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What the hell happened here? An episode with all the ingredients of awesomeness -- from momentum on Blair's amazing Big Fish/Big Pond arc to Serena's continued inability to do anything sensible -- turned out to be the lamest story since last season's epic stinker "Carrnal Knowledge." But I mean seriously, you got Little J turning into the ice queen of Constance with no warning, and Tyra Banks acting like the usual asshole she is, and you got Lizzie Montana over here wanting to snatch off her wig...
Whatever. It's so retarded I don't even want to talk about it. Here's what went down. Blair was alerted by old guard headband bitches at Constance that Queen J was preaching anarchy and whatnot, so Blair -- still surrounded by the social white noise that has been driving her nuts all year -- goes down there to quell the rebellion, reinstall the monarchy, and pretend she has any friends whatsoever. Chuck is grossed out, so he takes Little J to this movie premiere in order to shift the balance of power back to Little J, while making sure Blair gets the message that she is special all on her own, while going back to your high school makes you the worst.
This premiere in question is for the new movie starring Tyra Banks's character, let's call her Wyra Franks, and Hillary Duff's character, let's call her Blizzie McShmier, They don't actually matter at all, beyond how difficult they are to watch be on this show. Dan meets Shizzie, who is also Vanessa's roommate, only she tells him her name is Kate, because...
Notting Hill. That's all you need.
Meanwhile, Serena becomes friends with Wyra Franks by using all her Blair-babysitting mental illness skillz. Lily is not impressed by this fake publicist job, because of course now that she's home she's not giving up on the dream of Brown. Because Serena is a total moron this week, she can't actually explain herself and just keep tossing around nonsense phrases about "finding herself," which Lily is not hearing, because it's still stupid.
So Blair throws her annual sleepover, but it's ruined by A) being creepy and B) the Chuck/Jenny fake date, which puts Jenny back as the Constance Queen, which she's suddenly cool with. Vanessa and Shmizzy are roomies and she's going to be around for like seven episodes. Um, I think Serena is still a publicist working for this ugly pointy girl with spooky pale eyes, because she introduced Tyra Banks to her true self. Scott is in Boston and I guess dating Georgina, who joined him there a week ago. God, did anything else happen? It was so awful, dudes. Oh, but week looks amazing: G brings Scott back to NYC in order to break up Dan and Hillary Duff... Just in time to ruin Rufus and Lily's wedding.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"Black Champagne" by The Starlight Mints ("Queen with the rebel spark") plays over Jenny fussing with her headband -- an ever-so-Little J classic, the black velvet with shattered glass-looking jewels -- and GG wondering which way she's going to jump. "The first day of a new Queen's reign, nervous subjects twitter and Tweet. Will she continue where the old Queen left off... Or strike out on her own?" Jenny, of course, finally leaves the headband behind, because she already said she wasn't going to wear a crown, and also so we can see her urchin hair better.
"And what of Queen B?" In the dorm hallway, the peasants bump into her, once again giving her the opportunity to be horrified: "Is she biding her time? ...Or simply doing time?" In other words, GG would like us to know the same storylines are still happening, and nothing has actually changed. I mean, I love the whole disappointed aristocracy angle, because after all without willing serfs the monarchy can't exist, and we've been Jennyless long enough that things can now change; I just hope they do.
But the real story this morning, GG continues, is "a queen of the silver screen," who has just taken the Danes-Foster-Franco route of enrolling in a huge college and attempting to ignore the fact that she's famous. That's Olivia Burke -- Hilary Duff to you and me, slowly growing into her giant chiclet veneers and gaining back all that Hollywood lollipop weight that made her look so scary -- whom Nate, of course, adores, because she's the star of a series of tween movies that really get him going. Endless Knights is the ongoing epic, and it concerns vampire knights of the Round Table. Yep, that sounds like something Nate would be into. It also sounds like it would make a shitload of money.
Dan, of course, is so into being Dan that it's no longer a choice, and he is only vaguely familiar with the movies of which you speak. When you lose track of that particular thing ("Men? Walking on the moon? When did this happen?") you can turn into a whole new kind of asshole. I remember senior year I woke up early after a kegger and turned on my friend Mary's free pay-per-view, and sat there bewildered and drooling for two hours before I swept through the house, shaking people awake. "There is a bus! And it has to maintain a speed exceeding this certain miles per hour, or else it's going to literally explode! This film is simply thrilling!" And that's the story of how the J-man got punched in the nuts for the first time.
Nate's total disbelief that Dan is so pop-culture clueless is really adorable; he explains that Olivia Burke (who's going to be with us for a third of the season, so settle in; and trust me, she's a lot easier to take once you get a load of Ursula Fucking Nyquist) plays "Guinevere, but like a hot, blood-sucking Guinevere." Dan reiterates that he has no idea what she or her ginormous Candies-shilling pearlies look like, and Nate goes, "Hey man, I gotta run, I got a ten o'clock class." Dan promises to help Nate edit his Hawthorne paper, and Nate... Runs? To Columbia? If my friend Martha were here she would be telling me how retarded that is, but I'm going to guess and say the usual amount.
There's a girl in a fedora -- and what says "I want to be left alone" quite so much as a ridiculously inappropriate pimp hat? -- staring at Dan while he jiggles his poor man's pockets looking for change for his coffee, and then she buys his coffee for him, of course, and they meet-cute. Except it's more like a visit from Meet-Cutes of Xmas Past, because whenever a person meets a famous person and they fall in love with mistaken identities, there is always coffee. I mean, I'll take Dan Humphrey over Hugh Grant any day, so I'm not complaining. Oh, and you know what, often there are also large teeth. (I'll let it go, I promise, I just keep getting stuck in this one year where all I could think about were Hilary Duff's teeth. I drew pictures of them on things. They're also how I used to keep her separate from Mandy Moore until Hilary Faye's Jesus mullet caused me to fall in heterosexual love with Mandy Moore.) Anyway, she says her name is Kate. Kate's just a girl, standing in front of a boy, wondering if he's as gay as he appears to be.
You know how there's just the one coffee shop in New York now, where Vanessa lives in the floorboards and harbors orphans and overhears conversations? That's the one. So Blair comes into that one coffeeshop and sees some nerds talking about nerd things like what the heck kind of feline is Battle Cat. A better question would be, what kind of feline was Panthor, his evil purple nemesis. I loved that cat. I used to obsess on the fact that Prince Adam -- whose velvet vest was a total fashion coup in the relatively backwater environs of Eternia, equaled only once the Secret of the Sword opened up the portal to Etheria, where fuckin' everybody dressed like the bomb -- was a better match for Panthor than stupid Battle Cat, just in terms of accessorizing ability alone. I used to give Battle Cat to Ram-Man so they could be miserable and sucky together and play backgammon. Panthor also, I believe, lies at the root of my lifelong love affair with flocking.
