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God, this show has never been better. I'm cryin' over here. In ascending order of fabulousness:
Olivia told this pointless story on Jimmy Fallon and then gets Serena and a virus inside Jenny's body to pointlessly hide it from Dan. The story was that on their first date he came back from the bathroom with his shirt inside-out, and then... Nothing, that's the whole story. It's totally dumb. It's also the only time we see Rufus and Lily, but Rufus continues to act like an inbred golden retriever, so it's actually kind of fun. The awesome part is that Dan doesn't even have a problem with the story -- because it's totally dumb and Olivia's being paranoid again -- so the only reason he acts weird once he finds out is that he's remembered it's their one-month anniversary. Then they are cute some more.
Bonus: Hilary Duff and Chace Crawford totally rock in this episode, as does the hot fucking art in the Empire Hotel, which deserves its own webisode.
So Vanessa's been documenting Tripp's congressional campaign, which means she's on hand when a dude falls in the Hudson and Tripp saves his life. I think there's something magical about the Hudson, because Tripp spends the rest of the episode being smoking hot. When reviewing the footage, Vanessa sees the guy totally jump in the river, and assumes naturally that Grandfather is responsible. Nate tells her to sit on it, then sets her up with a fake news producer in an attempt to quash, which of course violates Vanessa's entire being.
Eventually Nate and Tripp confront Grandfather, who claims he's not to blame. At the party -- held at the Empire -- Nate takes the podium and claims he was the mastermind, clearing Tripp's name and winning him the campaign... But it's only after the party's over that Grandfather learns the true culprit: Maureen, Tripp's wife (we met her last year, she warned Vanessa not to marry into the van der Bilts), whose entire goal is to get Grandfather out of their lives forever.
But OMG Blair and Serena. S goes over Nate's head to get her and ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ invites to the party, because she's friends with Tripp. B, meanwhile, tries to prove that she doesn't need Serena by making friends with hot blonde fashionista Brandeis and taking her to the party. Things escalate, of course, and eventually Blair has ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ thrown out, which leads to him telling S that Brandeis is actually a high-class hooker, which is why she's so cool. S tries to warn Blair, then has Brandeis escorted out, so Blair calls S a whore and S shoves B's face into a cake.
Chuck takes Serena aside and tells her to grow up because B is almost done being insane, and Serena agrees that their friendship is not that big a deal. Also, she kind of feels like a whore because ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ smells like pee and she's dating him for money. It's too bad that she has to break up with him, because he's a lot cooler when he's naked. So she quits working for KC and tries to make up, but B acts insane some more, and then Brandeis admits that she's a hooker, and only used B to find new politico clients. B, fearing she went too far with Serena, can't apologize, so she once again crawls into bed with Chuck and pretends the world doesn't exist. But S, still stinging from both Chuck and Blair calling her out on being fake and sort of irrelevant, decides to confide in the only friend she's got left: Tripp van der Bilt, whose eyes now appear to have stars in them.
week: The big threesome, about which I have a few ideas, even though it'll probably = Maureen + Tripp + Brandeis, or like Bex + Alison Humphrey + Lord Marcus, or something like that. Georgina, Asher and Jonathan! That would rule. Serena's been there already, and Jenny's got Cotillion to worry about, and I can't see anything coming into Blair's relationship with Chuck, so... Sigh. I guess Chuck/Blair/Nate is still a season or so away...
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!While "I Could Rob You" by the upcoming Plastiscines [sic] plays (their lead singer looks like the unholy love child of Serena and Jenny), we see Serena in the Bleecker proudly gazing down at a headline calling her ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~'s It Girl as GG explains her very complex semiotic situation for this episode, which is how political parties and the fun kind of parties are similar. Which they are not.
"I can rob you if I want to/ I can rob you if I try/ I can rob you if I need to," goes the song, as we see Dan and Olivia safely in bed, levitating nowhere; Chuck getting everything together for the Empire's first major political function; Nate arriving as some kind of teenage aide-de-camp for Tripp; and Blair walking up behind him like they've never met before she gets bitchy with some poor bellhop, snapping her fingers in front of his face when he doesn't hop to quickly enough. So, once again, Chuck is the only sane person.
Apparently ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ has received not just an offer, but a great one: A Michael Mann political thriller. (Here's hoping it's more like the Aviator, Insider, Mohicans Mann, and less like -- let's say -- the Mann of Hancock and Miami Vice, although I must admit I never saw Hancock or Miami Vice and they may well be awesome.) KC's stomping about her office with those neon pink gerbera bud vases everywhere, and they talk about how it's down to ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ and Ryan Phillippe. Serena points out the salient point that Sebastian V lost his mojo right around the time Reese left him for Jake, and KC hilariously goes, "Don't 'Jake" me, Serena! This is serious!"
So the thing is that Serena now has to get herself and ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ invited to the Tripp election party that night, so he can learn to act like a politico. Which will be hard, because Nate finally located his nuts or they finally dropped or he had them shipped from overseas or wherever his junk has been for the last eighteen years. Maybe Bree found them in Tejas and brought them here. Anyway, KC is not interested in once again hearing about Serena's interpersonal UES bullshit, and informs her to suck it up. What's PR Rule #1? "My only value is my social network."
