Wow. All sorts of amazing wonders! As much as I ended up liking last week's episode after a week with it, this one just proves what a weird shape last week's needed to be. So much of last week was setup that it's like a prologue -- a quick fumble on the jitney, if you will -- before the real premiere, which was jam-packed tightly with crazy. From the top:
(Columbia) Bree Buckley's face is less pointy this week, but Nate not only has razor burn from hell but some kind of horrible rash that is very distracting. Maybe she gave him scabies. Anyway, they try to live together in her parents' apartment for several days in order to burn through their relationship as quickly as possible -- think Hotel New Hampshire without the incest -- and end up forging all kinds of amazing romantic bonds and shit. Frankly, between the rash and the endless mushmouth love talk they could have planned a bank heist somewhere in there. Any case, it seems likely that the storyline is going to heat up pretty soon and we'll get him back on our show.
(Brown, sort of) Serena secretly doesn't want to go to Brown, and instead of fessing up she couch-hops for a couple of days, scotching a big business deal for Chuck and earning his powerful enmity. I can't remember the last time he was this mad. So he yells at her and says some things that are hurtful enough that she goes all the way to Brooklyn, where Dan makes her breakfast and tells her to ask Rufus for life advice, but when she gets there Chuck's already blown her spot, so she gets into a huge fight with Rufus, and in a fit of pique: defers college for a year, pulls Carter back into her orbit, uses him to fuck up Chuck's dreams some more and alienates them both, then: realizes she's acting completely crazy, apologizes to everybody, has a really wonderful heart-to-heart with Rufus, and tells Carter she wants to be with him.
(NYU) Blair informs Dan and Vanessa (who are still momentary enemies) that none of them know each other from this point forward, and attempts to conquer her entire dorm despite Chuck's sweet request that she stay with him at the Palace. This goes not-so-well, due to her usual mental illness but also to her new roommate GEORGINA SPARKS, who undermines her every strategy, makes friends with Vanessa (who lives down the hall), and earns Dan's sympathy, all with like barely any effort. Dan and Scott make friends, which makes Vanessa creepily happy, but later Scott acts unhinged when somebody asks him what classes he's taking, because he totally didn't transfer to NYU, because he's only there to cut off Dan's skin and wear it over his own.
(Crazytown) Feeling lost and alone, and thrown by Dan's mysterious popularity, Blair eventually asks him if she can go to Georgina's rooftop party AS HIS DATE. Oh, I'll say it again: Blair Waldorf asks Dan Humphrey to take her to Georgina Sparks's party as his date. But at some point this becomes an evil scheme-within-a-scheme-within-a-cry-for-help and she invites the OMJCers to ruin Georgie's party and out her as a Christian. Dan -- both out of a sense of justice and a newfound pride in being more popular than Blair -- makes B look like a total villain, and after a wonderful conversation with Serena about the future, she skulks back to Manhattan and a wonderfully sweet/depression-flagging daytime nap with Chuck.
(Super Crazytown) Everybody's full of familial feelings so there's talk about getting together to discuss the "epicness" that was the Georgina/Blair/Daniel/Jesus four-way cagematch, but Dan's too busy having HOOKED UP WITH GEORGINA! All this, the suddenly ubiquitous/still delightful Phoenix, Leighton Meester's Cobra Starship cameo (twice) and that Just Jack song (three times) too? I was going to say I missed Lily and the kids, but honestly: Where the heck would you have shoved 'em?
Flaubert, sometime between 1855-1901: "Though she had no one to write to, she had bought herself a blotter, a writing case, a pen and envelopes; she would dust off her whatnot, look at herself in the mirror... She wanted to die. And she wanted to live in Paris."
Gossip Girl, more recently: "Every Fall, confident high school seniors transform into nervous college freshmen. They leave their parents' homes for the hallowed halls of higher education; and like any new venture, starting college holds the promise of limitless opportunity..."
Dorota holds a tray up for Blair, who's looking at herself in the mirror: A blotter, a writing case, a pen, envelopes. She takes a headband off the whatnot, and Blair settles it tightly over her hair, where it belongs: "The opportunity to conquer a new territory..."
The facts and the figures, they overwhelm and stifle
Everything that you thought you knew...
That's Just Jack's "Embers," which is not only a great song and well-used thematically throughout the episode, but links us back to graduation, when that Shiny Toy Guns song kept playing the entire time.
And the petty decisions that you think make a difference
So tiny that they blow away like dust
"Or to try and be a little less Lonely," GG muses, as Dan pops a toaster waffle in his mouth and tries to summon up the courage to leave the empty DUMBO loft where he lives now. Meanwhile Serena, in a flurry of clothes and bags and giant-ass purses, gets a text from far-away Lily about how proud she is, and wishing her a good drive to Brown. Serena sighs and sits in the pile of her crap. "But just because the opportunity presents itself doesn't mean everybody is ready to take it."
Chuck and Blair make out near a limo at the Palace; she's wearing a completely inappropriate but adorable red dress, and he's paired a purple tie -- with which he cannot stop fidgeting for anything -- with a purple white-collar and, as we'll see, a pink pocket square. So I guess he's feeling much better. He's feeling horrified by the idea of B living in the NYU dorms -- "Fluorescent lighting, communal showers, public school girls? There's a place for that, and it belongs in the back of a video store" -- but she assures him it's only until she has minions in place. (Here Chuck makes some dumb anachronistic joke about "queens" and "Liza" that we won't actually dignify because it makes no sense at all, unless there's some kind of continuing education outreach program for irrelevant faggy Nathan Lane roles, or Chuck doesn't actually know any homosexuals under the age of retarded. Both of which seem unlikely.) "Chuck. I trust that when you say Never drink absinthe with Daniel Baldwin, you know what you're talking about." He almost giggles. "But when I say the first week of college means scared vulnerable freshmen needing someone to guide them..." Season One Chuck's massive rape boner at these words twangs out whatever she says ; more kissing; driverman pretends he's not suicidal at having to wait on these bastards' every whims.
Serena and Dan discuss his totally interesting relationship with Vanessa Abrams because of how she stalked him to Connecticut in order to act like an asshole in a new location, and Serena pretends that this is interesting, and she is all excited for him because finally they'll be going to the same school, because I don't know if you remember this but the kind of asshole that Vanessa is, is the homeschooled kind. "I guess you're right. It's probably not the best idea to be avoiding my only friend at NYU." God, when that friend is Vanessa it's just heartbreaking.
Serena tells him once again that he is going to make tons of friends at NYU because A) All freshman are the same kind of desperate and B) It's NYU. She keeps saying that and he never registers it as a total burn. Like how clueless: "Right, because the world of Greenwich Village intelligentsia is Dan Humphrey's natural habitat." (IT IS. YOU ARE THEIR ARAGORN.) "You're so lucky, NYU is exactly the right place for you," Serena repeats for the millionth time, and he mumbles something about Brown, but she's going into some kind of fugue state.
