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Wow, that was something of an achievement -- not only one of the best episodes of the series, and by far the most successful finale -- but I think what truly made it great was the sound across America of fangirls' heads exploding again, and again, and again. So awesome! Not a sacred cow, from fake rape outrage to Jenny's v-card, goes unmolested. It's magnificent, high romance across the entire spectrum -- from Chekov to Austen to Thackeray -- while still remaining perfectly clever and balanced, with the fresh perspective and dynamic reassessment the show has desperately needed.
Plus all night you got Georgina haunting the edges of their lives like Catherine Earnshaw, barely visible and completely scorned, having finally won her way back from Belarus in a blonde wig and giant fur coat.
Okay, so Blair ditches Cameron but then misses the Empire State meet-up by a second anyway, because Dorota has gone into labor. The entire cast somehow hoofs it over to the hospital, because once again they're supposed to give a shit about Dorota. Godparents Cyrus and Eleanor get all kinds of obsessed with the baby, which rightfully and hilariously terrifies Dorota and the other one.
Dan and Serena get their asses pretty much dumped by Vanessa and Nate after Jenny GG's a picture of them sleeping it off (they only kissed, making the whole situation precisely the same as the Santorini Situation, right down to the ways and reasons S lies about it to Nate) -- and even when Nate takes her back, S decides she wants to explore life on her own.
Meanwhile, Jenny's entire life is crashing down, between her antics last week and the GG blast. Eric tells Rufus and Lily to send "her crazy ass" to Hudson; Blair drops by the loft to threaten her; Dan and Nate are exhausted by her, and as Rufus finalizes plans to send her to her Mom's for the year, she wanders the UES, finally ending up in... Chuck's bed.
It's perhaps the most finely tuned, epic set-piece the show has ever attempted, managing to one-up even classics like Blair's burlesque or Serena's Times Square kiss or art gallery snowfall: Nihilistic, fucked up, scary and incredibly warped. In other words, exactly where Jenny's at. Just brilliant, in both scale and execution. So of course Blair shows up, and tearfully reunites with Chuck, and Jenny sneaks back to the hospital, looking absolutely suicidal to the point where she scares the shit out of Eric, who sends Dan in to save her.
Chuck appears, ready to propose marriage to Blair in an effort to spend the rest of his life redeeming himself with her. Of course, having heard about Jenny, Dan appears and punches him out, resulting in a totally classic freakout on Blair's part -- the second-best scene of the night -- including like a death curse on Jenny, who is now officially ready to get the fuck out of town. Where she, and Vanessa, will remain for at least the beginning of season.
For the summer: Blair takes Serena on a summer tour of Paris, while Dan momentarily thinks about making a huge play for S once again -- but gets shocked out of it by Georgina's total pregnancy, which she claims is his. Nate is busily becoming the new Chuck, taking on champagne and prostitutes two at a time. And Chuck himself? He's in Prague's red light district, shot and bleeding out in an alley after a robbery gone wrong.
Well done, Gossip Girl. I was starting to think you just didn't have it in you. XOXO, forever.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"You reap what you sow -- what goes around, comes around. No matter how far you run, you can never truly escape. Everything catches up to you in the end, and when it does? It usually kicks your ass." This -- wherein we revisit the same exact idea not once but five times, including twice in the last single thought -- from the girl who managed to write EMPIRE STATE BUILDING OF MIND on the opening-credits blog post card that opens every episode. We willingly put ourselves in her hands, the girl who wrote without irony EMPIRE STATE BUILDING OF MIND. It's that concrete jungle where dreams are made of: She is merely its chronicler.
What is happening while GG is issuing these wise thoughts is that Georgina Sparks, in a big blonde wig and strange furs, is getting snapped very obviously by a wannabe in the train station. Not that it really comes to bear on the episode -- it's nipped by a tossed-off line in a later act -- but in terms of bookending the pilot, as so much of this episode does, it's pretty hilarious. Georgina in Serena drag is sort of how we got here, although we didn't know that at the time, and crazy-ass Jenny will leave from here in a week.
Lily, parenting guru and all-around feelings understander, lectures sad puppy Rufus about how teenage girls are a nightmare, because they realize their immense power over you, which lies in your unconditional love. So essentially I guess the point is to "close your heart," as noted gaywads Chuck and Blair would say, or simply wait until Jenny stops being an asshole, which Lily thinks is around college graduation. Or, in Serena's case, not-college not-graduation. Like Serena is done being an asshole! She's only resting.
