If I Ever Feel Better

S04E10

Well, that was fully awesome. Serena wakes up roofied in Queens and calls 911, and before you can blink Lily has committed Serena to the Ostroff Center against her will. Jenny rushes home to confess, alerting Juliet -- who actually OD'd Serena, secretly -- and Vanessa to the situation. Vanessa sells Jenny out before she can do anything, causing the usual rift between Humphreys; joke's on her when Jenny comes to Blair, confesses the whole situation, and sets everybody on Vanessa's heels. She runs to her horrible parents, where they make vegan shoes of her and we never hear from her again; Jenny runs off to Hudson for a very real banishment that won't end anytime soon.

Meanwhile, Ben yells at Juliet for trying to kill Serena and causes her to totally melt down -- her response is basically "All I did was try and kill the bitch, jeez" -- and then disappear... After one last meeting with Lily to arrange ongoing hush-hush payments about What Happened At Boarding School. It occurs to me that we could be mining this shit forever, where Lily just has a 30-person roster of people she mails huge checks to every month in order to cover for various fucked-up things that have happened to Serena. Maybe that's why she keeps getting married.

It's weird for Eric, who went to this same place for his actual suicide we don't talk about, and it's weird for Blair because of her bulimia that was mysteriously cured, but most of all it's weird for Chuck, who spends the whole time trying to be there for S (well, really Lily) and constantly getting his vibes all up in Blair's Powerful Womanhood. Eventually he gets tired of being her emotional foot massage and tells her they can't be friends; she sends him Harold's famous pumpkin pie as a sweet surrender to this latest iteration of their constant, fabulous bullshit.

Of course, S only remembers going to that party to find Dan because he is the One. After that, things get hazy. Of course, not even S is capable of imagining that she was there in three different bodies doing three different things... So even she is taken in by Juliet's GG blast of herself doing coke while dressed as Serena. After a short escape from Ostroff, during which she and Lonelyboy declare their feelings once again, Serena convinces herself to go back into treatment for the drug problem she doesn't have and the suicide she never attempted. Only Miss S. Bless.

So the whole Media Serena v. Actual Serena thing has come full circle: Not only is she not in control of the image, but she's now even capable of being fooled by it. That won't go well. Anyway, Serena having ruined her nineteenth Thanksgiving, Rufus and Eric join Lily and S at the Ostroff for a (sniff) french fry Thanksgiving, like when they were just approaching the idea of Brady Bunching it up. V and Little J run for the hills. And best of all, Blair and Dan decide to team up and take down Juliet week, hopefully in preparation for kissing and finally making sure every single person has either slept with or attempted to rape every other person on this show.

So, excellent: Callbacks aplenty, an inventive story structure that gets the whole "Serena bender redux" issue out of the way plenty quick, and Serena and Blair talking about all their love. Plus a fairly cool C story about Nate's mom filing for divorce, then giving that up after a lovely Thanksgiving in the clink, only to have Nate find out it's possibly a ruse for the parole board and the Captain hasn't actually changed. A storyline that basically makes sense, Dan and Lily having one of the best and most emotionally honest scenes in the history of the show, and Vanessa being told repeatedly that she doesn't count and might as well not exist when it comes to the vdHumps or the NJBC... And week looks pretty great too, with flashbacks to Boarding School and What Happened in which yucky Damien Dalgaard seems to figure prominently. This season rocks.

Oh, Blair. Inevitably when the episode is All About Serena, Blair proves the most interesting person. Here because she doesn't really have friends, just subjects. There are only two people in the world that are actually people: Chuck, and Serena. And her relationship with Chuck has just once again readjusted itself to avoidance that can't last, and Serena's Handmaidens have just betrayed her thrice -- Little J by blowing her spot with Chuck, V by taking away her Archibald G.I.R.L.S. plan, and Juliet by making her look insane and vanishing her -- so now she has no equals, just enemies and lukewarm disappointments. What's a girl to do?

Give thanks in some other location. "Strolling the Christmas markets with Daddy and Roman, celebrating Beaujolais Nouveau at Le Tambour." Blair attacks Dorota for packing her new double-faced Burberry instead of her new shearling Burberry -- the bitch -- and Dorota's like, "Freeze to death. I not give a fuck." Dearie D calls her out for splitting in the wake of the Chuck and Serena meltdowns, and then babbles about some kind of third world pretend Christmas bullshit for awhile, and then hands Blair a pumpkin pie to drop off at the van der Woodsens' to eat while they wait out the gathering storm of Serena's sluttiness. Not just any pie, if you remember: Harold's pie, the thing that represents Thanksgiving and also having or not having an eating disorder and therefore the careful control of unbelievable chaos that is Blair's daily task.

There is a very cool thing about this episode that has to do with Good Serena and Bad Serena, but actually has to do with Real Serena and Simulated Serena, that makes Juliet even more awesome than she would otherwise be. Essentially, the show's always been about propaganda for everybody, but Serena's propaganda is virgin/whore propaganda, where everybody keeps calling her a whore and she keeps trying to turn into a virgin.

We've seen Serena take hold of the spectacle -- using the tabloids to freak her dad out, going for Gossip Girl's throat a few times, eventually becoming part of the spectacle through her PR and campaign jobs -- and we've seen her destroyed by it a bunch more times than that. Always this relationship with surveillance, with being looked at by men and by women too, always this relationship with technology and the ways we use it to constellate our own personae. But the thing about Juliet, and last week in particular, is that this is the first time the spectacle has been in 3-D. The image walked off the screen and into life. Instead of images of Serena doing things, it was actual Serena doing things: The image became real. Real enough to fool everybody, even, as we'll see, Serena herself.

