Je Ne Suis La Belette De Personne

S04E02

On Serena's last shoulder-padded day in Paris, Lily phones to let her know that they've discovered a possible Chuck Bass corpse in the river. So now she has to ID her brother's body, head back to NYC, and keep Blair from finding out/melting down before she's back in the States. For a girl who literally does nothing all day, as like her entire calling, that is quite a task list.

Though Chuck's dead for now, Henry is fine! Hot as hell and living it up with that Veela girl in some kind of French bohemian fantasy world of wine and bicycles and baguettes and what have you. Perhaps she is evil/mysterious; certainly Henry walks with a cane. Blair's taxi almost runs him down, causing them both to emote. Blair of course assumes that dressing like Peer Gynt and running around with a cane and amnesia is some kind of romantic scheme to get B back; it is at this point that dressing like Peer Gynt and running around with a cane and amnesia becomes a romantic scheme to get B back. Or something. You know how Chuck is.

S tracks him down but he keeps grumbling "There is no Chuck Bass" and wobbling away on his cane like he's about to grant some wishes. Finally he sends some official-looking paperwork S's way, maybe now she owns the Empire Hotel or some shit, you know how this show works. Maybe it's Georgina's somehow. Serena freaks out about this while dressed like a clown, and Blair ignores her to date her hot prince, even though he was right to dump her gold-digging ass last week and she doesn't even like him anyway and also Chuck. It's fairly compelling, this bit.

This is also the point where Serena begins consulting with Scotland Yard or something, it's so amazing, she and her new friend Inspector Chevalier are like solving crimes and resolving complex issues of identity theft at Harry Winston and like forensically reconstructing the night of Chuck's shooting and... I love this show so fucking much, you guys. This actually happened. Serena is a crimefighter. A fighter of crime.

Finally S drags Blair to a really beautiful scene between B and Chuck on this walkway where she talks him into being Chuck Bass again, and it's so beautiful and wonderful and they have this amazing conversation about his pretend amnesia and the shooting and how she's not in love with him anymore. She makes a compelling argument for the UES, though, and he eventually takes up his name and brings Eva along for the ride. And B leaves Prince Louis with a fairytale shoe, returning free of the Bass Factor and totally triumphant.

Back home, while Lily and Rufus go gaga for Milo, Juliet jumps into the irrelevant Nate/Dan/Serena triangle with both feet, sending Dan off with Vanessa and eventually seducing Nate himself away from Serena, so that by the time S gets back home nobody really cares whom she chose. Of course, this is all part of some seriously evil planning by Juliet, who is working on somebody's mysterious behalf... To destroy Serena from the ground up!

...Poppy? Gabriel? Both? Pete Fairman people? That boring girl from Texas? Aaron Rose somehow? Dr. van der Woodsen trying to isolate her for some reason? Georgina now having a split personality and doing schemes she doesn't even know about? (And where the eff is she?) Nelly Yuki?

OMG is Nelly Yuki having a lesbian relationship with Katie Cassidy? Lucky old so-and-so.

Last day in Paris and Serena is determined to spend it in style, dressed as a clown from a distant planet where the men are men and the women have got to be kidding. Shimmering silver shoulder pads complete the look, but it all really starts with bright blue pantaloons and a Thunderdome bun-pony that looks like it took about two hours. If you look close you can see the buttresses. Blair describes, weirdly, Serena's Choice between Dan and Nate as that of a woman forced to choose which of her children should be cooked in ovens by fascists, and Serena hurriedly adjusts the metaphor to éclairs v. napoleons because nobody could actually be that idiotic or callous. Unless they just didn't know what Sophie's Choice was actually about, being illiterate and ill-informed in addition to being tacky.

Anyway, limp-haired Blair doesn't have time for that kind of talk, although in her head she's thinking, "And just like éclairs v. napoleons, eventually you're going to puke it up anyway, because Nate is boring and Dan is, well, Dan." For her part, she's managed somehow to convince Prince Louis Grimaldi that she's not quite the gold-digging whore that she actually is, and plans to further that lie by slumming it about town. "I've planned a day of polite interaction with the proletariat. Think Diana, princess of the people. Obviously, I'll wear gloves." Blair laughs that nothing, not even Nate getting gassed by the Nazis, will ruin her date. Life, and Serena van der Woodsen, will call that bluff.