"Deep down, all the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of her life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. She had no idea by what wind it would reach her, toward what shore it would bear her, or what kind of craft it would be... She listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing happened."
He says her name until she pulls it together, and she neglects to tell him what we have already figured out: That she's not going to Brown. And honestly all three of them did so much to sabotage themselves last year that I can't remember if we knew that or if it's part of the marvelous neverending grab-bag of crazy Serena brought with her this year.
Serena wishes Dan luck and hangs up, and some nosy girl -- one of the Greenwich Village intelligentsia -- gets on his jock about how he was published in The New Yorker that time. He's too giggly and she's too smarmy for him to go into the whole McInerney thing, but she doesn't care, she's just all over it. Oh yeah, she read it, and she loved it, but first she hated it, because she also submitted a thing to it, but then the thing she was submitting was her dignity, here now in this coffeeshop: "But then I read it and I was like okay fine I accept defeat at your hands, Dan Humphrey." Even Dan, to his credit, is amazed/embarrassed by that shit. I hate her terribly, and then more again: "Anyway, I have a writer's group. We meet every week. We're meeting here at noon tomorrow. You should come." Um, obviously he will? But also I think he just did.
Rufus and Serena have a way-awkward stepfatherish gadabout when he comes to tell her the car's there and that it's a big day and Lily's so proud and he's so proud too. Serena hugs Rufus in precisely the way you hug your mom's new live-in boyfriend: Affectionate, wise, and squirmingly uncomfortable. At NYU, things are similar. Remember unpacking all your stuff at the dorm? Random people's faces and you didn't know if you'd even ever know them, or hate them, or what would happen, and everybody's parents Rufussing around and being awkward, and everybody else being awkward, and nobody knows anything, and everybody's consulting little pieces of paper? The mad rush of feeling like an asshole, at like the one time in your life where you know everybody's exactly as lonely and clueless as you are.
Take Vanessa and Scott, for example, who are munching on each other's faces when Dan arrives with his little coffee and eyeballs all a-staring. They bumble about and then Dan's like, "Cool, you two are dating," and Vanessa turns that into some kind of Vanessa bullshit about how Dan should have called her after she acted like a total lunatic asshole, and Dan is not impressed with her 0-60, which is gaining at a rate, but then B gets out of a car Vanessa calls a limo, per usual, and she "notices" them when she's like six inches away, acts grossed out, crosses them out of her gameplan and informs them that they don't actually know each other here, and Dan looks at asshole Vanessa and her creepy incest boyfriend Scott and says that'll do just fine.
Of course, Scott stares after Dan like the kind of man who wants to make a suit out of another man's skin. Adler. Hmm. Besides the psychoanalytic pioneer and Mystique's psychic elderly lesbian girlfriend in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the only Adler I can think of is the other Irene Adler, the one from Sherlock Holmes. The perfect adversary? It's not lining up right yet. He's Serena and Dan's evil brother, and he looks mutated, but that's all I got at this juncture. Well, and dating Vanessa is pretty much like going lesbian.
Anyway. Purple shirt and purple tie and a guarded welcome to Serena, who has just shown up at Chuck's door, he presumes for some "study aid" for her studies at Brown. No, she says, and trounces into his apartment with all the giant purses the world has produced, piled onto a Palace luggage cart that pulls into view after the window in which he could conceivably say no. And oh, he is not loving this, and oh, he will not stop fucking with that damned tie.
Blair's got seven tragic girls lined up already in her dorm room, which is roughly the size of a $2000/mo. loft. Half of it is blank and white, the other half has been designed outwith reach. You got carpeting, serious wallpaper, puddle drapes, the whole nine. It looks like SMG's about to show up and do a bump from her crucifix. That one picture of Audrey -- looking right, in the Halston hat with the big old bun underneath it so she looks like Alien -- is hung perfectly on the wall. Which is, as usual, our strongest reminder so far of Blair's ongoing problem with reality/pissing match with God:
"She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification -- for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery."
"Yes, we may all be freshmen, and new to NYU and the dorms, but that doesn't mean we have to embarrass ourselves. I can tell from looking around this room that none of you are from New York City." One girl interrupts, to no avail: "-- Riverdale doesn't count." But no worries, the "sad truths of your hometowns" won't count against them, because Blair wants to help. "For example, who can tell me which is the only club to be seen at on a Saturday night?" One girl read Marquee, which is wrong, because trick question: "You should never be seen at a club on a Saturday night, it's strictly Bridge & Tunnel on the weekends. You're welcome."
Dorota passes out these giftbags -- including little Tiffany boxes and of course headbands -- and then they have a little aside about how well it's going. So of course Georgina Sparks appears in a cloud of that red smoke Elphaba preferred and starts squealing and hollering and hugging Blair, who looks like she's about to be sick, because as we knew, G and B are going to be roomies, which GG finds as delightful as any of us: "Rah rah, sis boom bah, Georgina's pulled a coup d'état!"
Georgina unpacks her gaudy shit while Blair shrieks at her. "Following me to NYU? Becoming my roommate? I'm gonna have Dorota file a restraining order!" G points out that she's already overreacting, although she does lie that the roommate thing is coincidental, so obviously she's going something going on. She says she didn't want to go back to bible camp, so picked Gallatin instead. Heh. "So you're not in love with Jesus anymore?" G explains that she holds Him in her heart, but that they've redefined their relationship. "You mean He dumped you because He found out you were Satan!" Blair screams, and G tries to bribe her with Manolos and how they can borrow clothes from each other, but A) No way and B) Work up to it, G. "I'll win, you know. I ruled at Constance and I will rule here. And you can't stand in my way."
I kind of love how Blair just instantly assumes this is some kind of baroque cat-and-mouse game designed to ruin her social standing; I love even more that it totally is, because that's how this show rolls. Except I'll be sad if that's all it's about, because Georgina is the Big Guns, and responds with force in kind. The reason she's coming after Blair is because Blair 1) turned her evil again, 2) turned her fucking crazy again and 3) made Jesus break up with her. I don't think sinking a couple of saketini parties is going to pay that out. What she should really do is... No, it's too scary, I can't type it out loud.
And the petty decisions that you think make a difference
So tiny that they blow away like dust...
We are all embers from the same fire
Vanessa, who is rooming down the hall, overhears the screeching of B and the yippy/wacky sweetness of Georgina -- how great would it have been if they'd worked up to Blair screaming "Get out get out GET OUT!" -- and comes to gawk. Blair shoots her looks full of hate and also appeal as she takes in the whole story, and the whole meanwhile Georgie's acting all xanaxy about things and driving B even crazier. "So uh... That's awesome," Vanessa says, and bounces. It's the coolest thing she's ever done. Well done, sister-lady. Georgina pulls out some kind of godawful Klimty bullshitty freshman tapestry to hang up and Blair fucking bolts. Dorota's hustling her hot ass down the street in full costume -- "Should we call police?" is her first question, which is awesome -- but immediately hails a cab so she can get over to Masa and set up a catered event for Blair, who is having a silent conniption in a grimy dorm hallway.
