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Chuck's freaking out about the low occupancy at his new hotel (Empire), but still pissed at Blair, so he tells her to shove it when she suggests he open the club part (Gimlet, cute) early... Then asks Serena to help him publicize the club part opening early. He explicitly tells Serena not to let Blair help, but of course Blair finds out immediately. While Serena stresses over the opening -- and Olivia's sham love life -- Blair decides to help Chuck get his liquor license early. By calling Uncle Jack. So I guess we're back to manic bulletproof Blair, the scariest of all the Blairs.
Chuck finds out about the Jack thing and freaks out on B, but since Serena's working on the opening she ends up choosing to stay with Chuck rather than running wild in the streets with Blair. This gives B some grief, which she expends in the form of abuse and rage on Dorota and her Mean Girls. When flowers arrive from Jack, with condolences for granting them a fake license, she heads for the Gimlet opening, which is going forward regardless of the legalities.
There's a mind-meld phenomenon where Blair and Chuck eerily co-decide to call the cops themselves, since they're getting shut down either way -- which is fine, because now the plan is to have it be a real speakeasy until the license comes through, and in the meantime it's the most-photographed party of the year. Serena, who doesn't know about any of this, gets super-mad at Blair for setting her up for failure -- and I don't mean Serena Mad, I mean Actual Mad, like we're heading into the big Blair/Serena breakup for this year. And since she's still looking for vengeance on Nate, that means she's got maybe two friends. If you count Vanessa. And she might have to.
But at least Serena's job is safe, because over in DUMBO, Nate creepily makes Dan watch the Endless Knights vampire trilogy for the sex scenes, which are a bit too realistic -- especially considering her costar was also her boyfriend -- and Dan has all manner of freakouts until Olivia assures him the relationship was just for publicity's sake. (Highlight: Watching Penn Badgley and Blake Lively discuss fake publicity relationships without breaking character or barfing.) Meanwhile, Serena is tasked with breaking up the happy couple and getting Olivia back together with the creepster, named Patrick. It's all very complicated, but the end result is that Serena saves the day, Dan is now dating Olivia in public, and Creepy Patrick's new fake girlfriend will be Miss S herself.
Speaking of creepy, the Rufus storyline is beyond grotesque. There's a Prince Hal wig, a Joey Ramone costume, Lily and Vanya recycling the same three little kids so Rufus will still believe in Halloween, and then some heavy petting.
In Sad-Face Eric news, he and Jonathan are so grossed out by Jenny's newfound obsession with preserving herself in the midst of the Constance hierarchy that they do some treachery and earn themselves a yogurt to the head. Lily, sympathetic about the fact that her daughter just ordered a yogurt hit on her son, mildly tells Jenny to cool it. Jenny does this by inviting the boys to Gimlet, separating them, then having her Mean Girls throw eggs at Jonathan until he cries. It's pretty much totally amazing. The sad result is that Eric tells Jenny she's neither his friend nor his sister any longer, so she tosses her sewing machine/soul on a pile of old kinderwhore crinolines and commits herself fully to a life of evil and black pantsuits.
All very bleak. But there are great clothes, no Vanessa, and even Nate only stops by to be hilariously mean. week: It's election night for Tripp van der Bilt, which means a whole lot of Congressional folks and hangers-on will be privy to Serena's cake-hurling, backstabbing all-out war on Nate and Blair.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"Strictly Game" by Harlem Shakes plays over various spooky New York things, like witches and scarecrows and Stephen King's Entertainment Weekly column, as Gossip Girl explains to us that All Hallows' Eve is an American tradition where people dress up as other things. FYI. Like, for example, Rufus Humphrey's KISS-makeup pumpkins, complete with a necktie-long tongue: "There are costumes to make men feel like boys again..."
"Or turn little girls into Queens..." Over a landscape of shopping bags from Bergdorf and all the other places Jenny used to salivate over, before she found her gift, we light on Lily tugging a hundred of Jenny's homemade crinolines and babydolls: "Jenny, please let me go through this closet. There's no room for your new things!" She crosses her ankles like a stewardess, holding up one black original, neon pink peeking out at the hem: "Does this even fit you anymore?" Jenny snatches it away from her in protest, rolling her eyes -- "All of it does!" -- while Lily stands there crosslegged like a music-box ballerina, framed in a full-length mirror, watching Jenny try to hold onto everything at once.
I'm serious about Lily's Barbie pose, it's like something out of yoga nightmares. Her heels are about three feet apart, legs crossed practically at the thigh, while she stands straight up, so her feet are pointing the opposite of normal. Like the Scarecrow, but legwise? It makes her look like a Dufflepud, or a mermaid. I go into a similar pose whenever anybody points a camera at me and I don't even remember why -- probably some modeling tip I picked up from Sally Jesse when I was like six and still believed -- but if it looks this crazy to other people, I'm going to have to curb myself.
This will be a better year
Make a little money, take a lot of shit
Feel real bad, then get over it
This will be a better year...
Also trying on a new grownup wardrobe -- metaphorically, of course, considering he probably started dressing like a venture capitalist when he was old enough to reach the Black Card -- is Chuck, who's impatiently pedeconferencing past the lounge of his new acquisition, the appropriately named Empire Hotel. "We're #183 on Travelocity. Right behind the Holiday Inn LaGuardia!" Blair's with him, of course, trolling the grounds of their empire; neither of them is wearing lavender this week: just white-trimmed black.
"Who needs travel sites, with their huddled masses searching the internet, late-night trolling for deals?" Um, Chuck does. "That's why you should open the club!" Blair screams maniacally. "Once that's the place to be seen, you'll be so booked you can turn away the tasteless tourists in fanny packs." She turns to face him, that scary gleam in her eyes: "Now, I was thinking an '80s theme. Although shoulder pads can be overwhelming on my delicate frame," she notes adorably. "This is a business, not a high school party," he hisses, as the song ends and her face falls.
"I told you I was sorry for my little transgression, and you forgave me. Now either make me kiss a girl already, or let's move on!" There's something in her face, maybe I'm making it up, but I think she's really pushing for Option One. Chuck apologizes and admits he's been on edge lately; maybe it's that word "edge," rhymes with "ledge," but she lets just a little of her worry slip fleetingly across her face. The dark fear for him that she covers up with so much sparkling and rage. "With all my liquid assets tied up in this hotel, I have to make sure everything gets done right."
Blair smiles like she's scored a point and adjusts his tie: "Right for the Chuck Bass I know means right now." He speaks to her in her language, about not being taken seriously; how they all think he's playing a game, like a rich boy, and would love to watch him fall. "I have to prove I'm not just Bart Bass' son. My impulsive tendencies have no place in my life as a legitimate businessman." She yanks on his tie, eager to slide into home again, reminding him how sexy he is when he's legitimate. When he's being the man he wants so desperately to be. As he heads off for a meeting, he checks in -- he knows her so well -- and reiterates that he needs to do this on his own. For one, because he does, and secondly, obviously, because she ruins everything she touches when she gets nuts like this. Her blunt chaos can't help this time. "Of course!" she says brightly, touching his lapel, and the second he's gone she goes all Lucy Ricardo and calls up Mark Ronson.
