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So Chuck's been paying hot poor people to beat him up. Ambush him and beat him up with their great big poor-people muscles. That's how that's going. Dan keeps walking in on these little scenes and finally he steps to Nate like "Trick, best treat your man right." So Nate stops baking -- literally, he was baking pot brownies for Chuck, possibly in a little apron, because this show keeps finding new ways to be gay -- long enough to call the doctor. It was really cute, how worried he was once Dan explained to him that he should be worried. They make such a good pair of domestic partners, the three of them.
Oh, and get this. Naturally, Chuck Bass is suffering from some kind of drama queen psychological syndrome where he can't feel feelings anymore, because this show also keeps finding new ways to be WTF.
Louis's sister Beatrice is some bullshit. I don't even want to talk about her. That thing that Zooey Deschanel does to people, that's what Louis's sister Beatrice does to me. So the prince and princess French at each other and it's so disgusting, just absolutely unbearable, and there's a sexy priest*, and somehow Blair ends up telling Dan that she's pregnant and then inviting some homeless people to the Monegasque Feast of Assumption. There is much lovely Blair-and-Dan time, if you're into that sort of thing. Which you are.
*Oh, and Beatrice is fucking the sexy priest. That was like the one cool thing she did. Finding a bra would have been another one, but she fucked that up too.
Diana Payne shows up in NYC and fucks Nate in a vestibule and then offers him a job. As what? Do any of these people actually have job titles or things you can put on your resume? It's like Eli Gold, or K Street, like that thing where your job is that you do things and people say, "That dude is really good at ... things." But Nate and Serena are not lobbyists or strategists, they're just... Hot. They just have hotness and it qualifies them for any old thing. Vestibule-polisher. Rough trade S&M enthusiast. Pot brownie-maker. Or whatever it is that Serena does. Boob-haver. Pants-scorner. Cousin-kidnapper.
Yes, and Ivy's awesome boyfriend is named Max, as it turns out. She gets roped -- through some complicated overbearing Serena behavior -- into leaving him and going to live with Serena so she can pretend to be Cousin Charlie some more. Then the whole LA storyline abruptly ends for no real reason, with Serena dragging Ivy back to the burgeoning UES film. Ludicrous indeed -- as though anybody would ever leave Brian J. Smith, for any reason -- but at least allows for the possibility that Ivy will fuck everything and everybody up somehow. Maybe Max will come to NY? Please don't let this be the last of Max. We love Max. We want more Max. And we want Ivy to get shithouse crazy. We still don't actually know what's wrong with her on the inside, as you recall. But there's always something.
week: Paternity test, Serena and Ivy return home, and Blair throws Daniel Humphrey through the air like a ragdoll. A curly-haired moppet of a ragdoll, with magnificent cheekbones and pecs.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: Nate met a mysterious old woman who fucked him on the floor in a great big California mansion, and naturally he assumed he'd be compensated. Chuck has devised the most ludicrous plot-to-be-fascinating yet, wiping out Quileute style on "our LA roadways" and then caressing his bruises as though they were the Velveteen Rabbit, and it was kind of amazing but not as amazing as it's about to get. Ivy has a wonderful boyfriend and is trying to become a working actress in LA, but maybe doesn't have the stuff for it.
to that she pretended to be named Cousin Charlie, because Aunt Carol is a goddamn loon. While Serena was discovering her in a local patisserie, Dan was discovering that Vanessa had once again conspired to make his dreams and nightmares come true. And Blair? Still stuck in Weddingville, population Crazy, but a wise handmaiden of the Orient has delivered one big Annunciation upside her head: Girlfriend's at six weeks. Too bad, I'd already picked out her roller-derby name.
PLUMPED-UP CHICKS
"Young Folks (King Jeremy Don't Like Mondays Remix)" whistles and warbles in its catchy way over a brand new day. I love this song. It makes me wonder how many other Peter Bjorn & John songs could be turned into school shootings just by moving some whistles around and changing a few words. GG be talking mad medicine, while Blair's pretending to care about Dorota's pregnancy as a way of getting information about her own. You know that show I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant? I've never seen it, but I think it's about the opposite of whatever Blair's doing right now. Turns out Dorota doesn't even know about Blair's little secret, but she's about to...
Blair: "Dorota, your womb is of the utmost importance. If things get rough, I plan on renting it out."
Dorota: "[Charming broken English.]"
Blair: "Thanks for asking. Louis's sister Beatrice is picking Louis up in their jet at noon, to take him back to Monaco to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption."