Serena spreads her infinite giant purses all over Chuck's couch and gives him some ridiculous speech about how she can't go to college -- to Brown -- to find herself, because she thinks that college is... I can't figure out what she thinks happens at college. Maybe she thinks it's a sweatshop or something. "I don't know what I want to do yet, and... Going off to a new place to figure that out?" A NEW PLACE THAT IS CALLED COLLEGE?! "I don't know. I'm just... I'm not ready for that." Whatever, Boo. You don't want to do it, don't do it, because if you don't want to do it, you won't do it, because nobody in college gives a shit what you do, so suddenly you're responsible for your own behavior. And I mean, imagine how much damage S-Bomb could do with that information. "Look, sis. For people like us a college degree is just an accessory. Like a Malawi baby, or a poodle."
("What's improper about it? ...Everybody does it in Paris!" It was an irresistible and conclusive argument.)
Seriously at this point she starts taking giant purses out of her giant purses in order to create giant towers of giant purses. I don't know where they're coming from. All sides. They are coming from all sides. Serena explains that she just needs to hide out in what he queasily calls "the Basscave" until she plans her move, none of this technically has to do with Carter Baizen, and not even Blair knows about this little life detour. This last, to be sure, is confirmed by the fact that she hasn't shown up to drag Serena to Providence by the hair.
This whole conversation takes place while Serena plays on Facebook and refuses to look up at Chuck, which sounds sort of bitchy but actually is the opposite, like, when he says Sis now you can tell he means it and the way she treats him is very comfortable. He asks her to get out that night for a few hours for a "meeting," and without looking up she goes, "Chuck, I don't mind if your dealer comes by." He assures her that "Jesse is in St. Bart's this week," and like, good point. Why are all alleged dealers named Jesse? Perhaps it is their alleged joke on us, the alleged buying public.
So whatever Chuck's got going on, it's legit. She finally looks up, and he bites his lip, and woggles that damn tie around, and finally goes -- literally he says -- "You know the old Art Deco bank on 72nd, between Madison and Park? The one that went under last month?" And she nods. I don't know, I'm not remotely like these people and certainly was not like these people at 18 years of age, but if somebody said that to me I would smack them for what they were implying, which in this case is that you -- Serena van der Woodsen, who can't remember basic shit about her own life, or do simple math -- have this like grasp on the ever-changing real estate market in Manhattan.
Guess she does, or she's just nodding. Either way. "I want to make it into a speakeasy." He shows her artists' renderings, horrible ones, of the deal: In the front, an "elegant restaurant," but down in the vault, "an after-hours locale devoted to indecency, disreputable behavior and all manner of debauchery." Serena gets it, it's like an homage to the Great Depression. "Chuck! This is really a great idea! I can't believe Blair hasn't told me about this yet!" He's all proud: It's his secret, he's not telling anybody until it goes through, and in this way he can appease old Bart's Hamletty ghost forever.
Serena looks at the pictures and at him, and they bite their lips at each other adoringly, and she's so proud of him, and it makes him more proud of himself, because that's the magic of Serena. Gosh I hope she doesn't immediately do the other magical thing she does after making you believe in yourself, which is turn your success and your whole life and everything else she touches into total hell.
The awesome and the awful thing about Emma Bovary is the same awful and wonderful thing about Blair Waldorf. Everybody thinks because that book was banned that Emma's problem is hobaggery, but if you actually read it, she's just basically Blair: So in love with romantic images and future delights that she never actually gets around to living her life. She keeps hurling herself into these new experiences and secret lives and trying to make the world as magical as she thinks it is in books, or Audrey Hepburn movies, and she keeps getting majorly burned by the fact that life isn't like that. Actual life is awesome, and she never really figures that out. So it's like continually getting dragged out of heaven, which makes regular life hell.
Dan and Vanessa, for similar and similarly grotty reasons, are taking Women In Literature, taught by a Professor Schweik. First thing on the syllabus? You guessed it. Dan approaches and they détente. Sort of. In a Vanessa kind of way. "You know I'm a sucker for stories about scorned women," Vanessa says. I don't even know what she means, I just assume she's being a dick. Dan's all alive with the serendipity of them both taking this gaywad course, and they immediately start apologizing and fawning over each other, and they talk about how V has some thrilling new dorm-mates but first, Scott and how badly he wants to wear Dan's skin over his own skin, and then Georgina appears in a hail of bullets and sparks and Dan vacates that selfsame skin, he's so startled.
Dan finally lands back on his feet, scrambling away, and Georgina acts all friendly and wounded-bird with them for awhile about how she's super sorry about how last time she was around she got scary, and the time before that -- which, let's review: she pretended to care about Vanessa's movies, and then gave Dan a blowjob under a fake name -- but now, of course, she's fine. "I've got my meds straightened out," she says, which is hilarious and causes Vanessa's eyebrows to go haywire, "So I come to NYU hoping for a fresh start, and who do I get as my roommate? Blair Waldorf!" Dan's shocked, of course, and Vanessa's like, "Girl, I know."
"I wish I had some other friends here, you know?" Georgie waits for them to fall on her with hugs, and continues. "You guys are... Really lucky to have each other." She waits around some more, but they're too scared to move. "Anyway. I should go..." She takes like one step away, and gets nothing, so she half-turns back. "Okay, this is probably too much, but would you guys want to have a cup of coffee with me?" (I WILL DRUG IT WITH A MICKEY! YOU WILL END UP NAKED IN QUEENS OKAY?) Vanessa opens her mouth but Dan sweetly explains to G that she is a toxic psychopath and no amount of clean-slate is going to fix the fact that she is genetically demonic, so no. Vanessa is, of course, not impressed, because Vanessa's entire personality is being better than anybody else in the room. G slinks away, actually sad I think -- I always believe everything she says, I just don't think she's ever saying the whole truth -- and says she understands.
Vanessa waves her Bovary around and gets self-righteous and Dan's like, "It's Georgina!" And she points out that he's Dan, which is not like an award you get, and BTW so is she Vanessa, so she says she thought he was better than that or whatever, and Dan -- and he is utterly correct, but read a room for God's sake -- goes, "I know you're new to the whole school thing, but you don't want Georgina as your friend. I mean, she's gonna scare everyone away." V is just horrified, of course, and they make various bershon faces at each other like primates establishing dominance -- only with the moral upper hand, so pretty much just like college freshmen -- and she finally breaks and runs straight into the cloud of Georgina's crazy. I have never wanted anybody to get hipster grifted as bad as I want Vanessa to get it. She can go live in that pit with Poppy Lifton and catch rats.