In DUMBO, Dan sips coffee from a gorgeous mug and flirts unendingly with Nate about a mysterious package. After much grab-assing, we learn that it's a DVD of the entire Endless Knights trilogy, which after much Dan-style soul-searching he is now prepared to watch. These movies being Nate's favorite collective thing franchise in the whole entire world, he sparkles all over like a Forks vampire and gets ready to watch them with Dan. (The second movie is subtitled Return To Camelot. I wish these movies were real so fucking bad.) Dan asks Nate if he honestly thinks "the sight of Olivia in fake fangs, reciting stilted dialogue" is going to be a dealbreaker. Because Nate is stoned, he doesn't give the obvious response, which is "Olivia's entire life equals stilted recitations in giant fake teeth."
"Oh, the dialogue's awesome," Nate Twihards, and explains it's the not-talking that's the problem. Hard to believe, but of course Dan's so dumb he thinks Nate is talking about like people biting each other. "Come on!" Nate squeals. "Seriously, man, do you not get internet here in Brooklyn?" It's a valid question; if you listened to Vanessa you'd think Brooklyn was just community gardens and packmules.
Nate explains that Patrick Roberts -- who might actually be grosser than Aaron Rose, which is a tall fucking order -- was supposedly her real-life boyfriend when they were filming. (I wonder what they call him on Nate's beloved EK blogs. Well, I guess ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ works just as well either way. Clever show.) So the urban legend is that Olivia and ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ loved doing sex scenes with each other so much that they skipped the "acting" part and went right for real-life boning.
(Which is totally gross, but funny in about sixty ways. Firstly, because I'm so sure that happens anymore. Secondly, because nobody ever actually believed that real-life Carter/Blair, Serena/Dan, or Vanessa/Chuck ever actually dated, even though they've been shoving that shit down our throats since before the first season started. Thirdly, because how do you get through this entire episode without once mentioning the giant lesbian elephant in the room? Not even a tossed-off "I thought you were seriously gay until you made out with Ryan Reynolds in that theme park movie"? Come on. Although I guess we could just wait for the Runaways mullets, and that way Jenny could get some gay-adjacent PR too.)
Anyway, Dan calls Nate gay for loving EK so much he reads blogs about it, and Nate abruptly changes the subject back to how they're about to watch a tape of Dan's girlfriend fucking and maybe they should just take off their pants and get real comfortable because they're all the way in Brooklyn and nobody would ever have to know. Also, he points out that there will be noises, and Dan seems to think it's appropriate to talk about Olivia's "noises" and how he hasn't yet heard that sweet music of the night because she's always in Japan and he's too busy watching softcore with Nate in another city. Just as he's stuttering his way through a whole song and dance about how maybe one day they'll do it, GG weirdly "scoops" Perez's "scoop": A story of Olivia snatching foil-wrapped prophylactics from a jar marked FREE CONDOMS at the Student Health Center. Nate and Dan are first aroused, then furiously aroused.
At first I was confused as to why there even needs to be Perez on this show -- I've always liked the guy a lot even if his site is stupid, but what's the point -- until I realized that it's totally brilliant. Contrasting GG's relatively low-readership blog about the doings of teen socialites -- which in real life only super-creeps like me would actually scan daily for the latest PC Petersen dirt -- with something huge and kitchen-sinky like Perez is a great way to explain the clash of worlds that Olivia represents. Just thinking about that made me love this season more, because where those bubbles touch is where Serena's living now.
More specifically, in the office of KC, who grows more beautiful each scene while wearing stranger and stranger outfits and with hair growing more voluminous every time we see her. And KC is pissed because Olivia got snapped nicking those condoms, because apparently she's still officiously supposed to be be-bearded by ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ -- but he's in Toronto, so they're obviously not going to be used with him. Serena takes it, like everything, in stride, but KC explains the poignant problem: Now that the Endless Knights trilogy is over, ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ is in a holding pattern and his only claim to fame is fake-dating Olivia Burke. So basically he's like a penniless Rita Wilson.
"This obviously means you didn't take care of the Dan Humphrey situation like I asked you to," KC hisses, and Serena tries to stare her down: "It's not a situation. It's a relationship. They're very happy together." KC says that, since she's not in the business of couples counseling but in fact the business of keeping ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ a commodity, that means less than a hill of beans. "Without Endless Knights, Patrick is on the road to Mark Hamillhood." Serena vaguely remembers who that is, proving KC's point, and KC makes a dumb joke about nails and coffins that we won't dignify, but Serena tells her boss in no uncertain terms that if she wants Serena's ex-boyfriend and current brother to stop dating his best friend's roommate, she'll have to do it herself. That is not Serena's business. "Olivia's trying to be a Real Girl and not taking my calls, so I suggest you make yourself useful. Unless, of course, you see yourself delivering James Franco's underwear for the rest of your life." That's a job? Is this even a serious question?
On the way to the Met, Eric mentions gingerly that Rufus was asking his size this morning, and wonders if that means he's going to have to start wearing flannel. The whole insidious Lily/Jenny thing with the clothes at the beginning and end seemed to throw a lot of people off, but this is another iteration of it: If Jenny's turning into the Serena Lily never had, does that mean Eric is going to take over as Rufus's son?
Jenny laughs and says it's a Halloween thing, which of course Rufus loves more than Christmas or even his birthday. So, she explains, they have to find a party to go to, so he won't make them dress up like the Octobabies and hand out candy. "Uh, speaking of creepy social anomalies," Eric interrupts, pointing at Jenny's minions. Who are fighting about how perfectly presented her morning yogurt is going to be. Eric, gagging on the horror, bounces -- "You look Queentastic" -- and Jenny sighs and tries valiantly to pretend she's not totally loving this. The girls crawl all over each other like dachshunds and Jenny goes, "Are there skins on these almonds? Fix it, and in a timely fashion. Otherwise you're all going as The Real Housewives Of New Jersey for Halloween!" The Constance girls scamper, just in time to miss Jonathan and Eric sitting down at the top of the steps.
"I mean, even if there are other Dillingers at the parade, none of them will have one of Johnny's actual suits from the movie," Jonathan's saying when she walks up, which is real low down in the mix and you might not have heard, but has a lot to do with what happens later. "Jenny, you should come to the Village with us!" he beams up at her, and she awkwardly asks WTF they're doing so high on the steps. The birds crapped on their usual place, the boys explain, and she's lukewarm sympathetic for a second before reminding them they have to move down so she's at the top. They grin at her, because this is totally stupid.
I mean, it's stupid, but two other things that are stupid are 1) high school posturing and 2) the actual placement of royalty seating and flags and all that shit, so this is heightened reality stuff in a way, but mostly it's just concretizing something that's actually real. I'm not going to question it, because I love it. Although there's something annoying about how the show just matter-of-factly and explicitly and repetitively explains these made-up ridiculous things, like, daring you to call it dumb. I don't know, there's a tone.
Jenny apologizes to the boys, but must insist: "If the girls see you up here, they're gonna take it as a sign of weakness and..." Eric nods and exposits that the girls are looking for any sign of weakness, and she can't afford to give it to them, so they move down sweetly just before the girls return with skinless-almonded yogurt.
Jonathan gays it up about "Hello, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers!" and how Jenny is becoming a "dark, power-hungry monster" and Eric stands up for her and how she only "wears the mask for school." Jonathan reminds us why we love him, cheating notwithstanding, with a brilliant volley: "That mask is becoming her face."
