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Even in a season of more hits than misses, that was overwhelmingly awesome. Everybody spent the entire episode being fantastic, there were more twists and turns and double-crosses and schemes than you can shake a stick at, Dan and Vanessa finally admitted they are worthless assholes, and even that part was adorable. Lushly directed, powerfully written, beautiful acted... Rachel Zoë got fondued! The troubling "powerful women" theme got lampshaded and debunked! Even Dorota was great!
Serena's war of attrition against the Code of Student Conduct continues, with some seriously hot Colin flirtation and some even hotter self-control. Turns out Colin is Ben and Juliet's cousin, but it's more interesting than that: Colin has no idea about Operation Smile, and in fact Colin and Ben hate each other. So now, it's not only about Juliet's loyalty to Nate, but her duty to jailbird Ben, and her benefactor Colin, as well. Big J's like the most conflicted person, considering we still don't even know her deal.
Serena and Nate get a court stenographer to come in and draw up a formal peace treaty between Chuck and Blair, which is fantastic, but the only person who sees the two parties' secret provisions is sneaky Dan, because he is slime. He tries to convince Eric to help him fuck everything up for Blair -- thereby restarting the war, gaining Chuck's allegiance, and getting asylum for Jenny -- but when Eric finally remembers he's not awful, he drops the fight. Then he gets all his little outfits even more intensely tailored, because his new power is wearing clothes better than Chuck and Nate put together.
Blair's twentieth birthday party is also Lily and Rufus's first anniversary party, which is why everybody is there except Vanessa, because she's sucking in DUMBO and taking up space in Dan's house. Also because she hates fun. In order to keep her shit together and not run off to fuck Colin at the first sign of a lull, Serena brings both Juliet and her ex, Nate, as her dates. This causes some good drama, but not the kind that goes anywhere. Eventually Juliet gets some spycam (!) of Serena kissing Colin. Things don't go further, and it's awesome, but you see that once again Serena is going to get screwed by not having sex, which is why you should always have the sex.
Dan gets a big ol' case of the hypocrites and invites Swedish pop star Robyn, who in addition to looking like a wizened space elf also has an adorably damning video of Blair drunkenly singing "Stand By Your Man" to Chuck last year. Blair flips, and even though everything turns out fine -- including a very sweet, very necessary conversation with Eleanor -- she kills the treaty, so of course she and Chuck end the episode with the best hate fuck ever perpetrated on top of a baby grand.
week: Chuck and Blair have more sex in more locations, Operation Smile gets twistier and thornier, and Nate teaches Dan to play naked Australian-rules football.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Well, it's Blair's birthday and you know that means three things: Macarons, Eleanor, and somebody's going to die. Hopefully a Humphrey. Blair's licking all her envelopes and sending them to people like Joe Zee and Rachel Zoë and Jonathan Franzen. You know, people of that social class. The one that includes all of those people at the same time.
Like if you were a stylist -- which is a person with an imaginary job which is to choose outfits -- who was on a very boring show about a very beautiful gay man who never stops crying, or Joe Zee -- who is a person that is imaginary -- from a scripted reality show about a stick insect attacking a blow-up doll, you could say, "I run in the same social circles as Pulitzer-winning author Jonathan Franzen. We go to all the hottest birthday parties for all the coolest teenagers together. We are very serious people."
Meanwhile, Serena is over at that visiting professor's luxurious office, drinking coffee and flipping her hair and not having any self-control and then suddenly suffering what can only be described as a sexy brain hemorrhage. The whole world goes melty and all you can see is jumpcutty migraine-looking closer and closer pictures of mouths and throbbing sexual organs and then closer still and then you can see molecules and then atoms and then it's a crayon factory and then Spider-Man breaks out a funky dance.
Serena picks herself up off the floor and tries to remember what their boring conversation was about before the global sex breakdown, but she can't. Any conversation that starts with, "So you're from Maine?" is a conversation best forgotten. You can hardly hear the rest of it because of Serena's yodeling vagina, but Colin does mention that his family is "still adrift, in more ways than one." She asks if he has a mystery family or a family mystery or maybe if his cousins are mounting a conspiracy to destroy her, and he's like, "That doesn't ring a bell, no," and then she tells him she's going to teach him to read.
...No, sorry, that she's going to make him read. A book -- probably something by James or Fitzgerald, given who we're dealing with -- because remember how she learned to do that last week, with Colin's own book, and so now she just wants to spread the word. I'm glad that her mother trying to slut-shame the literacy out of her didn't stick, I was worried about that.
Dorota and Eleanor have a really long backflippy kind of conversation trying to justify the events to come, and as usual it's answering a question nobody asked and just making it seem even more complicated and senseless than it really is. Blair licked and sent her invitations at Eleanor's request, a week earlier than the actual birthday, because Eleanor wants to throw the party herself and on the actual birthday she and Cyrus have tickets to the Palais Garnier. Caring and neglectful at the same time, classic Eleanor Waldorf and the reason Blair is so freakin' all about bloodbaths all the time.
Cyrus's gift for Blair is a signed copy of This I Remember. The inscription reads, Dear Blair, who won't be born for a good forty years after I'm dead, thanks so much one of these days. And remember: I may be my husband's legs, but I'll never accept de feat! Love, Eleanor Roosevelt. Funny old broad. Never really lost sight of the gag, that one.
Dan is full of shit about some things, and everybody's trying to eat breakfast around him, trying to walk down the sidewalk despite him, trying to take showers without him, all because he is hiding from Vanessa, because she is awful. So awful that they threw her off the commune and she had to come back to their DUMBO love nest for people who think they're above it but actually are way below it. So awful that people on a commune were like "Frankly you're a little self-righteous and off-putting."
"Oh, so now you're roomies with your ex," Eric helpfully explains, in case Dan saying that exact thing a second ago was too hard to follow. Because of the Palais Garnier, Blair's birthday party is taking place on Rufus and Lily's anniversary. What a conundrum. "Honey, should we celebrate making it through a year of marriage despite the best efforts of everyone else on this show? Or go to a child's birthday party? And just to make it harder to decide, this particular teenager has attempted to murder each of our children more than once. I simply can't make up my mind."