Rufus has sent her to DUMBO so he can think! Lily says that grounding doesn't work, but I think what doesn't work w/r/t grounding is that Rufus has never actually successfully grounded Jenny. Not once has she stayed grounded for more than five minutes. "Short of sending her away," Rufus can't think of anything that would help. That is a very Rhodes Women plan: Can't manage to actually communicate with or appeal to your daughter's valid concerns? Send that shit upstate! Eric agrees, appearing out of nowhere to explain that he doesn't need Jenny's "crazy ass" around any more than they do, and hopes only that they'll send her away sooner rather than later, before she strikes again.
But unbeknownst to her woeful family, Jenny is not in DUMBO, she is sitting in Nate's bed wearing Nate's clothes staring down at Nate watching him sleep. Because she is a creep. He wakes up and they act all chummy and brother-sister some more, like always, and like always Nate is out of the blue like, "I just want to be clear: We are not boyfriend and girlfriend." As simplistic as it makes Nate sound, it is true that Jenny should be reminded of basic things if they happen to conflict with her agenda, which is being super crazy all of the time. Jenny rolls her eyes and accedes, then immediately turns around and minimizes their relationship and gets him talking about how much of an asshole Serena is. Good work! He's like, "She's mad, but she'll cool off." If you can just wait until they reboot, Nate and Serena are the perfect mate because "forgive" and "forget" are just two words for the same thing: Goldfish brain.
Luckily, Chuck comes in with breakfast on a tray, calls them "sunshines," and generally behaves all gay and nuts. He sort of growls half-heartedly at Jenny, but mentions that -- as usual, one assumes -- he was listening to Nate sleeping, and thus knew they were up to no no-good. Jenny runs away, and Chuck gives Nate a speech about how his relationship with Serena is in trouble, and Jenny is exactly the kind of complicated motherfucker who might just push them over the edge. He says this like it's a scary possibility, and not a cold dead certainty. Then he pets Nate's hair and tickles his chin until he opens his mouth to giggle, then pops a Flintstones vitamin in there. Nate swears that Dino and Barney taste better than the other ones, without regard to color. This is one of Chuck's favorite things.
Hey it's time for everybody's favorite episodic situation comedy, That's So Dorota!, starring racism. Dorota is pregnant, so Eleanor bitches at her that if she can't perform her maidly duties, she'll have to hire a maid to maid their maid! That's So Dorota! Blair just wants to go on her date with poor old Cute Columbia Cameron and avoid the Empire State Building, where true love waits, but Dorota knows better. Broken English is always, always a sign that you're dealing with the pure of heart. Like with the mentally retarded, there's this trade-off where they just see certain things more clearly. Matters of the heart, and such.
A very herky-jerky screamy amazing Blair hollers she doesn't love anything except "shoes, clothes, and anything Harry Winston." Remember that Winston campaign where they had the giant ravens? That was so freaking awesome. Anyway, as punishment for sticking her pert little nose in where it doesn't belong, Dorota -- who is about seventeen months pregnant, which is just So Dorota -- will be chaperoning her date with Cameron, in order to keep her from going to the Empire State Building. ("But I already ironed your sheets and alphabetized shoes by designer, like you ask!" Dorota say, for funny! "Miss Blair, I defriend Mr. Chuck on Facebook, and in life!" Dorota say. Is So Dorota!) "If you let me go anywhere near 34th Street, there won't be a miracle but a massacre." God, if only.
Georgina Sparks appears in the Bass suite, getting all snappy with him about how nice the Empire is -- "For the Upper West Side" -- and saying she's not even angry about the time he and Blair got her kidnapped and sent to Belarus, because she's in real trouble this time. "The Russians don't mess around. It's really cold there, and there's, like, barely any designer jeans, and the average citizen drinks about thirty-eight pints of pure alcohol a year!" Russians got mad style, but the other things are true. Anyway, Chuck isn't having it even a little bit, so he tells her to leave or be thrown out. She goes. She is totally Catherine Earnshaw in this episode, just haunting everybody and acting weird all the time.