Nate is so into watching Olivia and ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ fangbanging that he like forgets Dan's even there. Once he bites her neck, she starts levitating, and Dan gets weirded out, and Nate very seriously explains that it's a special effect: Olivia can't actually fly. Love you, Nate. Dan talks and talks and talks to himself about fucking nothing and then when Olivia calls him he gets stupid and coughs into the phone and tells her he has the flu or something. As usual, keep your eyes on Nate because I swear for a second he actually thinks Dan suddenly got the flu in the last five seconds, and then figures out that it is a ruse -- a special effect, if you will -- and then is proud of himself for figuring it out, and then gets immediately drawn back into the fangbanging so hard he forgets that any of that just happened.
While Serena puts together goodie bags for something, Blair's all over her off-label club opening for the Empire, including the less masculine Ronson sibling and the mixologist from Milk & Honey. Whose house rules -- No name-dropping, no star fucking. No hooting, hollering, shouting or other loud behavior. No fighting, play fighting, no talking about fighting. Gentlemen will remove their hats. Hooks are provided. Gentlemen will not introduce themselves to ladies. Ladies, feel free to start a conversation or ask the bartender to introduce you. If a man you don't know speaks to you, please lift your chin slightly and ignore him. Do not linger outside the front door. Do not bring anyone unless you would leave that person alone in your home. You are responsible for the behavior of your guests. Exit the bar briskly and silently. People are trying to sleep across the street. Please make all your travel plans and say all farewells before leaving the bar. -- are for me what Endless Knights is for Nate Archibald.
Serena doublechecks that Blair is acting insane and against Chuck's express wishes, which she is, and Blair explains that Chuck's opinion about his billion-dollar business venture is not material. "That will change, just like it always does, when he sees my plans!" Serena cautions Blair, tossing in a random and awkward reference to how she pissed off Carter by trying to help him, and B is awesome, just sniffs a gift bag and starts going through all of the shit. Which is exactly what you would do. As though Blair -- or anybody, because let's be honest, if I can't look at him I don't wanna hear about him -- cares, Serena continues her Carter monologue: "The good news is KC's yelling at me all the time, and I don't have time to think about it..." NOBODY DOES, LADY.
But no, it's Chuck calling Serena and making sure Blair's not there, which is always a sign of bloodshed to come, so B pretends she's not there and he ends up on speakerphone, so B gets to be well-chuffed and quiet when he tells S he's worried about the Empire, and wants to do everything without the help of Lily or Bass Industries. Serena's excited and proud to be called upon to act as his publicist, and offers to call Condé Nast and TabletHotels, but he's like, no, I need to open the club tomorrow. Which is Halloween. B slugs S in the arm, because she's right, and S laughs at them both, and just before she hangs up, Chuck goes, "And Serena, I don't want Blair anywhere near this." Again: Wise.
I don't even have to tell you what happens with Blair's face, but Serena's situation is more interesting here, because he just put her in the worst position and didn't even know it. She's clinging to Publicist Serena as hard as Queen B is clinging to NYU and just as hard as Chuck is to his Empire, and all for the same reason: Because the crazy that you go in freshman year is second only to the crazy you go when you graduate. So Chuck, who is in the Grownup Club lead for now, is inviting Serena to play dress-up with him, explicitly defining that alliance against their mutual love for Blair. Which would fuck Serena up anyway because that's how she rolls, but is super fucked up because B was standing right there when he did it.
So while Serena's being totally awkward with Blair and looking ten times as tall as usual to accommodate the gawkiness, and marble-mouthing about how apparently Chuck is still angry -- which isn't the problem, but she only has Blair's hyperactive self-obsessed filter to interpret Chuck's motivations in the wake of the Big Gay Peck Without Any Tongue At All -- Chuck's over at the Empire club in question, Gimlet, finally wearing a purplish outfit, with the first guy he ever kissed.
Nate's wearing an awesome dark blue hoodie and spreading yet more discontent while lots of Empire guys run around stocking the bar, including Horace from the Brooklyn Inn storyline ten thousand years ago -- the only black guy ever on this show, so you probably remember him, but he was the Vanessa Project that led to them hooking up for five seconds -- and playing straight man for Chuck's dialogue about how no flimflam or dibbity-doo, he's honestly going to make an honest run at having an honest business this time. Horace gives his eighteen-year-old bar owner-boss a "Moonshine Martini" in the middle of the day, and they repeat verbatim Chuck's conversation with Serena about how speakeasies are both timeless and timely. "
A place to escape the modern world and violate its rules... Legally, of course." I'm glad that makes sense to Chuck, because that sounds like nonsense to me in every single way. Nate's like, "I don't even know what you're talking about, but why isn't Blair here? Does she hate you? Is she being a total bitch? Shouldn't you just dump her and die alone?" Chuck says that he's not fighting with B -- "a fight implies time and energy" -- but has learned once again to go for detached distrust, because she can't be trusted. Nate loves this almost as much as watching Ren Faire vampires doing it.
...Well, it's pretty much the same thing. So Blair has been yelling for probably ten minutes at Serena's place of business about this, about Chuck "choosing" Serena over Blair, which is a tossed-off line in the scene but is actually really important, because that's how it looks to her -- and that Serena and Chuck are in Grownup Club and she's useless -- but because that triangle keeps iterating for the whole episode. Serena shushes her in vain, reminding her that this club opening has to be a secret from KC for the nonce: "The only way I can prove myself to KC is if she doesn't find out about this party until after I make it amazing." Not to mention she'll steal it -- or as Serena more wisely says, "take it away" -- because it's a huge fucking deal.
"It's not like Chuck hasn't kissed a guy before! He said so himself!" (Oh, Season Five Previouslies, how I will adore you.) Serena, finally annoyed and flaring a little nostril, sharply advises Blair to get over herself. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe it's not about the kiss? Your game is based on trust, and you broke his." Blair gives a nutty protest that Chuck "pretending he's not mad" at her -- which is actually less nutty, since he just admitted that's exactly what he's doing -- is way more untrustworthy. "I'm going to demand he let me help him..."
Serena raises her voice and tells Blair the surprising truth: Today is not about her. Blair, having never met a day that wasn't about her, even when she wasn't wobbling like a blowout waiting to happen, is flummoxed. "Chuck has 24 hours to create something from scratch. His liquor license hasn't even cleared yet..." And if the phone hadn't rung right then, I'd like to think that Serena would have noticed the crazy gleam come back into Blair's eyes when she said that, and intervened. But no, because it's fussy Chuck calling to doublecheck one more thing, she lovingly deals with him and hangs up after B has had time to put her normal face back on over her totally insane face.
"I know Chuck is anti-everything Bart Bass, but his father must have had a better way to get these things done," Serena says, taking a match to the powder keg of crazy plans already spinning in Blair's head, and finally notices that Blair has gone to Schemeville. "Have you even been listening to anything I've been saying to you?" Blair gets spookier than she's been in a long time, perfectly composed and sort of vibrating as she repeats that this isn't about her, it's about Chuck, and therefore she is going home. Then she stiffly turns, grabs a bag, and makes her scariest face yet where Serena can't see it.
