Lily decides to spend her last days as a free woman focusing on the important things, like a Royal Fever-inspired Taschen coffee table book highlighting American royalty like the Rhodes Women. CeCe's already in town, along with Dr. William "Fake Cancer" van der Woodsen -- either of which would explain the high-pitched barking of lapdog Rufus -- but then we're joined by a couple surprise Rhodes Women: Aunt Carol and her daughter Charlie. Turns out Carol's life on the West Coast went downhill and, as judgmental poor people on this show always are, she's become quite the hypocrite: All this time she's been Dan Humphreying her shallow rich sister, she's been taking money from old CeCe in exchange for the odd family obligation like supporting Lily during this very legal time.
Charlie's another thing altogether, Jennying out on Serena's rich-girl lifestyle and -- like all Rhodes Women eventually do -- getting a scary obsessive crush on a Humphrey. In the end, despite Carol's wishes, Charlie stays in town the better to baby-talk her way into the van der Woodsen circle and then become some kind of Dan- (possibly Serena-) stalker.
But of course what's important is the blowback from the Blair/Dan kiss frame on which we froze. While there are no real reactions to it, besides some nefarious plan by Chuck that I'm not sure I fully understood, there are reactions from the players: Dan has devoted himself to Blair utterly for the last five minutes, but in a cruel twist of fate it's made Blair suddenly decide it's time to be with Chuck again. After Vanessa involves her shit in our business, and Chuck finds out about the kissing, some complicated stuff goes down with the photo shoot that results in Blair deciding she's still too good for Chuck after all. Dair shippers, I wouldn't worry about it: She's clearly just afraid of her Dan Feelings and running to the nearest manwhore port to weather the storm.
Meanwhile, Raina gets a strange call from her dad about how her mom is still alive or something, I wasn't paying attention during that part, but I think maybe a Ouija board is going to make an appearance. Lily takes a bunch of family photos with her two husbands, who have reconciled, but nobody seems to notice that the majority of their family's children (Chuck, Inspektor Pilot, Jenny) aren't involved. Chuck's too busy brooding at photos of himself brooding, and Jenny is never to be mentioned again, I guess. In the end, we're treated to foreboding about Charlie, a possible search for dead Mama Raina, Vanessa informing Serena about the kiss, and the reappearance of Blair's third suitor: Old Prince Louis is back from wherever, toting a shoe and a smile. Now that's a worthy Dan rival.
Great opening and closing sequences, a fair amount of new mysteries and a cliffhanger about Lily's jailtime: Perfect setup for the last episodes of the season, but not a whole lot else to hang your hat on. The scenes of Lily and Carol discovering their mutual dependence on outside money, as well as about a hundred well-timed punches to the jaw for perennial victims Rufus, Dan and Vanessa, make for a fun ride. Here's hoping Charlie doesn't turn out to be some rehash of the worst parts of Georgina and Jenny's storylines, and that Dan finds something to mope about besides Blair and Serena, before week, when the big kiss fallout actually descends on everybody's heads.
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Things are very troubled in the Upper East Side, my friends. We've hit that part in the cycle where everybody's voracious for facts having to do with Lily Humphrey's crime against paperwork, but haven't yet decided to get nasty about it. This is very dangerous time for a lot of reasons, chief among them being A) This is Lily's worst Rhodes Woman nightmare coming true in real life and B) Serena always fucks everything up anyway.
Since kissing and being kissed by the Spirit of Authenticity that is Dan Humphrey, old Blair has taken to her bed. Is it because he's tainted her with the self-righteousness of the pretend poor? Or because her head has gone spinning off its Powerful Woman axis altogether? Only time can tell, but I'm guessing it's not because she's suddenly in love...
Or rather, that the effect has been so drastic that she's going to rewrite the whole of existence -- pushing Dan back into Serena's arms, running full-tilt directly at Chuck's peculiar face -- in order to pretend time, space and reason haven't all suddenly gone nuts. Quick slap to Dorota's kindly face -- she's brought a radio with news of Lily's predicament, in the hopes that someone else's misfortunes will schadenfreude that Dan right out of her hair -- and then a return to the depths of eye-masked fitful slumber.
Mosquitorazzi all jazzed up outside PRADA, Dan's spending the day organizing his many wise volumes and checking for messages from Blair that never come in DUMBO, while Chuck and Raina have a grody little sad run-in at the Empire.
Chuck: "Hey, nice to see you this morning. I assume you've been boning my roommate."
