In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
So good! Damn!
Blair ends up accidentally pretending to go to Columbia, and those girls from the Waldorf show that are all about her prod her into telling Gossip Girl about how Jenny was a drug-dealer. This causes Nate to get up her ass about going back to her old ways -- like Chuck is doing -- and the girls figure out that she's just pretending, so they are bitches to her. Then this guy randomly reveals that she actually is a Columbia student... Thanks to Chuck secretly applying for her way back last year.
Rufus and Will fight over Lily, while Jenny and Serena fight over the fact that Jenny is the worst. Eric tells Will to go suck it after giving him the breakdown -- gay, suicide attempt -- but Will goes out of his way to call Elliott and take Eric out on the town, so now Eric feels accepted or whatever. I'm trying to tell this in a not-confusing fashion, but it was a confusing episode, in the best possible way. One of those ones where you think, "Man, this episode's so good and so much shit is happening that it must be nearly over" and it turns out it's like only half-over.
Meanwhile, everybody's concerned about Chuck avoiding Lily due to her Illness, so Blair visits him and basically talks him into seeing her. There are some very Charlie-Chuck-Charles things that happen emotionally, and perhaps you cried. In the midst, Chuck and Jenny -- who has recently been raiding Lily's cabinets, whilst drug-dealing -- figure out that something is hinky with the medicine Will's been giving her for Illness. Of course, it doesn't matter since Lily tosses Rufus out of the house for the night for acting like a jerk, and Rufus finds out about Jenny's dealing and needs to exert some power, so that means all the Humphreys end up in DUMBO once again. Where they fucking belong.
Dan and Vanessa stupidly agree not to talk about things like their work or their passion or their lives in any way, so of course Vanessa decides not to tell Dan that she got a three-month internship with CNN, in Haiti. After a bunch of back and forth, he gives her permission to take advantage of it, and she gratefully accepts. They cry and exchange stationary and whatever, they are a mess but they're doing okay.
Downstairs Hot Neighbor Lady Holland tells Serena, I think, that she has been fucking Rufus on the sly, and Will gives a very inappropriate speech at this gala about his feelings for Lily, but Serena tells Will to fight for Lily, since even if he were a serial killer he would still be cooler than Rufus, so it ends up with the four van der Woodsens enjoying their first round of hot chocolate near the fireplace.
Blair is set to become the Queen of Columbia, Cameron and Elliott should be returning shortly, the van der Woodsens finally have their creepy dad back, Vanessa Abrams is going to Haiti and Rufus is about to fucking kill himself. The best episode of this show ever? Just maybe. XOXO.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!My my, Gossip Girl is feeling philosophical today. "It's said that we're all strapped to Fortune's wheel... Nowhere is this truer than the ever-changing landscape of love!" Tell us more about that, GG. "The one thing you can rely on is that the wheel will keep on turning," she says. And as ridiculous as it all is, I have to say that GG, along with everything else, is in fine and classic fettle this week. No attempts to torture her bon mots into thematic unity, nothing more than clever(-ish) twists on the old blog-style updates that used to be enough for us all.
So for like the ninth week in a row, guess what Nate and a blonde girl are doing? That's right, prowling around Chuck's kitchen drinking coffee and dry-humping. What's novel here is that Serena's dressed in her own clothing, and not Nate's. "Salvation" by Scanners plays over this opening montage, and throughout the episode, in a very tone-setting way that's by turns romantic and ominous. It's a marvel. Nate and Serena share coffee cups and think about getting their eff on, because that's what happens in the AM. Also the PM. Really, any time, because pretty much all the writers can think of for Serena and Nate to do is A) Locate the kitchen and B) Bang in the kitchen. Challenge and reward.
Over in DUMBO, Vanessa and Dan are being very stressy and weird with each other, due to Vanessa maneuvering Dan right into being left in the cold outside the Tisch program, which is something he has always wanted for like five whole minutes. The only reason I'm giving him the moral upper hand here is that the entire situation was created wholly from Vanessa's chronic wannabeing. Dan is behaving in a huffy and excruciating manner? You're fucking kidding me. But this whole thing where Vanessa knew what he wanted and secretly went for it? That's just basic Vanessa behavior and therefore is much worse than anything anybody else could do. She leaves the Tisch class schedule out on the table right in front of them and he pissily hands it to her, and they deserve their lives.
