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Juliet pisses off Gossip Girl and her mysterious Ben-friend when a rumor about Serena's sexual health doesn't really connect in any meaningful way. It causes a bunch of damn strife with Dan and Vanessa, but what doesn't, and as if Serena cares if you call her a whore.
Nate is a little nervous about it, but that's only because he believes everything Juliet says, and he's only doing that because she's still holding out on him, and brother's about to lose it. Because, of course, she's still trying to believe that she's not really dating him, just using him in her crazy weird plan. Which this week twists and turns more chaotically than even a Blair Waldorf plan, as she has to keep accounting for weird variables like Vanessa Abrams and her horrible integrity, Chuck Bass's all-out assault on Blair's Columbia aspirations, and Serena's come-and-go mental acuity.
So once Juliet realizes that everybody kind of already assumed Serena was carrying "STD" (in the universe of the show, a Disease -- not unlike "cancer" -- which is Transmitted Sexually), and thus doesn't really care, she takes advantage of Serena's other problem: Her punctuality issue. This one is sort of hard to explain because it makes no sense, but apparently there is only one taxicab on the Upper East Side, and every time Serena tries to go to this one class, Sam Page (Joan's husband on Mad Men) shows up and steals the cab for his lady of the night. Every. Time: No cabs. So she's in danger of getting dropped from the class, because for serious this is what happens in the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite.
In her attempts to get this professor's attention and explain her... taxicab issue... the entitled Miss van der Woodsen opens herself up to a huge new thing: Juliet gets Vanessa to steal S's phone and then uses it to text the teacher about maybe trading some sex for grades. It's believable, because she's spent the whole week running around in a bustier and shorts like she's in that movie where Xtina takes makeup tips from Cher and Channing Tatum, but the bottom line is that Serena is not actually expelled, but the Dean knows she's fishy. Vanessa is run out of town in shame despite not really doing much wrong, which is how we like it best.
Meanwhile, Chuck has drawn Blair into a land-war over this visiting professor by auditing the class, stealing B's minions and her spot as the teacher's assistant, and generally being one step ahead. The damage is limited, but there is an awesome sequence in Hamilton House where they start screaming in each other's faces about all the dirt they have on the prof, how far they were prepared to escalate, the nuclear options, etc. The professor finally quits due to them being crazy, so now the Dean has her eye on both our girls.
In the end Chuck proves evil/crazy enough that Blair is getting scared, and Serena's lost her suspicion of Juliet and is thus even more vulnerable to her dastardly plan, but at least has a new cad to focus on. And then Juliet's falling for Nate, given that she finally loses track of her con and sleeps with him despite her strange connection to Jailbird Ben, which doesn't bode well for Nathaniel but sure makes her a lot more interesting.
In two weeks: Chuck pulls some strings to get Little J an interview with Tim Gunn, and probably plans to detonate B's greatest shame at that point. Dan and Vanessa, something happens or doesn't happen there, maybe Rufus and Lily get involved or whatever, who cares. And presumably some Juliet-type shit happens to threaten the relationship between Serena and her new (hopefully Dan/Nate hybrid) boyfriend. All we really know for sure is that Juliet will be wearing taupe.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Serena loves school so much, you guys! She loves getting dressed for school and thinking about her class schedule and wandering aimlessly around the campus without a plan. But most of all, she loves that cab outside the Waldorf building. You know the one, the one taxicab that makes all the difference? No, silly, not the one in front of it. And not the one behind it! Not the towncar she could be taking all over the place, not the black car she could call before engaging in what must be hours of effort to get her hair so effortless après-sexe every morning. Just this one cab. And don't you know it's haunted by the ghost of a sexy little rapist soldier-doctor from 1961, and his sexy ways, so that every morning our darling S comes out of the building -- making "geek chic," as Gossip Girl so misguidedly tells us -- to go to her one class in this one cab, and there he is. Being cute. And a ghost from another time.
The ghost likes Serena's purse! She doesn't care. The ghost has a different girl every night and puts a different girl in the cab every morning. She doesn't care! Last night it was an actress, possibly to star in a movie about a talking dog, just like Little J. Serena doesn't care! He wants to buy her ghostly drinks like a Red Snapper at the ghostly King Cole Bar, and Serena says No! Because he still has the girl's magical shoes in his hands! She will be auditioning barefoot for the talking-dog movie... But S doesn't care! She loves being barefoot. The ghost offers S the girl's shoes and she tells him to take hike. Then S gets into another cab. A lesser cab for sure and one that may get her expelled, but it's a cab nonetheless. She is so annoyed she makes that fuck this face and ignores his giant dazzling smile. Mama's got places to be, pal!
"Indra Nooyi, Ann Moore, Andrea Jung." Blair's minions have created a system of color-coded binders -- businesswomen are in green, women in academia are in blue, politics and government in red, with a subsection on royalty and dictators -- the better for her to "forge" her "path to become one." I see Blair's back to talking like Serena wrote her dialogue again. Included in the red binder is Sarah Louise Palin, which causes Blair to abuse a minion, and then Serena appears and they have a conversation. It goes like this.
