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Dan and Vanessa are, I guess, both applying to the Tisch writing program, but Vanessa isn't telling anybody that. I guess because it would take away her entire persona as a guerrilla documentarian or whatever, but also because that's sort of Dan's territory. So they spend the whole episode refusing to critique each other's work, like they usually do so fearlessly, because it would interfere with their Relationship. Of course, once the truth comes out -- that they are both horrible writers, obviously, and hate each other deeply -- they are free to resume their Relationship with no ill effects. Although it seems possible (and having seen some of Dan's writing for ourselves, more than likely) that Vanessa has gotten in by episode's end, while hopefully Dan has not.
That Jenny Humphrey, she is fucking psychotic. She leverages last week's near-miss with the gang-rape to get Nate to spend his birthday with her, even though she knows full well that Serena has organized a surprise party and epic-scale game of Assassin in his honor. The full-on fake sex-trauma ways she jerks everybody around to keep Nate in her orbit are legendary, as is the lunge-and-kiss that finally causes Nate to sit up and take notice that he's getting played. By the end, having given it a serious go, Little J gives up on him, at least for the moment.
Eric van der Woodsen is back from having fucked Japan, and gets an adorable new boyfriend named Elliott, whom I hope -- as the only attractive non-Vanderbilt boyfriend on this show ever -- stays around forever. But probably he is a serial killer or somebody's love child or something. Maybe both, like last time... Oh, and Dorota super annoying and get engaged to large blonde Russian for make baby not be bastard.
The lion's share of the episode, however, belongs to the deeply heartbreaking story of how Chuck sells Blair's ass to his uncle Jack in order to win back his Empire. The reveal and complexity of this thread throughout the episode are such that it's difficult to do justice, but: Blair weathers several creepy come-ons from Jack Bass before Chuck flips out on her, having lost the hotel forever. She sneaks away during the Assassin game, convinced that she's doing the right thing...
Want more? The full recap starts right below!GG: "Every war has its weapons. But on the Upper East Side, the rules of battle are simple: There are no rules." Assume at every act break that there will be more weapons metaphors. So it's Nate's birthday, and I guess he's been hinting at that for awhile because now every sentence he utters from under his hair contains the word. I never expected to share birthday proximity with Nathaniel Archibald but I can't say I'm disappointed. Serena brushes him off, explaining that the handcuffs and various other domination devices that she's laying out all over the room are in fact Blair and Chuck's dirty sex toys. She'd be a lot more believable if she weren't wearing a pleather tee.
It's fairly hot. So N gets all over S's business and feels the knife holster on her garter, which she unconvincingly blows off as a cell phone accessory, and then she blows him off again because she has to go shopping with Blair. Birthday sex denied! He secretly hopes she's taking him to a Knicks game for his surprise, but come on: This is a Serena Plan. It's going to be outrageously unbelievable. The Frick benefit, in fact, which is for "Asian horned toads. They're in danger?" she says weakly, and he laughs. Apparently, the big lie is that Chuck bought a table at this thing for the Asian horned toads, and therefore birthday is postponed until the weekend. "And you're going to lunch with your grandfather. That's festive!" Yeah, they really know how to blow it out collegiate style, over in East Egg.
Nate retires to cry in the shower, hurting Serena's heart, and Dorota sweeps in full of racist babies and secrets: "I feel very bad not wishing him happy birthday! Or bringing him Polish breakfast sausage in bed!" There's much broken English that gets us to the fact that Dorota has stolen Nate's phone so that he doesn't find out that they've actually planned a dorky game of Assassin in his honor. Which is truly the perfect gift for Nate! Good call. Serena's adorable, acting all faux-serious about the secrets and assassinations, but when she leaves Dorota gets real annoying all on her own.
Jack is apparently selling everything in Chuck's suite -- including that Lady Gaga/Georgina/Serena portrait with the giant glasses that hangs over everything he does -- on eBay. I guess so. There's a long conversation about how Jack is all about the takedown of Chuck's beloved Things, the horror of Chuck's new domesticated lifestyle, and a lot of other obsessive shit that only makes sense because Jack is always about these things, like a gross goateed angel on the shoulder. "Young Chuck in love. Beautiful. And sad. Bart always said you were soft." He keeps working that angle for awhile, and even says he doesn't mind that Lily's in charge of Bass Ind. since it's doing so well. But then why? Who knows. Ask Ophelia. "It's an interesting feeling holding another man's prized possession. You wonder how far he'll go to get it back, if there's anything he wouldn't do..." Chuck, of course, immediately offers to do "anything," and Jack moves in for the kill.
On first viewing, this story is complicated and Gothic and weird, and it's oddly successful, even heartbreaking, but just so we can track the actual story that we don't learn about until the end: It's at this point that Jack asks for Blair in exchange for the Empire, and Chuck totally agrees to it. He doesn't want to, but only because he doesn't want to choose. So he gives Jack all the secret keys to Blair -- the way "supportive girlfriend" has become her mission in life, the fear that she won't live up to their promises to each other, her willingness to prove how low she'll go to prove her love -- and starts making all his excuses in advance, which he'll spew all over her at episode's end in one fell, craven swoop.
But it's interesting, because there's been a whole "game on" thing with them all season where basically, they've done this. She made him kiss boys, and girls, and told S like three times to keep the romance going by acting shady and gross with Dalgaard, and then S passed that infection to Vanessa which resulted in nightmares last week. But the game is the same game, which is proving your devotion by displacing your physical affections onto a third party for mutual personal gain. And just like Chuck didn't mind kissing that cute boy -- only cared about the manipulations and creepiness by which Blair cheated the game in her favor -- she's going to be more upset by the totally outrageous betrayal that Chuck is right now convincing himself is necessary.
