Dan and Blair, with Little J's help, have finally figured out the past ten episodes of Juliet's misbehavior. But even without this helpful info, it's probably a good idea for Serena to get some treatment anyway, just for her general loosy-goosy screwballness, so Eric talks our soldiers into leaving Serena out of their plans. With Gossip Girl's help, they track Juliet to Cornwall, CT -- on a long, adorable drive in a vintage auto -- where Damien Dalgaard fills in the blanks on both Serena's absinthe-laced boarding school history and Juliet's more recent purchase of old-school Serena-killing unguents and powders.
Nate finds himself stuck between his mother and the Captain, and it's all very back-and-forthy, but in the end he picks his dad over Anne and invites him to come live in the Empire instead of going to a halfway house. So I guess now the Captain is going to burn down Chuck's hotel or sell it for drugs or something. Which wouldn't be Chuck's only issue: Come to find out that Lily's moving fast to sell Bass Industries out from under him before he comes of age. By episode's end, he's off Down Under, presumably to grab Uncle Jack so he can rape Lily some more.
Turns out that Serena's daddy issues were still hitting hard, back in the day, but Ben somehow managed to gain S's respect and fond admiration by being the first and only man ever to turn her down. Little did she know, after running back to the UES, that Lily managed to sorta accidentally get him jailed for statutory, by signing Serena's name to an affidavit, in an attempt to... get her daughter back into Constance. (That part is confusing, especially given the fact that Eric was killing himself at the time, but to be fair even S points out how retarded it is.)
After Juliet fully infiltrates the Ostroff Center to finish murdering Serena, they figure out the whole story and S promises to make it up to her. She creates a total scene at some Bass function that causes Lily to go into this like Ultimate Rhodes Woman Meltdown where everything out of her mouth is a horrible lie, and by the end all the truths are out and everybody, including Rufus, hates Lily from her hair to her feet. Poor old Lily, fuckin' it all up again.
Then, a sort of touching midseason finale-feeling sequence of events: The We Hate Lily Club, which is everybody, comes together for a belated Thanksgiving and we find out what they'll be doing for the seven weeks before we meet again. Serena invites Dan on a road trip to see/help Ben, but ultimately takes that trip herself. Nate's all about the Captain and Chuck's all about tossing Lily under the closest bus...
Which just leaves Blair and Dan, alone together, for the whole entire break. Gigglin' and sassin' and drivin' around in vintage cars and tradin' insults and sluggin' back champers... I'm sort of excited by this sexy, deranged development, but it's like that rollercoaster excited, where maybe you're going to laugh or maybe you're going to vomit or maybe you're going to both.
January 24: Serena and Chuck team up to impersonate and somehow screw Lily, Dan and Blair presumably somehow make a mess of everybody in the world, Ben presumably comes to the UES to be hot some more, and the existence of black people is proven once and for all. See you then! XOXO.
Normally Matt & Kim means Dan and Vanessa are back together, but in this case it's an altogether more brain-bending possibility that's got the hipsters hopping: Dan and Blair Waldorf, roaming the city with double espressos discussing the entire Juliet arc. Specifically, everything that happened last week. The commentary is pretty great: "You can't show up at a masked ball and not expect at least one social-climbing doppelganger to try and impersonate you," Blair points out, which is true for this show, and they discuss how dressing up like somebody and posting pictures of yourself doing coke is itself pretty weak sauce for the NJBC. These are people who more than once have had their enemies kidnapped and shipped off to Eastern Europe. Georgina alone! Not only did she get the Minsk Surprise, but also remember when Blair informed her that Jesus thought she was an asshole? That was so great.
For B, the part where "the Juliet Express goes off the rails and heads straight for Crazytown" is, of course, when Serena found herself full of drugs and suicide in a motel in Queens, finding the whole thing so very compelling that despite having neither a drug problem nor any reason to be suicidal, she checked herself in. Dan's curious as to the crazypants inner life of Juliet Sharp, which Blair finds amusing: "As someone well-acquainted with the darker human emotions, let me offer my theory. There is only one motive powerful enough to fuel a gaslighting like this, and that is retribution."
Right on the head, as usual. And I mean, Dan's fascinated by all this, but you know Blair doesn't actually care why Juliet did what she did. All B cares about is finding Juliet and curb-stomping her ass: She's not an unsub, we don't need a profiler, we just need somebody to hold our earrings when they come off. Never complain, never explain. Motives are for the poor.
Eric visits Serena at the Ostroff to discuss how great it is that she's getting treatment for all her problems she doesn't actually have, but of course Lily is busy. Doing what? Oh, meeting with the Post so she and Charles can show a unified front in defending the family biz and rep from this latest Serena fuckup. Serena's only request is that Eric sandbag those efforts by telling everybody who will listen that she's crazy, out of her mind, loony tunes. Which concept is itself all of those things.
I mean, there's a hazy sort of sense to this idea, that Serena needs to put a stop to Lily's nonstop constant WASPy lying. But coming clean about going into rehab is not going to affect anything, so really it's just a more sophisticated way for Serena to act out while still believing she has the upper hand morally. I think it's bunk and I think it's a great way to put Eric in the middle, where his ambiguity about everyone in his family can really flare up, but he's onboard for the same reason Serena is, which is to punish their mother for treating their problems like... problems. All of which would make them look like vapid dicks if we didn't know where the overall storyline is headed, which is that Lily somehow managed to get Ben put in jail through her Rhodes Woman actions, which is what unleashed Juliet in the first place.
"I know I've put her in a tough position, but please promise me that you'll try to keep her honest about where I am and what's going on. No stories about Aunt Carol's in Miami, like when you were here," Serena says. And I mean, just what are you suggesting?
"My gay son tried to commit suicide, I just thought you should know that. I just thought that was appropriate to tell you, Social Acquaintance. It reflects poorly on me, my family, and gay kids, but I just really wanted you to know about my failures as a parent. Hey, where are you going? I have yet to tell you about my daughter's tit-flashing tour through the Aegean Sea, or the time my son tried to rape both my daughters and then got shot outside a Czechoslovakian whorehouse! And find out what you've been up to!"