Dan and Serena wake up in bed together, goddammit. Apparently, though, all they did was drink a bottle of wine and kiss for ten minutes, and the rest was just talking. Also, S fell asleep on his arm, but she's coyote pretty so he couldn't move it. Thus neither of them noted Jenny arriving, with her name scribbled on her coffee, to take a picture of them together and email it to GG. Why? Because she is a bitch, essentially, and because she will never give up trying to break them up, because without trying to suck Serena's entire life out through her eyeballs, what is she?
So those two crazy kids, they wake up thinking life is basically normal: They love Nate, and Dan loves Vanessa, and they decide to keep this non-event a secret. There's one gorgeous moment at the door where Serena literally goes, "Call me if you... Need anything?" like she can't figure out what you say in this circumstance, and it's brilliant, but then he accidentally kisses her near her mouth, and he starts stuttering, and it's all very troublesome. For once GG is completely cogent:
"Spotted: A family reunion only Faulkner would approve of. I used to think that S and Lonelyboy were the most boring couple on the Upper East Side. But what makes them actually great together? Is when they're supposed to be with other people."
Everybody gets the blast at once, and it's so great. S is now officially her mother. What Happened In DUMBO is the new What Happened In Santorini: "Yes, I did kiss my ex and lie about it in more and more Byzantine ways. But it's just because I didn't want to answer a bunch of dumb questions!" Blair and S conference about the blast, and B is only moderately grossed out by the hookup. "We all try on old clothes from time to time, and sure, we may even be surprised when they still fit, but that doesn't mean we should wear them again, ever!" S swears nothing happened, and points out that clearly Jenny did this, which is sort of awful just because of the Dan part of it. She mentions that Jenny's in Brooklyn at the moment, and a terrible, wonderful, scary, beautiful look of great Zen-like focus falls across B's face, and she turns that car the fuck around.
S and Dan talk more about how their kiss was super meaningless and shouldn't jeopardize their stuff, but you can tell it's something of a half-hearted game of chicken right now and they're still worried the other one might be the one that is having the feelings. This progression, the two of them in this episode, is actually very well done. This whole episode is very well done, as a matter of fact. Except for the music, which -- bar one exception -- the music sucks dong. It's all covers, but they're all bad covers of ridiculous cheesy songs not even your dad could love. Not sure what we're going for there, although the episode is such a remix mashup of tropes and memories and symbolism that it might have something to do with that. But instead of seeming like The O.C. S4, where it was awesome, here it's more like the zombie of music.
Rufus makes fun of Dan -- "Was that my Lincoln Hawk t-shirt Serena was wearing?" -- and eats some waffles or some shit, and says he was reading Gossip Girl over Eric's shoulder. The way Rufus interacts with Eric is always so upsetting. Dan asks where Jenny is, because once again they have not figured out how grounding works. Dan regretfully says that he has finally after three years figured out that his sister is insane and totally out of control. "Yesterday, it was your marriage, and today it's Nate and Serena, and Vanessa and me. She's gotta be stopped!" They agree to lay in wait for her at the DUMBO loft, because they have a feeling she will... Go there at some point. That's literally the plan.
Chuck, who is looking fine as hell this episode, gets bitchy with Serena when she shows up looking for Nate, whom he says "knows who he loves and what he wants." Unless S can say the same, he says, she needs to be honest and so forth. "Courage, ma soeur," says he. Then Nate and Serena have a really dumb fight that they keep having, which is that he shouldn't have called the cops on her father for poisoning her mother because it's not Nate's call what is against the law: It is Serena's. However, she would like to make things work and "go back to being us," which I'm not sure what that means but I'm guessing it happens on the kitchen floor.
Blair arrives at DUMBO, and Jenny tells her to bring it on. "When are you gonna get it? For three years, you've tried to worm your way into our world, but you will never be a part of it. No matter what you do. This isn't copycat dressing at Constance or dumping dairy on your best friend to prove a point. Nate and Serena? That's mythic. You don't mess with that and survive. You're hurting people I love. You're hurting people you love." That's the part that gets her, because it's as close as possible to drawing a Venn diagram about how crazy she is becoming.
"Nate loves Serena, Dan loves Vanessa -- God knows why -- and Chuck loves me. But you, Jenny? No one loves you, except your daddy, and after what you pulled yesterday, who knows if that's even true anymore?" I didn't entirely buy the Jesus Hates You thing that drove Georgie crazy that time with Poppy, but as a warm up for this, that's cool. Because I do totally believe that this little speech would take Jenny all the way to Crazytown, of which she is already the foursquare mayor. Downstairs, Dan is worshipping at the fecund altar that is Dorota's distended belly. "That's so beautiful, I can't believe it! The miracle of life growing inside of you!" My God, this kid.
