In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
In a complicated episode from the writer who brought you Seth Cohen's spirit otter, Lily and Rufus are having second thoughts about their relationship, but a Parent Trap move by the van der Humphries gets things back on track. After a bunch of retro tunes and staring into space, Rufus convinces Lily to marry him tomorrow, and Serena puts everybody into action to plan the wedding.
Georgina returns from Boston with a little blackmail for Vanessa: Dan breaks up with Olivia, or G detonates the Scott bomb and ruins V's relationship with the Humphreys. There's a pretty hilarious act in which Vanessa dutifully follows G's orders, causing Dan to think she's finally making a play for him, but that idea is so gross that she finally comes clean about Scott.
Blair's excellent hatred toward Bree and newfound acceptance of Carter are two things that make Chuck very jealous, so he works out a scheme with Bree to get Carter out of the picture. The totally Vanity Fair deal with Carter is that he proposed to and then jilted Bree's cousin Beth to pay off his gambling debts. So now basically if he goes to the wedding with S instead of leaving town, Bree's cousins will abduct him. Carter attends the wedding and tells S the whole story, and she's grossed out, but kind of loses track of this in the middle of everything else.
Realizing Dan bluffed about breaking up with Olivia for her, Georgina brings Scott to the wedding. Of course, Rufus and Lily have bullshitted themselves into an impasse without her help, so Scott gets to watch them be their usual asshole selves and runs off. G tries to make it worse by telling his secret, but this actually causes Lily and Rufus to band together to find him, and say a lot of love words to him and each other before getting married in DUMBO by Sonic Youth. All seven of their children standing around being gawky takes up most of the loft space.
Blair sends Dorota and Vanya to kill Georgina, but doesn't do much otherwise besides explain Bree's scheme to Nate, who breaks up with Bree even after she blames using him on having Texas... In her blood! Bree's family takes Carter away to murder him, and Chuck explains how brave he was to come to the wedding knowing that he will now die, which makes Serena so sad that not even Lily's begrudging respect for planning all these weddings can cheer her up. But I guess week she's going to win him back in a poker game? Best jackpot ever. XOXO.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"Not only must plants be nourished, and respire in order to live; they must also be in general harmony with their surroundings... Any change in the environment requires a readjustment on the part of the plant, if the latter is to remain healthy."
Serena's putting on a necklace in one of the bedrooms Chez Waldorf, while Carter kisses her neck eighteen kinds of hungry. He's so super creepy sex guy in the first act that it's sort of embarrassing, but it makes sense with the overall story. GG throws out every musical reference to love she can think of, from Bette Midler to Paul McCartney to the Troggs and Joe Cocker, attempting to get us all in the mood. Somewhere else, Dan is IMing with Olivia, who's being harassed by harajuku girls for her autograph, because they think she's Hannah Montana. Elsewhere, Bree feeds Nate biscotti on the street, and he giggles.
But in the UES, we're told, love is pain: Rufus wakes up not in one of the billion bedrooms of PRADA MARFA, but on that one couch where everything happens. He stares mournfully out the window, and Lily passes him from upstairs with just about the worst look while a fittingly retro Matt & Kim song plays.
Serena's tickled because Carter has made her a toasted blueberry strudel, rather than letting Dorota make her a more appropriate omelet; they make out more and Carter acts pretty gross. Nothing makes me quite as hostile as the word "lover." God. Serena asks about his trip, back from which he came to much loving last night, and he tosses off the usual gambler's debts stuff. She now understands the pain of the abandoned child -- "Working for KC is nowhere near as lucrative as being Lily Bass's daughter," she commiserates -- and Carter asks her to please make up with Lily already. "For me," he says; for now it sounds loving.
In return, she asks him to take her place at dim sum lunch with her friends. "Dumplings with Blair and Chuck?" he hisses hilariously, and she adds to it, laughing: "And Nate!" They laugh, but she tells him she needs him to do recon on Nate's girlfriend, whom Blair absolutely hates. "You can find out if she's really that bad," Serena says, and he looks down and away, scared even at the mention of Bree Buckley, before claiming he has more debts to collect. Serena accepts it, and takes off.
They've done a great job of writing his scenes here so bivalently that you really could believe that he's the creep Serena's going to think he is -- that he's using her the same way he used Beth Buckley -- which ropes in some Austen on top of the Thackeray, which is smart. Even smarter: Carter linked himself with Keith van der Woodsen, a long time back, even unto the whole Santorini/wedding plot, which means that if Carter has been reformed, then Carmen Sandiego can also be reformed, but if Carter stays evil then Serena is screwed. It's a very gross, but very understandable thing for her to do in her head. She's done it before.
Vanessa waits endlessly for Dan to finish his IM conversation -- "One second, I'm telling Olivia to say hi to Godzilla from me!" -- and he makes a couple more awful jokes before admitting that he's bad at IM-flirting. As opposed to his sexy adeptness at the other, IRL kind, where he mumbles and then barfs up six horrible statements before running away blushing. The reason he's on Vanessa's account (docugrl91, naturally) is because Georgina is monitoring his every internet move, still. Vanessa points out that the solution is, as usual, as simple as the truth: Tell G that he's dating somebody. Dan isn't feeling that, but doesn't mention the obvious fact that telling her this will result in a murder spree; he allows Vanessa's commonsensical approach to completely bypass his survival instinct before asking after Scott.
"I called him last week," V reminds us, "But he hasn't called me back. I guess he didn't like me that much." Dan can't believe that, because even he was not insensate to the insane, Twilight levels of mutual obsession into which Vanessa and the Inspektor fell after knowing each other for five seconds. Dan awkwardly exposits that he really liked Scott too, "I guess because in a weird way, we were kind of related." I guess in a weird way, that's something a person would ever say. Just kidding, nobody would ever say that. Vanessa feels her secret burning inside her, and runs for coffee to quench it. "The toilets in Tokyo talk!" Dan informs her, reading from yet another device, as she's scrambling away.
At the counter in that one coffeeshop, which is called the Bleecker, Vanessa orders a nonfat latte and gets the hands-over-the-eyes move that only a truly crazy person would ever do to a person. "Georgina," she grumbles without looking. Vanessa is totally awesome in this episode.
"Mutation ... offers a method by which evolutionary changes may take place within a much shorter time-period than was demanded by the natural selection of fluctuations."
At dim sum, Blair's magic feral powers are at their height: she's utterly suspicious of Bree Buckley, but -- consistently -- can't articulate why, so she just looks crazy. She informs the table of Georgina's return ("The bloodsucker is back. I saw her coffin and telltale Louis Vuitton broom on the floor!") and Nate -- the expert of record -- informs her in turn that vampires don't ride brooms. Once is funny, twice is a character trait. Nate is the awesomest. "Leave it to Georgina to start a mutant strain," B grumbles instead of informing Nate that his vampire thing is fabulously queer. "You know, my roommate and I didn't see eye to eye at first," Bree says, Blair's eyes instantly headed heavenward, "So one night I bought ice cream cone cupcakes from the treats truck, and we bonded. She taught me how to say Hello in Swahili." Bree waves rainbow-style at Blair, hilariously begging for a Regina George smackdown: "Jambo!"
Charmingly dorky; B is not buying. "Aww! Do you happen to know what the Swahili is for Mind your own beeswax?" Chuck gets embarrassed, and Blair prickily clarifies that she's just looking for useful safari phrases. Nate begs her to quit it, but no.
"It was in effect a little tree-fern, with long, slender, sometimes branched, stem ... provided with spines by means of which it probably climbed on its neighbors..."
Chuck changes the subject to Bree's recent Texas visit, the better to mend fences, and she says it didn't work. "We're Southern, so family loyalty's really big down there..." Blair rushes to fill the void -- "Like slavery!" -- which even freaks Chuck out. Blair earns a fake smile from Bree ("You know I'm joking, right, Bree?") before Nate changes the subject to Serena, mentioning Carter and wondering if they've broken up yet. He sure is interested in her dating life lately. "Carter Baizen?" Bree brightens. "Is he in town? I heard he was away on business." Chuck is intrigued; but Blair's single-minded reaction to Bree refuses to admit any other plotpoint. "Traveling is so important. Bree, have you ever thought about traveling... Somewhere very far away?"