Nate has this horrible rash -- maybe from waxing, maybe from Bree Buckley -- and won't put his shirt on, preferring instead to roll over and over in a bed with Bree Buckley like a crocodile with its prey, and talk about God knows what, smoomy-noomy-hoo, and that little red-state cross dangling from her neck the whole time, and they better stay in this room and do it the whole week before classes start so they won't be in love or something, and he can watch his lame TV shows and she can sing Timberlake in the shower and they can just ))<>(( their scabies all over each other and whatever. "What do you say? You, me, this apartment? Let's get sick of each other." Done.
Chuck is talking to a sober man in a blue shirt and red Repp about the restaurant. Because any investor, when invited to discuss capital with a teenager, would clearly just drop by his penthouse in the early evening. The guy talks about how everybody knows Chuck is a dirty old birdy, and Chuck assures him that this is all above-board and he doesn't want "some raucous club coming in and disrupting the quiet" or "to bring that element to the area."
"That" element, of course, immediately busts all up in his area, when Serena comes running in, yelling Italian into her phone while calling out to the party people in the hall and drunk-whispering to Chuck and the man that she's broken her heel. Chuck's lawyer of course calls at this very moment, which is just long enough for Serena to drunkenly gape, "Isn't it so awesome how he wants to build a secret dungeon in this restaurant?" The guy's troubled, but of course Chuck doesn't help: He totally hisses SERENA at them in a way which makes it clear he's pulling some kind of stunt, and the dude bounces. Serena's scared, but so would I be if Chuck made that face at me. He hasn't been this angry since Nate started cheating on him with Dan.
Blair stands around her sushi/sake cocktail party in a gorgeous purple gown -- the floor's common room is, of course, decorated out to here -- but she's all alone. There's like one sort of terrifyingly desperate wannabe from before, a girl named Amalia, and when she introduces herself Blair just stares at her for like a whole minute waiting for her to vanish before remembering that this is a guest at her party, and then smiles. "I'm glad people understand the concept of being fashionably late, but this is ridiculous." Oh, but everybody's down the hall watching a movie or something. Blair stomps off after yelling at the girl to stop hogging the toro.
Serena's already pissed by the time we rejoin Chuck's lecture, already in progress, about how grownups act and how he obviously wasn't going to tell the guy about Victrola 2.0 and the coat-check girls giving happy endings. Serena disagrees, huffing that it was an honest mistake, because the guy was all trying to talk to her about Chuck's amazing plans, and but then Chuck makes a way worse mistake: "Look, why do you think I asked you to go out tonight? Because I knew something like this would happen." And I mean, the list of shit you don't want to say to Serena is pretty short, but it is emphatic. She assures him she'll be finding someplace to stay, then, and he grunts under his breath, "Trainwreck" as she's leaving.
It hurts. "She repented her virtue of days past as though it had been a crime; and what virtue she had left now crumbled under the furious assault of her pride." Just like every time this happens, yes, but this time she really does feel completely adrift and out of control, by her own design, so it's like twice as scary.
Blair appears just as the people filling her room are clapping over the end credits of Vanessa's stupid movie, and Georgie's all over it. "Oh, hey Blair! Oh my God, we just finished watching Vanessa's documentary about this community garden in her neighborhood? It was amazing! Yes it was! I mean, Vanessa! Tears. Actual tears. When that gang member picked up his first carrot..." Heh. This shit is Kryptonite, of course, so Blair tut-tuts the whole room and informs them that the cocktail party is in full empty swing nearby. "Saketinis, and... Is that my invitation being used as a coaster?" The nerve.
Georgina thanks her roomie, but they just "scarfed like four pizzas," and the thing is Vanessa's bootleg Michel Gondry videos, which is just perfect, and Blair assures them all they have no need for greasy pizza and Vanessa's home movies when there's a sushi and sake party right in the other room. It is at this point that she begins to shout. "Did I mention? Wasabi facials!" They all kind of stare around and wonder if she's always like this. They have no idea. One of the girls tells Georgie to shut the door and she does, gleefully, right in Blair's face. "Spotted: Blair Waldorf, going from VIP to VD. Poor Blair. How are you going to cure this one?"
Dan wakes up Serena -- in Jenny's DUMBO room -- on his way out, having made her three toaster waffles. That's just so sweet. "Harboring an Ivy League fugitive? I'm your man." He reminds her that they have no servants, so if she sees anybody but him, call the police. (Oh, and Vanessa. How quickly we forget. Or maybe not, maybe it's implied S should call the cops even then. If Vanessa's ass ever climbed in my window I'd punch her in the neck.) He mentions his "literary group" proudly, ever so proudly, and Serena again acts jealous and admiring about how sad his life is going at NYU. He returns the favor by telling her to talk to Rufus about Brown, because at some point his fatherhood gene might kick in. "He might ramble a lot, he might nervously strum his guitar, but uh... When it comes to fatherly advice? I don't know, he's pretty much the best there is." She thinks about that, and it's not untrue, and I was sort of hoping for this all last week. Then she grinds on those waffles like the homeless she is.
Blair wanders out into the street or something, wearing a light pink frilly top and a cute antique-key necklace, and falls into a flurry of activity: Bright pink Georgie-style posters for a rooftop rager, being handed out to just everybody, who are each and every overjoyed to have them. "So if you're not trying to sabotage me, then what is this? First you deliberately ruin my sushi party, and now you're making your move." She is, at this point, obviously right, but G just calls her paranoid. "Why else would you have formed an alliance with Vanessa? The one person I may hate more than you?" G points out the difference between "alliance" and "friendship," and then says the funniest thing: "Unlike you, Vanessa's cool and people like her."
This is a topsy-turvy motherfucker of a world we're living in where you can say that to Blair Waldorf, and be in the right. "...More than the weird girl who threw the fish party." G pushes past while B splutters, and then explains further: "Face it, Blair. Once upon a time in a far-off land, you were a queen. Here, you're just a loser who will never fit in." Which I love, because it's true, and that's what she was signing on for when she got Cyrus Rose to pull those NYU strings, which means she sort of knew this was coming, but not really. She knew it was a step down, but only because it would be easier, not because it would be harder.
I've always thought Blair was best adapted for the real world, but only because she's ferocious and mean; this half-way world of college is going to be her first experience with it, but the fact that they're hitting her this hard this early in the season means she's going to be pretty damned awesome at the end of the season. Assuming she, you know, survives. The difference between a Serena (or a Rufus) and a Blair is that being forced into new shapes is the only way Blair ever gets it, while doing the same to Serena is Procrustean, and means chopping off parts one at a time. It's the reason some of us never finished college: You're meant to be learning and getting bigger, not feeling caged or chopped at. So anyway, she's just broken by the information, and G steals back the poster and hands it to some girl and tells her she's pretty, and that is that.