Nate and Serena whicker and whinny and eventually Nate suggests that instead of living in Chuck's apartment, maybe Serena should go home to her mom, who is dying of Illness and has been forgiven for What Happened In Santorini, which is why her nineteen-year-old daughter stormed out of there in the first place. She thinks about it, but then realizes that living at PRADA would mean having to look at Jenny's face, and that would be a total thumbs down. Nate takes a second, you can see it in his eyes, to remember why we're mad at Jenny right now, and then he's like, "Harsh."
Chuck comes out with one of the literal whores he boned last night, grunts sexily and shakes a giant bag of coke at them before scurrying away in a flash so they can't ask him to come have waffles with Lily, because he's avoiding her because if Charles sees Lily he will have to confront the possibility of losing yet another (How many at this point? Bart a couple times, Evelyn several times) parent, because Illness is like the one problem he can't fix simply by staring intensely. (...Or can he? Stay tuned.) Nate and Serena paw at the ground, raising dust, and think about how to get Chuck to deal with the Illness currently not ravaging Lily's body in any way, and eventually are so tuckered by all this thinking that they form a little pile on the kitchen floor, and take a thinkin' nap.
Dan and Vanessa are the fucking worst some more, eventually getting themselves into another freshman-year over-cerebralized tizzy over things that they can and can't talk about, for like the fifth time this season, because that's all the writers know what to do with them too, because the idea of their funky furry little bodies making Matt & Kim-style whoopee is too horrifying to contemplate. (Vanessa Abrams going down on Hilary Duff. I'm just saying.) So should they deal with these things in a responsible human way by discussing and working through the underlying emotional issues? No way! Let's make rules and a list of topics that we can't talk about, because after all secrets and deception are the key ingredient of any adult relationship.
All that really happens of interest in this scene are the hilarious bullshit words that come out of their mouths -- "Look, we're two artists in a relationship" -- and a funny line about how she's allowed to tell Dan about Mime class. They realize that their relationship is now entirely limited to "politics, Jersey Shore, and where [they] want to eat," which they seem to think is both awful and totally acceptable, but essentially all they have done is invent the wheel.
"Ooh! Another sext session with your new BF?" Shut the fuck up, Jenny Humphrey. You gross little beast. Eric points out that Elliot is not his boyfriend, because Eric's spending all his time with Lily's Illness and Elliot is in "every club in school," so they haven't even been on a first date yet. Lily's sad that Charles isn't at breakfast, but quickly recovers and says that this is right in line with Will's The Secret style of treatment, where you talk about the Illness in stage whispers but otherwise ignore it completely, like if a big spider or a weasel came into your house, a wasp or something, you might just leave the door open and hope the Illness wanders away while you weren't looking. This is not medical, but I think one thing we know for certain is that basic medical knowledge is at a premium on this show. (Jenny bings "cancer" at the end of the episode, for Chrissake.)
"Anyway, one thing I'll say about William's treatment... Is that I have not lost my appetite. I want waffles!" (This is the third fucking time the word 'waffles' has happened, already, in this episode. I'm sorry, that's offensive. This episode is great and a relief in a lot of ways, but enough.) Will shows up out of the blue and Serena climbs him like a tree and Rufus is like what the fuck are you doing here and S shoots him a gorgeous look about how he can go fuck himself because she invited Will to breakfast.
I think Serena is just about the awesomest in this episode, because you never really see get to her explaining basic shit to Rufus, because she likes him so much, so it's nice to see the ultimate power of S giving him a smackdown. But I also like the fact that you get to see just how far Serena has to be pushed before she pulls out her guns. You know? Like how much did Chuck have to scheme and manipulate everybody before Serena decided to become Queen? So very much. And the same thing here, it's like, S expects you to accept the established order and she has lots of noblesse oblige to give. She likes to live in a happy universe where nobody questions her or makes things difficult, so if you cross her in a rude way -- in any way that suggests you are choosing, despite the common knowledge that S doesn't need any problems from you, to cause a problem -- you will be annihilated, because there is not a game that exists at which Serena isn't better than you. She just chooses not to play most of the time, because she'd rather fuck Nate in the kitchen and eat strawberries. That's honestly all she'd rather be doing.
Will gives Lily a "checkup" that involves touching her neck lightly in the living room for a few seconds and then inviting everybody to a Doctors Without Borders gala at Columbia, where he is an alumnus, despite Serena's longstanding belief that he went to Harvard, who cares really, and besides this year is sort of culminating in a Columbia place because of Blair, so it's fine. Will's false humility about this celebration, of his work with Illness and other illnesses -- "Clearly Columbia's run out of alumni to honor, if the best they could come up with is me!"-- is hilarious to see and really irritating for Eric. Serena gives him the shush and says she's invited Nate and Blair, as if we need at this point an explanation for why every single person in the cast will be at the party. This is not our first rodeo; this is in fact our sixty-third rodeo.