Serena says, "I need advice." Blair says, "What kind of advice?" Serena says, "The simple kind, like how do you know when to be places." Blair says, "I'm not sure I understand the question." Serena says, "Wait, what are we talking about?" Blair says, "The Art Of War and also ladies. A lady is coming to this school." Serena says, "I love that lady!" Blair nods condescendingly and ignores it, the world, everything. Slaps minion in the face. Serena says, "What about Chuck?" Blair says, "He is not part of my collegiate experience." Serena says, "But how do you know when to be places?"
Vanessa Abrams and Rufus Humphrey have a conversation even stupider than that. Elsewise, Nate and Dan are just about done jerking each other off and have changed into tennis outfits. Nate thinks it would be a great idea for them to double-date, if you know what I mean, because A) Juliet has proven herself so trustworthy and B) Vanessa is so fun.
Nate invites both Humphrey and Dumphrey over to Hamilton House -- you know, that exclusive club that Juliet got thrown out of about a minute ago? -- for free appetizers and a little Russian Roulette. Dan loves free appetizers because he is a cheap piece of Brooklyn trash just like his horrible girlfriend, Nate remembers this from when he was a homeless prostitute and only Rufus would give him the time of day.
Nate decides to up the ante by describing in oddly sterile but detailed terms his plans to deflower Juliet Sharp by candlelight. Because it is Nate, the only time he sounds actually horny is when he's describing the threadcount of the sheets on which this will occur. He then talks about how -- completely by choice! -- they have been living the sexless life of Dan Humphrey together. They played Scrabble. Juliet let Nate win, probably. I would. Whatever. Anyway, then they have some of that gay sex with one another.
Juliet's fake life is real in lots of ways. Like, number one, she isn't going to be letting Nate win at Scrabble for too much longer, because he is hot as hell and you can't keep that Bentley in the carport forever. Probably this means she will fall in love with him, because I don't know if you've ever seen this show before, but she's going to fall in love with him. And secondly, she has to go to classes for her imaginary spy life where she goes to college. And those classes are just eating her lunch!
Somehow, not having sex with Nate, and being a member of all kinds of clubs she's not a member of, and going to classes that she does not need because clearly she is past graduation age and fully capable of running her own LA advertising firm. Clearly all of this has become for her like the eponymous sensation of the 1991 Jennifer Jason Leigh movie Rush, wherein JJL and Jason Patric forget not to do a bunch of heroin, and then I think Eric Clapton's kid falls out a window.
Juliet apologizes to her broheim Ben for not visiting him in white collar jail. But honestly, jail for Ben seems to be entirely: Continually calling Juliet. And texting her, and emailing her and FaceTiming her and Skyping her and MySpacing her and Friendstering her and tweeting her and woofing her and digging her and poking her and joining her mafia and throwing sheep at her. What's an in-person visit really worth at that point?
"The good news is that Serena is now isolated from both Dan and Nate." All Ben cares about is sisterhood and how Blair must be separated from Serena at all costs so then Serena will have no friends and Ben will -- somehow -- win. Juliet tells him to slow his roll and thinks about making some more anal rape jokes and then says she couldn't possibly try to get Serena expelled, not so soon after the Hamilton House event. Ben says that probably Juliet should use Nate as her fall guy, and then starts talking about how pretty Nate is, because life's hard on the block and it can change a man faster than you think. That's the whole plan at this time: Use Nate in some fashion. Juliet's like, "Thanks for the tip!" and he's like, "Because you're not in love with him or else!" And I mean, is Ben really her brother? I haven't seen this much inappropriate interest in a family member's cooch since that time Jenny existed.
Blair is a bitch to like a hundred people, and then it turns out that Chuck Bass is on campus and auditing several classes and but so really he's at Columbia to destroy Blair's entire life from the ground up, because of that hooker whose named started with E. (Not his mom, the younger one. No, not the nanny, the other younger one. Frenchie. Yeah, you got it.) But he doesn't like school! It doesn't matter, they all go to Columbia and Serena and Nate can barely comprehend time or space and besides, Chuck Bass gave the school a rotunda. Blair tells the minions to keep her wish to take a class with the visiting lady -- you know, that recipe branding expert that Serena van der Woodsen is so fond of -- and then claws at the eyes of one of them, ensuring that for the first time a minion will act like a human person instead of Dorota.
I bet Kanye's "Power" was a pretty sweet get when they were editing this together. Little did they know that the whole world was about to become an advertisement for the Facebook movie and this song would just sound like sounds. What it accompanies is Serena van der Woodsen not having a blast with Gossip Girl's latest blast, which says that Serena is giving everybody a Sexually Transmitted Disease. (Or, as my best friend Alison says, "Serena van der Woodsen is a sexually transmitted disease." That's double jeopardy!) But honestly, Juliet Sharp -- and don't think I don't see you skulking around campus like Voldemort with unicorn blood all over your shit -- on the list of things that who cares, this ranks among the most.
Serena runs to Blair and they have a conversation like this: Serena says, "I need advice." Blair says, "What kind of advice?" Serena says, "Like how does Gossip Girl know what it's like down there. And who told." Blair says, "You don't have any diseases, she's just being gross." Serena says, "Except for that time she said poop she mostly keeps it clean. I think this is a lie." Blair says, "You being a whore is not news. This will blow over. Now, get to class." Serena says, "What is that and where is it?"
