Wow! Twisty-turny, deftly directed, and some of the breeziest, cleverest, straight-up funniest acting we've ever seen from this crew. This season has raised the bar in some ways. but I gotta say, that was quite thrilling. And more than a little touching, to be honest. For once, the A+ isn't just an act of protest against letter grades.
So Blair is burning the candle at many, many ends, trying to balance W and college and Powerful Womanhood and figuring out her Chuck stuff, but of course it's not long until she unravels. There's a lot of tickery-tock about the various million things she has to get done, delegating minions and getting dragged into every other storyline more than she has in recent memory, but by the day's conclusion she's lost W and ends up in DUMBO, eating Brooklyn pizza, and falls asleep curled in Dan's arms. Watching, of course, The Philadelphia Story*.
One of her many duties? Delegating the drug-mule position Damien's put Eric into, which starts off as Penelope's job but -- after finally begging him for help -- Dan accidentally ends up doing, once S and E come to Blair for help with this drug deal scheme. Unluckily for Damien, Dan screws it up, so Damien shows up looking to blackmail Eric for the money to pay back his cokeheads.
Since it's Eric's 18th birthday, he now has access to his Rhodes trust (and all the bullshit that comes with it, already) and pays out of that. Lily surprises them mid-deal, and finally comes clean about her guilt in the Ben matter. This mends the rift between Lily and her children, but Ben admits he's going to take a bit longer.
Doesn't stop him from threatening Damien with actual death, or confessing to the beating hit he ordered on the Captain back in jail, though. Random Vanessa overhears this conversation, and hoping to get back into the UES circle tries to warn Serena that her boyfriend is a killer of people, but of course who's going to answer a call from Vanessa? Also awesome: Vanessa appearing out of nowhere right when everything was hitting the fan, getting screamed at by Dan and running off into the night as though she was leaving the show, only to then get all implicated in this ongoing steamy angry thing with Ben and Damien. And yes, her hair is looking comparatively fierce.
Meanwhile, relieved of his blackmail funds and unable to rat out Lily, Damien runs to Russell Thorpe. Who needs a break, thanks to the fact that Chuck's corporate espionage has endangered the buyout of Bass Ind. And why? Because Charles and Lily (!) have finally made up (!) and run a scheme on Russell together (!) that involves her pretending to be sick of Rufus (!) who makes a last-ditch save of pretending to be a douchebag in order to seal the deal (!) and all of them do all of this while making crazy faces, and it's so delicious.
Altogether, it was one for the ages. Lily, Blair, even Dan all managed to show us colors we haven't seen in four years of watching them do this shit. And again, I can't mention enough how satisfying it was to see Lily and Charles back in action. I might have teared up at that reveal. Even Rufus was pretty much perfect. For an episode that was mostly people talking about what happened in every other episode of this season, followed by mental breakdowns, I gotta say this was a home run. Well done.
*(You know, the one about the self-righteous writer who spends a day falling for the uptight society bitch -- whose impossibly high standards for herself and everyone else drive everybody batty -- only to eventually help shepherd her back into the arms of her caddish former lover? AKA one of the greatest movies of all time? God, I love this show. Fucking genius.)
What else, something else was fantastic. Oh, right! Nate turning it all the way up to fully spectacular. Watch him sniff his own sweater! Watch him take Raina off Chuck's hands (permanently?) and smoke her out! Watch them dance to Ke$ha and feed each other ice cream and talk like big stoned potheads! Watch them totally do it in some nonstandard way that makes them both grin like the Cheshire Cat.
Watch Nate vogue. Nate vogued! Stoned! With Raina Thorpe! Epic.
week: Who cares, that was awesome! But in the interests of sustaining our XOXO, it looks like Dorota goes after Blair for having a secret affair with Lonelyboy, while she's presumably rewriting her life plan into something even more bizarre. Chuck probably comes running back to her and flips out, Russell goes after Lily once again with Damien's gross help, and the family stands united for the first time in a very, very long time. I give it five minutes.
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Gossip Girl, why do you keep talking about the Rolling Stones? Normally everybody tunes you out because you make no goddamn sense, but even the most passive viewer seems to have picked up on your bizarre little theme this week. From a writing perspective it makes sense -- pick up a ball, run with it -- but for all the times to suddenly get cogent and precious, why the Rolling Stones references?