I'd like to say I saw her insane move coming, but it's honestly so fucked up I had no idea. However, you can see how she got there: First the mention of Bass Ind., then the liquor license thing, then the idea that Bart would have a better system in place. And I hate to say this, but there's only one man we know who's actually invited Blair into the Grownup Club. It was grossly abusive and he's a rapist who nearly murdered his nephew, but there it is. The thing that's always worried me most about Blair Waldorf is the fact that of all of them, she's the least aware at any given time whether she's actually playing dress-up. It all seems real to her; even this: You've got connections? My connections go all the way to the top. I've been a grownup much longer than you.
Vanya accompanies Rufus into PRADA with a bunch of bags; Lily's wearing this amazing camel jacket that looks like orthogonal fondant and a chic black ribbon holding back her hair. The thing is that Rufus has bought a bunch of candy because he is all excited about Halloween, but what he doesn't know... What Rufus Humphrey doesn't know could fill a fucking Olympic pool, but what he doesn't know in this instance is that A) nobody trick-or-treats in their building, and B) Gimlet is a go. "Charles invited us to his club opening, and I want to go be supportive. I'm sure Vanya would love to take all of this candy..." Rufus puts his stupid little foot down and commands his woman in on uncertain to desist, because that they are not going to Gimlet.
Instead of punching him in his stupid chokered throat, Lily explains that yes they are, because she already got costumes, and Rufus quotes her on how they shouldn't embarrass the kids anymore -- I love doubly how in this episode "the kids" includes "Charles" -- and she's like, "Um, yeah, when it's embarrassing bullshit like making us dress up like the Ramones" -- Rufus points out quietly that Jenny would make a good Joey -- "Not when it's an awesome classy elegant Prohibition party." Rufus stomps his stupid foot again and whines about how "there's nothing classy about being at a party with your parents," which is another neat evasion of the entire fucking point, and once again states his command: "We can dress up and pass out candy."
Vanya stares at them, what with Rufus all lit up and pushy and Lily somehow managing not to just hold her hand out for his credit card then and there. As Rufus's puffed-up chest goes stomping around and knocking priceless objets off the shelves, Lily singsongs her thanks to Vanya before quietly pulling out a stunning last-minute power recovery: "He just seems so happy [about the imaginary trick-or-treaters], I couldn't bear to take his candy away yet." Vanya grins and leaves. Good for you, Lily! If you want to be treated like a man, act like one. If you want to be treated like a baby, ditto. It's the exact same amount of work for the rest of us either way.
On the Met steps, Jenny's being a bitch some more. "Not bad," she says of a minion's hopeful yellow-feather costume. "But it's Prohibition, not Last Of The Mohicans. Lose the feathers." Jonathan and Eric watch from ten steps down, and Jonathan is all about the mask and her face, and Eric tells him to talk to Jenny about it if he honestly thinks she's losing it. Jonathan instead decides to fuck everything up for everybody.
"Did you make your own costume, Jenny?" No, Jenny responds -- once again hitting the seamstress button -- that her costume will be vintage Gaultier; i.e. expensive and not hand-made. One of the girls notices Jonathan sitting on the top step, and the girls immediately get sneaky faces and start pushing and prodding to see which way Jenny's going to go. She heads up there, and Eric does an end-run so that he can greet her at Jonathan's side and I guess protect him, and she's like, "Are you for real?" and Jonathan laughs at her, and one of the girls is like, "Are you disobeying a direct order?" and so on, and Eric tries to make peace as usual, but they get into a staring contest which means nobody is going to win. So now Jenny is actually screwed, because Jonathan and Eric each did half of a coup -- real goods praxis + revolutionary rhetoric -- which together equals one coup, so all she can do is say, "Girls?" and turn away fast enough that she doesn't have to watch Eric get covered in yogurt.
Olivia schleps some soup all the way to DUMBO and has some unidentifiable emotion at seeing how quickly Dan has recovered. They talk about the condoms and Dan is cute -- "I love that picture of you. It's so flattering. And who can resist free gifts in, uh, in shiny wrappers?" -- but still just as flesh-crawling as usual when sex comes up, and she notices the tape and immediately/hilariously jumps to her first rationale for his rejection: "You think that I'm a bad actress!" His answer is both characteristic and funny -- "I wouldn't say bad" -- but she's not done: "Which scene was it? Was it where I sucked that Wolfman's blood? Because that was a dummy Wolfman, and it's really hard to play with a dummy."
Of the thirty jokes presenting themselves at this moment I don't think any of them are really of our caliber, you and I, so we're going to let it go. Know, though, that I am with you in spirit.
She hits the spacebar -- or whatever's the safety-scissors Mac equivalent -- and it goes right back to that fucking scene that Nate and Dan enjoyed so much in each other's exclusive company. Which is amazing, because that means Dan totally jerked off to it in his kitchen, because obviously Nate would have made him watch all three chapters, probably in a marathon, so Dan purposely went back to that scene on his own. Dan admits that he was feeling whatever the opposite of starfucking is, and reminds her that she levitated, and then Olivia Burke also seriously explains that it was a special effect and that she was only acting, not fucking, because movies are pretend. Why didn't Dan get this memo?
...It's because of Vanessa Fucking Abrams, the Documentary Filmmaker. I knew I could find a way to blame her. So Olivia totally explains/lies that she was never actually dating ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ and that all coincidental costar relationships -- with the exception of Bill and Sookie, OBVIOUSLY, because their love is REAL -- are fake as her giant Chiclet teeth. Then they make out and are stupid and Olivia proves that she's good at least one kind of acting, which is acting like a total gaywad whenever sex comes up, just like her boyfriend, and it's queasy: "Mm, well, we can explore all of my health center acquisitions tonight, after Chuck's club opening." Olivia slaps the computer shut and texts Serena that she'll make the Gimlet opening after all. As she explains to Dan, for some reason*, whilst making out on him.
*(90% of this episode is people explaining to each other how phones work. I've been leaving it out because it's totally retarded, but just imagine that anytime anybody calls or texts anybody in this episode, that person listens to their ringtone for a few minutes and then turns to the person nearest them and explains for no reason, "That's probably X, calling/texting me about Y." Sometimes they're wrong, which still doesn't make it necessary -- and sometimes they don't know the difference or whether they're getting a text or a phone call until they answer, which is dumb squared -- but usually they're right, and X really is calling about Y, which is the most infuriating of all.)
Just when Serena's getting the text from Olivia, KC runs in having gotten one of her own: Mary-Kate's asking to be on the door +2. Serena immediately crumbles and apologizes, explaining that she was just trying to impress KC, who points out in her best Kelly Cutrone that she did so using their client list and is thus fully fired. Serena, thinking fast, shows her the Olivia text and says it's all an elaborate plan to get Robsten back together, so all KC needs to do is fly ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ in from Toronto. Good save! "This better work," KC hisses, placated. "In the future? The only surprises I appreciate are cash and gifts." Word. But then there's one more surprise she doesn't need to know about: Olivia's followup text -- which I'm sure she also explained to Dan as she was writing it -- about getting Dan a costume. Serena rolls her eyes and sighs like it didn't occur to her that Olivia would bring Chuck's stepbrother to the club opening their entire family is attending.