(You know, my favorite line in any song -- besides that "Something Happened On The Way To Heaven" line I'm always quoting -- comes from Sheena Easton's song "Strut," which is basically about Serena's life. You might be forgiven for assuming that because it sounds kind of crappy and Prince-lite (which is what it is), but it's awesome: The whole song is the internal monologue of a fashion model who is way smarter than not only her photographer but the entire Male Gaze, and the greatest line of all music comes about halfway through: "All this fascination with leather and lace/ Is just smoke from another fire." If you take everything I've ever written about teenage girls and gay kids in these recaps and put it in a single document, you'd probably break your computer, but really it just comes down to that: "All this fascination with leather and lace is just smoke from another fire." Be the Blonde or don't, be a hooker or don't, complain about being a five-foot mirror for the door in every ladykiller, but either way you're really just carrying somebody else's bullshit on your back. It's not actually about you, because you're just smoke.)
Anyway, Serena's Gladwell Connecter worth, her network, is currently working a net loss in Archibalds. KC could not care less, as she stomps around grunting at her various hottie interns and assistants. Meanwhile, Olivia wakes up and Dan's staring creepily down at her, and because we are lucky and will never be spared naked Dan, he's shirtless and she is totally clothed. They talk about how Vanessa's documenting the Tripp campaign and thus is never around the dorm room, so they can levitate and fangbang as much as they want. Then Dan brings up Olivia's appearance on Jimmy Fallon, and not for the first time, and Olivia's eye-rolling and sighs tells us that she's been keeping it from him on purpose. It's too bad Duff is finally doing a kick-ass job acting this role right as she steps into her stupidest episode. Anyway, she bluffs him out and then in the hallway some dude calls him "Bathroom Boy," and Dan is confused.
Chuck, in an adorable velvet necktie and excellent grey suit, leads Nate through his new digs, the Empire suite that he and Blair will now be living in. He throws around a lot of verbiage about the media system, which is not only "interactive" but has gaming and is magic, and mentions that naughty Blair's favorite part is the "realtime surveillance playback" in the room. Of course it is. And of course that's an anvil for some storyline down the road, so pay attention. Nate pats Chuck's lapel and complains about the relative starkness of the Columbia dorms, because by the way he's in college, and Chuck is like, "Everything in the real world is better than the Columbia dorms. Particularly penthouses. You douche." But on the other hand, there are two bedrooms, so Nate can "feel free to crash any time." Guess Blair won't mind taking the spare.
Vanessa is getting some breathtaking footage of Tripp and his fiancée (wife?) Maureen walking out of one room and into another room: "All this behind-the-scenes stuff is really great!" NYC Politicos: They use doors like the rest of us. Grandfather William tells Chuck that he's outdone himself, and there is much glad-handing on both sides as we learn that the big party will take place in the Empire ballroom. Tripp's equanimity -- and ambivalence about being William's Congressman Ken doll -- are obvious as usual: "Even if the night ends in defeat, at least we'll have a good party!"
Maureen pinches Tripp's tender skin between two long claws until he screams, reminding him that we don't talk like that in her patented Cheated-Out Soap Acting technique where she stares ninety degrees in the opposite direction of whomever she's talking to, which makes her look impaired but mostly gives her the air of a pretty girl with a winning smile who is either much hated by her director, or can't act for shit, or probably both.
Tripp reminds everybody that the election is not a lock, and William pulls Nate away so he can exposit further to this point, and bitch at Nate for not using Serena properly as a tool with the whole Photoshop-bong fiasco, and then Nate can stare into space. Mostly this scene is about Nate's hair, which is architecturally precise in its tousled what have you.
Serena comes to Olivia's room in a sparkling dress-length sweater to drop off the goddamned Jimmy Fallon interview, and Serena pretends to be sympathetic, which is a lie in at least two ways because A) like I care and B) Olivia is being stupid. And by "Olivia" I mean the writer of this episode, because all three plots hinge on two very specific things: The horrible story Olivia told, and the amazing thing that Tripp's about to do. And both of them are lazy, first-draft thoughts, that shouldn't have made it out of the room. The latter because it's a cliché and the former because it is a non-event.
(I mean, SPOILERS, but here's what went down. I'm telling you upfront because it is actually so stupid, and so complicated in the way it unfolds, that people were actually confused about it. I literally had close personal friends ask me to explain what went down, like whether they missed something. Do you know how much it hurts my GG-loving heart to have to say, "You're not confused, it's really that stupid"?
When Olivia and Dan went on their first date, he got so sweaty that he kept running to the WC to dry off his shirt with the blowers. Problem #1: No he didn't. Barring a serious medical issue, that amount of sweat does not exist. And I know he's repping Crooklyn, but anybody who spends that much time on a chest hair knows of the existence of antiperspirant. So one of the times that he did this unrealistic and retarded thing, he came back with his shirt on inside-out, which he explained was because a spider got into his shirt on one of his trips to the WC. Um, okay. That's all fine. Not actually something you would remember ten seconds after it happened unless you were the most boring person on Earth, which Olivia may well be.
So but then, she goes on Fallon and, as part of her scheme to turn her life into one of those Dove ads where you're pretty even when you're ugly because you're "real," decides to fly blind without letting KC script the conversation. Because she is a dullard, this did not go well, so Jimmy F. was forced to cover -- in his smarmy, idiotic way as usual -- and pretend that this story was interesting. In so doing, he referred to Dan as "Bathroom Boy," which broke Olivia's stupid-ass heart into a million pieces because she honestly thought that Dan -- who is kind of a girl-balls, so it's understandable -- would somehow be mortally offended by her inane vapid story and Fallon's fawning pointless playing-up of the story. Which I'm sure he would have been, if her story weren't the most offensively pointless story ever told. Or maybe she suddenly realized not even Dan Humphrey could be expected to put up with a girl this vacant. Or just maybe this episode, while being truly fucking amazing in many ways, dropped the ball with both MacGuffins, to a hateful degree, for no real reason.)
