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Remember that nice boy LA Serena met at the beginning of the summer when she randomly got a job from David O. Russell? Not so nice. Feeling a little Blairness about Serena effortlessly taking over his job, he arranges to have her deliver marijuana to that pee-smelling vampire-knight actor from the Olivia years. She flails a bit, but her cockblocker finally explains to her what it's like for those of us who are not Serena van der Woodsen. She vaguely comprehends that it is probably very shitty for us, and vaguely quits or whatever. She ends up getting a way better job out of nowhere, of course, and we don't ever find out what happened to him -- or care -- but it's nice to see her actually think about shit and make decisions, even if they're really still Chuck's decisions.
Because meanwhile Chuck is racing his motorcycle around, dating lesbians, doing all the things Kristen Stewart does, to make the visions of a hairless, sparkling Blair appear. He is a danger junkie! Wearing his scars on the outside, these days! Jumps off roofs, rather than just blubbering at the edge of them! Bleeds just to know he's alive! This Eat Yes Love philosophy -- delivered with just enough hilariously tongue-in-cheek smarmy arrogance -- convinces Nate to pretend he's a movie star at this Hollywood party, which leads him inexorably into the bedroom of Elizabeth Hurley, who coincidentally has designs on Nate and the UES anyway. Nate is, as usual, the best.
Except, as usual, for Dan, who gets wind of a Vanity Fair reprint of one of the chapters from his as-yet-unpublished book Inside and must entreat Prince Louis to get it pulled, since it concerns Blair kissing him in the foyer that time. That glorious, long-ago time that she did that. (I don't know if you know this, but it might be helpful to know the masthead at VF, which goes: Associate Editor, Editor, Department Editor, Editor-In-Chief Graydon Carter, Prince of Monaco. So that's how he can help with this.)
It pulls Prince Louis away from an already-stressing (and super-bitchy) Blair, who is throwing fits over minor shit because she doesn't even want to marry him anyway, because she is in denial about being in love with Dan by thinking she's in denial about being in love with Chuck. So while Louis's off once again fixing her shit, Blair begins to imagine a conspiracy and runs to -- of course -- Dan to whisk her off to the Hamptons, where he stashed Eric's broken bloody body sometime this summer.
Dan agrees without explaining the reasons she should not call off her engagement, being a weak sort of fellow, but before he can take her out of the city and ruin her life for her, Louis arrives at the loft. Blair leapfrogs right over the obvious explanation (that just like every other guy she's ever dated, Dan is fucking him) and into a confused sort of inability to understand why Dan would do that. And of course Dan can't say that he loves her in front of the Prince, or out loud, or anywhere except in his diary with the heart-shaped lock, so she leaves pissed. Which, okay, but it was still a shitty thing for him to do. So of course he is immediately rewarded with a $10K advance from Vanessa for the book.
Serena elects to stay in LA when the boys head back to us in the UES, so she's all alone when she runs into Cousin Charlie from Florida, or whom we know as Out-Of-Work Actress Ivy, who has moved to LA to work in a restaurant with her awesome boyfriend (played by the lovable and talented Brian J. Smith, which means he'll probably turn out gay anyway). For some reason Ivy flips right back into character the second she sees Serena, which I'm hoping means the possibility there's a secret level of crazy underneath the crazy she was pretending to be last year, because she gave good crazy. And if not quite, well, there's always Georgina.
Not a lot we've not seen before -- winking about reusing plotpoints is not the same as writing a new story, FYI -- but it's always nice to see Nate get his tadpole on, and frankly there's a twist in the way Blair keeps playing Louis against his family that feels different even though it's verbatim the same shit that she pulled every episode last season. But Dan's journey looks amazing this year, and they're doing wonderful things with Serena so far, Chuck's heading into self-parody which is where he should always live, and with Nate it's kind of like hanging a lantern on his uselessness makes him sexier or something.
Also: Blair and Dorota are both pregnant, so deal with that shit. (Which reminds me, who's a brother gotta blow to get Tavi on this show? Did we just miss that window completely?)
Go behind the scenes with the show's cast as they filmed in Los Angeles.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS
Vanessa ran off with Dan's book, stomped caveman-style into a publishing office and, brandishing a femur, made them publish his book anonymously. Apparently she also secured reprint rights for one particularly Blairish love chapter with Graydon Carter. Then, like an overaccessorized rabbit, she sped off to España and was shot in the pancreas and died horribly, still clutching the papers that proved her baby belonged to Rufus all along.
Dan and Blair were in love, but that didn't stop her from letting Chuck on up into her Prince Grimaldi situation. While she was willing to ignore Adele's wisdom and ditch the Prince for her demon lover, it was Chuck that decided (iffily on her behalf) that she'd have a royal wedding in the fall, before heading out for a post-Blair homoerotic tour with Nate around the world -- as it were -- to Chiang Mai, where Chuck won a yacht.
Cousin Charlie was nuts, and then it turned out she was Ivy. We still don't know who the real Charlie is, and maybe we'll never find out or care, but Ivy went back to Florida to be with her awesome boyfriend and held onto some of Charlie's trustfund checks just in case. In the interim, she and the boyfriend have moved to LA...
Which is where Serena headed, to "find" herself some more, and then "found" a perfectly pleasant-seeming young man whose job -- helping with a screen adaptation of her favorite book -- she also "found." Turns out she has a Gladwellian ability to connect projects to people and people to other people, so her stint as a PR PA wasn't so far off. Also, consider this postmodern touch at the end of Beautiful & Damned in which a Fitzgerald character references a Fitzgerald novel inside another Fitzgerald novel, and telescope it to here:
"You know these new novels make me tired. My God! Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I've read This Side of Paradise. Are our girls really like that? If it's true to life, which I don't believe, the generation is going to the dogs. I'm sick of all this shoddy realism."
The book (collected for publication and immediately filmed in 1922) is about finding a reason to live, a vocation: What do you do with yourself when you have nothing to do? A question Nate and Serena -- in particular, of the five leads -- have been asking for four years now, with never anything so much as a big question mark as follow-up. But maybe that'll change this year.
Princess Sophie: "In our country, a bride always walks with carnations."
Blair: "I absolutely loathe carnations. You obviously didn't know that."
[Note: Carrie Bradsaw: "I think they're making a comeback."-- RS.]
Louis: "This is going to be one of those things where you say you want to marry into the royal family and then abruptly shit all over the family traditions, putting me into an impossible situation and becoming ever harder and more screeching. I can tell."