Serena bustles about getting Will a plate and shooting Eric the big eye, but Eric is not interested in that mess. "He left when I was two. The man's a total stranger to me," he says, and Serena tells him to give Will a chance and then tells Rufus to scoot the fuck over so she can sit to her dad and Rufus stares up at her wetly because A) His brain works slow and B) He can get offended by anything and C) Will's existence is an insult to him so intense that any amount of shitty behavior is now on the table, because that's the kind of little bitch Rufus Humphrey is. So then Serena has to be like, "Um, please move?" Exhausting. These people are exhausting.
To some weird fucking music or I don't recognize the reference, Blair heads over to the Upper West Side because she wants to watch Nate's lacrosse game at Columbia -- "So if you could make sure that there's a seat for me in VIP, preferably to an injured cute player, but not one on scholarship..." -- and explains that listening to the sad young NYU men and women planning their apartments for year is too depressing, and that her Minions have invited her to come live with them "in a postwar building -- on a street that's not even numbered, it's lettered -- and its big selling point is that it's above a falafel stand" -- and this is also depressing.
The music is oppressive. I wish I knew what it was doing. Is it like Love Story? Right era, wrong story. And later on the music sounds like Deer Hunter, which is more confusing. This could just be a Mancini pastiche -- it's definitely original, it responds like score to Blair's changes in mood -- but I still don't know why it's there. Maybe we're seeing an evolution of Blair's self-image? This is what her life now sounds like, or at least she is so determined? Anyway, at this point in the conversation Nate literally wanders away mumbling.
Those Columbia girls from the fashion show appear and look like an '80s movie, and tell her about their apartment for year, of which Blair would "totally approve," because it is pre-war, has a doorman, and is getting a Fauchon door, so they can throw up a higher class of macaron, and she asks them their thoughts on falafel. "Isn't that the kind of food paralegals eat?" Then the girls start shitting themselves about how what if Blair moved to the UWS and attended Columbia, and like the total psycho that she is, Blair blurts out, "...IT'S TRUE! I'm a COLUMBIA GIRL now!" They're so excited. She's so fucking nuts.
"The last time I was invited to a ceremony in my honor, I had to slaughter a chicken," Will says. I would like to see him and Vanessa Abrams go head-to-head. I bet he could take down her entire family. Then a really awkwardly written scene happens, and even though this episode is great, this scene is embarrassing, because here's how it goes. "I've never been honored. I did win a contest once at boarding school, and I think there was a plaque, but I'm not sure that really counts." Serena, what are you talking about? Why would you get a plaque for winning this contest? And why would you offer any of this information? Especially when it sounds utterly retarded the more you explain it? Vide "It was for drinking hot chocolate at the Winter Fair." They gave you a PLAQUE for drinking the most HOT CHOCOLATE at the WINTER FAIR.
No. They didn't. Will laughs about how druggies go to Exeter, and Serena lies and says she was at her school "more for the academics." When in point of fact you were there "more for the having killed a man and fucked your best friend's boyfriend and needing to get the fuck," it seems like a good compromise to say that. "It sounds like you've made some great choices, Serena. I'm glad. The bad ones have a way of... Following you," Will says ominously. Which is also stupid because we all know that Will knows what an awesomely drunken whore his daughter is. She spent all summer making sure he knew that. So whatever. Jenny makes a mean dumb face and goes, "You know, I've never heard that hot chocolate story!" S spits that there are lots of stories Jenny's never heard, including the one where Serena killed a man and she might be , so Jenny brings up Damien's tale of S fucking a teacher one night at a B&B. S sends a few warning shots across Jenny's bow, but you know Jenny has no innate sense of danger.
Serena stands up, sparkling brightly, and tells everybody her great new announcement that she just made up in order to express dominance over Little J -- who is really just being a bitch, and for no good reason other than her ridiculous schemes to break up N and S didn't work -- which is that she is moving back into her old room. "Don't worry, Jenny. We'll... Find a place for you." Nice. Way to imply everything at once. Just brilliant. Instead of letting me bask in the total Serenatude of that, Will announces that he's moving in downstairs too, and they'll just be a big old happy family. Rufus acts pathetic some more, but of course he doesn't say anything. GG thinks this whole plan might work, but I have my doubts. It's not Will getting a condo that's going to hook him and Lily up, it's the fact that Rufus Humphrey is the fucking worst thing.