Anyway, Serena's pretending to care that Olivia is so fucking boring that it has become a weapon when Dan arrives, and they scramble to talk about something else, so S starts talking about ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ and how much fun it is being his escort, and Olivia's glad because you know he "went a bit Method after that Gus van Sant movie he did nobody saw," and we learn that KC and his agents are filtering all his scripts so that he doesn't read something that causes him to go crazy in an embarrassing way -- guess what's going to happen in about three seconds? -- and then Dan finds some obnoxious page of a rejected Gilmore Girls script in the garbage and goes totally Method.
"Listen, as much as I enjoy my current girlfriend talking to my ex-girlfriend about her fake boyfriend who is also my current girlfriend's ex..." (Translation: Stop talking about things that are not me or relevant to my interests!) "...Uh, you could probably get us a copy of that Fallon interview, right?" I love how open Dan is about resenting Serena's life beyond the square inch he occupies. Even after all these years. Serena dashes because, as Olivia points out, you never know when FedEx will deliver more scripts to an unrealistic and one-note character like ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~.
In the hallway, Blair and Serena are wearing opposite colors. Blair immediately goes on the defensive offense, telling S she's not getting an apology. S is not feeling her bullshit right now, and says she's not there for Blair, but Olivia. "Oh, that's right. I momentarily forgot your job is more important than your friends." Serena takes a breath and offers to get coffee, but Blair is like, "You mean 'get apologies'! From me!" Serena says she's willing to let the way B used her Social Worth against her last week slide, and Blair says she didn't do shit, and S says for the third time in this short conversation that she wants to let it drop and consider them even. She begs B, with her eyes, and Blair considers it, but she's got that crazy light in her eyes that says she's not going to stop until she drives this shit into a brick wall. It's only smoke.
"I actually have to go meet Chuck right now," B says nastily, and Serena rolls her eyes, because whatever bitch, I'm busy, and B keeps going: "We've been going nonstop, prepping for Tripp van der Bilt's election party tonight. Speaking of which, I noticed you're not on the guest list. That can only mean one thing: Nate still hates you for whatever it is you did to him!" Grownup Club, part two. Serena clicks into Okay Let's Play mode and tells her that A) Blair has bad information and probably bad sources, B) she's going to the party tonight, C) with her movie star boyfriend while D) Blair's boyfriend is working the party, so E) who is Blair going with, because she F) has no friends, just "knock-off" versions of herself. Blair is like whoa. "Since you're so interested, I have made real friends here! I just don't share your need to brag!"
Right then, Amalia appears and smiles, looking myopic and tragic, and Serena's smile says it all: "Okay," as in um ok lol, and "Well, I can't wait to meet them tonight." The whole time she's flicking her gaze at Amalia and her headband, just rubbing it in like dirt, and it's amazing. She finally leaves, about ten feet taller than her usual ten feet, and Blair realizes that it is motherfucking on. Amalia points out that she's Blair's friend, on which Blair chokes before reminding the poor girl that she's actually staff.
Right around the corner in the hall, S desperately calls Nate for the millionth time, but he's too busy walking along the Hudson with Tripp and hating the shit out of Serena to answer. Vanessa is nearby, filming them and asking random lonely New Yorkers who they're voting for, but the awesome thing is that while this scene -- which is mostly Nate feeling Tripp out about how maybe some last-minute help from Grandfather would not be entirely evil, because of the guilting he got earlier about the Poker Affair -- is going on, you can totally see this guy sitting on the edge of the pier and getting ready to jump in, but you would never notice it, so a second later when a guy starts flopping around in the river, and Tripp jumps in like his perfect ass would, and Vanessa films the whole thing, maybe you get fooled. I have to say, having watched this one several times the weaknesses have become apparent, but on Monday night I was like totally amazed by everything, shouting OH GIRL every five seconds and scaring the step-dog, so remember that.
So yeah, Tripp saved the guy and in so doing became a hottie for the rest of the episode somehow, and the real lady from the real NY1HD -- my friend Lily goes, "Where'd they dig her up?" -- tells us all about it, and the goober tells his side of the story about how he "lost his balance," and then Grandfather struts around their suite at the Empire while Nate and Tripp worry about the king-sized, obviously staged coincidence: "Let's seize the day, gentlemen! Where are we with media? Time to call Couric, she owes me a favor! Anytime someone mentions the name Tripp van der Bilt it should be followed by the word HERO!" Nate pulls Grandfather aside and points out how unrealistic this storyline is -- which is always a bad sign when your characters have to do that, but especially tragic when it's fucking Nate -- and Grandfather awesomely and spookily goes, "Our family is really blessed. So is that man who almost died." But Nate and his bangs, who knows what they are thinking now?
Vanessa, not satisfied with putting every necklace she owns on her body every single day and watching them breed more and more necklaces so she can put them on her body, has purchased or found on the street in a pile of trash a sweater of such retarditude it's like so sad. It's a sweater with its own one million necklaces! So she has to compete by wearing six pairs of earrings that are also wearing earrings. I hate her so goddamn bad.
So Serena comes into the van der Bilt suite just as Vanessa's getting off the phone with a producer who wants to buy her footage of the incident, and Serena pretends desperately to care for about five seconds, then asks her where Nate is and would she please shut up. She heads on over to Nate as lonely Vanessa's still babbling about her footage, and Nate tells her to have a demitasse of pee and jump in the river, and she totally ignores his eyebrow rage in favor of just looking him in the eye and going, "I need you to put me and Patrick Roberts on the guest list for Tripp's party tonight." Nate cannot believe her behavior!