Dan is fussy because Serena and Ben are dating in his presence, staying up late playing those raucous Scrabble games Serena enjoys so much, drinking coffee, looking all blonde and cheekbony together. He bounces, and Ben's left with the pressure of Serena trying to get him to come to Eric's 18th birthday party that night. "Serena," he says, wincing at the very idea of Lily's existence. "I'm not eating her food, or drinking her wine, or smiling and pretending that everything's okay." Because usually Ben's such a bubbly fellow.
Eric's playing sick -- remember, the last time we saw him he was getting collared and homoeroticked by Damien Dalgaard in a funny hat -- and Rufus is saying shit like, "How's the patient?" and "Do I need to change my breakfast with Thurston?" and generally getting in everybody's way. Lily sadly cancels the birthday party, which as it transpires is a Little Kid theme -- Ace Of Cake-type cake, cotton candy, clowns, bunnies, clown-bunnies, forests of balloon bouquets, whatever gaywaddish Katy Perry nightmare accoutrements -- which is in addition to being completely awful is also not: A thing.
Blair does not have time to zip up her own dress, so busy is she being the new Anna Wintour despite being a teenager, and so she's leaning on Dorota even more than usual, even unto Serena noticing this is happening. Seems Blair's Powerful Womanhood is now so powerful she does not require sleep, and is living purely off her own crazy. S thinks this is because Chuck and Raina are all in love with each other's hidey-holes, but Blair assures her that she has become cold steel inside and will be taking everybody down with equal fervor and it has nothing to do with them, and then checks off a whole Cliff's Notes list of the shit they could possibly talk about (Ben, Lily) her typical responses to these topics (fuck off) and then, looping back around, another thing she doesn't care about: Raina was just named the head of G.I.R.L.S. Inc., Anne Archibald's foundation for the furtherment of lady-types (OUCH) for which Blair was once upon a time willing to give lap-dances, before the Three Witches turned themselves into Serena and locked her up in a cloven pine that time.
So expository is Chuck's likewise exposition -- even alone, they are together -- that even the most passive Nate has picked up on his little theme: "Russell manipulated me to make me look like a monster with Lily so Raina would break up with me and I'd lose my one advocate within his company," Chuck grumbles, and Nate is like, "You have said that one hundred times to me. You said it in bed, you said it during our shower, you said it when we were trying on clothes, and you're saying it again now that we've finally made it out into the kitchen."
Chuck's solution: Whore out the all-time hooker of this show, Nathaniel Archibald, so that he can charm Chuck's way back into Raina's pants. "I'm pretty sure a businesswoman like Raina has plans for the day," Nate says -- which is adorable, like, "Would a businesswoman like yourself be interested in going to lunch with a hooker like me?" -- but Chuck's just like, "You're a hooker, so hook." Nate smells his own armpit -- which smells like coffee cake at all times -- and pronounces himself good to go.
The Minions are at Waldorf's House Of Weirdos, because one of them thought that's what W stood for, so now we're skyping while Blair's at the office. They do a great job in this episode of making all these screwball machinations and technology and running-around feel actually stressful and substantive, rather than the shell-game another episode might portray. In addition to the fabulous acting of just about everybody, the whip-crack editing and intense music keep you moving even faster than usual.
So Blair snipes and skypes at them about her shit she needs to do: Art History essay test she'll dictate over bluetooth -- "penmanship counts" -- presents for Eric's birthday and Eleanor's housewarming in Aix -- "do try to approach my level of taste" -- and, for the girl whose name she doesn't know ("She has no time to care" Dorota hisses when she says her name), a meeting with Bryn Harold to get on the board at the opera. Penelope whines about getting the presents, Blair shuts off her computer and starts yelling at an empty room.
Turns out all her interns quit, as that one pretty assistant editor, the one that's always so in charge, explains -- "Your management style was a little aggressive; one claims she has PTSD and threatened a lawsuit" -- but then Humphrey shows up, just as the pretty lady is explaining that the last assistant who lost her interns lost her job too, and Blair immediately claims him as her assisting intern. Dan's jaw drops, of course, but that smile that never strays too far from his mouth whenever Blair's around these days? It doesn't stray too far.