And from his viewpoint, as gross as this is and as major, it does make sense: Jack needs to feel like he holds all the cards in order for this transaction to take place, but Jack also knows Chuck and Blair really well. So the only option, since Chuck is out of options, is for Chuck to just hand him all the cards, and then pick up the mess later. But since Jack doesn't actually care about sleeping with Blair, there's the real level on which the game is being played, that Chuck's too freaked to even see, whereby Chuck fooling Blair is the entire point. He's using the Chuck/Blair propaganda against them, because he knows for all their promises and indulgences, nobody is actually this cartoonish. Reality.
They let the genie out of the bottle a long time ago, which means there actually are consequences, but they're so addicted to their images of themselves, alone and together, that they will both fall into the trap of thinking they're stronger than they are. Which is a neat reversal of the usual Jack MO, which is making Chuck think he's weaker than he really is, but leads to the same place: Reiteration of the essential unlovability of Chuck. Which, along with all the weird sex stuff between Jack and Chuck and the continual bringing-up of Bart and the weird claims that Chuck is somehow illegitimate in his filial sensibility, that makes me think for real that Jack is either Chuck's dad or his brother. More likely, after this week, the latter. Which will do, again, hella to redeem the Evelyn/Elizabeth storyline, because you have to do something to reestablish Bart's weird love slash resentment of Chuck that's still one of the tentpoles of the character, and honestly, the series.
Eric's looking at Facebook and all the friends he made in Japan while Jenny (who is fantastic in this scene) and Rufus (who is Rufus in this scene) crack lovingly unrealistic -- but very good, I think, for the world and teens watching this show -- post-millennial PFLAG jokes about his whorish ways. Eric, troubled by something onscreen, frets about unfriending Ryuichi, while Rufus is concerned: Wasn't the boy he met named Hideo? Jenny and Eric explain that Hideo was a man-friend, while Ryuichi was just a boy. A boy who, like Hideo and their friends, has "a fondness for bathhouses and group photos." Eric, you are your sister's brother.
Jenny about gags at the bathhouse orgy pics, and we say Sayonara to Ryuichi-san. "Hideo was supposed to be my rebound from Jonathan. Now I need a rebound from Hideo. It's a vicious cycle!" Rufus, who should really be wearing an apron right now but instead is looking fetching in a gray v-neck sweater, assures Eric that there are "tons" of boys who'd "love" to go out with him. And as silly as that is, there's an uncomfortability to this scene that's, like, extradiagetic -- the scene supplies the weirdness to this situation that the characters do not -- that actually makes it work.
But again, heightened reality, and Eric van der Woodsen is one of the five kids on TV whose sexuality is brilliantly not an issue, and this is an amazing way to make the point. Especially after all the gorgeously partisan sniping over the last few episodes about the basic brainless inhumanity of current conservatism. Which, don't get me wrong, but in real life I'm aching for a William F. Buckley figure to fix the Right, so much so that I was honestly hoping that trashface girl Nate dated would be a conservative voice -- take it where you can get it -- and I think maybe the best way to bring the Right's brains into alignment, rather than sticking with the Palin-style/Frank Luntz/marketing genius/emotional appeal/racism/proud+stupid platform we're working now, is to get as nasty as them. Just for a little while.
Anyway, poor old Jonathan and Eric are the only boys of St. Jude's who are even out, which is a funny statement considering the amount of Belle & Sebastian cocksucking I guarantee goes on at that school, but then there's that Peter Carey Petersen-inflected word "out," which implies an either/or, which is not how things work at St. Jude's and never has, any more than you could find one straight man, by American standards, in the whole of the Home Counties. Or Austin. Honestly when I hear the word "out" it seems antiquated, do you know what I mean? Like when my cab driver asked if I was "Family" and I was like, "You mean like in high school? Like a Friend of Dorothy? Okay, Armistead."
Not to downplay the remarkable psychological physics and bravery of Coming Out, which to a near-statistic like Eric was clearly a huge deal... So I guess "like in high school" covers it, yeah. It's just not hugely reminiscent of my own experience so it sounds weird to hear people talk about it in those terms, like a Tom of Finland boner opening up about his leather-clad situation. This was my coming-out conversation, which I had thrice in one week with Mom, Stepmom, and my Dad:
"Are you gay?" Um, clearly. Incandescently. "Are you engaging in high-risk behaviors?" You mean like falling in love? "No, like JT Leroy." Um, boundaries. Also, I carry hand sanitizer on my person. Fuck, you think I'm blowing truckers now? Wait, that sounds totally awesome, actually. [Still does, don't lie.] Let me just finish reading this Elfquest comic book and I'll drop all the bi-curious parochial-school ass I'm pulling so I can have weird conversations with forty-year-old queers about their disturbing childhoods. And then we can do it. "Quit." I mean, what could be better than some methed-up old man's old balls all over me? "This conversation is over." Thank you for playing.
"I should just bury myself in work, like Jenny." Jenny busily works, works, works, and there's a neat moment: "I like working for Eleanor. I don't need a guy to make me feel fulfilled. Especially when he's unavailable..." And off that ellipse, Eric perfectly says in ref to his internetting, "Oh, poor Nate..."