Even though Little J's intel about how Juliet was behind the climactic coke-snorting photos is, let's say, a gamechanger, for some reason Dan and Blair are taking their time with it. Like, wouldn't you call your friend up and say, "Hey, girl! Turns out you're not a cokehead or a suicidal blackout drunk. Let's go shopping!" No, instead you get a good night's sleep and then make a coffee date with fucking Dan Humphrey? Anyway, they get to the Ostroff and are brutally rebuffed.
Blair wants to get through entirely on the strength of her ability to scream and be Blair Waldorf, but Lonelyboy goes into some kind of babbling tailspin about how Serena is both his sister and his lover, which earns him no pity at all. "Humphrey, they treat people in here for less serious complexes than that. Do you wanna get committed?" That's all we need, to add the self-centered perseverations of rehab to Dan's already epic solipsism. Can you imagine him in a therapeutic situation? And how did that make you feeeeeeel?
Eric shows up and tells them that they are not on the list, there is no list, because Serena has entered a 72-hour lockdown. No Lily, but also no Eric and no Blumphrey. Just Serena, that one magazine she's been trying to read all season, and all the diaphanous scarves and toga dresses you can stuff in a giant purse. Blair explains that Juliet was the perp in both the OD and the coke pictures, but Eric is unconvinced: "Whatever screwy series of events got her in the front door, she's here now. And she's getting the help she's probably needed for a long time."
I love how she went from a suicidal drug addict to just, you know, troubled generally. This is like Girl, Interrupted where she never figures out why they put her in the mental hospital and nobody actually knows why she's there so the whole time they're like, "It's because you're... You know, like how you are?" Diagnosis: Serena. Nobody would turn down free therapy, you know what I mean? But really, three-day radio silence so some doctor can say, "You have stunningly textbook abandonment and approval issues centering on men because of your dad, and thanks to your rockstar mom that's also twirking with some serious hypersexualization from a young age, you have a codependent relationship with a bulimic prone to addictive behaviors which borders on the sexual, and guess what: You're going to spend your entire life being objectified as a sexually attractive woman, which means the entire world is working overtime to make you crazy anyway. Suck it up."
In the best storyline of the entire episode, Anne and Nate Archibald talk about parties. That's literally the entire storyline: Talking about parties, deciding what parties are worth, are parties better than this thing or that thing, what would you give up for parties, what would you give parties up for. Parties: Good or Evil. Parties: Fact or Fiction. Nate is pro-parties, his mother is also pro-parties, but there's a curveball that makes this conversation a little bit more surprising than you might think.
See, there are many parties. (As Nate points out, it's the holiday season!) But Anne cannot go to the parties, because her drug-addict kidnapper of an embezzling husband is or is not getting out of prison. Not even Lily will deign. So between many parties and the Captain, which cannot exist simultaneously, Anne has to pick one. At first she picks the Captain, but then just at the most ironic moment she picks many parties. Parties wins again.
Meanwhile, there is a lot of hustle and bustle around this second thing that is going on with the Archibalds that is even more banal than the thrilling question of Parties v. Not Parties, but it's so trumped up and trying so hard to be an actual storyline that it ends up being confusing: The Captain wants to buy a house in Rhinebeck when he gets out, which Nate interprets as a cunning plan to disappear and not be his dad anymore, but really it's so the Captain and Anne can run away together. To Rhinebeck. And so Nate's incess
ant, I mean relentless, fucking around in their relationship causes Anne to pick parties, and miss out on the Rhinebeck romance altogether, which Nate then "fixes" by inviting the Captain to come live at the Empire. A place where he himself lives rent-free, thanks to Chuck. I want to get this all out of the way because it's inconsequential and -- despite Nate previously being a huge part of the Juliet storyline and the express reason she lost her remaining marbles -- has nothing to do with anything else: Nate finds yet one more way to sabotage his parents' marriage and then whine about it, while occasionally popping up as a sort of featured extra in the other stories. The end.Blair's wigging because three days is a long time for anybody to scurry, especially a rat like Juliet and especially-especially considering she already emptied her apartment and cut ties with her entire family. Why this is stressful is that they honestly believe that by talking to Serena, they will get some clues or something. Because talking to Serena always clarifies so many situations. Dan wants to go to Rufus and Lily and also the police, which plan Blair condescends to acknowledge, and then starts talking about wearing a wig and trying to sneak past the Ostroff receptionist. To what end, I still don't know. "Hey Serena, remember how you don't remember anything about that night? Well let me ask you this: Is there anything you remember about that night? No? Well, good luck getting treated for your drug problems and suicide attempt that don't exist, and we'll see you in three days."
Dan decides that Eric is right and that Serena should glean whatever she can from this process, and they should just move on to finding Juliet by themselves. Look how good he did tracking down Fleur that time, and he did that with Serena there, distracting him with her boobs and pawing at the screen in lieu of using the mouse. They think about their other connections: Beautiful Colin is out, Nate is busy getting existential with Anne Archibald, and the Columbia minions knew her through Hamhocks for a whole year before Ben activated her sleeper-assassin personality. Dan's like, "Let's ask Gossip Girl! She likes you and Serena, and she'll hate Juliet for faking her out with the coke picture!"
While Juliet wistfully walks the streets of Cornwall, CT, bags in hand, happy to be home, stinking of the Greyhound Bus and performance fleece, GG sends Dan and Blair a mysterious thing that is not the information but somehow a clue that will take them to ... an unrelated person whom she could not possibly know is the person they need to talk to. Far be it from me to question this show or the august person of Gossip Girl herself, but seriously: How did any of this go down. She's like, "Oh, they want to find Juliet? Well, it would be a more compelling narrative if I sent them to this party where this drug dealer might be so that he can tell them all his absinthe flashbacks and then eventually take them to her mom's house and then they can eventually go home empty-handed without ever actually interacting with her in any way." Gossip Girl is so helpful sometimes. Now is not one of those times.