"As a result of variation certain individuals will succeed better than others in the struggle for existence. Those most poorly adapted to their surroundings will perish, and only the more vigorous ones -- those best adjusted to their surroundings -- will persist."
Nate continues to be horrified, Bree -- whom, let's admit it, is getting kind of a raw deal here even though she is, like Scott was before, doing a creepy thing while also very much liking Nate -- tries her best to get past the continual assaults, and Chuck is just straight grossed out. He asks about Carter some more, and Bree says their families go way back. When the cart arrives, she offers to order for the table, having just been in Shanghai, which makes Nate proud and Blair even fiercer. She interrupts the order: "Nate doesn't like tofu when it's called bean curd, and he hasn't eaten pork since he saw Babe. With me." Nate makes a face, and she aims a nasty one back at him like what.
Bree scoots, finally bested, and Blair gives her a mean little wave. When she's gone, Nate can't even form a sentence, and Chuck offers to (1) go "apologize for [his] girlfriend." Left alone, Nate asks if it isn't sort of unfair for Blair to be happy with Chuck and (2) everybody else to be sad. Blair levels (3): "Trust me, Nate. I know women, and none of us are that nice."
Nate can't believe that, but what he can't be blamed for not understanding is that, while all three of these things above seem really trollish/sexist/3OH!3, they're all completely off-base. Blair isn't ranking on Bree because she's a hater, or because she still has feelings about Nate, or because women are bitches: She's ranking on Bree because Bree makes her feel prickly. The issue is that she's using Mean Girl tactics -- the hostility, the rudeness, the Nate territorialism -- in service of non-Mean Girl ends. This isn't directly about breaking Nate and Bree up, it's about getting Bree the fuck out of there, for the good of them all. Acting as the immune system for the group, just like always; just like she and Chuck were doing at Sotheby's, before Carter and Bree even looked connected. But because the tools are the same tools she'd use anyway, nobody can figure out what she's doing, including Blair. But she's just using the tools she has.
"When bacteria produce poisons (toxins) in the system, the cells affected are stimulated to secrete an antitoxin which counteracts the influence of the toxin."
Chuck walks into the kitchen as Bree's getting off the phone, having explained to some Texan that Carter is in the vicinity, and won't be going anywhere because he's in love. Chuck tells her that "the worm" is dating his stepsister, and tells Bree to level with him about the Carter threat: "Any enemy of Carter's is a friend of mine." She can't talk about it, but tells Chuck to make sure Serena watches her back -- and to let her know if Carter shows up.
He's just acting as the immune system for the group, as always. He's hated Carter since before the show started, because Carter gets to be the same kind of person Chuck is without ever seeming to risk his reputation, and because Serena never questioned him or his redemption, and now Blair's okay with him too? Because from Chuck's perspective, Carter is the Georgina of boys. Trace it: Nate loved him and Chuck hated him, just like Blair was always jealous of Savannah and Svetlana. Season One, Georgie came back and essentially kidnapped Serena, or her life, just like Carter did Nate (the baseball thing). Carter took Blair away when she was going crazy last year, just like Georgina did with Dan before OMJC.
Blair and Chuck are the only two people who are allowed to transcend their histories. Every time either of them shows up, he knows, it's only a matter of time until they show their true colors, and now that he and Blair are a team, they have to close ranks on this. So to see Blair going after somebody other than the enemy -- harboring the enemy in fact, which he doesn't know yet -- is not only a betrayal, but a dangerous loss of focus. Especially when Nate's so happy.
"It is of interest to note that the parts of the plant are not only sensitive to the stimulus of their surroundings, but are correlated, or adjusted to each other... If the 'leader,' or main stem, of a tree is destroyed, one or more of the lateral branches will turn upward, in what appears to be an 'endeavor' to perform the functions of a leader. In order words, the destruction of the leader alters the mode of reaction of the lateral branches to the pull of gravity."
Lily stares at a wedding photo -- beautiful, black and white; hilariously, Claus/Klaus's face is hidden behind hers as they laugh: she's smiling at the frame, he's looking down, and to your left -- and Serena approaches sadly. "That was by far your best wedding," Serena says, by way of introductory apology. "Who would have guessed nine months later, C/Klaus would have auf'd?" One minute you're in... "Well, the worst thing is I thought he would make me happy." Serena puts her giant, dangerous-looking purse down and sits on the couch's arm. "I thought all of them would. What are you doing here?" Heh, Lily. Serena, on Carter's orders, is there to clear the air. She apologizes once again for deferring Brown, and for going to live at Blair's house. Lily sighs. "I'm not angry at you, Serena. I should have been here this summer to help you with the decision instead of leaving you here with yet another man who doesn't get it." So, I'm off the hook because you've found somebody else to blame? Great parenting. But more importantly, WTF? "You and Rufus are the perfect couple." Lily stands up and runs out the room with a kiss on the cheek, unable to deal with any of that.
"...If the readjustment cannot be made the given organ, or the entire plant, may become unhealthy, or may die."
Serena's staring into space when the kids get off the elevator, and Jenny informs her that Lily and Rufus have been "in a Cold War" since the day S left. The wording doesn't escape her: "Over Brown?" Eric acknowledges that Rufus's total fuckup there didn't help, but that Lily's "flipping out about other things," too. Like her sick mom, her total fear of commitment, the crisis embodied that is Rufus Humphrey... "I think they could be in real trouble," Jenny nods. Rufus comes home to DUMBO and stands around dramatically until Dan asks him what's up. "...I've been running," he says exhaustedly, after a long pause, and then dramatically asks if he can have his bed back and slumping away into the darkness. Dan calls Serena STAT and tells her things are bad; they agree that it's time for a sitdown and a reboot on how much Lily and Rufus love each other. Jenny and Eric stare at Serena as she vows to fix everything. "I'm gonna figure out a way, okay? I promise." The look in their eyes is just heartbreaking.
"Why won't he respond to any of my calls, or texts, or my animated e-cards?" Vanessa has to laugh at Georgie, because are you kidding right now? "The last one I sent him was this adorable singing dog!" Vanessa nods, remembering that you have to move slow with Georgina: "Okay. Dan didn't write you back because A) he broke up with you, B) he's seeing someone else, and C) even though I tried to defend you, you're a full-on crazy person." See? She's just great this week. Georgie's not hearing it: "Wait, can we go back to B for a second?" She tosses off a scary, hooting laugh, and complains that Dan cannot possibly be seeing anybody, because they just broke up a week ago. Vanessa watches her carefully as she puts it together, and then the crazy clicks into place: "Okay. Then you're gonna get Dan to dump her."
Do what? Georgina gives her a scary, scary smile. "I didn't visit my family last week. I was in Boston. You know, I met the sweetest guy. I think you know him. Scott Rosson?" Vanessa's jaw drops and she goes, Oh my God? "He just had so much on his mind... And after several glasses of wine -- slightly enhanced -- you wouldn't believe what he told me!" (GEORGINA SPARKS ROOFIED PILOT INSPEKTOR TO GET HIS GENEALOGICAL INFORMATION. I maintain that this is the best television show ever produced.) Vanessa sort of stands back to see how wild this is going to get.
"Get Dan to dump the whore, or I'm gonna tell the whole world Scott's secret. And that would be too bad, because A) that's the last thing he wants, B) how do you think Dan's gonna feel when he finds out you've known his brother's been alive the whole time, and C) who are you gonna hang out with when all the Humphreys hate you?" Vanessa is revolted, but Georgina is precisely right. That's what homeschooling gets you: Your only friends in the world are an espresso pump and the barely functioning Humphries.
GG points out that "to Georgina Sparks, love's always a battlefield," which is really an amazing joke if you think about it, because there's the Pat Benatar thing, great, but also a more recent song -- much-beloved in this house, recent digital sales over 1M, peaking at #10 on the Billboard charts, written by my boy Ryan "Apologize" Tedder, lyrically identical to the Benatar -- called "Battlefield" and performed by? Jordin Sparks.