I love the Assumption. I love how Anne and Mary brought back the Old Testament tradition of being so awesome that God's like, "Screw the velvet rope, you're coming in VIP." What a useless prize! If I heard I was going to be Assumpting, I would drive a motorcycle off a cliff like Chuck Bass, all Come at me, bro!
Doctor: "I am reputable."
Blair: "Then I have some questions for you about my maidservant's morning sickness. Having never had it, and certainly not because I'm having it now."
Doctor: "As a doctor on the Upper East Side, I am familiar with the burden of a servant's illnesses, and will happily discuss your questions as though Dorota is a Labrador Retriever."
Dorota (Is marginally more intelligent than a Labrador Retriever, making this comparison unfair and more than a little classist.)
Blair, verbatim: "And what about breast sensitivity? ...You see, she practically screams when anyone touches them. I can hear her all the way from Queens!"
Amazing! Blair's got her head in the game, finally, once again.
Blair: "And how long until she can determine the father of her child?"
Dorota: "Blair Cornelia Waldorf!"
Doctor: "Um, this appointment is over despite my not having examined you or provided any prenatal care. As I said, I am very reputable. Dorota, time you come, you come alone. This chick is giving me agita."
Left alone, Blair reaches out and tweaks one of Dorota's sensitive nipples; the resulting scream can be heard in Queens. Not to be outdone, Dorota grabs her employer's left breast and holds on for dear life. It is quite a pickle. In the end, Dorota realizes that Blair is also pregnant, and the charade is exposed!
Dorota: "You pregnant too! We like sisters now!"
Blair Uh...
Dorota: "Cousins?"
Blair Um...
Dorota: "Distant cousins?"
In the end they embrace, careful to avoid one another's breasts. Blair misses Serena.
UN-PUMPED DICKS
Per credits, Unsatisfied Hottie: "I'm so sick of all you guys on antidepressants!"
Like fabled Nimue, like Melissa Gorga, the Mysterious Lady Floorfucker has sapped Nate of his essential ingredients. He can no longer rise to the occasion. And without this vitality to provide, of what use is he? Perhaps Brothaniel Snarchibald will lose his qualities one by one, leaving only a colorless cloud of ephemera, a puddle of tea-weak bong-water. Perhaps the eyebrows will be the to go, lofting skyward like the Lunesta butterfly.
And in a matching club chair, we see his other half, Charles Bass, insensate to la douleur as his brother is to le plaisir. Perhaps it has always been thus.
Chuck: "Do you need pharmaceutical assistance? Or assistance of ... any kind?"
It moves, almost imperceptibly. It goes still again.
Nate: "Yeah, I wish weed was [sic] the answer."
Chuck: "Not what I meant."
Nate: "I cannot stop thinking about that old woman in LA."
Chuck, verbatim: "Understandable, given your mother issues."
Chuck's Infinite Issues Roil and scream within the dungeon of his heart.
Nate: "Speaking of my mother, which I guess we kind of were, I must exposit to you now, at this time, that Anne Archibald has called from a public park in New Jersey, where she has taken to eating pine cones and rich dark earth, to offer me several internships."
Chuck: "Surely that makes sense, given your family history and educational success. Given your nigh-Serena inability to do things or be of use."
Nate: "Yet Schumer, Blankfein. They hunger for my services."
Chuck: "Your mother is mentally ill. Those may well be the names of two fatted squirrels she's stalking for her dinner."
Nate: "I could work for squirrels. I was homeless once, I don't have any pride."
DUMBO TRICKS
Rufus: "We scheduled DUMBO father-son time, because I am so terribly busy in Manhattan, and now you won't leave that computer alone. It makes me feel lost and alone, now that I'm down two kids and my wife's corpse is upstairs ordering shrouds and cerements from gilt.com."
Dan: "Sorry, Rufus, but I'm afraid I don't like you very much. You're sort of a sniveler. And anyway, I have to figure out who is publishing my book so I can make them not."
Rufus: "Wasn't Jay McInerney any help?"
Dan: "He just gets drunk and tries to tell me what it was like in college. It's worse than being here with you."
Dan, with a pretty sexy voice today: "My dad is here and he won't shut the fuck up."
Serena: "Parents, man. Don't you hate it when they shove their agendas down your throat all the time? Like say if you were an actress pretending to be a cousin for no real reason, and some giant blonde somebody tried to kidnap you and make you live in a gorgeous beachfront mansion. Irksome."
Dan: "...Right. So anyway, because you are a cat-burglar and former member of Scotland Yard, I wondered if you could hack some computer things for me."