The talking cure: "Serena, help me understand. Are you upset because of what you did, or because you can't remember it?" Both and neither! Serena asks doctor lady if she'd be weirded out by seeing herself on the internet doing sudden coke, to illustrate her point that she's not that weirded out by it. It is within the realm of possibility that she would betray her best friend, get with multiple guys, and end up doing coke. We all remember the Night Of The Shepherd Wedding, yes? When she did all of those things and closed it out by killing a man? Serena does. (Sorta.) Which is why she ran away to Cornwall, CT and enrolled herself in boarding school. Presumably she put on pants before arriving, but it's Serena. Perhaps she did, perhaps she did not, perhaps she thought they were pants but really it was a cookie sheet or the Magna Carta.
Magnificently, the road trip involves not only outrageously cute outfits -- and Blair's wonderful curls -- but a tiny vintage car from Brittania (for which Rufus once traded a '69 Les Paul) in which one could only ever "motor." We're motoring to Connecticut, dressed like Nick and Nora Charles, to find the girl that gave Serena van der Woodsen an ether roofie. If you weren't already in love with this season, I really feel this bit might do it: It's right up there with the Yale Admissions guy's chamber strings Muse song, and the entirety of "Age Of Dissonance," in terms of overall aesthetic value: First step in solving a Gatsby crime is your Gatsby getup.
"It was either this or the Lincoln Hawk van which, all I'm saying, has graphics," is a particularly nice Dan line, and then Blair's reading of this part is also genius, sliding from snotty to awesome in a single ellipsis: "Let me just consult the GPS. Oh wait, that's me... No, but for real, Cornice should be just up here." Like you can actually hear her excuse herself for being a bitch and go back to being Dan's friend. It might be my favorite moment in the whole episode, if not for the hilarious smash-cut to Lily in a minute.
Charles and Lily wind down post-Post interview, having smiled so much Chuck's face hurts (heh) and driving them both to drink even though it's like barely the afternoon. They are a great team, these two, and it's always nice to see them together. I hope something horrible doesn't happen to ruin it! They've complimented each other sufficiently -- she on Chuck's success with the Empire, he on Lily's success with the Bass Ind. board -- that he feels empowered to ask about one sticky moment: When they asked about Chuck's sometime return to heading Bass Ind.
Which I found confusing, because I thought Chuck gave up his interest in the company to buy the Empire in the first place, which is why Jack and Elizabeth's scheme was so scary, but whatever. It's juicy: Lily acts very Lily about it and tosses him a bunch of lines -- "I didn't see that it was any of her business! It's a long ways away, and it was off topic!" There's more, but we don't know about it yet; she says she's only a custodian, they clink, Chuck leaves, and girlfriend pours herself another huge drink, so Rufus can arrive and whine about it. Or as Sylvia Plath says:
The queen in the mulberry arbor stared
Stiff as a queen on a playing card.
The king fingered his beard.
The address GG sent Blumphrey for no reason is a gorgeous estate with about a million bad-ass cars outside, which sets off Blair's insanity meter in a way the rest of her schemes did not: "If this is Juliet's house, then she is even freakier than we thought. Who pretends to be poor?" Besides the long list of European royalty you keep accidentally dating, you mean? Dan's confused as to why the full-frontal attack -- "We're just gonna march up to her and pull her hair?" -- but Blair says that's a good place to start. Dan, after all this time, doesn't realize that Blair, like his sister, is all about creating chaos and only then scheming to control it.
Inside it is a Nelly-fueled Four Loko trustie party of outrageous proportion. Not the kind of party Anne Archibald likes, and possibly at this point not even one she could get into. There are rich white youth up to all kinds of highjinks, from dancing dirty to passing out to taking monster bong hits to shirtless capering to drawing on the passed-out people. ("At least he's owning it," Blair mutters after they pass one dude sleeping with I ♥ BALLS scrawled across his face.) It's the stark difference between a Vampire Weekend song and the truth about things; I would agree with Vanessa Abrams that it is hell on earth but probably for vastly different reasons. "Juliet wouldn't be at a party like this, let alone host it," Dan -- an expert on Juliet, whom he has never once met -- shrugs, and that's when they spot the greasy-haired awfulness of Damien Dalgaard.
The Captain, who looks better every week he spends in the clink, would like to live in a halfway house when he gets out of there. Those are his options: A mansion in Rhinebeck bought with Vanderbilt money, or a halfway house. Because being in this minimum-security jail for white collar crimes and the occasional statutory, it changes you. He got shanked that one time, remember. Of course, on the outside he was a huge criminal and constantly getting his ass beat by his delicately filigreed boy-man of a son, but now it's a whole new ballgame. I still don't trust him. They keep pulling back the layers of his sincerity and I have noticed with this show that the more times somebody turns out to be trustworthy despite all evidence, the more likely that they will eventually heel-turn for no reason and end up like Vanessa, just firing bullets into the crowd.
"How's your sister?" Damien asks, which is inappropriate to the extreme considering he used her as a drug mule and then attacked her personally on the ickiest possible sexual level, but Dan answers his question like it was appropriate. Blair chirps brightly, "I banished her!" Dan agrees that the banishing of Jenny has been a good thing, despite the fact that it has failed thrice and each time has caused Jenny to commit worse crimes against nature, but whatever: She's gone. And as if Damien cares anyway. He's all about the smooth drug-dealing action: College kids coming home for the break, and of course there is the reliable Knightley School. Which is where Damien met Serena, when she ran away to boarding school after killing a man. The murkiness begins to unmurk.