That's hot. So later, in her dorm room, with Georgie being awesome and insane on her bed, Vanessa calls Dan up to have a barely coherent conversation. "Dan, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but according to the uh Star... Olivia's been spotted all over Japan canoodling with Orlando Bloom..." (Orlando Bloom, Georgie mouths along terrifyingly; she spends this scene looking like she's trying to ignite Vanessa's weave with the power of thought.) Dan blows that off, and asks why he's on speaker, but it keeps going: "Also... Us Weekly has her on Baby Bump Watch..." (Georgie forms baby with her hands, still eyebrowing furiously) "...Probably just bloat, but I thought you'd want to know. Especially with the Orlando Bloom connection..." (Orlando Bloom! Orlando Bloooom!)
Dan asks why V is even reading those magazines, and Vanessa heads into a tangent about how they're Olivia's, which just further proves her poor character. Dan's like, "I don't believe that, obviously, and neither do you, so what are you trying to tell me, here?" I like how Dan's just straight-up confused about this and not getting fooled into assuming that his girlfriend is a drug-abusing street whore because of some casual comment or concerted effort to make him think that. There's a first for everything, I guess.
Georgina holds up a marker board on which she's written 1) Not a stupid movie star. 2) New York. 3) History. and motions threateningly toward it. This is like the funniest scene Michelle Trachtenberg has ever done, it's so good. "I was thinking... Don't you think that dating a movie star is going to be kind of hard? I mean, wouldn't you rather be with someone... From New York? Who you... Have history with?" The whole time Georgina is just going haywire on the bed with a mean scary face. Dan's like, I don't even know what's going on or if "Lenny made brownies for your floor again," but could Vanessa fuck off for like five minutes with this weird shit until Serena fixes their family, please? He hangs up, and Georgina yells at Vanessa: "That was just pathetic! Haven't you ever tried to get somebody to dump a celebrity before?" Vanessa's pragmatic, angry, mind-still-blown responds -- "No!" -- is as great as Georgina's response: "That's okay. Plan B. You're familiar with Photoshop, I presume?" Vanessa rolls her eyes, because Georgina is like a bad guy on Scooby-Doo at this point.
Rufus immediately knows from Jenny's reticence at dinner that something is up, but before he can hound his progeny, the Bass der Woodsens walk in. (Awesomely, Lily is ordering Serena to blow off their family lunch and get her ass to work, having pulled such a 180 she can offer exactly the same nagging speech for the KC job as she was against it five seconds ago. Lily is so good at reality that you wonder why she makes it so hard for herself.) Rufus comes over all puppydog the second they spot each other, and they both pretend to be horrified. As usual with these two, it's mesmerizing for reasons science cannot explain.
"I knew I let you kids watch The Parent Trap too many times," Rufus says, and then all four kids gang up on them, passing lines from one to the like Spoon River, explaining to their parents that they are in love and being stupid. "And it's not Rufus's fault that I made the decision not to go to Brown," Serena says, just to lodge this idea that she's a grownup in everybody's heads just one more time. Jenny does her best ankle-dipping face and asks them sweetly to just sit down, "For us," and then Lily talks about how she loves the "Bolognese" at this place, saying it as weirdly as a van der Woodsen can, the kids all congratulate Serena on her very great, very basic idea -- especially Serena -- and leave their parents feeling awkward.
Chuck is now, remember, implicated in the Bree/Carter thing and 1) on Bree's side, 2) thus on Nate's side, 3) therefore on the side of the Good Guys because Carter is bad, 4) while also screwing Carter over, and 5) still confused about Blair's whole deal w/r/t both of them. Oh, and 6) Blair doesn't know that her new/old trust in Carter is still misplaced, he thinks, which means he's also protecting her from getting hurt both personally and via her love of his sister, who is 7) also in need of protecting, which always makes him twice as scary and sneaky. So in fact all three people most likely to make Chuck act totally insane and get totally destructive are in, as far as he knows, real danger from a guy he already hates. Wow. I really didn't think Blair and Chuck had a lot to do in this episode, but I thought wrong. This is totally fascinating.
And it's even more perfectly balanced than that, because Chuck and Blair are both working the same angle, which is the only angle they ever work, which is that the only constructive thing they bring to the group is the power of exclusion: They're always the watchdogs, while Nate and Serena are always the inviters-in. They bark and bite, which allows Serena and Nate to be who they are, which is the only people on this entire show that ever allow themselves to feel actual feelings and are constantly fucked by that. They are the immune system; they spent the last two years keeping Vanessa and Dan, among others, standing at the door until they could smell them enough to make sure. So this time, the only reason they're at cross-purposes -- very subtle -- actually is the fallout from their relationship: Blair wants Carter to be an okay person because that means Chuck is an okay person; Chuck wants Nate happy with Bree because that means the chapter is really over, and on a minor note -- not huge, we've dispensed with the Jules et Jim of it all, except for how it seems to, appears to, be a sudden issue today -- it's okay to keep loving Blair.
Anyway, Chuck is doing some kind of crazy manipulation on top of Blair that causes her to moan her way through an entire monograph about how Carter is not the bad guy anymore, and sorry to mention it but he wasn't the cause of her first Yale spiral, just a very good symptom of it, and plus he makes Serena happy. At that point her eyes cross in pleasure, and Chuck explains that he's doing buntautuk on her, which he learned from a master in Chiang Mai during his pre-Jack trip to Thailand. And here we thought it was just heroin and whores. "Serena's deluded," Chuck explains. "The guy's not capable of genuine feelings." Blair's not buying it; Blair's not really talking about Carter: "He's brought out a different side of her. They're all happy and domestic."
When B mentions how Serena and Carter are playing house Chez Waldorf, he bends her arms back like a paddleboat. "Carter's at your penthouse? Why wouldn't you tell Bree that when she asked?" Firstly, because she only found out a while back that Carter had returned from his trip, and secondly, because "Why would I tell that future NASCAR Mom anything? I hate her and the tractor she rode in on." He drops her arms finally and declares that she's only angry because it means Nate is moving on. "Look, I love you, but Nate liking Bree doesn't make her a piranha, and Serena liking Carter doesn't make him a prince." He climbs off her to call Bree, and Blair hilariously hollers, "Hey! Where you going? I have tension!"
Walking away from the Parent Trap lunch, Dan mentions to the kids that Vanessa seems to be engineering a hamfisted attempt to break up his relationship with Olivia. Eric's all about the gossip, and Dan explains sort of, mentioning "this whole speech" about dating somebody with history; both Jenny and Eric are like, case closed. "Duh? I mean, everyone in the state knows how she feels about you," Jenny sputters, and Dan mumbles to himself in horror. God, can you imagine that Vanessa was still after Dan, and then on top of it that she would go about it that messily? I mean, it's Vanessa, but it's just so flagrant and lame. Even for her. "Come on, Dan. Have you ever seen a romantic comedy? This is the scene right before you chase after her and tell her that you can't believe how blind you were this whole time." Jenny has a point. Both Dan and Vanessa are like that. After a second, she confirms that he's really into Olivia, and suggests that he go ahead and let Vanessa know that. It's hard for Dan to process, because that's exactly what Vanessa said this morning, but who knows if he was listening.
Rufus and Lily drink tea and reminisce about the nineteen-ninety-eighties, that imaginary lunchbox purse time out of time in which they fell in love. Remember that night at Amherst? Lincoln Hawk had just opened for Sonic Youth, you see, and it was pouring rain, and they just couldn't bear another night in the van. Emily Dickinson was off at a rave with Walt Whitman and Steve Rubell. This was right before Florence Nightingale married Steve Rothko, so she was in her wild period and couldn't put them up; Hannibal's elephant pens were taken and Napoleon was unable, ere he saw Elba. Even the manger was taken, by some knocked-up religious fanatic and her deep-in-denial husband. What to do? Spring for a room in a quirky little inn!
"The Skylark," Rufus intones, which somehow surprises Lily. "Of course I do, they served us wine in Welcome Back, Kotter mugs. I swiped Horshack for you." (And from which, of course, he's slugged his coffee every morning since.) Lily laughs, finally laying one hand along his, as though this isn't a Serena Plan and thus doomed to end in tears... "I know we talked about the Pierre, but an inn like the Skylark might be a cool place to get married in..." Aaaaaaand there it is.
"No offense," Rufus continues (and means!), "But you've already done the fancy wedding thing... A few times... Don't you want to do something more? For us?"