That felt really good to get off my chest. So Blair interrupts them to ask after the Masters Of The Universe Society, explaining helpfully that the guys she's looking after are Wall Streeters using the name. "Not that I give two hoots about finance, I just need to know that in this misbegotten corner of Manhattan, that wealth, ambition and moral laxity are still alive and well." The most adorable nerd in the entire universe calls her "young lady," and explains that she has found them: "A society dedicated to promulgating the philosophical and political messages contained in the 1981-83 cartoon featuring He-Man. We also do role-playing." The guy is seriously cute, depending on if you can handle the kind of band-geek mouth that collects those little white spit bubbles in the corners sometimes. It doesn't happen onscreen but you can totally tell. Blair flees like a mother, while the other ones get up his ass about mentioning role-playing in front of her. If they only knew how sad her sex life is, they'd have her in Teela snake-lady getup in five seconds flat. And Chuck would probably love it, because he's gross.
Blair, in cute grey-black stripes because she's in jail, immediately sits and calls Chuck from another table to tell him once again that NYU is hell. "What do you expect from a place where the men wear sandals?" Chuck exposits for us that Georgina's cover story for her Scott mission from last week is once again that she's visiting her parents in Connecticut for the week, because that's how Gallatin works I guess. "How can I rule over people I don't understand? It's hopeless!" Blair dreamily reminds him that it's the first day of school at Constance, and they reverently remember how she used to "mortar and pestle all those hopeful young spirits." He tells her to chill and wait for her day to come, and she's wistful about how Constance will never change.
But of course it will. Dressed more bizarrely than Serena on her most dress code-flouting day, Jenny climbs all over Eric on their walk to school babbling about how there will be no hierarchy, no more Mean Girls, no more copying how the Queen dresses. (The last one, you would think, is a safe bet.) "It's gonna be a new era of sunlight and fairness!" When a Humphrey says shit like that you know two things: 1) They are going down in a hail of bullets; 2) It's going to be fun to watch. Even when it's Jenny. Eric points out that sunlight and fairness are poison to Blair Waldorf, and not the reasons she picked Jenny as her successor. He says "successor" weird. I love it when van der Woodsens say words. Just in case you were wondering, we learn that Jonathan is at fencing camp in Torino. Because that's how St. Jude's works, I guess.
A trio of highly unacceptable Mean Girl replacements suddenly come running right at them -- "That's disturbing," Eric notes -- dressed in crazy couture with like neon crinolines and Little J raccoon eyes and a million necklaces and these little charms around their necks: 1, 2, and 3. And here I was just mourning the passing of the monarchy, but if it means these girls go down in the revolution, then viva. I don't care for them. One of them says their names, which don't at all matter, and then they promise to help Jenny get "exactly" what she wants this year, and are looking forward to her ruling the school "with an iron fist." Jenny instructs them, in a horrified Humphrey manner, to go wash off their eyes -- she's still rocking a smoky eye, no matter how many times they tell us she's not, I don't know what they're trying to pull -- and then tells them to collect "everyone" so she can give her first fireside chat. Eric teases her a little bit, but it's all of such obviously little consequence that neither of them can really manage to care.
"That is absolutely unacceptable!" Rufus yells at Serena, smashing his hand down on a table while Serena perches awkwardly with her hand in that giant Buddha's lap. She shakes her head. "My mom would never hit the table like that. She would put her fingers to her forehead and do that, like, Why are you doing this to me? thing." Rufus nods, and then does an eerily perfect Lily impression. Serena goes again: "Okay, um... Mom, I have decided not to go to Brown." ("Oh, Serena," he sighs, with his fingers at his temple.) "I... Please know that I've put a lot of thought into this..." She's distracted again by Rufus's acting. "I'm sorry. She would just only do the forehead thing for a second, then she would look to the side and do these little head shakes, you know?" Rufus points out that the point of the exercise is to practice coming clean about Brown, not to critique his entirely frightening Lily impression, and then points out the role-playing motif of this episode once again, in case you missed it.
Serena admits she's stalling and distracted because she's nervous, and then deftly asks when Rufus is going to tell her about the whole Scott Drama. Which... Was not a drama, as far as anybody knows, because all that really happened was some random guy infiltrated all their lives under a false identity in order to find out shit that wasn't his business, which is something that happens every ten minutes on this show. Even still, Rufus is not telling her shit until his human shield takes the first hit about this Brown stuff. Little does he know that, as the parent and thus HBIC, the Brown thing is still his fault.
Serena goes, "Mom!" Which gives Rufus one more opportunity to act creepily/awesomely like Lily, but of course it's Actual Lily, finally back from her IRL drama and wearing a dangerous amount of no makeup. She kisses them and talks about how "CeCe" is feeling much better so she came to surprise them, and is generally delightful for a second before she asks what the hell Serena's even doing there instead of Rhode Island. It's awkward, but not as awkward as it's going to get.
If you stacked Dan Humphrey on top of Vanessa Abrams and lashed them to that teacher's aide at Yale from last year that I hated, you still would not have the embarrassing tryhard power of one Olivia Burke. "So I've been reading the course catalog, and everything just sounds so interesting! Like Cold War Philosophy! And The Bible As Literature! The Post-Impressionist Movement! I want to take everything!" Instead of telling her to take a fucking chill pill, Dan just makes fun of her Jersey roots, because he is classless but also blind to what dorkiness looks like. She bares her barn-door teeth at him and explains she's determined to take full advantage of this situation, because she had to convince a lot of people to let her go there. (Versus Dan Humphrey, who is there because Georgina garrotted Poppy Lifton and threw her in the river, and has spent this entire coffee-walk trying to find a way to inject his internship with Jay McInerney into the conversation.) He welcomes her to NYU and she heads back to the dorms, and they are basically cute.
Serena wraps up her pitch about Brown, and Rufus idiotically sticks his choker all up in there about how he was "against it at first," but that once Serena questioned his manhood and called him out for being a male prostitute in her mother's employ, he realized there were "benefits" to deferring a year. Serena promises to get a job or an internship or whatever bullshit, and Lily stares at her with that Rhodes look. Finally, Serena begs her to speak... And she pulls the same shit as always: "Serena, if this is just a case of cold feet, fine! I mean, classes have barely begun!" Serena informs her, once more, that not going to Brown means, you know, not going to fucking Brown. Lily points out the total obviousness of how the whole point of going to college is figuring out who you are and what you want to do, but then scribbles over her very valid point by immediately jumping to the Eat, Pray, Love tour over the summer, which is Serena's cue to act all cryptic about how she didn't find "what she was looking for" during EPL 2009, which was her Dad.