This whole part of the story is fabulous. So Chuck meets Lily at this restaurant and she's like, "I'm not staying for lunch, I just came to tell you to leave me alone, because of last week when you called me six different kinds of whore in front of our family and your girlfriend." Chuck whines about how Russell is setting him up, and she tells him it's all his fault and that he had her fired and that Bart's legacy can fuck a duck and whatever, Russell's going to be a great owner of Bass Ind. until he chops it into bits and eats the bits and pees on the bits and sets the bits on fire.
"What is it with this guy? You still have feelings for him?" Steam comes out Lily's delicate ears and she reminds him she's married, to the "man" they call Rufus Humphrey, and Chuck totally goes, "That didn't stop you from cheating on my father, I'm sure you'll do the same to Rufus!" Boom, slap, practically an open-handed punch, and Lily's out of there. Nice. Meanwhile, Russell is totally sitting at a table a few feet away listening to every word, as though he turned invisible when they walked in, and saw that whole slapping party without once interjecting.
Since the party's canceled and they don't need her "help" anymore, Serena has called Ben to meet her at the Plaza. She'll drop in on Eric, and then they can go do classy artsy things all day long. Eric comes downstairs in his fluffy robe looking like death warmed over, and of course reveals he's not actually sick: He just doesn't want to turn 18, because from then on it's just a downhill slide for twinks.
Out in the limo, Chuck and Lily are totally fooling! They are in on it together! Charles and Lily! So great! She admits it was satisfying to once again slap the shit out of her son, in public this time, and we realize that they staged it so that Russell would think A) He's won and split up their team, and B) He can sleep with Lily now. I'm sure he'll be calling soon.
So really though, why is Eric "sick"? Well, I'll tell you here in this hotel lobby: It's because Damien knows the facts about Lily sending Ben to jail in a fake way, and is thus blackmailing him to run drugs. Once again, Damien proves he knows what Lily's kids are good for. I'm guessing he also refused to have sex with Eric, causing him to fall totally in love with him but eventually driving him into Chuck's arms. Eric says this: "Damien's got his big coke shipment coming in today from Europe. It's arriving at the flower market in the fertilizer packs of a hundred pink tulips." Just another day on the UES.
Serena swears that she's going to fix everything, which gives just about everybody pause because generally that involves her donning a monocle and smoking a pipe in France, but Eric's so worn out from being Eric that he just heads upstairs and feels sorry for himself for giving it up to Dalgaard in the first place. Meanwhile Ben is like, "You know, or we could just let Damien send Lily to jail. Her being a bitch, and all."
Serena admits that she is once again at war with her mother but that's such a constant thing that she's not just going to flip over on this one time her mother could go to jail for a felony, and Ben practically tries to spin this as her being a bad girlfriend, so Serena gives him the cold shoulder, and boobs, and whips her hair around, and takes off. Ben heads back to DUMBO to get more harsh Dan treatment and wonder why Serena won't just join him in wishing her mother ill.
"This job offer won't last forever," Blair hisses at Dan, and he points out that working for Blair Waldorf would kill anybody but especially him. She multitasks while screeching at him to tell Penelope to get away from the "tasteful gift-free zone" she's checked in on at GG.net, and then screams at the person on the phone at Prada about magazine stuff, and then returns to yell at Humphrey for still being there.
"I'm not gonna work for you, but as a friend, I am willing to help out. All you have to do is admit you need me." Finally a Humphrey we can agree on. She brings out the best in him, always has. Maybe because his inordinate amount of "ethics" makes more sense up against Blair than it ever did against the well-meaning tofu that is Serena's day. Blair orders coffee, warns Dan that none of them are for him, and he props his feet up on the desk with a funny voice: "I don't really like refreshments with my theatah."
Did I mention every single actor is amazing in this episode? It's the most fun group effort I can think of, ever, on this show. Every person is having a blast, near as I can tell. Anyway, Nate finds Raina leaving her tea with Anne Archibald's nutty ass, heading to Trump Palace for a quick meeting with Ivanka, and then Nate does this New Yorker trick on her where he quickly tells her everything she needs to know about getting around the city before offering to squire her across the Park.