Blair: "Honey, none of us are getting out of here alive. That should have been clear."
Princess Sophie: "Vogue Paris would like to have a photo of you in my great-grandmother's wedding dress for their November issue."
Eleanor, verbatim: "Vogue Paris? Is perhaps the best thing to happen to the world. Ever."
Blair: "Yeah, they can put my engagement photos in-between the photo spreads of eight-year-olds masturbating, it'll be a hoot. But not in Sophie's ancestral wedding dress, and not holding carnations."
Princess Sophie: "Look, do you want to marry into our family or not?"
Blair: "Yes. Yes to both. I have a Milo in my womb and a crazy in my mind."
Dorota: "All aboard the Prosecco train! Everyone in this house is an alcoholic."
Gossip Girl, actually trying to form comprehensible sentences this season, texts: This just in. Due to a reader's dumpster dive outside a well-known Fifth Avenue Prewar, it appears someone we know and love is in the family way. So this is your humble Gossip Girl issuing an APPB... Who could the mother of our scandal be? Dorota scrambles and acts super weird.
Blair: "...I can't drink Prosecco right now."
Everybody: "Why not?"
Blair: "I have suddenly gone Paleo?"
STUGOTS, 1 CUP/CHEZ WALDORF
Serena: "...I can't drink champagne right now on this yacht."
Everybody: "Why not?"
Serena: "Even more unbelievably, I have given up drinking for the summer. Now I live the LA way, which means making great healthy decisions."
New Theory: It's not psychic twin stuff, or a blatant red herring, it's just that Serena got Blair pregnant and is feeling sympathy symptoms.
Gossip Girl: "I know nobody actually cares who's pregnant, so trust me when I say you will find out by the end of this episode. And you already knew that anyway, given the only storyline that would actually twist on this. And because shippers are fucking asking for it."
CHEZ WALDORF/STUGOTS, 1 CUP
Blair: "Serena! I need a drink! Louis has been giving Sophie everything just because they are a royal family with traditions that go back hundreds of years and Sophie's cautiously allowed me to marry him with plenty of reservations which should make us both act right. He is up his mother's sweater more than Italians get. Meanwhile, my hair throughout the first half of this episode looks like I just ran a marathon. I'm afraid Vanessa put a hex on me."
Serena: "Your one-liners are kinda first-drafty in this episode. I guess you really are off your game. So, Real Talk. Finding a balance between your mother and your fiancé has gotta be tough. I'm sure he's just trying to keep the peace the best he can. Say Yes. Yes to the dress. Yes to everything. Chuck has shown me the way."
Blair: "Stop being so rational, I called you because you are my insane best friend. Also, they want me to be in French Vogue Paris, for Chrissake. Monsters!"
Serena: "Yes. Say it."
Blair: "I..."
Serena: "Logistics have become my forte, so listen. If you wear the dress for Vogue Paris, she'll have a picture of you doing what she wants. Then you can leverage that when you decide on the dress you'll actually be getting married in. Done."
Blair: "There is a hole in my heart that can only be filled by you. Please come home and talk me down from the other eighty-seven ledges of my life."
Serena: "I have to Be Places. Call you later? XOXO."
Dorota: "Miss Blair, did you know we are both pregnant? Gossip Girl does."
Blair: Flicks her in the left eye with a dinner napkin and sends her on her way.
B&D
Serena: "Could you tell Jane I need to say Yes to her? Say Yes."
Underling: "I don't know who you are, but you've cast a spell over my mind. Yes."
Marcus: "I don't remember telling you that you could bring friends to this set, or breathe oxygen on this set, or say Yes on this set, or snickersnee bloo-blah."
Serena: "Yesssssss."
Montagne: "My grandfather is Atticus Finch! I will have you arrested!"
But wait.
Marshall: "Who are these beguiling tiny sex-goblins you've brought? One is shiny like a well-fed puppy and the other one is broody and smells like balls. But in a good way, like a Tom Ford way."
Team Blonde: "This is Chuck Bass."
Chuck Bass: Giggles disarmingly.
Zoë Bell: "I am the only stunt person anybody knows of. Can I give you a tour of the set?"
Chuck: "Yes. You sure can. I think also you could benchpress me."
Zoë Bell: "Don't get ahead of it."
Marco: "You are not allowed to talk to Jane. Consider yourself cock blocked."
Nate, verbatim: "The zip codes may be different, but douchebags are the same no matter where you go. But now he's gone. Go find Jane."
Nameless Casting Agent, C.S.A.: "Hey, S. Is this glorious specimen my noon audition?"
Serena: "Yes. Yes, that's totally how things work, from what I can tell. Say yes, Nate!"
Nate: "Yes."
Serena: "You're gonna be great! You act like a person all the time."
DUMBO
Dan: "Hey, Epperly. When you're not busy firing me from jobs I know you love doing me favors. Thanks for calling VF and finding out that Graydon Carter personally reads the slush pile."
Epperly: "[Muted trombone sounds.]"
Dan: "Oh, you mean it was agented? I have a literary agent I don't know about? Everything about this is illegal and illogical, you say? Okay, I have to go."
Rufus: "Wait, so why would Vanessa steal your book and sell it to a huge publisher behind your back? And do you think she might have talked to your Invisible Sister?"
Dan: "Why on earth would she do that?"
Rufus: "I never know what I am talking about."
Dan: "Anyway, this is one gift horse I'll be inspecting mouth-first. It's not because I'm so very talented, it's because my story is about a celebrity. I'm the Hamish Bowles of... Actually, I'm kind of just Hamish Bowles."
The fucking awesomest thing I ever read in Vogue was this mindblowing profile Hamish did of Blake Lively where they went surfing ("Isn't surfing a gas, Hamish?" asks Jon. "It's soul candy") and at one point he looks over and she's suddenly on her back on the surfboard, staring up at the instructor saying, "I want to watch you watch the wave. To see what you are experiencing." I nearly called Gwyneth right then and told her she'd been replaced in my heart, because that shit is gold. It is soul candy.
Dan, trusting in his ability to connect random dots like an insane shut-in, abruptly peaces. Sayonara DUMBO loft, hello third-act complication!
CHEZ WALDORF
Blair: "Louis, I prematurely accept your apology."
Louis: "I must prematurely preempt said unspoken apology. I bend to Maman in all things. I smooth for the future in this way."
Blair, verbatim: "The future! Is here!"