Raina: "Yeah, that's why I'm bringing him this cute morning OJ -- so he won't use up any of his precious lying-around energy."
Chuck: "Cool, stay here in my house as long as you want."
Nate: "Thanks! I love juice! It's like kissing the sunshine!"
Raina: "For reasons that nobody could ever explain, I've decided the Lily Situation is my fault."
Nate: "I don't see how that's possible, in like any way, but thanks for the juice. What's that ringing sound?"
Raina: "It's called a phone."
Daddy Thorpe: "Hey, thanks for picking up finally. I just wanted a drop a game-changer on you."
The Entire Audience: "I cannot wait to find out what is going on there! The state of the Thorpe family is the only thing on this show more fascinating than the disposition at any given time of Bass Industries!"
Serena fights her way through the cameras and hangers-on, shoving one tiny journalist out of the way with her huge giant fist while sweeping the double-doors open using only her shopping bags, disguised with a well-placed newspaper and uncharacteristic shyness around cameras.
Chuck: "Hey, how is our mom?"
Serena: "Going to the big house, probably. Are you coming for brunch?"
Chuck: "No, I'm not really a member of the family unless it's plot-related."
Serena: "How lonely for you. In more interesting news, did you know that CeCe and William are both here?"
Chuck: "Those are Rufus's two worst enemies!"
Serena: "Yeah, but think how weird it's going to be for me!"
Chuck: "Okay. Listen, have you heard from Blair?"
Serena: "She is chock full of malaise, I think. How come?"
Chuck: "She won't talk to me. Not like usually how she won't talk to me, but like specific to this episode."
Serena: "Expositionally speaking, I think it's because her Powerful Woman path hit a roadblock."
Chuck: "Okay, say hi to our mom."
Serena: "I'm sure she'll appreciate that."
PRADA
Rufus: "Lily, stop looking at your Google Alerts. We are not a Real Housewife."
Lily: "Well, at least one of us isn't."
William: "Hey Rufus, care to bite my head off for no reason except the many horrible things I have done to you in the past?"
Rufus: (Snarls wildly; it is adorable.)
William: "Look, all I did was slowly poison your wife and turn our daughter into a high-class Snooki. None of this is my fault. Please stop being mean."
Lily: (Sides with William, of course.)
CeCe: (Ditto.)
Rufus: (Whimpers; worries at his fleas.)
CeCe, verbatim: "Oh, darling! Oh, you look lovely in your mug shot. It was smart of you to turn yourself in, so you could make sure your hair was done."
Lily reveals that, instead of conferring with counsel or cutting a deal, she's going to be taking part in a Rhodes Women pictorial for the new Taschen book, Modern Royalty, meant to capitalize in a dying print market on the upcoming Royal Wedding you may have heard about. She actually refers to this business as "dignified," which shows you how fucked-up things have gotten.
Serena: "Hey, everybody! Hi, Dad, I hope Rufus isn't being mean to you about that time I had to chase your abandoning ass all over the world and steal a boat and a horse. Or that other time when you slowly poisoned my mother to death with the help of a brainwashed psychiatrist."
CeCe: "Oh, just in case Lily was planning on not hurling herself off a balcony, I've also invited your mother's nemesis, Aunt Carol. She's taking time off from teaching at the Vanessa Abrams School of Acting Like Vanessa Abrams."
DUMBO
Eric, Dressed Like A Total Humphrey Now As Per: "Dan, I love alphabetizing with you here, in abject squalor, more than anything -- but I wonder if you have any weird secrets or emotional baggage to unload all over me? Since my mom's going to jail and all, this should really be about you."
Dan: "Go ahead, twist my arm. But first, I have forgotten the fucking alphabet. Does William Carlos Williams go under 'W,' or any other letter of the alphabet?"
Eric: "Wow, your shit is dire right now. Thank God Serena hasn't called me to come support her in this time of chaos."
Dan: "Thank God we're both ignoring her phone calls, you mean!"
(High five.)
Dan: "You swear not to tell anyone or laugh?"
Eric: "I'll take your secret to my grave, but laughter is an uncontrollable bodily response."
Dan: (Tickles Eric until he nearly pees. They lie there in a heap of cheekbones and pecs.)
Dan: "I kissed Blair Waldorf."
(The usual Dan Humphrey Word Vomit.)
Eric: "Okay, not really into listening to you rationalize this for a million years. How about we address the fact that somehow this makes me feel like your life is imperiled?"
