Rick Rhodes has no interest in parenting, he calls ex-wife CeCe to come ambush her and take her home.
(He's played by the ageless Andrew McCarthy, precisely as one might imagine him performing the role of a 1983 record exec with no interest in parenting; CeCe's played by Lost's Cynthia "Libby" Watros, at a precisely icy midpoint between our CeCe and Lily in mannerism, but way scarier than both.)
Instead of driving back home, Lily decides it's time to go crazy, and heads into the city to find her beloved older sister Carol -- the excellent Krysten Ritter, from Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars and Breaking Bad -- who founded the We Hate CeCe Club a year and ran off to LA to be a tragedy.
Much like 2009 UES, 1983 LA is home to a disproportionately high number of homosexuals with really bizarre faces; Lily meets and falls in love with one of these immediately, and then tries on a variety of colorful items of wear apparel.
They go to a club out of a James Minion movie for like two seconds to pick up toolishly awesome friend/pet Shep (a blowdried Ryan "Dick Casablancas" Hansen, who never disappoints), and head over to one of those Steff & Blaine parties out of a Bret Ellis novel -- that whole popped-collar coke mirror bisexual Nagel print vibe -- and that's where Lily meets Keith van der Woodsen (!) and his rampantly disgusting girlfriend.
Everything goes all Ryan Atwood Fisticuffs -- Carol's money is tied up in a music video Keith's producing, and she therefore cannot invest in fannypacks -- and Lily ends up in jail. Instead of watching her sister crawl back to CeCe, Carol offers to let Lily move in, and a period piece spinoff is born.
And it's awesome, because even though nothing really happens at any point, it's all so informed by what we know about Lily, her future, her unwritten history with men, and CeCe's stuff that it carries a lot of import. Watching a girl on a show talking about "I need to figure out what I want, what I need" might be sorta lame, unless you know she ends up Lily van der Woodsen, which just makes it incredibly sad.
That whole time travel connective tissue deal won't help for a series, of course, but the rest will: clever dialogue, Lily's curious mix of forthrightness and reticence, the "school's out for summer" thing with both daughters taking a permanent vacation and acting all Nick & Norah about their family connections, the fascinating clothes, and a compelling story, of which we know actually very little.
Meanwhile, Rufus informs Lily that she's too emotionally immature to be worthy of dating him -- "him" in this sentence meaning "Rufus," I just want to be clear -- and Serena boneheadedly decides to stay in jail to somehow prove what a grownup she is, but those are the only two not-awesome things that happen. Serena and Lily have a really horrific conversation in which Serena says terrible things to Lily, and then CeCe shows up and has a series of really horrific conversations in which Lily says terrible things to CeCe, and just when you're wondering if the show's consciously rebelling against Mother's Day, everything figures itself out and the Rhodes women reconcile.
Dan -- in apology for fucking everything up so bad last week -- gets CeCe to bail Serena out and takes her to Prom, where they dance most amazingly.
Blair's plans for the perfect Prom date have been going awry all week, and it's stressing Nate's poor little brain out. He finally figures out that Chuck is behind it all, but not why: it's not that he was sabotaging Blair's perfect night, he was ensuring it, for both her and Nate, including making them Prom Queen and King.
Unrelatedly, Blair realizes over the course of a single dance that her entire relationship with Nate is retarded, and dumps him. He of course sweetly acquiesces, for now; Blair ends up on Serena's arm outside the Prom, reminiscing about their high school lives together and being generally adorable.
week: Season Finale, with Carter Baizen and Georgina Sparks. Serena goes after Gossip Girl. That's all I know. XOXO.
If this whole Lily idea doesn't pan out, we've got suggestions for other spinoffs we'd like to see.
It's 1983, Malibu, all scratchy and faded so you know it's a flashback: Lily's driving in her 911 down the highway, toward something. She calls Rhodes Records, her dad's company, and the secretary doesn't even recognize her name. Lily's sad about that, but not on a level you'd really notice, and clarifies that she's Rick's daughter. In twenty-five years she'll still be trying to get him on the phone, and thinking it's her mother that keeps him at a distance. She's wearing a pink and green argyle sweater and a tweed jacket, riding boots. He's horrified to hear that she's in LA, and not at school in Santa Barbara; he's headed to London. She's Lily: she doesn't allow him to speak again: "Geoffrey's? Your regular table? Great, okay, see you then, love you." She hangs up. She's been expelled. Back to the car.
Lily's driver knocks on her door: they're at the jail. Inside, Blair's pacing madly ("Serena's been in jail for over four hours! She's already served more time than Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan combined!") as Chuck stretches out easily on a bench, noting that it's an easy fix. "She's a socialite mistakenly accused of stealing a bracelet. I doubt they're working her over with the phone book." Blair continues to flip out, while Nate's horrified -- after everything his parents have done -- that Lily got S nabbed. Chuck offers that only someone who'd never been arrested would do something like that. And in case you're wondering, yes, there's a second level to that statement, because yes, Lily was once arrested. Wasn't that interesting, wasn't that hardcore, but we'll be seeing it shortly. If you took out everything that didn't need saying in this episode, much less repeated over and over and over, it would be ten minutes long. Blair stares Lily down when she arrives, awesomely, and Lily gets a headache. "So was Lily blown away?"