Serena's wearing essentially the same color, but in a Serena-type dress, and when she goes to see Rufus at PRADA she's displeased to see Chuck just on his way out, having been fed -- of course -- waffles of his own. He mentions having set up another meeting, and shakes Rufus's hand, and Serena's pretty sure he was there ratting her out, but one look in Rufus's deeply unimpressed Rufussy eyes once he's gone, and it's obvious. "Look, I don't know what kind of twisted spin Chuck put on things, but I actually wanted to talk to you about this." He cocks his head at her and she decides on the interesting tactic of pretending they've both forgotten she looked right in his eyes two days ago and lied, and then disappeared into the ether. "Rufus, I'm having doubts about going to Brown," she says, like it's the first conversation.
"Well, I'm sorry about that. But to lie about leaving for college? I mean, between the show you put on for the paparazzi all summer, and the craziness at the polo party last week, and this? I don't know what's going on with you." Serena agrees, and apologizes for lying. "I just didn't want to upset my mom," she says, and Rufus fervently agrees. "Well, at least we agree about that. Which is why you can repack your things and go to Brown today. I'll have a car here within an hour, as long as you're in it there's no reason Lily ever has to know about this."
(If you're wondering, that's when it happens. Because that is the most Lily van der Woodsen thing Rufus has ever said, and if Lily were here to hear him say it, she'd hear CeCe's voice saying it, because it's also the most CeCe Rhodes thing he's ever said: "You will do as you're told. I have made the arrangements; I have thrown money at it. Your existence is an embarrassment, but it's one we can cover up.")
"Or what, you'll tell on me? Wow. I feel really emotionally supported in making this life-changing decision." I am totally on Serena's side -- big surprise -- but seriously. She came to this house expecting waffles from a soft man, and instead she got the Rhodes Treatment from a weak one. This is why she goes crazy, every time. Running from this is how Serena was conceived. This is how Eric was almost killed: "Your existence is an embarrassment, but it's one we can cover up. There's no reason anybody ever has to know."
Rufus engages, unwisely, and says it's not a decision she's making, but a mistake, and he's trying to help her not make it. "By threatening me," she points out, and leaves with an awesome parting shot -- "Do you know... You're more afraid of my mother than I am" -- after telling him to call Lily himself, and tell her she's not going to Brown. Mind now made up. "Thanks for the talk," she spits, now in full-on Bad Serena mode, and he shivers.
Carter strolls around the Shire being total hotness, and when his phone rings he's totally mean without prelude. "What do you want?" She tells him she wants to go out, because she is not at Brown, and will be withdrawing her admission in a sec, and she wants to celebrate. He thinks about it, very frowny, and then agrees. Which is effed, because she already has a Bad Serena plan in mind and he's just a cog in the machine. Which is in itself effed because this episode is one in which Serena has an evil scheme and plays it out, while Blair I think is just coming up with shit on the fly, the way S usually does.
"Everything immediately surrounding her -- boring countryside, inane petty bourgeois, the mediocrity of daily life -- seemed to her the exception rather than the rule. She had been caught in it all by some accident: out beyond, there stretched as far as the eye could see the immense territory of rapture and passions."
Blair's looking at the hateful posters in this one singular coffeeshop and overhears Dan's douchey voice holding court: "I learned everything I need to know about women from Judy Blume's Forever." Eugh. There is much hysterical laughter -- and I mean hysterical, table-pounding, I need SAG laughter -- and she walks up. It's a pretty cool little scene, blocking-wise, because everything in Blair's body language is screaming courtly romance, and he's totally in his publike element.
So she waits for him to stand or acknowledge her, and it's not happening, and finally she goes, "Can I talk to you?" And he again does not stand, and just kinda mumbles for her to state her business. So then she waits a second more, and finally just goes for it: "I was wondering... Do you have a date to Georgina's party?" Her fake smile has never been more horrified. Then she just gets sad, waiting once again for him to answer. "Forget the Four Horsemen -- the real evidence our world is coming to an end? Blair Waldorf needing Dan Humphrey to rescue her from social extinction."
"Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times."
-- 1871 letter to George Sand
"Good Girls Go Bad," a Cobra Starship song on which Leighton Meester sings, wonderfully as usual, is playing at the kegger. So right then you have the stage set for a B/Georgie showdown, which is all about the definition of a Good Girl and the definition of Going Bad, sung over by Blair's actual human person in a triumphant manner while Blair eats shit and continues to eat more shit. It's fun. This episode is like "Age Of Dissonance" amount of complicated and cool.
So Blair and Dan head up the stairs behind the keg, and she's obviously slumping, so he looks down on her from the stairs and asks if she's okay. She's not, she's dreadfully nervous. "I just feel like I got off on the wrong foot here, and I want to start again." She pooches out her lips in that way where she's being sweet and sincere, but he never notices that: "So... Thanks for bringing me, Humphrey." Completely overlooking the fact that once again she has acknowledged that he is a good friend, he immediately explains that it's because A) He is awesome, B) Pay it forward, C) She is a bitch and D) Would not return the favor, ever. Then he takes away her headband and throws it down the stairwell. Blair is pretty much just entirely broken from this point on.
The rooftop, assuming you could get up there with the stairs at all, which you usually can't on a college campus, is pretty much real: Kiddie pool, beer bongs, lots of kegs. Blair is, of course, horrified. Katie comes running up and immediately compliments Blair's necklace, and Blair tries to compliment her back and just comes up with a guilty, yucky silence, which stretches into infinity until Dan breaks the silence to go get them some beer, and tells them not to talk about high school. Everybody high-fives him and shit on the way to the keg. Egregious, but still painfully realistic.
"So was everyone at your high school totally jealous of Dan for being such a great writer?" Blair nods at Katie, then does an awesome double-take: "Dan's a writer?" Yeah, an awesome one. Maybe this year he can write a story about a girl with an eating disorder and call her Flair Smalldorf.
Georgina is quite dewy when she spots Dan, who immediately apologizes for telling her to go fuck a goat yesterday at the bookstore, and she's like, "No prob!" She keeps apologizing for all the shit she did last time, but I can't remember her doing anything bad last time. Just getting called horrible names for about fifty years and then saving all of their asses and getting Dan into NYU. Yeah, remember that? Remember how the last time they saw her, the only reason they knew she was crazy was because she called them up on the phone and was like, "That was super fun saving all your asses with no thanks or break in the abuse you guys kept handing me, and oh by the way I killed Poppy Lifton and ate of her flesh, and I'm wearing my giant psycho shades again, so watch out."