Serena watches Blair hail a cab, eyes sliding idly down from the strange orange hue of her hair to the suggestion of an ass, while she answers a call from Lily, who is in Manhattan, where it's the same time of day as in Paris. Paris has just called Lily in a panic, and Serena can only assume it's because she was shoved into a fountain last night. No, in fact it's because her brother -- who has been missing for three months, who has since high school attempted to throw himself off tall buildings, whose last act was putting his dick in Jenny Humphrey, an act of purest nihilism -- was murdered.

Serena wonders if her brother is really dead -- and if so, how this affects her -- and Lily asks her to go down to the morgue, which in Paris is situated on the Rue Morgue and run by sinister chimpanzees, and identify her brother's body. Serena pretends she's paying attention, but the sun is glinting off Blair's insouciant breasts in the most delightful... Oh. Oh dear. Serena heaves. If Chuck Bass really was fished out of the river, Blair will turn her crazy up to one hundred and Serena will never, ever hear the end of it. It will be like Serena getting into Columbia all over again. Shit, as they say, just got real.

From one Serena-bound reverie to another. At that same moment, on the Upper East Side, the ill-read Juliet Sharp compares Serena's life story to "the most complicated Jane Austen novel ever." Because Jane Austen just couldn't stop writing about public boning, pants-free flights to the country, coke-fueled threesomes, murders, stepbrother-fucking, and the lives of spoiled sluts. Nate, because he cannot read at all, assumes that her literary reference is on the up-and-up, and swiftly loses himself to the conversation altogether.

As Juliet goads him to remember where he and Serena left things, he furrows his immense brow, because the answer is nowhere, because they are both incredibly vague and have been screwing themselves senseless with the lower classes all summer. Juliet nods sagely and explains that what Nate means is, he is in love with Serena and must now defeat Dan for her love. Of course this sounds fishy, Dan being the only person on the show Nate actually likes, but if Juliet says it, it must be true: Dan Humphrey -- who still believes he has a son, which he clearly does not, and still believes that he still lives with Milo's mother, who vanished in a cloud of dimples and Russian invective like a week ago -- is a threat. Somehow. To something. But what was it, again?

Serena does an autopsy on her dead brother's body, beginning with the classic y-shaped incision over the heart, but after putting her CIA training to good use realizes that the body is that of a common street tough, of the sort usually found murdering expatriate billionaires outside the tonier bordellos of Prague. "He was five-seven," she explains to Inspector Chevalier, "The last thing he had to eat was a pierogi. Vanessa Abram's favorite." Serena is on the case.

And what of Henry Prince, one-time Bass and honorary Humphrey, who was not after all fished out of the river? Rolling about between the sheets with the French girl who performed surgery on him back in Prague. Today is his first day of work, at some sort of Stella Artois-advertisement tourist trap claiming to provide visiting Americans with authentic Parisian experiences, speaking horrible French and dressed as the Concept of Sex. Rolling a sack of marbles around in her mouth, strange Eva says... Something.

Crazy being transmissible and Mommy being gone, Dan has taken over acting insane in her lieu. "Lieu" is a French term, which used in this context means "scheme." This loft is your loft/ This loft is my loft/ Where's your aunt Jenny?/ She moved to Hudson/ She wears... Leggings... Painful. Ill-advised. Unending. Dan Humphrey.

By Jacob Clifton

Juliet Sharp, trailing Nate Archibald like a scarf, enters the DUMBO loft and immediately takes the baby away from Dan, who has never met her, so that she can abuse it in Jenny's old bedroom while Nate enacts her plan. Whatever that plan is. For one brief moment, as Dan hands the child over to Nate, we are treated to a vision of a world in which things worked right and those two just settled down finally and made honest men of each other.

Oh, Sharp! Like Becky Sharp. Awesome, she's my favorite. Anyway, while she's molesting Milo -- tearing up New York's runways in a cute-slash-Vanessa approved knit cap with little teddy-bear ears -- Nate and Dan have a confusing and not very linear conversation about Serena, specifically the age-old van der Woodsen Uncertainty Theorem that says you can know Where she is or Where she's been, but never both at the same time. Perhaps she is in Paris, perhaps she has gone to Brown, or is she back in New York, or is she at Columbia, or has the school year already begun. Has she matriculated all of these, or none? Who can say? Nobody knows. By decree of the science, nobody can ever know.