Dan suggests going on a road trip, so he can be even further away from Vanessa than he already is, but they say they're not celebrating at all, actually. (Like what's to celebrate? "Lily, you finally married enough rich guys that now you're the rich guy I'm marrying.") Not because of Blair's birthday, as important as that is, but because horrible Jenny refuses to come because horrible Blair has banned her and horrible Dan has double-banned her from the city. Guys, just go to dinner. If you're not throwing a party, just think about what you're actually celebrating: The fact that you are both such flakes that you can't even get pull it together to get a divorce.
Not even when you gave birth to a mystery baby from Boston in the middle of your actual wedding, that had died in a jet-ski incident but was actually stalking your son. Not even when Rufus lost track of his scarf that time. Not even when Dr. vdDubs himself was there, with his crazy henchwoman handing out pills and fake cancer. Not even when your other son got murdered in Prague and turned up in Paris with a fake name and a limp. Not even after What Happened In Santorini. Not even when Jenny was wrecking shop in like every way, tossing around drugs and tiny boats and her virginity, taking over Serena's room. Sending Eric into a workout rage. Getting sassy at dinner.
Because Eric's boyfriend is -- the king of Tuscany now? Or goes to Yale? One of the two -- gone right now, Eric's been having to bowtie his own bowtie for a while, which has been weird because, you know, Eric's not really what you call a natural bowtie-bowtier. More of a bowtie-bowtieee, if you get what I'm saying. Not that he didn't give it the old college try, sure. And with Asher at that! Looking back, that's not how I would have pegged Asher at all. ("Pegged.") But I guess it makes sense and, you know, the whole bowtie thing gets weird real fast, because it's artificial and heteronormative, and like with anything those people do, it gets weird fast. Maybe Eric will learn to enjoy bowtying other boy's bowties, or even his own bowtie if that's his choice, one day.
But until that day, which I do not think is ever coming, he's got a lot of time on his hands. And this leaves him susceptible to Douchebag Dan, in the absence of Chuck, who is Eric's actual best possible big brother, and that means schemes that are not schemes and evil that claims not to be evil and calling reactionary revolutionary and two-legs-bad and I dunno, voting against your own interest on the strength of an emotional appeal. In terms of Upper East Side politics, they are forming the Tea Party. Which frowns upon anybody bowtying anybody's bowtie, even your own bowtie, unless you are a witch.
Luckily, Dan knows a witch or two. So now he takes his little bro firmly in hand and says, "You know what our parents need for their anniversary? An urchin from under the pavement, that will hiss and claw at the sunshine, and eventually be murdered by the Queen of Manhattania." And Eric's like, "My short term memory is such that I can't even remember who I hate anymore. Used to be Jenny for no goddamn reason, then it was Chuck for the opposite of an actual reason, and now... I guess Blair? I'm gonna say Blair. Not sure why, but I've never really taken part in the political process before and I'm just pleased as punch simply just to be here."
Eric wants to axe Chuck for help but Dan automatically knee-jerks about that and then Eric points out that A) Chuck loves Lily, very true and very important, and B) Chuck is technically on their side as long as the war is still going on. They don't have to pick a side, they can just pretend that there's a third side of the war, and it is them. And nobody has the heart to tell them that they're not actually part of the conversation, because they wear adorable costumes -- Eric is wearing plaid, like, all the time now -- and don't much matter either way. So they get down to work, and the first thing they do is make a sign with Blair's picture and she has a little Hitler mustache on her and it says KEEP YOUR FUEDAL MONARCHY OF MY MEDICARE. Nobody knows what it means, but it gets like a million hits on the HuffPo and now Eric van der Woodsen is a minor celebrity among the smug hard-left. (Dan, of course, was already famous for having the most posts on the HuffPo. Of all people, him the most.)
Waiting for Blair and Chuck to arrive, for a reason that is going to be awesome in a second, Nate noticed that Serena is wearing her just-got-fucked face, also known as her face, and asks if by any chance she just got fucked. "No, but in another way yes. I got my brain fucked. By a sex seizure. During my professor's office hours." Chuck and Blair arrive, along with a court stenographer, because get this: Nate and Serena have decided to create a peace treaty between them and have it notarized. I love this show so much. It's like, can you imagine if you didn't get the basic joke of this show and this happened? You'd be like, "That's preposterous!" Pity. No: Compassion.
"We know you both. You have nuclear capability. Sooner or later, one of you is gonna press the other's button, and we're gonna end up with nothing but cockroaches." And Carter Baizen. You know, I'd happily live through any old apocalypse if it meant unfettered Carter Baizen access. What is he, like four six? Somewhere around there. God, I'd just carry him around on my shoulders all day, looking at interesting rubble and shootin' at trash and cockroaches. Hittin' the bowtie section at what's left of Macy's; stockin' up on some real nice bowties. Then when the sun goes down, it's time to climb up to the treehouse, Carter Baizen's tiny arms around my neck like a sloth on its green-bellied mommy's back, sing some Christmas carols in a round, and tuck him in.
Bluck admits that they're already trucified but S&N is like, "Yeah, until one of you gets a hangnail or breathes wrong or something. Get real." So the NJBC itself, it's explained, is what's at issue: "And if either of you decide to break the treaty, he or she will be excommunicated." (Serena! Nate! You live at their houses! Serena, you live with Blair! Nate, you've lived at Chuck's for years at this point! Fucking think harder at all times!) Instead of pointing this out, Blair cups her coif and goes, "I suppose as I leave my teens, that I should start to think about my legacy. I have no objection to order in the kingdom. Let the negotiations begin."
And so they do. I've noticed GG doesn't really care this week, so neither do I. They toss around various New York places, maybe they're real maybe not, and when they're allowed to be there. Serena is mystified by this process: "If you give me the standard on weeknights, I'll give you the Carlyle for the entire Christmas season," for example, and she's like, "Preposterous! How can you possibly know when Christmas is going to come, or where you will be at that time? HOW DO YOU BE PLACES?"