That's Vanessa, over at DUMBO. Not really, Dan and Jenny explain, since Rufus never actually proposed, and then disappeared into his room. Rufus comes out and they start talking about how they're going to stay in and watch scary movies instead of Dan going to Prom. Rufus isn't fooled -- not by the lame plan, which is totally believable -- and tells them that, as members of the Gossip Girl generation, of course they'd be totally fascinated by the unending struggle of Lily and Rufus to find enough bullshit reasons to stay together and enough bullshit reasons to be apart to actually achieve optimal Blair/Chuckness in their relationship.
Dan brings up the money thing from last week, and Rufus says that the money issue is over, because Lily fucked it all up and got Serena arrested in the bargain. "I suggest you kids stay out of it. Let these van der Woodsen women fight it out themselves." Jenny tries desperately to care, but considering it's Rufus-related, it's like really hard.
Dan brings up the money thing from last week, and Rufus says that the money issue is over, because Lily fucked it all up and got Serena arrested in the bargain. "I suggest you kids stay out of it. Let these van der Woodsen women fight it out themselves." Jenny tries desperately to care, but considering it's Rufus-related, it's like really hard.
Lily has about one thousand memories walking down the hallway in the police station, which seem really meaningful but actually are just snapshots from the episode to come: her Dad driving away, a picture of herself as a child with her sister. Maybe Owen died, maybe CeCe had him murdered, but either way it's just sort of stuff that happens, and since we haven't met Owen yet it's just some guy's horrible face for a second, fading away.
Serena, whom it would seem has the run of the police station, is hanging out in some office giving her mom the stinkeye when she comes in. Lily's like, "Have you learned your lesson?" I guess the lesson "don't not steal things" is a biggie for them. Serena says the only lesson she's learned is that Lily is crazy, and Lily calls her to task once again for solving the huge problem that she solved last week before Lily fucked it all to hell. Lily lays some speech on her about how moms don't always win popularity contests, and Serena says when she's a mother she will be nothing like Lily, and in fact would rather give her kids up for adoption than be like Lily. "Oh, wait. You did that." For Serena's first attempt at sarcasm, it's pretty good, but also incredibly mean. Lily says she's there to chillax and put the whole thing behind them, and Serena's like, "I didn't even call you." Whom did she call?
CeCe, who appears behind Lily and leans in with a stage whisper: "Ironic, isn't it? If only she knew." What CeCe means is that Lily once got arrested for an even stupider reason.
"For those who complain about the youth of today: if you think we're bad, you should've seen our parents!" What Gossip Girl means is that Lily once got arrested for an even stupider reason. Everybody needs to take five minutes and explore the actual definition of "ironic," because this isn't ironic, because in fact there is no parallel to be had here, because of all the failures of this episode -- and there are only slightly more failures in this episode than there are awesome moments -- the fact that Lily got arrested for being at a party and hitting a man with her purse once in 1983 is, considering what a constant crutch it is for the whole first act, a largish one.
Lily joins her dad at his table at Geoffrey's, where he's having a record exec conversation on some kind of rotary phone. After a few preliminaries and a couple gimmes about the time period -- valets cost $2, gas costs like an apple or a good turn or whatever -- Lily brings up how Christmas was weird because he wasn't there. If you don't know what she means, they are going to explain it to you. He talks about how his job is important to keep Tower Records in business -- drink! -- and whatever, Lily, take it away: "I'm not a headshrinker or anything, but I do think the sudden uprooting of my family from New York, coupled with my parents' tumultuous divorce, may have contributed to some recent difficulties that I might be having."
What Lily means by this is that she does not have a psychology degree, has recently been relocated to California from New York, is a child of divorce, and has been having personal difficulties of late, including her recent expulsion.
"You got kicked out of boarding school," Rick says, and how did he know that? CeCe told him. CeCe sits down at the table, having made the drive from Santa Barbara in the time that it took her daughter to get here from Malibu. Luckily, CeCe is as awesome in 1983 as she is now: "If it was up to your father, they'd stop me at the county line. But Santa Barbara's really only a prison in my mind." She tosses off a few more aggressive zingers, pointing out once again that Rick is Boomer-selfish and wants to live his awesome lifestyle without any responsibilities, children, wives or parenting in the way. Then she orders a gin and tonic, no tonic.
This whole episode is like a gin and tonic, no tonic. You think there's more to it but there's not, so saying it that way makes it seem less obvious and wrangled together. Like the absence of tonic, having been remarked upon, actually stands in for something other than the fact that you are an alcoholic. On other shows they've called this hanging a lantern on the obvious issue, so that it becomes part of the story and is no longer a glaring error; this episode is just lanterns supported by nothing at all, plus Prom. Rick says she's a naturally better Bad Cop -- "Punishing loved ones just comes so much more naturally to some people" -- because in the '80s divorce made people act even more like clichés than just being in the '80s naturally did. Take my ex-wife. Please!