Juliet sends Dan into Jenny's old bedroom to see her handiwork -- Milo dangling from a dress form, mewling -- so that Nate can snatch Dan's phone and see the text message from Serena that Dan has clearly not read, alerting him to the answers of none of the above questions, and which Nate has also received. From these non-facts, which point nowhere and least of all to their conclusion, Juliet and Nate deduce that Dan is playing a wild game with their minds, an offense that cries out for redress. As easy as life usually is for Serena, I have to say that her job of "manipulating Nate Archibald with nonsense" makes Juliet's life pretty much sweetest of the week.

Juliet and Nate having made the transit to DUMBO, it only makes sense that Henry is still getting ready for his first day at work. Eva reminds us that Prague gave him nightmares, while Paris has set him at ease, and that they like to have heterosexual intercourse with each other. Setting out with his vest and cane and working the shit out of Dan's hair from last year, Henry finds himself standing in the middle of the street, nearly mown down by a terrified taxicab driver. Will Henry Prince fall prey to the same pan-European sense of etiquette that saw Charles Bass drowned and shot in two separate countries?

By Jacob Clifton

No. Blair, whipping the man about the head and neck with her gloves, barely notices at first the near-victim of her hurried cruelty, but soon enough her eyes lock with the erstwhile object of her affections, hobbling about on his cane under an assumed name, before she donkey-punches the driver once again in hysteria. "Vite!" she screams, wearing van Gogh's hat and desperate to see the fleshpots with her prince; a ghost lingers in the rearview, confronting various emotions and questions of identity, while a man named B.o.B. sings about similar concerns.

Juliet Sharp, no matter her agenda, can never be accused of lacking in dedication. To wit, she has spent the afternoon in the company of Vanessa Abrams -- dressed as usual like a toddler left to her own devices, with only a stack of Punky Brewster tapes for company (although I'll say her hair is a relief right now) -- for no real reason but her dedication of purpose. Which purpose, as we'll see, is just as satanic as this latest outrage would have you believe: "time I promise we'll do shoes and vintage, and not just health food stores," says Vanessa Abrams, inviting her own destruction. Juliet balls up one tiny fist and thinks about shoving it through the back of her own head, but giggles instead.

Oh, one day we'll do shoes and vintage, she thinks. One chilly day in hell.

Vanessa, having made what she thinks of as friends -- with the random, sinister stranger who in one hour has become part of all their lives; replacing Milo's mommy who ditto, like six times now -- heads over to bother Milo. He immediately plays dead in her arms, so that she won't talk to or dandle him, hoping that one day soon she'll bring back the matted wig, full of delicious twigs and inchworms, that usually delights him so. "Living on a commune, you clock a lot of babysitting hours," says Vanessa. "That and the orgies. And people think homeschooling is a cakewalk."

Nate and Juliet converse at length about how he just dropped a Georgina-bomb called Juliet on the whole of DUMBO, and only now is realizing what happens when you rub that particular lamp. Juliet's like, "Hush, you delicate little thing. Vanessa is always going to be in love with Dan, because she is pathetic. And Dan, knows he's bruised produce now that he's got a baby that's half-demon, half-stranger. They're perfectly wretched, and thus perfect for each other. Plus, once I get Vanessa and Dan hooked up, Georgina will come back and murder them both. Then it'll just be you and Serena, like you wanted. And I will have you for my brides."

Subject at hand: "B, I went to the morgue today." Blair honestly, hilariously, assumes that she's talking about a sex club. I can't imagine a sex club called The Morgue in Paris; conversely, if you told me it was a flourishing Berlin franchise I would just ask how much stock Chuck Bass owns in it and when it's coming to the UES. "A place where they keep dead bodies," Serena explains, wanting to share her newfound knowledge. Digging out the buried lede and then explaining it backwards, she tells Blair that her ex-boyfriend and current love-of-all-time, Chuck Bass, was shot and murdered. But then he wasn't. But he's still missing, so he might be.

Blair breezily explains that Chuck is not dead, and in fact is not missing, and as usual Serena and her stupid mom are streets behind. "He was on the Rue de Charenton an hour ago. Gossip Girl said I was in Paris. Where else would he be?" It is my own hope one day to have such solipsistic sense of self, that such huge coincidences would fall before my shrug, murders erasing themselves in time and space, just because of how self-obsessed I am. Serena worries because this still means that Chuck is on some kind of Lost Weekend, but again B bests her. "I could care less about his Bassets. And besides, he's probably filtering his finances through some foreign government so that I won't know he's stalking me."