Louis: "You know how every episode last season I would come up with some hard-and-fast rule about the dynasty that we might ignore only at our peril, and then by the last act it was suddenly not that big a deal at all?"
Blair: "I'll prematurely take this as an apology. I'll take what I can get, apology-wise."
Louis: "Do you want to go to that thing I said you couldn't go to?"
Blair: "When we ignore every tradition out of some misguided attempt to prove our relationship, it takes all meaning out of the relationship. You do realize that?"
Louis: "Yes, as far as the princess thing, but it also goes a long way to validating our relationship for anybody who might think I'm just a layover before the Dan and Chuck bullshit starts up again."
Blair: "Well, it's certainly working on me."
B&D
Jane: "[Producing-a-movie speak.]"
Serena: "Sorry I didn't follow up with you after our last meeting."
Jane: "When I say I hope I didn't scare you off, what I mean is that you are dead to me."
Serena: "I'm not a flake, I just didn't want to step on any cockblocking toes, such as those belonging to Marshall."
Jane: "He is a transparent little swot, isn't he? Your treachery is noted. I like it."
Serena: "I certainly wasn't suggesting that he should be..."
Jane: "Come off it, Blondie. You were tattling. Be real. Now, would you like to be a movie producer's number one guy for no reason?"
Serena: "Yes."
Jane makes a subtle, curt move with one hand, a command is whispered into a walkie-talkie, and on the other side of the set a blowgun is readied with a tiny dart.
Marshall: "So you pretty much got me put on probation, eh? Cool, no foul. Here's a tasklist full of totally legit and non-bogus activities..."
Serena: "Pull tomorrow's sides, update phone sheet, take dogs to groomer, write coverage of Eugenides... Buy drugs for a known addict movie star I've dealt with extensively in the past... Yep, nothing untoward here. Did you really think this would take you all day?"
Marshall: "Look, either you're a hot blonde who deserves nothing, or you're competent and resourceful. This shit is giving me whiplash. But since I resent you to an unrealistic degree, I'm just going to say good luck and hope you die in a car accident."
Serena: "Bitch, I've survived more car accidents than you have Grindr mishaps."
Patti Stanger: "That's just what I was..."
Absolutely Fucking Everyone: "Save it, loser."
Chuck: Abruptly jumps off a building, like in every episode. It is a stunt, like in every episode, but this time it's literally a stunt. He falls onto a big puffy thing, no harm done.
Zoë Bell: "If you were an employee, I would fire you! But since you're a random sex gnome that smells like Tom Ford's jockstrap, I will go on a date with you instead! You have a flagrant, devil-may-care attitude that attracts me, as a stuntwoman. And a woman. And a Kiwi."
Chuck: "Just one question. Did Quentin Tarantino ever get weird about your feet?"
RANDOM DISPENSARY
How was the fake audition? Let's listen as Nate explains, in a breezy awesome way that calls to mind the best Nate performances in history, such as that episode where he randomly started Vogueing and was totally amazing in every scene anyway: "Well, after I told them I wasn't an actor they said, That's too bad, because you'd be perfect as a kid from an East Coast political family who's constantly manipulated while trying to keep everyone around him happy. They told me that!"
Serena: "That's cool how they've finally settled on you as a codependent fixer by nature. It's always been true but they never really said it before. Even your CLASS WHORE label from that one finale kind of fits, since mostly you whore out to old people. It's kind of nice, when you look at it that way. Nothing would brighten a person's day like doing it with you, that's for sure. Anyway, you should've said Yes! If there was still an Oprah, she would've been all over that."
Nate: "Oh, I like Gayle."
Serena: "Me, too."
Jacob: "If there was still a Gayle, I would still like Oprah more."
Serena: "Anyway, thanks for letting me use your medicinal marijuana card that you got despite having been in California for less than two days. It's incredibly difficult to illegally buy pot in California so I'm glad we went legit."
Nate, awesomely: "Does Patrick Roberts have glaucoma or something? Or like a, like a little nervous twitch?"
I'm calling it. Nate has secretly been one of the best actors on this show the entire time. He is so fucking funny when he's being funny. It's like watching a child actor before they stopped being able to act, if that makes sense. I mean, that's actually really offensive and it's not what I mean, but he's got this naturalistically charming way-of-being that, starting from last year, is occasionally one of the neatest things about this show. I bet he needs directing, but only because the character's always been written as way more conflicted than he actually wants to be played, I think. I know that Nate's always been the odd man out, as far as buzz and the way the show gets talked about, but when he gets to rock he really does. He's funny in an RJ Berger, Awkward., Paul Feig, Jan Oxenberg way, where the lines come slipping out so easily and naturally that you don't even realize how funny they are at first. It takes a confidence and a love of actors, I think, like a Norman Buckley -- or maybe a David Warren too, in this case, being the overall funniest episodes and the best Nate episodes I can think of offhand -- to bring it out. I guess the best way to say it is, the show treats him like a Matthew Settle when it should be treating him like Kelly Rutherford.
I mean, No Homo. And maybe it's just Texas pride and there's obviously something I'm missing -- smarter people than me make these decisions -- but it's so exciting to see him actually do something subtle like this. I thought he was Taylor Lautner guest-starring on Friday Night Lights this whole time, but actually I think it might be the opposite (Scott Porter guesting on ?) and we never knew. He's always been tied with Badgely for most adlibbed line-readings, which is usually a sign of great intelligence or instinct -- even if in both cases it resolves down to a lot of interpolated "okay" in Crawford's case and a lot of stuttering in Penn's* -- but I wonder if we haven't lost some moments due to Nate's stubborn characterization as the Third Hottie, when he should just be the Cool One. This is the downside to plot-centered, not character-centered, storytelling. The female characters have become more and more like their actresses, to great effect, while the men -- with some notable counterexamples -- still service the plot. Which is fine, because I know what the show's about and I love the show, but what works for the goose might work for the gander; especially as the show as a whole has begun moving, S4-5, in its own wonderfully intuitive direction. (To wit, and again: If it weren't for obsessive and diligent shipper brilliance, I wouldn't have understood last season at all, because I wasn't looking at it right.)
*(Until your actual job involves poring over transcripts of this show for hours, just trust me on this. It goes Penn, Chace, Kelly.)
Also, in related-looking (and -feeling) things: I refuse to live in a world where Grey Damon isn't gainfully employed at all times. That kid is great, and he is not going anywhere, so you might as well snag him while you can. How about give Nate a little brother that he needs to take care of, turn them into GG's James and Dave Franco, and call it a day. Solves every single problem. That's what I would do, anyway.