Blair calls a sidebar, basically for the hell of it, and she asks if by any chance Serena got fucked today, and again her mouth is saying no but her eyes are whirling around in their sockets and sweating down the walls and doing a pelvic gyration and whipping her hair like she's got Will Smith money and doing that high-heel dance where you put a ring on it and oh, shit, I should not have looked at her mouth. This is the most deranged superpower Serena's ever had. I think my bowtie just no-hands bowtied itself.
Whilst all that was going on, Blair was explaining to Serena's breasts that they are about to do the same thing they always do -- take a perfectly normal, healthy relationship and somehow turn it creepy and bring in all these irrelevant bullshit authority issues -- and they (and by "they," I mean the girls) just sigh (oh, and by "the girls" I mean Blair and Serena, not Witch Baby and Cherokee Bat) and think about how inevitable it all is. "Colin sure was dreamy," they see themselves saying week, "Right up into that bear attack S inadvertently caused." Well I mean, what actually happens is that Serena promises to break up with Colin and stop with the Barbarella brain-sexing during office hours, but like I'm so sure.
While Bluck negotiates the last term of their agreement in private, the Teabag Two from Tuscaloo are working themselves up into a lather over made-up information cobbled together with the connective tissue of resentment and barely remembered civics lessons. "Tell me where in the Constitution it says about 'church and state,'" says Eric, and Dan responds, "Hang on a sec, apparently I'm supposed to buy a bunch of antique coins so Glenn Beck won't go blind." Gossip Girl is like, "And here we have a pair of twats."
Article XIX is: No touching. Enforced by Lady Blair, of course, to preempt another handshake orgasm like she had last week. There are some wistful damn moments outside the building, as Blair and Chuck are getting into their separate luxury automobiles, but you know they're gonna be rawdoggin' it on top of a piano by the end of the episode so you just have to kind of go with it and try to be sad like the show wants.
Apparently Gossip Girl has installed a chip in these people, because the latest 2.0 feature is a GPS tracker that will tell you where Serena is at all times. My understanding is that GG had this feature originally, back in the '80s when Gossip Girl was just a dialup BBS, but she was forced to remove it after the My Sister Sam incident. I don't want to be all "That's preposterous!" but... If you ever feel like murdering Serena van der Woodsen -- which, just anecdotally speaking, statistics favor the affirmative -- now you can. Just get the app and go for it.
Like Juliet, here on a street corner biting her nails like an insane person and openly tracking Serena's movements as she comes closer and closer. Finally, Juliet froggers across the street and acts like it's a coincidence that she's just standing there. She notes first the package in Serena's hands, which is an expensive bookstore bag, and assumes that the book is for Blair. Serena's like, "You've heard of books, I'm sure? I've been reading them for years now. No, but this is for my teacher." Juliet's teeth grow two inches and she turns into a vampire and quickly gets Serena to admit that she's "not" endangering her "academic" "career" or anything, just buying presents for a guy who happens to induce sexual hallucinations.
Juliet is like, "If you don't lock that shit down, he is going to fuck other girls." Serena has no idea what she's talking about, of course, because that's just not true because she's Serena, but it's still funny to hear Juliet talk like she understands things: "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but: He's a guy." Serena writes that down, promising to look it up later, and Juliet is like, "I am wise in the ways of guys, so if you need anything, be sure and come to me for advice, since you've never dated men before." Serena's like, "I really do need a mentor. A tutor. A teacher, if you will. Like in books. But I'm sure you knew that."
Which is true, but not because she's bad at guys: She's great at guys, which is why they're always dying or going to jail or starting Ponzi schemes or stealing horses or doing Things In Santorini or kissing her on a video billboard to the Kings of Leon or whatever. What the girl needs is some advice on not guys, because in that dept she's a little rusty. But since Juliet is in an increasingly incomprehensible war with Serena for reasons maybe we'll never learn, possibly asking her for bad advice about guys is a great way to get opposite-of-bad advice about everything else.
Palin/Perry 2012 is all, "We have a plan! Break the truce and then get Chuck to help Jenny!" You mean, repeat last episode when you shit on Jenny's head about exactly what you're now doing? Got it. You know, the chief danger in being a showrunner as your show ages is that you put together such a good writers' room that you trust them to take care of things and then go off to develop more things, because those very talented writers that you're so proud of are going to do whatever they fancy, which means a lot of times a show that should be one continuous story becomes twenty or so mini-movies that don't necessarily connect in any way. I mean, every show is prey to this, but some more glaringly than others. Like this shit with Dan, it works out because self-righteous hypocrisy is more delicious to these people than, ugh, waffles, but it doesn't really make sense because he was just embroiled in this scheme last week and pissed his last pair of skinny jeans about it.
So what would enrage Chuck Bass? His mother-not-mother-mother? His abusive-not-abusive-abusive dead father? His uncle-slash-tormenter Jack Bass? Yeah, so then Dan's like, "We'll tell everybody that Blair fucked Jack last summer in the south of France! Or how they're planning to do it again this Christmas!" Eric's like, "It's funny because it already happened! Also because he nearly raped my mom!" Dan's awesome plan, which is very Serena Plans all the way down, is that he will go over to Chuck's house, because they are friends, and tell Chuck he's sorry about Blair, because he cares so much about his old friend Charlie Trout. And just to really throw him off, Dan won't punch Charlie in the face, making this the first time they've ever been in a room together that he hasn't done that. And then just to up the ante a little more, he will gently cup Chuck's balls.
So their plan is to... Make her face smell like a foot. Got it. It would be sad if it weren't so clearly doomed to failure and thus awesome.
