It's the anniversary of Bart's death -- not that Lily even remembers! -- so Chuck is hallucinating Ghost Bart calling him a pussy all over town and goading him to foreclose on some homeless deaf blind vets or something. Blair gets totally freaked out about his encrazening, and even goes to Lily to help. But it turns out really this is all because of "feelings" and suddenly there's a whole storyline out of nowhere about how Chuck is pushing Blair and feelings away until Blair points out in a tearjerker scene that Chuck is pretty much awesome.
Then Chuck stares in a doorway at a hospital and has spontaneous therapy feelings and stops hallucinating and learns to care again or whatever, but he runs into that hot lady from Mulholland Drive at Bart's grave and just barely restrains himself from Hamletting, "...Mother?" I dunno. The acting is good, the continuity is cool, but the story itself is purely One Tree Hill, and really inappropriate, and seems like a big part of year's story. Doesn't it sort of shit on Chuck's entire storyline last year if his mom is alive?
Maureen blackmails Trip into -- get ready for this -- staying married. For the fourth time, she does this. Luckily, M's got THE LETTER from Carmen Sandiego, which in fact does involve Lily's summer trip, and threatens to take it to Rufus just to be mean. Keith and Lily were "alone all night" in his hotel room, but nobody knows what they were up to -- This would have been around the time of his marriage, right? Just like she fucked Rufus the day before she married Bart? -- and Lily's not talking. So now Serena and her parents are pawns in Maureen's plot to be the Jackie of a New Camelot, with Serena as the Marilyn. Of course, Serena is horrified by having reality pointed out to her and throws a fit -- but then Maureen gives the letter to Rufus anyway, proving that she's just doing it to be an asshole.
Because it wouldn't be a Stephanie Savage script without people boxing each other out all over the place, Nate tells Dan to hook up with disgusting Willa Weinstein in order to box Paul Hoffman's gay ass out of Vanessa's heart. But because of Willa Weinstein's way of speaking like she has a concussion, plus being gross anyway, it is a no-go. Dan "finally" tells Vanessa he is in love with her, and she shuts it down immediately and awesomely pretends it didn't happen. Meanwhile Jenny and Eric do some complicated Constance maneuvers involving YSL purses and the conspicuous consumption of the Handmaidens, but Jenny wins because she has infinite purses because she is a drug dealer now. It's been so long since I thought of Little J as a role model.
Eric doesn't know that part, and finally concedes that no matter how many Yucky Kiras or Vanessa-Looking Handmaidens he corrupts, Queen J will always win. So then everybody is a family again. Except for Rufus, who is thinking about hooking up with his sexy fellow housewife Holland Christianson or Holland McCormick or whatever name is most likely to be a hot black lady and not a pair of WASP babies. Campbell, that's right. Holland Campbell.
So the reason this week's "party that everybody on the entire show is at" takes place at the hospital is because finally Serena has had it and yells LIAR and makes Trip drive her back to the city, even though he's like "I would give anything to be with you! Except my career, my marriage, or anything real!" But they fight and Trip swerves to avoid three -- count them -- three random wolves having a get-together in the middle of the road, sending Serena's giant head through the windshield.
Because he is lovable scum, Trip moves the possibly-paralyzed ass of S into the driver's seat and calls Maureen to come pick him up so that everybody will just think that Serena got drunk like she does every day. (Trip comes up with ways to both have and eat his cake more times a day than Serena makes that mush-mouth face.) So Nate, of course, punches him right in the chappaquiddick, and then everybody cries over Serena's terrible wounds, which amount to a slight laceration on her forehead and suddenly enunciating.
Sooo satisfying. Congrats on making it halfway through the strongest season of the best show of all time. XOXO and I'll see you year!
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why high school shows shouldn't graduate.
One thing you should never do is listen to the Raveonettes on Long Island when you're having a fight and driving in the rain. My Grandmother taught me that: "Never go to bed mad, and don't ever think that Everything But means he's not cheating. That only means he's cheating more." You should especially not do this when roving bands of wolves are holding their biannual tea party in the puddled roads, because you're going to miss something important and end up with a concussion.
So it's twelve hours in our future and Serena is ever so disappointed in Congressman Trip for something we don't know about, but can probably guess, and she wants to listen to this song on the Land Rover HD radio and he's like, "My nerves" and she's like, "Fuck you" and then the wolves pop up. The song is about a "little runaway girl" from New York (all the songs this week are about New York) who thinks about suicide for not really any good reasons, spontaneously realizes quote "fuck suicide," and then goes back to being awesome. I don't know why the Raveonettes are the go-to band for Serena's ill-fated relations with Trip except that they are really old, like him.
In this scene, it illustrates that Serena knows damn well what she's doing and that they both realized their relationship is a terrible mistake the very second they didn't have sexy obstructions like marriage and political machinations in the way, which provides a nice parallel to the beginning of the season when B had convinced herself she could only get it up if Chuck was about to make out with fellas or ladies. You may remember that S told her this was dumb and creepy at the time, so of course it's no wonder that S is now going through the same thing now under a Three Wolf Moon.
Car crash! And then it's twelve hours ago, meaning now, and Blair is flouncing about the Empire penthouse in a crazy shirt made crazier by the black-and-white houndstooth pattern that is so giant it is clearly actually a joke about houndstooth. She's got breakfast in bed ready for Chuck, whom she assumes is going to stay in bed because of how it was exactly one year ago today that he caused his father's death by alerting him to Lily's unwitting/disgraceful recapitulation of Anna Karenina, causing his limo to crash out of some kind of quantum science.