They rehash about how Nate whored her out to PJ Buckley, and Serena unwhored herself while saving the campaign from the kind of fraud they can't stop perpetrating, and somehow that makes her an asshole, and once again Serena tries the "we're even" card, which Nate knows enough to dodge: "I wouldn't exactly call revenge a solid foundation for a friendship." Then Serena manages to be totally awesome: "Who said anything about friendship? All I need is an invite plus one." Word! Get over yourself!
I mean, I know this episode is intended in some ways to show her getting "worse," or like careening into something bad, but from where I'm sitting she's only getting better: "I am not asking you to hold my hand and get ice cream, I'm asking you for a professional courtesy that will raise profile not only for us personally but also for the causes we're getting off the ground." Valid, and once again S wins the Grownup Club crown without appearing to try, but not good enough for Nate, whose high color presages a hissy.
Luckily, Tripp appears looking fine and S deftly gets him to verbally invite her in front of Nate... Then pats Nate condescendingly on the shoulder and thanks him sweetly before catwalking the fuck up out of there. Serena likes Tripp. He's like them, but older. He knows Grownup Club back and forth; he's held onto his decency, he swims with sharks. He knows the difference, between the smoke and the fire itself. He can remember the gap between the image and the thing itself; she admires that. She needs more people like that.
Blair and all four minions (Sophie with the giant teeth/face, desperation-personified Amalia, and the twins) sit at the Bleecker in front of ginormous salads they will never ever eat. "Washington Square Park, Bobst Library, Bar None. I even tried spinning the cube in St. Mark's Place, but not a friend in sight. I just know this wouldn't be so hard at Yale..." (I know that cube! It's where Sebastian spit toward a bus and told Kelly they were not friends and she squeaked about something. But don't the usual Astor Place people sort of fall below Blair's standards? Am I, as usual, totally wrong about everything?) Sophie mentions Vanessa, whose star is still I guess on the rise, and Blair informs her that A) She's never heard the name before and B) Sophie is free to go. Without even a consolation bag of oats.
Amalia loves it, because she is clueless, and the twins stare because their entire job is being creepy, and then Blair spots the Valentino 360 bag across the coffee shop, and goes ballistic even though it's the black one and not the much cuter red one, and then like an It-seeking missile launches herself at the owner. They yell fashion words at each other until establishing that they are soulmates, and Blair acts flesh-crawlingly gross and freshman awkward ("I don't say this very often, but I think I like you," ugh) and the girl -- who has giant blonde hair and the posture of someone with a jacked-up Hollywood face, which is what she is -- totally lays down a brick of horror: "By the way, I'm Brandeis." The fuck you are. The fuckity fuck you are. Blair invites Brandeis, who is either in witness protection or a high-class hooker from the name alone, to the party. Meanwhile, the opposite of a party.
Humphries abound at PRADA MARFA, where Jenny has swine flu and cannot apply her raccoon makeup, and thus looks beautiful. Lily and Rufus are their usual adorable selves, and Dan is being a queen douche. They are playing Scrabble, because Humphries are the worst, and Olivia is enjoying herself, because she is stale toast with mayo and doesn't know any better. I wonder if her parents are Scientologists? Every second-gen Scientologist kid I know is like this. "What do you like?" Things! "What are your passions?" Things! "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Achieve!
Anyway, the real deal is that Jenny is now part of Olivia's diaper-shitting plan to keep Daniel away from technology so that he won't find out about the giant fucking nothing that happened. So there's much jiggery about the phone situation, and finally Olivia erases a GG blast about "Bathroom Boy" ever-so-secretly from Dan's phone, and he's safe from the lack of a problem for a few more minutes. Of course, he's still crowing about his ability to cheat stupidly at Scrabble, and about himself, and about needing a SARS mask, so he has no idea what's going on. Man, if Vanessa were there I would tongue-kiss Jenny until she gave me SARS.
Instead, Vanessa is watching her footage like a Gollum, and finally notices how the fake guy that was fake drowning is clearly a fake. She does this by doing that hilarious CSI focus where it's blurry and then blurry and then blurry and then you can suddenly see so clearly it's like an x-ray of the man and his intentions. Vanessa stares, bites the lip, wears her goddamned sweater some more, bershons to the left and to the right.
~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ has one thing going for him, which is that his face -- like many guest stars on this show -- is a lot easier to take when he's naked. Boyfriend is fit, and even wearing some snug grey boxer-briefs for the bonus. He answers the door of his Empire suite and immediately tells Serena she's looking hot. "Same," she says, in this hilarious Jessica Wakefield voice. Every scene with ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ Serena becomes twice as awesome as usual. Her expressions, her body language, the way she has no time for him and all the time in the world... It's breathtaking. And she's going to need that awesomeness, because ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ has gone off the rez.
It's the apocalypse we've been fearing since two scenes ago, when they told us exactly what was going to happen. "I just finished reading a fantastic script! A remake of Leaving Las Vegas! They want to redo it with a younger cast! It was in the garbage! Let's get Method with an ass pocket of Jack Daniels!" Also, Miley Cyrus is going to play Elisabeth Shue's role, which is funny because of the stripper pole incident but is not actually funny, because she's a hillbilly and a prematurely sexualized idiot with an obvious and ongoing history of sexual trauma, and when you give her your Cheeto-finger money or your trailer park eyeballs, she drags you down to her level and because her final destination is somewhere between Mackenzie Phillips and Britney Spears, and thus demeans us all. Anyway, S gets totally strung out and nuts about him because he's still there looking super effing fine in nothing at all and secretly slugging Jack, and finally she just drops her shoulders and stares at his back and pleads, "Put on some clothes, please."