When she saw him, when they spoke, what happened? Serena is on the case and you never know what might be important. A detective is only as good as her instincts, and Serena's are telling her that this conversation between Blair and the deceased might just wrap this case up sooner than expected. Chuck's murder must be avenged, and it's possible only Chuck himself can provide the clues to see it through.

"Nothing. He limped away, and I kept driving. It's probably part of some elaborate scheme."

But the limp! The blood Serena tasted on his snakeskin wallet, tongue flicking out just as Chevalier was turning away. "I'm sorry he pissed off the wrong pickpocket, but I've been waiting for this date all summer... I can't talk to him, S. You don't know what it was like seeing him, even through the car window. Trust me, the only thing wrong with Chuck is that I'm gonna be happy without him." And the limp. And the blood. And his murder, Serena thinks.

Henry Prince isn't surprised at all the tips he's getting, from the men with their fat necks and tiny little berets. You wear pants like that because you want to get noticed, and you never know when you'll need emergency surgery from an untrained Parisian. He is surprised, however, to see Eva there at the bar, seeing what he does to earn those francs. Also by the fact that judging by the shopping bags Blair was rocking in the last scene, he's only been at work for two stores' worth of shopping. Because he is French, Oncle Alphonse says that an hour is more than enough time for your first day, and Henri is free to be free for the day. Fucking Europe. Have some free medical care while you're at it. Oh wait, your waifish girlfriend took care of that already.

By Jacob Clifton

"Nothing. He limped away, and I kept driving. It's probably part of some elaborate scheme."

Limping away, Henry begs Eva to apparate away with him to another country altogether, because he has had it with Paris. They run you over and track you down and pinch your tiny ass. Eva nods sadly -- it is Oncle Alphonse's way, but he means well -- and then mumbles some indecipherable garbage of some sort. Henry says that not only will India serve his rapist's nightmares every bit as well as Paris, but that he has been keeping a financial secret of some kind. "Then why are we living in a shanty where the bathroom is the kitchen," I presume Eva asks, but there's no real way to know.

Lenox Hill calls Lily to get her to explain to Rufus, who is a dolt -- although props for actually pretending to be interested in whether or not your wife's stepson is dead this time -- that you can't be calling random people asking for other random people's medical information. "I was just hoping to get some more information, make sure this guy's even a real doctor, not some sex phone operator that crazy girl paid off to lie to us." If you were wondering, that's probably the best part of the entire episode: "Sex phone operator," Rufus says. Sex. Phone. Operator. The mind fucking boggles.

Serena has been working her way (Drinking? Mais non, she is on the case) through all the bars of Paris -- "[Chuck] has an intimate relationship with alcohol," she explains -- looking for Chuck. If Oncle Alphonse can't identify her brother, she's screwed. Oncle Alphonse cocks his head to one side at the photograph, then turns it over to look at the backside. The backside, he remembers. They always do. "He doesn't drink here, but he looks very much like my new waiter. He came to Paris from Prague, with my niece. He doesn't do much talking, especially about himself. Not that he needs to talk! Mon Dieu, the mouth on that boy." She nods wearily and pretends to care.

Henry spreads money on the ratty thin mattress they call a bed -- francs, guilders, florins, whatever they have there these days, I don't know -- and lies that he lied about his "small inheritance" because he was so enjoying slumming it and listening to her nightly cough out her life in little teaspoons of tubercular effluvia. "I've just been waiting for the right thing to spend it on," he says, and that's bouncing to Kerala. God knows what she has to say about it, but they jabber at each other and then suddenly Eva is hot on leaving Paris for India, for reasons that shall and must remain a mystery.

À huis clos there are breasts; hidden behind them is Chuck's sister Serena. Serena who? Serena van der Woodsen. Serena Van Der Woodsen who? That shit is so mean to do to Serena. She toddles away, wondering which one of them is real, and cops a brief squat in an alley to figure it out.

While Serge Gainsbourg sings France's answer to Dave Matthew's seminal "Crash Into Me," Prince Grimaldi condescends to pretend that Blair is not pretending to condescend. She makes chewing faces about her uneaten street kebab, lies her ass off forever, and eventually so shames herself -- "You know what's even better than street food? Street artists. I heard there's an amazing bucket drummer at the Pont Neuf Metro station, should we investigate?" -- that he smiles and compares her to Paris: "Complicated and beautiful." Is this idiot for real? Leave it to Blair to find the Monegasque Nate Archibald.