Does Damien know Juliet Sharp? Yes, and the mere mention of her nearly sends our skittish drug-dealing friend packing until they say it's about Serena and specifically the drugs that Damien sold Juliet that she then pumped into Serena for just days and days in Queens. For the youngsters Damien explains that ether is "like a turn-of-the-century roofie," okay, and then he comes up with the bright idea of going to Juliet's house in order to find Juliet. "She's a town
ie," he spits, and it's beautiful. Coming down that street for no reason, Juliet nearly runs over some kids -- all in a day's work! -- and randomly sees Blair and Dan putting Damien into the tiny funny-car. It jerks when he starts it, and Blair gives a hilariously sarcastic "Woo!" They're so busy bothering Dan about his adorable car that they don't notice her, and GG omnisciently surmises that her time is nearly up. You know what would have helped? Telling them where she lives. Those ruby slippers coulda taken you home any time, but GG didn't feel like telling you that.Back in the day Serena used to like her absinthe old-style, with the sugar cube and the whole thing, and she liked to do this while listening to the song about supermanning the ho. Somewhat less comfy, this mix of old world and new, but I do approve. Damien back then was dorky. Not like now, with his effortless coolness: Dorky. Doing her Spanish homework and worrying that she shouldn't improve suddenly but become smart over time, like Charley Gordon. "Iwannanayplus" she garbles, supermanning hos left and right with her arms in the air, and getting hilariously drunk-girl affectionate all over his face: "My tutor!" Very Private Lives Of Pippa Lee, this version of our girl. I wish there was like a webisode series of Serena being a trainwreck in boarding school. I would watch the shit out of that.
Juliet's mom is pretty -- of course, considering she has the two hottest children I've ever seen -- but, despite their huge gorgeous house, she is clearly a Poor Person. Beaten down by poverty, which in Connecticut is a motherfucker, and also by the perversions of her son. About which she cannot wait to tell strangers. She literally goes, "You went to Knightley? Oh, so I assume you know our Ben. He was a damn good teacher, no matter what they say." I love it when bit parts beg the question like that, it's always such a gorgeous, atmospheric mistake. She's like the MILF version of the servants in Wuthering Heights: "Aye mun cletter the dishes, but aforeshaft, did ye not ken th' perilous tale of our poor mad bairn Cathy? Ruint by love, she were. Be she haunt th' moors nae, wi' nary but a kindle to loit her wye."
They figure out that Ben's last name isn't Sharp, because like poor people often do, Mama Sharp has many a babydaddy: Twere a Ben Donovan what got nicked for samplin' the delights of Miss van der Woodsen, long ago. As Damien explains, Blair lets everybody off the hook for not knowing that: "If I taught at Knightley, I wouldn't bring my Mystic Pizza townie family to school events either." Mama Sharp comes back with the tea -- Earl Grey, and not a scone or crumpet to be seen, because she is poooor -- but they have to bounce and I guess think about this elsewhere. So they leave Mama Sharp to wait for her insane daughter and slurp down that Earl Grey until she is just frenzied, I suppose. Cleaning like a demon, telling all her knickknacks the story of poor mad Ben what got sent up.
Talking cure: Serena was her usual beastly self, all dances and kissing and illicitly modified school uniforms, until one damned soul caught her eye: Mr. Donovan, lover of English and boundary-setting, who was if possible even hotter at this time. She brought him his coffee just the way he liked it, because she'd been watching him in the dining hall. She brought him her mind and her thoughts and her interests, which started out his interests and soon were hers. (Blair points this out later, but aren't we sort of retroactively reframing the entire Dan/Serena relationship in terms of Ben Donovan now? And isn't that brilliant?) Just to show you she's on the up-and-up and totally not just sleeping with teachers for grades like she always/never does, she fully says aloud, "I actually have some questions about arbor imagery in the poems of Sylvia Plath."
Which is actually a really smart reference gift-wrapped in jaw-dropping incongruity, because Sylvia Plath's arbor imagery is always negative, and specifically always a gilded-cage Serena story, where half the time she's not even talking about an actual garden but just describing the wallpaper or the stained-glass of a door in terms of an arbor: She is trapped without being trapped, inside something beautiful that doesn't appear to be a cage to anyone outside it. Which is the ultimate Rhodes Woman problem, but also in turn makes her feel more alone: "It felt good to have someone who paid attention to me for a positive reason," Serena explains, "And we began to spend more and more time together."
Damien disapproved -- and possibly there are still things we don't know about his involvement in what happened later -- because it was weird. "There wasn't a keg cracked within ten miles that Serena didn't know about, and then suddenly she started staying home, reading in her room." Dan acknowledges that "the generous conclusion to draw" is that Serena was pulling her shit together, which is mostly true, but of course everybody thought she was boning Ben Donovan. And not even Damien knows the truth about that one. Or why this episode is all about random towns in this one tiny area of upstate NY.
Damien was having dinner with his aunt at the Millbrook Inn in Poughkeepsie, despite being the rootless son of an ambassador he has an aunt in Poughkeepsie because everybody has an aunt in Poughkeepsie eventually, when he saw Serena standing near the desk with their teacher. Now, what was really going on was actually less conceivable than the less-than-generous conclusion, but thinking that way never works out with Serena and her general life, because the right answer is always the most bizarre answer:
"We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story."
Not that Serena can hear you when you say that, no matter how many times you say that. Ben took it so far as to drive to Poughkeepsie, to the Mary McCarthy collection at Vassar, to get it through her head. Nope. She'd left her intense fascistic bluestocking at home, to gorge on pies and puke them up again: No time for drama, even lady drama. All she could think about was the smell of tweed and English Leather -- so inviting, so intoxicating -- and certainly not the real-life parallels to be mined from the relationship between McCarthy and Arendt, or the feud with Hellman that eventually involved Dick Cavett and Norman Mailer. If she had, perhaps Season One would not have been such a bloodbath. In any case: Flat tire. Right outside a bed and breakfast!