So they patch it up, I don't know how Dan does it but the agonizing apologies and back-to-normals he pulls are just Guinness level fast with these ladies, and then Georgina points out to Dan that Blair isn't looking for a second chance to smoke a beer with idiot frosch, she's looking for a way in so that she can form an army, and he has given it to her. Dan plays Vanessa in this iteration and tells G that B deserves a second chance, but her faith in B's wiles is unshakeable. "People like you here, Dan. And Blair sees that. I'm just trying to look out for you. Trust me: You're being used. Have fun!"
They keep cutting to Blair looking more and more uncomfortable at the party, and finally G just pats him on the shoulder and wanders away. Some guys hop in the kiddie pool and B stares and V drags Scott somewhere I didn't quite understand, and Dan stares at Blair and wonders if she's playing this time. I personally... Am unsure. This whole episode is about retreating to patterns, because of the facts and the figures, but it's also about being pushed back into them by the other characters' paranoia: Tell Serena she's a fuckup, and this has always been true, she'll start fucking up. Tell Blair she's being a bitch, and what do you know.
Now, I think where Dan fucked it up -- though maybe in a salvageable way -- was that little stunt in the stairwell where he called her an asshole and took away her headband. Obviously that was where it started to go south, especially considering she'd just bared her metaphorical throat to him by thanking him at all. I believe she was honest in that moment, and that makes it a very tricky moment.
But I would still like to think that if Dan ran over there right this second and started introducing her to people, and made her drink a bunch of beers really fast, she would mellow out and it would be okay. Tell everybody about her amazing mother, her fashion pedigree; all the things she and Eleanor have done for his very talented little sister: These are the things that will get Blair over the hump, and he's the best person to explain them. But just by standing there and observing her instead, he's fucking it up, because if she's all alone at this party for one second more, that means it's still Georgina's party and Georgina is still winning, and that means everybody has to die.
On some other stupid show about psoriasis: Nate Archibald used to wack it to the LL Bean catalog, and had/has a cargo short fetish, and he kept the boarding pass from the flight from London when he met Bree Buckley, because he's sort of sentimental, plus kissing.
The other Cobra Starship song (Operative lyrics: "Stumbling but yeah, you're still looking hella fine... The city's your playground/ I watch you take a bite...") plays over Serena's fake date with Carter, in which he's barely had time to toast "Brown's loss" and his concomitant gain, much less start talking about their relationship, before she spots Chuck with his business guys and fairly hops on one foot with her desperation to get over there and fuck everything up.
You go Coco, you got it girl
Dancing up on tables
Say that you're unstable
You're a hot mess and I'm falling for you
Chuck's already shaking his head slowly back and forth when they appear, blowsy and fun-loving as the day is long; he finally says, "It's not a good time." Serena, always one for a quick turn of phrase, goes, "Well then let's make it one!" She plops herself down at the banquette to him, and Carter on the other side, and they start a slick double act about their "favorite Chuck Bass stories," which are so numerous that they had to break them into categories: "What were we up to, International Affairs?" Carter remembers a time when Chuck and the Italian ambassador's son had to leave an Amsterdam brothel, and Chuck angrily explains that the culprit was mistranslation. Then it gets weird.
Serena giggles and the men stare at her, and she goes, "Is this a business meeting?" And then her plan kicks into action, as she explains they might be picking up on a vibe between Chuck and Carter, who don't like each other much: "...They share the same taste in women. Sometimes they share the actual women..." she stage-whispers, and Chuck's horrified, and Carter's feeling sort of uncomfortable too, and asks if this meeting is about trying to fill Bart's shoes, which is a cheap shot, and then Serena starts yelling about how he's only telling people it's a restaurant, and ends up looking right in his eyes, way less drunk than she's pretending to be: "What did you say, you wanted to 'redefine decadence'?"
"You wanted to ruin my deal, so you came here and brought Carter Baizen as your wingman." Carter now feels used, and gross, and Chuck bounces. "I told Rufus about Brown because I was actually concerned for you." She feels bad about that. He apologizes to the dudes for wasting their time, and now she's stuck with Carter, who is also giving her the stinkeye, and she sits and breathes and attempts to like feel good about herself.
Counting all the different ideas drifting away
Past and present, they don't matter
Now the future's sorted out
Watch, you're moving in elliptical pattern
Think, it's not what you say
What you say is way too complicated
That one Phoenix song that is just about everywhere, not that we're complaining yet, plays over the new scene at the party, in which two nerds are discussing BSG v. TNG, which if you don't know what that means, awesome.
It's twenty seconds 'til the last call
It's not a miracle we needed
And no, I wouldn't let you think so:
Falling, falling, falling, falling
(All you have to know is that TNG is a TV show where all the real-world parts of Maszlow's pyramid -- food, rent, shelter, money, air, etc. -- are taken care of, which frees the people to have adventures. So, pretty much exactly like Gossip Girl, only instead of great adventures like buying clothes and being mean to people and knowing what sex even is, it's about a lady with giant boobs, and a robot who thinks he's people. And every week, somebody who is not as nice as them shows up and causes ugliness and trouble, and the boob lady feels feelings and the robot man does not, and then a bald man or a beard man yells a lot, and there is science, and an explosion or an understanding, which is followed by tea. Occasionally a small nerd will do something stupid or turn into God, or his mother will go to Planet Scotland and masturbate on a ghost, but that's about it. Oh, and Whoopi Goldberg in a funny hat.)
Finally one of the nerds notices Blair, who is after all hot as hell, and asks what she thinks about this timeless nerd debate.
"And now she could not bring herself to believe that the uneventful life she was leading was the happiness of which she had dreamed."
She assures them that they do not want to know what she's thinking, but enlivened by beer he assures her that he does, and then she gets a text message saying, "We're here!" and runs off without looking back. Speaking of delayed latency, Scott's all over Dan about how thank God he came to this party, and isn't Vanessa so whatever, and then Katie and V come up all giggly and yelly about how Scott told Vanessa to take the wrong Art In The World teacher because he's old -- "his lecture notes are literally turning yellow with age," says future writer Katie -- and when pressed for more details about his like decision algorithm Scott pulls out a knife and stabs all of them to death because he is not now nor has he ever been a student at NYU, because he's only pretending to have transferred here (in which case how would he... don't care) so he can wear Dan's skin over his own: "I'm at a party. I really don't feel like taking a test right now." Dan is weirded out, and Vanessa is not impressed, but the "epicness" is going to overshadow this behavior for the night, meaning one more red flag that could have stopped Scott's transformation into a god-man drenched in the blood of unbelievers will have gone unnoticed by the time this hurly-burly's done.
"Excuse me, everyone. Can you please stop with that noise? Hi, everyone," Blair says, reaching all the way back to early Season One for this one. Georgie literally goes, "What the hell," in a voice so appalled and dripping with sarcasm I honestly thought it was Vanessa saying it until the third viewing. Dan shrugs, and B's off. "Well, most of you don't know me. My name is Blair Waldorf. But a lot of you know my roommate, who threw this amazing party, Georgina." There is much cheering, and she grits out a painful, "Yeah I know, Georgina rocks, right?" Pause. "I mean, it's funny, because I never knew that a Jesus freak could throw such a good party!"