Dan: "Yeah, I know what you mean. I just wish I knew if she liked me, you know, 'in that way.'"
Eric: "Oh! You are ass-backwards crushing on Blair Waldorf!"
Dan: "Oh! You just made up a phrase that already means something different! Very fetch, Cher Horowitz."
Blair: "I have consumption."
Dorota: "Consumption not since 19th century. They have vaccine."
Blair: (Actually does mention malaise.)
Dorota: (Compares her to Edie Falco somehow.)
Epperly: "Hey Blair, I know I fired you a couple of times and then recommended you for a high-powered job that you torpedoed, but you still seem like a reliable worker to me."
Blair: "Is this a trick?"
Epperly: "It's all a trick! This is show biz!"
Blair: (Heads immediately and crazily out the door to help style the Rhodes Royalty shoot.)
Epperly: "But Chuck, why did you make me call Blair? She is a ticking time bomb!"
Chuck: "Because Blair needs to feel like a Powerful Woman, and is so bad about actually being a Powerful Woman that styling a cynical photo shoot about rich criminals might actually help. Then we will fall in love."
Epperly: "I am just about disengaged enough to indulge that nonsense ever since I went to Bali and fell in Love with Javier Bardem even though he distracted me from my constant Praying and Eating."
Aunt Carol is married to Toby in real life, was on Sisters in the last season, and was the hardcore nerd girl from the last year of Lost, and yet in none of these roles did she have the breathy, affected, obnoxious tone of voice she's working here: The resentful "I'm playing a socialite" timbre of a woman who thinks she's too good for Gossip Girl despite having ended up on Gossip Girl. Before even hearing this voice, Lily is downing Chardonnay. Afterward, we all will be.
Lily: "Going to jail is nothing compared to this betrayal, Mother."
CeCe: "She's your sister! Specifically the prodigal one that I love even more than the one who is meticulously playing out the life I determined for her in her crib."
Lily: "I hate her."
Everybody: "Why?"
Carol, verbatim: "Hi, Sis! I always knew your house of cards would collapse eventually, but I never dreamed you'd actually wind up behind bars!"
Everybody: "Oh, it's because she's a bitch. Got it."
Carol: (Fifty bitchy things in a row. Even kicks the Rufus-puppy.)
Lily: "Whatever. I want to do a Dolce Vita theme for our Rhodes Women portrait, since I'll probably never see daylight again."
Carol: "No way, let's do Chicago. You could play Roxie Hart! Because she was in jail!"
Lily: "God, you are Abramsing out so hardcore right now."
Carol: "I have the upper moral hand!"
Lily: "Well, I have a portrait that documents my place in society."
Taschen: "No you don't. We just found out about your crimes."
Gossip Girl, verbatim: "Uh-oh, Lily! Looks like instead of being on the pages, you're about to have the book thrown at you..."
What the fuck is Gossip Girl talking about most of the time?
DOWNSTAIRS
Waif: "Hey, are you Serena?"
Serena: "No, I'm the girl getting a cab and jetting the hell on out of here."
Waif: "I'm your cousin Charlotte, I'm here to stalk you and dose you with U4EA and set fire to the homecoming float."
Serena: "I haven't been stalked by any secretly crazy people from my past in about ten minutes, so this is awesome! Come on, I owe you a coffee before the stalking starts."
UPSTAIRS
CeCe: "William has solved the Taschen problem."
Rufus: "I hate solutions."
William: "I know Benedikt Taschen personally."
Rufus: "I hate when my wife is happy."
William: "I'd be happy to call him and see if I can get the ladies back in the book."
Rufus: "I hate when things work out for the best."
CRAZYTOWN
Cousin Charlie: "Remember that time you took me on Claus's yacht and it was too big for the Vanessa Abrams part of my dumb mom's brain?"
Serena: "I hate when people Dan out about how my world is toxic."
Charlie, verbatim: "Okay, so you and your brother didn't both end up going to a mental institution? And your dad didn't give your mom fake cancer? And your mom didn't send an innocent man to prison just to get you back into private school?"
Serena: "You're right. We are the worst."
Charlie: "No, those things sound excellent to me, because I am a lunatic."
Serena: "Okay, I'm going to show you my world. It starts at Barney's and ends at Intermix. That's my whole world. That and vodka. That, and vodka, and dodging stray bullets from Blair's shenanigans. And getting roofied."