Blair thinks more and says, "Unless one single person we know goes to the health clinic today, and then it means you have AIDS." Serena says, "What if I see three crows fighting over a piece of bread?" Blair says, "It will rain. Chuck Bass, also." Serena says, "Why are we talking about Chuck?" Blair says, "Because I will be this lady's assistant and that will defeat Chuck somehow." Serena says, "I love that lady!" Blair says, "She is a human shield." Serena says, "Good point. I am going to go sit outside the health clinic and hope everybody we know doesn't show up there. Because I am proud of myself. And because I am One Less."
Juliet is amazed that everybody on this show slept with everybody else on this show. Dan and Nate hold hands behind her back and woggle their eyebrows, and then they both say that yes, they are all one big nasty rat king but that in this case they didn't bone Serena, separately or as a team, in a very long time. Juliet says now she can't sleep with him some more so her brother won't get mad, so this technicality doesn't actually matter at all because "symptoms can be dormant for months, or not even appear at all," and Nate could still be a carrier. Symptoms of what? Carrier of what? DOESN'T ... MATTER.
I love how they're like, "It's a CW show, let's educate the kids about what's the what" but then left out the what of that what.
"You could have a disease. It could have any symptoms, or maybe no symptoms. The prognosis is bad. Or good, we don't know. Medicine might help. Or you could go blind. Maybe you got it from a swimming pool. Or Serena. Or a long time ago. Diseases: Think about that."
And then a flying star with a rainbow tail and sparkles. Anyway, the only way Juliet will have pretend sex with Nate her pretend boyfriend is if he goes over to the Columbia health clinic quad where Serena is blithely emailing her professor ("Dear Professor How do U know when to be places lol") and taking part in the fight against cervical cancer by sitting around outside, to get tested for an imaginary disease he never contracted. Will she be wearing special underwear? He barely waits around for the answer, just grabs Dan by the dick and heads on over there.
Vanessa comes running up with leaves her hair because Dan makes her sleep outside and so she pretends that she likes to sleep in nature, because they are a pair of dicks. She yells at him for getting STD from Serena, which he didn't, that time they slept together, which they didn't. He tells her to stop being a suspicious ass for like once in her life and she tells him she most certainly will not. "But I told you I didn't sleep with Serena," he explains for the one millionth time, and for the one millionth time Vanessa's like, "That's right, you told me that before, sorry. I'm drastically sucky and I totally forgot."
Dan shakes his sexy gay haircutted head at her patronizing wig-shaking head and tries to be even more patronizing -- "I don't know if I can have this same conversation one more time," he says, which honestly, Dan, I feel you -- and so she shakes her head and furrows her brow so he shakes his head and furrows his brow and borrows Nate's brow and furrows that too so he wins so then she eats some bugs off the ground and goes to hell.
Juliet joins Serena at the crazy crotch table nobody else is sitting at in the always-hoppin' health center quad -- because who wouldn't want to watch everybody go in and out of there all the time, that sounds totally not awkward -- and tells her she's really sorry about how she's dying of STD and gave it to all of the world. S is like, "See, this is the fifth episode of this season and so far you've been the bad guy three of those times -- the other two the bad guy was murder, and I totally solved that in France -- so I'm thinking just maybe you were the one that did it because you are doing the same shit over and over."
Juliet says, "No, I didn't." Serena says, "Oh, good. Now we are friends. Thank you for not doing that." Juliet says, "I respect also your inability to be places, and I side with you over the professor of our one class, English Lit, who has higher hopes for your place-being capabilities than is really appropriate." Serena says, "How do you be places?" Juliet says, "I don't know, but I got places to be. Also, Nate is totally getting tested for Serena crotch viruses right now, which is something else I sympathize with you about." Serena is like, "You are such a good friend!"
Dan and Nate head inside to get tested together, and instead of jumping to the obvious conclusion -- or pointing out that Dan DOESN'T EVEN GO HERE -- Gossip Girl will assume that it's because they have Serena Transmitted Disease, so Serena grabs them on their way into the clinic and they stop holding hands and whistle and look at the sky. "Why did you confirm the rumor? Why did you go to the health clinic! Today! And you! You don't even go here! Both of you! We haven't slept together forever! You are just being mean!" Nate's like, "No, I am being horny."
Instead of realizing that Juliet's scheme is, as usual, completely transparent -- "Hey, stand right here." "Hey look, he's standing right here!" -- Serena goes to a hilarious place like, "Listen. I sucked every dick in France. And you got all the way to porn stars in Chuck's book, which is like whore with a nice crusty whore on top. So probably we do have many diseases. But instead of going in there to get tested, which can only 'ruin' my life today, why not be classy and go somewhere else? Or you could sit outside the health center and write an unrelated email, for example."
Nate's like, "Girl, you know I can't read and grabs Dan's hand and pulls him into the clinic. Vanessa sees them getting tested and -- instead of jumping to the obvious conclusion, or noting that he doesn't even go to Columbia -- assumes that this has something to do with Serena, because Vanessa, her head is like 43% tofu and superiority but the rest is just van der Woodsen all the way. I mean, so is Dan's? So it's not like she's wrong? But it's still wicked stupid of her to be so horrible all the time. You catch more flies with honey than you do with poisonous irony and self-hatred, as my grandmother used to say.