Rufus promises to save Dan a waffle, and Rufus tries to keep a stiff upper lip when asked about Will. "The fact is, he's just her doctor now. I'm her husband!" And if that were true, you wouldn't be nonstop acting like a total bowel obstruction, and then all of a sudden Rufus responds to Dan's mention of the Tisch Silence by spilling the beans about everything Vanessa-related. It's sort of amazing. Dan's like, "We're not telling each other things," and Rufus is like, "Things like how she's getting an internship with CNN that will mean spending three months in Haiti? You're not telling each other things like that?" Of course, this causes Dan to forget the rule too, so now he's going to go create a huge fucking mess and make Vanessa act disgusting some more so he can forgive her and instruct her on how to live her life and she can thank him with a blowjob, just like every week.
Will stalks Eric to the elevator and Eric is not having it at all. Eric's like, "Number one, I'm gay." Will goes, "That's... Cool!" and joins like a special PFLAG group for people with seriously husky voices. Will wants to meet Elliot, blah blah fantasy parents are like this, and Eric tells him that he doesn't even need Will to make it up to him, because going through his near-suicide experience without a father proved that he didn't need one. You can almost see his little face being like, "Are those the highlights? Yeah, that pretty much covers it." I expect Will to do what I would do in that situation, which is start hitting the elevator button like a bajillion times to make the elevator come faster, but instead Will just mopes and asks Eric about six different ways to stop hating him, and Eric explains that it's not an issue of hate or even dislike: "Serena may want a relationship with you, but I don't." I don't see that getting respected.
Serena's helpfully packing Jenny's luggage for her when Rufus walks into the scream party that is Jenny watching this happen, and the whole time Serena's like instructing Jenny on when it is polite to borrow other people's clothing, and Rufus is understandably sort of appalled that Serena is being so proactive about this, and tells her to stay in Chuck's old room. "No way. That room is haunted by Chuck's depravity." With which, she adds, Jenny should be fine anyway, because she is depraved and crazy and out of control and a lunatic Nate-kisser. Serena dares Jenny to tell Rufus even like Thing One about what's really going on, and Jenny backs down, and everything is all right with the universe, but then Rufus decides to fuck everything up by continuing to insist that Serena go live in Chuck's room. "I'm confident that there's no depravity that brand-new E. Braun sheets can't erase!" he says, like a true heterosexual, and Serena just rolls her eyes and says more true things. "How many problems does Jenny have to cause before you realize she's the problem?"
That song starts playing again when she says that, and it's awesome. Dan shows up to harass Vanessa about her CNN job, and she mealy-mouths about how she was going to tell him about it or something but then this morning she was going to tell him or something but then she just decided not to because he was being such a huge fucking whining baby about everything and so she decided to wait a minute, so now that's also a problem. Why? Because luuuuuv. No, barf. That is not a good reason. So then they immediately jump sixty steps to, "Wow, are we breaking up?" No, you're not. You're college freshmen. None of this is actually happening anyway.
Lily sides with Rufus against Serena -- dumb -- while she stands around in the very flower of health, and Rufus manages to awkwardly mention the problem he's having with Will's existence one more time, making reference to the shitty Nancy Meyers movies and not the old good ones, and Lily laughs sort of hysterically like it's funny, and then her dialogue stops making sense. In rapid succession she goes, "...He's the father of the patient's children! ...I'm the one that told William to stay away if he couldn't make good on the promises he made to the children! ...But if William wants to move in to be closer to the kids, I'm not gonna stand in his way!" She literally says those three sentences in order, like they don't totally contradict each other. Maybe it's the Illness making her do that. Anyway, Rufus calls Holland, his downstairs neighbor-buddy, and asks her to sandbag Will's co-op application, so that Lily will, I guess, have even more reasons to leave him. He rides her dick so hard this whole episode that it's like insulting, and then he gets all crazy-face when she tells him to fuck off. So classic.
"...And the social scene at NYU was criminal! Ten freshmen, a keg and a tub of hummus on a card table isn't a party, it's a tragedy." Blair gets a text and the girls cream themselves for getting to see Blair Waldorf get a text, but the text is only S whining about Little J getting the room after all. "Jenny can't do that to Serena van Der Woodsen!" They scream and shout and weird themselves out, but Blair's like, "It's between Serena and Jenny? Anyway, I've had some recent bad luck getting involved in real estate disputes," she grins. (Too soon, B!) She tries to change the subject, and they start making fun of her immediately about how she was "over" the second she went to NYU, and that it won't matter if she does transfer.