Charlie doesn't want any tea or sympathy or breakfast, because today is a day like any other. In fact, he's going to celebrate Bart's memory by kicking a bunch of homeless out of a shelter on the LES, kind of like how Anakin killed all those little kids to prove to the Emperor that he was bad-ass and had no feelings. He needs to get in an Empire state of mind, because if the feelings are going to kill him, today's the day.
Blair doesn't care about Charlie's dumb plans or his childish attempt to be bad-ass; she just wants him to feel his feelings and be sad today so she can do for him what they do for each other. But Charlie's not having it; he's no longer satisfied with the successes of his Empire and wants to branch out. She scoots her bulimic form through the elevator doors sideways, determined to stay at him until he bleeds grief, and that way she'll know she's being a good girlfriend.
Lily is fumbling and wrestling and chucking bags and coats left and right in that closet where she drunkenly hid herself at Thanksgiving, and eventually stashed THE LETTER in Maureen's coat while Maureen was wandering her home for hours and hours unattended. Rufus is all excited about some stupid co-op meeting because he barely gets out of the house anymore because he hasn't discovered his place among the trophy wives and yoga ladies and doesn't even know a good prescriber or plastic surgeon's name yet so he has no social capital. He can tell Lily's fretting about something, probably her whore daughter, and offers to represent her at the meeting -- which Lily is both grateful and nasty about, because it's not like he has anything else to do and she's sort of starting to hate him.
She realizes how she just ground his manhood into the cement PRADA floor and turns it into lauds for his commitment to their family that apparently takes up all his time... Which would be fine except she's not busy -- her professional life seems to be basically signing things a couple times a week in the comfort of her home -- and their children are: 1) A business magnate who lives in an honest to goddamn castle, 2) Tramping around Long Island having been evicted from the house, 3) Living both in DUMBO and NYC. Leaving 4) and 5) who are respectively a drug dealer and Eric van der Woodsen, who was raised by wolves and is doing just fine without their asses like always. So the question is really what the fuck do either of them do all day, besides chase each other around the house whining suspiciously?
On Lily's agenda today is locating THE LETTER and getting 6) Rufus out of her hair for five seconds so he doesn't figure out whatever terrible thing she's done this time. That's all she's got going on. So she literally puts his coat in his hands, pats the top of his stupid head, and sends him out to do a nonsense job that even trophy wives consider stupid. Then she sighs, because self-destructive and mysteriously busy all the time is a lot of work.
Blair doesn't care about Charlie's dumb plans or his childish attempt to be bad-ass; she just wants him to feel his feelings and be sad today so she can do for him what they do for each other. But Charlie's not having it; he's no longer satisfied with the successes of his Empire and wants to branch out. She scoots her bulimic form through the elevator doors sideways, determined to stay at him until he bleeds grief, and that way she'll know she's being a good girlfriend.
Lily is fumbling and wrestling and chucking bags and coats left and right in that closet where she drunkenly hid herself at Thanksgiving, and eventually stashed THE LETTER in Maureen's coat while Maureen was wandering her home for hours and hours unattended. Rufus is all excited about some stupid co-op meeting because he barely gets out of the house anymore because he hasn't discovered his place among the trophy wives and yoga ladies and doesn't even know a good prescriber or plastic surgeon's name yet so he has no social capital. He can tell Lily's fretting about something, probably her whore daughter, and offers to represent her at the meeting -- which Lily is both grateful and nasty about, because it's not like he has anything else to do and she's sort of starting to hate him.
She realizes how she just ground his manhood into the cement PRADA floor and turns it into lauds for his commitment to their family that apparently takes up all his time... Which would be fine except she's not busy -- her professional life seems to be basically signing things a couple times a week in the comfort of her home -- and their children are: 1) A business magnate who lives in an honest to goddamn castle, 2) Tramping around Long Island having been evicted from the house, 3) Living both in DUMBO and NYC. Leaving 4) and 5) who are respectively a drug dealer and Eric van der Woodsen, who was raised by wolves and is doing just fine without their asses like always. So the question is really what the fuck do either of them do all day, besides chase each other around the house whining suspiciously?
On Lily's agenda today is locating THE LETTER and getting 6) Rufus out of her hair for five seconds so he doesn't figure out whatever terrible thing she's done this time. That's all she's got going on. So she literally puts his coat in his hands, pats the top of his stupid head, and sends him out to do a nonsense job that even trophy wives consider stupid. Then she sighs, because self-destructive and mysteriously busy all the time is a lot of work.
In their Long Island Love Nest, Serena is rolling around in her underwear while Trip -- fully dressed, in some sort of hunting costumery -- takes calls from Barney Frank, who would like the Junior Representative from New York to celebrate his first minute in office by joining a Finance Subcommittee. I realize that it's liberal/Kennedy cachet to do the whole Democrat thing here, and I agree with you that Barney Frank is the greatest/only Democrat left, and you shouldn't go to the gay place automatically like this, but: I would love it if Trip and Serena switched places and Trip had to slowly realize he's only a pretend-congressman being used because of his total hotness and/or connection to It Girl Serena van der Woodsen. Wouldn't that blow your mind if this entire storyline were all Barney Frank's scheme to get Trip van der Bilt in bed and meet Serena? If I were Barney Frank it would be.