Serena: "It's true, I am very competent at things. Such as that. But aren't you best friends with Blair? Aren't we fighting over you or some shit?"
Dan: "No, Blair hates me. Because I did horrible things again. Anyway, remember Vanessa Abrams?"
Serena: "Sort of. Didn't she attack me with a femur once? And dressed all of her friends up like me so that they could drug me and put me into white slavery? Or maybe that was somebody else."
Dan: "What this show did to that girl, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. But get this, I'm still going to lie to you about it. Can you help me help Vanessa with a bounced check?"
I love how the show is still fucking her. I love that so much.
Serena: "All my bank-hacking needs are met by Charles Bass. Last time, he sexually assaulted four window tellers at our local bank branch. Got my annual rate up 4 percent. Have you tried that? Have you met my brother Chuck, ever? Are you guys BFFs maybe?"
Dan: "You've been a great help. So, are you really going to live in LA all season?"
Serena: "Indubitably. Our show's budget can totally handle that. Plus, Cousin Peepers is here!"
Dan, verbatim: "Charlie? As in Call Me Serena Cousin Charlie?"
Serena: "She's a gas, isn't she? Yeah, we're going to brunch even though California is three hours behind New York, and then I will grill her, and then I will attempt to kidnap her for no reason other than the plot."
Dan: "Just make sure she's back on her meds. And say hi!"
Dan honestly thinks about going to find Chuck Bass, and then GG's little tracker microchip inside Chuck's body tells him exactly where Chuck Bass is. Reality!
TROUTMOUTH FLICKS
Wonderful Max: "And for my final course, a hot peach clafouti, inspired by my hot girlfriend Ivy."
(The only people who say my hot girlfriend or smokin' hot wife are dorky unattractive Christians, because they still can't believe they get to have intercourse. Or because they are gay. Usually both.)
Ivy: "Which of these wedgies makes me look more like I'm trying desperately?"
Max: "Is this for an audition?"
Ivy: "You could say that."
Max: "Listen, apropos of nothing, let's move to Portland at the end of this episode. It would solve all your problems, and you would get to be with me. An LA 6 is a Portland 10, and I'm already a 10."
Ivy: "Let's discuss this later, after I lose my shit entirely."
Max: "We could use that invalid checkbook you stole from Aunt Carol last year, that I don't know about."
Ivy: "That's one of those trust fund checkbooks that only works once. Due to how using it would be several different kinds of fraud."
Max: "My smokin' hot girlfriend is a stickler! [Verbatim] I just don't want to end up like everybody else who comes to LA with dreams, only to find that LA is the place where dreams come to die. Or you get those weird lips that everybody here has."
It's called an Overton Window. It started with Meg Ryan. There is no escape.
SQUAWKING ARCHEOPTERYX
Louis: "[French stuff.]"
Dorota: "[Dorota stuff.]"
Blair: "Yeah, I can't say I'm too excited about meeting your sister, considering how your mother is a fucking monster."
Louis: "My mother and my sister hate each other even more than you hate other people."
Louis's horrible sister Princess Beatrice arrives, smelling like pork rinds and looking like Charlotte Gainsbourg's understudy. Bra check: Nil.
Blair: "Jesus, you smell terrible."
Beatrice: "It's jasmine and clove oil, from Africa. Do you like it?"
Blair: "I am pregnant, so fuck you. No."
Beatrice: "time I'm in Africa, I'll pick up some for you. Since they don't have those things in every bodega and Body Shop in the entire universe."
Blair: "Seriously, I cannot see straight. It's like your body is physically rejecting my presence. It's like Silent Hill right now."
Beatrice: "I've always longed for a sister!"
Blair: "I've always longed to like myself. But being a princess would work too."
LONG CONS & DIPSTICKS & MONEGASQUE TRIPTYCHS
Serena: "Crazy how you're in LA! Tell me many lies."
Ivy: "Done. Aunt Carol doesn't know that I'm here, just that I'm doing okay. Also, if you check my story she will totally cover for me, because this was all her lunatic plan anyway. I am taking my meds! I am acting. It's been nice seeing you. Too bad you have to go back to NYC for 'school.'"
Serena: "There are so many ways in which that is funny. School, heh."
Ivy: "You... Aren't leaving town immediately after this brunch so I can continue my life?"
Serena, verbatim: "I must be a genie, because your wish is granted! I'm staying!"
Ivy: "But I didn't... That wasn't my..."
Serena: "The producer offered me a job, we're meeting up later! Your wish is granted!"
Ivy: "So you're not ever going to be leaving me alone, then."