Fucking bucket drummer. I'm so sure. Anyway, how about instead of making a mockery of everything, including herself, Blair allows the Prince to take her on a "chauffeured drive in the country, to the ball my parents are throwing for the Givenchy exhibition." Unnecessarily, Blair puts one hand beside her mouth and says to the camera, woggling one eyebrow, "Givenchy was Audrey's favorite! Consider your intelligence: Insulted!" She agrees, but only if he'll take the kebab away from her and prepare himself for a whole conversation about her eating disorder on the way up there.

Dan wakes up from a nap to some wine chilling and some kind of horrible Vanessa Abrams paella or something with Spanish Fly in it. Where's Milo? Oh, Juliet is storing him in a recyclable tote. Just kidding, Milo is asleep in the same loft as you, which has only provisional suggestions of doors rather than actual doors dividing one room from the . So wait, what's going on? Oh, Dan and Vanessa are fucking. Yards away from a stranger's sleeping child. On a couch from the '80s. In a <1000 sf. loft. In Brooklyn. With bedbugs on every surface.

Henry discovers his quondam sister-slash-rape victim sitting in the alley outside his shanty, quite certain of her existence. She is also somewhat worried that he killed her stepbrother Chuck, whose body she identified as Chuck's murdered body. He assures her that he did not kill the man -- we'll find out more later -- and that he is not playing at his old games. If he were playing a game, he grits, and leaves her to complete the sentence by gesturing down at his lame leg, the walking stick, the fact that he was clearly shot in the abdomen.

"I know more than anyone what it's like to want to reinvent yourself," Serena says, comparing his failed Prague Spring to her own, "But just because people are mad at you doesn't mean you should disappear. That's why I'm constantly disappearing, every third episode of this show." Chuck says that Lily won't really care if he's pretend-dead, and then heaps on some drama about "all the people who've wished me dead since the day I was born," which is just uncalled-for, not in a personal way but in a terribly written way, and he explains, for those of us who just found out about Givenchy, that he lost the only thing he ever cared about, which is Blair, because of how he turned her into a prostitute. AFTER TODAY THERE IS NO CHUCK BASS, he howls, and then he limps away to see the fake identity guy that he -- of course -- has, despite having arrived in Paris yesterday. He's Chuck Bass: The demimonde is his regular monde.

Vanessa and Dan talk about their sex activities and the itching bedbugs and the hilarious coincidence that they both had to think about Nate to get it up at all. Oh I'm sorry, that's just Vanessa's creepy way of randomly blowing spot on Nate's big lie that Dan is in love with her. "No, see, Nate and Juliet sat me down and told me the truth that you aren't in love with Serena and you're in love with me. Then I had some juice. Then we fucked." Dan's like, "Yes, all of those things are true." But then Dan thinks harder, and realizes this farce will drastically lower his chances of tapping Serena once it gets out, and then he'll be dating Vanessa Abrams while raising a child with Georgina Sparks, making him officially Worst At Girls.

By Jacob Clifton

Blair is wearing a champagne gown that is okay, with rosettes on the breasts, and trying on tiaras. This is because she is batshit insane. Serena walks in -- after a hard day walking the beat and defending the innocent using only the criminal justice system and her hard-won knowledge of forensic science -- still wearing the space clown look. "I'm off to meet his parents at a ball. Just look at all the gowns he sent! The fairy tale is back on! As long as the evil queen doesn't ruin it." They both know she's talking about Chuck; Serena even acknowledges it.

"The only person he wants to poison is himself," says Inspector van der Woodsen, fingering him for the third murder of Chuck Bass. Means, motive, opportunity, Serena says quietly under her breath, and pumps a fist gently in the air on her own behalf. Blair doesn't give a shit about any of this. She's got crowns, she's got a prince sending her entire racks of weird dresses, she's got a diamond crown on her head. "I've been waiting all summer to feel sparkly again, and I won't be pulled back into the darkness."

