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Twisty, turny, sad and scary! Thanksgiving really is the Chrismukkah of this show, which is in turn -- and especially this season -- the Chrismukkah of TV. So Eleanor Waldorf comes into town with some kind of terrible secret, and she and Blair spend most of the episode sniffing weirdly around each other before the pedestrian truth comes out -- Eleanor and Cyrus are moving away to join the burgeoning French Colony Of Blair's Parents We Already Wanted More Of, Not Less -- and a more wonderful secret is revealed: Dorota and Vanya are pregnant! I love blue-collar Eastern Bloc babies the most because they're good with their hands, and they've got strong backs.
Dan spends the whole episode looking at Vanessa in a strange daze, but not because she's once again wearing a blanket as clothes. It takes Vanessa's awesome/horrible mother -- also wearing a blanket as clothes -- to explain to Dan that he is full-on in love with Vomitous V, and better get right with himself before making a move. She's got a point: The last time Vanessa was in love with him, it warped her into an Archibald-fucking, buzz-killing cat burglar. In other news, Vanessa is still dating a homosexual. But the glorious lion's share of drama, as it does best, surrounds the Rhodes Women:
Honorary RW members Jenny and Eric switch roles once again when she invites Jonathan to Thanksgiving, but he tells her about Eric's scheme at Cotillion, so she once again Humphries herself in Queenly apologies, but Dark Eric explains that her destruction is imminent regardless -- and he's clearly got plans in the hopper, including a mysterious ally. No mention is made of Jenny's newfound drug-dealing jetsetter lifestyle, but perhaps they are connected.
Junior RW member Serena wanders around alternately freezing out and macking on her Married Congressman, with whom she apparently STILL HAS NOT SLEPT. Maybe that explains his Crazy Eyes, which are really getting out of hand. Lily accidentally invites Maureen to Thanksgiving, so Serena and Tripp make out in an elevator, like, just to make everything worse. This destroys Nate because of how he ♥s S LOL, so he shows Maureen a video of the makeout. Serena apologizes to everybody for being an airhead whore, managing to play "contrite" for about five seconds before finding that hidden letter from Carmen Sandiego that Lily's been keeping (and which ends up in Maureen's possession, literally causing her to shine with an unholy light!). S feels betrayed and makes that face she makes before running off into Tripp's arms and sending Nate running into Chuck's, of course, while Blair and her mom bond over their many gay boyfriends.
And then there's senior RW member Lily van der Bilt, who has some other kind of drama going on, I don't even know what it is. Her disappearance from the beginning of the season turns out to be sneaky bullshit that may or may not have to do with Keith, but definitely has Grandmother -- RW Founder and Chief Executor of Awesome CeCe Rhodes, whose "blood runs with gin and secrets," we are reminded -- laughing demonically as usual. Apparently, from August to October, Lily was MIA and not with her mom. Whatever it is, I hope it kills Rufus dead. week: Things get all Chappaquiddicky as Serena once again pays for her sex life with death, ignominy and severe spinal injury.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Another holiday, a fresh new way for Rufus Humphrey to dork out. This time it's with some fresh Vampire Weekend song playing, which just about completes the picture. He's assigning everybody duties, and Eric and Jenny are still pretending they're allies, and Little J will be cooking but not eating the sweet potatoes, and Eric points out that the vdDubs are godless heathens and have no Thanksgiving traditions other than being exposed as past mental institution inmates.
...Unless you count Serena ruining everything, which she will be doing this year -- Lily informs us -- by volunteering at a soup kitchen with the good Congressman she's not doing it with. Also, if you care and I know that you do not, Pilot Inspektor is spending the holidays with his real family on the Cape. And CeCe, finally, will not be attending because she is dying as she has been doing for the last three years, because what began as a practical joke to force Serena to attend Cotillion has spiraled so completely out of control she can't even get out of East Egg.
Rufus pretends not to be totally hurt and whatever, and then Lily's like, "Basically, Thanksgiving is a huge hassle nobody cares about, just like every year, so we're doing takeout and if you don't like it, go back to your horror of a pointy-faced ex-wife, because she's the only person that cares besides your underage girlfriend Vanessa Abrams." Rufus pretends not to be hurt a bunch more, and shoves his recipe cards back into their decoupage carrying case without even alphabetizing them. Eric apologizes once again, and Jenny tries to crawl up his ass and pretend they're all a team, and Eric offers to "set up a video chat on [his] netbook and give Grandma a place at the table."
That sounds like a recipe for a whole other kind of bullshit casserole -- like CeCe Rhodes is so terribly advanced and not-WASPy that a "video chat on a netbook" won't make her old ass retire to bed with a martini, so why not just ask her to set up a Facebook or Twitter her thanks to the internet? -- but, as with a lot of the dialogue in this episode, it's best if you don't look too closely. Rufus is all excited about "a CeCe you can unplug," and sends Eric to get it happening.
Jenny follows Eric down the hallway, obviously having remembered that he hates her ass and has done for awhile now, but not letting that stop her from being totally annoying. He tells her that Jonathan's not coming to Thanksgiving because they broke up, and she pretends not to know why, and then when he's gone she texts Jonathan that they should have a truce and Eric misses her, and smiles smugly/Humphrily to herself about this good deed of sticking her nose where it does not belong, and somewhere St. Vanessa of the Nosey Parker feels a little bit stronger because she draws power from people noodging each other.
The whole time Gossip Girl is cackling about how on the UES, instead of maize and syphilis what we're serving up these days is a "bountiful harvest of secrets, lies and scandal." She's so manic this whole episode about how WTF and OMG everything is, but for once she's right. It is totally fucking amazing. There are parts of this episode where I started crying of joy.
Serena is just leaving Congressman van der Bilt a note about the note she left him, wearing a crazy twisted ivory weirdo Lily Bass shirt, nothing to see here, until the thousand eyes and ears of his campaign are gone, and then she's like, "Have you left your wife yet?" Tripp says he did, but I can't remember if he's lying or not, because he leaves Maureen a thousand times in this episode and every time he does so the little plastic castle in Serena's fishtank brain comes as a total surprise. So I guess they're going to publicly divorce because of Hudson Hero but really because of Serena. So Serena goes, "Just tell me it's not because of me," and he duly obliges, even though they both know it's not true, and thusly she is satisfied.
(Because if you for one second start thinking Serena is gullible or being a sucker about any of this, you need to go back to Serena 101 and start thinking about how to hack your life using her handy tips, because girlfriend is a total player of the highest degree. She is a cyclone and Tripp is a trailer park, and if you honestly believe otherwise that's exactly how she's gonna get you, because nobody ever sees her coming. Including her. You only realize the power of Serena once you have been utterly destroyed, which is the power of Serena.)
Serena notes that he's still "married" so they "can't fuck" but he says he doesn't want -- as she once again conspires to barely make it past his congressional boner in an office that is really just not that small -- to be alone during the holidays. Because family means everything. So she's like, "I figured you would say that, so I already lied to my family about some soup kitchen bullshit nobody would ever believe so we can 'chastely' hang out in my hotel room at the Empire and 'not fuck'." For good measure she gets right up in his pheromone detection zone and almost-almost-almost kisses him and then tosses her hair winsomely and goes off to drive some other elected official to distraction.