Charlie: "I cannot wait to get roofied!"
It's weird because she looks like Serena and Blair finally had a baby together, but on the inside she's like if Jenny's Crazy and Georgina's Crazy had a baby together. Meanwhile, it takes Carol and Lily all of five seconds to reconcile their differences enough to go on their own shopping spree so that they can track down gold unitards and try out to be Solid Gold dancers. I did not make any of those things up.
Epperly: "[Rich people] will be shot with [their other rich people], while Chuck Bass will be photographed all alone, looking dour and rapey."
Blair: "Hey, he has an uncle. Maybe we should call his uncle! I have forgotten about everything that has ever happened on this show, so I think that's a good idea."
Epperly, apropos of nothing: "Everybody has a soulmate!"
Blair: "I recently had a bit of a life-changer tossed my way too, so I understand that you are now crazy due to Bali. In my case, I kissed a 'person' and things were clarified."
Epperly: "What person?"
Blair: "None of your business. I hate nosy people who only exist to listen in on other people's conversations."
Vanessa: "...Hi, guys. Thanks for noticing me."
Blair, verbatim: "Fut The Wuck is she doing here?"
(Chonks a lapdog at her face.)
Vanessa: "I'm only here to make money for Raman and other sad poor-people food. I go to NYU and wear only rags. One day I will start a rooftop garden and eat as many leeks as I want, but for now it's just these paltry jobs doing photography for Taschen. I am saving for a chicken."
Charlie: "Thanks for all the things you keep buying me!"
Serena: "It's how we express affection. You'll see! Take this necklace from around my neck!"
Charlie: "Will it magically confer on me the ability to assume your likeness?"
Serena: "No! What an odd thing to ask. Anyway, let's go buy more objects."
Aunt Carol says awful shit like: "You might be Upper East Side blueblood, and I might be Florida bohemian, but at bottom, the Rhodes sisters are still badasses from the Valley."
Meanwhile, Lily says awesome shit like: "Rufus! Yeah, we found leg warmers! ...No, I'm not drunk! Although..."
The photo shoot is back on before you can say "split of chardonnay," but then who should appear but Charlie and Serena, looking similar.
Charlie: "Mom in a unitard. Awesome."
Carol: "Charlotte, what are you doing in New York City? I locked you in the houseboat on purpose! Go do your worksheets! And take your pills!"
Charlie: "You are not my supervisor!"
DUMBO
Chuck shows up at Dan's door, weirding them both out. He quickly ascertains that the Kisser in question of his little honey is none other than Dan Humphrey, which raises his gorge among other things, and in the process convinces Dan that Blair is in love with him or some such. Dan tells Chuck to let her figure out her mystery feelings, and says things like, "She's intelligent. She's intuitive, you know? She... Weeps when she watches Nights of Cabiria" -- which is a movie about a hooker that is constantly getting pushed out of windows and chopped up by her boyfriends until one day she meets a bunch of kids on skateboards and they have a parade, the end -- so Chuck calls Epperly back so they can do even more schemes.
Seeing Charlie in clothes that she neither made herself nor fought a hobo to get, Carol loses her fucking mind and pretty much calls Serena a whore on the way to demanding that Charlie give up all her wonderful gowns and precious emeralds and what have you. She won't even stay for the photograph, such is the state of her ire and general moral rectitude.
Carol: "I left this life to raise Charlie in the real world, and I am not letting you seduce her."
CeCe, moments later: "Really? Because you take my money all the time so I don't see why you're being such a pill to Lily about it."
Carol, where S can hear her: "Don't throw my behavior in my face! Just fork over the money. I said I would come to NYC and support Lily, and I've done nothing of the sort."
CeCe: "You're staying for the picture, or heads will roll."
Carol: "Wrong, I can do whatever I want."
Serena: "I have finally found someone on earth who is a bigger hypocrite than my mother. I honestly don't know what to do with this information."
DUMBO
Dan: "So apparently I'm being included in the Modern Royalty book, under the section titled 'People Who Are Not Actually In This Book, Stupid.'"
Eric: "But even just in terms of social climbing your sister is twice the man you are."
Dan: "Like she exists on this show."
Eric: "Maybe this is a scheme by Blair."
Dan: "Maybe this is a scheme by Blair, to raise my social status so I'll be a more suitable suitor!"
Eric: "That makes zero fucking sense, but okay."
Dan: "If it did make any sense at all, it still wouldn't bother me, because I love her!"