Which is the worst thing about this crappy episode, because Serena's rationale actually makes sense, if you take the time to let her explain it, but giving her rational stuff to argue with, and then immediately changing the subject entirely, just makes her look insane and ruins the flow of the entire conversation. You can't spend this much time on a single decision if you're only aiming for the endpoint of the story, it's just lazy writing. Nothing in this scene would actually change if you put words in that marble-mouth, except that Serena and Lily would seem like their usual realistic people, instead of cardboard figures blasting plotpoints at each other.
Anyway, Lily continues to piffle at Serena, ignoring everything she's saying no matter how harshly she says it, and just calls her a dumbass like a hundred times, and finally gets real: "I love you, Serena, but you have never worked a day in your life." Which Serena interprets, out of nowhere, that if she gets a job Lily will let her stay home from school, and then runs off to go find a job like right away. Which actually is the plot for this episode, not that it developed organically out of that conversation in any way, and I still can't get mad because Ursula Fucking Nyquist is going to take all I've got.
Lily makes a hundred faces at Rufus and then writes him an excuse note about how he didn't tell her about Brown because he didn't want to "burden" her while she was with CeCe, and not because he's a dickless wonder. He graciously allows her to think this, even though it hinges on the absurd idea that either of them are capable of thinking about anything but themselves. Then Lily informs him that his bad parenting doesn't actually count, because his decisions don't matter, because it doesn't matter what he thinks, because Serena is going to Brown. And of course, he can't say anything to that, or she'll take away his credit card, so he keeps his trap shut and she goes off to unpack.
Speaking of that pants-shittingly stupid denial in which the Humphries excel, Jenny has climbed atop a picnic table, and to thrilling music offers the following decree: "There is no more hierarchy! The steps of the Met will no longer be restricted to a certain crowd! No more Nairtinis! No more headbands! This is a new era! Let freedom reign!" The more tragic girls applaud, including Eric van der Woodsen, but one right-thinking individual who may or may not have been one of the numerals before shakes her head at this lunacy and starts texting up a storm.
"...The madness and genius of Skeletor. That is correct, I said genius," the cute nerd underscores, while Blair suffers a Nairtini to the soul that can only be saved by the Numeral's text: "Help! Jenny Humphrey is destroying everything!" Blair thanks God and rushes to the aid of Constance's basic -- what's the word Jenny learned today? hierarchy -- hierarchy, informing a pothead on her way out that sandals are not shoes. He and his shaggy brethren shake their heads in her wake, but I remember my first year in Austin, when I honestly did just want to let everybody know that fact.
Olivia's stupidly named publicist Kenny "KC" Cunningham, whose looks really turned me off on Monday but whom I have since decided is totally beautiful, is rearranging Vanessa's shit when she gets back to her dorm room. "I see that you took down my Godard poster," Vanessa bershons, helpfully providing KC with just about everything she needs to know about Vanessa in one sentence. She hands Big V an NDA and Vanessa gets curious about who her roomie's going to be, and then that bedamned fedora peeks round the doorframe, illuminated by all the teeth in the world, like a million stars.
Olivia vaults across the room to hang the Godard poster back up -- "For the record, I love Godard" she tryhards -- and Vanessa goggles at her, trying to reconcile her pretentious inability to admit she recognizes Olivia with her starfucker excitement, and coming up with like the square root of negative one. Olivia pretends to be just as excited that her roommate is the famous "Vanessa Abrams," but if she really knew V's rep she'd have a restraining order in hand already. She sees the confidentiality waiver on Vanessa's bed and makes a great big show of tossing it in the garbage before heading out to liberate the rest of the girls on the floor from their burdens of confidentiality.
Man, they are going to get along like gangbusters, these two. Please God, let Olivia get into PETA or lezzing out. If only to spite her unseen but even-more so sister, she'd follow that lead so easy. ("College is for experimentation," she told us. "Lebanese food," Dan's going to suggest! The clues are all there! The call is coming from inside the house!)
"Summer Job" by Art Brut ("I'm so laissez-faire/ Sometimes I'm not even there/ If you want me sober and straight/ I'm afraid I'm gonna be a little bit late") plays over a pretty glamorous montage of Serena interviewing for her job-slash-internship at all kinds of places with the following heart-stopping VIPs: Actual Tory Burch, of Tory Burch. Actual Georgina Chapman, of Marchesa. Actual Todd DiCiurcio, of the world of hot artistes and philanthropy and dressing like Chuck but In Real Life.
Her pitch is the usual you'd expect -- UES childhood, always interested in fashion/art, Constance grad, deferred Brown not that fashion is a fallback, she'll work for nothing -- which is the best face you can put on her situation, and still not that acceptable. Todd likes that she's "serious" about it, but like, nobody actually believes that she's serious about it. After Tory Burch makes a sad face at her, she heads off to Hundred Acres and has the following conversation with absent Blair: "Why do you sound so happy? What do you mean, you had to quell a revolution? Blair, I gotta go. I'll call you later." All of which is serviceable, if boneheaded and tone-deaf. No, the real problem is the thing that happens at the beginning of the montage, when gorgeous Tory Burch goes:
"You came highly recommended by Anna Wintour. I was happy to make the time!"
The fuck she did, and the fuck you did. That is retarded. I am Serena's biggest cheerleader on the planet, but give me a damn break. Anna would take one look at those breasts and tell Serena to come back when she was done being a spectacle. Or at least when she was no longer an eighteen-year-old socialite without even anecdotal experience at doing anything whatsoever.
Well, wait. Horse rustler she can do. And she can model like the dickens. What else? Raising a bid paddle at Sotheby's at appropriate intervals. Life coach, marriage therapist, crisis-suicide-bulimia-sexuality counselor. Putting Up With Dan, Blair, Lily, Chuck; TCB with Georgina on the reg. Various spy skills, including a surprising amount of experience at planning/executing extortion-ring sting operations. Coordinated enough for a jitney fuck, but cannot locate Santorini given two years and a boat. Able to produce plane tickets to Dubai out of thin air. Killed a dude.
I think that Serena can do anything, and I'm sure she will prevail, but you can't just throw fashion words at fashion people and hope they'll stick: "Sure, come work at the White House! You come highly recommended by Sonia Sotomayor, who knows who the hell you are, has nothing better to do, and thinks you have a real head for international policy." If Serena had Anna Wintour on her side she'd never have had to have the demeaning conversations with Rufus and Lily and Lily-Rufus in the first place.