"Eric has always been so serious and grown-up," Lily explains about her horrible depressing party theme. "This will be his last grasp at childhood." Honey, no. He had no childhood because you are deranged and because he comes from a long line of ladies who treat every occasion like they're Leni Riefenstahl and Edie Sedgwick at the same time. Back with Chuck, Lily discusses their scheme some more and then just as she's worrying about Russell taking the bait, of course, the second she's saying it, Russell calls.
Magazine, opera, blogs, presents, art history, crazy crazy crazy. Even Dan is less enjoying himself and more worried that she might literally expire like the dog at the end of Stone Fox. "Sleep is for the weak! You're only here to avoid Ben and Serena!" He's like, No, actually now I'm just waiting to see what happens to you in terms of neurology. The second Serena shows up with Eric for her help with their Damien scheme, Dan's out the door: "This just went from Women On The Verge to Saw II. I don't like gore porn, really." Serena herself notes that B is strung out, and B just laughs. "A takedown only takes two minutes! Tell me the plot points."
Raina's all, "Look at the lake! We don't have that in Chicago. Or kissing, or corn dogs, or karate, or flowers, or trees, or sunlight, or the Gregorian calendar." Nate's just like, "Silly, that's not karate! It's tai chi!" They show each other their hidey-holes about how they were always having to do shit like hang out in the Vanderbilt castles and eat gold-encrusted unicorn fritters and chase Ortolan buntings across the White House lawn every secret annual Freemason's Day and whatever, so then he teaches her to ice skate because they never invented that in Chicago either, because it is an urban wasteland. It's just homeless people, a giant pit and some tumbleweeds and that big silver bean, and that's it.
While Dan's downstairs getting a sandwich, Blair pulls Penelope off gift duty and puts her on drug deal duty! Any old minion that would be kind of crass, but it's Penelope so it's fine. "All the details are on a purple sticky note on my computer," she explains, and Dan comes back in time for a suuuuper cute scene.
"I wanted to tell you that... You were right... About that thing." Oh? Now which thing was that? "I, Blair Waldorf, need Dan Humphrey's help." As a friend and peer, not as an underling. "Asthma finger Verlaine malingering," she mushmouths in a way that would make S proud. Ahem. As my friend and peer, not an underling. Eventually she gets there, and then the pretty lady pulls her out of there so she's just like, "It's all on my desk! Just start!" and the first thing he sees? Penelope's purple Post-It with the drug deal directions. Of course, since you can't really question anything the van der Woodsens do at this point, because they are bizarre pretty aliens from Planet Money, he's like "Ten crates of tulips for an 18-year-old boy's birthday? Absolutely, why not."
They have set up Raina to be a really good romantic foil for both boys: She's just like Chuck, but Nate has figured out a lot of shit that neither of them have really figured out yet, because neither of them has ever punched their dad in the face. I never really thought about it, but in the context of being homeless and constantly punching his dad in the face and getting prostituted to literally every guest star that comes across the show, Nate has more actual perspective on life than anybody. Even Dan!
It is at this point that Raina takes a shower at the boys' apartment, puts on Nate's robe, agrees to play Black Ops with him, pulls out a joint from the robe, and decides to get high in the middle of the day instead of her meeting with Ivanka. This is Nate's idea of the perfect selling point, which for Nate it would be: "You know who gets really, really good weed? Chuck!"
"To old friends and new beginnings," we enjamb, as Lily and Russell drink a few bottles of wine and they talk about how Chuck did her so wrong. Apparently, Serena's not the only Rhodes Woman with a thing for bars, since apparently her mother once screwed Russell Thorpe on the one at the Peninsula Hotel. Lily gets him to move the subject to whether or not she would ever cheat on Rufus, and Lily admits that they have a sham marriage and that she is his beard and that he's been sleeping with Scott Weiland this entire time, I mean she doesn't say this but it's in the air, and that she's only sticking with her fifth husband because of the PR they're dealing with right now, what with her daughter constantly ruining parties and scaring off potential buyers and her son getting punched by her all the time and raping all those people every day.
But what's really going on with all this, beyond mind games for mind games's sake, is that Chuck is stealing documents off Russell's computer using the Captain's info from last week, which gives this whole scene a fun little urgency; around the time Russell's sort of asking her to divorce Rufus and marry him, she gets the all-clear from Charles and runs off again. You can never be too sure you've fooled Russell, but it looks pretty promising at this point.