Serena spots Colin escorting a hot ethnic into his house and stares for a while before getting him to buzz her in. She gives him her "favorite" book, The Beautiful & Damned, which is an awesome book. Fitzgerald is the most wonderful writer, and it totally fits Serena's deal. I always call her out for the Russian tragedy motif but that's really Lily. S and B just borrow it from time to time. After a few minutes of frozen smile, Serena's embarrassed to go there but she does: "Where is she? I know she's up here!"
j/k, it was his housekeeper. "You, uh, were jealous of my housekeeper. I always pay her cab fare." This guy and cabs. They should just talk about fucking taxicabs all the time and leave the books out of it. Then Serena goes, "You know how we're not having sex, but instead just hanging out all the time in a sort of achingly horny masochistic fog?" He's like, "Are you gonna let me tie your bowtie, or knot?" And Serena's like, "No, I just came here to tell you I can't come here to tell you things or have sex coffee with you or anything, because as it turns out, not doing something you're trying not to do is a lot smarter than doing the things you're trying not to do." Colin is like, "If I weren't prepared for this bullshit, I wouldn't be dating teenagers. Speaking of teenagers, I have to go to your house tonight for a birthday party. Everyone who's everyone will be there. Even Rachel Zoë!" S calls Blair immediately to bitch her out for inviting people to her birthday party. "Look, how can I possibly control myself at a public function with Nobel Laureates watching?" B can hear the yodeling from her place, but doesn't care, because stop being a ho for like ten minutes: It's my birthday. You can turn it off.
Dan walks into Chuck's room and is like, "Hey, can I borrow some sugar?" Chuck tells him, "I gotcher sugar right here. Also, what the fuck do you actually want, Subtlety McPuncherface?" Dan's like, "You've seen through my sugary ruse. I want to tell you that Gossip Girl told me that Blair fucked Uncle Jack. And so I was thinking -- somehow -- that this would make you want to bring Jenny onto the island for the second week in a row, because you give such a shit about any of this at all."
Unseen, in the shadows, Blair chuckles darkly to herself, with a surprised affection. "Oh, Humphrey. You absolute scratching post of a nimrod. I can't wait to introduce my socialist Muslim agenda into your overworked, overgrown bureaucracy."
For a second the ridiculously clueless nature of this scene Dan's creating, the blue-collar futility of it all, makes Chuck feel protective of Dan, who is just in the weeds. For a second he's like a Brooklyn Bruce Springsteen, caught in a machine that will chew him up and spit him out, dreaming of one day getting in his electric car and driving all the way to Portland, but somehow always still working at that same truck stop and drinking the same sixer of PBR when the day is done. For a second he's like a straight Tracy Chapman saying, "You and I can both get jobs, and finally see what it means to be living." For a moment it would nearly be enough to hold him close and say, "You go where angels fear to tread, Daniel, but you do it with panache. Remember that time in jail? Sometimes now I make girls call me Charlie." But then the moment passes.
Chuck and Blair sit Dan down on leather so expensive it curdles at his virtuous touch, and explain to him the basic shit he's never understood. In one ear and out the other, and in the middle just a whooshing sound and his favorite quotes from (500) Days Of Summer. Blair casually mentions that Jack was in Chile all summer, which scares and shocks Chuck that she knows that, but she blows him off for reasons she won't disclose right now, which just makes him more anxious. They show him the treaty, which somehow pisses Dan off because it's elitist (?), and Chuck is more than happy to play into that class insecurity: "Humphrey, the intricacies of our war games are too complex for a prole like you to fathom."
So Dan goes on Fox News and is like, "Can you believe he said that? Like I'm too stupid to take part in politics just because I have no experience or knowledge to draw from. That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about: Hardworking Americans being told things like that. 'You don't understand basic facts about the subject you're screaming about' and 'You don't even seem to understand the definition of the word "theory"' and 'What part of this is implied by "well-regulated militia"' and 'The GOP encourages you to vote against your own interests because they know you are just retarded enough to do so.' I mean, I just wish there were some candidates who hated the government as much as I do, so they could go be part of the government we both hate and continue to exploit my racism and resentment while doing exactly what they claim to hate! And maybe their campaign staff could curb stomp some people, like the Framers would have done."
Blair invites both Chuck and Dan to her birthday party -- everyone who's anyone, including teenagers! -- and S calls Juliet because B doesn't want any of her damn mess. Juliet offers to accompany S to the party as a "buffer" in the professor situation, I guess so that if S just loses control and turns into the sex werewolf she clearly fears is going to happen, Juliet can jump in the middle of it and have sex with Serena instead? Whatever Juliet's plan is, GG thinks it's brilliant, but I don't know. It seems like taking the long way around. Serena loves it, even after Juliet points out that the birthday girl won't be happy that her enemy is at her party -- not to mention the fact that every time S is civil to Juliet in any way it just makes her look like a brain-damaged golden retriever, because the bitch is clearly after her and has done at least one awful thing to her every week -- at which point Serena is like, "Who is Blair to decide the invitees to her own birthday party, at her own house, in which I am myself a rent-free guest?"
Dan calls up Nate to make fun of the peace treaty, and Nate's like, "Yeah, that was my idea? So..." By way of apology, Dan is like, "Yeah, by the way your friends are assholes. You have really bad taste in friends, and generally, and also you are a bad person. But we're best friends still!" Nate says Dan should not be asking about the treaty, because it has secret provisions, and when he mentions S was there too Dan has the fuckin' audacity to be like, "I thought we agreed that I can hang out with Serena whenever I want but you can't!" Because he is a sweetheart and because he is slow, Nate apologizes for hanging out with Serena, even though that agreement has been broken about eleven times by Dan, and then Dan totally steals the peace treaty before the Empire security guy can come put it in the safe. (PREPOSTEROUS!) Gossip Girl gloats girlishly: "Nate thought he and Humphrey were thick as thieves. Turns out Humphrey's a thief, and Nate's just thick..." Turns out this episode is amazing, and Gossip Girl is kind of a shitty person. But we knew that.
Serena goes to find Nate and tell him she's dating Juliet now, and he's like, "Fucking figures." She explains that it's just for tonight, and the whole sex buffer thing, and Nate is like, "I'M SO IN!" As long as Humphrey's getting all jello about Nate seeing other people, he might as well earn it by actually breaking their stupid agreement. S isn't sure about that, because it's not about making Colin jealous which is why she would normally go anywhere with Nate, and points out the stupidity of this entire plot thereby; Nate makes a fully nonsense argument ("Let's be honest, it's better to have a guy protect you from another guy") and because it's the Twins talking their nonsense language at each other, Serena is convinced. She calls up Juliet and breaks their date, and Juliet responds by scratching out all the eyes in every picture of Serena she has on her corkboard. It takes a long time because there are like a million pictures of Serena in her house.