Lily once again breathlessly explains exactly how shit is going to go, as though it's all her idea, and Rick gets more and more scared and CeCe gets less and less impressed as Lily slowly winds down. As much of an unholy mouthful as these speeches are -- and all '80s Lily speaks, apparently, is really long clunky ugly speeches nobody would ever say -- I can't imagine a lesser performer than Brittany Snow getting away with as much as she does: "You're letting me live with Dad? No way, that's exactly what I was gonna say, my bags are in the car and can I have the room that overlooks the tennis courts? I love that room! Thank you for coming all the way down here, Mom, but I think this is all worked out, right?" Which was hilarious ... One whole scene ago, when she did the same thing. As a character trait, it's awesome, and fits with our Lily, but it's like what if they threw a backdoor pilot and only remembered the tics of a bunch of people who don't matter?
Rick called the school: "I told them what had been happening at home, about your sister taking off, your mother and I splitting up. I explained that it was an isolated, uncharacteristic act of rebellion, and they're willing to turn your expulsion into a suspension." What Rick means is that Lily's sister left them a year ago, and that he has been divorced from CeCe, but that usually Lily is a more complacent young lady. What neither Rick nor anybody else believes is important enough to tell us, though, is what normally complacent Lily actually did during this uncharacteristic act of rebellion. Just something, some fucked up thing that not even the show knows or cares about. Which Lily intended to get her expelled, because she wants to live with Rick, because she's afraid that his awesome swinging LA lifestyle will cause him to forget her and she'll have no choice but to OD in the TJ.
Except I do respect this show enough to advance the theory that it's less about her crazy Daddy Issues and more about the fact that both he and Carol have deserted her, leaving her alone with CeCe, who clearly is already driving her nuts. Which is an interesting couple of parallels, since 1) when Serena left Eric alone with Lily he tried to kill himself, and 2) when Serena and Harold left Blair alone with Eleanor, she essentially did the same. So the moral of the story is: Mommies Bad, Daddies Good, Sisters Best.
Rick gives a litany of reasons this won't work which resolve down to Peter Pan Syndrome, and CeCe makes fun of him, and he takes off running. "Please don't walk away," Lily calls after him, because he's literally doing that, and he tells her to go home with CeCe, because she can't be allowed to turn out like her sister Carol. Who? Tell us, Lily!
"She ran away from our family, and for what? To become an actress, which is a completely unrealistic goal -- I mean, yeah, she was pretty good as Abigail in The Crucible, but what was that, like, eleventh grade? -- Anyway, the point is, I'm not Carol. I don't crave adventure, or the freedom to walk my own path. I'm perfectly comfortable with the path that you guys have laid out for me."
Allow me to interpret this vague speech. We now can take it as given that Lily's sister left for California one year ago in order to pursue her ambitions, which may or may not lie within the realm of possibility. These ambitions include work as an actress, a vocation for which Carol has shown talent in the past. Additionally, Lily is different from her sister in many ways, and is willing to conform to any weird demand put on her in order to be the good guy (like Serena) and force everyone else to obey her whims (like Blair). Finally, Lily is not Carol, but in fact another daughter of Rick and CeCe. Rick and CeCe are Carol and Lily's parents, in seeming good health but apparently of such weak character, or possessed of Alzheimer's or analogous brain diseases which are setting in so early that they cannot remember basic facts about their children, and must have these facts explained to them, in long breathless speeches, often several times throughout the day. A burden indeed.
So Lily chases after him, yelling, and from the seat of his car he tells her goodbye and that he loves her, and disappears. And somewhere in Lily's brain there's the tiniest little cracking sound, and she decides to go insane. So when CeCe points at her like an empress and says to go home, Lily decides instead to do something altogether unexpected. Especially given the facts as just explained.
Meanwhile in the future which is the present but at this writing the past, Lily is staring sadly into space while pregnant with approximately five badly hidden babies when her mother enters the apartment with Eric. "Grandma is deceptively quick," Eric wheezes, and Lily assures him there was an incentive: "She's probably racing back to that bottle of gin she has hidden under the sink in the bathroom." Eric's not too impressed with this, because he is the only human being in New York City and has thus tired of jokes about CeCe's love of gin, which we just explored in the '80s and now find again confronting us in the present.
So Lily tells CeCe to fuck off, pointing out that she isn't calling her mother, didn't invite her mother to come visit or go on invigorating walks, and has not received a Christmas card or "fruitcake at the holiday," whatever the holy hell that means. Eric apparently doesn't know either, as his rejoinder -- "you can be thankful for the last one" -- is probably a joke at the expense of fruitcakes, but who really knows, because it goes down like a particularly leaden dessert of the holiday. Lily then explains, in case we've forgotten, that she's pissed because CeCe told Rufus about Pilot Inspektor, and CeCe says that Rufus deserved to know he has a child, and Eric abruptly and weirdly corrects her: "Had." Then Lily prepares breakfast in bed for Serena to apologize for putting her in jail for no reason, and guess what? She's still in jail.
Why? Nobody knows. Serena's brain is completely checked out, and Blair assumes it's because she has become a lesbian -- known I guess for their love of jail -- and Serena refuses to explain what the fuck she's thinking, because there's no reason for her to do this. I mean for real: "My mother didn't think that I was old enough to make my own decisions, so I decided to stay in jail," she says. That's not age, that's brain damage. I don't think you're compos mentis to make your own decisions. Not to mention the fact that Serena's so retarded in this episode that she may not actually be in jail, considering that this conversation takes place out in a stairwell somewhere, and she's wearing her lovely black coat and generally hanging out and chatting with friends on a payphone about how hard it is to be in imaginary jail. "Look, don't worry about me," she says. "Enjoy Prom with Nate, like you always planned in that scrapbook that you kept under your bed."