Bryn Harold is friends with Lily Humphrey, which is why Blair will join the rest of the cast at Eric's birthday, and Penelope gives her a little sneering FYI about Bryn Harold and then Blair interrupts her own crazy talk -- "I'm not a typical college student, I'm a self-actualized, mature-beyond-her-years-yet-still-youthful-and-dewy working woman!" -- to yell about the gifts in Penelope's hands: She never got the sticky. Which means Dan is now a drug dealer! Or at the least a tulip-buying PATSY!
Ben calls Dan, on the way to drop off the drug tulips, to tell him that Vanessa's shambled back into DUMBO and up the fire escape and into a window and out into the living room and is now annoying him to death and could Dan please come deal with her or say the necessary words to banish her away again, and Dan's like, "I am not talking to her! She transformed herself into the doppelgänger of my sister/girlfriend, the two things she always wanted to be, and they ended up driving Serena into a lake and leaving her there until the ice melted!" Ben's like, "I'm not writing all of that down."
Dan explains that he's delivering 100 tulips for a gay kid's birthday party and Ben is like, "Serena totally sold him out. I hate it when she dicks him around! Unless it's by fawning all over me in his house, where she decided I would live without notifying him first." If only Ben knew that this is the only person she ever does this to, due to her inability to ever keep it together, and that she's going to arranging his life around him for her own benefit for the rest of their time together. (And yes, I did eventually get the "Ithaca Is Gorges" joke from like a month ago.)
Eric and Serena are distraught to see Dan with the 100 tulips, and even more distraught when the see that he has fucked them up: They're purple, not pink, and their fertilizer is only good for fertilizing plants, not terrible ideas at 4 AM. So now on the one hand Dan is not a drug dealer, but on the other hand Damien is going to come and kill everybody and whatever. Dan wants to know what's going on, because he always does, and as usual Dan, you don't really actually want to know what's going on, it would only freak you out.
Party time! Blair walks in and both Dan and Serena are like, "What the fuck were you thinking?" Um, she was thinking, she "would arrive at this party, and be greeted appropriately?" Dan accuses her of abusing the sacred "I trust Dan Humphrey" card just to get him to be a drug mule, and she's like, "I wouldn't do that to you, but Penelope is a bitch and frankly her attitude could use some time behind bars." And that's the end of that part of the story, it's amazing. Dan's like, "You're not going to apologize?" No, huh uh: "Well? You're here. The party's lovely. Everything obviously turned out fine."
Except the drugs were never delivered, because -- this is cute, everything with Dan and Blair is so fucking cute -- he was supposed to get pink ones, not purple, but due to the Stroop Effect, she wrote "purple" because the sticky note was purple, and of course only Dan and Blair would be able to pull that one out of their asses, and they're adorable about that little neuro-fact for a while before Eric comes up and he's like, "It is not a happy birthday! Damien is going to come here and kill everybody and send Lily to jail because he pre-sold this shipment to a bunch of insane Manhattan cokeheads and things are about to get nuts on him."
So now, how to get $100 grand? Dan's all, "That's crazy! There is not that much money in the whole world!" and everybody else feels super awkward and it's hilarious, and then Serena, a fuzzy little lightbulb goes off over her head at this point and she's like, "You're turning eighteen, so the checkbook to your Rhodes trust fund is somewhere in the pile." Saved! By entitlement! Once again! The blondes rush off to open all the presents and Blair randomly grabs Dan and goes, "I know you're thinking that Stroop is one of the symptoms of chronic fatigue, but I'm not even tired!" Dan just shakes his head and runs off, and it's great. Of course Blair would need to make that point to him, even though she just sent him on a $100,000 goosechase to buy drugs.
Facts found while going through Russell's computer: The secret backer is a guy named Bradley Kidd from Atlanta, for whom the financial scenarios Thorpe ran left out the part where Bass Ind. would be more profitable intact. This proves that it's personal, which we've been tossing around for a few weeks now, and also that Thorpe is lying to Kidd, regarding which the teenaged tycoon Chuck has invited Kidd to a child's birthday party so that they can coup. Lily and Charles congratulate each other on their scary good job of spying, and Rufus desperately mentions how watching his wife corporately maneuver is so totally sexy, and she's like, "Duplicity turns you on? The fuck haven't you mentioned that before now? I spent the entirely of last season trying to convince you I wasn't a soulless manipulator. Give a girl a break!"