Blair yells at them, and they randomly about-face and it's totally dumb: "You're Blair Waldorf! Fashion icon, Queen B, and probably the future President of the United States. Or Chanel." Nice line, but these bitches are straight up unrealistic. I'm so sure they would bully her into her old ways by literally saying to her face, "We are going to bully you back into your old ways!" So what's B going to do to Little J? Blair doesn't have any dirt on her -- since she hasn't been in the game for an entire semester, because she outgrew it -- and one of the girls mentions that Jenny sold her boyfriend drugs, so B's sort of impressed and starts texting GG immediately about how Jenny is a drug dealer now. The episode, the music, Archibald in a while, even GG's tone of voice implies that this is some major compromise of her newfound strength and maturity or something, but it's like, maybe the show's just justifiably terrified because it forgot what it's like when Blair actually does anything. There is nothing wrong whatsoever about telling GG that Jenny Humphrey is or ever was a drug dealer, because the fact that Jenny Humphrey was a drug dealer is hilarious.
morning S is snarky with Jenny, who immediately screams at her about telling GG she was a drug dealer, and that if it wasn't her it was Blair, which is basically the same thing, and Serena's like, "Okay, but I'm not Blair, and also you were a drug dealer." Like how could any Humphrey possibly use their waffle power for hypocrisy is just mindblowing for old Serena. "My dad and I were finally in a good place after a really, really bad patch. And if he finds this out, it'll destroy everything!" S points out that Jenny went right for her relationship with Will last night over that utterly retarded hot chocolate story that didn't even make sense, and Jenny -- it's always weird when she stops being crazy and starts getting real -- explains to Serena that building a false relationship with her father based on an idealized pretend version of your life is worse than dealing drugs. Which is so not true because a relationship with your parents comprises feeding them lies about your idealized pretend life, duh, but then she nails it: "I can't believe that you are willing to destroy my relationship with my father because you're too scared that yours won't love you for who you really are."
Well done. Meanwhile, V explains to Dan that "consulting with someone else doesn't come easily" to her, which is a total fucking lie, and she apologizes for not asking Dan's permission to go to Haiti, and he finally grants it, but she says she doesn't want to go because he's sufficiently hounded her about how if she leaves for even five minutes they will break up and their lives will end and they will die alone, and she goes, "We both know it's better for our relationship if I stay," and he goes -- this motherfucker over here -- he goes, "Are you sure? You're making this decision for you? Not me? Not even us?" Okay, you dumb cunt, you better tell me what that even means. What can you possibly even mean by saying that to me? "No, I'm making this decision for the people of Haiti, who frankly have suffered enough."
Dan tells her they'll celebrate her complete subjugation to him by sneaking forties into the midnight showing of The Lost Weekend at Film Forum, which is just so classically them, and Vanessa's like, "First I have to have drinks with CNN and turn her down in person," and Dan's like, "But if you do that we might have to break up! I want to cut a hole in your abdomen and climb inside you so we never have to be apart! You'll be a bloodied kangaroo and I will be your little joey. Your little love-joey."
Nate finds Blair wandering the Upper West Side, pretending that she is a Columbia student, and sadly he doesn't find this as amusing as he usually would, because he's all steamed at her. Why? I guess because of the Jenny factor, although he couches it in that hyper-literal way of this episode: "You are going back to your old habits! Like emailing and texting!" Blair points out that Jenny is a drug dealer and thus deserves what she gets, and Nate says it doesn't matter why she's conniving, the problem is that she's back to conniving. Which, Nate is the Exposition Fairy all the time, that's fine, but also: Not only was Blair totally boring when this was going on, but she stopped doing it for Elizabeth's sake, which proved to be a massive mistake, so why wouldn't she go back. But most of all, also: It never really happened. Yes, she stayed off GG and away from complicated plots specifically employing surveillance technology, but she also tried to kill her mother's unborn baby throughout Thanksgiving dinner. You know what I mean?
"The Waldorf equivalent of Chuck going around sleeping with every call girl in the city and avoiding any kind of emotional contact," Nate says, losing it right there at the end to some shitty writing indeed, and Blair explains that she is feeling trapped and crazy at NYU, and thus is self-medicating with her Columbia pretense and slight takedowns of people like Jenny Humphrey who frankly deserve worse. But then the worst writing yet: "You can always make it right with whoever you take down online. And who knows if Chuck's even gonna have time to do that with Lily or not?" That was some Gossip Girl herself-style bullshit. First of all, that's not a response to what Blair even said, and second of all, that is a segue without the segue. I mean, I appreciate that the words themselves actually mean what they're being used for because that's been gone for a long time, but that sentence made no sense either intrinsically or in context.