So I'm terribly proud of the show for continuing to find new ways of playing this one idea into so many wonderful stories -- this one idea that is the title of the show -- and I love it best when it's about Serena, because she's the Daisy Buchanan of the show and her image is all that she is. Her continued striving to make the image match up with the girl, and the girl match up with her own idea of herself, is something toward which I'm pretty sympathetic but more than that, it's good writing. Take a look at every single episode of this show -- particularly of course that third of every season which is about Serena herself -- and you'll see an arc having to do with this idea in one way or another, this continual building up and shattering of the image Serena has of herself and tries to get everybody to sign onto (B), or validate by wanting it (Dan), or validate by opposing it (Bart).

And in this episode you get not only this sort of enantiodromia where Serena's relationship with the image flips over, but she's also endangered by it, and why? Because everybody assumes she's somewhere else. They would have heard, they would have seen, they would have GPSd, and since they haven't -- since she is, in some way, denying them her image -- the assumption is that she's gone underground. Out of shame, like boarding school pre-show, or out of fear like Season One, or disgust like Season Two, or depravity like Season Three. Anywhere but as a victim, because images can't be victims: They can only be victimized.

So while Dorota is whispering to Anastasia -- the lost princess -- that the Polish word for pain in the ass is blairwaldorfski, and Blair is agreeing to take the damn pie to Serena's house, manorexic Rufus and mustard-sweatered Eric are staring at the intense Thanksgiving table Lily has caused to be set. "Do we have relatives I don't know about?" Eric asks, and even Rufus has to laugh about how likely that tends to turn out true, every few weeks. Eric points out that Lily making a big deal about Thanksgiving is a very Rhodes Women way of dealing with Serena's vanishment, which is to say it's as much about covering up and denial as it is about punishing Serena. Whether or not she's there to see it, it will make Lily feel better.

Eric's surprised that S hasn't responded to his many texts -- some including "angry emoticons," which is fine because he's a kid -- but assumes, like everybody else in the UES, that she's doing fine elsewhere. He's thinking of sneaking off to Blair's house to see her, and Lily shows up in a cloud of Chanel and resentment to tell her son -- and even her husband, whose chronic ambivalence about his stepdaughter has nothing on his goony stupid love of all holidays -- that under no circumstances is anyone allowed to deal with Serena or acknowledge her existence. And given the facts on the ground, it's not the worst Lily thing even though it sounds like it on paper:

"She dropped out of college, she refuses to return our phone calls. She's a grown woman throwing temper tantrums just to punish me! When she is ready to take responsibility for her actions, we'll talk. Until then, you know what? I'm done being punished."

You never get into an argument with a two-year-old, and you never say somebody is doing a thing "just to punish you." Even if they actually are, you're still giving up the argument. It's like calling Serena a hater, or saying she thinks she's better than you. There are a million ways to lose a fight but only one way to win, and that's by ending it. Double if it's your kids, because for fuck's sake.

Dan and Vanessa are at the Foragers Market thinking about buying "organic pumpkin tarts with gluten-free crust" and "this amazing tofu-sage stuffing recipe," and that is all we're going to say about those motherfuckers. Now that V has made her peace with Dan's unending obsession with Miss Serena and Dan has made his peace with the fact that Vanessa is an incurable monstrosity, they really are the perfect couple. They're like the Asher and Jenny of heterosexual lies.

El Capitan in jail is all about Nate getting Anne -- now that they've captured her and returned her from the wild -- to come visit. Breathe some of that salty Vanderbilt air into his terrible life. But of course Anne has been all over this shit and is not interested at all. Nate's bangs droop with sadness and he heads home after a lackluster visit with his horrible Pops, to grab a ride to Vanderbilt Palace for the holiday. But who is there? Our barrister Mr. Stahl, Stahl the nervous Stahl the homewrecker Stahl the interrupter of holidays, who wants nervously and twitchily to drop off mysterious papers for mysterious Anne. "She's getting her hair done!" Nate blurts, because that's a thing ladies do on Thanksgiving before heading for Nantucket, and sounds out the divorce papers contained therein. Phonetically.

Blair's somehow surprised that Charles is at Lily's for Thanksgiving, when the truth is the only thing those two bastards are thankful for is each other, for blowing the curve on moral ambiguity. They're sweet, and awkward -- Blair declared love, kissed, blew off a few opportunities and then dumped him again in a matter of minutes, remember, at Sinners & Saints -- and Chuck offers to disappear, and Blair is touched but knows that's not necessary, and they do this Canadian Dance Of Death By Consideration for awhile before Lily appears -- still strung out on not caring about shit -- shows up and smiles a kind of not-very-real, GTFO, where-is-my-daughter smile.

"I'm spending the holidays with Daddy and Roman in Paris. I figured since we usually spend this day together that, you know... Um, is Serena here?" Aw, strong Blair. Lily's eyes bug out a bit and everybody suddenly realizes that Serena is totally missing and probably dead and that's why they've all cooked up reasons to be at PRADA, so they can figure this out. Chuck's in this scene so he can say she's not at the Empire either, which are the three places in the UES that she would actually be. If I were in this scene I would be like, "I better call Carter Baizen just in case. You never know."