Georgina's eyes get sad. I've always liked her. Vanessa and Dan are not impressed with B right now either. "But I guess I was wrong. So everyone, raise a glass -- or a... plastic cup of foam -- to the coolest Christian I know: Georgina Sparks!" Which is hilarious, both because of how honest it is and how we don't talk about that, but also because the show went there. I don't know that it would have worked -- on sophomores, yes, but freshmen are often weird about the god stuff -- except right then is when the entire OMJC cult camp comes crowding onto the roof ("What do you know, what do you know/ What do you know about Jesus? What do you know, what do you know/ What do you know about the lord? What do you know, what do you know about Jesus? And his love?") and scaring the shit out of everybody with pamphlets.
Vanessa and Georgina's stares are equally freaked out and upset, but B's not done: "Oh my God, this is a conversion party! I can't believe it! Georgina threw this party and invited all her friends here to convert the vulnerable freshmen!" Everybody gets scared and tries to flee, and Georgina looks like she's about to catch fire, but also cry at the same time. "Seems that Blair Waldorf has finally found Jesus... And invited him to crash Georgina's party." Blair gives that humorless, pinched smile that means the world's been put back together again. Never bodes well.
"And all this time she was torn by wild desires, by rage, by hatred. The trim folds of her dress hid a heart in turmoil, and her reticent lips told nothing of the storm."
While Carter pays their bill, Serena tries desperately to apologize for using him, and Serena points out -- this is so Serena -- that it's okay because Chuck had previously screwed her over, or at least she thought he had. Carter says this is all because of Carmen Sandiego, and wonders if she hasn't also skipped out on Brown in some weird acting-out about her absent father. I don't even know about that one, I'll have to give it more thought. She does that fugue-state thing again, begging him to stop, but Carter isn't having it.
"No. I told you how I felt. And you blew me off, until you needed someone to do your dirty work. It's time to find a new bad habit, because it's not gonna be me anymore." He takes off, and the camera does a slow pull back on her alone at the bar, which rarely happens on this show.
"Poor little thing! She's gasping for love like a carp on a kitchen table gasping for water."
Blair runs wildly through the throng of the nearly converted, inviting everybody to Monkey Bar, limos downstairs, and Amalia is all over that shit. I can't wait to see what her deal is.
Meanwhile, a sweet/dumpy OMJC lady is yelling kindly at Georgie, "We were worried about you. We missed you so much. I can't tell you how my heart filled with joy when we got your call inviting us to share His glory with all of your new friends." I didn't invite you here, she hisses, beyond embarrassed. "We thought our little lamb had been lost for good!" Through gritted teeth: I am lost for good.
Dan stops Blair in her mad rush to get everybody out of there before anything else can go wrong, and she explains: "Georgina was turning everyone against me. You were just a casualty in the battle for social dominance. But don't worry. Your loyalty's been rewarded. Your name's on the list at Monkey Bar." To Vanessa, hilariously: "Yours isn't."
Vanessa, exasperated, tries to explain the street-level reality of today to Blair, which she should know is a failing proposition: "Georgina wasn't turning people against you, Blair. You tried to bribe people into being your friend with sushi parties and gift bags, and nobody liked it." B's not hearing that, and she's already rewritten the whole story in her head anyway: "I don't need these losers to like me in order to follow me. Fear works better anyway." She offers Dan the chance to avoid "social Siberia," and takes off.
Vanessa does a weird rapper move like she's not feeling it bro, and she and Dan wig out over the concept of popularity. Honestly every conversation between these two is like the first conversation about this topic. But then Katie and some assorted coterie come running up to ask if Dan's going to Monkey Bar, and he realizes Serena was right -- not that he will, of course, ever make this connection -- and he's totally popular. Vanessa sees it, and points out that if there really does have to be a Queen, it doesn't have to be Blair. Dan likes the sound of that shit, and immediately barges over to the DJ booth.
While Blair is explaining to the people that they are not to stick their heads out of the limo sunroofs, etc., Dan grabs the mic and tells the crowd that Blair invited people from Georgina's past to embarrass her. Georgie looks down, sad and not for show. Vanessa is, of course, as impressed by this as she is by everything Dan Humphrey does, because that is why she was born. "But you know, we're all starting college here..." (Ooh, except Pilot Inspektor who made up teachers and now makes a totally scary face because college is by his count the 1847th thing Lily and Rufus took away from him and handed to Dan or something.)
"And college is supposed to be a place where you're not judged by what you believe, or the friends you make. You're here to make new friends and start over, right? So last time I checked, I mean, I think this party's... Pretty fun, yeah? Yeah, okay. So who wants to leave with Blair? All right, and who wants to stay here and drink cheap beer wit [sic] me? YEAH! It's a no brainer!" We are all embers from the same fire, now.
Word. But I like the idea, this very fantastical idea that going to college is some kind of revolutionary praxis where the things that matter suddenly don't matter and the lion can lie down with the lamb and whatever. I like that. It's a very comfy thing, comfy like how senior year is the last time you ever get to feel moral certainty. And it's true that the world is a lot bendier here, and those first few weeks of freshman year really account for about two years emotionally, so: At this point in orientation week it's truer than it will ever be again, for any of them, for the rest of their lives. I like that. It means that Blair doesn't have to be a bitch, and Serena doesn't have to be a fuckup, and Dan doesn't have to be Lonely, and Vanessa has her choice of Dans instead of just the one, and Georgie doesn't have to burn. All these things will resolve, the truth will out, but right now they're all free, and that feels good.
In theory. In reality, you only grow when the sparks fly, because it's trouble that bends you into the new shapes. In reality, it's the people that hurt us that give us the most to work with, by burning off the bullshit. In reality, you got Georgina Sparks staring at Dan like she just discovered something better than Jesus, and the petty bourgeoisie dancing with kegs, and Blair slipping away into the stairwell looking more broken than she has since Chuck said it. Just damned sad. "Uh-oh, B. Looks like your new flock was just led astray. And by Dan Humphrey, no less. I guess they know a false prophet when they see one..."
"...The storm kept raging, her passion burned itself to ashes, no help was forthcoming, no new sun rose to the horizon. Night closed in completely around her, and she was left alone in a horrible void of piercing cold."
When Rufus comes home to DUMBO, Serena's sitting at the bar, looking bereft. She says "hi" but hardly a sound comes out. "You mind if I join you?" She shrugs, embarrassed. "It's your home. Dan told you I was here?" Rufus pours himself some coffee and assures her softly that the most important detail is that she felt she could come there. "That you felt like this was a safe place." That one nearly gets her, but she keeps it together. DUMBO has always been the only safe place on this show; it's the first one she's ever seen. "I'm really sorry, Rufus. I never meant for it to get this messed up. None of it was your fault." He sits, and apologizes for blowing up at her, while she makes more awkward stepfather faces. "So... Talk to me." Nobody's ever asked that before. Not like he means it.