Chuck can't even believe that Blair hasn't obsessively whined and moaned about Serena for the new record of fifteen hours, and Blair points out that she's been asleep most of that time. And no doubt dreaming about whining and moaning about Serena, starring as Mag Wildwood, feeding endless Congressmen to endless yaks. Besides, Blair can't deal with her S issues because she's got Eleanor issues, because Mommy Fearest is flying in from Paris to get her for the holidays, which is clearly a ruse: "She has some bomb she wants to drop on me in a controlled environment, surrounded by air marshals and French people!"
Chuck is amazed by her holiday paranoia, which is well-documented and anyway, she says, "precedence is not paranoia," plus when she grilled dear Harold about it "he clammed up faster than Rihanna." Too soon, Blair. So now she needs to figure out Eleanor's game before she can get on the plane. Then Serena comes home from ruining a marriage and Blair calls her a whore sixteen times and S says she's just looking for Nate.
"One van der Bilt isn't enough?" asks B, which is truer than she knows, because the only reason S is even there is to wrap her web of drama and bullshit around one more boy who was stupid enough to say he loved her, and she's going to bring the whole world down around her by Thanksgiving if it takes a million cab rides, but she takes a moment to tell B that Tripp is totally leaving his wife, and "not" because of Serena. Blair points out that this is even more embarrassing for S, because it means that she's an "eighteen-year-old blonde coincidence" and thus only This Year's Model.
Serena is hurt, and Blair informs her additionally that he's totally not even leaving his wife anyway, because that's just what married creepazoids do. Chuck shrugs at his sister like, "What are you going to do?" because this whole tirade of B's is basically correct. That is, if you leave out the part where Serena is a destroyer of lives and only bets on 1000% sure things. Those Crazy Eyes of Tripp don't lie.
Nate's still talking about threesomes, because sometimes Nate is like, you tell your grandma one Christmas you want like a Stephen King book or something and then ten years later you've got the entire fucking Stephen King Library or, to be topical, you compliment your aunt on some gross salad with like wasabi peas and jell-o that she made one year and then welcome to the thirty years of your life having to eat that shit twice a year. Nate and Dan, they try really hard to love each other, so now they know that they like to talk about the threesome, so that's what they talk about. Remember when the threesome of their conversations was soccer? God but that was a trainwreck, Bro.
Specifically the part of the threesome under discussion today is the part where Olivia's low self-esteem looked at Dan's low self-esteem staring Vanessa's gaping void of self-esteem right in the eye and how she decided that Dan was in love with Vanessa, so now Dan is in love with Vanessa. Which is so sad because of her gay boyfriend. Nate loves this story because he always wonders what Dan looks like when he's fucking, I guess. So Dan is like, "Let's keep talking about me and my love life with your ex-girlfriend and me fucking your ex-girlfriend forever and ever," and Nate obliges forever and ever.
Dan invites Nate to PRADA for Thanksgiving because even though there are fifty people in the van der Bassphrey Komplex at this point, nobody is coming, essentially because Rufus is the worst. Nate says that he's going to the East Egg to patch things up with Grandfather, because I don't know if you noticed this but Nate patches things up with Grandfather more often than Blair and Serena call their friendship quits. Dan desperately tries to remind the van der Bilts via Nate that he exists, and Nate wanders away from the phone to smoke a joint and Dan does whatever he does and Serena shows up at Nate's house -- which is in the same building as her house and Chuck's house with Blair -- and goes, "Hey, do you have a second so I can really screw with your head, I mean seriously fuck with your mind, for no other reason than my sublimated rage?"
Dan hangs up in DUMBO and wonders what he will do without Nate at Thanksgiving and then Vanessa just wanders right the fuck on in. She is wearing a quilted blanket as though it is clothes, which makes her Little Match Girl sob story about having no home and no family and no prospects and no ability to take care of herself even more moving. She fought with Mama Gabriela about -- it's to be assumed -- something dumb, so can she just stay at DUMBO and maximize awkwardness and crash Thanksgiving instead of just pulling it together like this one time. Dan stares at her with loving stares of love, and it's gross, and Vanessa finds it gross, and Dan word-vomits about how he's not in love with her, he just had a stroke or whatever, and of course she can stay there. Then he wonders how bad he can fuck that simple setup sideways, and immediately settles on the dumbest thing. You can take the Rufus out of DUMBO but you cannot Febreeze the Humphrey out of DUMBO.
Rufus is still drinking coffee out of his Prufrock china while they talk to CeCe on the computer. I guess she is so rich and so evil that she can do this but if you had a real grandmother consultant it would be more like, "Do I just talk into this? Do I need to press a button? I think that woman is stealing my jewelry." Rufus spills the beans about Lily's constant lies about CeCe's constant dying, and starts scratching nervously at his neck immediately, because even just talking to CeCe is asking for it, and so this is a meta-minefield with the mines placed between mines of a minefield. CeCe's like, "Oh, she said I was sick? Here's how we're going to take care of that lie: I'm coming to Manhattan immediately on my broom, and if you tell my daughter that I'm coming, the sphincter-tightening fear you're already feeling will be an understatement. Cool?" Rufus is like, "But wait, I fucked something up here!" and she's all, "Later!" and turns off the computer. Eric shivers like the Dementors are hovering over Rufus and he can't even see them.
Blair screams at Dorota on entering the apartment because Dorota is distracted by Doorman Vanya using all manner of social media to stalk her, because she is avoiding him. Why? Who can say. I don't make it my business to interrogate the help. Blair sees a package from Lionel Tribbey ("I'm a Republican, and Lionel Tribbey is incredibly not"), who for some bizarre multiverse-melting reason is Eleanor's estate attorney. EW is changing her will, which is probably the big secret thing that she's coming to tell Blair about, because she's the only issue besides Aaron Rose, who quite frankly can go fuck himself, and then Eleanor appears and they fake-smile and fake-hug and fake-kiss and do all that bulimia stuff to each other, and Eleanor won't open the package and she won't open the package and then they drag each other around by the hand and drink amazing lapsang souchong and generally act like Blair and a Blair impersonator dogfight.
Nate sits on a bench and tries once again to talk sense to Serena about how he has put two and two together and for once ended up with four because hello, obviously Tripp is leaving Maureen for her. S protests weakly for one second before admitting that she kissed him that night she stranded Nate at Brandy Library after he professed his love, which makes her a dickhead, and Nate like barely remembers that. So then Tripp calls Serena and Nate is a really good actor like he was this whole episode, and on the other end of the phone Tripp's Crazy Eyes start doing forward lunges is how hard their crazy is getting, and the only plot thing is that Maureen is now coming to town so they can't chastely not fuck all Thanksgiving like they were "going" to. Serena asks Nate to Thanksgiving since she now has zero plans at all, and Nate totally bails on his mental plan to patch things up with Grandfather so that he can continue to have his mind warped by Serena's evil. She's like, "Just get me drunk!" and then they laugh and think about how Rufus is the worst.
Lily runs into Maureen -- and see, this is why I keep thinking Tripp was lying, because what is she, magic -- on the street and they are wearing the same coat! Gee, I hope that doesn't come into play in some predictable way right at the end of the episode. Lily bitches at Maureen about how the Congressman has her barely legal daughter working at a fake soup kitchen of lies, which sets off Maureen's BS detector, and then Lily immediately invites the van der Bilts to Thanksgiving because nobody is coming to Thanksgiving because see above re: Rufus, and Maureen is like torn because on the one hand, how horrible, but on the other hand, where there's smoke there's rarely a soup kitchen.