Which is hilarious, because poor Nate indeed, but also for Jenny's reaction ("WHAAAT?"), and the chemistry and great line-readings from the two of them. We miss Eric when he's gone. So the real reason for Poor Nate is the email Eric just got from S, reminding everybody to blow off N's birthday -- Rufus is shocked -- so they can do their surprise party Chez Waldorf. Jenny, Nate-seeking missile that she is, immediately begins plotting: "What's Nate supposed to do all day? Just sit at home and think everyone forgot his birthday? And let me blow him? And spend five whole hours thinking his girlfriend is a bitch? And then we get married? And I have to go to the fabric store! Immediately!" She runs off, and Eric's too focused on the scary pictures of quickly unfriended Denjuro to notice what a total fakeout that was. Thank you, Mood!
Within seconds Vanessa has 1) Questioned Dan's environmentalism, vis-à-vis the amount of paper he's gone through, which 1a) Yes, Dan's on a typewriter; and 2) mentioned his killer morning breath. Where's that toothbrush. Ugh. So he's writing a one-act rather than a short story (like he got published in The New Yorker and would clearly be his pitch piece) for the Tisch Writing Program, and it's due in two days. She needles him relentlessly and they are awful, and she reminds him that their SOP has always been to show each other things as fresh as possible so they don't end up in this place. Which is very, very good advice. The second you start editing, not that I know from experience obviously, for an audience is when the words go dead -- and his words are zombies to start with. So he fusses and finally hands it over, and she 3) Tells him about his body odor, and we're done.
Jenny has aimed herself like a rocket at Nate's face, locating him by sheer psycho magic after finding him unreachable (or Latitudable) on phone. She tells him she wanted to take him to lunch, but then of course Serena is such a good girlfriend that he's probs on his way to FAO right now, and he's like, "Just me and Grandfather," and she's like, "Sad but fine," and then turns back at the door and says, "Remember my gang rape? I sure do." He sure do too. And the sick sad face she makes when he crumbles is just the scariest. Who does that?!
Although there's a thing here which is worth thinking about, which is the fairytale motif with Nate -- maybe it's meant to be just as strong and underlying as Chuck's gothic flavor, or Serena's Franco-Russian tragic romances, or Blair's double feature of Austen/Brit class comedy and her Hepburn fantasies. You had Hudson Hero, and then the outright Prince Charming thing with the wolves and punching Tripp's beautiful face, and now again you have him playing into the hero stereotype. And I guess it's always been implicit in his character, watching him bend over backwards again and again for the Captain and Anne, not to mention the Vanderbilt lineage stuff, but of course it takes Jenny's own pomo perversion to twist that story to her own ends: Nate's propaganda is just as controlling as everybody else's. Neat, right?
My favorite line from the Fabolous song that's playing while Blair and S shop? Either "Everywhere that I be feel VIP baby/ And everybody's cool, but y'all just ain't me" or "Somebody better tell 'em that we in this bitch like an unborn baby." Poetic. So B and S are up in some bitch like an unborn baby, and S is wha-whaa about lying to Nate and giving him the ol' Polish Sausage in bed, and Blair is like, "Cruel to be kind, S. Nate'll be fine." Which seriously, if it weren't Jenny it would be something else, a Rubik's Cube or a chandelier reflection on the wall, ala Pollyanna. But about Blair, he's worried about Chuck's sit-down with Jack and the guilt that comes with having pushed Chuck to lose it all "because he opened his heart to that raven-haired con artist." Specifically, we're asked to believe, the Empire is suddenly all Chuck consists of. Serena rises into the air like the Love Guru on a cloud of champagne giggles and "explains" it'll be fine because Chuck and Blair love each other, and that all she has to do is buy this random dress and this will fix the roiling madness inside of Chuck. "Empire or no Empire, Blair Waldorf loves him, and no one else can say that." Weird, right? Like buying this dress is the only thing she... Ah.
Jack materializes out of the darkness and admires B in the dress, and calls his stalking "window shopping," which works on both levels you see, and she hopes aloud that Chuck ate his lunch for breakfast, and Jack explains that all he really wants is to fuck Blair. She wavers and feels weird and maybe, possibly, wonders if Chuck agreed and Jack's here to seal the deal. Which couldn't possibly be true, she thinks and we think, but in fact it totally is, and that's brilliant. It doesn't make up for Elle or Elizabeth yet, but it's so unthinkable and hard to pull off, and this episode does, again, a great job of doing it, that I don't mind.
In fact, I go back and forth about how maybe if we'd known a bit more about the backstage goings-on, could they have found a way to make it even more powerful? Because there's shock value in the whole reveal that Chuck is complicit, but that only works if we're in B's POV, which we basically are. If you're a Chuck fan, waiting for Chuck to be involved in this episode, it's both heartbreaking and a rabbit from a hat, because of that moment when S tells him B's disappeared and he runs upstairs and finds the box, and acts like it's a shock even though the only shock is that she went through with it, which is what he wanted and what he didn't want, too.
It's nice how this show has always taken the post-DVR road of making the show, non-pejoratively, into a sort of video game: Play an episode once as Blair, and it's shocking and heartbreaking. Play it again as Chuck, knowing what we know, and it gets all the darker and sadder and nastier. Usually we get that both-ways twist with Blair, because she's having emotional shit that she doesn't even know about until the end of the episode, and then looking back every whackadoo thing she does makes total sense. And always with Lily -- and sometimes her mother, in a more Blair fashion -- because Lily's the only actual liar on the entire show.
But the Chuck/Blair relationship is so important to the show, and the insaner fans, that they generally have to play it straight, to the point of having them both say ridiculously face-front literal things all the time. To their detriment, obviously. So I think a lot of this shock value -- which turned it seems equal numbers of people off, and on -- comes out of our trust of Chuck as a reliable narrator... Just as Blair does. The reveal feels like a real reveal, a Pete Fairman murder confession unspooling, which is something this show has been lacking.