Well, at least Serena has discovered the double-edged sword that is Page Six It Girlism: "They all want me to come to their parties, but none of them want me to actually work for them." Not that they would anyway, because... Never mind. So then she sits down and gets off the phone with B for no real reason, and stares into space while eavesdropping on Olivia, who is yelling at her publicist KC for the obvious reasons: She's just a girl, looking at a publicist, asking her to stop doing her job.
KC tells her to stop being stupid, and Olivia tells her to stop doing her job, and this goes on forever and ever. KC explains that this grab for legitimacy is more likely to bear fruit in the form of her new movie, Fleur, which is Oscar-bait in the way that Endless Knights, while awesome, is not. Olivia is not having this. KC reminds her sixty times about how she's going to be on Larry King tonight; somewhere, somebody is doing the same for Larry King.
When Olivia stands up, the paparazzi jump out of nowhere and start with the click click flash and Serena -- spy skills, remember -- clears her throat and says hi. Olivia barks at her, and then apologizes after Serena shoots her a great the fuck you did face, and says hello more nicely, and then recognizes Serena and compliments her Met Ball dress, and Serena gives her a gracious smile and humble thanks and I bet that's just what Blake Lively is like in real life, and S tells O to leave through the kitchen, which nobody else would have thought of, like, ever. This episode is dumb. Then, because of this amazing ass-pull where she knows what a kitchen is, KC offers her a job in publicity. Which is ludicrous enough that even the show knows it, but not dumbass Serena, who is still a little bit convinced that her fame powers equal real powers. Like poor Bono.
Afternoon at Constance, where those three nondescript girls are standing on a bench issuing degrees in jewel-bright RGB headbands which Eric notes -- either figuratively or, if somebody really fucked up, literally -- are monogrammed with a little BW. Girls cry and flee, and one of them goes, "This is not a democracy, ladies. Everyone does not get a voice, and that's okay!" Sure is. Jenny throws a fit at them and does some kind of Gödel maneuver in her head where she thinks she can make people follow her orders about not following orders, and one of them laughs at her "cute little attempt at Perestroika," and instructs her that the ancien régime has won out against the Jacobins once again: "Queens, hierarchy and no Brooklyn wannabes." (Well, at least they learned the word hierarchy from this experience, that's something. I wonder if everybody at Constance gets a sticker whenever they use that word today?) One of the counterrevolutionaries calls her "Little J" and peaces out this little Bay of Pigs, and Jenny and Eric wig out and understand that Blair's been going to French history after all.
Dan and Nate have a paper-thin conversation meant to convey that Bree is visiting family in Texas w/r/t her upcoming murder of/threesome with Carter Baizen, and that Nate is not a stellar wingman, because all he wants to do is tease Dan about not getting digits from "Kate," but instead of mentioning the dealbreaker fedora, he just threatens not to help Nate with his Hawthorne paper, and Nate apologizes and says quote, "You just expect more game from the guy who dated Serena van der Woodsen."
Either that's a seriously deranged self-compliment, or Nate is really out of it. Serena has dated Dan, Carter, Nate, that con man I get confused with Lord Marcus, and Aaron Rose. Con man had game, and Carter's got mad game, but Dan Humphrey? Has the opposite of game. He is the concave cosmic area where Chuck gets his extra game. He will never have positive game.
So then Dan immediately spots the accursed fedora and points "Kate" out to Nate, and Nate takes one look, swallows whatever he was going to say, and launches Dan at her without explaining she's actually a famous movie star. He does this in maybe the most adorable way he has done anything, ever, on this show. He's like a person today. They should just make him the pothead that he deserves to be, and let him kick back and be the hottie Seth Green of the entire show, pointing shit out to everybody like Eric used to and Dan tries to. How cute would that be, for real. Anyway, Dan is awkward with the hat, she's awkward with the hat, he asks her out for pizza, she blows off Larry King, Nate giggles and rolls around like a sweet little puppy as they leave together.
KC brings Serena into a very pink room and gives her first assignment: deal with Olivia's costar in this big movie that's premiering tomorrow, Fleur. "Your background experience with the press," KC mumbles and never finishes the sentence, "...I think you are just what she needs." Girlfriend is still wearing her interview outfit from the earlier montage. So then KC grins at grateful Serena, because guess what? Ursula Fucking Nyquist.
Have you ever seen the television show America's Top Model? It used to be awesome, but then it got ghetto and I stopped watching. Maybe it's awesome now, I have no interest in finding out. But even in its heyday ("It takes a fucking ass to cover every seat, you shitslice"), one thing you could count on was seeing Miss Tyra Banks attempt to act. Sometimes like a human being, sometimes like a French person. Whatever she was feeling that day. And as she'd go on and on about her accomplishments and the interesting thoughts in her head and her big fat ass, you'd wonder how much of it was true, and how much was just confidence and modeling through it. And as much as the last six years have shown us the limitations of Tyra Banks, I wanted to think that it's shown us her humanity too.
But I'd be wrong. She is awful. This is awful. I hate that it is happening. On my show. My show. I would feel bad for C.O.P.S. if they did this shit, and they're not even a show. I still don't actually understand that program, what it is or what the point is, it's like... Football. If they had Tyra Banks on the Football Show or whatever, I would feel real bad for football. This is unforgivable. Even if it never happens again: It happened. We can't un-Tyra this shit. They did it. It's just so... Ugly Betty. And they didn't even bother to direct her in a way that tried to be anything but what it is, which is: Whoring out the show. For Tyra's scraps.
Fuck it, I've got a date: Horrible giant hair, big old forehead, looking like her usual tranny self, tossing shit everywhere, screaming stiltedly, "You are clueless! This is too blue! This is too pink! This is too red! KC, this is the most important night of my life, and you have me surrounded by amateurs? And color-blind amateurs with hidden agendas? You know that nobody supports me! Everybody wants to see me fail!" (I could hear Joel McHale's boner all the way over on the West Coast. Calling to me.) KC introduces her to Serena, and she executes a brittle scary owl-head 180° cheerleader snap-turn to stare at her, and Serena feels frightened. You can see her wig line, you know it's a wig, they keep talking about her hair and fixing her hair when you can see the goddamn wig line from space. This episode is for the birds, sir.
Serena and Ursula chat on a couch in their PJs about how fucking crazy Tyra Banks is, while chowing down on some ribs for breakfast, and it's creepy because Tyra does her version of Serena doing an impression of her, which we've actually seen Serena do a couple times, and it's another role-playing doozy of a thing, like Lily-Rufus. Serena is her usual charming, laid-back self -- "I never knew Josephine Baker was a part of the French Resistance!" -- and Tyra works herself up into a big old hurricane of this is stupid, and then... out of nowhere, for a second, she does a really good acting job: "Okay, there's this one scene where we're trapped by the Nazis, and I have to distract them while the others escape. And I think it's probably the best work I've ever done." It's a nice moment, which is nice since it's the entire point of this episode, but Tyra gives a great line reading here.