Maureen stares in a vicinity not wildly far from Lily's face, so at least she's trying to curb that tendency to issue speeches to nobody, and accepts, and GG does a backflip. "May the Lord make us truly thankful for what we are about to receive!" And I must say Word. I am so thankful for this hot mess. This season is so unbelievably good.
Vanessa and Dan are making Asshole Pie in DUMBO, and Vanessa is explaining that Gabriela is the kind of obnoxious dick that lectures cashiers about how "Thanksgiving is nothing more than a corporate agenda of the food industry masquerading as family sentiment," and true to type V fails to see the irony of how she is the exact same kind of obnoxious dick and she is telling this story to another iteration of that selfsame obnoxious dick. Vanessa brings up Olivia, because she's an obnoxious dick, and he makes that face at her some more of love, and then there's a knock at the door because what Dan has decided to do -- instead of dealing with life or being accountable or a man in any way -- is invite Gabriela into the steaming soupy mess of his love life and irritate Vanessa in the process. She offers to kill him for us, but Gabriela steps in with an apology and says she's willing to try and behave like a normal goddamn human being for this one day so her daughter will stop being pointlessly horrible to her, and also that Lily has invited their giant bag of bullshit to Thanksgiving so she won't have to be alone with her fucked-up family. Which is a pretty tight call actually, because you know what makes me feel great about myself, my family, my choices and my morals? Vanessa. She can come to Thanksgiving at my house any old time.
Serena comes home to the Empire and sees Tripp lurking around for her and pretends to be totally annoyed and pretends to get on the elevator while ignoring him and pretends to be so pissed that he's even there and pretends that he's not acting exactly according to her mad scientist programming of his robot brain. Meanwhile, Tripp is being totally adorable and like a cute boy. Which is probably why Serena says no three times, and then abruptly pulls the brakes on the elevator car and masticates his entire face while a particularly pithy song plays: "Your lipstick smeared sad/ I adore you/ I always have/ And every time you overdose/ I rush to Intensive Care/ Another sad-eyed stare before you disappear/ If this is the last dance/ Then save it for me baby/ Then save it for me baby." Because we think this is their last big makeout, but really it's because he's going to Chappaquiddick her and be ruined or dead before Xmas break.
Eleanor will be wearing some crazy swoopy pants outfit under a dress, in addition to her daughter climbing all the fuck over the place trying to get into that letter. There's much adorable snooping and sneaky-face and jumping out of the way and trying to get the letter, but while B is wily Eleanor's got years of wiliness on her. Man, I missed Eleanor. What a mannered, captivating actress she is. Dorota comes in with babka and Eleanor yells at her because she's jet-lagged and can't believe how opinionated and willful Blair has allowed Dorota to become in her absence. Also, because PRADA Thanksgiving is growing exponentially with every scene, Dorota will now be serving at Lily's dinner, since the Waldorfs will be en route to Paris anyhow. But Blair jumps at the chance to continue picking at the scab that is her obsessive love for Serena, so she decides they're going to have Thanksgiving at Lily's. While Eleanor makes the call, Blair threatens Dorota with deportation until she gives up the personal items that she picked up along with the babka. There is a pregnancy test! Somebody is possibly pregnant! Name the baby Yale!
When Chuck enters Nate's apartment, he's posing directly under the most flattering possible light and pretending to play pool, so Chuck has to lean all sexy against the pool table in a similarly ridiculous way before they can even have a conversation about how security just showed him video of his sister dry-humping a congressman in his elevator. Not actually an emergency, S-Dawg. I mean, it is, but not in an elevator way. Nate's heart breaks into a million billion pieces and he's caught between gathering them in his arms or staying in the good light, but he chooses correctly. Chuck says no doubt Tripp is all, "Oh, I'm leaving Maureen because of Hudson Hero, your ass is collateral ass, comfort me," which is...
I still don't know if that's what he's doing, but I confess that I have a mighty soft spot for Tripp. It's easy, if you have any respect for Serena's intelligence at all: I think they are equally matched as far as walking into the oncoming whirlwind of disaster with their eyes open, and equal belief in the power of letting Pretty equal Stupid. Plus if you ask around, or look at my personal league tables, "Blonde Young Republicans With Ronald Reagan Hair" ranks cumulatively right under "Seth Cohens On The Autism Spectrum" and just above "Hobbit-Like Misanthropes" in total notches, so I can obviously see the appeal. Chuck's like, "He's gone inside of six months," which offends Nate because he hero-worships his heroic cousin hero, and Chuck's like, "How often does the Other Woman get a Happily Ever After?" Um, all the time. Literally all the time. What a hack line.
Nate nods slowly and says somebody needs to get through to her before it's too late, which is code for how he's about to play the exact same game that S and Tripp are playing, which is pretending that you don't know exactly what you're doing while you continue to do it. "You know Serena. Whoever tries better bring a sledgehammer." Nate nods, and looks around his immediate area for a literal sledgehammer before calling security. Oh, I love Nate's idea of a scheme. Nate's big dumb plans are to Serena's big dumb plans as Nate is to Serena: A tinier, quieter, vaguer shade of pale. With alien eyebrows and even more conceptual hair.
Thanksgiving! Lily is surprised by the appearance of Dorota in her home, especially wearing this godawful tacky theme apron with pumpkins and leaves and crap on it. It's not out of character or anything, it's just unlovely. Dorota took the service elevator so she wouldn't have to see her boyfriend Vanya, because why? Because for reasons you probably already figured out, unless your brain is depressing. Then Lily gets the shock of her life as the animate remains of her dead mom comes clawing toward her face and Rufus stands behind the revenant -- wearing, if you please, that same fucking rollneck lady sweater he owns in sixty colors and styles -- realizing that as much as he never has things really well in hand, this situation is truly out of control. They all yell SURPRISE at each other and Rufus hopes that she doesn't hit him in front of the kids, and CeCe's like, "Isn't it so great how I turned out to be well enough to come to Thanksgiving and stir up a whole bunch of shit?"
Lily can't even deal with that noise because now the bullshit of Abrams Squared is coming through the door arguing about how the term "doorman" is not derogatory, because it is actually his job, and they introduce Gabriela to CeCe, which I can see working out because if you're going to have only one black friend it's going to have to be the Abrams kind, and Dan flirts with CeCe like he always does so well, but his wording is very serendipitous: "You're looking well, CeCe." She is now literally perched on Lily's back with her giant awesome face staring out hateful/joyfully like a harpy in a tree, and she's like, "I really am!" Gabriela starts "praising" the abundant dinner Lily has provided for her, and CeCe menaces her daughter, and there is a beautifully blocked moment where Lily and CeCe double-triple take on each other's faces and manage to tell an entire act's worth of drama just by swiveling their necks 45 degrees a couple times.
Downstairs, Blair is brandishing smoked salmon and Brut Rosé at Eleanor trying to make her throw up or admit that she's pregnant or kill the baby, whatever it takes, and Eleanor as usual is ignoring her daughter's crazy ass while being totally nice to everybody else, and she's not in a champagne mood, but it's not for any real reason, and as usual without actually doing anything still manages to create a palpable atmosphere of seething hatred for her daughter that manages to be charming and funny while also sort of making you want to binge, or cringe, or slap her silly.