Back from break, Blair gives him a strict no ("I'd rather spend the night with the Marquis De Sade. And yes, I know he's dead") so Jack starts applying the pressure points Chuck gave him: "I'm surprised... Knowing how attached Chuck is to his hotel, what it means to him. I thought you really cared for him... Chuck opened his heart to you, and now his future lies in your hands... Well, not your hands, exactly. But you could fix this. He would never have to know." And that's... The recipe to Blair. If he'd somehow been able to throw in a reference to her Serena loyalties, that would be literally everything that makes Blair, Blair.
Rufus! Has misplaced the Polaroid film he thought he had! Dan's upset because he promised S he'd get it, and if he screws up she'll kill -- not Assassinate -- him. Rufus fixes it, and then asks why Lonelyboy's in such a mood. "Is it because Serena never threw you a surprise party? Because you hate surprises." (Yes, a little, but moving on...) It's about the script. Which, we already know how that's going to go, and it's dumb, but not so dumb that we don't have time for some stupid Rufus Advice.
Dan opines as to how "in relationships, there's such a thing as too much honesty," like for example Dan made the right call in never telling S how much he hated her whorish outfits. (But you did, Dan. You did.) "Telling a woman you like her clothes is not lying. It's self-preservation!" Men are like this, you see, while women are like that! Clothes! Appearance insecurity! Rufus has got it figured out. Dan says there's "such a thing as spin" and Rufus spins up some homespun apron advice: "A half-truth is a whole lie, son. In my experience, it causes the same amount of problems down the line. Especially with the ladies!" So this is where the Humphreys get their allergy to subtlety or tact. I mean, we knew that, but "a half-truth is a whole lie"? Especially with the ladies! They don't get it!
Nate explains that S has "some toad gala at the Frick" planned, making it sound even worse this time, and then whines at length about how S has forgotten his birthday. As much as surprise parties are fun and Assassin is fun, you have to remember this is Nate we're dealing with. He thinks little people live in his TV. Jenny is like, "Your birthday disappointment is so relatable to me, due to my NEAR RAPE." Nate snaps back into Hero position, and they talk about how they are besties, and then Jenny says immortally, "Did I mention that public embarrassment is a part of the Humphrey birthday tradition?" Or everyday Humphrey life? That it is, in fact, the seed from which they were birthed?
Giant parfait, dorky birthday singing, Jenny's toothy grin hoping he gets a sugar high such that she can mount him and then I guess pull the sexual trauma card if he gets uppity about it. And even still, even after all this sick shit she's pulling, we're going to be hearing about the Time Chuck Didn't Rape Anybody until the end of eternity, because nothing makes us feel better about ourselves than getting self-righteous about fictional characters' non-misdeeds.
"The only note I've got is, I wish... I wish there was more of it!" That's the entire conversation, basically, about the Dan-Vanessa non-starter of a too-bloody-realistic storyline. Vanessa jerks a little bit and lies that she hasn't been able to read his stupid play yet, because of course she took him at his word and marked it all up to hell. Bleeds red, actually. So they agree to hunker down and Dan is a liar for poon and Vanessa is a liar, also for poon. Also at the party, Dorota talks and talks about God knows what, so Serena calls Grandfather to stall Nate, but he's not with Nate, because Nate is off getting the RAINN treatment, and Dorota says some more shit, and S goes off to find him.
Uffie is the funniest, stupidest little thing, but you can't deny she's got Jenny and Nate's collective number. "Crunk 'n grime, that's my bloodline/ Pick up the pace, with your cracked out face/ Down low is where ya keep it boy/ Don't let anyone know." Little J's new nickname should be Crunk & Grime. Or maybe that's the "Brangelina" of Vanessa and Dan's relationship.
Nate finally escapes Jenny, after about six more references to the gang-rape she clearly thinks of as a new accessory, because she is psychotic: "It's just you're the only one who gets what I'm going through right now," she says, classically. I always thought Jenny was the type to use the misfortune of like a bare acquaintance or the school janitor to get attention*. So she spots Serena's GG-wide blast searching for Nate, realizes they've now got an APB from the surveillance culture, and decides to take him to a movie, where they will hide from S under cover of darkness.
*(Remember those girls? "He was my best friend! Now he is dead or maimed!" Or "I am learning American Sign Language!" Or "My nephew has Asperger's!" Or "My best friend is gay, so I don't really think you should talk like that" or "My body, my words" or "When you used 'retarded' in a clearly different and intended context, it hurt my feelings deeply" or "I will never forgive the fictional character Chuck Bass for that time he didn't rape anybody!" Those girls? Our enemy. Don't be one. Stand on your own or you're not standing at all.)
"Back from shopping and no packages? Who are you, and what have you done with my girlfriend?" Version one, cute and trying to take the edge off a bad day. Version two? "Nothing suited my sensibilities," Blair says tellingly, and Chuck says he couldn't negotiate with the terrorists that are Jack. He made an offer -- "Nothing I would ever consider" -- and Blair hopes against hope that once Jack sees he can't get what he wants, whatever that is, he'll stop fucking around. Version one: Sheer optimism, a glance of candlelight in the dark. Version two: Falling right into the trap. Of course, right then Chuck gets the call that Jack's just straight-up selling the Empire: No more games. Clutch time.