Serena: "Who cares? It was on a list that my greatest enemy on the West Coast gave me in what I'm sure was good faith. I'm more excited about these kooky strain names. Blueberry Headband? Dragon Of Shaolin? Sushi Friday? Between this joke and the sex positions last year, I'm thinking Josh Safran was born for Twitter. Or McSweeney's."
Nate: "Yeah, those are pretty hilarious actually. And inside the show, I must say that Blueberry Headband is probably the best."
Serena: "Wait. You smoke pot?"
They crack each other up, these two. The funniest thing about Crawford being a good comedic actor is when you consider how Nate regularly ends up homeless, forced into prostitution by his father, dating girls whose dads set people on fire, having his heart broken by various cousins and old women and Anderson Cooper's entire family, losing out regularly to the thrill of incest, rescuing his drug addict bitch mother from the garden, and losing his best friend to suicides. And yet it's Chuck who goes around with that face on his face, and for what, he's got like one rapey uncle and that's it. That's his whole problem. That, and the scourge of domestic violence.
Serena: "Nate, you have the least stressful life of anyone who has ever existed."
Nate: "That's the problem. Have you ever read The Beautiful and Damned?"
Serena: "I don't believe so, no."
Nate: "Well, it's like that."
Serena: "If you don't know or like who you are, become someone else! A lame Frenchman married to a whore, for example, or a bisexual Russian girl named Svetlana that gives dudes hotshots and then bolts. Become a Strong Woman like Blair, or dress up like me. That was really big last season, everybody did it. Reinvent yourself as a dickhole, like my brother did last year. Hell, run off to boarding school and get some guy thrown in jail. This show was founded on the principle that you both can and cannot run from who you are. That's why Gossip Girl exists."
I miss Carter Baizen so much, you guys. He is my soul candy; I want to watch him watch the wave. I am Santorini and What Happened is: The boat he stole, it is my heart.
Nate: "For someone who seems even more oblivious than you, I gotta say last year really got to me. There was my dad, Juliet, Raina... You randomly started jerking me around for no reason again..."
Serena: "Yeah, I was on a tear."
Nate: "...So I just think maybe I should do some thinking. But I don't know what that's like."
Serena: "I am on the same page as you, usually, but this time I have discovered the key and it is this. We are in Hollywood, where everybody does it."
ibid., verbatim: "Look at me. I have gone from It Girl to Working Girl in just 3000 miles!"
Nate: "I don't even see the double entendre there."
Serena: "Frankly, I don't think I do either."
Nate: "So you're saying we should go to this party tonight at an unnamed woman's house -- who will be played by Elizabeth Hurley but is named if you can believe this Diana Payne -- and I'll pretend to be someone else?"
Serena: "What do you say?"
Nate: "YES!"
CHEZ WALDORF
Eleanor: "Why are you dressed like you're going to the UN with the Grimaldis?"
Dorota: "She's fucking with Louis's brain again."
Blair: "And if I don't get to go to this boring shit, he can just marry his mother during sweeps instead of me. God knows they'd both love that."
Eleanor: "Sometimes I feel like the Lord Marcus/Lady Catherine thing permanently fucked you up."
Blair: "Ya think?"
Eleanor: "Look, this is nuts. Testing a good man who loves you never ends well. Sometimes you turn them gay. Sometimes the answer to the What Are You Gay test is Yes."
Blair: "In that spirit I shall declare myself. I am a Waldorf Woman. I need to know I still have a voice, and that that voice is heard. Peace out."
Eleanor: "I often wonder why Blair is the way she is."
Dorota: Wordless and yet still risibly over-the-top eyeroll. Slapsticky Dorota is the very worst kind. Why are all Sookie St. Jameses so much prettier and cooler than their material? Why can't I stop hating her?
ROYALTY STREET
Dan: "Hey, Louis! I am just approaching you on the street, where your security team would most likely drop me from ten yards away."
Louis: "I clearly need new security guys. What the fuck do you want?"
Dan: "I wrote a story that this magazine is publishing in their issue, and I really don't want them to, but I have no idea how to stop it, but I figured if you put your royal weight behind it, it could be dead in an hour."
Louis: "You idiot. How does that make any sense at all?"
Dan: "The magazine is Vanity Fair. Aristo blowjobs are sort of their thing."
Louis: "Ah. Got it. Well, sorry, but you can screw."
Dan: "The story is about me putting a Milo in your fiancée's womb."
Louis: "Hop into this pumpkin-shaped diamond-encrusted carriage, and we shall away."
STUGOTS, 1 CUP
Zoë Bell: "Are you ready for our date to that party at Elizabeth Hurley's house?"
Chuck: "I thought you were bringing a third person on our date, like people do."
Zoë Bell: "No, I was going to bring Marylou along, but just for exposition's sake I should probably explain that Marylou is from the bond company and that she goes everywhere Patrick Roberts the Actor goes, because his sobriety is insured and if he falls off the wagon, the film will get shut down."
As if watching Ed Westwick's accent like a hawk isn't enough of a burden for the nitpickers among us, now we've got two people doing it at each other without anybody else around.
Chuck: "I was just being pervy, it really wasn't necessary to... What's this, a Howler from Blair that Nate's hidden from me? Cheeky little... Save The Date? Oh girl, we are not taking your truck. This calls for some serious Bella Swan overreacting. Where is LA's most dangerous twisty road?"
Zoë Bell: "Laurel Canyon, but that's not on our..."
Chuck: "Suit up, Stunty. I got me a vampire to hallucinate."
HOUSE OF PAYNE
Maurice: "Serena, how sorry to see you looking so... Wait, you did all the menial easy-ass things on that list? Maybe this job really is beneath me. Or us. Maybe Hollywood is a glorious mirage, both beautiful and damned."
Serena: "Let me just drop these drugs off with Patrick Roberts the Actor and then you can eat your iPad."
Marco: "Oh, the iPad that used to say 'Buy Patrick Roberts some drugs' but now doesn't? Okay, sure. You go find him and give him some drugs, I'll just be here, victorious. I hate you doing things well!"
Serena: "I am still oddly unbothered by your horrible 'tude."
Serena, wearing Ventura Beach's entire turquoise crop worth of necklaces: "Now, what is your new personality?"
Nate: "Brothaniel Snarchibald, scion of the Flanderbilt fortune."
Serena: "Oh, Nate."
Groupies: "ARE YOU THAT GUY? FROM THAT THING?"