Visiting Lady Facts! Fact one: Largest client to date, National Rifle Association. Fact two: Created Mama Bears campaign, increased female NRA membership by a third. Fact three: First major success branding a cherry pie recipe for Better Homes and Gardens. (How do you get from Better Homes and Gardens to the NRA? "It's a short trip, believe me." How do you get from "branding a recipe" to having a career and not being homeless? You got me.) Blair finds Visiting Lady and climbs up her visiting leg and into her visiting pantsuit and nestles softly against her visiting teat.
But what's this? Chuck Bass, having just bought the visiting lady a visiting rotunda for all her visiting, is not only in the class but also her assistant but also in charge of who gets to be in the class, which is a Psychology of Business class, which is whatever, because like Dan and Vanessa, Chuck does not go to this school. If I bought you a rotunda, could I let my Capuchin monkey Sweetie be my TA? Apparently, Columbia would be cool with that.
And could my Capuchin monkey Sweetie have access to everybody's class schedule and move things around at his or her monkey whim? You betcha. "Show me the rotunda!" Columbia would say, and there you'd have it. Visiting lady sees the crazy in Blair's eyes -- Psychology of Business, remember -- and scoots the fuck. Chuck breathes deeply of Blair's cherry pie, which in this context doesn't actually symbolize "bulimia" but in fact "cunnilingus." Cool how we've spent the last three years Zaprudering back and forth and back and forth endlessly replaying over and over about that one time Jenny Humphrey didn't get raped (moral of the story: Don't get raped), but Blair's eating disorder is just this... Major Thing that never happened (moral of the story: Your daughter's eating disorder probably just went away, because that happens a lot when you forcefeed them carbs: They just get better).
Where is Serena going? "Campus." When and where? No idea. They're meeting "during office hours," which is a mashup of two concepts Serena doesn't understand, to discuss being places, a third. Will she be late? You bet your ass. Contrary to popular belief, "office hours" are five minutes long. The name is misleading. But the lesson learned is, you better find that one cab or else you're going to miss office hours by office minutes.
(This may be the stupidest goddamn storyline I've ever seen on this show, and that is saying a lot. Remember the underground sex club nanny kidnap victim that had time to wander around abandoned houses in the middle of the night with a candle despite having like four jobs? Remember the Abusive Ghost of Bart Bass? Remember when Blair invited Rachel Carr to the opera past intermission -- how do you be places? -- and it made Miss Carr so mad that she tried to kill a child and had sex with Dan Humphrey? Remember Chuck's mom was dead and haunted the graveyard on her birthday and then she came back to life but she wasn't really his mom but she really was and then she was sleeping with his uncle and then she wasn't really his mom, but really she was? Remember the fake cancer that was caused by a mentally ill millionaire psychiatrist? Remember the wolves?)
Oh wait, this is pretty dumb too. Blair invites visiting lady over for a visit and they have her favorite tea, Earl Grey, which is like saying "my favorite tea is tea-flavored tea," and Blair starts in going, "That sucks that you got dumped by your husband because you're a woman in power." And lady is like, "Facile as that is, it is also true. I am a lonely spinster bluestocking stereotype who like Martha Stewart has sold off that last piece of my feminine softness that would attract a man, and so I am lonely." And Blair is like, "Short fat Jews are the answer!" And the lady is like, "You don't see many of those in academia. Perhaps you could introduce me to one? And then I will not be lonely. Maybe my shriveled womb could finally get started on gestating some sperms and then I could stop all this businesswoman nonsense, finally fulfilled. pie recipe I brand is gonna be served up naked in a frilly apron. I can't wait to start taking pills."
Serena runs downstairs to her one lone taxicab, praying that it will get her to office hours on time. But guess who is there? Dr. Teeth and his latest conquest, a flight attendant. She yells at him about how she is about to fail college for her inability to locate college and go there, and that this is his fault. He suggests that they kiss each other on the mouth, and she quirks her gorgeous self at him: "You put a different girl into a cab every day. If you think I would ever be one of them, you are out of your mind."
However if it were a Vespa, I would climb onto your body. Kind of a weird message to send in the middle of this episode: Self-respect means not worrying about other people's judgments of your sexual partners! But self-respect also means judging other people for their sexual partners! Anyway, it turns out these little meetings of theirs where he chips daily away at her collegiate legitimacy are arranged for his own perverse pleasure. Which is the only thing that could make this dumber. It's the kind of coincidence where both parties have to consciously act in a way that makes it happen, which is no coincidence at all.
Serena, you do nothing but lie around in bed reading your one magazine and effing Goop, not fucking anybody, reflecting on your time with Scotland Yard and waiting for Blair to get home. You're not even constantly packing scarves upon scarves upon scarves this season, like you did every episode last year. You've even given up that hobby. How about for your one class you get that ass out the door five minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes earlier? How long honestly does it take to get your boobs and hair to look like that? How is any of this his problem or your teachers' problem or, more to the point, how is it that this problem is a problem?
Dan and Rufus Humphrey have a conversation that is even stupider than that.