"Very little thought will enable one to understand at once the profound significance to the plant of its ability to adjust its organ as to bring them into harmony with surrounding influences."
Lily gets mean. "Well yeah, that's great, Rufus. I'm sure that Mayor Bloomberg would feel perfectly comfortable toasting us with a Freddie 'Boom-Boom' Washington cup. That is so you." Hand to God: "Not 'us.'" Rufus bristles, determined to drive this car into the wall: "I'm sorry, I didn't realize the Mayor was coming. I've never even met the man..."
If a stem, bent over, could not erect itself, if leaves could not assume positions that secure the most favorable illumination, if stems and leaves were not correlated to each other, most plants would soon be out of harmony with their environment and would sicken and die."
Lily reminds him of those "certain expectations" that come with "being Lily Bass," and nastily asks once again if he even gets that. "Maybe I don't? Because every time we get to a good place, I do or say something that makes you angry." Good point. Lily says this is because Rufus is incapable of compromise, which is also a good point, and so there is silence. He can't even look at her; he stares out the window instead. "You know what? Maybe we aren't ready to talk." She bounces; he is stoic and sad. Poor old Rufus.
Vanessa is seriously photoshopping Olivia's face into a picture of Orlando Bloom -- with giant headphone cans (of course) on, stupidly -- when Dan walks in and immediately starts screaming. It looks pretty bad. She swears she can explain, and he's like, "I am ready to hear that you are in love with me. In fact, I already knew. In fact, I've always known..." Vanessa tries valiantly to dislodge him from this horrific train of thought, but it's Dan: no dice. He goes on at length, adding up the clues, until she's too ashamed and creeped out to do anything but shout, "Stop! I'm not in love with you, you moron! Georgina's been blackmailing me." Only on this show would that actually be more likely, of course, so he immediately shuts his trap and is like, "I'm your best friend, tell me what she's blackmailing you about." And Vanessa, amid major gulps and eye-rolls and general freaking out... Totally does.
Nighttime, Rufus is in the darkening loft, looking at a photograph. The environment includes whatever's on that photo. Being an adult means adapting to the environment, which includes that photograph and whatever lies behind it. Have you ever seen a romantic comedy? There's a scene that comes right before you chase after her and tell her that you can't believe how blind you were this whole time. It looks like this.
Lily stares down at a framed picture of her own: It's the two of them. Not long ago, not when they were young, but now. She's smiling at the frame; he's looking down, and to your left. He's happier than he's ever been. Men aren't for that. They're for a lot, but they're not for that, and she makes him so happy without even trying. That look in the eye, she ran from it for twenty years, because -- as any Rhodes woman knows -- love is a burden on the beloved. It holds you in place, so tightly, like a photograph. The fifth thing I've learned is that running is a place. Waiting is a choice. You think you're going somewhere, you think you're not making a choice: You're wrong. That's the choice you made and the place you've stopped at. Spend your life refusing to be tamed, just to realize you're in a cage, all alone. And you can't breathe.
Rufus was supposed to be the antidote to that: Another location, another snapshot, to get her room to breathe. She dropped the walls, then, just to let the light in. So she could breathe in, a little bit, before buttoning up again. Bart dying took that away, too: There weren't any walls left. And she could feel Rufus coming for her, with that look in his eyes: Ready to pin her to the wall with his youth and all the dreams that never came true. to Scott. Right below his first marriage. Putting first Jenny and then Serena between them, with his heart bleeding open. Can you see it? Can you see just the spot?
He holds onto the picture, and finally, with finality, pins it to the wall, and we can see it for the first time: They're both holding onto the exact same picture. It's the two of them. Not long ago, not when they were young, but now. She's smiling at the frame; he's looking down, and to your left. He's happier than he's ever been. He can breathe.
"We seem to be led to the odd conclusion that living organisms do not respire because they take in oxygen, but that they take in oxygen because they have respired."
Rufus wanders through the darkness at PRADA; Lily's in Brooklyn, calling him at the same time. "I'm at the loft, I came to apologize. I don't know why I got so crazy." Rufus admits that he's never going to understand this world he's now a part of -- the environment -- but that has nothing to do with his love for her. That's his growing up to do. "We can keep asking each other if we can do this. We can keep planning and talking and adjusting and talking some more... Or we can just leap. So let's leap. Let's get married." She grins: They already are. "I mean soon. I mean tomorrow." His eyes are crazy, looking out the window: "We leap!" She laughs, and shakes her head. "Oh my God." She's already agreeing; she smiles to herself in the loft, surrounded by him. It feels like a safe place; I'm glad she feels like it's a safe place. She breathes.
Phoenix again, "Lisztomania," which is awesome because this song in particular, and the album as a whole, have the same anachronistic aim and aesthetic as the show: Classical composer-as-pop star. Lisztomania was a real word once, coined by Heinrich Heine in the mid-1850s to describe the scene at a Liszt concert: screaming women, people passing out, standing room-only...
Think less but see it grow
Like a riot, like a riot, Oh!
...It's not hard to let it go
From a mess to the masses...
"The Whitney is a no, Harvard Club a no," Amalia ticks off: "And Colicchio laughed in my face when I asked about Craft." Blair takes one last swipe at a poor old woman: "The only time I want to hear No is if Ruth Madoff wants an invite." Serena calls to the other Blair Army girls, calling them for some reason the "Constance Crew," while everybody bustles about, and they report that flowers and cakes are covered. The last girl shrugs: "Oh, I'm sorry. My family's in investment banking. They're all broke." Blair sweetly smiles -- "Then you can go" -- before grinning at Serena, who calls for Dorota. "I call the Sonic Youths. They in North Hampton, will try to make it." Serena gives her a smile: "Acceptable."
"Some leafy plants raise their foliage up to the light on strong woody stems, able to stand alone; while others secure this result by climbing up on other plants."
If there's anything I like more than group dancing, it's everybody running around making shit happen. Especially with a good song in the background. This show does so well with tracking shots like this, the whole wedding is just this neverending end-to-end tiny scenes and it's so, so good. But of course, my favorite thing is Serena. One day (and Melrose Place, which is just excellent by the way, says that day is tomorrow) all those false categories of publicist, manager, event planner, cheerleader, life coach, modeling coach, head executioner, stylist, chief executive officer, trustee and witness will all fade away into one all-encompassing superjob. And on that day, Serena will finally reign.
"Hey, Jenny, you okay? You've been working on that dress all night." Jenny is flinging off those cartoon sweat bullets at the sewing machine: "Yeah. It's like my own Project Runway challenge!" Lily appears, just as impressed by this whirl as she should be, and asks S if she needs help. "For once, don't worry about any of the wedding details," Serena says, taking her mother's arm. "You work on getting married. And write those vows!" Lily proudly says she's done so, and Serena gratefully squeals, pulling her out of the traffic to hear them.
Over at the loft, Dan's having some weird conversation with "Aunt Irene" about I guess the guest list, and some socks, while Rufus dresses. When Vanessa enters, he begs her not to make him do whatever he's about to do, and Vanessa just gives him a firm upper lip in return. "You know it's only a matter of time before Georgina spills." Then why not tell Rufus beforehand? "Lily and your dad are too precarious right now. This is their wedding day, you can't drop a bomb like that. You're gonna have to hold Georgina off for one more day." Dan gets a headache that looks like Rufus impersonating Lily, and Vanessa promises he can do it. Rufus is disappointed that his son's running off on his big day, but Dan assures him that he doesn't want to know the details before leaving Rufus alone with his real son, Vanessa Abrams.
"...And watching the sun set over the ocean in Santa Cruz that day, I knew that Rufus Humphrey was meant for me." Serena stands there with a clipboard, horrified. "Mom, are you kidding me? Those could be the exact same vows you wrote for Klaus. You substituted lederhosen for Doc Martens, and Nice for Santa Cruz." Lily protests, realizes she's right, and goes into a funny faint-couch routine about how the vows are killing her. "This wedding isn't like your others. You're marrying Rufus. Your soul mate. The love of your life. Talk about that. And your futures together..." At that word, Lily's eyes go wide, and she looks twice as freaked out. Right, the future. Fuck.