Ouch. Tortured syntax aside, this speech is intended to convey yet more facts: By this, Serena means to indicate that Blair owns or at one point owned a scrapbook in which she created various images, lists and fantasies for her high school life, including attending Senior Prom with Nathaniel Archibald.
"Please, I don't remember that. I was a child then!" Blair is leafing through the selfsame scrapbook, indicating that she does understand on some level that this is childish and gross, but of course doesn't care. If Blair stopped doing things that were one or the other, she'd just sit in a closet all day supping on water and bread. And even then, throwing it up again. "I should go," Serena says, "I don't want to abuse my phone privileges."
WHAT. Like there's a chief of police in the doorway tapping his watch and making the Wrap It Up gesture. "The fact that you're on an actual pay phone has me beyond nauseous," Blair says, once again the only funny or competent person in the world. "Stay strong, S." Dorota shows up with a bottle of DELICIOUS VITAMIN WATER so that Blair won't die about something. Which does Blair want, good news or bad? "Good news first," Blair says. "Always." (Buliiiimia!) But the good news ("There is replacement") doesn't make sense without the bad news, which is that her dress has been destroyed by the dry cleaners, which tatters Dorota won't even let her look at ("This body bag! Corpse not pretty!") before showing her a gigantic box from Paris that contains a dress identical to the one in Blair's scrapbook. Wait, what fucking scrapbook? "My scrapbook I don't remember keeping and haven't looked at since I was an early adolescent!"
Dorota grins like an insane person while Blair flounces around in the dress that resembles one from a scrapbook that everybody in the Upper East Side knows about, but still somehow needs to have explained to them two or three times in each conversation.
Out and about with Chuck, Nate goes on a separate tear about how everything's gone wrong with Prom: The florists "lost" Blair's corsage, the world suddenly has no peonies, and suddenly there are no limousines. I fucking dare you to accept -- for any reason barring parallel universes or something -- that New York City would simultaneously lose all corsages, bouquets of peonies, and limousines. Also Nate's hotel room was cancelled, and since they don't have their own apartment or any friends who own hotels, they will I guess be homeless for Prom. Which is worse than pregnant, even. And then the dress was ruined. So the question is, is Chuck doing all of this? WITH SORCERY? No, he is not. (Except really he is, but sweetly.) "I don't know how many times we need to have this conversation: Blair is yours." Barf.
Also: fifty. Apparently, fifty is the number of times you need to have this conversation.
"Oh, what a restorative nap that was!" CeCe says, like people do, and Lily tells her she might need some VITAMIN WATER or something because she's not going to feel great for very long. The woman beat cancer at 70 without anybody finding out she was even sick, before she even had time to recover from beating imaginary cancer. She does a very cool switch in tone, leveling with Lily: "Eric out of earshot?" He's at a movie with his boyfriend, like in every other scene perhaps, and CeCe's all, "You're going to what, Lily, hack me to pieces, suffocate me with a pillow?" Graphic, CeCe. Lily tells her to get the fuck out of her house for the twentieth time, because she is "toxic" and because Lily fears turning into her. They talk about Carol, but not really, and Lily reiterates for the third time in this conversation, and at least the sixth time today, that CeCe needs to vacate the premises. Happy Mother's Day.
In 1983, Lily goes to a random diner to look for her sister, and a cute waitress gives her some cute attitude and then a homosexual with a freaky gargoyle face bumps into her with some dirty dishes and she acts like a bitch to him but then apologizes with... Another little speech that might help you out if you haven't been paying attention for the six minutes the show has been on tonight, but admittedly gets awesome at the end.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I've had a really rough day. I got kicked out of school, my Dad doesn't want me to live with him, I can't stand my mom, I spent the last $9 that I had on gas, and so now I'm broke and I'm homeless and unless I can find my sister, who I basically haven't talked to in like a year, I'm gonna have to become... A prostitute. And I don't even know how to be a prostitute, I mean really, how much small talk is required? And where do you even go? And are BJs a must? Because if that's the case, I am so not doing that."
Lie, but other than that these are very good questions. However, if I could just ask you to back up and explain to me who Carol is? And the status of your relationship with her? And exactly how you feel about your father and mother? And what else happened today? And in the last year? And in your whole life? And what day it is? And what year it is? And how gravity works? Actually, let me get everybody in this diner to quiet down so you can tell us all these things at once because I WOULD HATE FOR YOU TO HAVE TO REPEAT YOURSELF.
"Not that any of that information is relevant, unless you're a john." At least she gets it, on some level. He's not a john, he says, he's an Owen. Owen Campos, gargoyle at large. They shake hands and "I Melt With You" starts playing, and he says he can take her to see her sister, like she wants, but she decides that's not what she wants, so he blows her off, so then it's what she wants, so she offers to change clothes to better approximate being Sunset trash like him, so he gives her a luxurious up-and-down and critiques her outfit, and she makes a hilarious shocked '80s face, so he takes her to Carol's locker in the back of the restaurant, which is some kind of fucked up Mary Poppins locker that contains all of the '80s in it, so she tries on like three outfits -- Olivia Gets Physical, Papa Don't Preach, and something else that's black and might be Debbie Harry or might be more Olivia Newton-John, I don't care because I'm not an old person or a me-too dork and the '80s don't actually matter in any way to me -- and makes faces about all of them, then dresses basically like a normal human, and it would be heinous if not for, again, Brittany Snow, who just has this Way about her.