Serena is wearing a black "pantsuit." But in places you would normally have fabric covering you, like say your entire breasts, those parts of the suit are merely a suggestion. Happy Thanksgiving! I love how she's like, "Those miniskirt/suspenders and fishnets and Faye Dunaway Supervillain Collection outfits that I wear to work are simply too formal. I should probably mix it up for this family holiday by wearing something ass-naked."
Serena, wearing this outfit like she's the CEO of Sex Inc., greets her boyfriend the married congressman and his sideways-talking wife at the door and it's way awkward, and Maureen's like, "You guys work such long hours that are a lie!" And S is like, "I know, man. Can I take your coat that is identical to my mom's coat and then immediately hand them to a servant so they can be placed in the same closet to each other?" Maureen addresses... Who knows. The PRADA MARFA sign or the sweet potatoes, and then runs off to speak in a direction tangential to Nate's location. Tripp's like, "The hard part is over. You know, the part where you speak to my wife without blabbing about how we're in total love and kissed two times."
(Gabriela and CeCe are still over there talking. I wonder what that's like. Probably two totally different conversations, where Gabriela thinks everything she's saying is a pointed barb about their lifestyle and everything CeCe is saying is a deliberate way of making Gabriela act like an incredible asshole. That's what is going on, I know it. So by the end of the night Gabriela will be like, "That old woman is wrong about everything, but I really got through to her. I guess she's more progressive than I thought." And at the end of the night, just like right now, CeCe will think, "God, that woman is insufferable. Where does Rufus find these people? If you like poor people so goddamn much why don't you stop eating my daughter's food and go babble at them instead?")
But Serena can't even deal with the Tripp/Maureen double-hit of Crazy Eyes because Blair just arrived, Eleanor and Chuck in tow, and she's still grossed out by Blair's total meanness, both in general and in particular this morning. Blair screams at the top of her lungs, "Surprise! Isn't this just the best holiday? Hello, Congressman! Where's your lovely wife?" Serena shoots Blair the meanest, angriest, no-kiddingest face I think she's ever made on this show, and Blair shoots her eyes piously to the ceiling, and Eleanor is a bitch about Blair some more, and once he's alone with S and Tripp, Chuck vibes them so intensely.
"A little Thanksgiving proclamation: You two ever play grab ass in my elevator again and Serena will be staying at an airport Marriott. Happy holidays." Serena's face goes from happy to see Chuck, to sad, to shocked, to more shocked, and it's very sad to watch but very good acting, especially given the angle used to get the reaction -- over the shoulder of some guy who may or may not be Chuck, who may or may not be saying that line at all -- and Chuck goes off to vibe some scotch right down his delightful throat, and Tripp and S stare into space like cattle right before it happens.
Maureen surprises Nate, who is drinking and crying at the window, and kisses him on both cheeks before addressing the area surrounding his face about is her husband screwing around with Serena. And the answer is, improbably -- because honestly, grow some balls and go there, or don't -- that they aren't, but Nate has the footage of the grabassing and immediately shows it to Maureen, who is his new ally apparently, without any sort of ado at all. Which is... Dumb, but in a Nate way. So now they are going to blackmail Tripp to leave Serena for his wife again, or else release the grabassing footage. Which if you think about it helps nobody but Maureen and Nate, which makes this the first time -- besides that nasty poker flimflam he perpetrated -- that Nate's actually ever done a wrong thing.
Blair, looking like one jillion dollars in every way, is tromping crazily around the house when she's suddenly abducted around a corner by Jenny, who is wearing by the way the tightest, shortest, chainmail minidress that anybody has ever worn on this show. She looks amazing and actually not tacky, but you'd be hard-pressed to acknowledge what she is wearing as clothing. If the skirt part were shorts, they would have a half-cm inseam. But instead they are a skirt, so really it's just up to the leggings to keep things okay. And they really do. It's nice. Also, her hair and makeup are basically under control. So all-in-all, she's doing great sartorially, especially considering the lunacy of Serena and the fact that everybody else in the world is wearing plaid flannel, because Rufus infected the real world through hipsters this year, so now everybody has the right to look shitty like Rufus.
"Where are you dragging me? Haven't you ever heard of a whispered aside?" I love that, the queen of the stage whisper. Every whispered aside Blair has ever issued was meant for and transmitted to eight other people. Jenny shakes her down for the real reason Jonathan left Eric, because apparently Eric did something fucked up at Cotillion that should have also ruined Jenny's relationship with him. If you remember, it meant blackmailing hot-as-hell twink guy to be the bitter fat-faced girl's escort, rather than Jenny's, in response to which Jenny executed a perfect maneuver anyway so it didn't even matter. For some reason Jenny falls apart when Blair explains this to her, which explains all that awkward dialogue when Jenny kept yelling, "I know it was Blair that did this! Blair did this whole thing for some flaky ill-defined reason!"
"By the way, how do you find having a sibling? Someone whose sole purpose on Earth is to compete for your parents' love and attention?" And on that brilliant, so-very-Blair-Bear line, the song starts, and Jenny stares, and Rufus calls everybody to the table so that the awesomeness can unfold right up in your face.
What's interesting about this song -- "Whatcha Say," by Jason Derülo -- is not the song itself (which is pretty standard fare: Take somebody else's great song, chop it to hell, find some good beats, use it to make your substandard song sound like a song) but of course that the hook/point of the song comes from Imogen Heap's "Hide & Seek," which connects us to the time Marissa shot Ryan's brother, and the fact that besides being my total favorite, Imogen Heap had a really intense relationship with The O.C.. "Goodnight & Go," a very pretty song about stalking, was also important on that show, and in fact one of my favorite Heap songs, "Just For Now," was written for an O.C. holiday episode, but ended up too dark for the scene, from what I understand, and was on her first album with the other two. It would always have fit much better with GG, but that was a long time ago and we didn't even have this show in those days, if you can imagine that.
But so the "Just For Now" song is a lot like this amazing scene here: The lyrics are a collection of snippets of dialogue around the Christmas table, ranging from openly vicious to self-conscious, alternating with this sort of interior monologue about how you can actually get through a family occasion without going insane if you just remember to do so. And again and again, the line "I'm secretly on your side," which: I don't know a better or more inclusive definition (translation?) for the word family than that:
That's Blair calling Serena a whore to her face and still waiting desperately for her to call, and Eric edging further and further out over the edge trying to take down Little J, and CeCe letting secrets drop faster than the temperature, and Dan openly taking Gabriela's side over and over against Vanessa, that's Nate ruining Tripp's relationship to save his marriage and career, and Gabriela telling Dan to keep quiet about his feelings, and everybody constantly making decisions on Serena's behalf until she feels crazy: "I'm secretly on your side."
And I mean, it's a sweet and a very true statement, but it doesn't really fix anything. It doesn't matter how much you love somebody at the bottom of the thing, when you pile a bunch of hell right on top. But it's something that helps, sometimes, when the short-term is all you can see and all you can think about is how mad you are: The 90% of family, marriage, relationships that's basically just synthetic traps and obstacles created to distract you long enough to calm down and remember whose side you're on.
So, dinner. The first time through, I think I watched this whole scene about five times before I could go on. It is gorgeous. As hyperverbal as this episode is, there's just as much going on with everybody's faces, and it's just so brilliant. Dan is amazing in this scene, particularly. And it's just so sweeping and swooping and cross-cutting and the music is so delirious and it's just so realistic and intense and funny and shocking and great.