Blair interrupts before S can notice that look on Lily's face: "Serena, I just got off the phone with the Mayor's office. He's agreed to expedite permits. Rufus and Lily can get married at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden!" Everybody squeals and screams, and S goes back into action: "Amalia, New Mean Girls, go to the Garden and get to work. Blair, you're on whip-cracking duty. I'll deal with the caterers. Mom, just please work on those vows." Lily is literally turning green at this point. You can barely hear her give assent. "We'll handle everything else."
"Wow, I wondered what happened to Poppy. I had no idea it was that easy to get someone deported!" Lame. Also, what? "That's... That is, um, that's so thoughtful. That's so... Georgina." Well that part's true enough. Dan and Georgina are strolling around somewhere, while Dan reels off all the lies about Orlando Bloom and so on before asking if they can, as a couple with a history, maybe give it a shot. Georgie is, of course, heartbreakingly moved by this idea, and immediately/scarily offers to accompany him to the wedding. Dan stutters and blows her off, and she's kind of sad, but when he says goodbye she jumps up and kisses the fuck out of him. He wobbles away, scared and sort of violated, and she immediately asks a random hotdog guy, "What does it mean when someone used to grab your ass, but now doesn't?" He shakes his head, because anybody but a Humphrey can actually spot a crazy, and good old Annie Wilkes Booth mumbles murderously, "It means that someone's a big fat liar!"
Carter calls Serena from the Waldorf house to ask how his "favorite bridesmaid" is getting along, and she giggles happily; she loves this work. He promises to come -- "I wouldn't miss you in something pink and poofy," he says, which makes me wonder what horrors Jenny could do in the way of bridesmaid-wear, given another week -- and she impresses upon him that it's important. "I know you've been avoiding my friends, but this is my mother's wedding... You can't hide from them forever. Chuck is prickly!" The way she says it is hilarious; it's also true. (Fundamentals Of Biology is strangely mute on the adaptive qualities of spines, needles, prickles and thorns, but go with it.) "I'll be there," he says, and meets Chuck's eyes: "And I'm not afraid of Chuck."
"The most essential thing in the life of every plant or animal is to keep in harmony with its environment. Every change of environment necessitates an adjustment on the part of the plant in order to maintain this harmony. Adjustments are most easily made when the plant is young and plastic, and especially while it is developing to maturity..."
Chuck's got his good-boy hair happening, which is always excellent, and dressed to the nines he downs some scotch before telling Carter he knows everything. Carter sits, screwed, and asks if Chuck told her where he was. "I told her there's a certain wedding at the Garden that she and her family wouldn't want to miss." Carter shakes his head. "You're setting me up." Chuck says that, as usual, Carter's being given a choice: Go to the wedding and come clean to Serena, who will probably dump him before he is introduced to "a little something I like to call Southern Justice" by Bree's family... Or take yet another free plane ride, one-way, somewhere far away. Carter licks his lips at Chuck, who finishes his scotch and takes off, and Carter smolders. What he'll never know or understand is why: Chuck's doing this to protect Serena, and Nate, and Blair, and Lily... And Dan, and Jenny, and Rufus, and Eric: His family. This one's for the wedding.
Georgina meets Scott at the bus station -- there's a cheap line connecting the Chinatowns of Boston and New York, people like to mention it but here it represents something specific, which is the entry and exit point of Scott/Boston: the place where he comes into and out of their lives, from the heart of one city to another -- looking fucking amazing in a silver dress with a red parasol. He's excited to see her, having been told she pled his case to Vanessa, and Georgina surprises him with a gift: "You know what? We're going to go surprise her right now. Let's buy you a tie." She walks right into the camera, eyes fixed and focused on destroying all futures, Scott on her arm and the parasol over her shoulder. It's awesome.
Dorota's intense cleavage and wildly adorable beribboned periwinkle hat come running up to Blair and Serena, informing them that The Sonic Youths are stuck in traffic. Serena characteristically tells her it's fine, with a sweet smile, but Blair prickily shouts after her -- "But time, remember Mr. Chuck has a chopper!" -- before Serena asks after Carter, whom Blair innocently assures her is coming, and they walk past Bree and Nate, with a characteristically nasty look from Blair, and he notices her staring around the crowd, as though she's looking for someone, in her characteristically fucking hideous dress, and they walk past Jenny, in seriously gorgeous swamp-thing makeup, climbing characteristically about the greatness of the wedding all over Eric, who can't even handle it, and they walk past kids playing, and we end on Chuck, who nods slightly to Bree as she holds his gaze and raises a glass.
"Carter is more than fashionably late," Blair hisses at him, "And it better be because he's lost his keys or he got hit by a pedicab, and not because of something you did." Chuck tells her to trust him: "Serena's life will be much better without Carter, which is why I offered him an easy way out." Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Blair stares at her current Carter: "I don't care what Bree Buckley told you. Carter's a new man with Serena, and this is her mother's wedding. He won't miss it." Chuck assures her they'll find out, and heads off for a canapé. Blair's top is amazing, I can't even describe it. It's abstract but modern, with these wood-like textured swirls all over it. Chuck does a lot with patterns but I can't think of a more textile or graphic piece of clothing on this show. Well, some of Serena's weirder things, but this isn't high-fashion weird, it's MOMA weird. It's like something award-winning out of a magazine for graphic designers, like an event invitation that doubles as sustainable apparel or whatever.
"I nearly choked!" Dan squeals at Vanessa on the phone: "She shoved her tongue right down my throat! I did some great acting, though. Totally pulled it off." Vanessa, looking resplendent in yellow, hails a cab with her dumb-looking hair. "It'll be worth it when you see them finally happily married." She tells him not to worry; he does not obey.
Jenny watches Lily in the mirror, putting on her dress. It's gorgeous; she fucks it up with some nouvelle turquoise drop earrings that fan out like a peacock's tail. "You know, Lily, it wasn't easy for me when my parents split up." (A Rhodes shadow crosses Lily's face, like, For real we're doing this now? Shit.) "And, uh, it was even harder when I realized my dad was in love with someone else. But the truth is, I've... I've never seen him happier than he is with you." Lily smiles at Jenny through the mirror, and turns as Jenny caresses her arm sweetly; she kisses her cheek. Jenny's excitement carries her right over Lily's sudden tension: "I can't wait for you to hear his vows! They're all about your future together, and... I don't want to spoil them, but they're really beautiful!" Lily's scared, Jenny's still manic. "Okay, I'm gonna go, but you look amazing. And I'll see you out there."
You can barely her Lily thank her. She watches her go, and smiles again to get the joy back, to breathe through the fear, to remember what Jenny said, how happy that little girl is, smiles until it feels real, picks up her glasses and her notecards. They are still blank. The future is blank.
"I don't even know how she breathes with her blouse buttoned that high," Serena said, and it was true: she'd buttoned all the way up to her glassy eyes. She had to. You button up, that's what being a grownup is about, and that's the thing Rufus will never understand. He knows how to play the guitar, and he knows how to run from Prada to DUMBO in jeans, knows how to show you his heart, right out there in public, shivering in the cold, but he never figured out how to button up.
Sometimes you step outside and breathe, and remind yourself who you are, and all the things you could be and could have been. But there comes a time when you go back inside. It's not very romantic, but romance is for DUMBO. We live in a Bass world, where love is about what you do, for the people you love, and not just about who you are.
And today, just after four, you could see a woman standing in her wedding gown, in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, buttoning up against the cold. She knows she'll have to go out there eventually, into all that life. She will breathe it in. And she'll be looking down the aisle as the guests leave one by one, in towncars and taxis, and as they go, she'll stand still, looking down the street, getting older.
Pretty soon she'll be all alone, but she will keep standing there, for all the world to see. They won't know her like you and I do; they won't love her. All they'll see is this: Just some lovely woman, with her eyes shining and her heart breaking. Still too afraid to breathe where he can see her.
For now, she is framed amid a million arches and doorways, gorgeous. Terrified. Over her head, along the ceiling, framed around her stillness, you can read the bold part:
"A careful reading of this book will have led the student to realize that the unsolved problems of botany are more numerous and quite as interesting as those we have solved. The essence of science is the endeavor to ascertain by the best method that which is most worth knowing." -- Fundamentals Of Botany, by Charles Stuart Gager (1916)
"Looks like I was right," Blair smirks, "And you were wrong." She points at Carter, kissing Serena in her gorgeous blue-black gown, her hair swept back. Chuck watches them, and without moving shifts his eyes to Bree, as she pulls out her phone and dials.