Ben told her to go dry off and get something to eat, he'd use his poor-person hands to make a new tire from the salt of the earth and his humble beginnings, but finding herself at the check-in desk of the Millbrook Inn sent everything crashing in the cupboards of her mind. She tells him to get a room, perhaps the tire will fix itself while they are fucking and they can drive home in the morning when the wolves are all asleep, and Ben Donovan resists, resists, resists. Serena pouts and he makes up epigrams to distract her. "The ability to have thoughts and not act on them, it's what separates man from beast." Translation: I want you, but not enough to get fired for it.
Serena goes with the full-court press -- "I know what the stakes are for you. For me, too. But this is real on both sides, and if you deny it you're lying!" -- but the nanny-nanny-boo-boo defense is something he's been trained against: "I'm not lying. I do want to fuck you. But I am not going to fuck you, because I think that you are awesome. So I am going to fix this tire and take you back to school, so that you can sleep in your own bed and hopefully develop a sense of shame about yourself." Looking back, Serena tells the headshrinka that in all of history Ben Donovan is still the only man who has ever said no to her, and then says something even more insightful: "I was in love with him. Well, as in love as I had ever been at that point." Because now Serena's attachments are so authentic and long-lasting. But it was weird, got
weird/stayed weird, so she never really talked to him again.Doctor Lady pretty much rules: "This must have been very disappointing to the 16-year-old adventuress that you were at the time, but when you tell this story now, what does it make you think?" That Ben Donovan was a pretty great guy, Serena admits, loving Doctor Lady for the first time, and finds a new way to feel weird about it. Little does she know that at this very moment, Damien is remembering that same night, Nate is worrying over real estate in the town over, Juliet is coming straight to murder her for it, Ben is thinking of little else, Dan and Blair are guiltily blaming Serena's incessant whoredom for the whole thing, and Mama Sharp is drinking the last of the summer wine, alone, wishing this year could have a Christmas at the end.
Sitting in her car outside the Ostroff Center, Jules finally consents to answer Ben's call. He's just calling to say hi, I guess, but Juliet figures since she's got him on the phone she might as well tell him about how Dan, Damien and Blair showed up in Cornwall looking to take her down. She explains about how Damien was the drug dealer of her overdose plan, and how probably they already got an eyeful of Mama Sharp's weird Poor Person behavior, and they are putting together the whole blessed mess. So if you'll excuse her, she is going to get out of the car and go kill Serena with her bare hands, and if Ben has a problem with that he can go shank himself, because he's in jail and Juliet is fancy free. She can kill anybody she wants. Maybe this is just the first in a spree.
You know how sometimes Ben can call eighty people or send them innumerable texts, and then other times he has to wait in line? Today is the end of the line on that shit. He is cut off. No more phone calls for you, Ben Donovan. And so (as a band named after an Edith Wharton novel about rich girls seeking oblivion starts to play) Ben starts screaming. Just one more call! He must warn Serena van der Woodsen! He screams at Nate, who is there for his sixth jail visit of the day, like this: "Hey, Archibald! I'm Ben. I'm Juliet's brother, all right? You need to find Serena and make sure she's okay!"
They shove poor old Ben back from the bars and tell him to stop harassing the pretty visitors but Nate, good old Nate, he does what you tell him. So he calls up Dan and they have a quick little meeting about how Ben is scared to death for Serena, for some reason he did not specify, and then but none of them can do anything. Nate's in Staten Island and everybody else is in Connecticut. So they all agree to run straight for PRADA and make a plan, hoping that the Ostroff Center's whizbang security will keep Juliet from murdering her. But you and I and Gossip Girl know that's not happening, so as Serena comes back from her therapy session looking proud and ready to face the world, Juliet's sitting in her room, in the dark, and flicks on the light once Serena's inside. Sooooo good. So good!
Blair enjoyed the episode's opening recap of recent events so much that she'd like to do it some more. "Serena had an affair with her teacher because, let's face it, it's Serena, and what else is there to do in Connecticut. Then she came to her senses and discarded him like last season's Chanel booties. Then he became a crazy stalker, and Serena pressed charges. That should be a warning to you, Humphrey. Never-to-be-realized literary aspirations: Check. Townie? You're from Brooklyn, so: Check. And giving up everything to become Serena van der Woodsen's stalker: Check. Face it, Humphrey. You are one knitted tie away from Mr. Donovan territory." Dan argues, it does not matter because he's wrong and Blair is right -- and even gets in a little dig about how he's stopped writing entirely in the grip of this latest bout of the Serenas -- but then, if people ever remembered that Blair is always right, each episode would be ten minutes long and have a much higher body count.
Apparently Juliet's been running down a list for Serena of all the horrible things she's done to her this season, and we're coming in on the tail end: The coke pictures and the overdose. Serena goes, "And then you just left me for dead in a motel room. Why? Because of Nate? Or Colin?" Juliet then utters maybe the most classic line of the season, or possibly the series, leaning forward with a Serena migraine: "No, you stupid bitch!" It's all in the delivery. Like she is just at the end of her rope. "Because you destroyed my brother's life!" Serena shrugs and she's like, "Who's your brother?" But when she finds out, she's as confused as ever. As far as she knows, he refused to fuck her and then disappeared from her entire radar. Juliet just shakes her head like she's about to yell at Serena again, and then it's another flashback.
The official charges were statutory rape, and transporting a minor across state lines. Ben protested, but the lawyer produced an affidavit, signed by Serena, stating otherwise. Ben can't believe it -- I love how this whole story is predicated on them still feeling warmly toward each other (up to the point where he's been in jail for three years and sends his sister to destroy her) -- but they can't even really go to trial on a he said/she said because Damien saw them at the Millbrook Inn. He is such a furtive subway masturbator of a person, I love it. Just the epic casting coup of getting somebody who looks exactly like that to play somebody exactly like that. It's beautiful.