CeCe stares down the long table at Lily and smirks about how she's sitting with Rufus at the foot of the table and how happy she is to be sitting with him and her daughter glares horribly at them both and finally excuses herself to go get crunk upstairs, and Gabriela -- still trying way hard -- asks about the recent nuptials (she was boycotting the floral industry and couldn't come, of fucking course) and CeCe natters that Rufus disinvited her because she is evil, and Gabriela gives him hell about that and Vanessa tells her to shut up and CeCe gets in a dig about how it was Lily's fifth wedding and Rufus says that it wasn't his fault because he understood her absence from the wedding to be due to her ongoing death, and CeCe stretches the moment out to infinity before saying she's been in remission since August, so all of Lily's absence at the front of the season was actually a huge lie, but she does this so slowly, and then so abruptly pulls back and says she must be confused about something, that they might as well be playing Pictionary and she's drawing a stick-figure Lily with arrows pointed at her head and a forked tongue, and then they both start drinking, and upstairs Lily is downing brown liquor like she's Chuck Bass.
Vanessa bitches about how Gabriela's so nosy like certain other people we could name, and Dan points out that "CeCe's heart pumps secrets and gin" and that it's not Gabriela's fault that she was a pawn in the evil games of the Rhodes Women, and Vanessa says that not only does he need to quit taking up for G-Unit but also stop making the weird love face, and she yells at Jenny about Dan's new face, which is Jenny's cue to bring up Eric's two faces, and he just gives her the old Rhodes Stinkeye and says that her sweet potatoes are bland, and upstairs Lily is still drinking herself steadily and deliberately into a stupor.
Blair starts acting spooky at her mother, drinking wine and watching her mother drinking water and then offering her artisanal unpasteurized camembert to kill the baby, and Eleanor asks what the eff, and Blair yells that she's pregnant, and Rufus stands up at the head of the table to dorkily tell some joke while he chews with his mouth open, sort of wonderfully horrible now, and Serena and Tripp laugh about how adorable he is, and Maureen notices them giggling and yells in their general direction, and not even Nate's grumble-voiced protests will stop her from telling them to stop having fun, and the whole time Rufus is telling this dorky (and music-themed, naturally) joke about a rock band of Pilgrims ("Now that's what I call Plymouth Rock!") and somewhere Lily is drinking, drinking, drinking.
So as Rufus tells the joke, Chuck is intrigued by Maureen's sudden knowledge of everything, and figures out that Nate requisitioned his security tapes and that this means that he is in love with Serena -- Chuck is very smart -- and then Maureen produces the makeout footage and goes, "He'll be a political joke. And you'll be a punch line!" Which is a good line, and then she tells them to stop fucking, and somehow in all of this Lily has tottered down the stairs so she's right over Serena's shoulder, wavering slightly on her pins, when they stare horrified down at the footage of themselves, and Lily is just plain shocked by it, and then she needs another drink.
This is where I start crying every time. Just out of heart-stomping joy. So there's an orgy of staring, and Lily leaves, and Tripp makes horrible Crazy-Eyes and Serena storms off also, and Nate watches all of this wondering how come Serena's not already sitting in his lap, and Chuck is sort of pissed at him, and Maureen stares in some direction that is incorrect, and Rufus tries desperately about thirty seconds too late to call this shit to order, but it's too late so Jenny takes her anorexic ass away from Eric's completely justified hatred of her, and Blair is still pissed at her mom for having secrets so she goes off to eat a whole pie and barf it up again -- Dan toasts the empty air in a wonderfully ironic "by all means" way -- and Gabriela finally gets nervous, and then for no reason other than the dangerous unbalancing of the Huffiness Quotient Vanessa realizes that she has not yet stormed away from the table, so she does so with a passing reference to her mother being an asshole, and the song is pumping so hardcore, and CeCe is glowing joyfully, truly enraptured by all this drama, and she raises a glass to Rufus and thanks him sincerely for inviting her to this front-row hot mess.
Serena runs upstairs to find Lily, who is drunk as hell at this point, and tries to explain that she's not having an affair-affair, just making out with Tripp all over town, and Lily says there's no difference, and S says that he's leaving his wife anyway, and Lily tries to explain that boys don't ever mean it when they say this, and levels a truly scary hateful drunk-eyed scowl at her and says that being left by your husband feels like shit, and Serena gets mad and says that, unlike the women for whom Lily is constantly being left, she is an actual human being and Tripp actually loves her, as though that's better, and Lily begs her to consider the fact that Tripp is a cheater and a leaver and that once he loved Maureen too, and S physically rocks back on her no-doubt insane heels, and Lily orders her to drop the entire Tripp situation: "Walk away, Serena. Until you do, you're not welcome in this home." Ouch! She drunkenly shoves past Serena, leaving her pissed/sad but mostly sad, because as usual it's confusing: Serena World is a happy place, always, and yet whenever people come busting into it they don't take part in the awesomeness, and instead just crap all over it. Which why would you even visit Serena World if you're not going to have fun and be awesome all the time?
Eric joins Jenny in her room, and she's like, "To review: You hate me, but you've been pretending to be my friend this entire time?" Except for the numerous times he warned you, and openly worked to thwart you, and put up with you physically attacking him and his boyfriend multiple times? Yes. That's the gist. "Why wouldn't you just tell me you were mad? At least then we could fight about it," Jenny says. She's really great in this scene. The dialogue in this one is about 50/50, but she sells every line. Eric explains that this is something friends do, and she gave up the right to that. He is not on her side anymore, secretly or otherwise, because trying to secretly be on her side turned him into kind of a sneaky jerk, and Jonathan was sort of right to dump him.
Which is oversimplifying, because Jonathan blew like the entire swim team while they were dating and nobody ever seems to remember that part, but there's a tale to be told here about the way that Eric feels about being a Rhodes legacy, which is that his choices are 1) suicide or 2) being of upstanding moral character, in control all the time, S1 Good Serena all the time, but that his love for Jenny has pulled him across the line into Crazytown (pop. every girl and woman in his entire family), which is fucking dangerous for him. And, if his Rhodes genes are working correctly, for everybody else too.
Eric wraps up the recap ("I decided to try to beat you at your own game") and Jenny is pretty wonderful as she explains simply that this was a mistake on his part. "I figured if I could take you down just once, so you could know how it feels to be the one getting egged, then maybe you'd realize what you'd become, and everything could go back to the way it was." Jenny explains, again, that this is not what happened. She's sort of pleading, because to her ears what she's saying is, "Let's go back to before that stuff went down, and everybody can be okay, because you lost out working it that way and I'm willing to reverse the trend, because I'm still secretly on your side."
Eric yells that he lost everything, and Jenny says he still has her, if they can work it out right now, but Eric's not convinced. He's already gone up and down and up and down that rollercoaster and the Anakin Skywalker of it all, and he's done. And has ruined himself, in his own eyes, in the process. "You told Kira she had to watch her back? Well, now you have to watch yours." He says this shitty line as credibly as he can, which is fairly so because he is good at his job, and Jenny stares at him for awhile until he takes his Rhodes ass up out of there. (Full disclosure: I'm secretly on Jenny's side. I know that's sacrilege and I will always love Eric van der Woodsen, but she gave him fully five free Humphrey coupons and he refused to redeem any of them, and for what? His dumb-looking cheater boyfriend that he's only with because every other gay guy on the UES is a total Asher? Who, by the way, was totally hot and ready to rock? The field is for playing, Little E. Don't let labels get in your way.)