Serena: "Your wish! Is granted!"
Blair: "Well, it's been great swallowing bile and smelling you and checking out your weird body and face, but I guess you have to get on that jet and jet, yes? To your principality? Away from me?"
Beatrice: "No. Your wish is granted!"
Ivy: "Serena, your education is very important. I think you should get on back to Columbia."
Serena, verbatim: "Well, I'm taking the semester off, and I'll see how things go after that."
Ivy: "Serena, you take literally every semester off. Every time this show comes on you're taking the semester off. You went to one six-week seminar, which you managed to turn into an Incomplete for the entire class by fucking the teacher, feeding him to wolves and then trading him in for his cousin. Who was also a teacher you fed to the wolves. That's the extent of your transcript."
Serena, verbatim/awesome: "My only issue is living with CeCe. Last night, at 2 AM, her bridge game turned brutal. A neighbor even came and complained."
Sit with that for a minute. Montecito, drinks in hand, trumps and suits and the rest, and then somebody's best-left-uninvited friend-of-a-friend's over the table in her, ahem, Michael Kors. The pearl-snatching, the hat-flattening, the broach-stabbing. The Marble Faun arrives from door and is decked, falling to the parlor floor. The fight spills out into the gardens, past a clumsy recreation of the Trevi Fountain CeCe keeps forgetting to have taken out.
At the bottom of the garden is a gate, and past that gate is the river. Myrtle always said she'd drown in bathtub gin, but this is no bathtub. Soon she is quiet, unresisting. CeCe stands, dusts herself off, throws those Rhodes shoulders back and claps her hands. Pilot Inspektor appears, in footman's garb, neither a grandson nor technically a servant. "Dispose of this, won't you? And I think it's past time for drinks in the drawing room." California's never felt right to her, not since she went east during the Great War and married for the first time, but the winter gets into your bones. She likes it best on the cross-country flights; she likes it best when she's neither here nor there.
Ivy: "Great, well good luck finding an apartment. At least I know it won't be anywhere near my poor ass."
Serena: "Let's go! I want to see where you live and try on all your clothes and put on your makeup and hairstyle and get to third with your boyfriend and say Call me Charlie!"
Ivy: "Rest assured we live in a very posh home in a very posh neighborhood. We are super high-class. In fact, my roommate is so inbred he can only eat cucumber sandwiches. And he does not like strangers."
Serena: "Unrelated to anything that you're saying, just let me make a quick call to my real estate agent and ask for a two-bedroom."
Ivy: "Why would you do that?"
Serena: "Oh, I skipped the part where we discussed living together. [Verbatim] But it's not negotiable."
Ivy: "I don't want to live with you. I couldn't be more clear about this."
Serena: "Rhodes Girls always live together, in backdoor pilots and failed spinoff series! It's a tradition, in theory! Your wish is granted!"
THE LONELY CICATRIX
Dan: "Oh hey, Chuck! What are you doing in this dark alley with sexy hoodlums? I can't imagine for one second. Are they going to steal your shoes? Charlie Trout did that to me once. It was a night I shall never forget."
Chuck: "Dan, get out of here and leave me to my rough trade."
Dan: "Even for Chuck, this is almost too Chuck, Chuck."
Hoods: "Get over here, Cheekbones. But we're charging you double."
Chuck: "He is not part of this! Why are you always taking my things?"
Dan: "I am so in the weeds right now. I am unprepared for what is happening."
Hoods: "No, this is dumb and weird. We're gone."
Chuck: "Thank you very much for interrupting me getting beat up, choad."
Dan: "Chuck, what the fuck is going on and why do you have that intense bruise?"
Chuck: "Beating myself up with a motorcycle just wasn't doing it for me anymore. I had to choreograph this whole fight scene with those dudes where I gingerly unbuttoned and removed my shirt and then they tossed me lightly back and forth between them."
Dan: "Chuck, I have to say I'm worried. Turned on beyond the telling of it, but also concerned."
JOYSTICKS & BROWNIE MIX
Nate is: Making pot brownies while attempting to track the Mystery Woman down. As one does.
Nate: "Why Daniel, old boy. I sure have missed you! Now that I'm seeing you and remember who you are, I mean. I was going to ask how things were, but considering you're carrying Chuck I think the answer is: Weird."
Dan: "Nathaniel, you will not believe what I found. This little goblin right here was having S&M with dudes. For money. In Queens. Now, is something going on at home?"