Blair burns one of the staff for putting gladiolas in her cabbage roses, and yells, "The Waldorfs' is not a Best Western!" Eleanor appears, having told Rufus and Lily that their life is pathetic and sad and lonely and that since they're determined to fuck up their anniversary for no real reason at all, why not have a terrible time at a birthday party for a child whom they despise? Rufus and Lily were like, "Awesome!" And they got off the phone and did a happy dance, because apparently they have friends. Or friend.
"I suppose powerful women can afford to be generous," Blair says, and Eleanor's face goes dark. "Also, you invited Charles Bass. I don't need that boy raping Jonathan Franzen." Blair swears they're not fighting and Chuck will be wearing his good-boy hair, and thus being totally ravishing and not molesting anybody. Eleanor's like, "If your twisted obsession is so not bothering you, how come I saw you stab a servant-girl earlier with a melon fork?" "Motherrrrr, it was a fish knife. And I didn't do it because of Chuck, I did it because I am the worst."
Dorota appears, Blair nearly slaps her head off, and Eleanor flees. And Blair, this is awesome, finally just looks at Dorota with sad fawn eyes and goes, "Dorota! What's going on with me?" Outsourcing your own introspection. That is amazing. Dorota picks up the slack as usual, and explains that it's because Blair is mentally ill that she does these things, and then runs away before B she has a chance to grab the garden hose and administer what she likes to call "a little lawn justice."
From the stolen treaty Dan learns their big secret addendum -- "I was expecting something a little bit more American Psycho. Not stabbing a homeless man, but at least feeding a cat to an ATM..." -- and Eric abruptly goes, "Wait, what? Get this plaid shirt off me, this is bullshit. You totally talked me into being shitty like you and Vanessa. I can't believe how idiotic this whole thing is. I must be really starved for male attention. I've been bowtying this bowtie to the point of injury and now I got my whole big brother complex twisted all around into crazy town. Listen, Douchebag Dan, you go ahead and do this stupid plan, but leave me out of it. It's mean and pathetic and also they will kill us."
"They deserve it!" is Dan's response. "They're... They're... They're smug! And they are condescending. They have treaties!" (Huh? This is the problem? God, I fucking hate Dan Humphrey. Of COURSE this is the problem.) Eric's like, "Seeing you all class-enraged for no reason except your own glaring insecurity has got me simultaneously disgusted and turned on. As a scion of the Rhodes Women, that's two more feelings than I'm used to having." But no, it's too late: Faces, lips, the bottom of somebody's foot, a hoptoad, tongues and teeth, tossing hair, handlebar mustache, eyeballs rolling up, smacking butts, a fedora, the jitney strawberries revisited, Nate's old lacrosse uniform. It's everywhere! Sexual lycanthrope is the new Betty White! This thing is a menace!
While Eric snoozes it out on the kitchen floor, surrounded by sundae condiments and empty bottles of Gatorade, Dan call up Interscope records to get a favor based on their Dad being a rock star. I don't know what it is, but I know Eric wouldn't approve. If he weren't so plum tuckered out.
A teenager's birthday party! See and be seen! Joe Zee and Rachel Zoë airkiss, blabber, and then turn to the screen and apologize directly to us, the viewers of television, for all they have done. If Rachel weren't so fucking fat you might be able to see around her, you could check for Mr. Brad Goreski, but I guess he didn't come with. He's probably getting some award somewhere for being hotter than the motherfucking sun.
The Dean of the van der Woodsen Serena van der Woodsen's Vagina Studies Rotunda drops by to thank Blair for inviting her to this shindig, because Columbia Deans are usually so unwelcome at tony networking parties, and Blair is all, "I hope you get a chance to chat with Patricia Ireland. I think she'd be really interested in that paper you wrote for the Yale Law Review on Planned Parenthood v. Casey." Blair read that? Of course, she's a brown-noser and a bluestocking now. "Of course. Every woman who cares about her right to choose should." A star with a rainbow tail goes zooming across the screen with a gentle yodel until you realize that this document doesn't exist because the Dean of the VdwSvdWVSR is not a real person.
The Dean is like, "Could you please have lunch with me some time? You just seem so cool and not transparently opportunistic at all. I think my life of accomplishment and success could really be enhanced by spending some time with a viciously deranged teenager." Blair's like, "Sure! You're really pretty." The Dean blushes and thanks her. "So you agree? You think you're really pretty?" The Dean's like, "Well-played, playa."
"The last girl the Dean took to lunch became CEO of Pepsi," that pretty blonde Minion says, and Blair lays her out with the pimp hand, almost too fast to see. Without even looking over there, just bam: Bloody nose. Over in the corner, Rufus is looking poor and unkempt and Lily is looking around the room to see how many people have noticed how hardcore she's settled. (Matthew Settled.) Eleanor makes fun of his clothes, and is generally a bitch, but it's Rufus so she actually gets points instead of demerits. Colin and Juliet walk into the party together and find the exact middle of the room, under a spotlight, so that she can say as loudly as possible, "Thanks for getting me in! But I should go before anybody sees us together!" Instead of asking what the fuck is the point of any of this, poor Colin is like, "I would rather hang with you than these famous beautiful people, but okay."
Nate and Serena are absolutely amazing together. You really get the sense that they have known each other for one million years and that they are really close friends. Generally this is true, but for some reason in this episode they are just stellar. Loved it. So he's distracting her from Colin, not doing great but he's doing it, and they are so sweet and she's just innocently laughing while he natters at her about teachers and people's clothes and she's like, "Gay best friends really do rock. Now I see what Jenny was talking about. This is way better than having an adult relationship with an available man."
Dan shows up and Eric's like, "Well, great. And I bet you brought out whatever secret weapon too. And now our parents are here, so they're going to see it too, and even without Vanessa being around you still manage to be the most embarrassing fucking person." Dan's like, "Nice plaid bowtie, let me adjust that for you." Speaking of dates awry, Juliet attacks! How dare S take her oldest friend to the party she's not invited to and not welcome at? S is like, "Yeah, I didn't tell you because you guys dated one time and I didn't want you to know that." Juliet tries to figure out who the professor is that Serena is "not" sleeping with, and S is like, "Nunya." Then Eleanor descends and whisks Juliet away to serve appetizers, like she used to pull with Dan all the time between the second and third occasions that Jenny worked for her.