Cinematically speaking, this is the best scene of the episode. Nate joins Vanessa at a pier, where she has lured him away from the campaign madness in order to tell him about the fakeness of the footage and the heroism. She talks to him slower than Swamp Thing, slower than Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut even, and he still can't quite process it. Poor Nate, who already knows it's fishy and Grandfather is fishy, and still has this total love of Tripp, and instead of working it out he just kind of eyebrows and cheekbones his way through every conversation, because if he actually tried to think about both things at once he would probably pop like a sexy, psoriatic balloon. And yes, the skin issues are still apparent. I honestly think at this point he caught chiggers from Bree, or what she calls "chew-daddies."
So then Vanessa's sweater explains to Nate's scabies in a very portentous and slow fashion all about the person to whom she's selling her footage, including the woman's name, address, social security number, likes and dislikes, favorite sound, and what she hopes God says at the pearly gates, and then scampers so Nate can compromise himself one more time by calling this woman Caroline Lowe in order to quash the footage in some needlessly complicated fashion that involves hiring an actress to meet up with Vanessa and buy the footage -- which is digital, I mean, it's not like she's handing over the negatives or anything -- instead of just tossing Vanessa in the river or stealing her camera for a couple of hours, but whatever, because he knows all of this and yet persists because he's like a double-triple agent on himself right now, it's so confusing. Nate is like a Philip K. Dick story about Nate trying to locate Nate whilst wearing a Nate suit.
So's Serena, though. That is her definition. She's listening boredly to some old senator explain some bullshit to her -- "Wow. Thank you so much for explaining that," she dead-eyes -- when ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ comes walking up and she goes, "Hey, we were just discussing the senate committee on Appropriations! Maybe you'd like to join us." Is this one of those GG things where instead of S acting smart or doing normal shit that any normal person would do in any circumstance, they just throw dialogue at the problem? (Remember when Kati and Iz were like MacArthur Fellows?) I prefer to believe that she was dying inside. There are pix taken and then S sends the senator away so she can administer positive reinforcement to ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ ("Isn't this great? You've got the perfect Capitol Hill vibe!") but, just like her S magic is no longer working on Blair, ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ is bored. He sighs that he has to "hit the can," and S sighs nearly in defeat.
Brandeis runs off to say hi to some senator she knows, which makes Blair's eyes go all starry, and then when Serena arrives, she gets to gloat. "Do you see that gorgeous blonde in Proenza Schouler talking to those high-profile politicians? That's my best friend Brandeis! She knows most of them personally." Serena is wearing this fucked up pony braid -- overthought, messy and... rustic, like imagine if Nigella Lawson did your hair -- that I thought was gross and postmodern at first, but grew to love. Serena sort of laughs at Blair for making friends based on political connections (what's PR Rule #1?), but I mean, that's B. And this also is B:
"They must really love her, because when she introduced us, they seemed thrilled to meet me. They even asked if we were sisters!" SO GROSS and SO CORRECT. S doesn't hear the coded nasty whoredom implicit in this equation (politics + sex = nihilistically weird Bret Ellis shit, every time, just like trust-fund kids) and just goes, "Meanwhile, my movie star boyfriend is a movie star, and my boyfriend, so boyfriend movie star friendstar boymoney" and finishes up with, "He's over at the bar, getting me a drink right now. I feel so lucky, he's so attentive!" Blair, awesomely, returns the serve like McEnroe: "Doesn't take much, does it?"
I mean, wow. The rest of the fight -- in which B basically calls her a whore a bunch of times -- doesn't even matter, because that is one of the Things We Don't Say. Serena's need to have her existence acknowledged is as desperate as it is understandable: The only word that ever sent her to war was "irrelevant." When you're basically a walking Times Square of flashing billboard signifiers -- SEX! BOOBS! TALL! BLONDE! RICH! MAGICAL! -- with what's admittedly a shifting cacophony of nonsense behind it, you need people to look you in the eye. This isn't where the fight starts, it's where the fight has already ended. Everything else is just zombies. Blair runs off, with as usual no idea how far she's already pushed S, and spots ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ pissing... In a potted ficus, directly outside the men's room. She runs off, terrified and pained and a little bit thrilled, to take care of it.
Dan talks himself through locating a Scrabble dictionary online -- to prove "squiffy" is a word -- and narrates himself navigating to the Jimmy Fallon footage and explains aloud how it's labeled "Bathroom Boy" and then addresses himself adorably, Top Five Dan Humphrey moment no lie, about Olivia: "She's cute."
This great song by Republic Tigers about what it's like to be a robot and attempt to stop being a robot plays over Vanessa meeting the real version of the woman that Nate sent an actress to replace. At first the lady is irritated, then jealous of whoever bought the footage, then confused and enraged by the twist, and then confused an enraged by Vanessa's characteristic obliquity: "So who was the woman in the restaurant?" she asks the IRL lady, randomly, and the actress is awesomely like, "Um, what?" Then Vanessa and Nate bershon at each other across the room for like a million years and Nate tries to remember back far enough to explain why V's making mean faces at him.
When Dan comes back to the Scrabble game having seen the DAMAGING FOOTAGE, he bounces like immediately, and then everybody talks about how OOC it is for him to leave in the middle of a Scrabble game, because without being insufferable who is he. Olivia and Little J figure out that he found the DAMAGING FOOTAGE on her computer, and they run around like lunatics, and Rufus is like, "Scrabble is for words!" and Lily is like, "You are so gullible to think our kids would actually hang out with us!" and Rufus is like, "Where am I?" and then she gives him a doggie treat in his special platinum doggie bowl and scratches his tummy and he goes to sleep on the floor with his bangs in his eyes and he looks just like an angel. Good boy. Good boy, Rufus!