Ke$ha, at this party? Excellent. Finally the truth about Serena's secret Hannah Montana lifestyle can be revealed! But no, it's actually just Nate and Raina stoned and playing some kind of dance game on the Wii. At the conclusion of the song, Nate does this amazing move where he like secretly vogues his hand in front of his face, and it's amazing and the reason animated .gifs were invented, and then they eat a bunch of ice cream and talk mad stoner shit -- "We should start our own company! This is really fun! I like dancing!" -- and just when it's almost too adorable, Chuck calls and summons them to Eric's party. I guess because Chuck needs Raina to see him take down her dad and the inevitable meltdown that will make her see he's been right all along and is not a scalliwag blackguard like she correctly thinks.
Before they leave, Nate goes, "You know who loves ice cream? Chuck! He loves it!" Which first of all, Raina's onto you, subtle though you're being, but second of all: Is this Nate A) Being cute about Chuck his favorite person? B) Being an idiot? Or C) Deliberately fucking up his mission of whoredom because he is crushing on Raina? I think all three. Far be it from me to assume depths to these characters that don't actually exist, you know I would never do that, but either way it's fun to think about.
"Ugh! I hate professional gift wrapping," Serena whines as they take down the pile of monster presents, which I like so identify with because I too have known the pain of the clock ticking as I try to find my trust fund checkbook to pay off my drug dealer, and then Lily raises the stakes on their Elite Problems when she appears and hisses, "What are you doing? Do you realize how gauche it is to open gifts at a party? Before dessert?"
Blair shows up in time for Eric to open the Baccarat salad bowl she intended for her mom -- "which means that your Larry Clark print is on its way to her, Penelope" -- and everybody runs around a whole lot more. At first I was like, "Larry Clark? Really?" but yeah. The unholy union of Nan Goldin and American Apparel, the constant specter of horny teen suicide... He's Chuck's little brother, after all. God knows they've both seen enough of their mom's infinite Mapplethorpe bush, at this point, for a lifetime.
"The Dan part was a mistake," Serena tries to explain, "But I did ask Blair to help." Ben's like, "I'm fairly certain that we agreed your mother could go fuck herself? Is it really your plan to send yet another of your boyfriends to jail for that woman?" S is like, "Dude?" And he totally goes, "Are you saying you choose Lily?" Um, when you put it that way, yes. Douche.
While Blair finds and tackles Bryn Harold in the middle of conversation with Lily, Russell walks in and acts like he's already having an affair with Lily -- which is dicey because his secret buyer is secretly on his way to a secret meeting with Charles -- except that Rufus immediately comes running up yelling about "What the hell is going on? You think I'm a fool? I know what went on between you two! And it looks like it's still going! You invited him to Eric's 18th birthday party!" Lily is amazed, makes fifteen fabulous faces, and sends Rufus away. "Some men know how to behave appropriately at social events," she very much Lilys, and Russell leaves them to gloat and be cute with each other about how much fun it is to lie and scream and yell all the time on the UES.
Blair's still babbling at Bryn a few hours later, working her way around to the reacharound -- "I'm imprinting proper etiquette and fashion sense as well as my philanthropic mandate on a whole new generation, much like you did!" -- when Bryn points out that A) Blair is wearing two similar-but-different black shoes with jeweled pilgrim witch buckles and B) Where is Chuck, because Bryn's a huge fan of Raina Thorpe and wants an intro. Daaaaaamn.
Before Russell can leave, though, Kidd shows up for his meeting with Chuck, so Russell sticks around.
Eric's writing Damien his check when Lily comes back in, high on her spycraft, and gets all up in arms about it some more. "Eric! What is the meaning of this!?" Everybody stares and stuff, commercial break, and then she's like, "Are you on drugs again? A hundred grand worth of drugs?" No mom, it's because you are going to jail. Damien heads off for some mac and cheese and leaves the three van der Woodsens huffing and puffing amid by beautiful gifts and misapportioned rage.