And where is she? Queens. And what is she? Fuuuuucked up. And why is she? Because Juliet has been feeding her contraindicated combinations of medications that are tryna kill her. And why this? Because Juliet has lost her goddamned mind to the Nate Effect, which makes you murder sometimes. She calls 911 and moans her emergency, which is "My name is Serena van der Woodsen."

But there's more! "I don't know where I am or how I got here. Please help..." Dude's like "You are mumbling incoherently, ma'am, are you intoxicated?" and Serena's all "No bitch, that's just my voice."

Nate runs to Dan for the comforting muscles of divorced parents, and Dan is no help at all: Firstly he's like, well, life has been a lot better since my awful mother and sister fled to Hudson, so look at the bright side. Secondly, your father is the biggest cocksucker on this show, so good for Anne Vanderbilt. Maybe now we can stop hiding the perfume in Lily's bathroom whenever she comes over. And thirdly, it's probably all your fault. Nate meanwhile is like, "He's been an asshole my entire life, why now? When it's Thanksgiving and he could possibly be coming home a changed man? I haven't punched my father in a whole year -- doesn't that mean anything to him?" Dan's like, "It's not about you. It never, ever is." Then he takes a phone call rudely to warn Rufus that Vanessa is coming to Thanksgiving and will probably be shitting all over it again.

But no, Rufus is calling to tell Dan that his sister-lover is in the ER, and please do not tell her best friend Nate who is sitting right there. At the hospital, Alexi Murdoch's first song of the night, "Towards the Sun," bookends nicely with the one at the end of the episode, "Through The Dark." Blair has her knives out on the nurses, of course, and there's a sweet gentling whisper of her name from the Chuck area of life to calm her down. Lily and Rufus explicate the facts we know: She dialed 911 from a motel in Queens, and drugs were involved. Lily's all, "I'm freakin' out!" while Rufus masks his total lack of giving a shit about this by saying that doing nothing is the proper response. Lily goes to get coffee. Take the edge off. Balance out the chardonnay.

Say what you will about Taylor Momsen, or Jenny Humphrey for that matter, but she is a really good actor. I'm nostalgic for the days when everybody talked about that, instead of how unprofessional and naked she is now. It's a fucking shame to see her gone. Not Jenny necessarily -- although there's nothing like a good punked-out dystopian Jenny situation -- just this beautiful girl who is so talented and so smart and so very in need of some boundaries, getting shipped off to a fictional Hudson until she pulls it together and taking mean prank calls from Tim Gunn just when she thought she was going to have a good

day.

So Jenny is horrified by the S news, and it gets real in her head, and then she's ashamed, and then wants to confess she might have driven Serena to a bender or suicide, and then doesn't want to talk about it on the phone, and then wants to come immediately to the UES even though she's scared to do that, and all of this on her face but all she really says is, "Dad, can... Just tell Lily how sorry I am." And somehow just her intonation takes into account the wretched history between the sisters, and her feelings for Lily, and her guilt about Eric, and this latest thing; it is great. Do we really have to lose this? I could handle just one scene a week of this, just Little J getting a phone call and emoting. She could be the Betty Draper so easy. She kind of already is.

Vanessa arrives at empty PRADA, as usual a day late and a dollar short, yelling embarrassingly and almost waking up the baby, and Vanessa's like, "Dorota, why are you here alone," and Dorota's like, "And who the fuck you? Be quiet!" And then on top of that awesome awkwardness checklist, Dorota won't even tell her what's going on because she's not family. Then she kicks her in the box and dangles her out a window. Luckily, just then Jenny texts her to say, and this is great because no matter how much the character twists and bends she really does stay pretty much the same person: Serena in trouble. We screwed up. Coming home. V calls Dan and gets voicemail, as if the phone itself can sense her Navajo rainbow jacket, red tartan skirt over pants, and gigantic hideous purse. Ever her hair has calmed down trying to get away from that shit.

Dan arrives at St. Margaret's and runs immediately to Blair, as anybody would. She fills him in on the facts, and then immediately starts in on her part in all this. Which in one way is sort of narcissistic, but it's also the way you treat a friend: She's not looking for an audience, she's looking for comfort. She doesn't want a hug, she just wants the other person who loves Serena as desperately as she does to hear her.

"She overdosed in some cheap motel in Queens, alone. Why didn't she come to me? I mean, no matter how angry we were at each other, she knows. I don't know what I would do if anything happened to her."

She's even affectionate when she sees how this gross story shocks Dan so terribly: "Sometimes I forget how much of a recent addition you are, Humphrey. You met her as a girl coming home, trying to start over. I wish it wasn't true, but... Sounds a lot like the Serena I used to know."

It's a propaganda war: Past v. future, evil v. good, whore v. virgin. And once again, the only person it actually affects isn't there and doesn't need to be. This is when Dan slots into banging the Good Serena drum, which causes Blair to solidify her position on Team Lily's Bad Serena spectacle -- for which, remember, she already has ample reason. She saw it happen, the downward slide starting, and there's no amount of personal growth and commitment that can possibly equal the evidence of your own eyes, which is why the whole Handmaidens thing was so brilliant and why I'm so glad the Juliet story is coming to its climax at the season's midpoint. Because once the Ben thing comes out week, literally anything could happen after that.

The doctor tells them that the OD wasn't too severe, no kidney or liver damage, but that they should think about putting her in rehab -- perhaps the Ostroff Center For Embarrassing Children With Problems? Lily goes through the typical Rhodes stages of shame in record time: "Well, she's not a drug addict, and she didn't mean to harm herself. This was all sort of a stupid mistake! And as you said yourself, it wasn't severe!" The doc is like, "Um, there were antidepressants there also, known to kill your ass in combo with painkillers and sleeping pills." And when the doctor asks if S was battling depression, Lily looks anywhere but Eric.