Eric: "Hey, did you happen to tell S that you kissed Blair?"
Dan: "There's nothing to tell. Yet."
(Yet!)
Eric: "Okay. Put on some real clothes before your photo shoot. It's not Modern Lumberjacks."
CHEZ WALDORF
Dorota: "How come I'm packing underwear for a photo shoot?"
Blair: "Because if I'm leaving the house I might as well get laid, and because I finally have the courage to tell that certain someone about my love."
Dorota: "Okay, I must protest. This is going too far."
Blair: "What are you talking about?"
Dorota: "The reason you take to bed! Shame from emotional affair with Lowly Boy!"
Blair: "It's Lonelyboy, and it wasn't an affair, just a kiss, and it just made me wish I was kissing Chuck."
Dorota: "Are you sure about that?"
Blair: "Darling, I have to be."
Much prince/toad metaphor follows, along with all kinds of mirror-talking and odd angles, which, not for nothing, but I totally forgot about the shoe Blair left the Prince until this week -- wasn't it the same shoe as one of the mismatched pair Blair was wearing when she lost her damn mind that one time? Yes. In fact, the shoe thing has been going on this whole time. That is fantastic, actually. Well done.
Serena tracks down Charlie returning all the crap Serena bought her, and after some apologia Serena drops some knowledge on her cousin that Carol isn't quite the paragon of virtue she thinks she is. I really think Serena's skipping some necessary chapters in the Rhodes Women Manual. You can't just jump right to "Your Mother Is A Fraud" without going a little nuts. Plus you miss all the great parts about sex and drinking and acting out, which are what make the whole thing worth it.
Functionary: "The revised portrait concept is William van der Woodsen and his two children."
Eric: "And here I was getting offended thinking I was suddenly a Rhodes Woman."
Rufus: "And here I was getting offended because that's the only thing I ever do."
CeCe: "And here I am taking care of motherfucking business, once again."
(She sends Eric to find William, heads off to distract Lily, and threatens the functionary with death if she mentions anything.)
Rufus: "Hey! What should I do?"
Nobody: (Cares.)
Nate: "Hey, I've been looking all over for you in this vastly more entertaining TV show where we have eyebrows and talk about your mom."
Raina: "So what's going on is, Taschen wants us in the Modern Royalty book, which apparently was the game-changer my dad was talking about I guess. Since I didn't want to take a picture with him, they asked me if I wanted to take it with my mom. Since my mom exploded, that made me sad. It's my first emotion. I am not dealing well."
Nate: "I lost my mom to drugs years ago, so I can identify. Cutting myself off from my dad was really tough. You feel all alone, I get it. How does this affect the plot?"
Raina: "In no way at all."
Dan: "I'm here for my photo shoot!"
Blair: "What the hell are you doing here and/or talking about?"
Dan: "I know this was a lie!"
Blair: "Because it was totally obvious?"
(Her eyes cross as she downloads the necessary information from the brain she and Chuck share.)
Blair: "This is a Chuck scheme! He wanted you to be humiliated at a photo shoot to show me that he knows we kissed!"
Seriously, that's what happened.
Meanwhile, Lily starts crying backstage when Serena shows up, and says some very sweet and heartfelt things: "We've been through so much together, and I let you down so many times, and here you are." Serena's touched, but tells her not to cry her makeup off, because every student eventually must aid her master. Of course, Carol ruins everything by running in screaming about Charlie.
Carol: "She ran away and will be murdered! This is what happens to people who hang out with you, Serena!"
Lily: "Don't talk that way about my daughter!"
Serena: "Well, she kind of has a point."
Lily: "I am experimenting with being a parent!"
Serena: "All I did was tell her how you're a total hypocrite that has been Humphreying our family down her whole life but still taking Rhodes money. I don't know why that would unmoor her mind. Unless of course she's dangerously unstable..."
Lily: "Of course Mother paid you to be here. I am so foolish to think that you would have come because you cared."
Carol: "I don't. What part of this is a surprise? Why are you running away crying?"
Blair: "You had Epperly hire me, and call Dan and tell him that he was an Up & Comer?"
Dan: "I am so humiliated! Even though I knew it was a trick!"
Blair: "Pretty lame takedown, honestly."
Chuck: "I just wanted you to see that you shouldn't be kissing him!"
Blair: "We are not together, and you kiss everybody."
Chuck, tellingly: "You're not supposed to kiss him!"