But when Blair punches him, it's not for that: It's for fucking around with Nate and Serena's relationship. Blair knows, through her feral extrasensory powers, that they at least kissed, and are leaving that part out. Then suddenly the dumbest thing happens, wherein suddenly Blair looks at the skyline and sees the Empire State Building, and falls back in love with Chuck Bass. In the middle of a sentence: "Signs are for the religious, the superstitious and the lower class. I don't believe in them and neither should you... Damn you, Chuck Bass. Damn you to hell!" Lame. I mean, the whole plot hinges around Blair being a crazy person, and that this whole Affair To Remember thing is not actually romantic but just Chuck's correct idea about what Blair thinks is romantic. So I can see her suddenly falling face-first into it like she never saw it coming. But the way it's done here, very unconvincing. Maybe it's just the line reading. Anyway, she sends Cameron away after he's said his one line of the entire episode, and she's headed for the Bridge, but then Dorota goes into labor. Which is just so Dorota. "Dorota's water might not be the only thing breaking tonight," says GG, which is also so Dorota.
Rufus, having finally tracked down his daughter, explains that she is leaving the show and going to live with Horrible Allison in Horrible Hudson and will be attending Horrible Hudson High in the fall. For some reason, after Blair's little speech, Jenny has decided that New York is the fifth bitch at the table, and that she lives and breathes New York State Of Mind and could never be happy with Baryshnikov in Paris and the city is "all I have" and "If I leave, I have nothing!" and all this random crap about that. Rufus doesn't care, because he doesn't love the city. Does Rufus love anything? Those fucking coffee mugs that time, that he never mentioned again. Talkin' about waffles. The word "grounded." Judgin' and adjudicatin' and administratin'. Powerlessness. Weakness is all he has! Without weakness he would have nothing!
Hey, somebody's maid is having a baby with somebody's doorman! We better all get to the hospital for that major life event in none of our lives whatsoever. You go warm up the car and I'll pack some snacks. Hey, call your cousin in Phoenix, she'll definitely want to know about these irrelevant people and their baby. What's that? A doctor? We don't need a doctor, we have Cyrus Rose. An entertainment lawyer! Dorota sends Blair off to the Empire State Building, because she's running behind Chuck's creepy weird schedule, and B doesn't want to go, because she wants to stay with the entire cast of this show in this one hospital room for literally no reason, but Dorota tells her to get the fuck over there. "You have my blessing. We both get what we want now. Go!" That's so Dorota!
Blair nearly runs over S in the hallway, and Dorota births some more, and B talks to herself a lot, and S and D are awkward and guilty and weird in the hallway, and Nate hears them discussing all of this, eyebrow faces all over the place. Round the corner, Georgina explains that she followed the Waldorf-Roses from their house to the hospital. Why? I guess she wanted to be in on the blessed event of some immigrants having a baby. "I need to talk to you. I'm in trouble. Big trouble." Blair says that's awesome, to please fuck off right away, and "May God save your soul. Again."
Nate explains to Dan and S that people kiss each other because they have feelings, kissing type feelings, and S says that's usually but not always the case, like for example they have boyfriend and girlfriend feelings for their boyfriend and girlfriend. Nate almost goes back to explain about kissing again to them, because they don't seem to have understood what he was saying, but then instead he just offers to call Vanessa right away and fuck them over. Maybe explain how kissing works to her, as well. S yells at Nate for threatening Dan, and when he says he can stand up for himself she beautifully points out that A) That is not true and B) That is never true. Nate says probably it's because Dan knows he's right, and then tries to explain about kissing one more time.
While some random poor person shoves the world's giantest fake baby out of her giant fake belly, and Nate uses this week's new cell phone to notify Vanessa of the sleeping that happened, Blair runs to the top of the Building and finds a bouquet of peonies in the garbage. I guess Chuck had some places he needed to be. Or maybe, I'm not sure how it works, maybe there's some kind of surgery involved in "opening" and "closing" one's heart, and he needed to get on the list.
Oh no, he just got bored of waiting, so he went home to drink. Jenny comes looking for Nate, hoping her time-release dirty bomb will have done its work, and Chuck offers her a wee nip and some dark and gloomy company. Dark and gloomy being the watchword for old Jenny, she slugs the drink and asks for more. Then they have a super gay conversation about how "this world" is so empty and "only exists from the outside."