Grateful for a mission, Blair speeds over to Chuck's -- not before the Columbia girls apparently use spider-hearing to figure out that she's not really a Columba student -- where he has left out a bottle of Dom '95, which he calls her favorite even though any fucking retard knows that it's actually Dom '96, but apparently she prefers Roederer nowadays anyway, so it doesn't matter. Chuck apologizes for the bras everywhere -- "Nadine left behind some of her intimates, she must have wanted an excuse to come back" -- but while Blair nearly laughs that she probably just left in a hurry, I'm more confused as to why Nadine came over wearing eleven bras in the first place.
Chuck acts super gay and rolls around on the couch and acts ridiculous and won't go see Lily, which Blair explains to him in Nate-sized words is -- because of how his parents keep dying or dying and then coming back to life or coming back to life as somebody else or fucking his uncle and then being dead but coming back to life only to reveal that they are an actor and your parent is really dead -- not really acceptable, and that if he doesn't go see Lily then terrible things will happen to his psyche. "Perhaps if you were at an Ivy," he snorts, "You'd have better insight." (Which is AMAZING, but we don't know that yet, so it just sounds mean when he says that.) The GG blast about B claiming to be at Columbia comes through -- "First she lost Chuck and now her dignity" -- but she tells him once again about keeping his heart open to Lily, because they are the only two people on this show with a healthy relationship, and she calls Amalia back at NYU and tells her to count her in for the falafel apartment.
Serena heads down to Waffle Central to yell at Rufus about how he's fucking with her dad via the co-op board, and Rufus totally tries to stand his ground and be admirable and honest, and she's just appalled at this whole act. Which it is, just appalling, even if he turns out to be right: He is constitutionally unable to do anything in the correct way. Whatever the easiest solution is, do something twice as complicated and make sure to involve a bunch of stances and moral stands and weird behavior like everything you know about fatherhood and adulthood and masculinity is just something you read in this book one time.
"I know you and my father used to hate each other? But that was a long time ago. You are the only one still having this fight. He has moved on." Lily shows up and Serena explains about how Rufus is acting like a petulant child, shocker, and Lily's like, "Jesus with this, still," and how it's "jealousy run amok" and Serena tells Rufus to sit, stay, roll over, he's not allowed to come to the gala. And not that I would like him to do otherwise, but the fact that he just stands there and whines soundlessly instead of responding in any way? If he had done one thing in this episode so far that didn't involve crapping on Lily or Serena, for no real reason, maybe it wouldn't seem so delicious now to see S put him in his place. Just kidding, that would be beautiful no matter what.
Those Columbia girls show up at the alumni event, and laugh at B to being a fake student, and meanwhile everybody else is running around staring at everybody else, and then Nate and S spot Chuck standing there, with an extreme version of his patented Good Boy Hair, and everybody tries to figure out who made him do it. Blair goes, "It's not like he even listens to me! And he probably just ran out of girls to have sex with." Amazing. So they watch him walk over to Lily, and it's really sweet and they're both awesome. He apologizes for not being around, and she says she understands, and he tells her she looks great, and she says he's in for a lot of waffle brunches to come. And when he hugs her, with that Charlie smile, possibly you got a little misty.
Jenny shows up at DUMBO, having bailed on the Columbia gala -- thanks for the update, Jenny, since you had zero reason to be there and weren't really invited at all -- and immediately burns a huge bowl of popcorn, and Dan asks if she really is a drug dealer. And Jenny, who remains awesome for the moment, is like, "Oh, I totally was. But I stopped." Dan retardedly suggests that Jenny get ahead of the story and tell Rufus herself, because clearly he's going to figure it out eventually, even though nobody managed to figure it out at the time, and Jenny went so far as throwing the drugs on the floor at PRADA and telling her father she was a drug dealer, which got her off the hook for everything somehow, so I'm not sure what Dan's talking about. If you're not dealing drugs anymore, shake it off.
"If you want him to have faith in you, Jenny, maybe you need to have a little faith in him." Um, no. That's so stupid. These people are so fucking stupid. "Dad, I want to do you the favor of telling you something that's no longer relevant, as a show of 'faith' in the idea that you would ever, under any circumstances, act rational or attempt to parent in any way. Absent any evidence to the contrary. Do please try to keep your shows of gratitude for this compliment from becoming too showy." Jenny tells Dan to have similar faith in Vanessa, for similarly murky and undefined reasons, and then goes to her closet to find something stupid to wear to the gala so she can ruin it by making a big dramatic deal out of telling her father that she is not a drug dealer. An errand which simply cannot wait!