Blair's working on that pie down in the lobby when Eleanor finds her, and she immediately starts biting into her mom instead. "Mother, how could you? And no offense to Cyrus, but do you think the world really needs another Aaron Rose?" (No. We need less than the one we have.) Eleanor laughs at her, but Blair is on a roll: "Thanksgiving always has secrets!" Eleanor explains joyfully that she's changing her will because she and Cyrus and are moving to Paris full time. I wonder if Blair will have psychic fallout from the fact that she has now chased four entire parents to France.
I honestly have no idea where Blair's storyline is going at this point. We haven't done the big Blair arc yet this year, so if she does go crazy it'll be spring, but who knows. I'm looking forward to it. "But you love New York! You always said anyone who lives anywhere else is fooling themselves." Eleanor says, and maybe this is a clue, that she's clearing out so B can make Manhattan her own, which impresses her of course, and they talk about how the penthouse is on the Ile Saint-Louis across from Rôtisserie du Beaujolais, which makes a poulet rôti I could swear Blair has name-checked before, and is her very favorite.
Blair winsomely takes her mother's hands and sincerely apologizes for acting so crazy, and Eleanor affectionately rolls her eyes like what else is new, and B giggles crazily: "You, pregnant? I mean, come on. We both know you closed for business a long time ago." (The first time through I thought she said, "You closed your business a long time ago," which would have been a bit out of character but made me laugh hard.) But then where did the pregnancy test come from? Hmm. So of course right that very second Vanya comes running up and asks them to get Dorota to talk to him, and instead of getting his presumptuous and unprofessional ass fired like you normally would, they stare at each other and go, "Oh my God!"
Upstairs, Gabriela is grilling Rufus about the two months Lily vanished from the UES (and our show, but not our hearts), because that's how she is. (I think it's brilliant that they not only wrote Kelly Rutherford's absence into the story, but then double-wrote it into a storyline of its own. We would have bought CeCe's ongoing death as a production gloss, but the fact that it's coming back around in this crazy way is just the kind of unnecessary but delightful extra effort that makes this show so wonderful.) G-Force even goes, "I don't mean to be presumptuous, but..." which of course whatever comes is totally presumptuous, and Rufus tells her he trusts Lily, and when that doesn't shut her up, he actually mans up and heads off to find more whipped cream for whatever he's drinking, because my God.
Vanessa immediately jumps up her mom's ass about bothering Rufus. Another thing I love about this episode: Vanessa has plenty of reasons to hate her mom, she's awful. But instead of ever giving her a leg to stand on, it always seems to come out of nowhere and she's just bitching at her mom for essentially being a mom. If this were any other character it would be like, "Well, G-Spot was hiding a letter from her Dad or threw her out of the house to be a fashion designer or is keeping dossiers on everybody or made her be a prostitute three different ways or turned her into a bulimic" but with Vanessa's it's like, "Gabriela sucks just like Vanessa sucks, so we get it, you both suck, but two suckers sucking don't make for anything worthwhile either."
Lady Gabsalot tells Vanessa that she is a moral paragon of honesty and compassion and that's why she was grilling Rufus about something that clearly made him uncomfortable and is none of her damn business, and Vanessa says she handed her the same line of bullshit after she forked over an entire barista paycheck to get them tickets to see Hair, which of course you did, but Gabriela spent the whole show talking to some goddamn homeless guy. "He was a vet," is Gabriela's amazing defense, and even Vanessa is grossed out by this shameless moral carbon-trading. Dan appears and tells them both to cut it out and act happy, and Gabriela pulls the "maybe I should just go" card, but then Vanessa slices her heart right open by agreeing, which calls G's bluff and breaks the "secretly on your side" rule, so then she actually has to leave. Well played!
Serena arrives downstairs confronted by a pissed-off tableau encompassing Chuck and Nate posing together near the table and Maureen and Tripp striking Crazy-Eyed anger poses in the middle ground. She addresses everybody with her apology, because welcome to Serena World, where you're constantly apologizing to everybody for everything. She tells Maureen that she is a fuckup and is sorry for hurting her, when the last thing she wanted to do was hurt anybody, and she'll of course leave T-Bag alone after this, which makes Tripp sad and makes Chuck impressed and gives Nate a holiday boner.
Blair goes to find Serena, softest inside-voice cocked and ready to be a good and loving friend, and Serena is too sad to even notice that Blair has rapidly changed gears and is now her BFF again, so she's like Whaddaya want and Blair skips over the part where she was secretly on Serena's side all along, and cuts right to how Chuck told her about S's display of common decency and how hard that must have been for Serena and how comparatively impossible it would have been for Blair, who is more stubborn than S, but that actually this is all about Blair and how much she loves Serena, and then things get kind of lesbian. I never saw it until this scene but I think you girls are onto something.
Blair pretty much gives S a full rubdown before inviting her to Paris -- "Chuck can shop for sweaters with Harold and Roman, and we can wander Notre Dame and spend time, just the two of us, like we haven't for so long..." she says, like Anne Shirley and Diana Barry, like Playground Love Never Dies -- to get her out of the obviously still-gathering shitstorm that is about to explode all over Maureen and Tripp, and Serena giggles and chuckles and purrs and finally agrees to go with. Man, usually it's S making B feel amazing and magical with the love rays, but the reverse is even more amazing. Blair just loves the shit out of Serena van der Woodsen. That makes me so happy.
Lily is now drinking something clear, that is either vodka or "water" in Bart's office, which is now Rufus's sadsack failed-rocker den of boringness. We haven't seen him twanging and twiddling a guitar and handing out wisdom in a while, have we? He appears and Lily says the funniest line of the episode: "...Oh. I'm sorry I missed Thanksgiving." He immediately asks why Lily stayed in at CeCe's all through the fall instead of coming home to him, and Lily obviously and totally lies in the most amazing, chilling way: "My mother and I were finally connecting. I think, faced with her illness, she became a different person. She was loving and kind..." CeCe, who doesn't even have a vestigial ability to be those things, appears in the doorway with a tumbler of gin and waits to see how bullshitty Lily can get. I want to see CeCe and Carter Baizen team up again. I want to see Carter Baizen team up with anybody. I want to see Carter Baizen. I want to see Carter Baizen: The Movie. I am secretly on Carter's side.
"I wanted to stay and enjoy this person for as long as I could." Rufus, eating this up of course because it's exactly the kind of saccharine Believe In The Stars nonsense he believes and has passed onto his children (although to be fair it's also the same nonsense that kept him loving Lily for twenty years no matter how many Clauses and Klauses she married, and that's pretty wonderful about him), takes her hand and assures her she could have just told the truth. Heh. "I know, and I should have, but I... I knew it was selfish, leaving you here, in charge of the kids and everything. And so I lied. And then I just continued to lie, to cover it up." Just like I'm lying right now! Yo dawg I heard you like being oblivious so I put some lies in my lies so you can be an idiot while you're being an idiot. Maybe Dorota's baby will have another baby inside of it, and a baby inside of that, and inside of that another baby -- as many levels of baby as there are of Lily's lies.