"Why are you talking to that horrible Juliet, and what are you doing here with Nate?" Blair asks Serena, nails biting into her arm, and then refuses to hear the explanation, and acts generally like a cokehead and specifically like this guy who used to date my friend, and but finally goes, "Serena, do you have amnesia? Juliet isn't your friend." Serena's like, "Um, insensitive much? I totally do have amnesia. Wait, what's the one where things are backwards? Like words and clocks? You know. Where you can't be places? I have that one. I need pills." Serena reminds B that Juliet saved her from "Vanessa's takedown," which is just pathetic trebled if you think about it, and B full goes, "Oh please, if I want to hear fiction I'll go talk to Jonathan Franzen" and then in fact does just that.
Rufus and Daniel, in the absence of anything to complain about, complain about how they didn't know the other was coming to the party. They bicker about that nothingness for awhile, and then Dan tells them to get the fuck home, because first anniversary is paper. "Everything here is on china and crystal! You gotta go home and celebrate on paper plates, as planned!" Rude, fussy and classless. The Dan Humphrey Hat Trick. Even Lily is amazed: "I never knew you were so superstitious! Or so... gay!" So Loofus, they're all, "Let's face it. Our plan to stay at home was pretty depressing" and then head off for some cookies in the shape of Blair's shoes. Eric begs Dan to say he didn't pull the trigger on whatever sad thing, and to fix it. Dan does neither of these things, because Dan is an inhuman monster who dines on the awkwardness of innocents.
Chuck and Blair meet on the floor and they go, "It's so cold in here, I can barely feel my fingers," and "Cold? I'm practically feverish," they say. (This will matter later, when shit gets real.) (Real hilarious.) Everything goes wavy and a maître de leans over and licks a statue and everybody puts on masks and it's just faces, lips, hair, hands holding hands touching hands reaching out touching me touching you, and finally the maelstrom fades and the madness passes and Chuck's like, "For real, where did you hear that Jack was in Chile this summer?" Once again Blair blows him off, breezily, and he gets more and more worried that B still has interest in old Uncle Jack even after he managed to make her feel like a whore to such an extent that she crossed the ocean twice and had a little French girl murdered.
Cynthia Rowley. At the same party as Joe Zee? AMAZING. Maybe Awesome Erin from Joe Zee's office is in the back making out with Mr. Brad Goreski somewhere and later they will tweet about it and be like, "It was amazing but kind of weird and I don't think I would do it again, but you should try everything once." Maybe Olivia Palermo is living in the walls of the Waldorf house and only comes out at night to prowl around and eat like a stick of celery each evening that she has melted down with her napalm saliva. Maybe she got Mr. Brad Goreski and that's why he's not calling me back: Locked up somewhere cold and lonely, nobody to bowtie his little bowties for him, workin' on his lats and just cryin' and cryin' like usual.
I don't want to get into what Serena and Nate are actually talking about because it's not that awesome on paper, but the whole scene is so awesome. He makes her recite the Gettysburg Address, because that is indeed something Serena van der Woodsen would be able to do on command.
Nate grabs Colin to ask him if he is Ben, because for no reason, and meanwhile Blair is being sort of amazing, and she grabs Nate and pulls him past Lily and Rufus, who are literally having this conversation: "Paper plates are bad for the environment!" "Oh, come on, Rufus. It's not gonna kill anyone if we use paper plates just for one day." "I mean, we all have to do our part." And the finishing move: "When was the last time you used a paper plate?" I just had to reproduce that, both for posterity and because I want you to understand that I am not exaggerating. That is a verbatim transcript of their conversation.
Nate and Blair watch Juliet and Colin fight, and figure out that Juliet is lying about the... Wait, that Juliet said she didn't know who Serena's boyfriend was, but now is having a secret conversation with... No. Wait, so the deal is that Nate is still under the impression that Colin is Ben and that Ben is the guy Juliet dumped him for, and not her brother who is in jail. Yes. So then Blair's like, "Proof that she is a bad guy!" But then Nate yells at Juliet for leaving him for her brother or cousin, and she... No, just for dumping him. I think. And she says that... No, wait. I had it, I thought.
I don't know. Some people know that Colin is dating Serena, some people don't, but they're not dating, and Juliet is involved with Colin in a way that makes even less sense than before, and Ben is Glory and/or Colin, and I... Give up. There is no reason for either of their asses to be at that party. There is no reason at all for Lily and Rufus to be at that party. There is no reason for Dan to be at that party, or any party. There is no reason for anyone to be at that party. It is the celebration of the birth of the greatest evil any of them has ever known. "Welcome to the world, The End Of The World!"
Dorota looks gorgeous, dressed as a person, and she's all, "Miss Blair give me many bruise" or whatever, "Please to give back my baby Miss Eleanor," and a big hook comes out of nowhere and pulls her out of there, and then Dan's friend at Interscope brings pop superstar Robyn onto the stage area to show some love. Robyn is interesting to me in that the more grotesque and inhuman she looks, the more awesome her music gets. I didn't even like one song by her until she turned the corner into full-on shrunken-apple gnome-wife. And I don't mean to be mean about her, she's great and probably in Sweden that's the new thing, and she's been great for these post-breakup drinking binges I've been on lately, a real lifesaver. I'm just trying to be honest when I say she looks like that population of little potato people the Skeksis were so into exploiting. She's got a Jim Henson pedigree. And anyway, not that she adds anything to this episode or is here for any reason whatsofuckingever: She sings a song in the background and has brought a tape of Blair drunkenly singing "Stand By Your Man" to Chuck at an afterparty in Sweden two summers ago.
That's the big secret. Not, as the Minions hope, a Jack Bass sex tape or Nelly Yuki snuff film: Just Blair singing, being happy, being adorable. Because this is the part of the episode where inevitably this show goes, "But wait, why does the thing happen? Aw, fuck it," the thing happens, which is Blair predictably shitting a brick (prebricktably!), yelling at Chuck for no reason at all, setting her own hair on fire, and cramming her fist down the nearest person's esophagus.