"In many cases the organs of plants are disguised, appearing to be what, in reality, they are not; stems may masquerade as leaves, and leaves as stems."
Serena asks Carter if he's all right, and he answers honestly that he is not. And neither will she be, in a moment. He takes her for a walk. "A few months before we left to search for your dad, I uh, I ran up some gambling debt. I owed a lot of money to some scary people. And then I met this woman, Beth. She was shy, kind, and well, she... Fell in love with me, and I saw an opportunity." Serena nods, angrily: "She have money?" Yes. Her family did. Serena nods again. "And I knew they'd take care of my debts if... It looked like I was about to be one of them." Her eyes beg him to continue, plead with him to stop. "I proposed. The wedding was all planned, and she had her dress, flowers. And I nearly went through with it, but I... Didn't love her." So he just vanished. Just disappeared, slipped the leash, like Waldo. Like Carmen Sandiego.
"It's the worst thing I've ever done." Serena's lip curls, disgusted. "You buy this girl a ring, you tell her you love her... What, did you make her breakfast in the morning, too?"
Over breakfast, when she reminded him they were orphans, cut off from the family funds, and he told her to make it right. "Talk to her," he said. "Talk to her. For me."
He swears it's not the same, but she can't take it in. "Carter, I have to go. My mother's getting married right now." Serena rushes away to join Dan, Jenny and Eric when Georgina arrives with a giant crazy smile. "What a... What a great surprise!" Dan fake-smiles: "I thought our date was tomorrow?" Oh, it is, she says. She just stopped by to give Lily and Rufus their wedding present. She proceeds past them, and Serena immediately grabs at Dan, scared, asking what that's about.
On a bridge, just out of sight, Rufus chases Lily, begging her to stop and come get married. "Can we just talk for a second?" she asks, and then doesn't speak. He reads it in her eyes, and his shoulders drop. "I don't get it. Everything came together for today." She can't write her vows, she explains: "I mean, how could I when we don't agree on how to raise our children, or how to get married, or anything?" He's already defeated, you can see it in his face: "What happened to taking a leap?" Not when the stakes are this high. Not in a Bass world.
Georgina lights up with devil power when the wedding march begins and nobody appears. Serena steps forward immediately, of course, and addresses the crowd. As she's telling them it's going to be okay, Georgina prances past. One eye on her, Serena promises to check on things, and follows; behind her is Blair, who reaches back for Chuck, without looking: for the hand she knows is there.
"I can't believe you. You want to know what our future looks like, Lily? It looks like this. We are going to fight. We're gonna want to kill each other sometimes. That's what marriage is about: Not running away from every little problem. Sticking it out, you know? Committing. Do you think you can do that or not?" Scott appears, listening carefully to the silence, until Lily shakes her head. It's too real. "I don't think I can."
"...In order correctly to understand a plant nothing is more necessary than to remember that its characteristics are the result, not of its inheritance alone, nor of its environment only, but of the interaction between the two."
"Wait, so you're not getting married?" Scott's alarmed; Rufus is shocked to see him, but Lily snaps on his ass. "What? Who are you? This is a private conversation at a private event. How dare you?"? Scott, feeling dumb, squished down into nothing with that Rhodes woman charm, brushes past. Lily's grossed out, asking if Rufus knew the kid. Before Rufus can reply, Georgina appears, surrounded by the entire cast looking murderously scared: "--Your love child. Yeah, not dead. Congratulations, it's a boy!"
That's my fever girl. "Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly up." Or, as our guide Dr. Gager already told us:
"Mutation ... offers a method by which evolutionary changes may take place within a much shorter time-period than was demanded by the natural selection of fluctuations."
Lily almost barfs, of course, and Serena immediately reminds everybody that Georgina is a huge liar, which is technically true except when it counts. Jenny, hilariously, is like, "What is she even doing here?" Lily and Rufus confirm for each other that their son died, and Lily starts yelling at him about hiding a relationship with their dead son's brother, but Dan finally speaks up. "I'm so sorry, I was going to tell you after the wedding. I found out just yesterday." The misery, the terror, the shame: the absolute, stark, heartbreaking hope on their faces. Man.
Calling immediately on Vanessa, who suggests he'd go back to the Chinatown bus, Rufus gets his coat of armor on and heads riding out to find him; Lily in her fuchsia wedding gown and earrings chases alongside: "I'm coming with you. He's our son, we're doing this together!" Thanks, Georgina. That's exactly what we needed you for.
"We have analyzed the substance chemically, we have carefully examined and tried (but without complete success) to describe its structure. We know it is more than merely a chemical compound. It is a historical substance."
The people leaving pat Serena awkwardly on the shoulder, as she sits in the chairs once again all alone, head in her hands and feeling rotten for any variety of reasons. Carter sits beside her, and she rolls her eyes; she won't look at him, even as he stares at her, and she finally just asks him to leave. He tries to take her hand, and she stands up; he turns her to face him, not quite letting go yet. "Just so you know, I told you what I told you because it's not the same with you. I really do care about you, Serena. So much." How can she believe that? She takes his measure, and finally walks away.
"It is what it is, not merely because of its present condition, but because its ancestral cells have had certain experiences. We can never understand a plant protoplast merely by studying it; we must know something of its genealogy and its past history."
Distraught, he looks away and sees Bree, framed by the gigantic Buckley cousins, Beth's brothers; he'll remember them as the defensive line for Arnett Mead, will he not? He does. "I'll be at the Downing tonight. We can't do this here." Bree nods, reminding him he's being watched; Chuck stares at the scene, blown away by basically everything Carter's done in the last hour. If Blair were there, what would he say? Best that she's not. She's with Dan, staring at Georgina as she chows down on wedding cake and yells at passersby -- "What, it's not like somebody else is gonna eat this now" -- before flipping her hair outrageously and pulling out her phone. They bark and they bite. They protect the family, like the defensive line is doing, but as usual it's just the mondegreen of a song they never learned.
"What we ... inherit is a tiny particle of protoplasm having a certain characteristic composition, structure, and past history. This protoplasm is capable, under certain combinations of circumstances, of developing into a mature organism, resembling the one from which it came, but under other combinations of circumstances the external appearance -- the expression -- may resemble that of the parent only a very little, or not at all."
Lily's almost ready to give up, on the street in her beautiful gown; Rufus trusts Vanessa absolutely, and points out that the bus still has eight minutes before it leaves. He goes rushing around the block again, to check the bus stop -- which is obviously where they should have camped out, duh -- and Lily asks what the point even is. "After what I just did, I... What am I supposed to say to him?" Rufus knows that feeling. "That we're his parents, and that we're here for him. And that Love Can Fix Things!" She scoffs; can you blame her? "We both know that's not true," she says distractedly, and he whirls on her. Rufus Humphrey gets right up in somebody's face, because you don't talk about love like that. Not on his watch. (I'm so invested in and sad about this because I've done both, I've been both -- and in the end, does putting the hash mark in the Lily column more than the Rufus one make you better, or worse? -- and have spent the last decade wishing I could title a recap "I'm Still Your Fag," but that will never happen. Nonetheless, this one would have been the best. The particular novel I'm writing this month could totally be called that, so that's something, but still.)
"You know what? I don't!" He really doesn't. He never will. It's simultaneously the most nauseating and the most wonderful thing about him. "You... What Scott saw was you, grasping at anything you can to push me away." She says that's wrong, but he's on a tear: "First it was Serena and Brown, then the mugs and the Mayor, then it's that you 'can't see the future'?" Lily shrugs, rising to the level of his emotion: "Well? I'm scared of the future. I'm scared of a lot of things." Rufus stomps his little feet and tosses those bangs around and clenches his little guitar fists; he doesn't get more than a sentence into his speech before his throat closes up and his eyes are full of tears.
"You're scared because you're in love with me like you've never loved any of your husbands. And unlike a Bart Bass, someone like me can break your heart, and that's terrifying." He swallows. "And I know that because right now you're breaking mine."