Oh, and, this whole episode Serena keeps saying "plausible deniability" over and over and over because she learned that term earlier from Dorota, who learned it from SVU. Like, using it so much it becomes elastic. "This taxicab has a real plausible deniability." "But the Red Snappers at Old King Cole's are so plausibly deniable!" "If I wear this ridiculous looking dress and one of my giant boobs pops out in front of the professor, I'll have plausible deniability based on the fact that all I wear are perilous dresses like this."
On campus, clomp-clomping herself toward an office somewhere, Serena is startled by Vanessa suddenly jumping out from behind a bush and gnawing on her arm. "I have to be places, Vanessa! I am learning to be places! Don't you slow me down!" Vanessa's like, "I am so mad at you!" Serena continues to clomp but somewhere the bell is tolling and it is tolling for Serena, because Vanessa sucks so much that time itself slows you down at her event horizon.
Okay V, why you mad at Serena? "Because did you sleep together that time you didn't sleep together?" Serena's like, "Talk to your boyfriend, spacker, today is not the day to bug me about my sex life." Vanessa's all, "I did and we keep having that same conversation over and over!" Serena's like, "Relates to me how?" Vanessa goes, "Relates to you because [and then she hits turbo for no reason whatsoever] YOU ARE A SLUT and ALL GIRLFRIENDS FEAR YOU because YOU TAKE NO PRISONERS, JUST A BUNCH OF DICKS." Serena's like, "As usual, it's been a pleasure."
The minion that Blair abused so badly at the beginning of the episode is now having one of Chuck's "signature martinis," which is so fuckin' gay it's not even something a gay guy would say. She says some shit about practicing to take Blair down herself and Chuck almost pities her because she will most certainly be dead ere too long and that's sort of naïve to even think anyway. Then, I guess, she tells Chuck about how Miss Visiting Lonelyhearts needs a Cyrus Rose type to visit her visiting nethers and Blair's latest gambit to get that on lock.
Nate finds out that tests for Serena Transmitted Disease can take up to three or four days to come back. So now who knows how many viruses are crawling around inside his body and sexual organs? Answer: Not Nate. So now they can't sleep together, tonight, with the special underwear, due to the lack of information. Also because bareback is the only way, because condoms are bad for Jesus. "I can't believe our night's being derailed by this!" they whine, and then Juliet is like, "If only there were some way we could find out if Serena has texted or emailed anybody about all her sexual diseases!" Nate, you know Nate, he's not going to get there on his own. Juliet is somehow able to keep from striking him, and takes off to let this whole phone-stealing thing marinate, although Nate won't ever mention this conversation or think about it again so it's kind of a bunt: "You know? Like a device or something that she would do those activities on?" Nate goes, "You mean like Blair?"
Juliet strolls through a sunny park surrounded by stranger, reporting to Ben about how she's moved a good two yards forward since their conversation earlier in the three o'clock hour. Vanessa jumps out from behind a tree with her arms in the air, shrieking, and Juliet's like, "So nice to see you! Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That Dan and Serena slept together last spring when you were still going out and you've discussed one billion times about how they didn't?" Vanessa's like, "Juliet, you're uncanny. It's like we're sisters!" And Juliet is like, "If I was your sister I would fucking stab myself in the heart. Let's go shopping! And then later we can steal Serena's phone at Hamilton House. Have you ever been to Hamilton House? Have you ever been inside a house?"
Serena, having missed office "hours" -- because, as the professor explains over text, he waited for five whole minutes -- comes back home bedraggled and late and sad and close to getting expelled. FOR NO ACTUAL REASON. "You know there's a clock on your cell phone, right?" Serena lies that she knew that, and she swears that it wasn't her fault. And yeah, this time -- maybe she was so very late for his office hours that she was five minutes past the end of them? -- really she's just blaming Vanessa for being a bitch. Actually, that's probably better than a doctor's note. "You know Vanessa Abrams?" Oh, you sweet child. Sit right down, I'll get you some Earl Grey tea-flavored tea. "Thank you, that's my favorite tea flavoring."
So Serena immediately emailed the prof -- come 2 the hamton house party? im in that club lol plausibl denaibility -- and so everybody in the whole world is going to this exclusive location for an exclusive party that only three of them have any right to be at. Apparently the entire faculty will be there, rubbing bows with the kids, administrating staffing and class schedule decisions like you do at a party. Juliet was literally thrown out of Hamhocks by its board of regents for being super slimy, Dan Humphrey's cheekbones aside he has no business there, and Vanessa's just going to grunt and piss on everything about how just one of these hors d'oeuvres could feed a family in Haiti for like twenty years.
Vanessa steals Serena's purse without thinking twice and gets her phone out and hacks it and reads this, about which I am ever so fucking sure: "If Vanessa thinks something more than a kiss happened between us, even though it didn't, I need to show her I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make things work." I write emails like that all the time and it never looks suspicious or like a lie. "Remember when we DIDN'T STEAL THAT MONEY?" Juliet totally drive-bys Vanessa on her way to getting the phone herself -- "You're not the only one with Serena insecurity!" -- and then makes Vanessa "stand guard" long enough for her to some terrible thing. Vanessa comes back and is like, "What should I do, now that I know that thing I already knew five times?"