And that person is Rachel Zoë, who gets hit with a chocolate fountain and goes flopping down on her giant ass -- total fondon't! -- and eats the entire thing like it's a sodapop and moves on to the appetizers platter by platter and then up Juliet Sharp's arm, because I'm saying the girl just can't stop eating. Rachel Zoë is trying to resolve the existential I/Thou question by consuming everything else in the world so that there will be no Cartesian duality, just Infinite Rachel from here to here. We will all be Zoë. What was once a personification of abyssal emptiness will become its own opposite, a person of substance without that zany tweaked uncanny-valley look in her eyes. "I die no more," she'll say, in her real accent which is kinda Scottish: "I, I: I live."
And her dirty-looking gay husband can finally have all the babies he wants, because maybe she'll start getting her period again. Or she is fifty-seven years old and he is fifty-seven years old and they are just in denial about everything and she is not a celebrity stylist and she does not have a TV show about her and when we're watching her TV show really it's just in her imagination. What they think is Demi Moore is just an unopened can of beef stew. What they think is Gwyneth Paltrow is actually an umbrella stand with three umbrellas in it, and a walking stick. What they think is Kate Hudson is in reality a leather armchair with an afghan thrown casually over it. (One of those is true but I won't tell you which.) Or they are both machines being run by tiny people using a complicated system of weighted levers and that's why it's so terrifying to look in their eyes: You see the tiny people looking back. And now those people are covered in chocolate, because Dan had a Plan. Panama. He's so prebricktable.
I mean, I get that the video is actually really sad and that the real reason Blair wanted that in the treaty was because she didn't want to see herself happy with him or singing that particular song, because doing that particular thing is how she ended up a hooker, so standing by her man turned sour on her. But the way it's played, it just seems like she's embarrassed to a great degree for no real reason, and then turns on Charles for even less of a reason. Or maybe I'm confused by this episode even more than I think I am. Or maybe it's because I'm having another attack of the Serena And Colin Go Into Serena's Bedroom So They Can Talk About Not Having Sex Some More And Have More Eyeball Sexes.
Blair thinks that Chuck did this unbearable Robyn surprise because of how she knew Jack was in Chile last summer, and finally she's distraught enough to explain what she was too proud to explain before: She only knew because she was desperate for news of Chuck. "All summer, when I was pretending not to care, I wanted to know where you were. I paid a private eye to look, but the only Bass he got was your scaly uncle." Sweet, right? Fight over? Nonexistent fight that never should have happened stops happening?
Oh hell no. It's now Chuck who is completely irrational and plays along with the plot for no reason other than the script. Because bringing Robyn to sing a song to Blair is so fucking offensive that if Blair truly believes he would do that, then they never should have been trucified in the first place because it means nothing. NOTHING. And then Dan, having somehow succeeded in causing trouble with this retarded gambit, jumps into the crowd with like a "huzzah!" sound and goes, "It was me! All along! You are my marionettes, I am your Wayland Flowers! I have taught you a lesson! Now, could you please do me a favor!" They're like, "Um, no." He tries to play the "my poor sister" card, which is fucking laughable because she's crazier than both of them put together and he just called her out for this exact same shit last week, and still Bluck are like, "Yeah, still no. We don't give a shit about any of this. What are you even talking about?" and Dan's all, "I'm talking about taxes! Don't tread on me!"
It is embarrassing. Rufus is so confused by Dan's bizarrely illiterate reframing of the narrative that he's like, "Oh, I see now: You're a politician just like the rest of them. You're not a normal hardworking American at all, drinking your six-packs and having your babies. You're part of the gay liberate elite. you're gonna be correcting my spelling and talking about Faulkner and who knows what else. Death panels. Mice with fully functioning human brains. Kosher meals." Rufus runs off in a huff all the way off the edge of our flat planet and the whole way down he's lookin' up at the sky, eyes steadfast and fixed on that one bright north star.
While everybody's like, "Dig the fuckin' Humphreys once again," Chuck storms off for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and Juliet Skypes Ben on his prison-issued iPad or space phone or whatever and tells him that the professor and Freddy Krueger of S's waking sex dream micronaps is none other than their cousin Colin Forrester. And apparently if Colin founds out that they are running Operation Smile on Serena, Juliet will lose her apartment and her tuition, because I guess he thinks her fake cover life is her real life. Ben's all, "Don't tell me about losing everything!" like he always does, and Juliet exposits that Colin and Ben hate each other, and almost exposits what the fuck is going on, but luckily Ben interrupts to yell some more, and then they say this ungodly mess: "It's because she's responsible that you have to do this. It is the only way to make things right. It is the only way for our family to ever move on. Now please, Jules, get the proof and get Serena expelled."
So I guess why Ben is in jail is, Serena got their whole family expelled. Except for Colin, who is a Fortune 500 businessman who sometimes teaches at Columbia when he gets a yen to teach at Columbia, and who dates teenagers and benefactors his poor cousins and steals cabs. But the rest of the family got expelled, and Ben went to jail additionally to that. I thought that Serena's boarding school was upstate, but that sounds more like a Connecticut kind of justice: Like, you could get expelled, but the level above that is jail, and then the level above that, super-duper expelled, that's like you have to go to the kind of jail where they don't let you send text messages all day. The kind of jail where when you get murdered by a dictionary, that shit is unabridged.
New York's hottest club is Dorf's. Run by mental ward escapee, murder suspect and college freshman "Blair Raid" Waldorf, this club's got everything. Queen Latifah fondue party on the roof! Valerie Bertinelli doing the Kwassa Kwassa with a Pat Sajak lookalike! The deaf lady from Sesame Street dressed like Charlie Chaplin and a bunch of confused Teabaggers thinkin' she's dressed up like President Obama! A balloon boy, a pepper spray room, sex acrobats, a bowtie party, Mr. Brad Goreski doing plyometrics, and just when you thought it was over: Knock-knock, who's there? Madeleine Albright!