She really is. Lily Bass, who would walk on knives to get through a social occasion -- whose Rhodes powers are such that she could literally do that -- does not throw a wedding for just anybody. Not if she'd just spent the night with the man of her dreams, would she fuck up all that planning. (He knows that: he was there. He was that man.) She is breaking his heart. Again. They are fragments, repeating: Only the parts of the story they could agree on, before the cold pulled her away again. She's Lucy van Pelt, snatching that football out from beneath him, once again; refusing him to let him leave, or grow, or change:
Not a man, just a photograph. A picture of a boy, hair in his eyes: Not like they are now, but when she was young. When she was happy, she holds him there: fixed in place. So tightly, like a photograph. Have you ever seen a romantic comedy? There's a scene that comes right before you chase after him, and tell him that you can't believe how blind you were this whole time. It's a fairytale. He's the only man that ever lived that believed otherwise. She hated him for that.
She loved him for that. She stares at him, barely able to believe it's still true -- barely able to believe that he, that a person, could actually say those words out loud and mean them so much, certainly it's not done that way, not after all this time, certainly this is just fragments repeating of the story he likes best; certainly we don't know who we are, or what we want, not really, and certainly not like he does: we just live. Her heart's a mess; he's desperate to connect. He can't live like this.
She's made him live like this. She asked him to live this way, so many times: as a favor, as a threat, as a means of survival, as a carrot. He did it gladly, again and again. And there goes the football, one more time, and she's just some lovely woman on a street corner, afraid to breathe. Afraid to start.
Around the corner, the bus. Rufus spots Scott, and goes running after him, but the kid keeps walking. He grabs at Scott's shoulder, smiling wildly, and Scott turns to face him angrily. "Stop. This was a mistake." Rufus begs him not to say that, but he doesn't stop. "All my life I wondered about my real parents. When I found out that they were you and Lily, that you were back together and you were getting married, I guess I hoped that I'd find out that you gave me up because you weren't ready. Not because you didn't love each other." Lily approaches; she slows at this. Rufus shakes his head: "Look, the difference is now I know we both want you -- need you -- in our lives. Sure, we've got our problems, but Lily and I love our children. And despite what you just saw, we love each other."
Lily nods, shaking. "He's right. He's the best father and the best man I've ever known. And uh, I am scared." She looks at Rufus. "Because marrying you means finally giving myself a real partner, my children a real father, and... Finally, letting myself truly love." Barf, but not untrue. Rufus is, of course, totally touched. "Lily..." She sighs. "I'm sorry, Rufus." Sorry I kept you tied to the pursestrings, sorry I tried to buy you off a million different ways, sorry I wouldn't let you be real. "And I'm sorry, Scott, that this is how you had to meet me." That's when she falls apart. If you want to know exactly when it happens, this is when:
"All I've thought about for the last twenty years is... Holding our child in my arms," she weeps, begging, as her son cries. She breaks apart, into a million photographs; all the pieces she's held onto since the day she left him, all the girls and women she's had to be since then, buttoned up. All those pieces, knitted up against the cold. "Please give us a chance."
Please tell me I can be redeemed for this one; please don't look and see me the way I am. See the person I'm trying so desperately to be. The woman Rufus believes in so utterly, so easily, that he breathed her into existence. The mother Charles gave the company, in love and trust; the mother Jenny blessed, in absolute peace and certainty. The woman Serena keeps running back to, no matter how many times I screw it up. The woman Eric forgave, after I nearly lost him. Please don't be another son I've lost. Please tell us that we have a chance, please give us that much: that what we throw away is less than what we keep. Her love for Rufus is standing right in front of her, strong back and musician's hands, Rufus's dreamy eyes and her proud cheekbones: To be profoundly lonely is a state that I've accepted. I want to deserve more. Please don't be another thing I drove away.
Scott goes to his mother; in his embrace the years fall away and she curls around him, suddenly soft, for the first time in twenty years. He closes his eyes and leans into her, tears gracing his cheeks. Rufus watches her; how beautiful she's become, with all these years. Lily stares at Scott's face, for the first time seeing him, and Rufus sees it in her eyes: The fairytale, coming true for her, the way he always wished it would. She can see the world he sees, finally; the way love fixes things, sometimes. He wraps himself around them both. She smiles to herself on the street corner. It is a safe place. Lily breathes.
"...Even the stars and planets, like our own earth, are coming gradually into being, undergoing changes of surface and interior condition, and ceasing to exist. Nothing is constant except constant change."
In DUMBO Rufus promises to eat caviar without spitting it in his napkin, at Mayor Bloomberg's -- as long as he knows when he comes to their house, he's eating my chili. The family laughs. Kim Gordon says her name softly, knowing not to spook her, and Lily's eyes are clear. "And Rufus, um. I know that our future will be just like us," she says, looking at him, sliding her eyes down his face. That face, after so long. "Flawed, and fragmented, and full of more love than I ever thought possible."
Jenny's so happy, with her dark eyes and lips. Dan cries just like his father, and laughs just like his father. "I am so excited for you to be my husband," Lily gushes, as Chuck takes Blair's hand, without looking. "And for our children, all of them..." Serena smiles at Scott. "...To be my family."
"Well, by the power vested in me by a sketchy service on the internet," Kim cracks, and Lily jumps a secret little bit, "I pronounce you husband and wife." They kiss, to much applause. Bree watches, happy for them. Everyone in this room, we know all of them. Serena calls out like she's wearing a helmet -- "Yaaay!" -- before eventually telling them to knock it off. Dan and Jenny run to their father, and Serena falls into her mother's arms, towering over her. Lily asks after Carter, and the shadow falls over Serena's eyes for a moment: "Oh, he went home. He wasn't feeling well..." Lily can feel something there, and looks in her eyes: "You know all I want is for you to be happy, right? Look, I have to admit, if you were at Brown, this wedding probably never would have happened. So thank you." Serena nods, as she always does, and smiles. "I really am so happy you finally found the right man," she says, nursing a wound of her own: "You're very lucky."
Scott apologizes to Dan for the whole, you know, secret stalker thing, and Dan laughs awesomely: "You know what, I should have guessed. No one under forty has ever shown that much interest in Lincoln Hawk." Jenny and Eric show up, fighting over Scott's face: "See, I told you: He has my nose" and "Uh maybe? But those are my eyebrows." (I love that: I always do this with my stepsisters, who look just like us boys; I delight in it.) And does he like board games? (Of course he does. He dated Vanessa... Wait, I promised to be nice about managed fun.) Of course he does! Because he's great!
Dan tells Scott that Vanessa texted him to say she's sorry she couldn't make it. I hate that. She should have been there. She's been as much a cheerleader for this as Jenny and Serena have. I don't get it. I'm sure it's some kind of scheduling thing, but it does sort of rankle. Well, at least this way we're easily shod of Scott, who first feels bad about putting her in the middle of this whole shitstorm, which is nice to hear, and Dan calls her "an All's Well That Ends Well kind of girl," which is basically true -- although Scott better keep his act together because you know she'll whip that shit out at the first opportunity in a fight -- and then Scott goes away forever and ever and ever.
"I have to go back to Boston, my family, figure my life out. Lily said there's an open invitation, I'll definitely take her up on that. Maybe the holidays." Like the Feast of Our Lady Of The Endless Billy Zane Eyelash Extensions? So there. Fluttering away. Scott tries for a handshake, unaware of Dan's manhandling/man-handling proclivities and thinking he's safe because they're brothers, but there's no stopping Dan Humphrey when there's dudes to be hugged.
Actually, given the sick body he's rocking, I bet a Dan Humphrey hug right now feels really excellent. Perfectly non-Newtonian. Plus, how many times are you going to get the chance to scam on a guy that's half you, half your ex-girlfriend/sister, and 25% of all the children you could have had together? In a weird way it's like they're related. And you know Vanessa doesn't even care about dating him as long as she gets to have his baby. I will pay this show one thousand dollars if Vanessa Abrams manages to produce the Kwisatz Humpharach.
"The major problem of botany is to record, in order, the evolutionary steps that have culminated in the present condition of the plant world."