Meanwhile Real Lily is looking at some random photograph that Old Lily is also looking at, at the same time, of Carol and Lily having some kind of Christmas experience in which they snuck out and went skating at Rockefeller Center and took a bus, which is also their lives at the end of the episode, and she has the grace to look ashamed of herself when she admits to Dan that Serena is still in jail. Which at this point is totally Serena's call, if she's even in jail at all, so maybe Lily's just embarrassed that her daughter is an imbecile.
Dan opens the garage door that separates him from his sister -- and thus keeps Child Protective Services from rescuing them both from Brooklyn -- and says he needs a Prom dress. "Okay," Jenny says, "But you're gonna have to wear your own shoes." God, just imagine the Prom dress Dan would pick. It would be like burlap with moths inside it and stinking of trash so it's clear he's not trying to impress anybody, and then at Prom he'd still have the balls to be like, "Why isn't anybody dancing with me?" And then Vanessa totally would, and she'd be wearing a matching burlap dress, only you could see her privates.
"Do I look like I'm wearing a Halloween costume?" Old Lily asks Owen, and he's like, "No, my face is a Halloween costume" and tries to muster some heterosexuality for her, and is brutally and irrevocably denied this last ditch effort when Lily goes, "Is this the moment where you fall in love with me? Oh, it is, isn't it? You're totally falling in love with me right now!"
By this, we can understand that he is totally falling in love with her. Not even Brittany Snow can rescue that one. Meanwhile, Lily tries to drop the fake charges against her daughter, and instead of arresting Lily for dicking the cops around for no goddamn reason and letting her child wander the station all day under the impression that she was in jail and not on a field trip, tells her that Serena is gone.
Owen tries to give the entire world a SLC Punk hello in this 607 club by hugging everybody, maybe he knows them or maybe he's just showing off or whatever, and Lily's like, "You're so popular!" And he's like, "When you don't have a lot of family at home, You've got to find it somewhere else," like that time his aunt and uncle moved away without telling him and he had to live with the earnest English teacher, and Lily's all impressed with how full of hepatitis the club is, and then Dick Casablancas comes flying through the air so hard and fast at Owen that his signature sideswept bangs are blown back into a big dumb bouffant and he ages about thirty years and looks his real age instead of the age he's supposed to be, and he calls Lily a "betty" and also uses the words "awesome" and "wicked" and gives a speech that means very little, and then a strange Bostonian accent comes screeching out of the low-key chaos with another speech: "Randy Walter Sheppard! My twenties are ticking away as we speak, and we've got to go now!"
And it's like, so very you know, like "Carol! Carol? Lily? What are you doing here? What are you guys doing with my sister? She's your sister? She's your girlfriend? How do you know Shep and Owen? We need to talk! I've been missing you!" It would be awesome if either Carol or Lily then turned to Shep and Owen and explained exactly what was going on, don't you think? Carol: "I'm so sorry I haven't written more, or called, like ever. Are you totally mad? Wait, what are you doing in LA?" Lily cannot fucking wait to explain what she's doing in LA -- "it's kind of major" -- but Carol has no time for that, because they have to... Go do something. Get away from No Doubt trying for another "It's My Life" with "Stand & Deliver" again. A song about, like, banditry. Pirates. I knew there was something lame Gwen Stefani didn't already have her grubby hands all over but I couldn't remember what it was.
Meanwhile a swing version of that song is playing at Prom, which is cool. Blair, who has always tried to make her life resemble the movie in her head, is content with the intensity of Prom, and we know this because she goes, "I've always tried to make my life resemble the movie in my head, and tonight, no effort required!" The Plastics come up and tell Blair to vote for Prom Court, and Blair tells them this is a practice for "suburban schools and... lame teen comedies," such as this episode of Gossip Girl apparently. They win her over by A) informing her that there's a tiara (which makes her hands fly to her hair awesomely) and B) pointing out that Blair and Nate are on the ballot. They grin nastily and Blair's excited about this for about ten seconds before remembering to be like, "I mean, of course we were."
Then the Plastics head over to stuff the ballot box and hand Prom Queen to Nelly Yuki, who frankly I think deserves it anyway -- especially for her excited line here: "If you do this stuff in college, people think you're pathological!" -- but when they scatter away from their election fraud, Chuck is revealed looking at them like Carrie White right before the gym doors close.
Dan apologizes for selling Serena out to her mom, and then tells the bold falsehood that he would never tattle to adults about anything, even though last week alone he did it about ten times, plus in every episode in Season One, and protests that Lily is "not like other parents." Serena grins while she puts on the Jenny creation that -- stop the presses -- looks eerily identical to the gold-toned glittery toga that Serena wears every day of her life.