I think this scene, like much of this episode, plays out a mashup of their two dominant narrative modalities -- gothic romance for him, hyperreal/po-mo punk for her -- and if you put those together it's all about putting cigarette butts out on your chest and making little cuts on each other, which is why their conversation is too embarrassing: Add nihilism to gothic romance and you get De Sade. "The hard way is the only way," he says, and they decide to fuck.
It's that simple; it's always that simple. "If you want to leave, now would be the time." But neither of them wants to be alone. And honestly, what's to be afraid of? The whole point of Chuck is that he defines the absolute worst, scariest places your body can go. If you are Jenny, that's what he means. But the absolute worst, scariest places are where Jenny's trying to get. Honestly, if she's going to have any chance at all, they're the places she needs to go. Three years ago she made a deal with the devil, and realized almost too late that she was too young to make those kind of deals. And by hook and by crook she's been acquiring that social capital she wanted back then, when she thought they were only playing. And the joke is that it's just as empty now as it would have been back then: She has discovered the punchline, and it's her.
Dan is back on the kick of babies and staring at babies and loving the whole idea of babies. "Turns out I'm a big fan of babies," he helpfully explains. "Everything for them is so simple. They start out with a clean slate. They have no idea how complicated everything is gonna get for them." Serena joins him, pointing at one "smarter" baby who will always be an outsider with a chip on his shoulder. Dan returns the favor by pointing to a little girl who will have "Fabulous hair and a great smile, but her daddy issues are gonna make it real hard for her to trust people."
First of all, you are not playing this game right, Humphrey, because that was totally mean and shitty. What are you, some kind of Humphrey? And second of all, her daddy issues make her trust everybody. You've let her down about sixty times without trying, Carter Baizen, like, who even knows what he's up to most of the time, she screwed around with a married Congressman... The only person she doesn't trust is Nate, but that's only because he doesn't trust her, and the only reason he doesn't trust her is that she is fully untrustworthy. But instead of punching him in the nuts, she takes a little romantic walk with him, and Georgina appears from around the corner and stares down at one totally crazy baby and goes, "And this baby's gonna do some things to make all the other babies hate her!" Georgina, what are you talking about? Why so mysterious? Why is your coat so big? Why is your wig so big? Why are you in big trouble?
Godmother Eleanor scares the shit out of Dorota by attempting to eat the baby Anastasia, then saying she never wants to go back to Paris, because she loves the baby. Nobody even blinks about the fact that Eleanor already had a baby of her own, and broke it -- they just accept that Dorota raised Blair and that this is the first baby Eleanor has ever dealt with. Downstairs, Dan figures out that Nate at some point sent Vanessa the picture of them in bed together. In Haiti, there is no Gossip Girl, but there is Nate. In addition to asserting that their relationship was "so easy" because they didn't know each other as well as the NJBC, which: what show are you watching, they also agree that Nate is within his bitchy little rights to break up Dan and Vanessa after she's been gone for literally a day.
One of the things in Wharton or Austen or Thackaray that you get used to is that there are always going to be scoundrels, but you rarely get to meet the girl half of the equation. Darcies will always embarrass nameless third daughters, and Willoughbys will always run away with the vicar's sister. She's a ruined lady, possibly crazy, definitely not the kind of person your heroines are ever going to come across. And of all the things I love about this episode, the part where Jenny's liminality is leveraged against that fact is one of the best, because it creates two of the greatest scenes in the episode, both of which -- not by coincidence -- feature Blair and Chuck.
The entire show, the entire story, these two characters who have always acted as the UES's immune system, takes every possible opportunity in this hour to say, "You do not belong here." Almost as if the story itself is pushing, pushing, pushing her out. Almost as if it has been doing so for three years. Almost as if all her madness and grasping and hard-won power came from somehow knowing it would lead here, eventually. That she was only ever going to be granted temporary leave from her real life. In that case, all the heightened reality, from "Glamorous" to the Masked Ball to her jagged Cotillion gowns, puts her right where she needed to be, in order to keep the show moving and alive. I'm not saying the show is about her character, but I do believe that her character has always been about the show, more than even Serena's has been.