Serena continues rolling around in her underwear throughout the entire sign, pulling every kittenish moue and six-mile limb out of her arsenal at once because: Once you're in the Love Den, what are you supposed to do? They just look at each other like they are the most boring white people, and then Serena fully goes, "If being together means everything will fall apart, then so be it. It'll be hard, but we'll figure it out. Even if that means starting over."
This would be the moment that Trip realizes that Serena is a child and that he has made a truly dreadful fucking mistake, and that he has stepped in something so scary even those wolves we now know to have the run of Long Island wouldn't touch it. He's like, "I'm going to town for... Supplies," whatever that means, and he's got his phone out of that pocket before he even gets out of the house. Meanwhile, Serena rolls around in her underwear all alone.
As Jay-Z's "Empire State Of Mind" comes around for the first time -- imagine it as a sort of overture at this time -- Blair comes to realize that the LES property is a homeless shelter. "A) Gross, and B) Really? I'm not a huge advocate of the downtrodden, but I am a fan of not stepping on them when I'm at John Derian. If you turn these into lofts, then where are they going to live?" Charlie cares not. She calls him on his Scrooge routine and tells him grief is real and it is happening, so he strong-arms her back down the block and into a limo. "Fine. Pretend like you never get sad and all you care about is making more money. But just so we're clear, I know better. And you, Chuck Bass, are not your father." He looks hollow, and agrees. That's the point.
Meanwhile, Lily's framed gorgeously in that closet, having a headache and wondering when the bomb's going to drop. I still can't get away from the fact that S has been fucked up because Keith sent her away when she finally found him, and it seems likely that Lily was there when that happened, which means even Serena's stint as a horse rustler and Ibizan boob-flasher is not just mostly Lily's fault, but somehow directly Lily's fault. Doesn't that make sense?
Song's still going and Trip's calling somebody to come meet him on Long Island, and that somebody is clearly Maureen, who once again is going to save his stupid ass from his stupid decisions. And as cool and scary (and as talented an actor) Maureen has proven to be, you're coming up against the power of Hurricane Serena. Just rolling around in that bed in her underwear could be the butterfly-flutter that causes a tectonic shift deep in the earth and strands them in Long Island forever, and they all become werewolves and by the Three Wolf Moon Serena eats Trip's heart to gain his strength. I don't necessarily think that's what will happen? But my point is that it's Serena: You don't know where the bullet is coming from, only that it is coming. For thee.
Then it is sort of weird because guess who's talking to Charlie and congratulating him on Scrooging out? Bart Bass, who is fully a dead individual and yet puts his hand on Charlie's shoulder as though he'd just stepped out for some mean-guy cigarettes. And Charlie shakes him off, but it's hard to actually buy it when people talk to dead people because that's not actually how it works. And yes, it's a metaphor and the actual Bart was a pretty cool guy who did his best to protect his family and had emotional issues about Charlie's resemblance to his dead mother Evelyn, but this Bart is mean as hell and basically exists to tell Charlie to get hard again, to attain and stay in Empire state, and that those three little words were a secret spell that turned him into something entirely worthless. I mean, it's fine and I get it, it just seems like a kind of cheap way to cross a lot of ground at once. I guess we should be happy there's only one mean-ass ghost Bart and not the three Ghosts of Christmas What-Have-You I was afraid of.
"I Hear (Click Click Click)" by the very welcome Rosebuds plays while Jenny trots along carrying a black patent YSL Roady hobo-style bag ($1195-1795), which you have to know so that you don't assume -- which: usually a safe assumption -- that GG has suffered a stroke: "Spotted: An It Girl with an It Bag. Looks like the Roady to success is paved with Cruel Intentions..." Still ugly, but nowhere near "Little Orphan Jenny needs a Daddy Warbucks that doesn't grow on a tree that grows in Brooklyn" territory, plus bonus CI reference, since that's the movie we always used to watch to quell our GG cravings before this show existed and our cravings had no name. ("You could be a model. It's too bad you're not sexy!")
The Handmaiden that wears Blue calls the purse a "baby" and the one in Purple starts crying and shit and they talk about how the waiting list is still waiting because it's not in stores yet. Which would all be very amazing if this exact same thing hadn't happened, oh, two or three weeks ago when Blair made the acquaintance of that awesome prostitute, pretty much verbatim. At least this time they're not saying that egregious fashionista crap, and none of them are named Brandeis. I mean, I don't know what their names are -- Saylor, Taylor, and Baylor or something -- but that would be pushing it.
Kyler and Tyler are like, "So lucky to be Lily Bass's daughter!" And Jenny points out that her name's Humphrey now, like that's something to be goddamn proud of, and that anyway she has her own secret connections. Then Schuyler comes walking up all in Green and she's got the same bag and isn't that cute and they're twinkie-twins and Jenny tells her she can shove that Roady right up her bodhi if she thinks she's getting away with stepping on Queen J's style, and sends her across the street to be lonely and fashionable. Everybody's sad because it was a Christmas gift from her Mom and Jenny is being unreasonable, but then she offers to let Huey and Dewey touch her bag and they have orgasms.
Around the corner, Heather Green is like, "That was totally humiliating," because it turns out the whole intense purse thing is Eric van der Woodsen's latest evil plot to bring revolution to the proletariat. Horrible Kira adds nothing as usual to this scene. But the plan is solid: Use Saylor (who's the prettiest one, that looks like Vanessa) to illustrate the essential unfairness of Jenny's rule and cause an uprising, then install Saylor as the new Queen and go back to not caring about any of this shit. Eric mumbles darkly about "Phase II," wherein more bullshit will happen with stupid-looking purses.