"With good judgment, morals and maternal instinct?" No, Dan says, because he knows that nobody above the poverty line can be expected to have those things anyway: he meant that Lily would use her billions to take a motherfucker out. Dan tells the cab driver to get his eyes off Serena's insane boobs, and points out that sticking around in "jail" for no real reason is idiotic, especially on Prom night. Serena's like, "You're so right, Dan! Just like always! Sorry I'm such a crazy dumb bitch that can't do anything without you right there to explain everything to me!"
Carol sold her BMW to finance this really amazing idea: "It goes around your waist like a belt but you can put stuff in it, like a purse." She sells it adorably with the eyebrows (Ah? Ahhh?), thank God, but Lily makes fun of her, which Owen loves. She changes the subject to what a failure Carol's year in the valley has been: "You told mom that you were making it out in LA." And Carol says the most awesome thing: "I am making it. This is what making it looks like." Which would be good, because it's awesomely true, but the rest of the line makes it funnier than it is true: "Before you've totally made it."
So Carol is only going to be living out of her car and magical diner locker until such time as Shep's "music video" is on MTV, of which she is the star. What's a music video? Ask your mom. It was once a much-touted "new art form," like a Rubik's Cube, which Owen is playing with, because he's a genius. Shep is also a genius, a musical one, and Lily asks why Carol hasn't given their demo to Rick Rhodes, if they're so good. Owen catches part of this conversation about their totally rich dad in the music industry, but is such a genius that he doesn't seem to find it important.
Carol turns the radio up and says to keep quiet about their family. "Why do you care what they think? And besides, being us is awesome," Lily says delightfully. Carol says the usual, how the strings are attached and how people outside the family treat you differently. "Yeah: better." Lily is SO GREAT. Carol snarks that she sounds like CeCe, which Lily awkwardly rewords to be some kind of dumb complaint about Carol ditching her, and Owen saves the day by whispering from the backseat in a caring voice, "Hey. I think we're here." Like if he hadn't said that, they would have kept fighting and what, driven past the mansion they're going to?
Lily shows up to apologize to Rufus for, um, parenting her own child in a way she thought was appropriate, because that's what happens now. They sit on his couch and she talks and talks and talks until he decides that she's talked enough, and he can give her condescending little taps on the arm like how she is capable of one day growing to be a better person than the shit-ass worthless person she is today, who would do something like have her own daughter arrested, like he tried to do a few episodes ago, and that if she wishes and tries hard enough to earn it, maybe one day he'll deign to marry her, and live off her at the age of like fifty while he decides what his fourth career should be, but in the meantime she should forgive her daughter (like she already did three times at the beginning of the episode) and her mother (like she's obviously going to do for no reason at the end of the episode).
Carol and Lily climb in through a window in a random closet in the mansion where the we still don't know what is going on is going on, and Carol explains that the director of their music video is holding the tape hostage, so Carol's going to like get it or whatever. Any time I type the name Carol, assume that Shep is around somewhere pretending that he's her boyfriend, and she's explaining to him at various volumes that they are not dating. There is no need to imagine that it is particularly funny.
We also learn that Keith van der Woodsen (for it is he) is the nephew of John Landis, and that Shep is impressed with Keith's hand towels in the bathroom. Lily makes like a third nasty comment about fannypacks to her sister for no reason, and Carol yells at Lily for being a goody-goody because I guess fannypacks are rebellious, and then Owen is like, "You kind of are a goody-goody" so then she decides to get drunk to prove that she... Loves fannypacks and isn't a goody-goody. This episode makes no goddamn sense at all. These conversations don't add up or connect to anything, and people just keep getting mad and getting sad and changing their minds and making snap decisions, all for no reason whatsoever.
Blair's vicious with Dan for no real reason at Prom when he shows up with Serena, and then he and Serena, um, dance at the Prom. And I don't want to talk about that, because I can't possibly explain to you what it's like. I think maybe they're going for like "unfettered by convention" or "childlike and joyful" or something, but it just looks impaired.
In the past which is also happening, Shep is dancing wonderfully like a robot, while Owen and Lily have conversations that we blessedly don't have to hear -- "So I heard you haven't seen your sister in a while, like a year?" "Yeah, our parents were divorced last year and I got expelled." "I didn't know that, that is really interesting." -- and Carol spots them flirting and taking shots and thinks it's so sweet, but then literally on camera remembers to go look for Keith, and it's the funniest moment in the entire episode, maybe not on purpose.
Carol goes outside and Keith's doing blow with the most stock '80s guy ever, like his ruggedly handsome face and bushy brows were actually built for this, to look like every date rapist pastel-sweatered soc in every Molly Ringwald movie ever, and long story short, Carol didn't know Keith had a girlfriend when something happened, so then something happened, and now he has the video tape and wants more money. Except maybe he doesn't really want money, he just wants Carol to not care about the girlfriend, who is sitting right there, and looks like she invented syphilis.
I don't really get what Keith wants, but he's not interesting in explaining himself, just telling Carol to go away even though he is only keeping the tape so she will come to his house, which she has done. Then Carol says she's not leaving, and inside the mansion Lily and Owen are being dorky on the dancefloor and Owen goes, "Is this the moment where you fall in love with me? It is, isn't it? You're totally falling in love with me right now."
This is, I think, the moment where she falls in love with him. She's totally falling in love with him right now, as far as I can tell.