Serena sits Will down to explain to him that she is a giant ho. "The contest that I won at boarding school? It was for drinking absinthe." AND I ALMOST GOT A PLAQUE. I still can't believe that absurd story about Serena's award-winning hot-chocolate-drinking prowess. That's just the stupidest thing. Will's like, "Remember how you tramped around Europe for three months this summer with your vag out and people doing body shots off your tits in Ibiza? I get it." He leads her directly to the part of the conversation, smooth as usual, bringing up how he doesn't want to step on any toes, which means Rufus, and she falls for it: "You know, I love Rufus. But you're my dad. He's not."
But there's a certain lack of narrative pressure here, because Will could literally be a incontinental serial murderer and I would still be on his side, so the fact that S is picking Will over Rufus is like, "Name me a person you would not pick over Rufus."
Blair feels like babbling at the bar for no reason to whomever is standing nearby, which is quite a lovely coincidence when the person she complains to -- about being at Columbia tonight but stuck forever at NYU, "like being locked out of Lanvin on the day they get Fall in" -- just happens to be, and I'm sorry but this is total bullshit, an admissions officer at Columbia who just happens to have reviewed and approved her transfer application today. With even weirder music, like the usual GG score somehow merged with one of those cover albums that's U2 or Coldplay songs, but as lullabies for babies.
Seriously, that's the plot this week for her. That really happens. Dude just goes, "Welcome to Columbia, Blair Waldorf," shakes her hand, and bounces. And the only thing that makes it okay is the gorgeous, wonderful, hilarious faces she makes throughout the scene. Love that girl. Nate walks up -- "Whoa! You got crazy eyes!" -- and explains that Chuck applied for her months ago, because he knew she had too much pride to admit NYU was a mistake. Which cuts the coincidences in half and is super-sweet, but we still have the amazing timing of her babbling at the random guy. Oh well, I'm not going to complain.
You know who is? Rufus Humphrey. Eric gives him a whole speech about how Rufus and not Will belongs with Lily, and that Rufus needs to believe in himself, and he's got Rufus almost revved to go, and then Elliot shows up looking delicious, because Will wanted Eric to have a perfect first day. Rufus tells Eric that, in all fairness, he should at least give Will a shot, and takes off after Eric reiterates everything he said earlier.
"After Dr. van der Woodsen organized the response to the polio outbreak in India, he moved on to Somalia, where he served as a field coordinator in Huddur. While there, he oversaw everything from shrapnel wounds to cancer to chronic Illness." See? I didn't make it up. He treats Illness. Holland intercepts Rufus at the Columbia gala -- Why's she there? Who cares! -- and he blows her off to go bother Lily some more. He apologizes sweetly about the complete dick he's been all day, and she seems interested in reconciling.
"...Improving access to primary health care to remote villages. He has done all of this while continuing to build his reputation as a leader in the progressive treatments of cancer..." the voice continues, and Jenny and Chuck stare at Lily and how pretty and not-at-all sick she looks, and Chuck gives her an x-ray with his x-ray eyes and Jenny thinks back to when she used to go through Lily's drawers and steal her pills and stuff, and wonders if there's something fishy there, and finally we know all the accomplishments and Will can take the stage.
Will gives a really inappropriate speech that has nothing to do with Columbia or the alums or medicine or the fact that he's being honored, and it's pretty much just excruciating to watch because it's so rude to everybody there, so completely boring and irrelevant to everyone else, and really just worthless. Except awesome, because really all it is is a heartfelt plea with Lily to let him be her fella again, because he loves S and Eric so much, and that if she could just see her way to kicking Rufus free, that would be great. And the look of abject pant-shitting fear in Rufus's eyes is more beautiful than a thousand white-hot Elliots. "My, oh, my. Did Dr. van der Woodsen just make a public pass at Rufus' wife? Looks like this doctor without borders... Needs a few boundaries." Well done, GG! One out of (63 eps, 5 act breaks per...) 315 ain't bad.
Lily tries to explain that, while yes, it turns out he was right about Will, she loves Rufus and not Will, so it doesn't impact her relationship with Rufus in any way. Rufus will beg to differ on that note, though, because he would like to throw some more fits and make Lily get another doctor, just like the last umpteen episodes. Lily warns him -- "I understand why you don't trust him, but surely, you trust me?" -- and he puts his foot down precisely in the wrong way, at the wrong time, and fucks everything up: "Okay, we'll put it aside till tomorrow. Let's get you home." Instead of telling him the actual deal -- which is that her body is her body and he is not in charge of her body, and he will additionally not be telling her when and why it's time for her to go to motherfucking bed, or where she will be or when they will leave wherever she motherfucking is -- Lily just tells Rufus he's sleeping at DUMBO tonight. Simple as that. That's how the Rhodes Women do it.