Guess what Dan's talking about? His threesome. And guess who is listening because he is stoned? Nate Archibald. "Your ex-girlfriend that I'm in love with? Well, I'm totally in love with her." Nate's like, "Awesome, I vaguely recollect these people that we're talking about. Go for it bro!" He explains that Paul Hoffman, Vanessa's homosexual doddering old-man pretend-boyfriend, has nothing on Dan. Dan disagrees, because Paul Hoffman is a "handsome" guy, a sophomore like that matters in college, and has a lot in common with Vanessa. "He's a douche," Nate says. Which is the thing that he has in common with Vanessa.
Nate explains that Dan needs to man up and go to war with Hoffman for Vanessa, or move on to a "palate cleanser." (Why Nate, you dirty boy!) Dan is amenable to either, as any sane person would be, but then Vanessa comes into the Bleecker with that Willa Weinstein (gross) to invite Dan to a "writer's retreat" (grosser) with a hot tub (grossest) and Paul Hoffman (mostest grossest). Dan turns them down because who wants to hot tub with Paul Hoffman besides dumb-ass Vanessa, but Nate tells him this is the perfect opportunity to do either of the things they just talked about.
Dan can go to war -- "You can box Paul out of the hot tub," Nate says, still trying to make fetch happen with that fucked-up phrase -- or get his palate cleansed by Willa. Nate unconvincingly discusses Willa's charms (cute; crazy because she's a drama major) and then fully yells Willa's name, pretending to be Dan for like the fiftieth time on this show. They're always being each other. Willa is all over it and talks with that concussed affectation of hers about something, I don't know what, and then Nate says in a strange burpy voice, "You're welcome." Nate Archibald is so great.
Holland Kemble, a hot and crazy lady, welcomes Rufus to the Fifth Wives' Club meeting, and in a little bit of writerly shorthand informs Rufus of several facts: His manhood means nothing, he is a trophy wife, everybody hates their husbands, Rufus has nothing to live for, everybody's husband is cheating on them, and Holland Kemble is a crazy person: "We all sacrifice our independence for love. At first it seems totally worth it. It's just later after you've given everything up that you realize you have nothing left to offer." She and Rufus join the table, where lots of faded flowers just like him remember the place their souls used to be, and try to fill that area with Prosecco.
(Did you ever think to yourself, "I would be the greatest trophy wife"? I think about this literally all the time. I mean, I have no shame and I have no real interests. I have my art of course, but that's a time-honored tradition among the secretly whores. My teeth are good, I love kids, I'm nice to wives, I don't spend a lot of money and I am way too fascinated by myself to blab much in the way of other people's dark secrets. I can barely get up the energy most days to react to, like, insults. Now taking applications. I would alternately enjoy being the plaything in a high-powered political family saga situation. This is one of the few ways, as we'll see, that Serena and I differ: She's got all that self-respect.)
Whilst rolling around in bed in her underwear, Serena calls up Trip to ask him where the groceries at, because when you're a hoss you gotta fuel the machine. He lies and says that he's meeting with Grandfather, who is there to advise him on his ridiculous problems. In fact he is meeting with Maureen so she can save him from the mess he managed to make of his life given about six seconds unattended. He mealymouths some crap she'll appreciate about how he relies on her and is such a mess and whatever, and she gives him some marblemouthed pep talk that relies mostly on any of that being remotely true, and then he hangs up on her with a gotcha-type "Thank you for understanding I'll see you tonight" that gives Serena pause for like one second before she continues her scientific experiment of seeing how many blankets she can pile on herself in order to stay comfy without putting on any clothes at all.
Maureen's on the side of the road with him, having driven his adorable sporty car to the meetup, and explains that their plan now is to talk Serena into accepting being his mistress. That way Trip gets to be with S and gets to stay a Congressman, while Maureen gets to keep her whole wife position. It's clear that she married him because she loved him, and is now settling, but -- wearing a spooky and hideous twisted swirling mesmerist tartan hat -- figures Serena's just a phase anyway, which she obviously is. Trip gets defensive about how he totally totally loves Serena infinity no takebacks, and M's like, "Um, okay. So anyway, I'm going to go talk to her and you take your adorable quilted hunting jacket out of here for awhile, and at the end I will have talked her into being your mistress and a total embarrassment for everybody."
The Ghost of Christmas Bass watches Charlie drink and congratulates him on making the homeless even more homeless, and Charlie tries to get some ethical wiggle room, but Bart ain't having it, and furthermore is just totally disappointed by everything Charlie's done in the last year because it's not enough, because it's never going to be enough. "You opened your heart to Blair, and it made you weak. You cannot be one person at work and another one at home. If you're soft, you're soft. And well, let's face it: You're soft. 'I love you, too,'" he giggles, and Charlie slams the door behind him when he goes.
The House of Yes: Serena sits in a lovely window seat in a dusty room where all the furniture is covered, finally having managed to put on some clothes, and of course it only took her about ten minutes before she thought of a reason to call poor fucking Nate. She asks him how to turn the heat back on, and they talk about how she boxed him out at Thanksgiving when he totally laid it on the line with her, but luckily he barely remembers that because he's Nate, and although he cannot tell her how to operate the heat -- there's a reason they call it a "summer" house -- he can offer her some alternatives to being antsy and hungry and bored and calling to torture him every five minutes.