Blair takes the face of one of the French maids in her hand and presses it to the floor, slowly and with great care, one vein along her wrist more than usually prominent, as Serena "realizes" that she "can" solve the Chuck thing "on her own" -- and that Blair is doing that thing where if you push her one more inch she'll blow something up -- so S backs off and opens a package containing Chuck's deeds to the Empire Hotel and his shares in Bass Industries. Which I guess were secreted somewhere on his person at the time that he was shot to death and awoke with fake amnesia and never returned to his hotel? Or wait, I guess he got that stuff when he picked up his fake inheritance (from whom and whence we don't know or really care) but still, you'd think somebody would have called Lily at that point, right? Maybe Rufus answered the phone, and then immediately hung up when he heard French.

Anyway, Serena heads over to the shanty to yell at Chuck about his deeds, and his deeds, and the paperwork she has only just begun to decipher, though less so the note atop it: I'd rather have nothing than be Chuck Bass. This is very dramatic because when Serena disappears for months at a time, the first thing she figures out is finances. If Henry Prince is willing to do without -- this is a woman who was homeless for most of last season, okay, and still managed to cart around eight suitcases for just scarves and pieces of chiffon -- then maybe those bad guys shot him in the brain. If only she'd had more time with his body, Serena thinks, that autopsy she did on him might explain what he's up to now. (Know why you couldn't figure this one, Keyes? I'll tell ya. 'Cause the guy you were looking for was too close. Right across the desk from ya.)

Wearing a just stunning red ballgown, Blair's at Harry Winston Paris having a good old-fashioned diamond orgy and making bad puns -- "Carats, clarity, charisma!" -- when she happens across a ring that catches her fancy. Right then Serena and Inspector Clousseau come in, literally by coincidence, and everybody starts talking.

It's kind of hard to understand, mostly because it makes literally no sense at all, but the gist is that the ring is coincidentally (1) the one Chuck was going to give Blair at the Empire State Building before he decided to fuck Jenny instead. The muggers, unable to sell it in Prague, took it to well-known fence Harry Winston (2). He refused to buy it, because Harry Winston is not actually a pawn shop, but coincidentally (3) remembered that Monsieur Chuck Bass was the one to buy it in the first place, so he called his old friend Inspector Chevalier (4) to report it, and Chevalier ("of course!") called his number-one agent Serena (5) so that she could identify it, despite never having seen it (6), several days after the fact (7) and after the mugger himself was murdered (8), but Serena noticed Chuck's blood on his wallet which leads them all to deduce (9) that Chuck fought so hard to hold onto Blair's ring that he got shot in the gut, which caused him to limp with his legs (10) after being rescued by a random French girl (11) who happens to have an oncle with a wine bar (12) in the 12 Arrondissement at which Chuck was scheduled to begin work (13) this morning, just as Blair was driving to get poor-people clothes for her date with the Prince of Monaco (14) whom she met by standing for hours in front of a Manet painting (15), immediately insulted sixteen times, and has been creeping out ever since.

Best show on television. Across the pond, Dan is whisper-yelling at Nate for telling Vanessa that he still cared about her, and this conversation takes so incredibly long even though it's quite simple that Vanessa eventually comes out from behind the collapsible screen that forms the walls of the loft and explains that she can hear everything they're saying. Of course, Dan and Nate immediately start stuttering and blushing and there is immediate word-vomit pursuant to the notion that Serena is on her way back to the UES and will be handing them her decision about which one of them goes to a concentration camp and which one gets shot in the face immediately. Vanessa, realizing that either of these outcomes is apparently more desirable than she is, finally gets offended for a real reason and stomps out in her lesbian sandals... Just as Lily and Rufus are showing up for another thrilling episode of Extreme Bedbug Infestation: Nursery Edition.

By Jacob Clifton

"Au revoir, l'enfant terrible" is what Gossip Girl is supposed to say, but I never thought for a second that Blair would end up with the best accent of them all. Anyway, Serena's leaving Chuck-related message after Chuck-related message, standing around this empty apartment while the landlady ignores her unwelcome stranger ass -- when you're a tiny little Paris landlady and an American hoss like Serena van der Woodsen comes in flashing a badge and giant boobs and says she wants a look around, you just try to look as small as possible, and clean up around her -- but when the phone rings, it is not Blair, it's Serena's partner in crimesolving: "Inspector Chevalier, of course! she says. I don't know why this is the funniest line in the episode to me, but it's so fucking funny. Inspector Chevalier needs more of Serena's help with this case immediately. He's like the Morgan Freeman to her Monica Potter/Ashley Judd! Just call her The Boner Collector. The Girl With The Vitamin Water Tattoo. The Girl Who Played With The Idea Of College. The Girl Who Mistook The Hornets' Nest For Clothes.