Chuck, having found the Waldorf-Sparks suite at the hotel NYU empty, has come calling Chez Waldorf, where Blair fusses with fruit and bouquets and obviously lies that she's been "tutoring a few girls from Constance," which is her attempt at depatheticking her counterrevolutionary activities through euphemism. He doesn't buy it; he's come to invite her to the premiere of Fleur, to which all the girls of the dorm have been invited. She's not interested, because it would involve socializing with people her own age rather than Constance girls, and then Dorota totally blows her spot, bringing out the blankets and stuff for the annual first-night Waldorf Sleepover.
"Fine," Blair admits, and Chuck weeps for her. "But Jenny Humphrey is destroying everything I worked for, and those girls deserve to learn the meaning of aristocracy." He tries to get her to admit that it's not about Constance, or the aristocracy, but she pretends she has no idea what she's talking about, and brushes past him. Gosh, I hope he doesn't do something fucked up and Chuck-like in order to bring her crashing back down to earth.
Dan gives Kate advice on classes, but unlike his brother/stalker, he knows what he's talking about. She eats it up, of course, and he says he's happy to share his wisdom (his words, not mine) with her, and talks about Lebanese food, and invites her out for a second night in a row before awkwardly strikethrough-retracting the invite after he's already made it, so that he can do the dorky thing and still make the point that he knows it's dorky. Classic Dan Humphrey. She says she's fine with that part, but after blowing off work last night she really can't do it tonight, and tries to make sure that he understands she's into him, but it's all complicated.
Dan Humphries again, the refractory period on this kid, about how funny and smart she is, "And... You know what, just gonna throw it out there, you're beautiful." Barf. Barf, barf, barf. And then just to underline how out of the loop he is, he acts bewildered about how "an alarming number of people" actually stop on the street just to stare at her and her hats and teeth. "And on top of that, you're refreshingly normal." She goes from wondering if he's mentally impaired to being charmed, and laughs and asks WTF that even means. "The last girl I dated, her life was never really out of the spotlight, so it made things kind of hard." What also made it hard is that I am a douchebag. I'm sure he was about to add that. Instead, Kate jumps up to get ready for the premiere, running off in a hideous plaid dress with a fringe-infected leather purse as big as the Ritz, talking about how she's not "the girl [he's] looking for," even though part of her "wishes" she were.
You know what I could do with never hearing again? All the ways these ladies would like to be less special, so they could more easily fit into Dan's stupid fucking expectations of them. He just hates when girls exhibit the very qualities that attracted him in the first place.
Jenny leans against Chuck's car, obviously not interested in having this meeting with him: "Congratulations. Your girlfriend's installed a puppet regime." Chuck agrees that Blair's "gone Colonel Kurtz," and asks Jenny to help him bring her back to earth. In return, he offers to help her take back the crown. Jenny wonders if it's even worth it: "They don't want my kind of leadership, they want a tyrant who will police their behavior and chart their movement on the social ladder. Find someone else." I really like Momsen's acting here, as usual: No matter how much Chuck has changed, she still has to -- and should -- treat her dealings with him as Faustian negotiations.
"I/They need you," he says. Either one of the mumbles is true. "You're fooling yourself if you don't think you were born to rule this school." Jenny reminds him that people change, but he says she's the exception: "The Jenny Humphrey who used to sit in Brooklyn and watch the lights across the water? Who went toe-to-toe with Blair Waldorf and actually won her respect? You can't tell me that girl isn't still in there." She rolls her eyes, but she knows he's right. "Now that the dream is coming true, you owe it to her to live it." (Which, given the acting on Chuck's side, is a nice nod to the fact that he's really changed in the last two seasons, and doesn't really understand that Jenny is never going to trust him. It just honestly doesn't occur to him: Everything he does now is in service of and redemption for the other lost boy, the one that jumped off that roof after all.) She complains that B doesn't want her to be Queen, and Chuck blows that right off. Of course.
Serena walks into another shitstorm of Ursula, wherein she's running around acting crazy and Serena has to take care of it. Ursula comes out with that exact same wig half in curlers, because we're pretending it's hair, and yelling about X thing, and Serena calmly takes care of it, and it's dumb. KC sends her off to get finished dressing, and bites her thumb showily, so Serena asks what's up. What's up is that the big scene Ursula was telling us about this morning got cut from the movie, but S thinks they should tell her that because of integrity, but KC thinks not because Ursula sucks and will totally flake on the premiere, so Serena looks dim and worried, and then has to go help Ursula with her hair, because sometimes movie stars just wing that shit for the red carpet.
I really hope you can come -- Your Roomie Even Olivia's casual notes, attached to the premiere invite, are trying too hard. Dan calls V to tell him that Kate just dumped him for no reason, and Vanessa invites him to the premiere, in needlessly cryptic fashion.
That night, the paps are going mad, and Dan's milling around right up at the velvet rope, but somehow misses Olivia's big entrance onto the red carpet. The tweens screaming and hip-hop soundtrack of the premiere fade -- this is clever -- to the one million textures of the Waldorf Sleepover, where Bizet is playing and Blair is lounging on a divan. One of the stupid Constance girls literally says aloud, "Blair, OMGBSE," then translates herself: "Oh My God, Best Sleepover Ever!" Oh my God, Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis!
Blair agrees that the BS is adequate, and yells at Dorota to stop skimping on the gin: "These martinis taste like tap water!" Dorota tries to stop B from embarrassing herself further -- "Mr. Chuck and I both of the opinion..." -- but that's exactly the wrong formulation right now. The last thing B wants to hear is that the two people who keep her grounded in any kind of reality at all (S doesn't really count) have seen right through this pathetic bullshit; it's sort of like how Serena feels when Lily starts with the Real Talk. "And who cares what you and Mr. Chuck think? Szybko." That means "quickly." Dorota exits, szybko, and B offers to tell the girls "how I got the great Chuck Bass to tell me he loved me!" They all rush over and lay down on the thirty couches and gaze adoringly at her total craziness.
Jenny gets out of the car for the premiere, dressed to the nines. Chuck is inappropriately but understandably all over her: "Exquisite. You exceed even my high expectations." She makes it clear that she's only there for the good of Constance, and realizing that she's feeling sticky about the whole thing, assures his sister he's only there for Blair. She nods and rolls out, and there's a funny thing in his face: He's attracted to her, and keeping a respectful distance, but he also: Likes her. If this were really Flaubert, or Thackeray or de Laclos, they'd be the best of friends: the roué and the rebel, the libertine and the liberated lady. Too bad he warped that too far, when he barely knew her. As much as the horse has been beaten, I'd still like to see him just regret that shit.