Brothaniel: "...Yes?"
Groupies: "CAN WE HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH?"
Brothaniel: "...Yes?"
Groupies: "DO YOU HAVE A NICE CAR AND RICH PEOPLE STUFF LIKE A PONY?"
Brothaniel: "Yes."
Cougar: "Is this your house?"
Brothaniel: "...Yes?"
Cougar: "Can I get a tour?"
Brothaniel: "Yes?"
Groupies: "But wait..."
Cougar, whirling around on them with her nails: "Hsssssst!"
They scatter to the winds, terrified. They will not watch him watch this wave. No soul candy for you, ladies.
Actor Patrick Roberts: "My, my. If it isn't New York's finest. Nice to see you out and about for once!"
Serena: "Wait, am I cop now? Did I reinvent myself as a cop? Maybe this is harder than I thought. Well, anyway, here are some drugs."
Actor Patrick Roberts: "Great! Wait, doesn't the entire film depend on my sobriety?"
Serena: "That's not something, apparently, about which I would know."
ROYAL LIMOUSINE/CHEZ WALDORF
Blair: "[Bitch bitch bitch]!"
Louis: "Blair, I'm so sorry that I have tried to meet every one of your insane demands. That's really mean of me."
Blair: "Why am I standing in my foyer in this amazing hand-painted-looking bamboo-print gown that is tailored to perfection? With my hair finally looking pretty? Alone?"
Louis: "I must do a thing."
Blair: "You're going with vague on this one? Why don't you just admit that you're already in the UN with your mother?"
Louis: "Because I'm not, you irascible lunatic. I don't lie. At most, I equivocate."
Blair: "FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU"
Louis: "...Okay, I gotta go."
Blair: "Tell your mother to go suck a fuck! I am over this!"
Louis: "Dan, thank you for holding my hand while that went down."
Dan: "Your hands are really soft."
Louis: "It is because I am royalty."
Blair, removing her necklace from before: "Call down to Doorman Jimmy and get me a cab."
Dorota: "Where to?"
Blair: "Fucking Brooklyn, obviously."
HOUSE OF PAYNE
Cougar: "Do you collect photographs and art? Is this a Helmut Newton? Is that Lauren Hutton? Or is it Lisa Taylor? Is this the master bedroom? Let's destroy it."
Brothaniel, to each of the above: "Yes!"
Jenny & Johnny: "Our score for Beautiful and Damned will draw inspiration from Leonard Cohen's for McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Plus, other music things."
Jenny Lewis & Robyn Lively: Two totally different people. If you run into me, ages 10-25, let me know, okay? A lot more stuff would've made a lot more sense. Like how it was never actually possible for Rilo Kiley's lead singer to make me a better rapper through magic spells, for just one example. And that's a good thing, because I doubt my flow would have become nearly so excellent, with outside help. I just want to watch them watch the wave, both of them, and experience what they see. In different ways, they are my soul candy. Nobody can Top That.
Marylou: "How come Patrick Roberts has pot?"
Marshall: "Because Serena is a ninny!"
Serena: "Uh, what is going on? You told me to get him pot."
Marylou: "Actually, he ran straight to me out of guilt for almost smoking pot, so it's a non-issue."
Everybody: "Come on, really?"
Marylou: "Oh yeah. Those rehab people have really fucked with his head."
DUMBO
Dan: "Hey, Blair. What on earth could you be doing here at my loft? Where's Louis?"
Blair: "Listen, I have nowhere else to go. All my friends are in California."
Dan: "I don't even have friends."
Blair: "Are we still friends? I know I ignored you all summer, but that's because I'm awful."
Dan: "I know you are. It's fine. What's up?"
Blair: "I am thinking about calling off my wedding. Unless you have any pertinent information."
Dan: "Do I ever?"
Blair: "Good point. I'm glad you're such an upstanding fellow."
Actually, it's really well acted. He's not being tremendously heinous, somehow, and it seems she's honestly looking for friendship, and he is trying to be supportive. I don't know, I didn't get a particularly gross vibe out of this. I wouldn't call myself a shipper per se, but Blair and Dan are pretty much the entire point of this show -- Serena and Chuck existing as elementals, above and below the material plane, respectively -- and deserve each other in negative and positive ways both, and anyway they're such good actors that they kind of dictate how you come away from the scene, just by the choices that they make. So Blair says she's being above-board -- he honestly is her friend and her last resort -- and Dan somehow comes off as being not incredibly shitty when he says they can work it out, and I buy it. I'll be Beautiful and Damned if I know how he accomplishes it, because anybody else I would call major bullshit on -- especially Daniel Fucking Humphrey -- but somehow it works.
Dan: "So what now?"
Blair: "Take me to Amagansett. CeCe's house is still empty, yes?"
Dan: "Lily's whole life, to hear her tell it."
Blair: "So?"
Dan: "I want to experience what you are seeing, when you watch the wave. We'll take my father's car and we'll call Louis from there. Hold my hand, and we're haaaaaaaalfway there..."
Louis appears. Dan hangs his head in rueful shame.
Gossip Girl: "...Holy shit, you guys. That was amazing."
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
Zoë Bell: "Stop hotdoggin' on your motorcycle."
[Awkwardly verbatim]: "People write songs about wiping out on our LA roadways."
Chuck: Continues hotdoggin' on our LA roadways. Wipes out on our LA roadways. Gets our LA roadways all up in his personal hotdoggins. Slides several yards.
Zoë Bell: "For a second I could almost see Robert Pattinson, forming at your windscreen like a foo fighter. What the fuck was that about?"
Chuck: "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel. I just need a scotch."
Zoë Bell: "I know I don't know you at all, and you probably could give a damn about what I have to say. Most of the people in my business are in it because they're thrill-seekers or adrenaline junkies. But for some of them, there's something darker going on. I think you need help."
Chuck: "I'm Chuck Bass!"
Zoë Bell: "I am done with this date. Later."
GUEST BEDROOM OF PAYNE
Nate: "I said Yes and then got fucked by a hot cougar! Named you! My best friend was right!"
Payne: "I still don't understand how this is a new philosophy. Maybe Chuck will explain it later in the episode."
Nate: "I sure hope so. Anyway, it was nice fucking you, ma'am."
Payne: "You're kind of a thoroughbred. Funnier than people give you credit for. Not that I'm going to write some kind of no-homo two page essay about it. Nonetheless, time to go now."
Nate: "Wait, this is my master bedroom. You should go."