Maureen immediately appears like a gothic mystery ghost and Serena tells her to get the fuck out. "You have no reason to be here!" she yells, because there is nothing ironic about Serena and she can't understand that of the two of them, she's the one that doesn't belong there. Maureen explains how Serena is going to be the Marilyn to her Jackie, and that she's agreeing to this because Trip cares about her, but all Serena can hear is that her truly fantastical imaginary life of "starting over" with a disgraced Congressman at eighteen years of age, which will never happen, might not happen.
Maureen assures S that Trip is on board with the plan, and then seals the deal by producing THE LETTER. If S doesn't go along with it, Rufus will find out that Lily spent the night in Keith's hotel room at the end of the summer. And though THE LETTER is vague as to what happened that night, nobody's really considering alternate possibilities: "Knowing Lily, I think we can assume the worst. I'm pretty sure Rufus will." Serena does so as well, is sickened and can't speak, so Maureen gives her a bright and shiny goodbye and flies off through the night in a chariot made of Executive Realness. Empire state is where Maureen lives.
Charlie's drunk himself into bed, fully clothed and on top of the covers, when Blair comes looking for him -- he's missed their lunch date and is clearly in the quickest downward spiral ever accomplished on this show -- and he looks at her angrily through his fingers and tells her about a million times to fuck off, and every single thing she says cuts way too close to his issues ("I know how hard it was for you to let your guard down," she says tearfully, "To let me in") so Charlie rolls his eyes all around and then -- haunted by Bart through a heavily-glazed French door -- drunkenly tells her to GTFO. She finally gets that he's going to a very dark place, and leaves to figure out another scheme, and Bart's like, "Well done."
The Departed is about a gangster that pretends to be a cop and a cop that pretends to be a gangster, both learning how to be a man from the same mobster father figure, and it gets so messed up with them trying to figure out the other one's identity that they pretty much lose sight of their own entirely. It's very good. And I think right now to be Charlie Trout is to be doing both at the same time: Watching himself crack the case of himself while trying desperately to cover up the crime of being himself, and wanting to put a hit out on anybody that starts to clue in, and trying to figure out which parts of his father are a villain and which parts are safe to take with him. In which case, he is lucky to have the van der Woodsens on his side, but about ten times luckier to have Blair Waldorf watching his back.
Eric tries to explain to Baylor and Taylor how Jenny's reign as Queen is a grotesque aristocracy mockery and how Blair was never this drunk with power, but just as the worm is turning Jenny appears with two more Roadies ear-marked with Blue and Purple ribbon for her two Handmaidens, explaining that her banishment of Saylor was punishment for ruining the Christmas surprise. "OMGBGE!" they scream -- "Ach Mein Gott Ist Tot Jenseits von Gut und Böse Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft!" -- and there are many hugs, and the girls run away but not too far so that Eric can have a whispered aside about how three Roadies is the same amount of cash as a SmartCar, which not even Lily would shell out for purses. Jenny rolls her eyes and runs off with her Handmaidens to buy quote "matching lipstick." Matching what, pray tell? The black patent-leather bags? Each other's lipstick? Their monochromatic jeweltones?
Lily pours Blair some tea while she explains her issue: "Chuck's having such a difficult day, and since I'm sure you are, too, I thought you might have some words of advice. Cyrus says it's an essential part of life, honoring the dead. But Chuck refuses to visit Bart's grave even today." Lily's triumphant-slash-oh fuck reaction to figuring out that she's completely forgotten her husband's death is perfect in every single way, like she's playing Pictionary: "...On the...? Anniversary of his death!"
Blair continues making Lily feel greater and greater amounts of asshole while simultaneously downloading tons of rehash exposition of stuff we haven't talked about in a long time so we can adjust continuity retroactively in a sec: "Do you know that Chuck's never been to his mother's grave once? I can understand not going on the date she died -- it is his birthday, after all -- but Bart refused to tell him where Evelyn was even buried. Said it was morbid for a child to visit a cemetery..." Lily drinks and stares and thinks about what a dick she is until Blair shouts her name like a misbehaving child: "Lily! Are you listening." Lily swears she was, and promises to visit Charles immediately.
Blair thanks her and stands to leave just as Rufus is coming back from his pretend life, and explains to him about Bart's death anniversary, so Rufus assumes that Lily's fretting has to do with that, which he loves to the max because it means he gets to be a strong husband and hand out liberal hugs, which is his favorite activity. Meanwhile, Lily just gets shiftier and shiftier because now she's got three husbands having teatime in the middle of her life, like Chrimbo ghosts or wolves, and she doesn't know how she's going to get past them without hitting at least one of them, and if she does it's going to be Rufus that gets run over, because he is asking for it every second of every single day.
Serena has given Nate about three seconds to himself before calling again to complain about the horrible mess she is perpetrating right in his face and all over his life, tarnishing his ideas of his cousin and ruining his family's name yet again and asking him to please give her sympathy for this despite being in love with her. But again, it's Nate so it's fine. She goes on and on about how Trip rules and Maureen's evil, and finally Nate advances the hypothesis that maybe Maureen is not entirely lying. "Why would you say that? I've risked everything to be with Trip. I have to have faith!" Oh, girl. "Your grandfather just loves to talk! Trip will be home soon, and he'll explain everything." Home, Serena says, just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. But then again, it's not her fault she never learned the actual definition of the word.