When Serena's lying her hands go to her hair, like for example when B comes to tell her about his drunkenness and rub it in a bit more, and S is pretending he's like just around the corner and B lets her twist until finally she's like, "Your fake boyfriend is a huge drunk just like you, and I had him thrown out." Which is three things, two of them intended to wound and one of which needed to be done, but because B buried the lede, it sounds like she did this just to be a dick. "He's drunker than Paula Abdul during Hollywood Week," B explains, and even though Serena knows that's probably true, she pulls a Nate on herself and says this is just because Blair is super jealous. Dumb. So then Blair just wades in throwing as many punches as she can, and getting some good ones in regarding the historical Bad Serena, before drawing the lines in the meanest, truest way possible: "This is Nate's big night, at Chuck's hotel. So sorry, S: I did what I had to do. Again."
Jenny and Olivia watch the DAMAGING FOOTAGE, and it's stupid and gross and Jimmy Fallon can't help being what he is so it's just mean to make fun of him for it, but Jesus God is it hard to watch. I mean, he's very good at being Jimmy Fallon, but I would kill myself first so it's sort of a null sum. Olivia leaves a voicemail and Jenny tries and fails to pretend to give a shit about any of this whatsoever.
Serena finds ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ asleep on his bed with his shoes still on and throws water in his face, and he suddenly becomes charming and tells S, wrongly, his theory that Blair had him thrown out not because he's drunk and gross, but because he was talking to her hooker friend. Serena jumps out from behind the door frame to stare at him right when the "Two Left Feet" song kicks in like oh girl, and he's being all wet and cute on the bed, and Serena looks like she just saw God... But listen to the song:
You retreat, I advance...
You will ebb and I will flow...
The more I love you, the more you stray
The more I leave you, the more you come for me
Dance like this, dance like that
Love me, love me, love me like a baseball bat
It's not about boys, or Brandeis -- that's just smoke. It's about them, standing on opposite sides of a very busy road, speaking in semaphore. V comes running to Nate to scream at him about the pier footage and the fiduciary responsibilities of public office, and Nate calls her self-righteous, which duh, because she was just excited about being an established documentarian with buzz and her name on TV. Nate needles her for a bit, and then Vanessa awesomely goes, "You know what, Nate? I'll let you know how that feels in just a minute." Because of course she ended up selling the whole story to the lady after all. What I don't get is why she didn't also package it with the fact that the campaign also rigged an absurd heist wherein they sent someone to impersonate a TV producer in order to quash the story. I know the media likes to talk about the media/their own, but that is actually the second-creepiest part of this. Then, once again, we act out on this storyline, which is fine except the big Nate reveal in a little while suffers because it's in the middle of the act, and instead we wasted a lot of time with Vanessa running around having such stereotypical V-fits about it all that we could have just assumed, rather than putting his reveal here or at least showing the most interesting part, which is the fact that he hired someone to impersonate a TV anchor -- like, that's how his brain works.
That same NYC1 lady just works all day long! So now they're wondering who did the hoax, including this immortal line -- "Someone in the van der Bilt camp?" -- as though that's a novel idea. "Well, it's either a fast-fashion cabal or the Illuminati, but -- and I'm thinking outside the box here -- maybe the campaign itself? Is that crazy?" Tripp and Nate are so, so mad for a million years and then Nathaniel Archibald, who is a teenager and Columbia freshman, quiets everybody down with a professional bark and then orders all of the professional, adult pollsters and political advisors out of the room. Like in what universe... You know what, fuck it.
So Grandfather -- Grandfather, they keep saying; Grandfather -- is to blame, but he swears he's not, but then have we ever seen him do anything bad? Isn't it always Nate yelling at him about how he's bad, or a phone call that goes nowhere, or random day players telling us how shady he is? I can't remember a single time he actually did something shady. All he does is tell Nate he loves him or here is a car, and then Nate shits himself and runs around shrieking for a bit, then William just kind of shrugs and waits for Nate to change his mind back for no actual reason, which he always does. At least Bart Bass did evil shit.
Man, I'm grumpy. I think I have H1N1. But when I find myself in times of trouble, and I feel like I'm just going dark for no reason, you know what I say to myself? "Poor Little Orphan Jenny looks like she needs a Daddy Warbucks, but Daddy Warbucks don't grow on trees, at least not on a tree that grows in Brooklyn."
Who can frown in a world where that happened?
So Tripp wigs out like a Kennedy Clark Kent and Nate keeps telling Grandfather to give it up because he is evil, and Tripp says that if Grandfather doesn't take responsibility for the Hudson River Miracle, if he doesn't land that plane so to speak, he will drop out of the race, and Grandfather looks aggrieved as usual, and Nate gets a headache. Tripp goes off to tell Maureen he's dropping out of the race, and then Vanessa whooshes in from out of nowhere to lecture Nate -- whom she "used to call [her] friend" -- about how he was once a moral compass and is now a moral sewer, and then vanishes again. Like they're friends or were ever friends.
"Write to Make," an awesome song by Estate all about how the industry will use you up, plays over Serena investigating the prostitution angle with Brandeis. She even slips into her Savannah persona long enough to suggest to Brandy's Congressman friend that she is also a hooker, and he suggests they all go fuck -- "Let me guess: You want to go upstairs and see if two blondes make a right?" -- before Brandeis whisks her away and confirms that she is a hooker, and S tells her everything's fine and then goes off to get Brandeis thrown out with a triumphant smile. It's just smoke.