Payne: "Uh, this is actually my house, you liar. And it's not even the master bedroom."
Nate: "Being unbelievably wealthy, I will now be cowed by your excess."
Payne: "It's a guest room. The smallest one."
Nate: "I ain't never been in a house with more'n one room before! My name's Nate."
Payne: "That's a nice name, Nate. My name is..."
Nate: "Yes?"
Payne: "Outta Here."
Nate: "Oh. Yes."
REAL TALK, II
Serena: "Oh my God, I just now figured out that you were fucking with me."
Marshall: "That's amazing. I mean..."
Serena: "Do you understand that you could have shut down production?"
Mauricio: "I had no way of knowing you would actually do the things on the list. Look. I actually need this job. I pay for things. With money. I exchange currency for goods and services. I understand that you're unfamiliar with this concept."
Serena: "Haven't you read The Beautiful & Damned? Meaning is necessary for existence. Being rich doesn't exempt me from needing a..."
Marceline: "You're Serena van der Woodsen. You do one lap around this party, you'll get ten job offers. You weren't even looking when you found this one!"
Serena: "Real Talk."
Maybonne: "And in two weeks, when you're at college, will you even look back at this as anything more than that thing you did That Summer? This is my career."
Serena: Grasps it. Isn't surfing a gas?
Serena: "Marylou, I'm the one that gave Patrick the pot. And he only took it because I told him Production okayed it. Someone played a joke on me, and if I wasn't so intent on proving my worth I wouldn't have fallen for it, but I did. I'm sorry. You can tell Jane I'll clear out my desk in the morning."
Everybody: Stares, some gratefully.
Serena, bouncing: "Outta the way, Peck!"
DUMBO
Blair, Dan and Louis all stare at each other and breathe heavily, drunk on drama.
Blair: "I don't understand, Louis. Are you following me now?"
Louis, eyes darting to Dan: "No, Blair. Actually..."
Blair: "It's fine if you are, because I can do this in person then..."
Dan, staring longingly at Louis: "No. Louis is not here for you."
Blair: PANICS
The Moment: Is unending. She watches him watch the wave.
Dan: "Louis didn't meet you tonight because he was helping me. Last spring, I wrote a story about you, and due to a Series Of Unfortunate Events, that story is going to be published. Was going to be. Louis kindly obliged to help me kill it, before it came out so it wouldn't embarrass you, and that's exactly what he did. He really is your prince. It may not have been standing up to his mother, but it was protecting you against the world."
Blair: Gapes. The audacity, the betrayal, the downright creepiness.
Dan: Thinks it's about his story, of course.Dan: "You gotta understand, I didn't ever think anyone would read it!"
Blair: "No, honey. I'm staring at you because just did something heinous. You would have let me walk away from my fairytale knowing that he was doing this to help us? Help you?"
Dan: Goes abruptly petit mal for a second.
Blair: "Seriously, dude. Why? I want an answer! I want you to look me in the eye and tell me the truth, the obvious truth that I absolutely cannot imagine what it is. Please look me in the eye in front of my royal fiancé and tell me why you would sabotage my happiness with another man on such a fundamental level."
Dan: Still nothing. Very beautiful at this time.
Blair: "Are you reading me? Do you not understand what I am saying? Tell me why you would do that. Right now. To my face. Between our faces. With Louis Grimaldi standing here. Just fuckin'... Seriously, are you stupid? Come on, man. Fix everything at once by telling me this outlandish thing that I couldn't possibly figure out on my own without you saying it aloud. Five. Break my cover story, come on. Four. It's always been you. Or at least since NYU. Three. I'll be damned if I end up getting married. Two... Jesus, you guys. Every time with this shit. C'mon, Louis. We are done with this tool."
Gossip Girl: "Oh, Lonelyboy. You catch what happened there?"
Lonelyboy: "...Yeah. Fuck."
Gossip Girl: "More like Slownlyboy."
Lonelyboy: "We got all season. I'll work this shit out. I'm going to do okay."
Blair, echoing down the hall: "Yeah, you motherfuckin' better. I'm not going back to effing Chuck Bass, I'll tell you that much."
STUGOTS, 1 CUP
Nate: "Hey, Aristotle. Saying Yes totally did not work out, so kudos to that."
Serena: "Yeah, I got pwned by a poor person, it sucked."
Chuck -- wearing a pale yellow cravat that may well lie precisely opposite his earlier one, on the color wheel -- sits down and trades his work shoes for some tennies and puts on a cardigan and loosens his tie and takes out a pipe and stuffs it with tobacco and sucks on it for a second and then suddenly he has a beard and he's stroking it and looking into the far-off distance at a place only the very very wise can even see.
Chuck: "Serena-san, you accepted responsibility without hesitation for the first time in your life."
Serena: "Aw, shit. Is that what I did? No wonder it felt like a wrong-sized bra."
Chuck: "Nathaniel-san, you learned that change is inevitable and that -- as the centipede becomes the butterfly -- you too must accept the evolution of your character."
Nate: "I think I am turning into a hooker again."
The lesson is not yet complete. Chuck produces the Howler Nate hid from him.
Chuck, verbatim: "We're growing up. We need to start being responsible for ourselves, instead of always being responsible for others. I know you think I must be dying inside because Blair is marrying another man. But we let each other go. So stop doing stuff like this, and start focusing on yourself."
I predict that this will last exactly as long as it takes Nate to discover Chuck's suicidal road rash, and then he'll be administering the meds like always. I predict that Chuck and Blair will always be a thing, not because they are perfect for each other and not because they are perfectly awful for each other, but because some of us can't resist pushing the bruise. I grew up in an extremely violent household, and managed to get myself into all kinds of situations -- sexual and otherwise -- once I left, so yeah, I get a little sticky about "abuse" and what it constitutes for imaginary people and how they are represented. But I do feel like there are two kinds of people: Those with the darkness and those without. And Dan, Serena, Nate, thank God, don't know -- not that Lily, and CeCe before her, didn't try -- about the darkness I'm talking about.
But Chuck and Blair do. And along with their personal issues, their beautiful burlesque and their even more beautiful warfare, they know about how low you can go. If this show ever did anything right, it's by portraying that viewpoint realistically. Where the fuck do you think the burlesque comes from? From being hurt on a level that Serena, for e.g., should never even have to imagine. And I have always respected that, about the show, and about them as people and as people with a relationship of any kind at all, and I always will. I can see why you would construct a narrative that leads directly from Chuck raping Jenny to Chuck punching a wall: How would I not understand that? But the difference is that this story isn't about me. It's about whatever the hell they decide it's about. And that's how it gets evaluated. God, if Chuck were real none of these people should have to be in the same room with him. If Blair were real, same deal. (If Dan were real, same thing. Any of these dicks.)