Juliet's like, "Boys are dumb. Just fuck him and that will shut everybody up inside your mind." Vanessa's like, "I want to say something nice but I have never done that in life so this might come out weird but your hair is really hair-shaped? And you and Nate are a couple." Juliet's like, "That's right, we are..." And then the screen goes all wavy and her voice echoes and she realizes that not only is she about to cross the line and snort the heroin of Nate's insanely sick body, but that she wishes her fake life were her real life and she didn't always have to wear this one dress or always be on the phone with jail.
Vanessa and Dan have a stuttering stammering mumblefuck conversation that is stupider than that, and promise to go have some gross Brooklyn sex... Right after they load up their sweaters and little dump trucks full of rich people appetizers like the Clampetts, or the Palins.
Meanwhile, Blair wheels visiting lady and her visiting womb over to her assigned loneliness antidote application device, who turns out to be a lady herself. Blair gets very nervous because it's not the fat balding IP lawyer she ordered -- who "does pro bono work helping kids sue Hollywood for stealing their Twitter ideas," come the mellifluous and mesmerizing tones of a truly musical writer -- and the lesbian flirts with visiting lady and Blair's like, "Oh shit," but then she's like, "You wanna give it a shot?" Because hey, why not. Once you've dated Chuck Bass, things like gender -- exchange of money, if it's their uncle, profession, age of consent: Petty things like that -- just don't seem to matter as much.
WELL, announces the visiting bluestocking, a powerful career-driven woman who intimidates men and is probably a lesbian, "Since I'm a powerful career-driven woman who intimidates men, I must be a lesbian? No! My class is full. Forever!" She leaves in a huff, complimenting the lesbian lady on the way out with a look that says, "Visit me in the Ladies' in ten. I'm not gay, but I'm not dead either."
Serena runs up to Dean Reuther, the Dean of Columbia or something, and Professor Lawford, the guy who invented five-minute office hours. Serena starts to apologize about showing up so late to school and meetings and the party and even this sentence, but doesn't even get to the part where she explains about the ghost and the taxicabs and the red snappers and Old King Cole and all that, and the Dean stops her right there, because just guess what Juliet was doing while Vanessa was keeping watch? Sending Lawford an email from Serena's phone to get her expelled, something genius I'm sure along the lines of, u give me an A ill give u some A lol or u raise my gpa and ill raism y skirt lol or 69s not just my last quiz grade b4 the curve lol.
It doesn't help that this was her opener: "I'm so sorry I didn't make our meeting this morning. But as I mentioned in my email, I'm hoping to impress upon you -- upon both of you -- that I'm willing to do whatever it takes to succeed at this school," even though if you actually sent those emails, why would you put it that way, and say all of this in front of the Dean, and this is all just so terribly stupid. Anyway, then it gets dumber because the Dean's like, "Now of course in the Columbia faculty we all read Gossip Girl -- a blog about high school students -- but we try not to let those rumors affect our work. However, this clearly forged email is grounds for expulsion." Serena stares shoots and leaves.
Here's Juliet's explanation to Vanessa about the email she clearly forged: "If you ask me, it sounds like an idea that Serena would get all on her own." Vanessa's like, "No, she wouldn't. I'm tired of pretending that treating Serena poorly will do anything to help my station or feeling of self-worth. I'm going to tattle." Juliet -- this is also genius -- immediately comes back with a prove-the-negative burden-of-proof imaginary scenario: "Maybe if we had access to it, then somebody else did as well!"
Right. The villain of every episode so far, who has already copped to using Vanessa as a pawn three out of three times, thinks maybe this is all a coincidence. We don't know all there is to know about the world. It could have been anybody. Could have been spirits, aliens, werewolf, Marla Gibbs, coulda been singing dancing living teapots, like in Beauty & The Beast. Who's to say?
Then Juliet points out that if Vanessa comes clean, Juliet could get expelled, because this is no skin off Vanessa's ass, because she doesn't even go here. Little does Juliet know that, counter to the way most people behave, that's exactly the kind of shit that will push little V into exposing her: Self-righteousness, prying and bullying? All at once? That's the fuckin' Vanessa Abrams Triple Crown. "Oh, you mean I have you at my mercy? Why didn't you say so? I'll still do the 'right' thing, but now that I know for one moment I'll actually have power over somebody else it's going to make it even sweeter. Now, to tattle!"
Chuck has the real date for visiting lady over at the Empire, fucking a prostitute. Well whatever, because Blair's Plan B is a Filipina sweatshop immigrant. Well, fine, because Chuck's Plan B is an IRS audit. Well, Blair's Plan C is her prenup. Well, Chuck's Plan C is her nanny: "She has pictures. Martha's ex is in them. So is Martha. It turns out it was a threesome until the nanny turned it into a twosome..." At this point visiting lady, who has been listening to them this whole time, is like "Jesus Christ! You people are nuts, and I say this as a fictional composite of Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey! Tell the Dean I QUIT!" At Columbia, it's simply that easy: "Tell the Dean I'm the Provost!" and then you're the Provost. "Tell the Dean I have a degree in Peace Studies!" Boom.