Lily tells herself a little story, and Rufus can't meet her eyes: "This was Serena acting out, blowing off steam like she always does. It just went too far. That's all."

Nate shows up to bitch at pretty Anne for the divorcing stuff, and she is of course appalled, but Nate's self-righteousness is not to be disregarded. She tries to explain to him that the Captain is playing him, a sort of jailbird conversion or maybe just straight up lying, but Nate's too concerned with the fact that she hasn't even seen him in jail and been exposed to his brain hypnotism. She points out that Archibald walked away from them well before the jail thing even happened -- nobody ever remembers that he also tried to kidnap Nate out of the country for his Vanderbilt money, which was my favorite part of that shitstorm besides the constant dad-punching -- and Anne's like, "I am not going to the jailhouse for any reason whatsoever. Get your shit, we're going to Grandfather's."

For a second, just a second, I let myself believe that Tripp would be there, and we would sit down with Tripp and his insane wife and remember the wolves, and the chalet, and the cold cold waters of the Hudson, and he would be wearing a cashmere sweater that set off his eyes, and they would play some sort of homoerotic Abercrombie sport at the water's edge, like in the olden days, and Grandfather and Crazy Eyes would get into a gunfight and in the aftermath Nate would wrap those arms around his cousin and comfort the hell out of him like in old-time Britain, all wounds healed, all-American brotherhood on the upswing, and then I remembered that this episode is about the Captain once again making Nate look like a retarded pansy, and I realized that was good enough.

Because they are the best parents since Mr. and Mrs. Menendez, Lily and Rufus line up their children and school friends of their children, and put the fate of Serena's mental health -- Serena van der Woodsen, the fucking adult woman, is who we're talking about in case you're confused -- to a vote. Eric is terrified that his sister somehow caught suicide from him, but Lily shuts the door on that rabbit hole pretty gracefully. Blair is terrified, still, and just generally acting up because her house is built with just a few strong timbers. Dr. Keller offers to commit Serena to any old treatment center whatsoever, and Dan -- Dan Humphrey -- suggests that maybe they should fucking try asking Serena what she thinks about her situation. Good boy. Good Dan!

Blair, operating on the facts as she sees them, says it's probably best just to lock her up because this isn't the first time she's done these particular things -- in this particular order, leading generally toward murder and the stealing of boats and horses -- and that even if S never forgives them, essentially, it's still the best thing right now because they are in the danger zone. Rufus says it's Lily's decision, which it isn't really, but just as she's working her way verbally toward doing it, revving up for the big betrayal, the decision gets made for her:

...Well-known Manhattan socialite and former party girl Serena van der Woodsen was admitted to St. Margaret's Emergency Room after EMTs responded to a 911 call from a motel in Queens..."

They play the 911 call and it visibly socks everybody in the gut, but you know the second that breaking news hit the airwaves Lily was like, "In the absence of a dungeon or oubliette I guess Ostroff's the way to go." Chuck comes running in to seal the deal: The paps are insane outside. Everybody confers, a sort of ad hoc Rhodes Summit, and decide that they have to leave the hospital but that PRADA, the Empire, and Chez Waldorf are all out of the question, there is no jitney that leaves from St. Margaret's to the moon or anywhere else, and therefore -- because of the threat of the image and for no other reason, note -- girlfriend's getting committed, stat.

Serena's so used to ruining Thanksgiving with her drug problems she's able to do it now even in the absence of drug problems. Short bit later and Eric's smelling the smells and touching the walls of the place he was reborn. Her room's bigger than his was; her resentment too. She feels betrayed, of course, and of course Lily walks in right then to give some kind of ameliorating, railroading speech, and Serena tells her to suck a duck.

"Your daughter wakes up alone, drugged, in an empty motel room, and you don't call the cops, you don't ask if she's okay, or what happened, you just have her committed. What kind of mother does that?" Well, valid. But I give Lily credit for holding out as long as she could. That whole PR thing really strikes at her core, doesn't it? But then Serena questions whether this was the best possible plan and Lily has to go ruin it, like so: "Well, Serena, this isn't exactly what's best for me, you know? It would be a lot easier to take you home and act like this never happened." Have you met my friend Lily? She says things like that constantly because she thinks like that constantly. It's a real bear too, because she's pretty awesome otherwise.

Serena bitches at Eric half-heartedly and he tries to explain from his own perspective what it was like getting committed to this same place after trying to kill himself presumably the same way, and Serena very logically points out that this is a different situation because she didn't even try to kill herself. But because all Eric knows is that she did five awful things in a row and then told him her life was over and not even he could save her -- which we thought meant something rather different, in context, but now twists into a new shape just like it did in his head, when he heard the news -- all he can say is, "It took me a long time to come to terms with what I did, too."

If you drink every time somebody refers to Serena as "alone" -- being found alone in Queens, overdosing alone -- you could get pretty effed up. It's an interesting thread to follow -- everybody horrified, including Serena, by the concept of her existing alone, or without help, without being looked at, waking up without the people around to hold her together -- but also one of those ones with this show where you don't know if it's on purpose or just bad script editing.