Upstairs, Blair gets a package from Jack; the dress S picked out, with a note: One last chance to save your man -- Jack. Then, "Heart" by Bertie Blackman plays over the few beats, which is good. Kind of a boring song, but the type that sets mood while relating to every single thing that happens, which you know I love.
This road feels rough under my shoes
Crunching and gritting all that we hold true
S runs around, everybody's trying to find Nate. They have Vanya and Dorota spying through every doorman in the city -- way to use the Upstairs, Downstairs thing as another level of the GG surveillance thing -- which means more obnoxious racism: "Dorota has pretty much the entire Eastern Bloc on lookout!" But nothing there, and nothing from GG, yet. Jenny's plan is working, but Jenny's plan: What is it? Just be darling while they go on their secretly-a-date, and then hand him over to S when it's time for the party? Ah, no: She's going to use the party itself, this is just a warmup. Game recognizes game, Little J.
And if you get your hands and hold them just so
You might feel different and out of control
Blair runs up to S for some awesome: "Serena, come here. You've done some unforgivable things, like having sex with Nate when we were saving ourselves for each other, or killing Pete Fairman... [Serena's response, of course, is brilliant, one of the funniest moments in the episode] How far is too far? Where is that place you can't come back from anymore?" Serena, of course, immediately locates the problem, but thinks it has to do with Chuck attacking Jack in some way. Blair fusses around and around about answering the questions -- prostitutes are people too, B! -- but just waves her hand around in front of S's face to distract her: "The point is, if someone does something awful, but it's for love, is it okay?" No. You've still done something awful. The ends are the means, always. It's how we stay human.
So S assumes, again correctly, that if you're finding yourself "crossing some moral line to best Jack Bass," then you've already lost. (Which is true, although it's funny that the previews and Previouslies keep quoting Serena's line about how if Jack wants a war he'll get one, which she didn't say.) She wonders what B's not telling her, which is obvs a lot, and Blair's like, "Never mind! I brought cannon fodder in the form of my minions." Which, how amazing that we're still pretending they exist, freaky twins and all.
So cut the crap, because I've cut my soul/ With knives and anything that I can hold
You'll find me swimming in your head/ Before you can count 1-2-3
Eric, having figured out and kept secret the fact that Jenny is squiring Birthday Boy all over town, calls Jenny to remind her that Nate needed to be at the fête "no later than an hour ago," and hisses delightfully at her, Serena-to-Blair style, to get the fuck there. "I'm determined to believe he'll arrive momentarily," S informs Dan in an awesomely formal way, and points out all of Nate's Columbia friends, who have arrived and are getting bored. What on earth would a Nate Friend look like? Glad you asked. They look like extras.
I've been tricked, poisoned, mislead in what I've been told
And our hearts are lit with darkness/ Falling down down down
Dan goes to grab Vanessa's camera, Polaroid film in hand, because this version of Assassin is dumb -- or possibly brilliant, UES-wise -- in that it's like touch football and you snatch photos of each other. Seems silly but even in the down-and-dirty game of pretend murder, do you really want to fuck up your clothes? He finds the marked-to-hell copy of his story, realizes that V lied about her notes -- in response only to his total lie, naturally, not that he would ever think about that, I mean, she actually gave him good notes instead of just pussing out like he did on the whole concept, forcing her to lie -- and then she runs up and he snaps her for the game: "Smile like the killer you are!" Dan Humphrey, you absolute tampon.
And it's the cheapness of the world that's been getting me down
With everyone screwing each other and anything they've found
Upstairs, Chuck is having a bit of a freakout when B comes to check on him. The lawyers, who we already knew were bad but I guess it was just that one guy, say it's totally Jack's right to shutter the place. "I just have to watch it die, a slow painful death," he says, not at all melodramatically. Blair climbs up on her usual, putting herself and their love at the center of the issue and recapping stuff as is her wont: "When you bought the Empire, you told me you knew you could do it because I believe in you. That hasn't changed. You'll find a way!" He gets violently scary for a second and tells her to grow up, because there is no way. Because he has to yell, to scare her, at least once before the dominos start falling.
Immediately, Blair gets hurt and quiet, and he apologizes, and goes for the final cut: "I'm not mad at you. It's my own fault. I am everything my father said I was." Which is the final key in the box for a reason, because Blair can't accept the idea that her parents love her, on that yucky level, any more than Chuck can. The one thing she's always tried to do is save him from Bart, because nobody ever saved her. And no matter how much work she and her parents have done to fix it, and they've done admirably, there's still that little voice: Not enough.
Serena's literally flipping weapons around (Eric, recently Stateside, even calls them "nunchaku"!) when Eric comes up to give her support on her failed party, and he's like, "Well, you did steal his phone," and she's like, upset that he ditched her made-up horrible plan, and Eric tells her to put the nunchaku (love him!) away, and then Jenny comes in with bright yellow canary feathers in her mouth, loudly announcing "Sorry we're late, everyone!" but because she is Serena and everybody else is... Everybody else, S doesn't even notice that Jenny is launching a typically Humphrey wuss assault on her life.
It's kind of cool that Lily is out of town for this, but I'm hoping that once the good Doctor vdDubs shows up, Jenny will use her Lily alliance against Serena in a totally brutal way. Aren't you? They kind of went there earlier in the season, but it's never been Jenny v. Serena as equals -- that was a Don't Tell Mom thing -- while Nate and Lily, as people, are both playing fields where that could actually happen. Blair's sort of worn out as Little J's nemesis, just because they're so much alike and have that begrudging respect thing happening, but if Jenny brought the fight to S like I hope she's going to, that's a whole other nasty thing, precisely for this reason: S would never see it coming, no matter how obvious and crazy Jenny was acting.