Chuck: "Dan, stop helping. This is graduate-level Bass, okay, not even Nate can help with this. This is like Thailand, Uncle Jack, molested-by-nanny stuff. The full Trout. You guys are just not qualified."
Dan: "Looks to me like you're trying to get Gossip Girl's attention so Blair will get worried about you and come save you. They did a decent job of introducing that trope last year, come to think of it."
Nate: "Yeah, or he's just a perv. Have you, like, met him? One time he made me put a mousetrap..."
Chuck: "-- Nathaniel, that is private. Give me a brownie."
Dan: "I am so inured to feeling left out that I can't even see when it's intentionally being done to me. Therefore, in the grand Humphrey tradition, I shall soldier on."
Nate: "What can be done?"
Dan: "Well, his body is all kinds of jacked up."
Nate: "My mother has a concierge doctor that will come to the house. He's a woodland creature, so his rates are quite reasonable. But it should really just be between us right now. Would you mind coming back after I've got him showered and dressed?"
Dan: "Yeah, I need him to sexually assault some bank workers anyway."
Nate: "He once got my Black Card's limit raised to infinity, and all it cost me was a handjob."
Dan: "...Oh, Nate."
SARTORIAL HERETRIX
Bra check: Same.
Beatrice: "[Something.]"
Blair: "I want to wear Woo for my welcome parade -- short but regal -- and Alaïa would put Charlene and her swimmer's body to shame at Albert's ball..."
Beatrice: "[In the negative.]"
Blair: "Because once again Monaco has all these bullshit 'traditions' and 'history' that somehow make me feel oppressed despite those being keynotes to my character? Great. What is it, do I have to wear a Quinceañera dress made of carnations?"
Beatrice: "[In essence, I guess.]"
Blair: "So you get Balmain, and I get to be Barbara Bush. How is this possible?"
Beatrice: "[Foreshadowing the fact that she's jealous of Louis's position in the line of succession or something? Do like HRH Caroline in real life? So she'd be the heiress presumptive if Louis vanished or, I guess, just didn't feel like it.]"
Blair: "That reminds me of the time Louis threatened to quit for me, that one time that that happened, and you gave this interview where you pretty much bit through your lip with lust for power. How curious that you're now acting as though it's a luxury not to be the heir... Hold up, I have to barf."
LITTLE MISS MXYZPTLKS
Ivy: "I'm not sure there's enough closet space."
Serena: "Are you speaking literally? Because there are closets galore."
Ivy: "Beach traffic gets me down."
Serena: "Are you speaking literally? Because where in LA is Carmeggedon not an issue?"
Ivy: "Look, bitch..."
Real Estate Agent: "Better give me a down payment on this apartment you don't want!"
Ivy: "No thanks, I..."
Serena: "Here's my trust fund checkbook. Oh wait, I don't have it because why would I have it. Hey Peepers, how about you put this down payment on this apartment you clearly have no interest in?"
Ivy: "I do not think I can cover that amount with my trust fund checkbook, which I have on me for no reason."
Serena: "Please, as if money is something that ever runs out! Are you speaking literally? Or... Wait, hold up. Are you saying to me loud and clear over and over that you don't want to live with me? Using every possible excuse to get out of it in a fairly transparent way?"
Ivy: "Please don't make that sad face. I'll write this lady a bad check on somebody else's account if you'll stop being sad."
Serena: "Being me. It is really something."
POTHEAD BOYCHICKS
Doctor: "Stop fracturing your ribs, stop getting road rash, stop meeting strange boys in alleys, stop puncturing your lungs, stop having a high pain threshold."
Nate: "I think that's actually just all the drugs he's constantly doing."
Doctor: "Oh, do you?"
Nate: "I mean, just kidding."
Doctor: "No, I'm not the kind of doctor that would care about that. Just make sure he doesn't accidentally kill himself with all those drugs he's been doing and continues to do. Maybe if I were a different kind of doctor, I would think there was medical interest in this fact, but honestly I'm not even a doctor. I just met your mom in the woods, where she has started a cult. Anyway, I'm glad he has somebody to depend on. You seem like a nice boyfriend."
Nate: "This whole not-caretaking thing I decided on last week was never going to last anyhow. Farewell, Mr. Brothaniel Snarchibald. You were fun and impotent while you lasted. But mostly you were impotent."
BARFED-UP DRUMSTICKS
Beatrice: "[I am so hungry from all that shopping! And constant eating I kept trying to make you do!]"
Blair: "I have to go upstairs now. You go eat at your dumb Feast. Say hi to your brother and whassup to the Virgin Mary."
Dorota: "Did you need something else?"