Chuck's with a reporter under a balcony on which ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ is once again flashing the view, shirt open and boxer briefs snug as ever: "I'm a businessman, not a politician... You think anyone goes to the Mercer for the maid service? They go because they want to see Russell Crowe throw a hissy. Anyway, nothing happens at the Empire without my say-so." Meanwhile, ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ is tangoing with a security guard, and Chuck leads the reporter away none the wiser.
B's now looking everywhere for Brandeis, so S runs up and joyfully tells her Brandy just got escorted out because "She was an escort! A high-priced hooker!" B can't believe it, and they fight and fight, and Blair tries to level with Serena about how she was just protecting everybody, S included, when she got rid of ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~. Things are well past that, so when Chuck shows up to defuse the third problem/scene they're creating, S goes into "I'm too cool" mode and B goes straight-up tattletale. Chuck tells them both to chill, but Blair instead kicks into high gear. "And who's the one getting paid to date her clients anyway?" Chuck tells her to check herself, but Blair only knows how to wreck herself.
"The only prostitute here is you," Blair says, with that gleeful/terrified look she used to get all the time in Season One, where she can't even believe how dreadful she's being, and S just stares at her. "Come on, Chuck," B lies, "I want some cake." So then Serena follows behind her, and quicker than a blink shoves her face hard into said cake. And it's amazingly edited, because no matter how many times you rewind and watch it, there's still something shocking and delicious about it. Well well well. So GG is like, "Oh hell," and B's little tongue peeks out and tastes the icing, and that's how you know she's going to be crazier than this before she chills out.
Then there's Leighton's depressing talk-singing song and rolling around in a limo looking dumb. She's so amazing and her voice is so great -- why not actually just sing? That sucks, I was looking forward to her album because all the other songs I've heard ("Birthday" by the adorable/wonderful Awesome New Republic, her fantastic cover of "Bette Davis Eyes") were really exciting. But ugh. So after that, Tripp's heading up to the podium to drop out of the race, and once again Nate fools everybody into forgetting he's a child by taking the stage manfully and giving the following all-time ridiculous speech as Maureen sucks on lemons and William sucks on his legacy and Vanessa films, and sucks generally:
"Excuse me, hi. My name is Nate Archibald. I'm Tripp van der Bilt's cousin. And I know there's a lot of buzz going around about what exactly happened this morning at the Hudson River. And it saddens me to tell you all that the story about it being a hoax... It is true. However, my cousin Tripp van der Bilt had no knowledge of any kind of setup. My cousin is not only the most moral, honest and courageous guy I know... He's still a hero. And how do I know this? [YOU ARE A TEENAGER, DRAMA QUEEN!] Because I'm the one who set it up!" William stares, Nate almost starts crying right there, and it's fantastic.
Chuck, resplendent in his good-boy hair as ever, joins S in a DMZ and asks her WTF is going on, and she says she's thirsty, but he grabs her and shakes his head and invites her once again into Grownup Club. "She called me a prostitute! I'm not sleeping with Patrick! You of all people know what a prostitute does!" Chuck explains that B is acting out, once again, because she misses S terribly -- that the whole prostitute and ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ thing is just obvious smoke from an emotionally illiterate fire -- and that this is all obvious and S should rise above for like one second. But thanks to Poppy Lifton, Serena has realized that constantly catering to Blair's insecurities is a great way to keep her nuts, and she will no longer be "reading Waldorf subtext." Chuck says that whether or not it's "time for Blair to grow up," as Serena suggests, it's S that just shoved her best friend into a cake in public.
Serena continues to attempt to justify herself for a sec before slipping back into Too Cool mode, but Chuck's had it: "Look, you think your friendship is going to take care of itself? You're not kids anymore. You can't say you hate each other, then make up an hour later on the Met steps." S considers, but is too far gone; Chuck is deeply loving. This part got to me a little bit: "You should be careful, because one day you're gonna find yourself telling people about Blair Waldorf, the girl who used to be your best friend." S is sort of decimated and so Chuck runs off again, because somehow he went from rapist to Mary Poppins and now he just fixes shit that's broken. I had this strong feeling back in the day that his breakdown would actually stick, that "Chuck Bass" jumped off that roof after all. Who knows in the long term, but it pleases me. Now if we can just get Blair to go nuts once and for all...
Olivia comes to DUMBO and makes sixteen retarded apologies about the non-event while Dan lets her twist, cruelly, before he finally tells her that the whole thing was stupid and not the problem -- it's just that she mentioned on the interview that it was their one-month anniversary today, and it made him feel like a bad boyfriend, so he set up this romantic dinner for them at the loft. He explains about the spider, and she says that she has a surprise for him too. Which again: You're not confused, it's just stupid. Because on the way to Brooklyn, Olivia stopped by Fallon and filmed a whole segment in order to apologize, which will be airing in five minutes. Don't think about it, don't worry about it, just let it go. She can't be here forever.
Nate looks incredibly beautiful in this scene. It's refreshing. So Tripp comes to find him, sitting alone watching the results of the election roll in, and tells Nate how much he appreciates the falling on the knife that he did. Which is only a huge sacrifice if you, like this show, have forgotten that Nate is a little tiny child that can't tie his own shoes, and thus risked nothing. In fact, Nate taking the fall is what anyone would have suggested, because it hurts nobody. Least of all Nate. "...The spiderweb was, it turns out, fictional. Happy one-month anniversary to Olivia Burke and whoever. In other shocking news tonight, a teenage stoner did something stupid earlier today..."