Madeleine Albright was up in that joint. I'm not making this up. Joe Zee and Madeleine Albright. I bet tonight was a real fucking standout for her. Maybe we didn't see her because she was dressed like something awesome, like, picture Madeleine Albright wearing a fake beard. (I am so into Brian Wilson the SF Giants pitcher it is astounding, and I'll tell you why: He is so compulsively watchable, so completely perfect in every way, that I was actually disabused of the idea, this notion I'd picked up wherever, that baseball was just something they did Before. Like witch hunts or churning, or the Oregon Trail. Turns out it is alive and it is real and it is still going on, even nowadays. And it's just like America! But, downside, it takes even longer than America.) Anyway, Eleanor tells Blair not to feel bad about her total meltdown at her own birthday party, because Blair can't be held accountable for her own actions because she is a fucking lunatic and everybody knows it. Blair complains that she wants to be a powerful woman but that when Chuck is around she feels like a weak little girl. A weak little girl with orgasming arms.
Eleanor says this shit, and I'm not sure about it at all but here goes: "I shut myself off for a long time after your father left. I was cold and hard. Then I met Cyrus, and he taught me that sometimes you have to allow yourself to be weak in order to grow stronger." My emphasis because yes, on balance yes of course this is good advice, but this entire conversation is framed in terms of "powerful woman," which makes it sound super fucked up. I mean, I love this "powerful woman" trope they're doing with Blair this year, I really do, but it leads to some strange places, writing-wise. Blair agrees, anyway, and Eleanor goes, "You don't have to lose the girl to be a woman." And also that time she lets the "girl" out, she should think harder about whether Rachel Zoë will pay the consequences. It's just like that song "Seether," my favorite song, but with Blair's insanity instead of riot grrl power.
Lily's like, "Um, why is everybody shitting themselves about this? It was just a cute karaoke video. And the only person that got hurt was Rachel Zoë, who is not a person. Why so serious?" Rufus is like, "Because the one thing I've felt was secure in this life was that my children are marginally less fucked up than your children." Lily's like, "In no way is that true. Even my son the serial rapist is a better person than your awful children." He's like, "But now I can't ignore it. And it's because of the Upper East Side and all the rest of your disgusting perverted kind." Lily's about to remind him who pays the motherfucking bills when they notice all the giant paper pompons littering every conceivable surface in PRADA. It looks like Martha Stewart exploded and she was full of Tribbles. Lily's like, "This must be my gay son's doing." Eric's like, "Yeah, but I helped too." Rufus is like, "I guess Dan's not completely worthless like the rest of you, if he's still got enough heart to come over here and make cheap crafts we'll have to clean up later. In lieu of discussing things like an adult, I mean." Lily knows what he means; she kisses him for it. And to shut him up.
Dan comes home to sour dour Vanessa and lists his crimes: Wrecked Blair's birthday, betrayed Nate by stealing the treaty, disappointed Rufus which is so fuckin' hard to do, and ruined their anniversary. Vanessa's like, "The suck is strong in you, Padawan, but until you really commit to it they're never going to hate you like they hate me. These occasional glimmers of awesome, in addition to your new haircut and sick bod, are going to make this a downhill battle. But give it time. Because you have the makings of just a dizzyingly monstrous piece of Brooklyn trash." Then they have a sex hallucination but instead of it being weird and kind of awesome, it's just like: A french fry on a rainy-day sidewalk. Somebody getting whiskey dick and feeling bad about himself, wondering if maybe he's gay. Being the temp in a new office, on the day they have cake for all the birthdays that month. Learning that a favorite young actor of yours passed away over the weekend. Wool when it squeaks.
Gossip Girl wraps things up with awesome, awesome shit like "At the end of every war, the warriors come home, hoping what they've seen and done won't stay with them forever." Juliet puts a spycam in Colin's house, okay, so she can get a video of Serena showing up at his house, okay, to discuss the Fitzgerald book, okay, which he read sometime today even though they've been together almost the entire day, okay, and then Serena kisses him and just when you're like, "I knew this shit wouldn't last more than a week, that means the wolves will be here by Christmas break," she leaves him, bowtie all askew and half-bowtied, and she's like, "Later! Now I'm just being mean."
And down on the street, looking up and wondering if she's going to have to watch a video of her best friend-slash-stalking victim fuck her cousin, Juliet Sharp weeps the tears of a woman who knows she has damned her own soul, and lost any chance at that Archibald garden of delights. But hey, Serena needs to get expelled from college. That's the only way Ben will have his revenge: By taking away the one thing Serena... Never really cared about and in fact blew off for an entire year and is now taking two classes, neither of which she can actually find or be at. Then she'll know the pain of your whole family -- except for its three hottest early-twenties members, naturally -- suffering a fate that is sure to eclipse even What Happened In Santorini, or That Time Serena Didn't Kill Anybody.
Chuck shows up at Blair's to tell her that -- because she accused him of a harmless prank after telling him the sweetest thing she's said in a long time -- the treaty is over. They are no long trucified. "In fact, I can't remember: Why did we trucify ourselves?" Blair admits that the "pretense of civility" was exhausting -- actually it was awesome, they were like pouring tea for each other and shit, it was unnerving -- because "being amicable" isn't in their blood, and they can't be friends because of what she did tonight, and then shit gets wild, son!
Blair's all, "I've never hated anyone more! Every nerve ending in my body is electrified! By hatred." Chuck goes, "There is a fiery pit of hate burning inside me. Ready to explode." Chuck literally says that; this is an actual conversation they are having. She is electrified in her nerves, and he is ready to fuckin' explode, dude. And then it's just crazy town sex romp boogaloo with her up on the piano and then he's hanging from a chandelier with a rose between his teeth and then she's strangling him with a garter belt and then he's running an ice cube all over her ass cheeks while they watch Italian cinema and then she's slapping him with a wet noodle and then they eat that noodle and then they're holding hands and spinning in a circle faster and faster until they almost fall down due to the throbbing centripetal pressure, the explody heat and nervy electric of it all, and then she rides him around like a pony, like a tiny pony, and she rolls into a big ball and he is a small ball and they roll around pretending to be a sexy naked pennyfarthing and then she puts on a top hat and a fake mustache and they do it all the same way again, but reverse, so like equal time is spent on Chuck's bowtie, right, at this point, and then just when you think it's all over? Boom: Madeleine Albright.
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