CeCe floats into the room, holding in her belly laugh as only a gin-soaked WASP can, and goes, "So that's it, then? You love me so much you couldn't let me go?" She puts one hand on Lily's shoulder -- this is another excellently done scene -- and thus signals the fact that this just went from being a sting operation to a snow job, she's not going to call Lily out or put her on blast and all that drinking and nervous scowling was for naught, so Lily flips right into a Rhodes Women act they could have been practicing forever, wrinkling her nose adorably and fakely and complaining that CeCe wasn't supposed to hear that part, and looking to Rufus for support in her embarrassment, and CeCe also flanks Rufus, saying that now she has a witness of her daughter's love for her, and the whole thing is this elaborately choreographed lie/routine that they just made up on the spot, and the whole time Lily's checking out Rufus's face to see if he's buying their concerted bullshit... (If you still have access to this episode, check this scene out. It's like a horror movie, it's so great. They are like magical witches here; I honestly feel like we just learned about a full third of their relationship we never even knew about before.) And then just like that, Rufus is like, "Cool, I'm going to go clear the table!" And bounces out of there with his stupid tail wagging away.
Lily thanks her mom, who sits and notes that obviously she didn't tell Rufus about her "little trip" this summer -- Which, what could that even mean? Something to do with Carmen Sandiego? They did make a big point of Serena's latest post-Santorini trip with Carter being at the same time Lily was still gone, didn't they? What if Lily somehow forced Keith to ignore Serena and all that crazy was actually Lily's fault? Which it already always is? And why can't we have Carter Baizen every week anyway? And when is Blair going to go crazy already? And did Dorota and Vanya kill Georgina Sparks or what? And did they conceive the baby-full-of-babies that very night? And please, did Georgina really just have Poppy Lifton deported, or did she kill her and eat of her flesh? And how are we supposed to live until March with no Gossip Girl? -- and CeCe tells her that, as usual, some secrets can't stay hidden, but they both kind of agree this one would be better as a secret for good. Because for all the bitching and accusations, and the occasional hostile buyout and faked not-fake cancer, hasn't CeCe always been secretly on Lily's side, and in the last year proven to secretly be on Rufus's side too?
Eleanor and Blair strong-arm Dorota onto the elevator to take a plate to Vanya -- "Tom Colicchio live in building, I'm sure he sent plate already! Mr. Rufus good cook, but not Top Chef!" -- and she whines that her parents (Who are like the King and Queen of Poland or something, right?) will declare war on Russia and once again emerge victorious, because she's not married to Vanya, and they don't even care about her broken-English bullshit, and they wish her luck and then Eleanor throws her arm across B's shoulder and they are pretty much totally cute.
When Lonelyboy returns to DUMBO, Gabriela has packed up all her stupid shit and is leaving. She is also wearing a Navajo blanket like it's clothes. They have a conversation about how worthless Vanessa is, and Dan tries to convince a skeptical G that she is not worthless, and lists her many obnoxious accomplishments -- "She petitioned to keep a historic bar from closing in Brooklyn last year! And she spent the end of the summer rebuilding community gardens in Alphabet City!" -- and he tells Yo Gabba-Gabba how amazing and not-at-all disgusting Vanessa is, and she gets a wise smile on her face and informs Dan that he is in love with Vanessa, and he makes that face some more and babbles like he does, and Vanessa shows up to be an unasked-for buzzkill and day-ruiner some more, and Dan vanishes wearing an awesome grey wool trench that makes both Abrams A-Holes look even more shamefully like the grotty beasts they are. I'm secretly on Dan's side. I don't know how long that has been going on but it's real unnerving.
Tripp lets the Crazy Eyes take the lead as he approaches Nate and grunts angry incomprehensibles about what a traitor Nate is, and Nate calls him out on being insane and falling into Serena's trap of craziness and risking his entire life and point just to be with somebody who at this very moment may have forgotten his name, and points out that Tripp is still mostly thinking about Serena, who just dumped him in front of his wife before he even got to second, so it's time to reprioritize. Chuck watches this conversation for a while, and then Tripp makes Craziest Ever Eyes as he's leaving, like the eyes themselves have fingers that do the two-finger eyeball-to-eyeball "I'm going to have your ass" gesture without him even having to use his hands, and then Chuck's truly insane giant plaid tie asks Nate why he didn't just say the truth, which is that he is also stuck in Serena's crazy sandtrap of love.
"Serena deserves someone who would sacrifice anything to be with her," Nate yells, which... Is exactly what he just told Tripp not to be, so as usual Nate's thought processes are like totally inscrutable. Chuck says that the real secret is that Nate is so far gone that he actually stole from the Chuck Bass, and Nate feels bad, and Chuck blithely does his whole blithe Yoda wisdom thing that's frankly getting old about how Nate should just tell her how he feels or whatever. (Note: Nobody ever says this in real life, or means it, because it's absolutely dumbshit advice. If you know, you know, and you always know. Being a man doesn't mean making huge stupid gestures, because drama is always more about you than it is about me: If you know, you know. None of this "I have to just once tell you this or I will die." It's fake and childish.) Anyway, Nate is also wearing a rollneck sweater, I think, or hopefully a scarf, whatever, he looks great, and Chuck says S deserves to be with a guy who deserves to be with her or some such pointless nonsense.
Blair strums Rufus's abandoned guitars in Bart's old office, and S snorts that Lily probably hasn't even given R the vault combo, and Blair of all people says pithily, "Now that Bart's not around to keep files on everybody, maybe you guys don't need one?" She gets her passport thing, which is leather from the skin of a golden crocodile, and then Tripp appears. You can actually hear his Crazy Eyes echoing off the surfaces before you see him, like you are now a bat. Blair immediately threatens to judo chop him or something, and Tripp explains with tears in the Crazy Eyes that he just left Maureen for the fiftieth time today, but that the difference this time is that she's going to ruin his entire life for him, so that must mean he really loves Serena, so he's going to go downstairs and wait creepily for Serena to come join him for a week of whoredom in the country.
Blair, who is so consumed by reputation and standing that the very idea Tripp would willingly go there means that he really does care about S, gives an about-face on the issue of Tripp and tells S to follow her heart. Which, the way it's written is crappy, but the plotpoint is solid: Blair's not a staunch defender of marriage, she's just against being retarded, which is what S was doing, assuming that Tripp is like 99% of guys. But the fact that he just gave up the two things B loves most -- power and rep -- means he's being for real, so go for it. S ducklips about it for a bit, and then notices Carmen Sandiego's letter in the vault, and notices that A) it's postmarked like pre-Tripp era, and B) it's been opened.
Which means Lily is a no-good, because she broke the one rule of Serena, which is you don't keep the information from her, because the information is all she has. She made a decision on Serena's behalf, which means whatever is in that letter is going to determine the severity of the sentence, but she's already ruled guilty for doing it at all. Eleanor yells for Blair, who reluctantly leaves S alone with the letter, and they hold hands and are longing and loving with each other for the first time in weeks, and then she's gone.
Keep in mind that Eleanor and Blair are now officially on their way out the door, dinner's been over for awhile, Tripp somehow already got in his car, and Maureen just got punk'd three times in a row in front of everybody she knows, but yet she still has not left. I assume that she is wandering the place at random looking for stuff to stab Serena with, but I still can't account for why it takes the Waldorfs the rest of the episode to get their asses downstairs, where Tripp somehow already is. I know I'm being silly, but it's actually just because it's funny to think about what could possibly keep everybody in motion that long when they've already said their goodbyes.