"You left campus with an underage student and drove across state lines," even if it was just to the sexless Vassar library. The lawyer explains how Lily works, quite succinctly: "The girl's family doesn't want the story to get out either, so they pressured the DA into offering a plea bargain." Upside, Ben's name stays off the sex offender list; downside, he didn't actually even get to sleep with Serena van der Woodsen and still has to do five years at a Staten Island facility with iffy 3G coverage. Juliet's like, "It's so hard to be poor! If only we had a billionaire cousin who could get us a better lawyer." In the present, Serena is hornswoggled and fogfuddled by all of this. "He was nothing but good to me!" she swears, but whence the affidavit? Who could have signed Serena's name to a legal document just to make a problem go away? I can't quite, it's on the tip of my, if you'll just give me a...
"Lily!" somebody yells. "The party's lovely!" Lily runs around lying to everybody about everything that ever happened in the world. "Serena? I have no daughter named Serena!" she tells one old person. "Serena? She's working for Medicines Sans Frontiers, you know, with her father. Fixing cleft palates and things. Stealing boats and horses just wasn't fulfilling her anymore." "Serena? Driving the jitney for Diddy's White Party again this year. I tell you, that girl's dedication to charity and Vitamin Water knows no bounds." "Serena? My daughter Serena? Well, as it turns out she died in a waterskiing accident, just like our son Pilot Inspektor." "Serena? Why, it was the strangest thing. Smack in the middle of Madison -- which I will admit, she was crossing against the light -- a giant eagle or something swoops down and carries her off. Apparently it is a roc trained by a wizard. He has property in Millbrook."
But true to his word -- and barely buried resentment of his mother's awful coping mechanisms -- Eric pops up at every opportunity, yelling "That bitch was doing coke! You saw it on the news! She's 'exhausted' from all those drugs she keeps doing! I tried to kill myself but it turns out I'm just gay! You're all a buncha goddamn phoneys!"
"Eric," Lily says gorgeously and correctly, "Somewhere between a Marlins jersey and the absolute truth lies the better part of decorum. Becoming an adult is about learning the distinction."
Seriously! As much as this episode pretends to paint Lily with a tarred brush of unbelievable evil, she's not wrong about any of it. I mean, maybe the thing with Chuck but we still don't know the rest of the story there. She even manages to spin forging the affidavit in a semi-acceptable way. But the pile-on is so intense and the buildup has been so graphic and long-coming that it all seems very apocalyptic. I guess I get where Eric and Serena are coming from as far as the ongoing damage Lily's whitewashing tic has done to them, but I'm not sure the proper response is to act like dicks in public.
The Anne story about parties and their relative value rears its head for a moment, since Lily was so excited to hear that she'd resumed her plans for divorce that she last-second invited her again. Nate apologizes for screwing everything up about the Rhinebeck house and how it was secret romance, and Anne's like, "Listen, Kid. Halfway house or not, your father is a motherfucker. The truth is, I prefer going to parties over watching your father earn punches to the face." Then who should pop up but Minnie Mortimer, relative of Babe Pailey and Brook Shields, who has typos on her website but designs like a more palatable Proenza Schouler, and who is married to the Oscar-winning writer of Traffic and writer/director of Syriana. And I mean, you don't really need more proof than this to know that Anne is making the right call, no matter how great the Captain's looking these days.
Charles is introducing Lily to the assembled group -- Did I ever say why they are having a party? I think this one is Bass board people, but honestly it doesn't matter -- as Serena enters, with Juliet as her date. She stashes Juliet with Nate so she can go bitch out on her mother and it's tense and sort of amazing. Lily's giving some speech about how Chuck is family, and you gotta do what's best for your family, "It's the one thing that has always guided me," she says, and then S pops up and she goes into crisis mode. Serena hisses that they need to talk and Lily goes, "First let's take a few photos!" Good thing Serena looks neither crazy nor like she's overdosing on pills, or I don't know what she would do. One wild child on each arm, Lily's completely in her element -- and not just because both her outfits in this episode perfectly mimic the red walls and silver sconces she keeps being framed against.
Eric is not happy to see Damien, due to Jenny's drug-mule history, but as usual he's the only person who remembers what happens on this show so everybody just acts like he's being weird. "What, have you come to recruit another virgin to be your drug mule?" Damien, to his credit, goes, "Why, are you available?" And then abruptly bounces, because there was never really a reason for him to be in this episode at all and so having it confirmed by his point-blank departure almost feels like a respectful gesture from the show to us.
It is at this point that Serena considers her plan -- to act like a respectful adult woman and thus gain the respect due an adult woman -- and abruptly decides that she would rather just take every one of these motherfuckers down with her. I'm not sure where the impulse comes from but I know I don't approve. I mean, there's a thing here having to do with the image and getting photographed, like, she's still smarting from the image being a lie and that she's now being forced into yet another perversion of the truth, guest-starring in her own life, but I'd like it more if her speech weren't so bitchy and easily dismissed:
"I can't do this! Hi. I'm Serena, I'm Lily's daughter. I wasn't gonna be able to make it tonight because, um... I was actually at the Ostroff Center. But if it were up to my mother, she'd have you believe that I was at Canyon Ranch. That's because having a daughter who's in a mental hospital threatens her carefully protected image. She wants you all to think that she's the perfect host, and mother, and wife, but the truth is she's a selfish liar who will destroy anyone who stands in her way!"
Now I ask you, how does that make Lily look bad? Of all the ways you could make her look bad, because she does kind of awful things at a rate, this is not one of them: It just makes Serena look altogether petulant and crazy. These people don't know her, don't know Ben, don't know anything except that they're at an obligatory Christmas party for the woman who signs their checks, at a company owned by the most frightful family on the Upper East Side. Nobody ever got anything for playing the victim card, and by making these accusations both vague and personal Serena has assured everybody the option of pretending it never happened, while confirming their worst theories about her specifically. I get that this is a teen show and there very well may be a vicarious Truth To Power/Parents Just Don't Understand thing going on, but I cannot think of a single time in three and a half seasons of this show that I have not been behind Serena 100%: It's embarrassing, but not in a way that helps anybody at all. It's trashy.