Russell and Chuck get into a playground fight over Kidd, and eventually just stand there slapping their thighs and whistling to see which ridiculous person will get his money. Of course Russell has figured out the entire scheme with Lily and her ludicrous marriage to the human Swiffer, and Chuck finally tells Kidd about how the company is better if left intact, and Russell condescends and patronizes for awhile and tries to take Kidd out to dinner, but of course because it's realistic Kidd goes, "I think I'll stay and hear young Mr. Bass out," so Russell throws down a smoke bomb and disappears with maniacal laughter.
Just when everything is squirk itself up to eleven, Vanessa shows up to apologize to Dan for that time she engineered his sister's abduction and suicide attempt and then lied and sold out his other sister, and Dan of course is not having it, not ever but especially today, so V gets all disappointed and haughty and left out. As per.
"I'm relieved you're not going to overdose," says Lily's sense of appropriate parenting, "But you should have come to me with this." She sits down and explains that she was the one who did the felony and that it is ridiculous that -- just this one time -- her kids are having to pay for her egregious and constant mistakes. S rolls over immediately, because that's the most grown-up thing Lily has ever said, and then they have a big old birthday cuddle party and everybody cries. What Lily does not do is pull out her own checkbook, like she always, always does, because she's still smarting from the time Juliet taught her that generally, blackmailers will continue to blackmail you, because: Why wouldn't they.
Dan surprises Blair crying due to her failure with Bryn, the whole Chuck mess, and the fact that she has literally lost her marbles this time, and he's super sweet to her, and she's awful to him, and Dan's like, "How about this: You're only getting insane this time because you're feeling competitive with Raina." Blair's response is fabulous -- "She's from the Midwest!" -- and so is her followup: Drying her eyes, chasing Humphrey out the door barking at him, and then looking for some more trains to wreck.
Turns out the Art History minion earned her an F because she went to Regular History and wrote the essay, and then just when it's darkest she finds out she did one thing right: Her intern wrote her W blog for her. "All that stuff about servants being like belts and purses, overpriced and interchangeable? It was really funny! Or mean..." Blair's like, "Mother fuck. Did I say anything about needing help from my friends and peers?" Oh, you betcha: "Friends are the fashion fundamentals!" the minion chirps, and Blair's heart grows a size or two, because my God that is exactly what Dan Humphrey would ghostwrite, if he were pretending to be Blair Waldorf.
Outside, check in hand, Damien gets beaten up once again by Ben Donovan, who warns him to stay away from Lily and the usual litany of warnings, because this time he actually will kill Damien. He yanks the check out of his hands and he's like, "Don't let these cheekbones and soft girly voice fool you, I am a hard bastard. I got the Captain beaten up in jail and I will hire ex-cons so fast to kill you." Um... Hands up if you can remember why that happened. I have encyclopedic recall of this show and I can't remember, is how dumb it was. Something about Juliet dating Nate, was it? Ah well. I still miss Juliet. (And Tripp.)
"I always knew you read too much Shakespeare to be sane," Damien says for some reason, and then he totally goes, "Bygones," and then Gossip Girl says some more incomprehensible shit about the Rolling Stones, and then guess what: Vanessa Abrams, little pitcher/big ears, finally with a haircut that makes sense, overhearing the whole thing and seeing her chance to get back into the crew by ousting its newest member. Her like one move.
(Maybe she'll try to have a threesome with Ben and Serena, because not only is that her other move but it's obviously something everybody would try, if you had a shot at that. They should just make her do that all the time, that would be awesome. Or, or, she could be the Chuck from the books -- since Jenny is already kind of the Vanessa from the books -- and she could get a pet monkey and turn gay. And then she could finally be with Dan. Everybody wins!)
Even for Nate, this whole "getting Raina to the party" thing is going pretty slow. Chuck shares a manful handshake with Kidd and then calls Nate, who is nearly in tears about his inability to Be Places with Raina in tow, and Chuck tells him it's fine... But really, back at their apartment, it's because Raina has already decided that she wants to be with Nate forever and ever, through all kinds of weather and in all kinds of places. Starting with the butt.