Like right now, what is Maureen doing? Admiring the Kotter mugs, or asking Jenny and Eric for acting tips, or drunkenly molesting Nate -- who has disappeared entirely even though he's going to end up downstairs at the exact same time as Serena, in a minute -- because he is easy and because turnabout is fair play and because it wouldn't take much subterfuge to fool him into thinking you actually were Serena even in full daylight. So Serena comes downstairs and Lily's like, "Tripp and Maureen are gone [which is only half-true, but also Lily is drunk as hell], so where are you going? Also, you did the right thing or whatever."
But full of the righteous anger of someone who has read THE LETTER, Serena gives her best Bad Serena and informs Lily that they are divorcing after all, and Tripp is waiting to whisk her away to some very bad behavior, and Lily's like, "Am I drunk? Did I or did I not commit my annual five minutes of parenting and we came to an understanding?" And Serena says she understands perfectly that she is not welcome in PRADA as long as she is fucking Tripp, which she has been holding off for awhile but is now going to be doing in abundance for the rest of the holidays, so you can shove your PRADA right up your MARFA and whatever. Lily tells her this is obviously a horrible mistake and she will regret it forever, but Serena just produces THE LETTER and tells her mother that mistakes have definitely been made, and then gives one of those Dark Phoenix Serena pronouncements that warms my heart every time: "You don't get to judge me. Ever again." Lily stares after her sadly, because maybe Serena is right. WHAT IS IN THAT LETTER?
Over in DUMBO, who even cares, except Gabriela is a fantastic actress and Dan is maybe the best ever in this episode, and they hug and kiss and talk about Vanessa's not really so bad, and she tells him not to fuck with her. "You gave me some great advice, I'm going to return the favor. When Vanessa told you her feelings all those years ago, you broke her heart." He feels guilty anew, like he'd sort of conveniently but necessarily forgotten that chapter; it's a really good moment. "And your friendship almost didn't recover. So unless you're sure that my daughter is who you want to be with, I suggest you keep your feelings to yourself." He makes that face at her some more, caught in the love. "Because if you break her heart this time, your friendship won't survive. And that would be a tragedy, because you are a great friend for her." That would be a tragedy inside a tragedy inside a tragedy, actually.
Gabardine touches his hand and is pretty much fabulous, and he really takes it to heart. Then V comes out of the back bedroom yelling about her homo boyfriend Paul Hoffman with the teeth, and how his parents want to meet Gabriela and confirm for themselves that Vanessa is a real person, and Gabriela's like, "Do I go meet the boyfriend, Dan?" and it's just totally pointed and awkward and weird, but look who we're dealing with, so Dan's like, "Go meet the homo boyfriend with the teeth, I'll just stay here making that face." Gabba-Gabba-Hey is proud of him for keeping his gorgeous mouth shut and looking out for V for once.
So Serena is now downstairs, and Nate suddenly time-warps down there so he's behind her, yelling not to go with Tripp, and he starts talking like Swamp Thing very slowly about how he is in love with her and has always been in love with her, forgetting that he already told her all of this. And she's sort of searching his face, and wondering if she loves him back, and wondering if she can somehow rope him into an even bigger hell mess, and trying to take in the majesty of his crazy fucking face, and he begs her to take a chance on him, and she thinks about it but not really, and Tripp's in a limo going, "Are you coming?" And Nate's eyes immediately well up when she looks back at him, because he knows he lost again to the Smarminator, and she feels really guilty, and he really does start to cry, and her last look is of extreme sympathy for his trials.
Dan says goodbye to the Abrams Coven and there's a pretty great moment where Vanessa giggles and says she likes his new face and thinks it's cute, but the way she plays the moment is just brilliant. I've always liked her as an actor, but there's something about the look she gives him before leaving, it's like wistful and like she's still in love with him but is so accustomed to being his Joey Potter that she can't even convincingly consider the idea that the face is for her, so we're still friends and wingmen for each other even after we slept together, and the whole time he's making the face that's just for her and she can't even see it. It's amazing.
Downstairs at PRADA, Dorota tearfully explains the situation, and Vanya goofily looks around for a place to put the plate before picking her up and whirling her around, deliriously happy. They're kind of racist and kind of annoying, and there's something annoying and racist about the way everybody loves them so much, but they are pretty much wonderful in a way you can't argue.
Upstairs, everybody's milling around the apartment without noticing Maureen skulking who-knows-where: Lily is drinking and rereading THE LETTER in the hall closet, as one does, and Jenny's living off the smells of food, and Eric is pissily eating his pie and texting scary T9 messages about "Jenny knows, we have to strike now," to that execrable Kira girl while scarfing angry pie, and Rufus is hounding the shit out of CeCe and forcing her to look at and I quote "pictures of me jamming with Kim and Thurston," like CeCe can't fucking wait to get her hands on those awesome pictures, you dildo, and CeCe is begging Lily to save her from that bullshit, but Lily is too busy being drunk in the hall closet, and crams THE LETTER into her jacket or the identical jacket of Maureen who is still wandering around somewhere, and the Waldorfs have fallen into a time warp somewhere between the penthouse and the lobby, and then CeCe and Lily hold each other's hands and imagine a world where Rufus didn't have pictures to show you.
Chuck grabs B, who has finally made it through time and space to the street, and asks if he can stay and make tender manly love to Nate Archibald rather than going to Paris with Blair and her mom, and she's like, "You boys" and lets it slide just like her mom did for so many years, and they kiss, and he grabs Nate and is totally hot for awhile and drags him away to get very drunk in the wake of Serena's path of destruction, and pats him and chatters at him to distract him from the love of Serena, and meanwhile Serena has completely forgotten about Tripp altogether and sits in the limo thinking sadly about Nate and how maybe she loves him back, and if you had a nickel for every time Serena stared out the window of something and went somewhere she shouldn't be going, you'd have as many nickels as men have died for associating with her, and Tripp notices that she has totally vacated the limo, so he grabs her hand and she looks over at him with this indulgent lip-bitten smile like, "Oh, you. Right: Left your wife and career for me. Great, cool, let's do this."
Dorota comes back to clean up PRADA and the first piece of trash she finds is Maureen van der Bilt, who has come out of hiding somewhere in the apartment in order to "find her coat," and she says to thank Lily and Rufus and lie to them that everything was wonderful, which Dorota lies and says she will do, and Maureen gets into the elevator and feels sort of lonely and sort of excited about destroying her husband's entire life, but in the pocket of her jacket she finds THE LETTER and opens it up and as she reads she literally begins to shine with evil. It grows brighter and brighter and she looks right out at you, into your heart, with the beatific smile of somebody who may soon break Serena's record of destruction, and I take back everything I ever said about her lazy-eye acting, because it turns out she was just being nice, because when Maureen looks right at you, you are fucked on the soul level.
week, the last until March (!): Serena and Tripp have a lovenest, but Maureen is in league with the Devil, and maybe Chuck is haunted by a ghost, and Nate punches somebody, and (I'm guessing on the anniversary of Bart's death) there is another serious car accident, and if you ever wondered if it was possible to still look glamorous with a head injury, Serena will answer that one for you definitively.