Serena explains Assassin, snatch the photo, get that person's kills, and when you're ghost like Swayze you come back to the Waldorfs' for the actual party. Five minutes to leave the building -- although, sadly, not the block -- and everybody runs off. Jenny twinkles about how she was "in on it," and Serena is not fooled by that shit at all, and when they're alone she asks Nate WTF he was doing running around with Jenny all day when they were supposed to be doing not only a real thing but a fake one. With associated double entendre regarding Jenny's role in all this mystery. It is well done. He runs off, and into Chuck, who is not feeling this stupid game in any way, but explains why in such a dramatic way that Nate doesn't even hear him: "I'm already dead... Although you're welcome to kill me again if you like." Oh, girl.
"Bored" by The Shoes plays, ironically, while a truly retardo montage of everybody chasing everybody else, and Jenny making dewy horny hunting faces, plays out. Occasionally they flash into this Photoshoppy comic-book bullshit like what ruined the DVD reissue of Streets Of Fire, and it's totally embarrassing and we're not going to talk about it. Similarly, Vanya proposes to fucking Dorota, and we're not talking about that queer shit either. The kids run around them and they are very pretty to look at but very fucked up to deal with, and Eric trips over them and into a totally hot boy, and gets excited about their engagement, and then he and the cute boy meet-cute and Eric is all kinds of sexy and self-assured -- and again, unrealistic in the most affirming way, viewerwise, and very well-written, and let's all be Eric from now on, as usual -- picking up the cute boy, but has to run off to tell Jenny to stop being such an obvious whore with Nate, and the cute boy purses his Culkin lips and furrows his Sebastian Stan brow and gnashes his Ben Foster jaw and is totally cute some more as he picks up Eric's photo, having figuratively nailed him... With Cupid's arrow!
Dan gets all intense with Vanessa, like he maybe will actually kill her -- wouldn't that be great, if he just snapped Tunnels & Trolls style and assassinated her ass? -- and she doesn't know he's not kidding, and finally he spills about finding the marked-up ms. in her bag and how her work was in fact a D and not an A+, but before they can Lesbian Process the shit out of that development, which is like their entire raison d'être, Serena kills them both -- " At least you'll be together on the other side," she mumbles without even giving a fuck -- and that's why she's my favorite and the best.
Eric gets Jenny cornered and says he's not about gameplay, he just wants to tell Jenny to fucking cut it out, and she acts all compartmental once again and tells him it's no big deal. And besides, he shouldn't even be playing anymore, he's already dead. He's like, "Where did my photo go?" Little does he know that Culkin Face has already taken that photo worldwide, and will somehow in a few hours have narrowed it down -- maybe the Eastern Bloc Racist Joke Doorman's Assoc.? -- to the Palace, even though they're at the Waldorfs' building. (Unless, NYCers let me know, they're both on the same block, in which case a whole lot of the timespace fuckery on this show starts to make sense.)
Nate eludes Serena by stepping behind a glass door that opens in, so she can't get to him, and he apologizes for flaking all day, but only after she apologizes for her pretending not to care about his birthday. He finally cracks and says that "something really messed up happened" to Jenny last week, and S -- where have you been? -- asks why Little J would come to him about that. Um, because that's what she does every time? He spazzes out Nate style and goes, "Only because I was involved!" Which is hilarious, as she appropriately responds, "Well, that's not making me feel any better?" He tells her about the drugging and near-raping, and S is of course devastated, even though she herself has been roofied more times than we can count and usually takes it in stride -- although not as in stride as Jenny, because nobody ever would besides her -- and Nate assures her that Jenny is fine, except for this malingering PTSD that... Only shows up when he wants to spend time with his hot girlfriend. Still not connecting those dots.
Of course S plays right into his Prince Charming narrative about how he's a sterling solid big brother-friend -- Awesome: "Can I kiss you before I kill you?" -- and then Jenny shows up to push the metaphor once again, snatching the photo off Serena's back (which I wondered about all episode and eventually assumed was just because the breasts' power might be diminished that close to Polaroid technology, like how Superboy had to keep his Kryptonite in a lead-lined box) and goes, "Gotcha! Watch your back!" I love how every line from or near Jenny is a double entendre, with either the show commenting on her ("Poor Nate!") or using Jenny to comment on the episode. She's always been a liminal and a mirroring figure, and especially in this episode she's just used brilliantly in both ways, while still maintaining what is a powerful crazy all her own.
"Looks like it's just you and Nate left," S sighs, fears allayed, and Jenny speaks the truth once again: "I'm on it." Which again is beautiful not just for those reasons, but because that means that Serena was winning the game until Jenny got to her, because think about it: This is a game Serena would excel at. (Especially since B's not around.) Finding, hunting, owning, surprising. Playing the blonde as long as she had to; smiling as though she's forgotten the knife behind her back, actually forgetting it until necessary. But by usurping her role as the Serena, in this game and hopefully in Nate's pants, Jenny has also narrowed the field to two -- without doing any of the work. Classic Serena, classic Jenny. Classic Nate. As we say: Why would you even visit Serena World if you're not going to have fun and be awesome all the time? Only to end the world.