Blair and Chuck painfully/awkwardly agree that their kiss meant "nothing" and Blair admits that she was going to come clean to Chuck tonight, about the kiss and what it made her decide, but that in the end Chuck is still just a tool.
Blair: "Dan Humphrey may not be royalty, but at least he's not a child."
Which doesn't help, because the whole point of going back to Chuck was to rule out the possibility of Dan, which makes her even more pissed at Chuck, considering this was not the hill they were supposed to die on. That shit was straight out of the Miss Carson playbook: Oooh, Chuck invited Dan to the opera at 8:30 instead of 8! Total social burn!
Rufus: "It's one thing to be edged out of my family; I'm used to that and frankly it confirms my self-esteem issues and gives me something to bitch about. But cutting Lily out of her own photo?"
William: "None of that actually happened. Let me figure out what went wrong before Lily finds out."
Lily: "Finds out what?"
William: "Nothing, you look pretty."
Lily: "That's cool, I generally just agree with everything you say. Plus, I'm like 95% white wine by weight at this point. I'm going to the pokey tomorrow! Take my picture, Cecil B.!"
Charlie: "I'm here too. Pay no attention to the bloody scalp in my hands, I got into a rumble with some Crips downtown."
Photography: "We have no interest in any of you. This picture is for William van der Woodsen and his two children."
Rufus: "I did a great job of keeping that secret, no?"
Everybody: "William, you've done it again."
William: "You slowly poison a woman to death one time and everybody just thinks you're the kind of person who would rearrange a meaningless photograph. I am sick of this shit!"
ELSEWHERE
Blair: "This looks like the dress Diana wore the day after she became princess."
Chuck: "It is, I got it for you to wear in my photo with me, because it worked out so well for the People's Princess. Today was going to be a very complicated day, what with all the schemes and whatnot. Damn your intuitive powers of knowing my schemes!"
Blair: "I know, it's a hassle. We both wanted me to stop being a Powerful Wannabe so that we could build parallel Empires, but then I kissed Humphrey and realized that you are still a massive tool."
Chuck: "That's my most exciting feature!"
Blair: "I'll miss it. Adieu, Chuck."
William: "Lily, I totally did not sabotage your photo shoot."
Lily: "I am too drunk to stand. I'm more interested in harping on my sister's hypocrisy."
William: "She lives on a houseboat in Miami. I'd say you won."
Lily: "Except for how I'm going to jail. You're a very good husband, when you're not poisoning me."
Rufus, appearing: "I just spoke to Julia Chaplin and found out that Benedikt Taschen was traveling and never got your message. The van der Woodsen photo was the editor's idea, and William had nothing to do with it."
William: "That sounded like an apology. I know you're being as classy as a Humphrey possibly ever could. Let's all go home together like one big scary family that's missing half of its members and pretend to be happy."
Lily: "I'll grab the wine!"
Dan: "Hey B, what did you want to talk to me about earlier? Was it about us being in love and stuff?"
Vanessa's Spidey Sense: "Schwing!"
Blair: "No, the opposite."
Dan: "Oh, okay. Listen, your prince is out there."
Blair: "Yours too, Humphrey. In the meantime, please go back to Serena and get off my plate."
Vanessa: "I am going to fuck up absolutely everything for everybody. Again."
Charlie: "Mom, stop yelling at CeCe about how you have to keep taking her horrible, evil money. You sound like Vanessa Abrams."
Carol: "But honey..."
Charlie: "-- No. Serena's been giving me lessons in making rash decisions and telling my parents to fuck off all the time."
Carol: "stop: Public screwing, horse rustling, and coke-fueled threesomes."
Serena: "Hey, Charlie! I didn't see you hiding behind that ficus and smelling my hair."
Charlie: "Listen, I hate my mom and I'm homeless. Can you give me some 'advice'? By which I mean 'somewhere to live or some spending cash'?"
Serena: "Let's go eat gelato!"
Blair: "Did somebody say gelato?"
Charlie: "Your hair smells so nice! Can I climb inside your clothes with you?"
Blair and Chuck do a lot of staring at each other; his photo is alone, looking dour and rapey.
morning, Blair and Serena are a tangle of limbs, while Charlie's sleeping on the floor. She wakes up and goes around smelling all their things while they are sleeping. See, Charlie is different from Jenny because Jenny was a rebel queen usurper, while Charlie is the displaced princess: She actually was born to this manor, which means she's going to stretch out crazily in directions Jenny never could. But since S never gets the "princess" thing applied to her, I'm guessing it's going to be a fight with Blair if there's going to be a fight at all, because they're the two princesses this year. I could be wrong, but that's what makes sense to me.