Beatrice: "I will be making a bunch of Assumptions. You should Feast on them."
Dorota: "Oh, what now. You Grimaldi bitches are all the same."
Beatrice: "Blair is a drug addict."
Dorota, verbatim: "No. Miss Blair too much control freak to use mind-alter substance, even to help mood swing." (Hee!)
Beatrice: "Okay, then why the constant use of -- and I realize it's unnecessary and annoying for me to say it like this, but unnecessary and annoying are kinda my whole thing -- les toilettes?"
Dorota: "Perhaps it is your imperialist colonial stank? She's been horking since you showed up."
Beatrice, verbatim: "I knew I recognized that faint acrid smell from boarding school! The pale skin, not eating in public... Blair's obviously bulimic."
Dorota: "Yeah, but no. These days she is digesting everything. Constantly. Why don't I go make you both tuna melts? That should settle her stomach right down."
Beatrice: "Louis? We need to speak right away. Preferably in English, for some reason."
TRUMPED-UP MEDIATRIX
Nate: "Cougar! Why are you here at my house? Go back to Cougartown."
Cougar: "I am not here to see you, I'm here to see your mother."
Nate: "She is in the garden, drinking mouthwash out of teacups. I know you're here for me. For Brothaniel Snarchibald. You don't fool me, ya old cougar!"
Cougar: "I just bought The New York Spectator, and I wanted to interview your mother for my inaugural article on the disgraced wives of dirty businessmen, but she got huffy with me. She was a regular Arianna Huffington with me."
Nate: "If you tell me your name, I will tell my mom to give you the interview. I will tell her you are Queen of the Cougars and you need her to settle a complicated land agreement between the Cougars and the Squirrels. Then you will smoke a peace pipe."
Cougar: "You never really had a chance, did you."
DYNASTIC POLITICS
Beatrice: "Your fiancée is bulimic!"
Louis: "There are so many other things wrong with her that you're just looking pathetic."
Beatrice: "Do you know what bulimia is? I know English isn't a first language for either of us, so you might be confused. Since we're speaking in it."
Louis: "She said you were hectoring her about rules and things, maybe that made her barf. Or your horrible fragrance."
Beatrice, horrifically enough: "You never did understand la psychologie des femmes. I guess I will just have to prove it to you."
LEASE-PAYMENT GOLDBRICKS
Ivy: "Hey, lady. I gave you a bad check and I need it back, secretly. Also we don't want to live in your stupid apartment. Also, please tell that giant blonde whatsit to stop running my shit."
Realie: "You talk to her yourself. This apartment has been down-paymented and leased and you already live here and your stuff is here and your name is Peepers now."
MORNING SICKNESS YARDSTICKS
Dorota and Blair loll around on Blair's bed being pregnant and chatting about it.
Dorota: "Saltines only thing I eat for months with Ana."
Blair, just to be a bitch: "Well, that was not the same. Your people are bred to work through these conditions. Give birth in a field."
Dorota: "No fields in Krakow. And I have birthing suite at Lenox Hill."
Louis & Beatrice: "Are you guys taking une nap? On el bed?"
Blair: "Stop it already."
Beatrice: "I have rewritten the laws of time and space to invite my sexy priest friend and the entirety of our population to come celebrate the Assumption with you in your living room. Your wish is granted!"
Blair: "This is so stupid."
Beatrice: "It's a Feast! With food! Get it? Because of how you used to be bulimic? Anybody? Hello, is this thing on? Does anybody know what a bra is?"
LONELYBOY PLACEKICKS
Chuck: "Unlike Serena, when I rejected you I meant it."
Dan: "Unlike reality, you think that would stop me."
Chuck: "Look, unless you're going to wrestle me to the ground and get that Brooklyn sweat all over me, I need you to leave."
Dan: "I need you to sexually assault some bank employees. Also, I'm trying not to be worried about you as my brother. Is there a chance you're melting down because Blair Waldorf is going to the Feast of the Assumption in exile, as previously decided mere seconds ago in that last scene?"
Chuck: "Humphrey, you know nothing about our situation."
Dan: "I hate feeling left out! Don't say that. I know all about your situation. Your situation and I were talking about on the phone last night and I'm not telling you what we talked about. Your situation invited me for a sleepover on Friday, and I am taking a sleeping bag to school. It is going right in my cubby. So that it doesn't get dirty. And Friday night, we are going to make popcorn balls, and you are not invited."
Chuck: "Yeah, you kissed her? But I fucked her, at a Bar Mitzvah, so how about you drop the Vanessa Abrams act and stop pretending you know anything that's going on."
ibid., verbatim: "That hurt? Wish I could feel it."