Chuck invites her to stay the night -- "You're not kicking me out into the street?" she says, tellingly -- and Blair arrives. He comes running out, promising there's nobody in the bedroom, and Jenny -- after finding a tiny bag from a jewelry store on the nightstand, and peeking inside -- strips the bed and quietly disappears. Blair gives another nutty speech. "I wasn't going to show up, I was resolved not to. Every bone in my body tried to slow me, every voice in my head screamed Don't! But I didn't listen. I followed my heart, because I love you. I can't deny that our path has been complicated, but in the end, love makes everything simple." Chuck, terrified, tries to make everything perfect. Jenny, having now gotten everything she ever wanted, fades to black. Blair wanders back into her movie and wonders why she wasted so much time in the real world.
Down in the hospital chapel, Jenny looks a mess. Sort of like when S killed that guy, but even more sticky and scary and awful. Eric comes looking for her, and promises that he'll always be there for her, but she's not so sure about that. "You say that now. But I'll do something to let you down. Then you'll turn your back like everybody else: My dad. Dan. Nate. Serena. Blair. Everybody hates me! Even Chuck." It takes Eric a minute to figure out what went down tonight, and then he's just grossed out for her. A pretty cover of "The Funeral" plays as he figures it out.
"Jenny, why would you... Why would you do that?" Eric compares it favorably to Damien, but Jenny admits that she didn't do it with Damien. "I wanted to wait. I wanted it to be special." And instead she wasted it on their brother, because she was alone and he was alone, and they wanted to forget, but mostly because Jenny has been doing the same thing, over and over, all season long, and nobody was reacting. Her virginity was for Nate. She knew it, we knew it; he knew it. And because that's the way it had to be, Jenny did what Jenny does: Stepped outside the story, broke it. Smashed the pieces. Hoping somebody would notice and see how far she's gone. Brilliant.
Eric tells Dan to go to their sister, immediately, while Nate arrives to talk to Serena. She breaks up with him, because she honestly thought when Will came back she would stop fucking things up. Nate's sort of disgusted by all this, and tells her if she's out then she's out. And she is out. She kisses him goodbye, and his story falls apart too.
Downstairs, Chuck apologizes to Blair for everything. "I know I can't take it back, but I want to try and make it up to you, even if it takes me the rest of my life." He pulls out an engagement ring, but then Dan arrives for the big set piece, punching Chuck once again. Blair takes one look at Jenny's ruined face, and figures it all out. The way Jenny just stands there, silently, and Blair falls apart: Gorgeous. Epic. Chuck's sad little face is nothing compared to the unleashing that follows.
"You. Get out of here now. And not just out of this hospital, but off this island. Go and never come back, because if you ever set foot in Manhattan again, I will know. And I will destroy you." Jenny tries to apologize, but Dan points out that it's all about Chuck; it's always been about Chuck. They stand around, with this death curse sort of reverberating in the walls, and Rufus stumbles into the scene yakking about bagel chips before he comes up short, mumbling, "What'd I just walk into?" The first real thing that ever happened to your family. Jenny collapses against her father, and Lily and Rufus take her away. Serena arrives, scared to death by Blair's expression, and Dan takes her away from them. Chuck tries to explain, but Blair screams at him, and says the whole night didn't happen, and then he's all alone. The end.
A week later, Jenny's at the train station, saying goodbye. Rufus hugs her goodbye, and Eric promises he'll always be there for her, in the city. Rufus gathers up his son and daughter in his arms, and then pulls in Eric and Lily. I'm guessing Serena is busy. Jenny takes off into the station so she can stare out the window -- like Serena, like Marissa Cooper once upon a time -- as the train pulls away.
Over at Blair's, Serena is all about how she's excited to have "an entire summer with nothing to do." B points out that S forgot to go to college and has held down about half a job in her life, and therefore nothing has changed. "All the drama, it's who you are," she explains, which is why Blair is dragging her away to Paris: Because who she is, is a person who believes in fantastical love, even if the Chuck thing went so terribly wrong. "I was gonna do a cleanse and yoga. And maybe start keeping a dream journal." Serena and her priorities, I do adore them. Blair talks her a long talk about how they have never been single together and how Paris is like this and like that, and S gets all whipped into a fervor about it, and she's like, "I really think I need this!" After all she's been through, what with dumping her boring boyfriend and not giving a shit about her family falling apart, and whatnot. "As long as we have each other, we're both gonna be okay," she says, and they scream about Paris for a bit.