Still no joy on the liquor license; Chuck complains to Horace that clubs are closing all over the city, and therefore ABC should be excited about expediting things. (I'm such a dork, I kept glitching over the fact that they were saying "ABC" instead of "TABC" until like two seconds ago when I realized the T in "TABC" stands for TEXAS, and thus would not be part of a New York state acronym.) So Horace is like, "Dude, no way can you open without a license," and Chuck says he's considering what Bart would do. Obviously Bart would surveil and blackmail somebody. The phone instantly rings again; it's somebody at the ABC, and they're all good suddenly. The guy laughs and promises to hand-deliver it. None of this raises any flags for Chuck. "You see that, Horace? Victory without deceit!" There's something so heartbreakingly Humphrey about this moment, you know it's about to get weird. "Seems like little Chuck finally stepped out from big bad Bart's shadow..."
"...Too bad his girlfriend's still playing on the dark side!" Blair gets a text from Uncle Jack about how now they're even because he rigged the license -- even his font on her phone somehow seems Shakespeare levels of evil -- and since nobody's around for her to explain texting to, Blair opts for putting on a scary veil and making an intensely creepy face.
Rufus Goddamn Humphrey is wearing an awful Johnny (of course) wig, torn black jeans, a leather jacket, and that CBGB & OMFUG shirt with the skull. "Uplifting Gormandizers" is the grossest phrase in the English language anyway, the anti-cellar door if you will, but damn if it isn't ten times grosser on his stupid self. Rufus comes downstairs, inflicting stupidity and ugliness everywhere, and asks what Lily thinks. "Does it really play without the other Ramones?" It only takes one jackass to look like a jackass, although the constant "we're a family" nod to group costumes is really cute. "I was gonna do Iggy, but I thought it might scare the children." I was gonna throw up in my mouth, and then I did.
Lily grins, because she loves nothing more than indulging his bullshit, and keeps her Gorge from Uplifting long enough to compliment the image of Rufus "shirtless and in eyeliner" -- to which he nods, quite seriously -- and once again cautions him against getting his hopes too high. He doesn't hear her whatsoever -- "I know the kids care more about the candy than the costume, but I think they appreciate the effort" -- and, seeing that he's about as delusional as Blair this week, she gets worried enough about him to just, you know, tell him the truth: there are no trick-or-treaters in this building. But will that stop him? No.
"That's because no one thinks you're home! But this year I told them we'd be here! And they all seemed pretty excited about it! Except for that guy on six who never makes eye contact." Lily is just honestly confused by him at this point. "It's hard to tell what he's feeling," Rufus says about eye-contact guy, in such a sweetly dim matter-of-fact tone that it's pretty much adorable. He cocks his hand on his hip and leans way over on the desk, and they watch as Eric -- having showered post-yogurt -- comes wearily home, and as usual, the weight of the world is threatening the structural integrity of his tiny frame.
As though Constance or St. Jude's ever had a set schedule of any kind, Lily goes, "Oh, Eric my darling, are you sick?" (Why would you think that? Just because he's home in the middle of the day? Eric could just as easily be having cocktails at Butter, or yachting off Santorini, or thirty-five and divorced: We'd buy it. We have nothing left to stand on at this point.) But if he's not sick, then what? Did something happen? "Ask Jenny," he says mournfully and sort of pissed, and slumps away with some sad music. Lily takes one look at her husband, who is just resplendent in his cluelessness, and goes, um, "I'll handle this one." And Rufus nods! Like that's a decision they made together!
B's got pedicure ladies in her dorm room buffing Dorota's situation, which she hates, but B's in a mood. "Dorota, when I get you a gift, the least you can do is to enjoy it." Chuck knocks and enters, and Dorota runs to him like a fugee. "Oh, Mr. Chuck! My goodness! When you are mad at Miss Blair Dorota is very tired and has to have the foot bothering and never sees Vanya, or movies..." Blair shrieks at her and throws everybody out, because their bodies are between her and the giant gift Chuck is carrying. Dorota backs out of the room beaming at Chuck like a crazy person, and as usual he finds her completely awesome, and then they're alone. And by "they" I mean Blair and her gigantic present.
"Is it safe to assume this visit signals the end of my community service hours?" she asks, with what you might call a detached disinterest, and he apologizes. Now that everything's worked itself out, he thinks, he has time to let her in again, but of course he can't say it that way, so he just says he did, in fact, have to deal with some boy-kissing PTSD, because he knows she'll buy that, because after dating Nate Archibald and Chuck Bass for her entire life it's understandable that she'd find gay panic an attractive trait in her man. There's always that question mark.
Blair snatches that bitch out of his hands so fast there are little cartoon whoosh lines, and while she paws at it he formally invites her to the Gimlet opening. "It was never my intention to leave you out, I just needed to create it on my own," he explains, "As a legitimate businessman." (He can't yank on his necktie when he says "businessman" because he's wearing a vest, but you can sort of see his hand go for it.) He smiles at her adoringly as she opens the box, pulling out a gorgeous flapper dress with seed pearls, but her acquisitive grin falls the second she meets his eyes, and remembers what she did. "It's beautiful," she says, almost regretfully, and then the mask becomes her face again: "I love it!"
Serena tromps out to DUMBO, where Olivia is trying to get Dan to give up the dream of dressing as a gangster for the party, and stick to his musician roots: "You have no street cred!" she says, and he can't even muster an honest affront. "I'm offended! You know once, in the fourth grade, I had to miss recess because I purposely broke the rules of grammar?" He fires a plastic tommygun like he's darling, which he is, and Serena grins at them, but with a little bit of guilt in there. "I think Dan will look fine in whatever he wears," she says, and he cracks a joke about how she can't very well have zero opinion about a fashion choice. Dan, there's a difference between "fashion" and "clothes." You embody it.
Serena laughs, which very accommodating of her, and shifts into business mode: "Look, KC wants you guys to break up." Olivia's like, "Did she seriously send you here to do this because I wasn't answering her calls?" The energy between Olivia and Serena is very friendly and complicit, I like it a lot. Serena's like, "I obviously don't actually want you to break up, because Dan is even more insufferable when he's single, but I have a Wacky Serena Plan you might be interested in hearing about." The idea is that Olivia and ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ will make nice on the red carpet for the cameras, and then Dan can sneak in the back after they're through the paparazzi gamut. Olivia's not loving this, because of the whole lie she told about them never having dated, but she agrees it's a good plan. Dan throws a stomper about it, and Olivia tells him to grow up, and he threatens to shoot them with his plastic tommygun, and then Serena clomps off in her work attire, which in this instance means satin hotpants with like suspenders, with a heaping helping of, shocker, exposed boobs.
Speaking of fashion insanity, Jenny is wearing seven Avril Lavigne videos' worth of crap today. Seven necklaces, three neckties, one of those cute thumb shirts from five years ago where the cuffs have a thumb hole so they're like fingerless gloves, an inner tube with a duck on it, and a parrot on each shoulder. And like any teenage girl would, when confessing to her stepmother about internecine warfare, she's fucking with all of that shit simultaneously. We got Harpo Marx over here! But of course, needless to say, she looks totally amazing.
Jenny whines to Lily that that Eric is just being a baby: "I didn't do anything! I can't control every girl at school!" Lily awesomely says that yes she can, and that sending bitches to do the deed doesn't mean you didn't do it. Jenny shrugs, because the jig is up: "He sat above me on the steps!" Instead of laughing in her raccoon face, Lily totally nods and goes, "That must have put you in a very difficult position." I love that, I love how Lily is immediately like, "I understand now: You had no recourse." Jenny's relieved all the way down to her shoes, and high on sympathy goes, "Yeah! And he did it on purpose! He knew that I'd have no choice!" All of which, mind, is basically true. She begs Lily for clemency and points out that Rufus is no more capable of understanding the sophisticated mechanics at play here than he would the sophisticated mechanics of a game of Fetch.