Lol.
CRAKE & ORYX
Max: "I am just a ray of sunshine in this cold hard life."
Ivy: "We gotta move to Portland immediately. Just like everybody else."
Max: "Did your audition for the role of Cousin Peepers not go well?"
Ivy: "No, it went too well. Serena bought us a house and a pony and some Tupperware and I think we might be common-law married and it's so fucked up right now and just, trust me, we have to run. Get your shit."
Max: "We'll be like Bonnie & Clyde, without the killing and robbing and car chases. Basically if Bonnie & Clyde were normal people who weren't notable in any way."
Ivy: "Well, once I go off my meds it's a crap shoot."
Do you realize that when you say "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" you are also saying, "What was I doing fifteen years ago? Did I like Marshall Mathers fifteen years ago? Was I offended? Was Elton John relevant at that time? How did I become so old? How can I become young again?"
ENTER THE MATRIX
The sexy priest is named Father Cavalia, and he will also be marrying Louis to Blair in their wedding that is so actually happening. Everything he says sounds like you're about to make out.
Father Cavalia: "Did you enjoy a religious upbringing, Miss Waldorf?"
Sounds Like: "Would you like to see me take off this collar, real slow?"
Blair: "My family's of mixed faith, but I've always appreciated a confessional."
This is True. Actually, Blair's relationship with God is a constant. Huh.
Beatrice: "I'm just literally gonna start shoving food in your mouth at this point. I deserve to have my ears boxed and my box punched."
Virgin Mary: "I'll save you, Blair!"
Dan Arrives. At this royal function. Wearing plaid and jorts and Crocs and a leather arm cuff like Daddy used to wear. Just walks right on the fuck in. Doesn't get shot, doesn't get tackled. Monegasque security is heavily unionized.
Louis: "Stop doing literally everything that you're doing! I wish I had gotten a turtle instead of a sister. You're the worst."
Beatrice: "I am, it's true. I am just the fucking worst."
Blair: "Am I mad at you right now? I don't remember. Come with me to the vomitorium."
Dan: "I started thinking that Chuck was doing dangerous things to get your attention, and I didn't want that to happen, so instead of waiting for you to see it on Gossip Girl, I decided to come here and tell it to your face. So then that way you wouldn't know he was doing dangerous things, and wouldn't fall for his trap. Which is now the role that I have taken on. I'm the one telling you about the thing I didn't want you to find out about."
VESTIBULAR FELLATRIX
Nate: "We meet again, Cougar! I told my mommy that she should do your interview, but first you have to fuck me in a vestibule."
Cougar: "Anything for journalism."
RELUCTANT SIDEKICKS
Ivy: "Serena! Why are you constantly lurking? Are you going to cut my hair in my sleep? I feel like that's coming."
Serena: "Okay, but you can just stop. I know what really happened."
Serena Has no clue what really happened.
PINOCCHIOS & CANDLEWICKS
Blair Barfing.
Dan: "Are you throwing up because you fucked Chuck at a Bar Mitzvah?"
Blair: "No, but yes."
Dan: "I can't help thinking this is about me."
Blair: "It's barely about Chuck at this point."
Beatrice: "Are you barfing in here? I can't wait to tattle to my brother. About the barfing."
Why is everybody in this bathroom listening to Blair Waldorf vomit?
Dan, verbatim: "Why would you worry about her being suspicious if you weren't bulimic? Blair, this isn't a joke. We are not leaving this room until you agree to get help."
Insufferable. Just insupportably insufferable.
Blair, verbatim: "I don't need help. I'm not bulimic. I'm pregnant!"
Beatrice: "A-ha!"
Gossip Girl: "While one mother's life leads her to heaven, another's is going straight to hell in a Moses basket!"
That's more like it. That's the loony-tunes Gossip Girl we know and love. I knew you couldn't hold your shit together for the entire episode. Moses basket! Like that's a thing! A thing people say! And can I just take a moment and remind you of this, it's been a while but I still think about it every day: "Poor little orphan Jenny looks like she needs a Daddy Warbucks but Daddy Warbucks don't grow on trees at least on a tree that grows in Brooklyn." I bet Gwyneth keeps Moses in a Moses basket. And Apple in an Apple basket. And Coldplay in an Easter basket, I guess. I don't know how you store a Coldplay, to be honest.
MONEGASQUE ANTICS
Blair: "Yes, I fucked your brother. We might be having a devil baby. It may have a very high forehead and a penchant for rapine."