The van der Woodsens are just sitting down to pretend to eat birthday cake when Chuck shows back up and they can all talk about their many different masterful schemes and worries in the wake of the party. Serena loves the part about Rufus threatening to clobber Russell Thorpe, and giggles, "So sad I missed all of this! And did anyone else see Vanessa, or am I having ether flashbacks?" Hilarious on many levels; I love that Serena would firstly assume that Vanessa's utterly random appearance for five seconds presaged some kind of mental event and secondly decide that her overdose is now a hilarious in-joke, but even better is the response: "Probably the latter? Although I did notice Blair wearing two different shoes." This episode was so insane and the party was so insane and these people are so insane, that they can sit around saying this shit and not just assume there's a gas leak in the kitchen or something.
Ben shows up, having also come and gone swiftly from the party, and he just hands over the check back to Lily and assures her that Damien won't be bothering them anymore -- he refuses to cooperate with any kind of blackmail plot even though it's been established that his testimony wouldn't mean anything given the charges -- but the token means something; Lily nods and sparkles at him a little bit and then softly and without fanfare hands him the ultimate Rhodes go-ahead: "Thank you, Benjamin."
He got the Benjamin! He is so in! Dan didn't get the Daniel it seems like forever, and Chuck just recently got his Charles back, so you know Lily's being very measured with this one. I wonder if Ben even knows what just happened?
Or does he care, because immediately he's like, "Serena, just because I halted the blackmail plot and got that check back does not mean that I don't hate your mother. That was about currying favor with you, and your barely legal fanny." She's like, "I know. But do you want some birthday cake?" Serena, eating birthday cake in your mother's house would taste like ashes. We had no birthdays in the Big House, just unending beatings and the occasional mean-spirited handjob to mark the passing of time.
So on the one hand, thanks Dan for the "friends as fashion" metaphor, but on the other hand Blair has just been fired. "Slash quit," she says in a way that you know she's going to keep saying that, and also that it is a lie, and actually my pretty editor girl we'll never see again said the sweetest thing: "Donna said they'd been watching me for a while, hoping for the best, but let's face it. I'm imploding." And for her last trick? Making sure Dan got the byline.
"I thought that if I could be the Blair Waldorf that I want to be a little sooner, that maybe I could return to Chuck before he fell for someone else." She seems to finally understand the sadness of that concept, which I guess means the Blair's Empire/Powerful Woman story is at an end. Which is in itself sad, but if it was tainted by the romance thing than it never really existed at all.
...Well, though, I mean, everything that rises must converge, and I'm sure she knew -- or could calculate -- the precise percentages of how much was to do with Chuck/how much was her actual ultimate goal, but it's not yours until you set it free &c., so maybe we can put that toy away for a while, so when it does happen it'll be because she actually is a Powerful Woman and not just acting in Powerful Woman: The Movie, starring Blair Waldorf as A Powerful Woman. Which is the only way she's ever going to actually earn the right to be happy, with him or without him: When she stops seeing this stuff as something she needs to earn.
"Meanwhile: I lost my job, I failed a test, I almost got my best friend's mother arrested. And I'm in Brooklyn, talking about it to Dan Humphrey." He gingerly asks her to stay in and have some pizza, and she goes along with it, kicking and screaming: "I think someone Freaky Friday'd me, and this can't possibly be my life," she says, and Dan says the kindest thing: "Well, it is. What do you want?"
So while Damien is bringing news of the affidavit to Russell Thorpe, and Ben and Serena are knocking boots in the Waldorf/van der Woodsen suite back home, Blair's falling asleep near, and then on, and then curled against, one massive Humphrey delt. And what are they watching?
Oh, The Philadelphia Story, of course. You know, the one about the girl so convinced perfection was possible that she nearly missed out on her life entirely? Until the intellectual snobbery of one gifted writer so intrigued and disarmed her that she cracked open like an egg, relaxed her standards for herself and everybody else a smidge, and suddenly realized the love of her life was the cad she'd spent years tangled up in love and hate with? Cary Grant didn't sell her for a hotel, but he did punch her in the nose.
Although damn, if you told me I'd ever be equating Dan Humphrey with Jimmy Stewart -- I've kissed guys based entirely on the quality of their Jimmy Stewart impression, in my day, because you gotta have some kind of standard -- I'd say you were nuts. If you told me this storyline was going to happen, ever, I'd say the same thing. So it's as perfect as anything could ever be, this trajectory. But guys, just maybe you should wake up and watch this one, because you're heading straight into it with your eyes open and the results will not be pretty for anybody. Or maybe not, because right now is about as great as it gets. XOXO.