In a waiting area that looks a lot like a Dwell article on "Rooms You Could Literally Have Objectum-Sexual Sex With," Dan apologizes to Nate for not telling him about S when Rufus called, and Nate blows that off entirely. Not because he's dumb and not because he's callous, but because he's so stressed out by thinking about the Captain -- trusting the Captain and looking a fool, or losing his family because he's right and they don't see it -- that he twists it into a very sad shape. Serena says she remembers nothing, he scoffs. Dan points out how Serena told them she didn't kiss either of them, he scoffs. Serena swears she's not suicidal, Nate scoffs:

"Dan, I care a lot about Serena. I always will. Whether she realizes it or not, this is how she pulls people back in. And I'm not gonna let it happen anymore. Neither should you," he says... And then heads out to lobby his mother about the Captain's rehabilitation. Oh, Nate. Right speech, wrong lady.

Juliet once again finds Brooklyn trash on her doorstep, this time in the form of Little J, come to call about Serena. Juliet shrugs manically: "Her overdose? I had no idea she was so depressed!" Jenny runs back through the entire situation and everything they did to her and Juliet laughs at her basically until Jenny Humphreys that they have to go to the Ostroff Center and explain the entire thing and apologize. At which point, of course, Juliet will be fingered for the murder; she swings into action.

"Okay, wait. No matter what we did, Serena still went on a bender and overdosed. Maybe she needs the help that that Center can provide. Who knows? We may have called attention to a larger problem that could have been much worse." For Juliet, I guess, locked up is locked up, and that's justice: They'll reset the timeline to Season One and everybody will assume she's a murdering teacher-ruining coke whore, which is what Juliet needs her to be. Now, more than ever. Jenny doesn't even really acknowledge Juliet's demand that she keep quiet and consult her fellow witches before blabbing anything, she just takes off. Meanwhile, Juliet sends GG some pictures of herself snorting coke in her Serena costume. That girl has every exit covered, I swear.

While en route, Dan comes to visit S, which she sweetly assumes is Lily's way of "sending in the big guns." I really like the open acknowledgement that Dan's the only actual person that can get through to Serena when the issue is something on this level: It's a Humphrey/van der Woodsen conundrum, and Dan's the only one who can do both now, so he's automatically the go-to. Jenny's too unpredictable, Rufus doesn't give a shit, Eric's too close to it. But Dan, although it's often misguided, honestly does just trust and care about Serena at this point.

Serena swears she remembers nothing, wishes she did, and then somehow manages to say with a straight face that the last thing she remembers was heading into that party with the express purpose of choosing, and kissing, Dan Humphrey. (Which, awesomely, could have played into Nate's whole Bad Serena concept about her sucking you back into her drama, but they don't go there. What happens with Lily is probably better, but I would still have liked the possibility of playing this episode both ways in your head: Maybe Serena's using her powers and resources to get out of there, or maybe she's just being honest all the time. Instead, we only get Option B and Dan never questions her, which is in turn either out of character or a sign of growth, depending on whatever the writer does with it.)

Dan's like, "Get your stuff, ya sweet little head case." Because what's more romantic than busting a crazy girl out of the institution? No matter how many times the movies try to tell me that crazy people are romantic, and that mental health is a terrible monster from which we must be protected, I can't really believe that, because just writing that story identifies you as yourself a crazy person. Which makes the rest of this kind of dumb, but considering this episode is like a three-ep arc in one hour, it doesn't last too long. Of all the packed episodes of this show that we've seen, in some ways this is the packedest.

Vanessa and Juliet have a tense little discussion about how like Jenny she is going to Ostroff to pretend she's a part of this story, this family, this show, and Juliet repeats her advice, "With one caveat: We are not responsible for what Serena did after she left that night. If Jenny wants to come clean, they will forgive her eventually. She's family. You're not. You will lose all of them. Especially Dan. He will use you as an excuse to go right back to Serena. And this time, that's where he'll stay. If Jenny wants to go down for something that we didn't do, then that's her call. But she goes down alone."

Which is lovely in many ways: Firstly because every time you push that bruise it feels delightful, and she managed to find both of Vanessa's buttons in record time, with the bonus of obliquely implying that she'll never be UES material. Secondly because it's a neat reversal of what Vanessa did to Juliet at the ballet when she turned her back into Odile. Thirdly because girlfriend is packing her shit up quick as pan while she's having this conversation, meaning that once the shit hits, which is a given because of Vanessa's innate ability to do a goddamn thing right, she'll be long-gone, and thus Vanessa will be left holding even more of the bag than she is right now.

We're all about talking about Juliet's serial takedowns of Serena, but the fact that Vanessa's just constant collateral damage, every single time, I mean, doesn't that make it worth it? She makes V her tool, insults her every five seconds, and inevitably V gets fucked for it in the end. Juliet's neither a villain nor an anti-hero, she's the goddamn hero of the whole show. If anybody deserves a coke-fueled threesome with Georgina Sparks, it's our goodly Miss Sharp. The show would explode in its own awesomeness if those two ever allied, but it would be so worth it. Sparks! Sharp! Sharp & Sparks! Sparks & Sharp! We kill you dead!

Blair, searching desperately for A) Replacement Serena and B) A place for Chuck in her life, combines the two into a terrible idea. She invites Chuck along to EAT to get S some food, and babbles at him about how nothing has to change, and he's happy to hear it and happy about everything until she says the magic spell, about how no matter what happens, and then his whole body shudders and he points silently behind her, at Jennifer Humphrey entering the Ostroff, stomping through without even noticing them, like a ghost.

It's a very, very sad little moment. Somehow for Chuck most of all. Jenny as the ghostly embodiment of Chuck's guilt and the ways he'll always be denied his heart's desire: Are you satisfied yet? Imagine how you'd feel if he never raped even more people.