Nate -- who is secretly already halfway to Long Island as they're talking -- finally tells her Grandfather is in Bermuda, his mother has confirmed it, and God knows what that means about Trip and his many ways of fucking up. Serena stares at herself in the mirror and goes completely cold when he says this. Whatever Empire state entails, this is the opposite of that: She just vacates her body entirely. "Will you excuse me?" she says quietly. "I have to go."
Dan meets up with Willa for their retreat, but she's all alone lighting sexy candles and wearing an ugly gold shirt and talking retarded and it turns out she told Paul and Vanessa to leave them alone so she closes the door and shows Dan this performance art video -- "It's kind of Karen Finley meets Daryl Hannah in Legal Eagles," the dear thing says -- but without clothing, Dan immediately notes. "You're naked there," he stutters, while the video moans, and Willa smiles uncannily like a young Jodie Foster before shushing first her own lips and then his. Ambushed by a crazy drama student! Who has not been there? They are the perfect couple. He likes girls that can't enunciate, and they are both into pointlessly complicated, weird scenarios.
Lily brings flowers to Charlie, and he stands over his pool table without looking at her, staring at the plans for the lofts he intends to build in place of the shelter. He says he's too busy to deal with her, and she gives him great Rhodes about "Well, wherever you're going, will you put it off for a few hours and come with me to the cemetery?" he says he can't, and she comes closer: "We both know that your father was a complicated man. And I honestly think that he thought it was just easier to be alone." Charlie finally looks at her. "And you know what? There are moments that I think I agree with him." Like today, for example. "But we're not that way, I'm afraid. We need each other. And right now, I need you to do this with me." Charlie sincerely apologizes, saying that the way he can honor his father is through work. "Sometimes we need to do something to show people how we feel, even when they're not here to see it," she says, and he nods sadly and then just before he thinks of something else to say, the phone rings. She takes it behind the glazed door, handing over flowers that do not impress him at all.
Serena is packing and freaking out, and immediately starts apologizing for running off with a married congressman and dropping THE LETTER bomb like she did, but Lily doesn't care, she's just worried and happy that S is finally reaching out, because as usual it was only her intention to protect Serena and that's the only way she knows how to do it. "I don't need you to explain. Right now I just need my Mom, okay?" She sits on the bed and quickly explains that Maureen has THE LETTER, which almost kills Lily, and Charlie listening on the other side of the door as she stammers about how she should have told Rufus immediately about her little trip to Sandiego, and they agree that Serena should head home immediately so they can work everything out.
Charlie is sad to see Lily go, but after all Serena is just a little bit more of her child than he is, and Rufus is just a little bit more of her husband than Bart ever was, but hey, maybe Charlie can go to the cemetery all alone, "for both of us," which is wrong, and when she's gone he just tosses the flowers in the garbage: "They should be yellow roses. They were my mother's favorite." Which I mean, those are there for the end of the episode, but the whole point of that was that Lily didn't even know what kind of flowers would best suit Bart's grave and just got a random arrangement, but either way why would she bring his dead wife's favorite flowers? There had to be a better way to get all that done.
So now Serena is stomping out into the brisk winter air with her bags, apparently under the impression that she can just hail a cab or something, and Trip begs her to stay, and she yells "Liar!" which is kind of awesome. She gets in his face and says, "Tell me it isn't true. Tell me that you're getting a divorce, that you spent the entire day talking to your grandfather, and that you didn't send Maureen here, and Nate is just jealous..." All of those things are true. She heads off into the night like a brave Jack London character, and he waits a second before her toes get cold before offering to drive her into the city. She acquiesces, but says he can only drive and not talk to her. "I'm done talking." His Crazy Eyes are very sad, and then the whole Raveonettes thing plays out again in a quick montage: Driving, music, pissiness, wolves, crashing; Charlie ignoring Blair's umpteenth phone call; Blair getting more and more terrified for him in the NYU dorm hallway; Serena's brains falling out of her head, Trip shitting himself and immediately calling Maureen to save him once again.
By the time Nate pulls up to the accident, there are cops everywhere and they're loading Serena into the ambulance. Concussed, she just keeps asking for Trip, who is nowhere to be seen, and her last statement is that Trip was driving before they take her away. Nate stares from the ambulance to the crushed Land Rover to the hole Serena's head made in the windshield to the fact that Trip was driving and is no longer there to the ambulance to the crushed Land Rover to the hole Serena's head made in the windshield, and slooooowly puts it together and calls Trip immediately, hissing "Trip? I need to see you. Right now. You meet me at the hospital or I'm going to the cops."
Lily comes home to Rufus cooking up a nice Bolognese (her favorite, remember): "I figured you could use some comfort food today." She asks if the kids are home and he cutely says they aren't yet, and he gets worried when she says she has something to tell him, but before she can there's a phone call from the 516 and then as her face falls and she gets very scared very fast, "Right Where They Left" by White Rabbits starts playing, which in this context is an explanation of how Trip is pretty great in some ways but kind of a cocksucker in other ways, and then there's another incredible montage.
The ceiling's falling down around your feet
Right where they left you
Right where they left you on the floor
Dan's not feeling Willa or her disgusting synthetic fabrics, and as he's begging off with every possible excuse to disentangle himself from her mess, his phone rings and he's entirely grateful for that, until he answers it.