Vanquished, Serena heads inside, where Chuck is stabbing a fake knife into his leg, again and again and again. He's already dead, we just don't know it yet. She asks after Blair, "I assume she's still slaying," but she never picked up her Polaroid. "You know Blair, she's probably cheating!" Serena giggles. The wordplay in this episode is exquisite. Not because any one thing is mindblowing, but because there are so many games going on and the dialogue touches every single one in every situation. Great stuff. So Chuck finally mans up, and goes to see if B took his bait, and finds the abandoned dress box and the note about "saving her man," and makes what we think is an inscrutable face but is in fact a face of self-loathing and triumph and regret and shock at himself and herself and themselves and reactionary rage, all at once. And elsewhere, Blair walks into Jack's suite and drops the jacket, showing off her dress with mad determination in her eyes. And, I'm not ashamed to say, Uncle Jack does what he hasn't done in three seasons of this show or his two on Dexter, which is get insanely hot all of a sudden. Childlike glee and horniness in equal amounts, which is what you really want in a john.
Jack plays the situation out at length, all about how the memory of NYE brought her back, and how it's only semantic that she's doing this for Chuck, and she produces an actual contract (with, as a freelancer, language I recognized immediately) that he needs to sign. Jack asks if, like most whores, her conditions include no kissing, but the terms are obvious: "You'll tell Chuck that you realized he isn't worth losing Bass Australia over. Now that you've devalued the Empire, you're willing to sell it back. At a profit, of course, so he doesn't suspect anything. And Chuck can never know." Jack giggles and then gets all horny and scary... And then offers her a drink first, because he's just playing with them both.
Jenny chases Nate through somewhere -- a dining room, a kitchen -- that we might recognize from the pilot. And they're adorable, and then weirdly she calls out to the patrons, "The grilled cheese with truffles is really good, by the way!" Which is, stick with this for a second, the thing that Chuck offered to make for Serena the day she came back to town, when he tried to preparty by raping her before going off to rape Jenny. I mean, that's there for a reason. I don't know what it is -- Jenny finally turning the corner from Being Blair to Becoming Bad Serena? -- but it's odd, and scary, and a little frisky. And in an episode that's all about revisiting Jenny's martyrdom three years ago, especially interesting. Dorota can't remember Culkin Face's adorable name because she's getting married or some shit, so Eric takes off because yes Virginia, there's stuff more important that illegal weddings and other imaginary shit. Like boys.
I hope you won't blush
I hope you won't be madIf I tell you how I worry
How I worry about you
Yes, let's talk more about the invigorating world of editorial loggerheads. Vanessa's like, "For real? A play about a homeless man winning the lottery?" Which is... All we need say about them this week. Trust me when I say. So Dan mans up and laughs about what would have happened if he hadn't fucking forced Vanessa to lie and then horror of horrors he submitted the wrong application piece, and she's like, "Yes a tragedy" and then lies that Tisch would've loved him anyway, because that's what you say and because already it's obvious that she has a better shot at the Tisch writing prog and, like every single episode, it's suddenly Armageddon/Deep Impact important that his little Humphrey dick self-esteem not suffer, for one single white heterosexual moment. Which you know their years are like seven of ours, so it's a big deal.
Nate once again for the eighth time this episode reiterates how "trying to kill you is the best time [he's] had in months," because we really need to know that acting like a child with a child, name of Jenny, is the secret key to his boy heart, and finally Jenny relents and lets him kill her, except surprise she steals a sweet little kiss and kills him instead. And again, the impulses to his brain are so dot dot dot that he figures out what happened like a whole minute later.
Speaking of whores, how's B doing? Well, it would be one billion times easier to care if Jack hadn't all of a sudden become sexy as hell. It's not the storyline and it's not the character and for Xtina's sake it's not the hair or goatee, but for some reason this retardo story has unleashed the secret sexy awesome inside of Desmond Harrington, which as always eluded me. So while we're supposed to be like What Stop No Way, he keeps applying from within himself the secret hotness that would have made the last couple seasons a lot more powerful. Like, I really do want to sleep with him, and -- given that satanic, boyish grin -- I want to make it as gross as possible, just because that seems delightful. And then there's Blair, who's like, "Get it up or don't, pretend you are not a rapist or don't, just fuck me and get it over with." And he stays adorable. Sign of a classy rapist.
Just kidding, they're never going to do it. Instead, the only time they hooked up was like an accidental asterisk on a voicemail from like 1997, like a story that we forgot so now we create a story actually happening to justify the driveby of the storyline. I can't remember when it came up, but I almost feel like it was during Blair's flirtation with Carter Baizen, who is adorable but more importantly, like, the gold standard of off-brand secret dick. Just ask Nate!
So Jack is like, "Just kidding! Rape is about power, not sex! I would only rape Lily Bass because she took my company via Chuck!" And Blair's like, "If I'm not here for sex, then what?" And Jack says, "It's not you I'm fucking, it's your boyfriend! Who is fucking you by having you fake-fuck me and getting fucked in a whole other way! See, you're a whore, right? And Chuck is disgusting. So all I had to do was ask him for you, and he totally gave you up, including all your luxurious emotional PIN goodness, and now I'm reaping -- nbut not nreaping! -- the benefits. Kiss me or don't, but your boyfriend is a motherless shithole. Wanna fuck?" And again, it's a testament to his ability to turn it on and off that I was like, "Um, without question? Are you serious? He has never once been this hot, or this nasty, or this overcoming of his face and in this case goatee. I don't, not to be rude, but I don't see how this is even a question. Have you seen his sick gleeful capering as he says this shit? Dealmaker. Shut it down."