Lily agrees, but then remembers that she's a parent and points out that Jenny should be punished in some way. Desperate not to be Joey Ramone, Jenny squeals that they already got permission for the Gimlet opening -- even though that couldn't have happened until well after Eric got home, but of course fuck me for even worrying about that -- and Lily says she can still go as long as Eric still wants to go with her, and the "so-called friends" apologize when he gets there. Jenny rolls her eyes, but I don't even think she comes up with a plan before agreeing to it, beyond not being Joey Ramone or having to watch her father make a mockery of himself and his own masculinity yet again.
Serena and Blair watch proudly as the ABC guy hands over Chuck's liquor license, but at the last second he's all, "My pleasure, I'm always happy to help out Jack Bass," and then leaves just as the music goes, What?
Blair jumps in there to distract him with more manic squawks about "the cornerstone of the new Chuck Bass Empire," and Serena shakes her head like oh girl because obviously this is Blair's doing, but then Chuck starts screaming at Serena because he doesn't know that Blair was on the original call, and has known about the opening the whole time, or about her lurking around Serena's office all day listening to all of his problems and trying to solve them in the most fucked-up ways possible. Serena just stands there waiting for Blair to man up, and finally sighs, "Blair?" Nobody moves, and Blair's like whistling Dixie and staring at the pressed-tin ceiling, so Serena half-masts her eyes and goes, "Blair. Did you call Jack?"
Chuck stares at her like he just got knifed, which he basically did, and Blair puts on her best smile: "Well, you have the liquor license. What does it matter who called who to get it?" Serena gets a headache; meanwhile, actual stormclouds form over the intense tiki anger of Chuck Bass. "Jack. Is the last person. I would call for help." Instead of forming a rational response, Blair rushes him with her arms out Frankenstyle and going back to the gay-kiss well one more time, but Chuck's had it. He straight-up tells her the gay thing is not a big deal, but the reason he refused to say the eight letters for so long is because she is INSANE and CANNOT BE TRUSTED. And here we thought that's why he loved her.
Blair makes the just-as-valid point that she only did this because she loves him, which is true enough that he doesn't flat break up with her, and instead retreats back to detached distrust: "Be that as it may. I have a club to open, and you're no longer invited." Still sort of appalled, Serena joins him at the bar, and they turn their backs on Blair, and it's awful for all three of them because now they're all on the same page: Blair tried to play Grownup Club, and failed, so now they're back to the original team, and she's on the outside.
The only two people she loves, the only two people that make her crazy, have washed their hands of her in this venture. Another test she's failed; another attempt to be a part of something, get that power back, and she demonstrated exactly how deep she was willing to dig to prove herself, and there they are, backs turned on her, telling her some people are just better than others. And she can't turn on Chuck at this point, because there's no point in making more waves, so in a second she's going to have to hate Serena. But that's for later: Right now, there's just the horror and the pain on her face, and worst of all to see, the confusion, because she honestly still doesn't understand what she did wrong.
There's a long monochrome intro with some kind of annoying rooty-tooty jazz age song playing, and Serena gorgeously doing her publicist thing at the door, and Nate gets out of a limo and S -- still mad for the admittedly awful shit he pulled on her last week -- immediately points out that he arrived alone, because his only friend is Dan: "What's wrong, you don't have any friends left to screw over?" And the new Bad Nate I'm loving so much immediately spits, "At least I'm on the list and not working the door!" Glad to see he's enjoying the entitlement that comes with being a van der Bilt, but more importantly: She got him back, and fucked up his latest plan to make things right with the Grandfather as well as Tripp's campaign strategy. He's slippy-sliding and I love it, but I don't think that line is proof of evil: He's just pissed at Serena and being bitchy, like we always knew he could. Serena rolls her eyes about what a dick he is and looks fantastic some more.
Jenny arrives in a total outfit: The Gaultier is a black super-wide-leg pantsuit, so she looks like the trophy wife of a Hollywood kingpin hosting a coke and key party in 1976. Just totally scary and glamorous and hard. The minions arrive looking cute and instantly start bitching about how come, if this party is so exclusive, Eric is behind the rope texting with Jonathan and waiting to get in. Jenny admits that she got ratted out and has to be nice -- the girls shoot mean glares in his direction -- but that she's got an evil plan that "won't get [her] caught this time." Which is a gross misstatement, because it's the exact same plan, but whatever.
Blair stews and plays chess with Dorota on her dorm bed while she sweeps up, since she can't go to the party. "It's a Queen's job to protect her King! Chuck should be thanking me for making his club possible, not treating me like some useless pawn!" Dorota remembers fondly, for a moment, her lusty webisodes: "It's hard to love a powerful man," she notes, and Blair completely ignores it, even though she's being really weird. "You think I'm trustworthy, don't you, Dorota?" Dorota lies better than anybody on Earth, then calls out her move -- Dorota plays mental chess, of course -- and Blair immediately cheats, which furrows Dorota's brow delightfully, and there's a knock at the door. "Tell those pathetic trick-or-treaters there's no prepackaged joy for them here," Blair screams, but it's a bouquet. They giggle together about Chuck, but of course it's not from Chuck. Whatever the note says, it makes Blair go deadly, and as Dorota scampers away with the offending bouquet, she screams, "Dress! Now!"
There's a hilarious spooky version of the usual GG music playing as Rufus hands out candy with a dumb Ramones voice to a policeman, an adorable fireman, and a half-assed Lady Gaga. Lily slips Vanya some money quietly, and he ushers the kids away, and Rufus booms "HAPPY HALLOWEEN!" and, looking after the little kids as they leave, Lily shoots us the sweetest, biggest smile.
Albert Hammond Jr., late of the Strokes, which are kind of like the Ramones of nine years ago, is onstage at Gimlet, singing his song "In Transit," operative lyrics as follows: "Free from it all/ I'm not gonna change till I want to..." Blair comes in with her dress and veil, looking great, and Chuck leaves Nate alone at the bar to come yell at her, looking so super hot in a boxy wide pinstripe suit with a red carnation. He looks even more like a Dick Tracy villain than he usually does. She apologetically acknowledges that he doesn't want her there, but explains that she was only acting crazy to convince him that they were a good team, and that he needed her. They both have to join Grownup Club at the same time, because if they don't that means he got fixed and she's still broken, and the second you think that's true it will be.
"But you were right not to trust me. I ruined everything." She's so sad! I don't mind this whole Blair Is A Screeching Lunatic storyline, as I've said, because A) I remember Season One, where that was true, B) I remember Season Two, where that was still true, and C) Everything she does makes total sense for the character as presented. It's not always admirable and it's often pathetic, but that's what you call a television show. I'm not here to pretend I'm Blair, or that Blair and Chuck's love is real or relevant to my own life: I'm here to watch a story in which people fuck up, which is what stories are about. Not sure what's confusing about that concept. "Heartfelt, earnest," says Chuck, with a hint of detached distrust in his voice: "Let me guess, you found out the liquor license you so thoughtfully procured was a fake?"