But it's not real, it's a story. A story that I love, even in this second act of life, that happens to be the kind of story that moves its people around to tell itself. And I just don't get the impulse to generate parallel narratives around that story to talk about myself. My own ideology, my own martyrdom, my own anger, my own rage. I don't get that, and I try not to do it when I write about the show. And I don't personally know anybody who has been through that shit, who has actually worn those bruises and felt that fear and gone to school feeling that shame and that hate, who would even think for a moment to apply their personal junk to a science fiction story like this. Because it trivializes actual abuse and actual pain when you express your rage, or outrage, through the medium of a TV show. It's a kid move. There is a difference between discovering a new grad-school-sounding way to be offended by the story, and actually being bothered, and I know that sometimes that difference can be hard to locate.
(I spent one confused week of my personal 23rd year convinced that Buffy was a sneaky way for the patriarchy to trick us into getting off on watching a girl get beat up. It was an interesting toy to play with. That's all. And eventually I remembered that I'd been thrown around just like that, and I remembered that I didn't feel remotely like Sarah Michelle Gellar. I felt like a little kid, getting hurt for no good reason. And that's the fucking difference: I am not Buffy Summers. You are not Blair Waldorf. They are stories, not attacks; they are obstacles, not goals. No living person has ever elected abuse based purely on the fact that a TV character was subjected to it. Not once. But a shit ton of us have felt better watching people choose a better choice, and walk back into the light. And I hope you never have to know the difference.)
One of the big lessons in my life personally has been about drawing the lines between myself and the stories that I love: Knowing what is me, and what is the product of literally hundreds of hardworking people who have never met me. I would never use the word "offended" about myself, because I feel like that's a power game -- whoever is the biggest victim wins -- but I have very little patience for these me-first approaches to art, because that's not what art is about. If I were so naive as to read this show in terms of my own shit, it would start with Blair's forgotten bulimia and body issues, and end with Chuck's childhood sexual abuse, with a lot of rage and physical abuse thrown in. That means no more jokes about Nate having sex for money, no more admitting that Chuck is even a character that exists on this show. And pardon me, but that seems irredeemably silly at this point in my life, given that I am writing first and foremost about a science fiction program that is not about my personal feelings, biography, or whether I know in my heart -- which I do -- that Blair and Dan are meant to be. Or whether the story of Chuck and Blair is grotesque, and scary, and awful, and lovely, and manipulative, and meets all points of the rubric for an abusive relationship: If I didn't believe in Blair, if it wasn't my job to be more interested in seeing her as a person in a particular situation than a pathetic victim without the agency to make basic decisions, it would.
It's not that I don't acknowledge the shipper/abusegate viewpoint: I didn't want Chuck near Jenny any more than you did. But when it divorces itself from the story, it becomes tacky, because the real story is: Our lives. Yours and mine. And at that point, it becomes more about the shipper/abusegater saying the thing than about the story we are being told, which invalidates the point because you've crossed the streams in a way I can't understand or handle. Those Tumblr photo-collages of Downton Abbey, the history of Blair and Chuck, the music videos of FarScape characters, Amy Pond (if divorced from some gross man's heteronormative interpretation and unbelievably sexist, objectifying writing): They make me cry. On my own time. (No homo, again.)
Because here, it's not about me. Astringently. And I don't know how else to make that clear: I get it. I think it's silly, and I think it's a function and a symptom of white middle-class privilege, in the absence of realistic motivation to get angry about sexism in your own, actual life. Which offends me, because it's past time to start the actual riot. And instead, fake Internet feminism and privileged white-girl Internet anger gets tied up in dumb TV shows and not real life, and we all bitch to the online echo chamber of people who already agree with us, and it becomes a game of oneupmanship about who gets to be the most offended, and everything is lost to the competition. The smartest, angriest, most wonderful young women and gay men fall to the pettiest competition of all, and we're the only ones that don't benefit. And I don't know how to combat that, because we all do what's easiest, unless we have to do otherwise.
Dair Shipper: "But you're a man! You're mansplaining!"
I guess so: "As long as you look at gay men as being privileged above sexism, as though homophobia is a separate issue and not the other side of the exact same issue, you are never going to understand that we're under the same pressure. Just as you wanted."
Hopeful Feminist: "But you are a man! A white man!"
Sure, and: "You have privileges of your own. The privilege to identify with abuse victims. The privilege to co-opt and identify with a gay male identity you barely understand. The privilege to get married. The privilege to play in the universal softball game known as heterosexuality."
Fake Internet Feminist: "So you're saying we shouldn't think of you as men?"
The Only Men Who Actually Carry Fractionally The Same Burden As You: "Think of us as double agents. That's how we've always thought of you."
ANYWAY
Chuck: "Though this part of your journey may have come to an end, it shows you there's a world out there you never knew existed, one you want to be part of."
Serena: "I don't know what the fuck you are talking about, but if you're not going to start a cult maybe you should write a book. Or the end of a Gossip Girl episode."
Chuck: "People like me don't write books. We're written about. Often in books illustrated by Arthur Rackham."
Team Blondes: "Okay, it's been fun watching you give yourself the happy ending of all time, but we've got various things to do. Serena has to clean out her desk, and Nate needs to get his phone back from the House Of Payne and apologize to its hostess for impersonating her to herself."
Chuck, literally: "I'll stay here, alone with my genius."
They rush him, full of Chuck love, and fall all over him with sweet kisses. He pushes them away, giggling -- "Too close! Too close!" -- but as we'll see, it's not that he doesn't want their affection -- "Don't be shy!" Nate wheedles, curling around him like a crosse's net -- it just hurts, in particular, today.
Which I really love. I love this idea that he's reached an inner plateau, actually feels like a grownup, running around kissing his friends on the cheek; that he's happy, but he's also got these horrible scars and bruises that he doesn't want anybody to know about. It seems really fresh, and I hope they play through on it. A zero-circle; a mighty kindness.
CHEZ WALDORF
Eleanor: Stares at Blair for a while.
Blair: "Is it my hair?"
Eleanor: "No, you finally fixed that. It's this copy of What To Expect When You're Excepting that I found hidden in the pantry. Care to explain?"
Blair: "As if I've ever once been in the pantry."