"And now for one of the most time-honored traditions of the sleepover... Truth or dare!" Blair's loving it. Suddenly, everybody gets a GG blast, except for Blair (why?); she does that dog-clapping thing I love so much, and the girls apologize for getting distracted. "It's just... Gossip Girl says Jenny Humphrey's at the premiere of Olivia Burke's new movie. And she's with..." They lock eyes, and Blair snatches the phone out of one girl's hand: "Spotted on the red carpet: Jenny Humphrey on the arm of the Red Baron, Chuck Bass." The girls are loving it; B loses one more little bit more of her everlovin' mind.
Lily giggles at the premiere, and asks why they're even there. "You really couldn't wait till it comes out in the theaters?" Holding a bag of popcorn and sodas, he talks about how it's his dream film: "Nazis and cabaret singers? It's like Casablanca meets Showgirls!" So far, so Rufus. (And actually, like with Endless Knights, it's an awesome idea for a movie, considering how Josephine Baker, like every other interesting European woman of the times, was a total French spy.) Lily asks how they got invites, and he hedges about his connection, and Serena finally appears, thanking Rufus quietly for bringing her mom. Needless to say, Rufus peaces.
Lily gives her daughter an expectant look; she is back to being totally gorgeous, with the appropriate red lipstick. Serena explains that -- since yesterday morning -- she's become a publicist or something, and thus Lily will now let her off the hook for Brown. Lily breathes, takes it in, and lays down some more straight talk: "Right, yes. Because, um, a year of parties and premieres is a worthy alternative to an Ivy league education." Instead of producing an answer, Serena whines and asks Lily to please not make her feel dumb for inviting her. To this made-up challenge nobody asked her to overcome, which was never going to impress her mother.
"Fine, no Brown talk." Noting the daughterly worry in Serena's eyes, Lily looks around them and goes, "Now tell me." It's pretty awesome how fast they switch gears; it's the one point where it actually makes sense instead of just seeming like place-holders for a real conversation that never got written. S explains about Ursula Fucking Nyquist being a slow-motion car crash and how the scene got cut, and that boss lady KC doesn't want to tell her. Instead of telling her to do her job, which is to maintain like a modicum of boundaries with the people around her because they don't give a shit about her, Lily tells Serena that since Ursula, whom she met less than twenty-four hours ago, is a true friend, she must disobey her boss and ruin the entire premiere. Thanks, vdDubs. S goes into a repetitive tailspin, so finally Lily levels, sadly: "This woman saw an opportunity to exploit your celebrity and your connections. Why else would she hire an eighteen-year-old with no skills and no college degree?" Word.
But once again, instead of having a single rational line in this entire episode, Serena just yells, "Maybe because she believes in me?" Then Ursula comes running up and thankfully interrupts the scene as follows: "Serena, please lie to me. Something is obviously going wrong and I am obviously a laughingstock. Under no circumstances should you tell what is going on. Now, what is going on?" Um... Nothing. "Whew!" All you're missing is KC in the background with her talons tented like Mr. Burns as the little angel on Serena's left shoulder succumbs to OMGBSE and starts walking around in circles. Serena leaves Lily with Rufus because, as she pointedly says, she has imaginary work to do.
Olivia spots Dan lurking around in a high-traffic area, and they engage in some sort of bavardage about mistaken identities or something, who knows, it makes no goddamn sense, he's like, "I have to go find Vanessa" for no reason and she goes, "Vanessa Abrams?" also for no reason, and the scene on his face is like what the and then he figures out that Kate is Olivia is Fleur is Miley is just Hannah Montana in another wig, and somehow that makes O a bitch, of course, because it's Dan, and she runs back to the paps on the red carpet because she's at work, and Vanessa -- (Vanessa Abrams? Yes, the very same!) -- Vanessa runs up and moon-eyes at Dan, who emotes or something, and of course with their united Humphrey-Abrams powers they are still standing in the exact middle of everybody else trying to get their shit done. Getty Images tomorrow is just going to be this découpage collage of Dan's cheekbones and firm shaven décolletage and everybody is going to be like, "Who is that douche, is he slow? Is he there as a favor to somebody?" And the answer will be No. Categorically, he is not.
And now we have to watch the atrocity that is Fleur, in which Duff, wearing Jenny eyes and talking in an absurd French accent, gets some secret documents -- "From de Gaulle," UFN says helpfully, having snuck them into the cabaret with her sheet music -- and then UFN, also be-Jennyed in the eyes, offers to distract the Germans with the power of her song. But how? "How else? I'll sing." If I have to listen to Tyra Banks sing I will kill myself. I will do it. She steps forward, and then wongles awkwardly off the screen so we can watch Duff breathing and voiceovering horrifically, "I never heard her song, but I owe Josephine my life. As does France." UFN goes running out the joint, S feels sorry for her, and KC squints and makes creepy evil faces for awhile before heading back to the open bar for another helping of virgin's blood or baby brains or whatever publicists eat. Serena's entire point.
S tries to follow Ursula into the bathroom, where she's moaning like Myrtle, still acting, and KC tells her to wait, because the new plan -- which is secretly the old plan -- is to give UFN a minute and then shove her in front of the cameras, so she can have a high-profile meltdown. Makes total sense. Serena, who is just out to fucking lunch this week, is like, "But she'll be sad! We like Ursula! No sad for her!" And KC rolls her eyes and is like, "Right. Because she would have skipped the premiere, which makes us look bad. But flipping out at the premiere and making a fool of herself is great publicity for the movie, and for her, and for Olivia. What part of this do you not get?" Serena's like, "The part where I'm stupid! All of it!" KC doesn't give a whit, she just sends her ass in there to deal with UFN with a totally terrifying fierce look of purpose.
Way better meltdown? Blair Waldorf, who grabs Jenny by the fucking balls and starts screaming at her in the middle of the entire premiere letting out. Just screaming her ass off. And Jenny's awesome, because the whole time she doesn't yell back exactly, just yells Blair's name in this commanding fashion and trying firmly to get her to calm down. Chuck shows up and Jenny bounces the fuck on out of there, and Blair starts yelling at him about how he humiliated her and all this shit, and Chuck's like, "No, that was you embarrassing yourself. Like you're doing now. NYU's hard, but Blair Waldorf does not give up."