While Sonic Youth plays some creepy song... Well, I should qualify. 1) Sonic Youth rules. 2) They already made one appearance on the show: Thurston did the version of "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" at Jenny's guerilla fashion show, and it was joyful watching wonks shit on that version because they're So Expertly Punk Rock, only to go utterly mute when the Thurston part was revealed; in part because of wonks, and the I Am Music History Embodied wonk double-blind there, but mostly because of the fact that if you think a "shitty version" of any punk song is even possible, you've missed the point of punk.* 3) Dirty is one of those albums where either you did filthy things that you are too old to recreate to it, or you didn't.
In my case, I only vaguely understand that they have a million other albums. It's not the curse of our generation, although albums don't really exist anymore so maybe it is, but let's say it's just the curse of music: Everybody has a favorite Joni Mitchell album, and the other ones can only be so good. 4) It's entirely possible that you've heard about Sonic Youth in the same way that you've heard about Lightspeed Champion or Yo La Tengo or the idea of Weezer or Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, which is to say you know they are awesome but haven't actually gone there. With Sonic Youth, I plead the I'm Not A Musician card to explain why I like the small amount that I like. It's not that I didn't or don't listen -- sternly, with all the focus of somebody attempting to care about NPR -- but that I just gave in. But "Wish Fulfillment" still makes me cry, with a complicated set of fragments all my own. So is that a small difference, or a large one?
*(There isn't one.)
Serena stands alone, in a room just off the main room because it is a loft in DUMBO that is very small because the Humphreys were once not that long ago totally poverty-stricken, which is what they deserve(d). (I got this awesome hatemail several months ago -- from a 1-L, of course -- lambasting me for my classist hatred of poor people after reading a few Season One recaps. I honestly didn't know how to respond. You either hate poor people like Vanessa and Dan, who live in $1500/mo. DUMBO lofts -- meaning you're a heartless pig with no sense of scale, like myself -- or you don't, in which case you'd probably best rush to their defense... And that of poor people everywhere. Then you just kick back and wait for the parade in your honor.) Chuck approaches, having been monitoring her situation from not-very-far for the entire episode, and makes sure she knows he's there before he speaks: "Hey. I've been looking for you. You okay?"
Serena is beyond grateful, as usual. (I have this whole Jungian theory about how Serena/Chuck and Blair/Nate are comfortable because they're typological opposites, but to explain it I have to bring up Hogwarts and The Golden Girls, and this shit is already too long because of the Lily callbacks and botany stuff, which incidentally is also why I've held off for weeks discussing Jennifer's Body -- best movie of 2009, please do go see it if you still can -- and how it explains Serena van der Woodsen As Subjective Modern Expression of the Queer Experience, because Jesus, dude. Enough. So much thoughts.)
Chuck listens. "Carter told me some stuff. And it turns out he's not the person I thought he was. The person he is... I don't really want to know." Chuck, pressing himself against the fence of every instinct, holding his arms out toward his sister: "Look. I may loathe the guy, but he didn't have to own up to anything. He could have skipped town." Serena looks so beautiful, staring at him: "I even bought him a ticket. He risked a lot, going to the wedding knowing Bree would be there." But I had to protect the wedding, see. I had to bark, and bite. "What, the girl he was engaged to was a Buckley?" Exactly. "He must really care about you," Chuck says, amazed. Looking at his fragments, his biography. "...Do you think the Buckleys would actually hurt him?" she asks, and he shrugs. "They clearly want revenge." He takes off, leaving her in shock; there's nothing left to say, and this was never his house. Never a safe place, one might say.
The song goes minor as Nate approaches Bree, asking if it's true: She used him, to get to Carter? Sort of true. Sort of sad, basically true. She fell for him while she used him, in order to find a way back to her family. Just like Scott did, just like Carter did not. She is ashamed, but fakes a Texan bravado: "Come on, Nate. You're a Vanderbilt, I'm a Buckley. And as much as I like you, that's always gonna come first." Nate's too Nate to understand the layers here; he just sees cruelty, and it breaks him apart. "It's in my blood. It's Texas."
(I just read this press release from Bush Sr. to A&M asking them to not be crazy, because he'd invited Obama to come talk, and it took a few passes to understand the problems: He says "Howdy," and at the end it says, "Gig 'em." Now, I come from generations of A&M so I'm pretty immune to Aggie jokes, and I'm still processing the whole "gig 'em" lynching thing, but I was shocked at... Just how much explaining Texas requires. Like even me, with my coastal pretenses, managed to blow past both of those without even blinking. So when she says "It's Texas," she means two things:
1) Don't even bother because we will never have the time, and 2) All of this is real and you shouldn't question it, because looking at that shit objectively will send you into a Blair-style existential freakout. I mean, if Arnett-Mead actually existed -- which I really don't think it does, which makes awesome that GG did that, referenced a West TX town that doesn't exist in order to make a point about Friday Night Lights being real and being awesome -- it would be an hour or two from my parents' house. And what I learned today is that, being who I am, it actually is impossible to explain. I'll keep trying, but it's not actually possible. Which bums me out because Bree Buckley's stupid face should be good for something, and if it's not for explaining Texas, which her few words secretly do explain, then what's she for, but also, when I heard an "evil Texas socialite" was being cast last summer, I stupidly went to a Mary Cherry place, effortlessly. And Senator's granddaughter Bree Buckley? I served with Mary Cherry, I knew Mary Cherry, Mary Cherry was a friend of mine. At Hockaday. And you're no Mary Cherry.)
Bree says if it means anything -- and it does -- she's sorry, but Nate's still stuck on two pages ago because it doesn't. He's so sad! He asks her to leave, and she does, and he's like amazed. He stares after her, past Kim doing her thing, and there's Serena leaving Carter a scared voicemail: "Carter, hey. I just talked to Chuck. I just want to make sure you're okay. Call me, please. I want to talk to you." Lots and lots of fades through the party, until we're looking at Carter in the car with the Buckley cousins, and it's scary, and guess what Carter is brooding, and then Jenny and Eric are giggling, watching Rufus and Lily dance. Finally. "Well? It took twenty years, but we finally made it." Lily laughs, and loves him: "I wouldn't have done it any other way." Past them, and into Dan remarking that it's an almost-perfect night, except for how Georgina once against got away unscathed, and spooky Blair, master of scathing all comers, telling him not to worry about it because sweeping into Chuck's arms, and dancing happily.
"People who are immune may, however, unknowingly transmit the disease-germ from one person to another ... a recent case being that of "Typhoid Mary," a domestic servant near New York City, who for several years endangered the lives of others in homes and hospitals where she was employed. The menace of such persons to public healthy justifies their permanent isolation."
"I couldn't help but notice you," sexy doorman Vanya says to Georgina's back; she puts down her drink deliberately and turns slowly to look into his beautiful eyes. "I am Prince Alexi, from Belarus," he says, kissing her hand. Well, no Svetlana tonight, she thinks: "Nice to meet you, Prince." He informs her that he's flying back to his "home country" now, to celebrate his new oil pipeline, and asks her to join. "You know, I'm pretty much over college, and uh..." -- I just got cast on this hospital drama that looks like it'll do well, playing a rookie nurse -- "...Well, who am I to say no to a prince?" He smiles, creepy, and whisks her away; past Dorota, in a kerchief, hiding behind cocktail menu and grinning wildly. Normally I'd say Dorota is the voice of reason, but it's Georgina. Even if she wasn't doing this for B, she'd do it for them all. We know she loves Chuck, but I think she secretly likes Nate and Serena even more than I do, which is tough to pull off.
"There are songs that make us want to dance, songs that make us want to sing along..." GG says, apparently talking about Sonic Youth, as the camera sweeps past sad Nate to sad scared Serena: "But the best songs are the ones that bring you back to the moment you first heard them, and once again break your heart." Don't worry, though. Looks like week Serena wins Carter in a poker game, and Blair impulsively whores Chuck out to a dude, so, you know, we've got options. And as we say goodnight to the newlyweds, to Serena with her new problem and Nate with his new issues, and goodbye to Scott, and hello to a brand new family, you know what the good doctor would say:
"Evolution means gradual change. Applied to the natural world... it teaches that things were not in the beginning as we now find them, but that there has been constant though gradual change. Creation is regarded, not as having taken place once and for all, but as being a continuous process operating from the beginning without ceasing -- and still in progress."