Eleanor: "Come clean. Something's going on."
Dorota, suddenly: "Is me! Pregnant me, is have. Baby number two on stork train!"
Blair: "Are you fucking kidding me? You're pregnant? I was sure I was pregnant. Or Serena. But mostly me."
Dorota: "I just want to tell you first, but you were away, and it not right to text Hello, pregnant! And then you were back, but you did not let me speak, and so now news comes out this way. At least news out. And Gossip Girl talk about me. I feel so special!"
Blair: "That is the saddest goddamn thing I have ever heard in my entire life."
Gossip Girl: "Well, I guess I somehow know that Blair isn't pregnant anymore."
HOUSE OF PAYNE
Payne, verbatim because who knows: "I had no idea I was going to meet him out here, I didn't expect to make contact until New York. But something tells me I'm going to see him again. Even sooner than I imagined. Oh, much sooner! Call you later."
Nate walks in, doesn't question her total sketchiness right now, and she gives him his phone. He apologizes for pretending to be somebody else, and just in case that was interesting to her -- which why would it be -- he explains further.
Nate: "I only did it because I'm just now starting to realize that, well, I don't really know who I am."
Payne: "Nothing more interesting than the existential crisis of a person in their early twenties. There have been studies. The only things more fascinating than this are other people's vacations and other people's dreams they had last night. Who doesn't like to listen to that shit all day long? Please, tell me more about how you don't know who you are yet. It couldn't possibly be that you're a boring half-formed self-obsessed fetus of a person, no, it must be something really individual that nobody's ever thought before."
Nate: "Anyway. It was nice fucking you, ma'am."
Payne: "Agreed. PS, I am stalking you to New York. Grab a lollipop on the way out."
B&D
Jane: "You know how you got fired? Well, you're not fired. Beautiful and Damned wraps in a week, but you can keep working for me because you've been the first one in every morning and the last one to leave every night, all summer. I need someone with your dedication and fire. Although not with your stupidity, necessarily. time one of my tasks seems a little off-the-wall, like buying illicit drugs for the talent, you can check with me. Okay?"
Serena: "Yes."
DUMBO
Dan: "Hey. What's going on?"
Rufus: "Lily has another meeting with the decorator. She's redecorated so many times, it looks exactly the same. I keep telling Andy Cohen he should make a show about her called The Real House Arrests of New York."
Dan: "So essentially the same as any other episode where she doesn't appear?"
Rufus: "I will happily keep making Lily redecorating jokes until the end of time. Listen, something mysterious and shocking happened at the end of that story about Blair which you should not have let me read. My question is, did that really happen?"
Dan: "Whatever it is, you can bet that it did, because I don't write fiction, I write halfhearted literary nonfiction about my fascinating life."
Rufus: "I expected you to hate on Blair -- given this entire episode's plotline -- but in the end, you [redacted] on her [redacted] with your [redacted] and then invited her to [redacted] your [redacted] -- which I didn't even know you were into -- and it seemed possible that might have ended up with a [redacted] in her [redacted]."
Dan: "No, apparently that was Dorota."
Rufus: "You [redacted] with Dorota? Even the thing with the [redacted]?"
Dan: "Anyway, I just need to figure out how to stop the book from getting published, which I guess is the thing that might anonymously happen."
Rufus: "There's a whole [redacted]ing book? Oh look, par avion from Vanessa in Barcelona. How weird that we were just talking about her. I'm sure it's unrelated to our conversation."
Envelope: Contains ten grand of the advance and a Vanessa-obnoxious thing about "Congratulations on your first novel!"
B&D
Chuck, Nate and a limo arrive to pick up S, but she's staying so she can keep working with Jane. Where's Peck? I don't know, but I liked him and I hope he'll stick around, maybe become like an East Coast Dalgaard menace. Anyway, Chuck produces champagne from the car, pops it on-set, and it gets all over his shirt, so he ducks into a trailer and shows us the biggest, messiest bruise. For people who don't even have pores -- that suffer through the most traumatic and brutal marital assaults ever captured on film with just the tiniest of paper cuts to show for it -- it's pretty grotesque. And he pushes on it, and pushes on it, and have you met Chuck Bass.
FITTING
Louis: "Maman! Blair absolutely loathes carnations! And I'll tell you some more things that Blair could have told you at any time. Come away with me, into a side parlor."
French Seamstress: "Do they know?"
Blair: "Do they know what? English? Kinda."
Psychic Doula Seamstress: "No, that you're six weeks pregnant."
Blair: Boxes her ear, snatches out one earring.
Bleeding Seamstress: Continues to hem Sophie's legacy gown, choking back tears.
Blair: "Shut your face, you illiterate bitch."
Righteous Seamstress: "Okay, lady. But you're going to be showing by November. Which is when your wedding is. So maybe you should think with your brain."
Blair: "...I am so fucking pregnant!"
CAFÉ MISERABLES
Brian Jacob Smith, you are so cool. Welcome to Gossip Girl. It will be our pleasure to watch you watch the wave. I promise not to freak out about however the story makes you go, because I love the story and it's what we're watching.
Boyfriend Brian: "We have been living in California for one month, ever since you decided to tell me that your Fake Uncle left you some Fake Money and we moved here from Miami."
Cousin Charlie: "I bet we are bringing even crazier mysteries with us that don't even have to do with the Rhodes family."
Kitchen Bossy: "Ivy! Get to work and stop talking to your awesome boyfriend!"
Boyfriend Brian: "Better do it, because we are super poor."
Serena: "Charlie! OMG, what are you doing in this random place?"
Cousin Charlie: "Certainly not waitressing under my real name, that's for sure."
Serena: "Then let's go shopping and spend a bunch of money and do girl talking."
Cousin Charlie: "Sounds good to me, Cousin Serena who is my cousin for sure."
Serena: "As long as you are on your meds, I am so happy to see you!"
Cousin Charlie: "As long as I can conveniently forget my purse and you pay for everything, me too!"
Georgina Sparks: Better get involved with this shit immediately.
week: While Ivy and Serena stir up whatever fresh hell they've got going on this year, everybody else converges on the UES. Diana Payne shows up on a Nate hunt with like a startup or something, Louis's sister Beatrice shows up to be super pretty and no doubt throw some speedbumps Ol' Crazy's way, and Dan gets some of that Charlie Trout lovin' he's been missing.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Gossip Girl, The Good Wife, Pretty Little Liars and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, most recently A Friday Night Lights Companion and Fringe Science.