Blair's amazed that he already knew, and asks if he got condolence flowers about it too, and he actually smiles: "I don't need condolence flowers. I know Jack Bass." The song goes into the bridge, and she goes, "If you know, then why is the club still open? If the cops show..." A lightbulb goes off over her head, and she very timidly offers him one more big idea... But he's already had it. "I'll take care of the paparazzi!" Blair beams, relieved beyond the telling of it to be a part of the team, but before she can run off, he grabs her wrist. "Blair, we still have things to discuss." Her smile is sad but knowing, and she nods. Good enough.
By the way she looked I should've calmed down
I went too far/ Oh that's all I got to say
Sitting off to the side, Eric is looking completely at ease and adorable -- banker/bookie's outfit, complete with suspenders and spectacles, and a bright green visor -- when he spots Jenny making her way awkwardly through the crowd; he laughs when she trips, and she swallows some self-hatred: "If you got it you got it, right?" It's sort of mortifying. Eric informs her that she does not "got it," and he finally offers her a seat. He puts down his drink and expresses his honest sympathies that she had to have a sitdown with Lily, but Jenny still doesn't get the danger there, or what he's really warning her about: "Yeah. Well, she clearly has some experience in Queendom."
Eric lets it go, because that war is cold and not relevant right now, and just says he'd rather have a run-in with Jenny on the Met steps than deal with the Rhodes Women bullshit -- Which is such an old attitude that I wonder if this mention isn't a plant for future Lily/Eric drama, which to be honest would probably fucking kill me -- and they broker a sort of tense and very grateful peace. I love how much they love each other. "Without Jonathan here, I know no one!" he exclaims, and when she agrees, he asks where her Handmaidens are. She just shrugs, but you know something horrible is about to happen.
By the way she looked I should've calmed down
I went too far/ Oh that's all I got to say
Chuck's thanking Albert onstage when Jonathan arrives outside; the handmaidens pile out from behind an SUV and nail his authentic costume with a bunch of eggs, before running off shouting and laughing. His face really does say it all.
I went too far/ Oh, I went too far
Some other rooty-tooty-jazzy-fruity song is playing when KC brings ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ over to meet Serena, and he gets his disgusting horny slug juice all over her and slobbers on her hand, and he looks like he smells like pee, and KC agitates for Olivia to get the pictures over with, but where is she? Dancing in a corner with Dan. KC is just appalled. Dan and Olivia, meanwhile, are saying pointless shit and running around and ducking into booths and being grotesque, and duck out of sight just as Serena, chasing them, runs into Chuck's beautiful self, heading for the front door. "These gentlemen are here to close down my club," Chuck says impassively, and Serena gets intransitively scared, and KC's face finds yet another way to demonstrate that she's not impressed with a goddamn thing.
Oh my God, Peaches is still alive. How gross is that?
So yeah, it's that one Peaches song about how she fucked your grandpa with her penis or eats pubic hair salad or how she's secretly Har Mar Superstar or whatever art-fuck bullshit she's pulling these days -- You know, that one song that sounds like a car crash getting sodomized by an emetophiliac? Sounds just like every other Peaches song? Makes you hate Karen O slightly less? -- while the cops do all kinds of ridiculous stuff like tear down the fake liquor license and stare at it super hard, and box up every bottle of liquor, and things of this nature. Serena's like, "Chuck, why don't you talk to the police?" Chuck informs her -- with Blair standing to him looking like a gangster's moll -- that he's the one that called them. B bounces up and down.
Maybe it's his big-shouldered suit, but I can't shake the image of Blair Waldorf as Harley Quinn in this episode. "I'll handle the paparazzi, Mista J!" Serena is confused, so Blair explains that once the license turned out fake, they psychically agreed that either Jack was going to the ABC, or they could "take control" and call the police to "blow up the party -- for a night that no one would ever forget!" Blair congratulates herself and her man, knowing full well that Serena's going to point out that they have fucked her in the process, but too excited to go there without first yelling, "See, S? We belong together!"
Gotcha. Yes, Chuck is now on the official list -- along with Yale, Eleanor, field hockey and daddy issues -- of things Serena absolutely cannot have without tripping the wire. It's a very small list, but Blair is a very tragic young lady. "Okay, well, KC blames this whole thing on me. Now, I have to go get my clients out of here, before they get mug shots or TMZ videos." Blair nastily/fake-brightly tells her to go through the hotel, but then points out there are "probably" paparazzi out there too -- you know, since she put them there.
Serena finally realizes that Blair's not only being a bitch, but actively using her to get her shit accomplished, in a way that endangers not just her job but a lot of her clients, not to mention pretty much implies that she's a pointless moron; her eyes go that particular kind of dead they go when Blair does this. "I'm sorry, S, but Chuck's hotel needed this. Without your celebrities, we're buried in the City section. Now we're front page news!" Serena is horrified and asks why this, of all things, Blair would sabotage, and B lays down the final plank: "Remember when you chose Chuck? Now I did, too."
B shrugs, and Serena's face goes, Oh, you will pay, and she bounces. Blair is, of course, completely unaware -- and definitely not thinking about how Nate already fondled the trigger last week -- that she has just unleashed Dark Phoenix Serena, once again. Although at this point the regularity with which Dark Phoenix Serena is unleashed by stupid crap is something you could set your watch to. I mean, it's my favorite thing, and so much of it is about watching it unravel until she goes the full Jennifer's Body, but it does tend to happen on a schedule that, properly observed, would probably serve fairly well as a birth control method.
Rufus struts around and acts like the Ramones some more, and I... CAN'T TAKE IT. This scene is so revolting, I can't even... So Rufus at some point figured out that Vanya and Lily were just parading the same three little kids through their house in different costumes -- which is, BTW, fucking elaborate even for the massive infrastructure normally required to preserve Rufus's sense of self -- because he speaks Lithuanian, and Lily explains that she was merely patronizing the shit out of him like always, and he thanks her for that like always, and she plays with his Johnny wig in a very disturbing way while they talk about fucking, and then Rufus says something horny/stupid that would even embarrass Dan, about... Not worth it. Fuck it.
Olivia spills the truth about ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ in a curtained niche, which is funny because it takes all those icons that got clasted when we talked about how those costar romances are fake, and sets them back up on their shelves, which is sort of amazing in another, slightly creepier way, and then Dan whines about some things, and Olivia explains basic shit to him some more, and ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ was in a Bruce Jenner biopic which is probably the root of his career troubles -- and not the fact that he smells like pee -- and Olivia, who is a fast learner, heaps up sixty quarts of rose-scented BS about how great Dan is, and he's relieved, so he leans in to kiss her, but then Serena appears and whisks them both away to another hallway, tells them they can kiss now, and then throws open a curtain to reveal them to the paparazzi and screams, "Look everyone it's Olivia Burke kissing her boyfriend Dan Humphrey!"