Lily starts spitting out lies at a frequency double that from before -- "I told Serena she couldn't take the company plane to Belize for Christmas break!" -- and sends Eric to figure out why Serena is losing her shit, which is a funny moment. But not as funny as the shot, which is one of the Bass people taking Rufus Humphrey aside and literally saying, "Please, Rufus, take the holiday to get things under control." Rufus Humphrey, ladies and gents, is what's going to get us past the icebergs this time. Then, of course, the dude follows up by mentioning "the upcoming sale of Bass Industries," which is the kicker, because of course Rufus didn't know about that, not because it's none of his business and frankly beyond his capacity to comprehend, but because Lily van der Woodsen Bass Humphrey is a pit viper of a woman.
Everybody crowds into Serena's old room to yell at Juliet, Blair starts taking off her earrings, and Serena tells everybody to shut up and stop yelling at Juliet. Blair assumes that S has once again been drugged and barks out orders: "Dan, write a list of everything Damien said that he sold to Juliet! [Nate], look at the list and tell us which one of those drugs causes you to repeatedly trust psychopaths! [Serena], call the police!" Heh. I like that she only called Dan by name (first name, in fact) and everybody else was just "You." Also that she assumes Nate is such a druggie that he would be able to come up with contraindications and side effects for the drugs Juliet bought.
S acknowledges that none of the many acts of Juliet is okay, but she refuses to put any more Donovan-Sharps in the clink. "Juliet, I'll find a way to get Ben out of prison, I promise. You're free to go now." It's pretty great, this little scene of Serena working things out without asking for permission or explaining why she's doing it. Blair screams and screams, but Juliet swears she won't do anything to anybody ever again, since it's all just this crazy mistake. Really? Because everybody's going to be ganging up on Lily in about five seconds and, as Georgina Sparks (and Vanessa Abrams, and even Little J) can tell you, the best way to get in on the NJBC is to be a double agent. At most, you lose your Bible money. And maybe the love of your Lord.
"I'm sorry, I just spent a day in a car, with Dan Humphrey, to try to track her down. And you're just letting her leave? I really need someone to tell me what's going on!" But first, Serena needs to go attack her mom some more now that she's chased off the entire party. You know that I love how every episode has a party, but what I'm really digging this year is how easily you can disperse an entire crowd of Manhattan's scandalous elite. One childish, bitchy speech and they bounce. Remember that fashion party that they just kept ruining? I swear they went to like five different houses that night. Or the time Vanessa Abrams convinced the entire board of G.I.R.L.S. Inc. to randomly attend a sex party at the Empire? And they all arrived in trenchcoats?
Lily apologizes to Charles for the behavior of her biological children, and Serena comes running in screaming about how Ben Donovan is more than just some dirty laundry, and then has to explain this entire episode to her mother about how Mr. Donovan was the boarding school teacher that Lily sent to jail for fake statutory rape, which sends Lily screaming for the ceiling with the most Rhodes Woman outburst we've seen in the absence of CeCe: "Is that what the Ostroff Center calls treatment these days? Public scenes and false accusations?" That's like a hat trick of Lily magic, right there: "Oh yeah, 1) Crazy? 2) Prove I did any of that! Or that it happened at all! 3) I blame the institutions at which I keep throwing money for your behavior!" Both Eric and Chuck are pretty grossed out by that one.
Lily learns finally that Juliet was Ben's sister, and explains her version of things. Thanks to Eric's dramatic gesture, Serena and Lily agreed that she should put down the absinthe and come home. But because of her Charley Gordon subtle climb in grades at Knightley, Constance wasn't feeling her. Or any other schools. So Lily went to CT to throw money at Knightley and change her grades, and while she was there she heard some girls talking about how Serena van der Woodsen and some teacher were fucking. Instead of being horrified or defending her daughter, Lily thought, "I can use this." So she threatened the school with legal action if they didn't help with Constance.
The trouble is that Knightley, of course, actually had to take action on this -- "I didn't know what I had set in motion," Lily says -- and so at some point the DA called her, and by then it was quote "too late." Which, Lily gets to her point here in a weird way but basically, and this is key, she assumed the whole time just like everybody else that it was true -- because it's Serena and let's face it, what else is there to do in Connecticut -- so even forging the affidavit was done to protect S. I mean, I get it. I don't even think it's that terrible. I never do, when Lily pulls this shit. I'm sorry for Ben, and all, but it's not the worst thing in the world to assume that Serena would behave exactly the way she behaved, note, or that any man would be powerless before her, which is supported by what actually did happen as far as anybody knows.
Serena yells for awhile about how she honestly, truly, absolutely did not sleep with Mr. Donovan, not for lack of trying, and tries to get Lily to, I don't know, break down or something. I'm not really clear on what Serena's aim is here by screaming over and over, "You sent an innocent man to prison!" I mean, let's go get him out of jail. Let's play the quiet game, and fix the problem. Making people feel like shit should take a backseat when you're asking them to do something for you.
Backed into a corner, Lily babbles some kind of "we've all crossed the line at some point," hoping probably for backup from Blair, but then fuckin' Rufus throws his snot nose in there and makes everything ten times worse. "It's not so easy when you're the collateral damage! Lily, do you have something you need to tell Chuck?" Lily goes cold as ice and thinks about punching her husband in the neck, because my God Rufus is just Rufus 24/7. He does not take a break from being fuckin' Rufus. Ever. She's like, "Listen motherfucker, if there was something I wanted to tell Charles, I would have told him." But Rufus keeps going, full-speed ahead, as if what he really wants is to move back to DUMBO or end up paying alimony and living in the Lincoln Hawk van with only a barrel and suspenders for his clothing: "Lily's selling Bass Industries!"