Blair desperately claims that she's just making a strategic retreat, which he calls potato/potato, and begs her to let him help her get her equilibrium back, but she's too far gone. She explains exactly how: "NYU is not the Upper East Side. They don't care about Constance, or the social hierarchy. They don't care that I'm Blair Waldorf. It's over." She's always so rational about how irrational she is, it's one of the best things about her:
I am literally having an existential crisis. I am very good at a thing, which defines my entire life. That has been taken away: Now I have nothing at all. My whole life is building walls to hold myself in, and NYU is too big currently for those walls to make sense anymore. So I am recreating the walls in the only way that I can figure out how, because if I don't have those walls I will fall apart. I realize that it looks crazy, but right now it's survival. I'm willing to give up a little dignity today rather than having a full-blown psychotic break tomorrow. When I say you're ruining everything, I mean literally everything: Not my stupid schemes, not my petty points, not my momentary victories, but the entire universe as I understand it. Food, Serena, my mother, my boyfriend, social standing/the aristocracy. My actual life is just a whooshing sound right now.
Then Chuck jumps into some bizarre other movie and starts talking like Marlon Brando. Fat Edition. "And you'd do this to me? I'm Chuck Bass, and I told you I love you. You're saying I'm easier to win over than a bunch of pseudointellectual homesick malcontents. You'd really insult me like this?" Whatever. I get his point, but it sounds so stupid it doesn't even matter. But if that's true, then why did I tear up at the end here: "So the time you forget you're Blair Waldorf, remember I'm Chuck Bass, and I love you." Maybe it's the kiss. It's very sweet. I guess kissing makes me cry now. That should go over well in my future endeavors. You got me this time, show. Blair closes her eyes and Chuck walks away and she radically reassesses a few things.
Another thing that Dan gets to do because he's special is sit around the empty Zeigfeld after a huge Hollywood premiere and just feel some feelings. Like right now he's thinking, "All I did was tell this new girl that I have impossible standards, and then she dumped me, and instead of feeling bad about myself I just decided she sucked, and then it turns out I was right because she was in this movie I just watched. I am the king of the world." Olivia apologizes for, um... Being a person? She looks really pretty as she explains the obvious thing about how she wanted to be a normal person and then hottie Dan hit on her, and it just drove her straight over the jittery bleeding edge to the madness of going by her middle name.
Well, I can see how that would be attractive. And so can Dan, honestly. I'm being a little hard on him because I hate this episode and he's my go-to punk whenever Vanessa's not living up to herself. He reiterates, though, that she's not good enough for him, because his last couple of relationships were "full of drama." Is he counting Georgina? Because that's hilarious. Georgina brings equal drama, in one week of dating, to what Serena managed in two years. And most of that was just lying so Dan wouldn't emotionally abuse her about it.
"I get it. I do. And as much as I want to be Kate, I'm also Olivia, and you don't want that." He looks down, because when you say it out loud like that, it makes him sound like a total cock. And it kind of makes her sound deranged. She's just a girl, looking at a boy, pretending to be another girl and then looking at that girl and then the two girls are looking at each other while the boy talks about his ex-girlfriends for no good reason and masturbates in an empty theatre about how he's going to tell Nate about this so hard.
Yet another friendly and non-troglodytic paparazzo approaches Blair as she's leaving, and asks you take her picture. "Aren't you Blair Waldorf?" She flashes a beautiful smile. "Yes," she says, looking around. "Yes, I guess I am." Finally. She poses, in a million different ways. ("Oh, it looks so good! You're doing so good! You got it! Look how good you are!")
Ursula is still crying, of course, and KC's like, "You know what you should do is wander out there and just totally shit your pants," because the producers ruined her scene, so now she can screw them over, but Ursula asks Serena -- the eighteen-year-old socialite with no practical experience or skills -- what path her career should take. KC shoots her more devil eyes, and Serena summons up her stupid pointless integrity -- damn you, Humphrey! -- gives Ursula some advice that would actually be good, if she could act. But I think we're supposed to pretend that Ursula can act, despite the disgusting betrayal and perversion in which this show has steeped us all, so I guess it works: "If you want people to see you as a real actress, you should be gracious, and... And the movie's more important than your scene." KC points out that Serena is unqualified to do anything but pack suitcases full of diaphanous fabric and steal horses, but UFN tells her to STFU and then, mascara running, thanks Serena sincerely and walks out of the bathroom to, I don't know, act gracious or whatever. KC informs S that she is stupid and also fired.
Back in her bedroom at PRADA, Serena is packing her perennial suitcase of diaphanous fabrics -- you say scarves, I say toga dresses by the fistful -- when Lily comes in with some tea and sympathy. Serena is not having that shit. She explains the throwdown with KC, and begrudgingly grumbles that Lily was apparently right. Immediately, Lily jumps in with both hands: "Well, it's for the best. You'll love Brown." Serena just about kicks her in the box and screams she's not going to effing Brown, and Lily's like, "Then why are you packing all that diaphanous fabric into your giant purses?" She reiterates how people go to college to figure out who they are, and then takes it one step further into scary grownup territory that she doesn't need to be telling people: "This need to find out who you are... Do you think anyone really knows who they are? We don't. We just live."
Ugh. Serena's like, "Give up? That's your advice?" Lily's not wrong, but it's actually the same thing. Everything that rises must converge, and all that. Tending to one's own garden; being at peace. No, it sounds like settling when you say it that way. Living is not about complacency. But there comes a point when you realize some very important shit. I don't know all the things, I probably know very few of the things, but the things I know, which number exactly four, are as follows:
1) Nobody is watching you on secret cameras, so stop worrying about it. You'd be surprised how much pointless shame you can shed every day just by looking at the fucked-up thing you did and thinking about how fucked up it was for a few minutes. Then, drink a glass of water and get the fuck over yourself.
2) Your reputation is everything, but it's also totally recoverable. People are more worried about their shit than they will ever be about yours, and are looking for any opportunity to cut you a decent break, just so they don't have to think about you anymore. Your reputation is made up entirely of acts and behaviors, as perceived by other people (only the ones whose opinions are relevant). Do a thing enough times, and that's the person you are. Everything that happens to you from the direction of other people is entirely a reaction to this person. If you don't like those reactions, do a new thing instead, and after just a few times you will magically become a new person. Monitor the new responses.
3) Generally, we only look closely at the situation when it has become untenable. That's rough, because when the situation is untenable is precisely the point at which your best bet is to accept it as it is, and think about ways to change it. Instead, when things are bad is when we're most likely to wig out and act like idiots. You can't change what is until you're willing to look at what is, the ingredients and causes, and the ingredients it contains for the thing. It changes every second, so you might as well be in charge of that and utilize your vast opportunities to choose the what is.