Before Serena can once again launch into the story of the ring, which you know she's about to, we cut to Dan and Nate getting broactive on a rooftop in matching plaid shirts, drinking mojitos and wondering what on earth they are going to do about Serena. Does Dan want her? Not really, he's got ninety-nine problems of which bitches are merely two. Does Nate want her? Nate would settle for Dan, frankly, or whoever is in front of his eyeballs, which right now is Juliet Sharp, so he doesn't really care. The only person that actually cares even a little is Gossip Girl, and she's acting loopier than she has in a while. So then what are they going to do? Dan is going to stay with Vanessa, and Nate is going to blow him on the roof and then go downstairs and make a sandwich. The real thick Dagwood kind, with everything he can find in the fridge. Little does he know it's all Vanessa Abrams health food store shit in there now. He'll be disappointed, and then he won't.

Eva can't take her eyes off the gorgeous socialite in the red ballgown rushing past her into the train station, or the ugly pink diamond necklace around her neck that is probably worth about a trillion dollars and which my friend Martha pointed out is totally stolen. Or maybe they were like, "Prince Grimaldi told us she might do this. Put it on his tab." And then following behind the gorgeous brunette, those same boobs from earlier, followed in turn by the mysterious lady who visited their shanty earlier today in the middle of the murder investigation she was solving. "I knew it was too good to be true," closed-captioning purports her to say. "Who is she?"

Well, Danielle Rousseau, that is a long motherfucking story. Suffice to say that either they will both be dead shortly, or your Prince-impersonating boyfriend is going to have his fifth epiphany this week. Hope the clothes you bought for India are equally appropriate for New York City... Or shame. What would Harry Potter do? Sia is the violins of our generation. You can hear her singing about her sad hurt feelings even now, Eva. I think we both know how this is going down.

"Just because you're dressed poorly doesn't mean you're not Chuck Bass," Blair says. You can tell she's nervous because it's both a shitty opener and also patently untrue. In fact, he has never been hotter. Those French peasants can tailor your shit like it's on fire. Chuck says that, regardless, he doesn't want to be Chuck Bass. Also, why does she care that he got shot? She's certainly capable of doing it herself. Then another shitty line, whose success is down completely to Meester: "I have, many times. In my dreams. The good ones."

Having caught the repeating virus from his countrymen, Chuck explains about how the burden of identity was lifted by the fact of his missing wallet and that "I might be alive, but Chuck Bass didn't have to be," gimp leg or no. It's a charming scene thanks entirely to chemistry so I won't try to reproduce it here, because on paper the dialogue is embarrassing, so we'll just say that he hoped, in time, for Henry Prince to be somebody worthy of respect, and love. Blair's position is that Chuck Bass was once worthy of those things, and in that girl's honor they both need to grow up and past this, because he has family in America who loves and misses him. "I don't think that great man you're talking about wanting to be is a coward. I think he would face up to what he did." Then she explains, with very little shaking, that she's not in love with him anymore, and that he doesn't need to feel guilty for destroying her, because "it takes more than even you to destroy Blair Waldorf."

They're best when they're pushing against each other. She takes back her name, so he takes back his; he puts away his peasant fantasy, and she gives up her prince. They both have to grow up, which means leaving summer behind and going home. As usual, S is way ahead of them, and has already busted a move back to the UES. On the plane, after reading her one magazine, she still had time to make a list of Pros and Cons that's funnier in concept than reality ("Dan: Good shoulder to cry on; Nate: Good shoulders"). Blair just wants to win the Gossip Girl poll, and is willing to stoop to insider trading to do so. She says that her talk with Chuck clarified things for her, as well, and Serena sweetly... Hangs up without ever asking what that means or what Blair has decided.

"Hope you get... Whatever you want. I don't really care. Bisou bisou." She turns to the window, thoughts of her new career in law enforcement cascading like the Matrix. Last week she said "home doesn't exist until we're there." Maybe the opposite is true and Blair doesn't exist now that she's still in France.

But! That is not the case. Serena pretended the UES would stay stuck in time like a fairytale, just because she's the center of the universe. And yet: See Juliet seducing Nate with flirtatious apologies. See Dan tracking Vanessa's hair down to apologize and promise that Serena means nothing to him for at least the three episodes. See Rufus forgiving Dan for something implacable that we never quite understood, and throwing his granddaddy self at poor Milo with both grabby hands, talking about how maybe they'll just NEVER KNOW FOR SURE if it's really Dan's baby, because... You got me.