Nate calls Dan and Dan gets all Humphrey about how they both need to apologize to each other, which is just so passive-aggressive, so wonderfully Humphrey. They work it out man-style, in about two seconds, and confirm that they are both single fellas. Nate employs the phrase "dick move" about his own actions, but Dan gets stuck on how Nate and Serena broke up, which I guess he didn't know for sure. He's all planning to write Vanessa a big whining email about their true love, but pulls an about-face when he realizes Serena is back in play. As Chuck is apparently in Prague, where you go when you have run out of healthy options, Nate will be using his little black book to find the best NYC has to offer in the way of whores, and would love to share them with Dan. While this would technically be their favorite thing it's possible to do on this entire earth, Dan must beg off. He has some pathetic shit to do instead.
Nate as the coke-snorting drunken Nate version of Chuck? That has promise! I can't believe Dan's not signing up for that shit. But the heart wants what the heart sometimes wants, I guess. He calls S, but she's slugging champagne on the way to the airport. Even Blair is like, "We'll miss you, Humphrey!" It's adorable. He says he'll see them in September and hangs up, immediately forgetting his email to V in his haste to secure a romantic ticket to Paris with all that money he doesn't have, but then is surprised by Georgina, who is PREGNANT WITH HIS HUMPHREY SPAWN!
I don't even know what to say about that. I think I love it very, very much. If you were playing Dan's earlier baby game, I would say that a Dan/Georgina baby would be just about the perfect baby. It would be adorable, and small in stature. Cheekbones to die for. A brilliant, vicious mind, but with an open heart and a capacity for spirituality unheard of on this show. It would make great crazy schemes, but then feel bad about them. It would be kind of like Vanessa, if Vanessa were cool and not a total drag. A little nutty Suzuki Beane of our very own. You can hold it if you want, but don't get your fingers near its mouth.
Alternately, of course, it's more likely that this is not a baby but some kind of massive scheme. She could have C-4 in there, or a roulette table. Who knows, when it's Georgie? Maybe it is Pilot Inspektor's baby. Definitely it has dark powers. Maybe she switched babies with Dorota, and Dorota will end up getting decapitated by a plate-glass window when she pisses off the baby she thinks is her own. Forced to jump off a window ledge for failing to secure the perfect pony for its fifth birthday. That would be so Dorota.
Chuck wanders the Prague Red-Light District, being all dissolute and whatnot, and some Czech rough trade drag him into an alley for the rough-up. He tries to explain that he is totally rich -- "I'm Chuck Bass!" he shouts, weakly -- but soon enough they discover the ring, still in its velvet box. He begs them to give it back, promising all the money in the world, but he struggles too much, and they shoot him, and they leave him for dead.
All in all, a fine finale. Much better than the other two, which were strong on their own. Definitely one of the best episodes of the season, right up there with "The Freshmen" and alongside the greats of the series as a whole. And as much as I love the Brit Lit wonkery, tracing references, seeing what happens when you drop a Fitzgerald character into a Trollope farce or putting a punk princess into Bernard Shaw period pieces, I think what I love the most about it is the mission statement feel: This is what the show is like, from now on. This is how the game will be played year. Doesn't it feel that way to you? This season has sort of lacked a perspective, compared to the others.
When you think back to the classic, magical appeal of the first season -- the world they lived in, where you could just toss a cell phone in the garbage if you were angry, or put on a mask and suddenly know all the steps to a complex group dance number -- or the cold, technological light of Season Two -- where everybody was keeping tabs on everybody else and spilling secrets at a prodigious rate -- you can see how we got here. It was very sudsy, which is much more respectable if you keep in mind who was doing what, which is why I keep bringing this up.
Serena played out her Daisy Miller shit, and Chuck did Wuthering Heights and EF Benson horror, over and over. Blair tried desperately to come up with a working philosophy that didn't depend on cinematic existentialism; Nate did the same thing with fairytales. Dan and Vanessa recapitulated American poetry, from the Beats to Buchowski and even a little self-indulgent Patti Smith. Jenny's story was the absence of story. Rufus and Lily continued to be the only teenagers on the teenager show.
Put it all together -- run those stories into each other at top speed -- and it's just completely over the top, which is exactly what the year after graduation is like. Freshman year of college means every week feels like a month, because you're changing so fast. And then the year you graduate college, you pull the entire bookcase over on your head. This year, we did both. XOXO.
Look back at the juiciest moments from the third season of Gossip Girl.
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