They almost kiss, which is hard to manage when you're trying not to totally barf on each other about how queer you're both being, but Carol's outside smashing tables or something, and then at the same time Blair is at Prom yelling at Chuck, having found him with all the Nelly Yuki ballot-stuffers, and of course assuming that he is sabotaging her chance at Queen, which means he also did all the one hundred other things, which she again lists -- "my missing corsage, my dress, the limo and hotel!" -- but back in the past Keith says he wants sex from Carol for the tape, because that's how they rolled in the '80s, it was like a secondary currency as I understand it, and Lily says that's totally gross, and of course Carol already boned him, and then Carol explains the whole sordid story to Lily again, and Lily walks over to her future husband and babydaddy and says that nobody speaks to them that way, but doesn't really follow this up with anything else, because she is tedious.
"Okay, we already called the cops, so... You guys are trespassing." Owen gets scared I think about the cops and drags them away, but the disgusting-ass girlfriend is like, "Finally. Take the trash back to the Valley!" and they both scoff at her, and I still can't figure out where Carol picked up her Faith-esque inflections, but it's obnoxious and dumb, and Carol talks about fighting the girlfriend, and Shep wanders into the scene and punches Keith, and then it's just fighting, fighting, fighting forever. Owen gets into it, Carol beats it out to her car, and Lily for some reason jumps on Keith van der Woodsen and hits him with her purse a few times.
While Blair shrieks at Chuck about his betrayal most foul, Penelope -- horrified, and that sadsack tragic girl you see sometimes gives her a little attitude about the ballots -- announces her as Prom Queen, and she goes, "This is my moment. I own Prom," into Chuck's face, and forces Penelope to put the crown on her head with her own hands, and Dan is like, "Who would vote for Blair?" because he's never seen a TV show before, and Chuck explains that he did it, and was removing the Nelly Yuki ballots, and did all the sabotage, and then gives Serena the key to the penthouse at the Plaza. It's a long brass key on a ribbon like the pool at Constance. "You didn't think you were the only one who knew about the scrapbook, did you?" There is NOBODY ON THIS PLANET THAT DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE SCRAPBOOK! SHUT UP ABOUT THE SCRAPBOOK! STOP TRYING TO MAKE THE SCRAPBOOK HAPPEN, SHOW! IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!
Serena can't believe that for the tenth episode in a row she's once again being forced to admit that something Chuck did was sweet, and he just smiles up at Blair on the stage, lit up like a stadium, glowing about her perfect night, and how he pulled it off. Gossip Girl's like, "Wait, you know what? Blair dating Nate is stupid. This just in."
Lily makes some awesome faces, and horrified sounds, in her mugshots, and then she calls CeCe, who's doing an aerobics video on VHS while wearing legwarmers, and CeCe yells at her for awhile about how if she were a better mother she'd just leave Lily in there, and then goes, apropos of nothing, "Oh, Lily! The hopes and dreams I have for you! An Ivy League education, life on the Upper East Side, married to the richest man in Manhattan..."
Which is exactly how it ends up! THAT IS IRONIC.
"See, that's the thing, mom. Those are your hope and your dreams, not mine. I need to figure out what I want, what I need." Whatever. Sure, why not. So CeCe says that she needs to stay the hell away from Carol and her fannypack madness, and of course Carol walks in just in time to hear Lily give a long speech, naturally, about how great Carol is. Which comes in handy, because we have seen her do nothing of import or interest, so being told what we're supposed to have gleaned from this is actually quite helpful. The whole time CeCe is, as usual, awesome ("How about your spare me the heartache and yourself the humiliation and give up on this failed experiment in rebellion? ...Enough soul searching, I'm calling your father's lawyer.") and immediately goes to the SO IRONIC thing of needing to keep the nonexistent scandal out of the papers.
(Um, like what? TOWER EXEC'S DAUGHTER INEFFECTUALLY HITS LANDIS NEPHEW. "She hit him with her purse a couple of times," witnesses say. "She's about five-two and he's easily nine feet tall, so we were surprised he didn't just hold her at arm's length." When asked for comment, police authorities would only say, "We couldn't charge her with anything so she was only in jail for about five seconds, and then wandered the halls making telephone calls at her leisure and complaining that she was in jail. We're pretty sure we could have told her a McDonald's was jail and she'd believe us.")
"Please, Mom. I don't need a publicist, I need my mother," Lily says. Good line. Carol grabs the phone and randomly starts talking like a Jersey tough again, and tells CeCe that Lily's going to moving in with her for awhile. "This is your chance to be a big sister and finally offer some actual guidance to Lily. Advice. Her future's at stake... We both know the first time that she breaks a nail, rides a city bus, or God forbid actually steps foot in a public school, she'll come running home." Carol tells her this is Lily's call either way, and hangs up on CeCe, who just can't believe it.
Meanwhile, for no reason except Rufus told her to, Lily comes waddling up to CeCe -- whom it would seem has taken twelve hours to make it down from their apartment, since she's just now putting her stuff in a car despite having been thrown out this morning -- and begs her forgiveness. Except she does it in an awesome speech: "I'm not going to apologize. But I love you, and I know you love me." CeCe says that yes she does, that her only motivation is love, and Lily hands her another big old steaming handful: "On the contrary, your motives are quite suspect. Selfish even!" Hand me the Kleenex, this is like something on Oxygen!