Carol comes back to Lily looking apologetic, and Lily cracks some joke about teaching crafts in jail like Martha Stewart, and they discuss how they both wanted each other's approval this whole time for trying on their different versions of bohemia, but that once Carol got knocked up with Charlie -- what if Keith van der Woodsen was her father or something? -- she had to come back to CeCe's crystal teat. Which kind of makes Lily's standing on ceremony about the hypocrisy a little less fun. But then Carol goes full-Vanessa condescending -- "Turning yourself in, not giving a damn what people think? That's my Lily" -- and offers to smuggle Lily pot brownies in jail. God, I hate Aunt Carol.
Serena: "So how are you going to totally burn your mom today?"
Charlie: "I'm going to play it by ear!"
Serena: "No, girl. You just tell her you're an adult now and that you appreciate her support in whatever you want to do. Parents eat that shit like candy because it makes them feel like they're in control."
Charlie: "No wonder my mom hates you! Hey, that guy you sometimes date who's also your brother: Am I like officially related to him? What kind of perfume do you wear? Are you allergic to ether?"
Serena's phone rings and it's Vanessa, and she does that awesome nose-wrinkling scoff she only does when Vanessa calls her, and this is the message:
"So I know you don't want to hear from me, but I had to share. Dan Humphrey kissed Blair Waldorf. You can confront them, they'll deny it. But it's true, I overheard them myself. And believe me, if I was lying just to mess with you, it wouldn't be something as unbelievable as this."
...Valid. The thing about Vanessa is that she's never not doing the right thing, and she's the most eloquent person on the show when she explains her reasons. And yet.
Everybody meets up for a Prada brunch, it having been 24 hours, and by "everybody" I mean "hardly anybody." Rufus and William are holding hands, Eric's weirded out, CeCe is bored of all their claptrap, and Carol and Lily are working things out. Who's not there: Pilot Inspektor, Chuck Bass, or anybody cool. That's when Charlie appears and says she's staying on the UES, hopefully in Serena's room at PRADA, so that she can get real weird.
Carol, verbatim: "Charlie, that's a mistake! What happened wasn't so long ago. You're not ready for this!"
Charlie: "I am. Because of you, I know who I am, and... Nothing's gonna change that. And thanks for supporting me."
(Serena escorts her to Jenny/Serena's old room, congratulating her on railroading poor dumb Aunt Carol into going back to Grey Gardens alone.)
Lily: "Hey, what's this about a 'thing' that happened? There's a 'thing'?"
Carol: "Yeah, a few months ago she got kicked out of college because..."
Lily: "Because what? She obsessed on Minka Kelly and tore out a girl's bellybutton ring with her teeth? Pretended she was carrying Dan's baby? Ran off to Haiti? Set a fashion designer's entire oeuvre on fire in an old barrel? I'm in suspense here, sis."
Carol: "Yeah, she actually... You know what, never mind. Just keep an eye on her."
Lily: "Totally. One thing we make sure to do in this house is supervise our children."
Raina: (Her mom is either dead or not dead; not even Nate can care.)
Gossip Girl, verbatim: "Walking down the primrose path, you risk finding hell instead of happily ever after."
No clue. No idea what that means.
Everybody in the "family," with the exception of half of the family, suddenly has to pull it together when Rufus appears with Laurie Simmons. CeCe sits down between William and Rufus, adorably, while Eric and Charlie get acquainted. Behind CeCe's hairdo, Eric and Dan link pinkies without looking at each other. Pilot Inspektor lies in a ditch somewhere, choking on his own blood. Jenny is jumping out of trees onto passersby somewhere upstate. Chuck stands very still and sad and scary all alone, looking at his portrait where he's standing very still and sad and scary and all alone. The phone rings: Lily's sentence. She lets it ring.
But all is not so dark: "Why does love have to be so hard, Dorota? All I ever wanted was a simple fairy tale. Kate Middleton has it, and I have much shinier hair. Although she does have a better assortment of hats..." Dorota tells her not to despair, that destiny is full of surprises. And out of a taxicab, holding one Vivier shoe on a velvet pillow, steps: Our Prince.
Tonight: Presumably Serena attempts to care about Dan kissing Blair without giving Vanessa Abrams the satisfaction.