But I do think it's interesting, because I don't know if this episode is for Team Life, you know? Like, we talk a good game about "women in power" and how men are frightened of them, but then spend the whole episode torturing her. We talk about how Blair needs to study women in power, but she ends up getting screwed over by two men. We talk about the double standard and how a woman in power is either sexless or an invert, but in the end, she gets outraged about it only to later show evidence of bisexuality. Well, unless it's the whole Hilary Duff thing again, where a MFF threesome isn't really "sex" so much as a fun present for your husband. (If you and your husband both hate you.)
And there's this weirdness where, I don't know, it's always seemed to me that the only thing more satisfying, for a lot of us, than watching them take Martha Stewart down would be watching Oprah go down. And it does go into the sexual flexibility, and it does go into the emasculation games, and racial resentment, and these are fucking terrible things. But then the episode takes its opportunity to humiliate this specific type: Being a woman in power is hard, but finding a man with the balls and the brains not to care is basically impossible. Which is just demonstrably untrue, and a horrible fucking thing to tell anybody. And it's not even about this in a way where B could learn something, it's not an object lesson for anybody, in there or out here. Unless I missed it, this is the whole of the thought:
"Okay, what's the B story, what happens with Blair in this episode? Blair and Chuck use somebody as a pawn and bring the fight to Columbia. But who?" Well, maybe like a super-strong woman. Martha Stewart, somebody awful like that. "Good call! I hate that cunt." And then What's the A story? "Oh, Serena's promiscuity." Those old chickens finally coming home to roost, huh? "Well, somebody's got to punish dirty girls like her. Having Blair call her a whore every single episode just isn't doing it for me anymore."
Yeah, I think this is a good mix for the episode, seeing as how they're both totally valid storylines that don't go together in any particularly horrifying way and teach good lessons to the demographic. Boring! So what will the guys do? "Awkward conversations about how real men don't hug each other. You know, somethin' for the straight guys in the audience." Are you as excited as I am by this episode, bro? "Yeah, dude! I can't wait for our Emmy."
Serena can't find her phone. Therefore, she did not send any dirty emails with it. The Dean is not convinced, because she doesn't know Serena that well so she doesn't understand that this actually is proof that Serena didn't do it, because that is a lot of complicated steps if she did. Including when she walked up to the Dean and teacher and was like, "Heard any good sex-emails-from-students jokes lately?" I mean, you would have to be a criminal mastermind to do that, and it still would not achieve any purpose.
Vanessa comes running up in full-tilt tattle mode just as the Dean is pissing off, and suddenly Juliet cockblocks her with a sudden call to Serena's phone... Which she has hidden in Vanessa's purse! YES! Karma always works pretty swiftly on this show, but I've noticed before that it never comes quite so quickly for anybody the way it does for Vanessa. She even thinks about snooping on a Humphrey: Hair on fire. She checks out Nate's ass while he's dating Serena: Hand chopped off. It's so beautiful.
So, so beautiful, at this moment. So you got Juliet smirking and already having made friends with dipshit Serena for today, because S only remembers the last thing that happened, and over here you got twitchin', bulgin' Vanessa trying to explain that Juliet is the bad guy even though she stole the phone and somehow ended up with it but please don't think that she was responsible for doing the exact same shit she always does, just a couple hours after dropping on Serena out of a tree and biting her arms and face.
"I wasn't gonna say anything, but Vanessa came to me today. She asked me to help her get revenge, and I told her no," Juliet explains, and Nate totally backs her up on that, because she's been laying the foundation for this scheme all day long. Then Dan lines up to take turns slapping Vanessa with everybody else, and he's like, "You didn't want to just have sex, you were happy because you were getting S expelled!" Which, that one's a little weak, but it's worth it because they do that head-shaking judgment dance with each other again, and finally Dan's like, "You are worthless trash" and leaves. It means a lot to hear it, even coming from him.
Once everybody on the show has punched her in the nuts eleven times, Vanessa is left all alone and Juliet comes up and she's like, "Sorry I detonated your entire situation!" And V is like, "That was pretty fucked up, dude." And then I guess she threatens to kill Juliet. Which, on the one hand she's incompetent and distractable, so it's not that scary. But on the other hand she is malicious and has always been the worst person, ethically and in every other way, on this show, so... Kind of scary.
Like, she won't getcha the way she thinks she's gonna getcha -- snooping and then somehow out-Blairing Blair Waldorf, the poor pathetic dreamer -- but when her lack of grace results in you hanging off a roof ledge somewhere, she's the only person on this show that would just kick you the hell off. Yeah, she'd cry about it later and go around confessing to everybody, but what do you care at that point? You're dead. Kaput. A street pancake. Just another ghost, stealing Serena's taxicabs out from under her.
The Dean believes that Vanessa and not Serena sent the sexy email, but is worried about the level of "drama" that S brings to campus (and has "grown even louder since [S] arrived," if you want to document yet more of the base-level shit writing in this episode), because categorically, the Deans of Ivy League Universities are like so over drama.