Jenny comes running up to Rufus, to come clean about how her dastardly behavior of pulling on a curtain and turning on a spotlight -- almost as evil as inviting someone to the opera, in terms of this show's most storied crimes against humanity -- that mayhap provoked Serena to go on a Queens-bound bender and murder herself. Considering how Jenny's the only person on this show who ever gets shit done, her heightened sense of importance makes sense. God knows she's driven every boyfriend Eric's ever had four-fifths of the way to Columbine doing way less evil shit than that.

Rufus basically understands the plan -- knock S down a peg or two -- but of course he gets all tangled up in the Rufus Is Important of it all. Like he's mainly offended that Jenny came home for Serena's benefit and not to create the Humphrey Triforce of Awful. "Why can't you ever create schemes to remove me as the Queen of School or the Page Six It Girl? Think about me every now and again?" Well Dad it's because you have no pegs left.

Serena has disappeared! All of them! No Serenas left! Look under the bed she is not there! Who's that riding by on a bicycle? Not Serena van der Woodsen, I know that much! Dan has taken the S out of Ostroff Center.

We're pretending Eminem is relevant long enough for him to sing a little song about how Juliet's last-ditch hold on sanity was Nate, and now without Nate all that's keeping her from biting on the big steel doors of the iPrison -- "iPrison! Where texting and Gossip Girl blasts are often available! But not always!" -- is the thought that probably she can still kill Serena somehow. If she could just rewire this bomb to take out the whole of Manhattan it would take the Otroff Center... Little does she know that Serena's in the last place anybody would think to look for her. ("Anybody," in this case, meaning "anybody besides Vanessa." Meaning actual people.)

So while Juliet is feeling unhinged, who should show up but stupid Nate, followed by gullible Anne, who walk straight into the dragon's mouth of wishing the Captain was a real person and the jaws snap shut on them and they're lost forever like a family of Greek tragedy. Juliet's like, "I remember when I had a family, a brother, a hot cousin who bought me things, a hot boyfriend who was too dumb to deceive. And now I have none of those things. And why? Because... Well, because of... Who am I? Who was she? ¿Quién Es Esa Niña?

And then it's just flashes in her brain of Serena and a thunderous voice going eat the flame be the flame the flame is life and before you know it, she's packing up her Dexter Morgan kit bag and heading out into the wide world to look for anybody that looks like Serena, which is everybody, which is... Who's that girl in the Barney's window, looking so haggard? So broken, the twigs and bits of peat that Vanessa trails everywhere clinging to a hem. Who is she, looking like she just visited her insanely hot brother in jail for the fifteenth time today? Why, is that Serena? Eat the flame, be the flame. And then before you know it Odile's a parakeet, scratching at a mirror. And nobody even calls 911 because they all think she's Serena van der Woodsen.

Just kidding, I totally zoned on that whole part. I guess she saw the Captain yukking it up with his retarded family and it switched on something in her brain and little did she know that it was Nate that needed saving. Or whatever. Dan and S are in DUMBO packing up Vanessa's horrible peat-and-twig vegan eating disorder food and the usual voluminous scarves that Serena is constantly packing, because they are going on the run, Jailor Man and Sailor Sam left far behind. Like a drifter, they were born to walk alone. They're taking a midnight train going: Anywhere. First, though, a little loony-bin makeout sesh.

Interrupted in turn by the dour scowling faces of Lily and her van der Humps making everybody uncomfortable. Even though Vanessa headed Jenny off at the pass by confessing for her about what they did, Jenny's answer to that is relatively straightforward: She tells the actual truth. Jenny's nuts but trustworthy, Vanessa's an asshole with a dangerously high sense of her own integrity. Rufus, of course, spins this into "But the only one of you that I can legally harm is you, so I'm going to be horrible to you and tell you to leave the City for an even longer time this time, because Vanessa's not my child and Juliet is somebody I still am not sure who that is."

So Jenny wanders off into the city and Rufus is like, "Wait, I forgot to parent!" But this is the only road she's ever known, so she just keeps walking. To keep a date with destiny, and pistol-whip Tim Gunn for all that shit he said about her, and start that hot new career of singer-fashion designer-model-cobrasnake that's so hot right now. Candles, hand-dipped, purses hand-designed, parties she appears at for a fee. Underage boobies for free.

Serena tells Mums -- and even more harshly Blair -- to eat a dick, and retires to Little J's old room. "The only way I'm going back there is in a straitjacket," she says, which is sort of like Mr. Mxyzptlk telling you his secret, because fine: "Here is a straitjacket. Put it on with some tights and heel boots and set it off with a chicken bucket for your hat. We'll go out and meet some guys. Like some Italian guys or whatever." It's not like the girl comprehends the line between clothes and not-clothes.

Dan heads into the room to get all up in the Blair/Serena situation, and Lily tells him to back off. Not for the right reasons, of course, but because she wants to get into a fight with yet another teenager. I mean, "Please don't kidnap my daughter from the boobyhatch" is sort of a compelling argument, as is "I was there for the public devirginizing of Nate, I was there for the coke-fueled threesome, I was there for the murder of Pete Fairman, I was there to get Ben locked away for What Happened At Boarding School. Meanwhile what, you can't manage to date her for more than three episodes at a go? Do you not comprehend what she gets up to when she's taking a break from you? Horse rustling. Whoring it up on a global scale. Working her ass up the Left Bank and down the Right Bank. Santorini. Chappaquiddick plus wolves. Give me a break. Until you've covered up a murder for that girl or gotten pretend cancer don't you dare condescend to me about that girl. She is thirteen pounds of trouble in a curvy twelve-ounce package."