Which would be laughable and Oh So Serena, if that weren't actually how shit goes down. The truth is that this is Serena's most realistic storyline in the history of the show. So they kiss some more in front of the paparazzi, and Dan's getting off on it of course, and one of the highly literal paparazzi goes, "Olivia! If you're dating this guy, who's dating Patrick Roberts? Sad Patrick. Yeah, how about that? S j" ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ stands over in the corner looking sad and smelling like urine, and then Serena jumps out of a cake or something and goes, "I am!" And he shrugs and kisses her in a huge dip and balloons and confetti comes spilling down from the skies and Perez Hilton unfurls a huge banner across your TV that says:
GAY IS STRAIGHT. RICH IS POOR. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. JENNIFER ANISTON IS LONELY & MISERABLE. LETTERMAN IS A HERO. BUY STOCK IN ROBSTEN. THE JONAS BROTHERS ARE VIRGINS AND SCIENTOLOGISTS ARE OK. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH BULLSHIT YOU ARE BEING SOLD EVERY SINGLE DAY. FIONA APPLE WAS RIGHT.
The front door of Gimlet is locked, with a public notice; Blair and Chuck come chuckling through the back talking about how Perez drew tears on his own photo because he wasn't there, which is amazing. And yes, blowing up the club exploded the Empire's online reservations, so it all worked out. "Now do you see I'm trustworthy again?" Chuck grins and asks her to acknowledge that she will never be entirely trustworthy, which makes her make a sad face, and then Chuck basically turns to the camera and addresses us directly: "And I admit, it's not my strong suit either... But it's part of what keeps things interesting between us!" Oh, I wasn't sure you were still interesting, thanks for telling us. Blair adds, because this is the important part, because she's a Queen without an Empire without him, that they are also a great team, and he corrects her: "No, in order to be a team, we need to focus our duplicity on others." Here, here! That's what I want. Blair puts on a grody little-girl voice and asks about whether her duplicitous acts couldn't also count as acts of love, like when a cat brings you a bird's feathered bloody head, and he says there are better ways to demonstrate love, because this episode is about people talking about sex as if they've never actually had it.
Like for example Olivia and Dan, who has slipped instantly into the acceptance stage of being a corporate whore -- "I can handle being in the She's Dating Him? page of In Touch if you can handle not having a fake boyfriend" -- and they act repulsive about fucking for awhile, and they talk once again about how the levitation was a special effect... Or was it? Only one way to find out: Rawdoggin'.
One of the minions is apparently named Sawyer, which is cool. She texts Jenny: "Operation Dillinger: Scrambled. He almost cried!" Whoever Sawyer is, she's now my favorite handmaiden. Jenny's sort of grossed out but not losing sleep over it, and then Eric takes off without a word the second she gets to the PRADA kitchen. She follows him and asks, unnecessarily, "So I guess that means you heard about Jonathan." I love that they talk like teenagers. He's like, duh, and she says how she wanted to call it off when they were sitting together, but she was too worried about the possibility of "full-blown rebellion." Eric points out that she could've warned Jonathan, but she just smiles a scared smile and tries to put it off: "Come on, everyone gets egged on Halloween..." Eric points out that she didn't get egged this year, and Jenny asks him please to remember that she has to act like a total beast about school stuff. "But I'm still your friend, I'm still your sister. We just can't let the worlds get confused." It's sad. Eric is mostly just grossed out at this point, and assures her -- as he constantly does with these people -- that he's not confused at all: "I want nothing to do with you in either world." He pads off into his bedroom and shuts the door firmly, and Jenny is like, Oh, hell..
Serena's breasts come undulating down the street to apologize to KC about getting her purse locked in the club -- "and the police showing up, and Dan and Olivia kissing..." -- and KC tells her she did fine. "You got my clients photographed at the hottest party of the year, Patrick got more attention than he's had since Olivia dumped him... As long as you get my purse back, your job is safe." I love the idea that finally getting approval for doing something, anything at all is Serena's secret switch. Like of course now she can slide into straight-up evil, because she finally got praise for something other than Being Serena van der Woodsen. "And Serena? That job now includes publicly dating Patrick." Serena honks about how that's not work, besides the pee smell, and KC's like, "Get back to me after date two." Honey, it's Serena. She'll have him sold into white slavery or in a bathtub of ice with no kidneys well before date two.
Horace mourns the short hot life of Gimlet: "Sometimes the best ones are just too hot not to burn out," he says soulfully, and Chuck says it's blue skies, so Horace obligingly reminds him that he can't get another ABC license for at least six months. They pass a flask back and forth, and Chuck brings up how "speakeasies were built on finding ways around liquor regulation." Instead of explaining that Chuck has just defined speakeasies, which this club never was, Horace just laughs and reverses his position entirely for no reason. "Are you talking about a secret password type of establishment?" Keys, actually. "An ambassador program, like they have at The Gates." (Which is actually what Gimlet is.) "Keep the lock on the front door, come in through the back." There was one like that in Houston that I loved. "Your father would be proud of you," Horace says, oddly pointing at him: "In the best way!" It's all kind of Bagger Vance-yucky, but a good reminder that Horace was connected to that history too, which make Horace as Chuck's manhood mentor make a lot more sense.
Blair is totally excited to bring Serena in on this new plan, and completely forgets that Serena is totally pissed at her from ten minutes ago when Blair did everything she could to totally piss Serena off. She buzzes happily at her for a good long while about being the publicist of a "Members Only club so exclusive it makes the SoHo House look like one of those dirty public schools with numbers for a name," which is a long way to go for a punchline but a darn good one nonetheless, and finally Serena has to just look her in the eye. "Blair. I would never work for you." Blair points out that she's giving S a chance to "leave that Lizzie Grubman wannabe" before she gets "run over," which is the funniest joke of the episode, but S isn't having it.
"You don't get it. KC can be a bitch because she's my boss. You're supposed to be my friend. Chuck might forgive you, but I don't." And Blair is shocked and horrified, because she still doesn't see the problem here, and then so sad, and it's very touching. I love both of them so much!
GG blabbers about Halloween some more while various people make out: Olivia and Dan have a near-levitating first fuck, Blair and Chuck kiss in front of a huge bouquet of red and white roses that totally flatter their outfits, we luckily don't have to watch Lily say "Keep the wig on," and then... There's Jenny, whom even GG worries may have let the mask become her face. "Everything returns to the way it was. Except for little girls who forget that Halloween only lasts one night. They wear their costumes for so long, pretty soon they can't even remember who they were before they put them on..."
No wonder Gossip Girl talks so crazy all the time! When she actually tries to say something normal, she uses more words than I do! So Jenny marches over to that closet and gathers up armful after armful of those babydolls and cute handmade stuff, and makes the change to grownup mean people clothes from fashionable boutiques and apparel purveyors, and then in a last desperate move toward total craziness, picks up that sewing machine -- the sewing machine always gets it -- and, after a soul-searching moment with breathing and slow-blinking and a sharp little nod, plunks it onto the heap. Her rebel spark goes out. She stares at it for a second, commits to this decision, and goes to bed.
So of all the people who tried on new personas this week, it looks like the worst/best ones stuck. You've got Jenny finally relinquishing her home self altogether, Eric moving into the proletarian provocateur role Jenny used to fill, Serena yet again implicating herself in the spectacle she was trying to administrate, Blair becoming a full-on Evil Empress, Rufus and Lily finally giving up any pretense of him being a human being or a man, Dan finally admitting he's a starfucker, and Nate becoming the snotty Kennedy he was always meant to be. For an episode that came off as a particularly snappy writing exercise, it sure does look like everybody's rigged to blow in a major way week. See you at the van der Bilt election party -- and you'd better bring some Band-Aids and moist towelettes, because I don't see Serena letting Blair live one second longer than she needs to. XOXO.