4) Every minute that goes by, one of your futures dies. That's scary and it's sad, but it also means clarity. That sense of purpose S was talking about last week. Getting older means splitting less of your hope and energy into those million possible futures, and keeping more of it for yourself -- right now -- to keep moving forward toward what you really do want. And that's what Lily means. It's not about giving in, it's about giving up the maybes, one by one, until you become whole.*
*(This part will never actually happen, but you have to keep pretending it's going to, for your entire life. That's what Blair's Voltaire quote means: Hoe your own garden, for the rest of your life, because it is art, and it is very simple, and it is very hard to pull off correctly.) That's what pisses S off, because she thinks we get more than half-ass answers to our questions at some point, and she grabs her million giant purses and her horrible vest and busts a move right out of there, past Rufus in his godawful band-collar shirt, who tells Lily that S is going to be fine, and Lily finally bitchslaps his mournful little puppy face with the information that all of this is his fault. He has the audacity, the gall, the sheer bloody-minded Humphritude to go, "That's not fair!"
Um, it's totally fair? While I spent the summer watching my mom die, you gallivanted around East Egg and watched our kids go crazy, and they marble-mouthed you into thinking that was parenting, and now you've given my daughter permission to go join some kind of fucking poseur '90s band and wear a choker? Not on my watch, chucker. Although he does get in a very Rufus move at the last second when she goes I trusted you!: "Then trust me now, don't force her." She stomps off and he feels bad, but I kind of think he won this one, somehow. He's so passive and implacable that I don't even know how you would fight him. Karate chops?
Anyway. Vanessa's dumb chalkboard saying from last week is almost gone when she comes home and tells Olivia -- who's just sitting there, maybe undergoing some kind of dissociative Hannah/Miley break -- that she loved the movie, also loves Endless Knights, and -- classy! -- is totally embarrassed about that. "So I'm gonna pretend that you're not a movie star, and we're just two roommates..." Ugh. Everything she says makes my flesh crawl! It is not my fault. She is like this on purpose. Olivia's like, "I was doing that before, and it turned out really shitty." Vanessa's eyeshadow in this scene is really the only good thing about this episode. She looks fucking fabulous.
Vanessa immediately changes tack and goes, "I dated this guy once for like a really long time, like a week, and it turned out that he was the brother of my best friend/secret crush and his ex-girlfriend who tolerates my existence, and the son of my secret common-law husband Rufus. And I bugged him and bugged him to ruin all of their lives, but then he didn't. So it was kind of like how he was a movie star, and he made his own choices about his life. And that was like, so not what I wanted. So... Um, Dan is special," she wraps up finally. Olivia is just a girl, looking at this other horrible girl, waiting for her to shut it down. Then she abruptly leaves, even though they already had the conversation they're about to have, and Vanessa gets some weird stalkerly look on her face.
Blair tells Serena she can totally stay at Chez Waldorf, which is an exciting concept, and they do the reverse of the earlier scene, this time B pretending to talk to S like S was doing at the restaurant earlier: "I sound chipper? Well, I'm on my way to a meeting. Just a little club I'm starting..." There's three girls sitting on Georgie's bed when she comes in, for some reason: That girl Amalia from the sushi party, that wouldn't quit with the toro, and these twins that look really... Like, very blue-blooded? Anyway, these are the Blairs from other schools who, for whatever reason, "failed to go Ivy," and are now "wasting away in a patchouli-scented purgatory." They don't deserve it, she explains, but they don't have to put up with it. "Candide said On doit cultiver son jardin? Well, NYU is my garden, and I plan to rake and hoe and weed it until it looks exactly the way I want." The unspeaking, creepy twins nod, and Amalia commits formally to her rule.
GG starts some damned extended metaphor about how we want happy endings from the movies, but happy endings aren't real, but sometimes they are. The new Mean Girls point to a package from Chuck -- a tutor's uniform, I guess -- and she's totally moved and happy. Meanwhile, Chuck continues to talk totally dumb and out of character, and pays off the paparazzi that made Blair feel special, as per, and then goes, "Dumbo could always fly. He just needed a magic feather." The guy walks off without acknowledging that, because fuck you, weirdo.
Ursula is wearing a business suit and has discovered her true self or some shit, and has threatened to leave KC's agency if she fires Serena. So now Serena has a job and maybe will find herself, or something chill and friendly like that. Ursula is touchingest motherfucker on the planet. I think she literally shines every inch of Serena in this scene. Uncomfortably affectionate? Total lack of boundaries? Yes sir.
Vanessa, fresh off her totally weird look a second ago when Olivia ran screaming from her company, calls Scott in Boston to harangue him about God knows what, but he spaces on her and then totally hangs up so he can answer Georgina's incoming call. It's been less than a week! It's been like two days! What fresh hell are they hatching?!
You're drifting like a fire, buried deep beneath the water.../ Whose side are you on? What side is this anyway?
Dan sees a blonde girl in an awful fedora at that one coffeeshop, but it's not Whatsherface. Meanwhile, the icky Constance girls come to Jenny -- looking like a magical Tim Burton fantasy, sitting on a stone table in monochrome clothes, looking like a Queen -- and ask her for orders: "Actually, go make sure my spot's free at the Met steps and wait there with a yogurt for me." They run off, she breathes and feels weird about herself, but I mean: Go for it. Over at NYU, Blair's instructing her own girls on who knows what.
Dan is approached by a blonde girl in an awful fedora at that one coffeeshop, and it's Whatserface. She repeats their conversation word for word, and asks whether -- for no reason at all -- his opinion of her has changed. The scene on his face is like what the and then he's like, long pause, "I don't even know why I'm pretending to think about it!" before giving in to her insatiable desire. She's just a girl, standing in that one coffeeshop, looking at a boy acting like a jackass, wanting him to date her.
You know what's a fucking authentic NYU freshman experience? The nine miles of bullshit that Dan Humphrey is about to put you through. XOXO.
week: Vanessa has to save Scott -- and everybody else -- from Georgina... At the van der Humphrey nuptials! I predict that Rufus will get hit by a car, and Lily will stand over his dead body with lilies in her arms and then run off with Carmen Sandiego, which will cause Serena to get real. Meanwhile, Blair will build a cardboard fort in her dorm room and insist on being called "Lady Waldorf" before admitting anybody inside; Chuck will infiltrate her bedroom Duchy under the guise of the "Red Baron" and wrest control of her kingdom away through cruel machinations and sex games; somebody will ask Eric something about Jonathan and he'll shrug and finally admit that he made Jonathan up; Jenny will start the Hunger Games in the Constance courtyard; Eleanor will return with Cyrus to the States after a month of debauchery in the Seychelles with Harold and Roman, pregnant with a baby named Yale and no idea who the father is. The father is Keith van der Woodsen. When Yale is born, sparkling and speaking grown-up English, Scott -- who it turns out is a werewolf -- falls madly in love with her, and waits around until she's twelve so he can marry her in Utah. All that, and Special Guest Star President James Madison. See you then.