Wearing yet another amazing fucking dress, this time a draped one-shoulder number with giant blue dots, Blair meets Prince Louis in front of that Manet painting. He says French stuff and she explains that, ball or no ball, Sarkozys or non, she's over the fairytale and headed back home. Because somebody there did something for her. She tells the Prince he can come and find her, and even slips off one beautiful Roger Vivier for him, to make the tale complete. But what makes it wonderful is the way he smiles as she goes, at the way she humps along in one high heel before grinning over her shoulder and slipping it off in the most delightfully self-aware way. Try to be a fairytale -- fake Prince, real Prince -- either way you end up with a limp.

Yeah, see what they did there? Nicely done. So Serena comes rocketing into DUMBO and tosses herself on Lily, who as usual gives the slightest impression of being appalled at all this action and emotion, and S shushes the rents so she can make her big fucking decision about Dan and Nate. And now it becomes clear why the show, through Blair and Gossip Girl, has made such a big fucking deal about that: So it would hurt when Dan and Vanessa, holding hands, appear in the doorway, followed immediately by Nate and Juliet, also holding hands, and then as Rufus hands Dan his tiny son.

Confused and already getting offended -- frankly, feeling retarded which is a terrible feeling -- Serena looks over at Vanessa, who of course is like "You saw me four months ago, you think I was pregnant?" instead of helping her out. Dan promises to explain, and then everybody ditches poor Serena alone with some weird baby. Gossip Girl makes fun of her for awhile, so Blair as she's leaving France texts her about what's up, and S -- with that fuck this anger-pout that always seems as clever as it does pitiful and ultimately destructive -- assures B the choice was not hers in any way.

The now most assuredly doomed Juliet flirts with Nate some more, telling him finally the thing no boy can resist -- "You're not ready for me yet" -- while at PRADA, Rufus notices that Milo was O-, which is recessive, and he knows that Dan is AB+, so even if Georgina is type O -- he explains after Lily makes a funny joke about his medical expertise being limited to the time that Lincoln Hawk got a song licensed on Chicago Hope -- so is the swart Russian that fathered the baby on her.

Over in Poortown Juliet is being super scary, taking pins one by one out of the photos on her corkboard, not even giving a shit where they fall. That's the scariest detail, just drop-drop-drop they go, down on the desk and the floor behind the desk, like she doesn't even care. Dan, connected to her by this and this and this: Eliminated. Nate, connected here and here and here: Acquired. Dead-eyed stare: Locked and loaded on the one picture left: Serena's mugshot. "I had to improvise, but it's done. I'll see you soon, and we'll talk about what's . Take care. Hang in there. I miss you."

By Jacob Clifton

WHAT? That is so awesome. Katie Cassidy is so awesome. So there's the Juliet part, which maybe it matters. The Becky Sharp part is interesting, especially connecting with the Lily Bart part, because they're both poor girls living above their station but Becky's also about revenge. The fact that it's the mugshot I'm not sure about, because it wasn't a murder or anything, just that time Lily called the cops on Serena so she would obey curfew and so we could hear Freur in a flashback episode.

Maybe the Becky Sharp thing means it's a school-days grudge, considering how intent S&B are about leaving Constance behind them. (Maybe it's Nelly Yuki after all!) I still think Poppy Lifton and the whole Gabriel situation are shoes that may yet drop. I was thinking also of the Countess but Martha pointed out that she's a high-ticket guest star. My greatest fear is that it's Jenny. She could make a pretty good case for the idea that her entire downfall (indeed, every bad thing that happened to her in all three seasons) started with Serena. Wouldn't you sort of love it, if Jenny pretended to get clean in Hudson but really had finally out-Blaired Blair? Sent this assassin after Serena, just for taking her bedroom?

Very exciting. Anyway, back in Paris, Eva is standing around doing nothing and Chuck comes running up and tries to explain this show: "Where I'm from, people lie and cheat and destroy whoever gets in their way. I did it better than any of them. When you dragged me in from the alley, you didn't just save my life, you gave me the hope of a new one." Eva knows that he's capable of being wonderful, and hopes that he takes a little bit of Henry Prince back home with him. Chuck responds with an invitation, and when she asks how he got her a ticket to NYC, he says they don't need them anymore: He's Chuck Bass.

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