"Women of my generation had to fight for every opportunity and to be taken seriously, and your attitude, Ms. van der Woodsen, makes a mockery of that." This little speech about Serena's priorities is so vague she might as well not even have said it. My... "attitude"? The one where I was late to class and tried to talk to my professor about it? Yeah, that's a real blow to fuckin' feminism. I think, though, that by "attitude" the Dean actually means "rack." (In which case, this show is curdling faster than I thought. This episode, dude, bro, this episode is so nasty, but I'm loving this season so I'll step back from statements like that.) Dean's also keeping an eye on Blair, because of that time she... tried to set up a visiting teacher on a date and was defeated by a rotunda. The Dean leaves to let children make more of her decisions for her, at this party for children, and Serena and Blair have a conversation. It goes like this.
Serena says, "Plausible deniability!" Blair says, "Not only did Gossip Girl give you a clean bill of health, but is royally pissed at whoever sent the tip. She's on GG's hit list." Serena says, "It was Vanessa or something." Blair says, "That bitch doesn't even deserve to be mentioned by Gossip Girl." Word up. Serena says, "Juliet is our friend now! She was nice to me when I was writing emails at a table. I love that lady!" Blair nods condescendingly and ignores it, the world, everything. Juliet appears and pulls out this pocketwatch and starts waving it around in front of Serena's face. "You are frieeeeeends with me. You are friends with meeeeee. You don't care about Haaaaaamilton House. You don't care that the story with Vanessa was clearly cooooooockamamie. You don't care that this is the third episode in a row where I've been openly skeeeeeeeetch." Serena's like, "How do you be plaaaaaces?"
Blair goes to visit Chuck and thanks him for making her "appear" crazy in front of the whole faculty. Also for the rotunda. Chuck explains that he has only begun to destroy her, in his typically wild-ass fashion. "If you think I'd take tonight as some sort of balancing of the scales, I don't. I'm not trying to make a point, Blair. This is just a warm-up. Whatever you want, wherever you want it, I am going to be there to take it away from you. I won't stop until you have nothing. Who knows my limits, since you took away my future?" Like that.
Blair reminds Chuck that it wasn't actually his future she ruined, but Henry Prince's, which is a nice line, and points out furthermore than destroying her won't make him happy: "The only thing that will make you happy, you lost the moment you slept with Jenny Humphrey. And that was the best thing that ever happened to me, because... I got over you forever." Then Chuck threatens to tell the world about how he slept with Jenny Humphrey, even though everybody knows about that already and it was on Gossip Girl, but for some reason we're pretending it's the nuclear option and that if he tells this thing that everybody already knows, he will also be destroyed. But see above re: A man without a future and his limits or lack thereof: "A man with nothing to live for is capable of anything!" he says, and then disappears in a cloud of smoke.
Vanessa is going back to the farm where they keep her parents, because she has done everything in her power to make Dan hate her today. She swears she didn't do the dirty deeds of which she stands accused, and he believes her, but the head-shaking dance of death begins again: He hates her not for her part in Serena's non-downfall, but because she didn't believe him about sleeping with Serena, for the fifth episode in a row. They can break up, these two assholes, over literally anything: "I need my Welcome Back Kotter mugs if I'm going to live on the Upper East Side!" "Well, I have pretend cancer!" "Well, then I'm dumping you!" "Well, I had a secret baby in Boston so I'm dumping you!"
Instead of going out for a drink with Juliet and Nate -- surely a night to remember that would have been -- Serena finds herself drinking a Red Snapper at Nat King Cole's. And for the first time all week, she's right on time: Dr. Teeth shows up out of nowhere and he's like, "We're on a date now! Just like I predicted!" Serena pretends that's not exactly why she went there, but the bizarre coincidence doesn't faze either of them. The Red Snapper, she says, is "a Bloody Mary with an inferiority complex." Some weeks she mumbles and Blair spits out nastiness pitter-pat, and then other episodes she talks like this and Blair's making do with some kind of broken English, it's so weird.
Anyway, they flirt, whatever. He gets her to stay and they talk about the unlikely chance of escaping one's past vs. the joy of reveling in one's personal history. The same thing Serena always talks to strangers about, because this is an epiphany she has in all even-numbered episodes. Two episodes from now, I'm telling you, she's going to be whining about her inability to escape her past.
Meanwhile, GG is getting just punchy, "Little Orphan J" amounts of weird: "The Law of Affinity refers to unlikely compositions forming a bond through a purely chemical reaction! But even the strongest bonds have their limits! That if left unchecked! Explode like a nuclear bomb!"
See, it continues the theme from her earlier expository statements, when she was talking about chemistry... Wait, no she wasn't. No, she's just being weird. Anyway, Juliet is chattin' with Ben about the usual, threatening her and reiterating -- as in his texts, emails, phone calls and carrier pigeon missives -- that they need to bring S down and telling her not to fuck Nate or at least not to mean it. She heads over to Nate's insane body and has sex with him and means it real hard. That'll show her brother Ben. That's what most people like to think about when having sex with Nate Archibald: Their siblings.
Out on the street, Chuck smarms and smirks and calls up his old friend Tim Gunn and asks him for an interview with Jennifer Humphrey. Because the Tim Gunn of this universe still works at Parsons and not at Liz Claiborne like he has for about a million years. And also, he and his assistant Veronica are good friends of Chuck Bass, due to their intersecting lifestyles. But then, if you told me Tim Gunn were an important ingredient in a nuclear bomb, I could not say for sure that you were lying. It certainly makes sense to me.
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