So then Tripp wins, and Nate goes, I mean he literally says this, "Just do me one favor, though. Be the best congressman this district's ever seen." Barf. For reals. Tripp promises to make it up to him, and then Maureen and her crazy Manson Lamps come in and talk in the opposite direction of whoever she's talking to, and she shoots weird eye lasers at Nate while hugging her husband and speaking directly away from him, and even though it makes it obvious that she was the culprit, Nate just sees them and smiles to himself, because: Hugging. Nate likes hugs.
"Everything Is Shattering," by Maps, has a very cool video; it is also the perfect song for this moment, as you can tell by the title. So Serena approaches Blair with some tea towels, but B has managed to almost completely clean the icing out of her hair and her face, revealing her beauty and deep sadness. Blair tells her to fuck right off, and Serena begs for her forgiveness for the millionth time this week, and says that if they were really friends, all these scandals could have been dealt with above the table. Blair shakes her head the entire time, because S has no idea how long ago Blair wrote her off this time: "Seriously, Serena? After eighteen years of this, I actually feel sorry for you. You're so far deep in Serena World, you can't even recognize what's really going on. Throughout all my years with Nate -- my whole life, really -- you've always been number one. And now for the first time, things are different. I'm different. I have college, and a real relationship. I'm starting to build a life for myself."
Which is sort of true. As long as she focuses on the Empire and her classes, the class-struggle stuff won't matter. She's a tricky wicket but it's not like she's that complicated. Being the Empress means she doesn't really have to think about being Queen, and is a better fit anyway. But what I can't figure is that the story seems to agree with this speech, because Serena immediately whines, "I'm building a life for myself, too!" And well, when you say it that way, it sounds pretty pathetic. "With Carter? With your job as an assistant to a publicist who pays you to date a whacked-out movie star?" Ouch, but the real ouch, which is coming, because B is being real: "You're drifting away from Dan, and your family, and you've lost Nate, one of your oldest friends?" Serena stares at her like, hurry up and finish this, and Blair does. She feels ugly, and bad, but not wrong: "This night is finally over... And as far as I'm concerned, so are we." S is all sad and lonely, and it hurts Blair more than she'll ever admit, but what she's doing makes sense: Let the person drown, because she can't swim for them both this time.
Some due in a bowler hat gives Brandeis a laminate for some reason, I didn't really understand that exchange, and then B comes running up to make her S replacement permanent, sort of hysterically begging Brandy to laugh with her about the false accusations, and Brandeis is like, "Actually, I'm totally a hooker." Blair is grossed out, but Brandy explains that she's really a Psych major at NYU and that everything she said was true, except she left out the escorting. B shrugs and thinks and decides maybe they can still be friends, which is a downgrade as far as she's concerned, but at least a Band-Aid on the gaping hole Serena left on her way out. Which Brandy likes, but can they table this because she has to go have sex for money. What's PR Rule #1? Blair realizes Brandeis went on the date with her not because they are new just-add-water BFFs, but because she was looking to drum up business. And now, feeling like Serena for a moment, Blair writes Brandeis off too.
Meanwhile, the conversations with Chuck and Blair ringing in her ears, Serena tries to get ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ into a cab. For what reason, I do not know, since I was pretty sure he was staying at the Empire and thus only needed to take a cab upstairs, but whatever, so he says he wants to go out and party, and she has to go with him because she's his fake girlfriend and he can't be seen without her. He gets all up in her situation as he says this, and S feels herself on the trembling edge of whoredom and Sharpies a farewell on a cocktail napkin -- as one does, in a grownup job -- giving KC her notice, before stuffing it in the breast pocket of ~♥~RPATTZ~♥~ and sending him to KC's house.
Blair, bereft, comes out onto the sidewalk to find Serena and beg her to come home. Serena's standing on the other side of the street, desperately staring at her, begging her to cross. And it might happen -- if she just crossed the street. If she just made the move.
Maureen joins Grandfather at the bar with a glass of white, and slowly leads him to understanding/praising her meddling way of throwing people in the river. William is, of course, unsure whether or not she's talking to him, because she's turned her head 180° around on her neck like Hedwig the better to address the empty air with all her implications and mumbled subtleties. At last she's like, "You thought I was like this dumb political wife arm trophy," and William awesomely informs her that he never even gave her that much thought, so she changes her tune and says that she did it all so that Tripp could finally be free of William altogether, and that way she gets a Congressman without all the van der Bilt bullshit. Which doesn't even make rudimentary sense, but what do I know? I have no idea who she's even talking to.
The sad piano of "I See You" by Mika plays over Blair, wrapped up in a robe on top of the sheets in Chuck's suite, where all his art has reappeared after Jenny took over his PRADA room. She's staring into space and missing Serena when Chuck comes in, and she admits that she broke it off with Brandeis. "But that's okay," she says once again, as he curls himself around her: "I have you. That's all I need." She'll say it a million times, but the sadness in her eyes will keep saying something very different.
And Vanessa Abrams will stay up late, trying to enjoy her famous footage and her name in lights, but the camera will keep going to Nate, the moral compass she used to call her friend; and on Fallon that night, Olivia and Dan will watch Olivia and Jimmy make sushi together, and Jimmy apologizing to Bathroom Boy and wishing them a happy anniversary; and Chuck will finally fall asleep, with his arms around Blair, who will stare at the wall until she's gone too; and Serena will sit all alone at the bar in the Empire, long after the guests have left, and when Tripp comes to sit with her, she'll smile and trace one finger down her neck, across her brow, tossing her hair, confiding in her friend. He will see her when he looks at her, like she is something real.