Lonelyboy holds his own. "Yeah, well I have it on good authority that you are a bigger problem for her than all the other things." They talk about how much they love each other and it's brilliant. Dan's point is that Lily doesn't want to talk to Serena about anything, ever, not really, which is true. And they slippery-slide around the whole Lily's Ben Secret thing but Lily just kind of gulps and pretends that's not the issue right now.

the pictures of Serena doing blow. Serena comes out of there holding hands with B all, "I guess my memories of that night are even more confused than we thought. I hope I didn't kill anybody this time. Take me to the nut house. No straitjacket required. Although I have decided to wear the bucket on my head."

Dan and Serena make out a little bit before putting the S back in Otroff Center, and they head out. Rufus meanwhile has been wandering the streets with zero Jenny and one more Abrams than is required, and randomly heads back toward DUMBO. Vanessa, I don't even know what she's up to at this point, just staring into space and wishing that Dan would love her and not everybody else. Juliet tells Ben about how she may or may not have murdered Serena, and instead of giving her a chaste kiss on the forehead he points out that she is FUBAR and the last tiny little piece of her mind goes pop: "If there is a line that you wouldn't have crossed," she hisses, "You should've told me before I lost everything. Including my marbles."

In Chuck's limo Blair is only too happy to paw at him like the Replacement Serena she's made of him this week. "You know, I'd never even been to Brooklyn until Serena met Dan Humphrey. Now I know the drive way too well." Since she's missed her flight, would Chuck like to come back to her house and paint their toenails together and watch some MGM musicals Dorota downloaded and generally get working on once again breaking down Blair's brittle convictions? Chuck says: No. He involved himself in this storyline because of his sister, not because he wants to be her gay best friend, and B feels that. She also feels like maybe her Strong Woman speech last week was a bit premature, seeing as how Chuck's the only other person she can even tolerate.

Chuck tells Blair in no uncertain terms that he agrees with the Strong Woman speech and that he is also bent on becoming a Strong Woman and that they need to not be BFFs right now because A) It will ruin this new plan and B) It is terribly hard on his heart. Sweetly, he admits there was an upside because he got to spend time with Blair, which is great.

Eminem sings some more, and it's totally stupid because he's a fifty-year-old man still bitching about Tom Green and Kim Kardashian and other concerns of his home century, but see also it's a transition to the jailhouse, where Juliet -- referred to as a "bloodsucking succubus" by the extradiagetic Slim Shady -- is leaving just a trail of those marbles as she leaves, ditching her Visitor Badge forever, and where also the Captain and Anne are making up, to Vanderbilt Mansion Thanksgiving. I wish we got to see Grandfather deal with that bullshit. "Wait, you're back with that motherfucker? Tripp, take your aunt out on the lake and don't come back until she's fixed." At some point in all this, Jenny finds Juliet's apartment totally empty except for the Serena Mask that Juliet has left in the middle of the room for some reason. Jenny's brain starts working, which is always a good sign because she's got the only one.

Lily's like, "I miss the days when Serena ruining Thanksgiving was fun for everybody because she was drunk and all about bathtub threesomes. This day sucked. I might not forgive Thanksgiving this time." Rufus is like, "Stop talking about Serena because it isn't relevant to my interests." Lily asks politely if the grunge princess crawled back through the pipes to Hudson, where that awful Alison deserves what's coming to her, and she has. Then Rufus admits that Jenny was part of the takedown that may have caused Serena's latest shame spiral, and Lily's like, "Either way I'm blaming Serena. Even by blaming myself, I'm really still blaming her." And Rufus is like, "I like that because I blame both of you."

Then Rufus Humphrey literally says, "Parenting can only go so far. And you and I couldn't be any more different in that regard, yet we both have daughters we can't control." And that's when Lily starts taking off her earrings, because enough is motherfucking enough.

Jenny goes to Blair's, as always, and Blair comes down the stairs screaming at her, as always: "How many times do I have to go Courtney Love on your ass before you get the message? I don't want you here!" But Jenny knows by now not to pussyfoot around with small talk so she's like, "The GG blast was not Serena, it was Juliet in a Serena costume, which is what we were all wearing when we did the horrible things." She leaves out, sadly, the part where Vanessa set up the G.I.R.L.S. deception, which would have been like waving a red flag in front of the snorting bull of Blair's rage, but honestly the girl has had such a fucking day that she doesn't even really care about bullying Jenny right now.

Plus, you know, how it's awesome that Jenny finally did the right thing and came to Blair. Hell, even if Vanessa had gone to Blair instead of letting Jules play them off each other this whole thing could have been avoided. ALWAYS GO TO BLAIR. GOD. But then Jenny ruins it: Blair tells her to double-agent Juliet so they can bring her down, and Jenny's Horrible Humphs act up and she's like, "No, all of those times I've been banished -- first you, then Dan, now Rufus -- have finally kicked in and I realize that doing schemes hurts Jesus or whatever." Which of course a Humphrey would be like, "I will not be useful right now. It's a moral stance." Blair muses that she actually would like to have Jenny at Thanksgiving, in an obliquely sweet way, and Jenny wishes her luck destroying Juliet and then bounces. Again. This whole show is just Jenny leaving.