CeCe says she'd rather deal with Serena -- killing dudes and leaving the country and fucking her best friend's boyfriend in public and quitting school, sometimes all on the same day -- than with young Lily, who after all hit a man with a purse. (God knows if CeCe ever hears about the time Blair invited Rachel Carr to the opera she'll have a heart attack!) And she'd take twenty "Dan Humphreys from Brooklyn" over "that boy you loved from the Valley," meaning Owen. Who... Maybe she had him killed? I really hope she did. "Well, you took care of that, didn't you?" says Lily bitterly, and CeCe points out that it turned out okay, because she ended up marrying Keith and having Serena and Eric and tons of money.
Then they have a conversation that contains the word "destiny," and I don't recap those, because I respect myself and I respect you, but also because I guarantee you could construct something better than they came up with, just from me telling you that it contains that word. Lily says that she would have actually become a person, except she couldn't find the time and/or couldn't let her mother go completely, and then she tosses some more sunshine in her mom's face: "Mother please, I'm just asking you to stay. You know, being a mother myself, I've made mistakes that rival -- if not outshine -- your own. And I forgive you."
I would pay any amount of money to see CeCe slap the shit out of Lily right now. Not because she's her mother, but because the fuck you're going to say that shit to any grown up adult? If you have that much of a grudge, cut your losses. Saying shit that pointless and aggressively nasty to any person, regardless of what they've done, reflects more on you than it does them. Whether or not CeCe is toxic in fact -- and I've always found her to be delightful -- she's toxic for Lily, because she makes Lily act in demeaning and crazy ways. "Mother, just say thank you and give me a hug," Lily orders. And although she doesn't push Lily's 18-month-pregnant ass into traffic, which is what I would do, she at least has the grace to explain that she most certainly will not be thanking Lily for the ten million horrible things she's said in this episode, but consents to a hug, and then the music swells and there's an uncomfortably long embrace, in the grip of which Lily's lovely face in the middle of her water weight grins crazily like she's on X.
Such a weird episode, and we're not even done, because now Blair's dancing with Nate (and at least one thing is working this week: Fountains of Wayne's "Prom Theme" is playing, which is all about how fake and dumb Prom is, and it's just like this reflection of a reflection of a Baudrillard simulacrum of how Prom is supposed to be, which is Blair's whole life but especially tonight), and she explains to him that their relationship is empty and without merit, and will be dumping him at the conclusion of the song. His only response is facts: "Something is ending: high school!" and "We are dancing at Prom!" and "We are at Prom!" and finally she's like, "Don't speak, hush my darling," and kisses him goodbye. And of course, because he is Nate, he is fine with all of this.
Between the idiotic and pointless ways Serena and Nate react to things in this episode, I'm starting to think it's a valid hypothesis that maybe the sex two years ago was just an improbable coincidence, like she just tripped on something and landed on him. "Oops, we're having sex. I wasn't paying attention." "Okay. I like grilled cheese sandwiches." "Cheese is like so good. Where are our clothes?" "I don't know, but I have to go running through the streets of Manhattan in my panties and have a threesome and kill a dude." "I already forgot this happened."
Afterwards, Serena joins Blair on the steps outside Prom. She looks a little older. "Hey, there you are. Where's the Prom King?" They broke up. Why? Why ask why? This episode doesn't care, why should you? It has to do with the scrapbook, that's all that matters. Blair laughs at Serena because she had the perfect night and realized her entire life is a lie, but meanwhile Serena's night sucked even more because her mom put her in jail and then her date was her brother slash ex-boyfriend. Serena says it's all okay because she made up with Dan and realized that Lily was just acting out of love, and besides the only person she actually loves is Blair, who is sitting right there. This is horribly edited on top of everything else, even with the awesome Freur song "Doot-Doot" playing, with Blair looking in a whole new direction every time the shot changes, so it looks like she's deaf and having a psychotic break unrelated to anything Serena's saying, while simultaneously being really super touched by what Serena's saying.
Carol gets Lily out of jail and they talk about how Lily's a "brawler" and how Lily has totally missed Carol and her crazy ways; Serena explains that Blair is high school -- or at least three out of four years of high school -- because "all of the boyfriends and Mean Girls and tests and teachers and our crazy mothers" were experiences they had together. "We raised each other. You're my sister." So sweet. If it weren't taking place in this unholy mess of an episode, this would be the best scene ever. And the weirdest thing about this episode -- which I've been hating on the whole time and making fun of -- is that I feel that way about every scene. If you just repress the part of your brain that wants reason or logic or competent storytelling or actual characters or moments with any gravity at all, this is so the best episode. Which just goes to show you how many people's hard work goes into TV, because this atrociously written episode is so awesome anyway. It's the most fun.
So Carol drags Lily off to the city bus ("It's us! We travel in style no matter how we travel!" she yells super-irritatingly) and they sit together in the back of the bus, and Lily is nervous because whatever, and she stares out the window just like Serena will in twenty years, and Our Lily stares out the window of a limo and smiles at an apology text from Serena, and Serena stares up at the night with Blair's head on her shoulder, and everything is perfect for like one second.