"Well, um... I called Brown and deferred for a year." She feels a little dumb, or a little trepidatious about it; he's shaken, but recovers: "Okay." She admits it was for dumb reasons, but has decided that it was the right call. "I would have just been going because my Mom wanted me to go, and while that's a good reason, that's not good enough." Rufus then fucks up major and recollects that he did the same thing: Dropped out of Rutgers to pursue music. "I wish I had that same sense of purpose," Serena explains, once again missing the point of college. "But I hope that if I... If I take this time, that I'll find it."
An appropriate length of time passes before Serena breathes out in a sudden exhausted sigh, "Gosh. How am I gonna tell my Mom?" Rufus's tail starts wagging so hard it is a blur, as he offers to help her with that tiny question. "I know I'm not the first guy that your mom's brought into your life, but if you and Eric will let me, I'd really like to be more to you than... Just Lily's most recent husband. Let me help you with this." She's moved, and she's touched, and she's relieved. Rufus Humphrey is so screwed.
"...Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."
From that delicate, brilliant scene to Bree Buckley wearing a summer dress Lily wouldn't have worn in the ugliest months of 1996, honking into the phone at her parents about schmooby-wooby rashy-washy, and then Nate comes out into the room -- fully clothed, thank God, and how weird is that to say even this one time -- and whatever, their parents and they accept each other and blah-blah remember last week, it's like that. But with the memory of a rash. And then she stores him in her cheeks for the winter.
"...They talked about the mediocrity of provincial life, so suffocating, so fatal to all noble dreams."
"There's a reason we never went downtown: It's awful!" Heh. Blair and Serena, back for a little sojourn on the Met steps, outside the new American wing. Nice. "The minute you cross 14th Street, people forget there's a class system!" Also nice. Serena assures Blair she'll find her place, and Blair shrugs: "No, I found my place, and it's at the bottom. It's a point of pride now that I see who's on top." She points out that it's for the best; if she'd been less distracted she would have forced Serena into school. Serena giggles and says it really wouldn't have gone down like that. She's rooted. Blair admits that S seems "a lot better" than she has in a while, now that she's let Brown go.
("Self-confidence depends on surroundings: the same person talks quite differently in the drawing room and in the garret, and a rich woman's virtue is protected by her banknotes quite effectively as by any cuirass worn under a corset.")
"It was so much easier when it was just about where we sat on the Met steps!" Serena agrees, pointing out how they've been here/done this, and B laughs: "But I was so good at it!" Serena stands up -- and about six steps down, so they can look each other in the eye -- and tells her it's time for a new challenge. Which frankly is how they should have sold this shit to her in the first place, because it's Blair. She likes two things, achieving and destroying. They hug and giggle and kiss and touch each other's faces and finally Serena peels away and goes off, and then it's just Blair, worried about Serena, and then Blair worried about Blair, all alone on the steps.
Scott creepily hands Vanessa this intense block-paragraph page of helpful notes and hints about like every teacher at NYU -- "And look, I even gave them grades!" -- and apologizes for how he acted clearly psycho last night, and is continuing to act totally psycho while explaining it. Vanessa's like, "No prob." Scott's like, "Yeah, a lot going on last night. Like Dan, he was so amazing. His skin looked really... wearable last night. Is he always so commanding and masculine?" Uh, no. Vanessa finally sneaks a look at her boyfriend to see if the gay he's always getting about Dan is literal or figurative, and finally she's like, "Um, do you want me to call him? (So you can have sex with him?)" Scott tells her yes, but knows enough -- or can see through the haze of his developing crazy -- to say that first he would like to spend some time with his little woman.
"...But how to speak about so elusive a malaise, one that keeps changing its shape like the clouds and its direction like the wind? She could find no words; and hence neither occasion nor courage came to hand."
When Carter Baizen doesn't feel well, you can really tell. For such a pretty face it sure does turn into that scary Russian man from Ghost when he hasn't slept. So he comes out of the building looking all bruised and mean and asks Serena what the eff she wants, and she gives him an awesome speech. "There's a reason I always come back to you, Carter. And it's not because you're my bad habit. You're the only one who understood why I needed to find my father. You were there for me during all of that, and I trust you." He's tired, or just sad -- we still don't know him enough to really know what his game is -- and assures her anybody would have done the same thing. (Which is what, of course, Dan said to Blair on the stairwell, when it was true.) "No, they wouldn't have. And I don't want anyone else. I want you." He actually laughs at himself, considering her once again, but as she turns to go he takes her elbow, and kisses her.
Through all of the devilish things we do
I can't help my stupid hope, it's always with me
They make out. It's delightful. She deserves somebody like him. Speaking of: Blair comes home to Chuck's, as "Embers" plays again. She is down the fuck trodden. He's there too, in bed, taking a midday nap in his little PJs, depressed and sad. She curls around him like a question mark and the question is: Not ready yet. Not ready to be asked. She takes his hand and nuzzles at him. "You were right about the dorms. The lighting is awful." Nothing. She asks if he's okay. He's not. "I am now," he says.
I'm glad you felt like this was a safe place. Right now, it's good. It is necessary, it's how they need to heal. They will drown in this. They're both embers from the same fire; snuggle down and smother it, and you've got nothing at all. They can't just let things go like Serena, because they are those things. I like that Blair is getting shoved so hard, because that's when she shoves back. But having a safe place like this -- the lost boy, who has nothing and nobody now but her -- and a safe place to bed down? No thank you. They will drown. They want to die; they want to live in the Palace.
And petty decisions that you think make a difference
So tiny that they blow away like dust...
Through all of the devilish things we do
I can't help my stupid hope, it's always with me
We are all embers from the same fire
Dan wakes up, still on the rooftop. His first party. It's Vanessa: "Hey, do you want to meet me and Scott so we can download about the epicness last night?" (Honey, no.) He says he's still hung over and begs off. There's a girl in his lap. It's poor Georgie, who once loved Serena so much she tore the world apart and burned it up. Who loves hotter and brighter than anyone in the world. She smiles up at him sleepily and he kisses her, headachy.
She falls back asleep, against his chest, and he's sort of amazed by himself once again. GG, too: "Apparently, higher education doesn't make for smarter decisions. So take out your notebooks and sharpen your pencils, kids. Gossip Girl's going to college... And this class has a lot to learn." But I don't know, it seems about right to me. It's about time for Dan to grow up, and that's all Georgina Sparks was ever meant to do. It's all any of us can do for each other.
I can't help my stupid hope, it's always with me
We are all embers from the same fire
We are all embers from the same fire
We are all embers from the same fire.
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