Whilst the other Alexi Murdoch song plays and Gossip Girl babbles a Scary Sadshaw amount of nonsense, here is how the thing falls out: Juliet meets Lily for another meeting of blackmail arrangements, and disappears... Until week. When presumably the whole thing comes out and it's the midseason finale and Serena can actually just have grounds to sue her mother for reckless endangerment...

...Nate finally figures out that the Captain wants his beautiful blonde family holding hands and WASP air-kissing and air-hugging at his upcoming parole hearing, which deflates the bangs like nothing else. He will run to Chuck and he will run to Dan and he will give them all the thanks in the world if you know what I mean, but it won't take the sting out of once again selling his family out for the worst man on earth...

...Blair, all heated up with the power of vengeance and ready to track down this bitch at any cost -- the best of all possible Blairs -- immediately reaches down to call Chuck and then remembers how he just told her to leave him alone and remembers also that schemin' always leads to touchin' and before you know it you're standing by your man and Robyn the Mad Musical Goblin is laughin' at you, so she makes other arrangements for him and then calls up... Wait for it...

...Chuck gets a room service cart delivered to his suite at the Empire, and this really kind of got to me on several levels: The Harold Pie of Thanks, Blair's biggest food symbolism thing, with a note. And the note says, "Just because we can't be friends doesn't mean we aren't." Which is just the greatest thing. And Charles agrees, with tears in his eyes...

...Vanessa gets an AWESOME text from Jenny ("I told Blair everything. Good luck lying your way out of this one.") and caught between shame and the pants-pissing fear of Blair's rage, she runs away to the commune once again. Their standards are so low they'll take anybody, even her. (I kid, because actually this is a very good actor and you are totally on her side when she blasts "Oh man I gotta GTFO" across her face like the Shirt-Tails.) But maybe it will be like the old good Wicker Man and they'll chase her around in animal masks and set her on fire and watch her burn and give some damn thanks. Or, in protest of the imperialist horrors of this holiday, they will dress up like pilgrims and hunt her through the woods and give her diseases. I'm guessing though that what they're really going to is make her feel free-range and fancy-free, they're gonna mortar-and-pestle some maize for making into a pretend turkey, and they're gonna pet their real, ugly turkeys on the head and sing them little songs, and they're gonna do whatever else is just hateful...

...The van der Humps meet for a replay of that wonderful Thanksgiving where they ate at the diner, bringing french fries to the Bell Jar and pretending everything's okay. I still cannot believe that Rufus got away with the whole, "I'm a good parent and you're not, and yet our kids suck equally." I would have fucking punched him so hard. I would have spit in his trophy wife face. "Okay but your daughter literally dresses up as my daughter, on the reg, and your son is willing to commandeer an airplane or submarine to get her to kiss him, so either way I think my kids win. Have you met Eric? He's twice the man of anybody else on this show even when he's bitching out. My kid the rapist is still cooler than all your kids put together even including that caveman who haunts your house. And whadda you got? Fucking stalker-killer Inspektor Pilot, a Hunter Thompson wannabe, and To Write Love On Her Arms. Boom. Now get down there and lick mama's shoes, because you have been naughty today. Very naughty indeed..."

...And finally and most beautifully -- a stifled scream, a blinked-back tear perhaps, from this guy over here -- a stranger walks into DUMBO, where Dan is apparently not having sad mental institution Thanksgiving with the rest of those geezers. Who is it? Is it Vanessa? For it is always Vanessa. But soft, this time it is not. It is Blair Waldorf, queenly and apologetic. She was on the wrong side the whole time, betting on Lily when clearly Serena was in the right. She voted against Dan on multiple occasions, despite the furious love of Miss S that lashes them together so violently. So what else can she do, besides conscript him -- this enemy, this disdained thing, this other self, this brother -- into the worst fucking ass-kicking of Juliet's life?

By Jacob Clifton

Blair, meanwhile, is trying to talk S into treatment based on the way Serena rode her the whole time she was bulimic, walking her to doctor appointments and walking her home again. Compelling, not least because it's a thing we never talk about anymore. And then just as Lily talks Dan into considering a backslide into his default paternalism, GG releases the pictures of Serena doing blow. Serena comes out of there holding hands with B all, "I guess my memories of that night are even more confused than we thought. I hope I didn't kill anybody this time. Take me to the nut house. No straitjacket required. Although I have decided to wear the bucket on my head."

By Jacob Clifton

"What do you say we find that bitch and get a little frontier justice?" Blair asks. Sparks zap between their hands before they even shake on it, szzssing at the edge of hearing like a Tesla miracle, and everybody's hair stands straight on end. Birds fall out of the sky, delirious and panicked; storm clouds disperse into strange unreadable glyphs overhead, unheeded; faucets cracked against the coming frost find water running steadily backwards, up into them, hot as blood; an angry Goddess awakes: The Dog Days, they have only just begun.

By Jacob Clifton

She looks down from Her frosty throne and holds out hands to either side, blinking away the sun. On the left stands Her greatest lieutenant, Justice; while on Her right Mischief gads about. They take Her hands, and these three make their way into the gallery with a ghostly aberrant prelude: The drum, the fife, the piper. Crows scatter in Her sight, winging high up into the dusty vaults; Her footfalls echo, like strafes and cannon. She reaches out to a black iron lock and it falls away at Her touch; Her handmaidens skip out of the way as a black tidal wave, frothing and loud, is loosed. They are the Dogs of War, too long left to bay and gnaw; they are holy vengeance, and they are legion. How they howl.

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