He goes downstairs to find Jenny, who is getting bitched out for selling a girl Oxy that turned out to be antibiotics: "Yeah, I didn't get high? I got a yeast infection." (Which specifically it was Oxycontin that Jenny stole from Lily for her Illness headaches, so I feel like we're being given a clue as to what is really going down, but I just can't see it yet. Maybe I should google "cancer.") Anyway, coincidentally now the cat is out of the bag and no amount of Jenny trying to explain that her whole point in coming here was to explain it, and Rufus squeals, "Like I'm gonna believe a word out of your mouth! Get your things and come with me! We're going home... To Brooklyn!" Well, I don't know about you but I did a backflip.
Dan takes one more opportunity to interject his own feelings and personal bullshit into Vanessa's relationship with CNN, and he tells her to take the internship after all. This motherfucking pair right here, I'm telling you. Literally they have just been flicking a switch back and forth the entire episode. Go to Haiti, don't go to Haiti. "I don't want us to be making decisions based on fear. All right?" NO. NOT ALL RIGHT. "We" are not making this decision, based on fear or anything else. You are making the decision, and being as scummy as possible to make it appear otherwise. Anyway, Vanessa thanks him for giving her permission to have anything nice for her own, and he produces some stationary, so they can be gay transatlantically.
"That is so romantic! Maybe if we become famous writers one day, they'll publish 'em after we die. Like Sartre and De Beauvoir." 1. Um, that's EXACTLY who you are. A girl who thought she knew who she was and didn't let anybody give her shit, until she fell in love with a narcissist philosopher and spent the rest of her life following him around and massaging his feet. 2. Are you kidding me with this shit? Is anyone on the planet so lacking in self-awareness that they would say something like that? "They'll publish our letters after we die." How do you keep your hand from balling into a fist and punching your face of its own accord?
Dan sends Vanessa off to... Christ, I don't even know which end was up this last time, but I know she ends up going, in the end... And Holland, a grown woman, walks right up to Serena, a young lady, and tells her some seriously personal gossip about herself and Rufus. And then GG, who is one classy slut, goes, "Listen carefully, S! Holland has a tale to tell. Apparently, her upstairs neighbor has been cumming downstairs..."
I don't know if that's even true or what Holland's game is, but I cannot believe Gossip Girl and how urpy and gross that was. It wasn't even a pun, it was just like when a drunk guy takes out his penis and waggles it at you to punctuate whatever dreary, aggressive point he's making. Anyway, S runs straight for Will and tells him she's backing him against Rufus in the coming war and that he should fight for Lily, if what he wants is her.
A few meters down the sidewalk, Blair coughs in the faces of those bitches from Columbia and explains that she's actually a student after all, and they immediately offer to let her come live with them in their apartment, and she goes, "No. I don't live with the help. Oh, and you wanted to see a Blair Waldorf takedown? Well, cross me again, and you'll experience one firsthand." Which I guess means growth, because at least it's fair warning. And these girls, while still not as interesting as Nelly Yuki Penelope Hazel et aliae, are more interesting than the NYU ones by a mile already. So we'll see how it goes down.
Jenny bings "cancer" and somehow discovers a problem with Lily's meds, so she calls Chuck. It's cool how she's embarrassed about the thieving/dealing: "It's kind of a long story how I know this" being code for, "I used to root through our stepmother's cabinets for pills before we realized she had Illness," but whatever, they'll explain it all eventually. I'm just happy to like Jenny again.
"Elliot's the perfect mix of smart and fun. He speaks three languages, but he has a subscription to People magazine." (And somehow nobody knows he's gay!) Also, I love that Eric's great breakdown is "smart" people v. "fun" people. I was going to say that's a false dichotomy, but then I realized that's how you get Blair v. Serena, and a perfect mix of those two is precisely the guy I would want to date. Serena brings Will over for hot chocolate, and Eric -- thanks to the first date bribe -- gives permission, and the four of them, all four of those van der Woodsens, sit down and drink hot chocolate by the fire for their first time, ever. Pretty good feeling. And if it involves answering Rufus's call with the lie that Lily's in bed, well, that's a pretty good feeling too. XOXO.
Why does Gossip Girl actually care about parents and a family that lives in Brooklyn? We're still baffled too.
Want to immediately access TWoP content no matter where you are online? Download the free TWoP toolbar for your web browser. Already have a customized toolbar? Then just add our free toolbar app to get updated on our content as soon it's published.