In the elevator Nate's still processing Jenny's attack on his face, and she kind of walks him through how it's not a big deal, with even more teen-girl eye-rolling than usual, and Nate's just kind of horrified by both versions of her right now, and so just to plunk it down and pull the classic Jenny move -- erasing whatever dipshit thing she just did in favor of pretending everything is okay -- she's like, "Look, at least I can have fun again after not getting raped!" Nate begins to wonder if maybe Jenny is a psycho, but the idea that anybody would play creepy internal brain-games like that is so repugnant that he just files it in the Hudson Hero file where like the 90% of all human behavior that blows Nate's mind is inevitably filed. That, or he creates a sad narrative that may be closer to the truth in which Jenny's ongoing issues with sex are creating mad acting-out and she's going to end up on the pole. Which just the idea of scary creepy Gothic Little J doing a striptease is sort of a mind-flaying concept, but just weird enough that I hope we see it one day.
Eric is none too impressed when Jenny, for the fifth time today, strolls in with Nate on her arm and once again addresses the world at large with her winning stack of deaths. S, on the other hand, can't wait to be all sweetie-pie and embrace Jenny before running over to Nate and palling around. Eric watches this whole interplay and I think honestly wonders if Jenny got what she was going after, which if true would put him right in the middle of two hurricanes that always freak him out.
Blair comes home to Chuck with shoulder pads overwhelming her delicate frame, and Chuck seems surprised that she wrapped up her foray into prostitution so quickly. Her face would seem to suggest that, or something worse, has happened, so he sets up all his little domino lies and self-justifications and just starts firing them off robotically without even considering if they fit the context of the conversation that's actually occurring. B straight up asks if he really sold her out, and Chuck says she is the betrayer because she's the one coming home from the Empire.
Which, her intention was to go through with it, so he's not wrong about that tiny fact, but it's really immaterial. Blair reminds him that, just like with the boy-kissing, she would have done anything if he just asked her to, including I guess Jack, which would be weird if we were talking about any other human beings but here seems probable. Chuck tries to explain his mental alibi about this, which is that if she were in on the plan, then they'd all be in on the plan and Jack wouldn't feel like a winner, and the deal wouldn't go through. Blair is disgusted, because that is disgusting, but also because she likes to be in on the scheme and not a pawn. If your whole life is chess, then there's nothing worse than getting played: And in that case, this is actually worse than the prostitution part.
"I can't let my feelings cost me all that I've built," Chuck whines, and Blair points out that what it's costing is her. "All I ever did was love you," she says, heartbreakingly, and then Chuck plays his card, which is her original bluff-call that got them together in the first place: "The worst thing I ever did, the darkest thought I ever had." He says he is redeeming that coupon, as it's self-evident that this is the worst thing he will ever do. Blair is very sad and very beautiful and very much has already left the building, watching his face as he says that, and you can see her swallow it: "I never thought that the worst thing you would ever do would be to me."
Which is where you apologize, but he's so cornered and has spent so much of the day justifying his shit, that he pops out a "You went up there on your own..." before he even knows what he's saying, and she slaps the shit out of him and bounces, because just because you've said something in your head a hundred times doesn't mean the person's going to hear all that mental effort on your part when you say it out loud. Also, eye-for-eye is not what's called for here. And most of all, calling your girlfriend a literal whore is not ever going to be an effective strategy.
Meanwhile, in Pretend Nate and Serena World, the parallel is, "Sorry for tricking you on your birthday!" Nate's super happy about everything, though, so it's bygones. S handcuffs him and drags him upstairs for birthday sex, and Eric lets her watch them giggle and golden retriever themselves upstairs just long enough to make her feel like an idiot before asking if she's ready to go. "Yeah, I'm done. I mean, yeah, I'm ready to go." You are neither, but how cute. Can't she see what a great couple they are?
Over at NYU, Vanessa's got a giant purse happening and Willa shows up in some cute weird clothes to hand over her secret Tisch writing application, with some classic undermining bitchiness: "It's really competitive. I mean, there are only a few spots for NYU transfers... I hope you get in!" So awesome. I'm happy that Vanessa is actively looking to step on Dan's dreams, but even happier that Willa was there to fuck with her about it.
Culkin Face, his name is Elliot, and he has taken Eric's picture to every floor in the entire building before ending up at the penthouse, PRADA, and it's amazing. He is really just very attractive, this one. Over Chez Waldorf, Blair can't get that nasty dress off herself fast enough, and she cries and feels gross. Which is the chapter right before she marshals her anger, which is when she is best.
And over at the Empire, Chuck has Jack forcibly ejected from the building, and he leaves with a smarmy giggle at Chuck's retardo belief that his relationship can like possibly survive this bullshit. "Blair's seen the real you now. It's over. She could never love that. No one could." Which is the key to Chuck in the exact same way as all his other speeches were the secret poison of Blair. "Hope the Empire's everything you wanted, because now that's all you got." He takes off and Chuck stares into space and GG wonders whether love, or people, can survive in a world of yadda-yadda-yadda, and it's sort of depressing but the show has stacked the deck so impressively against him this time that it's actually a fair question.
All in all, I would say that the buildup to this breakup was super weird, but the through-line -- of Blair's staunch choice to become singleminded/near-mindless in supportive of Chuck, as the tragedies compounded -- was really well done, because it was this sort of obvious repetitive thing for so long that we just kind of forgot how obsessive Blair can get, or what the inevitable downfall would be. So as dumb as the Elizabeth stuff was, it was brilliant as a distraction from the sword that's always hung over them, you know? A year ago you could probably have said, "Chuck is going to do something irreparable," but the storylines this year have been so manic and otherwise-focused that when the rumors about that started coming up, I thought they were bogus. Which means the show did its job, getting us to this point, and now we can go into the last act of the season with things actually broken. Which is when this show -- like Blair, like you and me -- is at its best. XOXO.