The smoke's rising outside your room
Where you let grass grow under your feet
Right where they left you
Right where I left you
Dan catapults himself to Blair's room, where she's just taken a shower, and without even thinking she grabs a robe and runs off down the hallway with him, confused Vanessa in tow, Paul Hoffman left far behind. I know the group -- which, like it or not, should and does include Abrams at this point -- mostly only get into attack formation when Serena's imperiled, but that's only because Blair's so rarely imperiled by things you can actually fight.
Oh darling I love you
But this just might be
A feeling that just comes and goes
Don't say I didn't tell you so
Charlie finally answers his phone, snarling at Blair until the nightmare comes true and his face goes slack with fear: Not again, not now, not tonight. Empire state is just a memory of a thing that doesn't matter anymore. He tells his driver to hit the LIE, rerouting from the shelter foreclosure meeting, and Ghost Bart gets so anxious about this that Charlie actually screams at him to shut up, scaring the driver. He pulls himself together for the most part, embarrassed, enough to shoot off a tenderly hilarious, bitchy "Stop looking at me."
Nate grabs Trip outside the Nassau County ER, pointing out that he not only abandoned Serena to the literal wolves, but also moved her into the driver's seat, which is like the only no-no you can expect Nate to remember. That's such a Maureen move, jostling Serena's spine like that. Trip whines that he called 911, and Nate explains that not only is that a joke, but also welcome to how he no longer hero-worships Trip. Because fucking around on his wife with the sudden love of his life and acceding to everything Grandfather ever asked about him didn't do the trick. He assures Trip that he'll be speaking with the police quite openly about this unforgivable shit, and Maureen once again appears from the shadows. She's getting really good at that.
"...The truth is that Trip was with me." Trip is like, "I told you to stay in the car! I want to see my girlfriend and everybody keeps bothering me!" and Maureen informs him that he is not in charge and will never be in charge again, tells Nate that Grandfather William has Trip's back on this and has the Nassau County police in his pocket anyway, and that nobody will believe Serena's story because she is a drunken whore. There's a certain resigned sadness to her when she heads back to the car, summoning Trip with a whistle, and he almost follows before coming back to beg Nate with Crazy Sad Eyes to help him get in to see Serena. Nate drops him with a punch, because it's been months since we saw him pop somebody's clogs, and Maureen is just disgusted by everything, and GG calls Nate a hero, and it's all sort of amazing, especially when you consider how Trip and Maureen are the Ghosts of Christmas Future of if Nate and Blair had stayed together, and how much neater Nate's become this year than ever before.
Serena immediately apologizes to her mother when she wakes up, and they agree that Rhodes Women have to learn the hard way, and then Lily fudges around about how she tasked Rufus with getting Serena's "health insurance papers" out of her desk before coming out to see them. This information is prompted by S asking if Rufus is there, which my loving heart would like to think is because S is fond of Rufus but is obviously just Serena's shorthand for asking if Rufus has left Lily yet. Lily stammers and acts guilty and Serena gets disgusted about how no matter how often the entire UES screams at her about making the right decision, Lily is still weaker than she is, and fully turns her eyes to the ceiling and asks to be left alone. Lily leaves, guilty, and pats Blair on the arm on her way out.
Serena's overjoyed to see Blair -- "Nice outfit," they giggle at each other, not mentioning Blair's ongoing houndstooth issues -- but Blair's had such a motherfucker of a day and seeing the person you love most in a hospital bed is always going to be like getting hit with a sledgehammer in your guts, so the whole time Serena's being a sweetheart Blair looks like she's going to break into a million pieces and she finally grabs her and holds onto her so tight, crying and unable to speak, because it was bad enough when she was just losing Charlie Trout.
Like a wall of stars
We are ripe to fall
Charlie smells the hospital smell, and sees someone who is dying. He's pushing against something real, trying to get down the hallway to his sister. Serena was wearing a ballroom dress the night Bart died; she rushed him down the hall and into Bart's room. Lily was wearing a white coat over her dress and the doctor was explaining to her that Bart was gone. And in that moment, Charlie got scared, all the way down. He teared up and pushed Serena away when she begged him to stay with her and Lily, with his family, but he couldn't be there when they switched Bart off, so he ran. And he kept running, across the sea, and when he came back he was broken. And they were never his family in that way again.
Charlie falls down, against the wall, sliding, drunk; he curls into himself. Blair approaches, watching him carefully; there's an animal in there. She knows, because she's one too. She sits quietly with him while he breathes. Fresh terror makes him jump: "How's Serena?" he gasps, and she almost smiles. Serena's fine. "Lily's here? Eric's here?" She nods. Everyone's here. He was so scared.
And if you are a ghost
I'll call your name again...
"My father always thought I was weak. And in the moment that mattered most, I was. I couldn't be there when he, uh..." Blair tears up; he's left a space in the sentence, a blank he can't fill in. "I left. Ran away. I've been pushing myself to prove him wrong. And pushing you away." He's sad. Fuck suicide.
"I don't think you ran away because you couldn't handle death," Blair says quietly. "I think it's because you couldn't handle feelings." Charlie swallows. Her words are like punches thrown, but feel good too. He still doesn't have the hang of it, hearing people love you out loud. "But you're not like that anymore. You're strong." He breathes out, quickly: Too much. Too big. "You carry people. You carry me." Charlie looks down; it's like a punch to the chest. "You're becoming a man in a way that your father never was."