Instead of backhanding him for being a piss-pants little tattletale, she gets into it with Chuck. Who is, of course, not having it. And further to the theme of perfect image -- and that of red/silver PRADA as Lily's domain -- the framed picture on the table behind Chuck is of Lily, wearing the exact same outfit and earrings she's wearing now. Amazing. They confront and backbite for a bit and finally Lily just goes ahead and says, "Do you really think the board would allow me to give the company to someone who just disappeared for three months? Your instability is the reason that I ended up in charge in the first place!"
We call those fightin' words. So Charles leaves under a hailstorm of lack clouds and danger sounds, and everybody stares at Lily and finally runs away from her before there are more flashbacks -- Lily stands with a pillow over Pete Fairman's still-jerking form, Lily whistles for her wolves outside Tripp's summer home, Lily impregnates Georgina with a turkey baster full of Dan's semen, Lily pushes a man into the Hudson and then saves him, Lily hands Jenny her first tube of liquid liner and shadow to match, Lily cuts the brakeline on Bart's limo, Lily invites Miss Carson to the opera -- with Serena doing her usual "I owe you nothing" exit speech she always does, and Rufus just hating on her wicked hardcore, and then she's all alone. In her gorgeous house, in the middle of a room that once held ten judgey judgers judging, and now contains just pinot. Score.
A week later Dan and Blair have cooked an Empire dinner for the NJBC, and there's a funny about how Nate enjoys pretending to be middle class until you have to clean up, so can they call housekeeping now? Blair says no, Nate still has to clean up. Chuck's off the hook because it's his hotel, and now he's going to New Zealand to enjoy "a taste of summer, and girls who like sex games in the rainforest." Dan wheedles his boyfriend Nate into helping clear the table -- it's awesome -- and Serena ignores a call from CeCe, who is calling on Lily's behalf. She's in Montecito, and while Rufus will be joining her, he'll be doing it in a separate car, thank you very goddamn much.
Since Lily is refusing -- refusing -- to help Ben get out of jail, Serena's going to drive upstate to find the judge that signed the false affidavit, and invites Dan along for the drive. In other news, Serena has called Dean Reuther up on the phone and "explained" about how she quit school a few minutes before going on a bender that ended in her near-death, so of course she got back into Columbia. "She was not happy, but she did reinstate me," Serena says, as if... I dunno. If I were Dean Reuther I would put out a hit on Serena's life at this point and yet no matter how many times she says "YOUR DRAMA IS NOT WELCOME" she keeps letting S back in. To take her one class and one short seminar she loves so much. Dean Reuther is a complex elixir I'm not sure I'll ever understand. Or maybe Nate was right: Maybe drama is Serena's way of ensuring you'll never let her go.
"Goodbye, friends," says Chuck at the door, and after a beat, "Dan," he nods. Heh. Blair offers to walk Chuck out, having noted the proximity of New Zealand to Australia and thus to Uncle Jack. Deal with the devil, or an enemy-of-my-enemy situation? Um, it's both. Dude, you cannot be serious this time. He fucked your mother into being brainwashed, if you recall. Slept with Blair to mess with you and then bought her, expressly and precisely for the sole purpose of sinking your relationship. He is obsessed specifically with you, destroying you, owning you, overwhelming you, messing with you. If he goes to Jack at this point it's going to be an amazing shitstorm indeed, and I cannot wait.
Nate silently leaves with Chuck, and Blair is bummed, and then I guess she leaves or something, so now it's just Dan and Serena in Chuck's bedroom. She wants him to come with on the road trip, she really does, but he's all, "I have to write" and she's all, "But I'm going to be having sex with you obviously" and Dan goes, "It feels like this trip is something you might need to do on your own." Out of nowhere Serena goes, "I've been trying so hard to prove to the world that I've changed, but I think the person that doubted the most was me. I'm gonna work on that." Dan wishes her luck and kisses her and they are very sweet and she's disappointed but on some kind of Eat Pray Love journey upstate so she'll forget about it soon enough.
While Diddy sings that song about how his illegitimate children sometimes make him feel sorry for himself and isn't that a fucking pickle, Nate calls the Captain to say that he will not be going to any halfway house but in fact will be living at the Empire, he's already told the parole board the address and he's currently buying his dad clothes. It's very sweet and the Captain cries so manfully, but that's another shitstorm I can't wait to see. So hmm, you've got Rufus and Lily in an uproar, Chuck facing off against Jack again, and the Captain living in Nate's house. I wonder if it's going to be a boy-heavy back half of the season? Daddy issues and such for the boys for once? Usual
ly it swings back and forth between Blair and Serena, but that's more dads than have ever been involved. Maybe Jules has a brother named Jim and he'll be out for vengeance.Blair comes back to the Empire, where Dan is now completely alone, just tooling around in this house he's never been inside before, doing dishes and feeling lonely and I presume creepy. They discuss how they'll be spending the holiday break together -- Nate's going to be with Grandfather, Eric in Gstaad with Elliot -- and make a movie date despite discussing not spending any time together at all. Then they do the dishes, which Blair washes in L'Occitane shampoo, because she is a lunatic. Shit gets major cute.
And then, as GG says goodbye for the holidays, and Nate tries to live his last December of being welcome in the Vanderbilt house to the fullest, and Blair and Dan get a sudden strange feeling like a rollercoaster dropping out from under them, and Chuck goes off to do the worst thing he can think of, and Juliet Sharp returns to the wheezy garrets and derivative architecture of the only home she'll ever deserve, and Jenny sews dollies of all her friends and then takes them apart again, and Vanessa swings softly back and forth from the highest rafter of the communal barn, and Georgina Sparks tries to find a buyer for her baby, and Rufus scowls all the way across our great nation, and Lily and CeCe drink all the wine and CeCe welcomes her at last into the dark Rhodes sisterhood, Serena heads to Staten Island in her sparkliest dress and three best sweaters and jackets, with just one thing on her agenda: Turning the first guy who ever said no into just another one of the ones who said yes... And maybe lived to tell the tale, but probably not. XOXO.
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