Real love doesn't make you act crazy. The reason we act crazy when we are infatuated is because we want it to be real so badly -- we want to jump over the distance of time that makes real love what it is. Serena wanted to catapult herself into the future, and Trip wanted so badly to believe that he wasn't a congressional cliché. That's the trick of romance: The crazy infatuation love is so much brighter and turns so many more corners so quickly. Much more exciting than the real thing. But real love, at its finest, makes you feel like you are bursting open, like this: Like hearing a beautiful song, or reading a beautiful poem, or hearing a wonderful story, and the tears come and you don't know precisely why. It doesn't hurt; it hurts in a way that isn't hurting, that we don't have a word for. Largeness. Enormity. It takes a real strength, a real grace, to stand up straight in the face of that. Especially if you're not familiar with it.
Blair takes his hand, slowly. Carefully. He is a wild beast. "Come. Let's say goodbye." She stands, and he follows awkwardly, and sniffs, and accepts the gift. He leans on her, and he is very beautiful. They pulled a sheet over Bart's head, and he was gone. And that hospital room became just another hospital room. Even today. He breathes in, so hard, and holds onto her as they make their way back to the family. And into her hair, Chuck Bass whispers his thanks.
Eric slams his fists against a vending machine and Jenny nervously offers him coffee and he snaps at her and she gets all prissy about "I was just offering," and he snips at her that he was "just" declining, and then simultaneously they both ask for a détente, and immediately debrief about the YSL purse thing. "I'm assuming you set Sawyer [Sawyer!] up with that bag," she says, and then it turned out that he overheard a call Jenny made, but she knew he was listening, so she already had bags in hand for Jane and Carmen [Jane and Carmen!] when Eric and Kira moved to Phase II. Which, they congratulate themselves on being so clever and Machiavellian and she gives a cute ankledip and then throws her arms across his shoulder, to go look for tacky Get Well Soon crap they can buy for Serena with her drug pusher money.
Rufus, having finally found or not found Serena's "health insurance papers," is on his way out of PRADA when Maureen appears -- time and space apply to Maureen van der Bilt even less than the rest of these people, she's constantly teleporting and timewarping all over the damn place, it's awesome -- and hands over THE LETTER. Why, I can't say. I guess because now that she and her husband have conspired to cripple her there's no need to keep Serena in the loop of her machinations. (That's sort of the soap apex. Like, even on Passions it was always leading up to the paralysis and once you were in a wheelchair they'd leave you alone for a month or two. Melrose Place, slightly different story in that you might end up blind and in a wheelchair, but in that case they'd do the sensible thing: Toss you in the ocean and watch you float out to sea.)
Vanessa is a charming fucker. "...I mean, imagine if Serena would have hit her head a little harder, or the car rolled, or the..." Dan finally turns to her with that Face of his and, perhaps just to shut her creeper ass up, confesses his love. She nods and says she loves him too, no big whoop, and then notices him continuing to make weird faces. She asks why he's spazzing and he strongly implies that he love-loves her, and she shuts him down with a quickness: "Dan? Sometimes when people are under a lot of emotional stress, they say things that they don't really mean." Poor D-Bag is just crawling out of his skin uncomfortable at this point, but accepts the smackdown and mumbles to himself for a bit before Vanessa huffs off to check on Serena and get away from his constantly escalating needs. "Empire State Of Mind" starts again, but it's used in this amazingly mean way that lends everything a very "Winter Finale, See You In March" vibe.
There's nothing you can't do!
Now you're in New York!
These streets will make you feel brand new!
The lights will inspire you!
Let's hear it for New York!
New York, New York!
The kids come laughing into PRADA, Lily calling for Rufus, but she freaks when she sees the open letter on her desk. GG: "Sinatra sings 'New York, New York, it's a hell of a town, but on the UES sometimes it just feels like Hell..." In New York!, Alicia Keys helpfully chimes in, as Lily swallows; and Rufus is meeting with Holland Kemble for advice on being a trophy wife, while she flirts and is clearly crazy; and Dan comes home to DUMBO alone once again; and Jenny sneaks out of PRADA dressed like a cat burglar; and Serena wakes from a restless sleep to see Nate in the chair by her side, smiling sleepily to herself as GG snarks that only Serena ever gets a happy ending.
It's not just Long Island that the wolves are partying these days. Damien is testy and European when Jenny finally shows up for their streetcorner meeting; they've got somewhere to be. She doesn't go into detail about her sister's political trainwreck/literal car crash, just says things are hectic. He's got the drugs on him; she asks if she can hold them, and demands to meet their connection by herself.
Chuck finally goes to see Bart's grave, yellow roses in hand, but hears a woman weeping when he's halfway there. He thinks it's Lily, but it's someone else, wearing a scarf, carrying yellow roses of her own. She looks up at his voice, recognizes him, and runs off into the forest like an insane person, leaving behind only a broken old locket, monogrammed E for Evelyn and bearing Bart's photograph, and a heaping helping of silencio.
On the one hand, I love Laura Herring and all, but I worry about taking major Jenga chunks out of Chuck's entire life like that. Hopefully she is a fake. What would be really awesome -- although less likely now that Blair's pulled him back from yet another ledge -- is if the whole Banquo's Ghost thing had hooked into what seemed like an obvious Sketchy Mom/Evil Uncle Hamlet thing again. I don't really miss Jack Bass, but I do miss having Blair and Chuck at center stage -- it's been a while -- but also, it's time for Blair to get right with her Ophelia shit already. It's not over until you tell us it's over.
So we'll see you in March, I hope you're loving this season as much as I am, and I hope your holidays are mad satisfying. You know I love you. XOXO.