Beatrice: "You have un fetus in your le oven? That's not bulimia in the slightest."
Louis: "What's everybody standing around in the bathroom for? Literally everybody in this episode?"
Beatrice, braless: "We were just talking about the homeless. Just kinda riffing."
So then, for no reason, they invite the homeless in to share their Feast of Assumption, and Beatrice keeps shoving things in their mouths, but they don't mind, because they're neither pregnant nor bulimic, just hungry, because they are homeless.
SELF-IMMOLATION GIMMICKS
Spotted: Chuck, on the wrong side of town. Looks like Bassman doesn't have enough of a dark side. He has to take a walk on one, too...
Get it? Bassman? The dark fishy knight? Get it? Do ya? Um, anyway, Blair is pregnant and Dan is her best friend-o again somehow and she's going to be showing by the time they get married and really, Blair is just making no sense at all right now. Do they not have Planned Parenthood on the East Coast? Why is any of this happening?
DOING THE UNSTICKS
Ivy: "I didn't want to use that checkbook, because of how it's fraud on top of identity theft."
Serena: "Don't be silly! This is all your mother's fault somehow."
Ivy: "Really?"
Serena: "Uh, always."
Ivy: "Okay, well thanks for getting us this apartment and dressing me up like a doll and everything, even though I asked you about twenty times not to."
Serena: "That's not all. I've also gone around Aunt Carol to CeCe, who hates your mother more than any of us do, and she's granted you -- Charlie, whom you are not -- access to your trust fund."
Ivy: "Which I already had."
Serena: "Which you already had."
Ivy: "And which doesn't solve the main problem, which is that I am still not actually Cousin Peepers and really have no reason to be involved in your life whatsoever."
Serena: "You can show your gratitude by packing! I will be back to kidnap you after a meeting about my job."
MONEY SHOTS & MEDICS
Dan: "Wait, you're getting beat up again, on this same corner again, by different sexy toughs?"
Chuck: "Getting beat up by sexy toughs is so last year. The new thing is Dan Humphrey walking in on you getting beat up by sexy toughs."
Tough, literally: "Sorry. Mr. Bass said nothing should stop us except his safe word."
This makes sense like fan-fiction makes sense. "Why would Snape even have that up his ass in the first place, much less do this where Hermione would walk in on it?" Also:
Chuck, verbatim: "Though this be madness, yet there is some method in't."
First of all, give me a fucking break. Come on.
But second of all, doesn't that make Dan Polonius? And isn't that sort of brilliant?
Chuck, who is on a goddamn roll: "I wasn't trying to kill myself. I was hoping it would hurt. ['To dull the pain of losing Blair?'] That's what you don't understand. I feel nothing when I see her and Louis. Or when I jump off a building. Or when I crash a motorcycle. Even you don't irritate me."
Dan: "Well, having these guys beat you up is not the way to try to feel something. You could have died!"
Chuck: "Is being dead that much worse than being ... nothing?"
Chuck! You are so fucking ridiculous! That's amazing. If you had a friend like Chuck, okay, who was willing to take off from his busy schedule of raping and domestic violence so that he could pay sexy street toughs to beat him up, while quoting Hamlet, and then said some shit like that immediately afterward, what would you do? I'm honestly asking. I have no idea what I would do. None. Probably I would make out with him. But maybe like in a mean way?
THE AGENDA OF THE EDITRIX
Nate: "I told mommy it was her chance to tell her side of the story and move on with her life. And that it made her seem classier than Ruth Madoff."
Cougar: "Clever. That's all it took?"
Nate: "Well, and that you are a double agent for the squirrels. And that she gets to decide whether I do my internship with Goldman or Schumer."
Cougar: "Why do either? Why not come with me to my fantasyland Internet IPO? I mean, we just met, and those are real people, and I'm clearly a grifter of some kind. What part of this would give you pause?"
Nate: "Sometimes the difference between me and Serena is like, imperceptible. Yes, I am in."
Cougar: "Someone with your persuasive skills could be great at sales, or marketing."
I love it. "Based on the fact that you compared your drunk bitch mother to Ruth Madoff, I pronounce you qualified." For what? "For jobs." Like what jobs? "Like whatever."
Cougar: "Once you know how to control information, you can do anything with it. Politics, banking, whatever."
See? Literally she said "whatever."
"You could walk into a publisher's office with somebody else's book, drunk, wearing dreadlocks with bones in them, and say that the publisher has to publish this book but they can't ever know who wrote it, and that they have to send checks to Spain or something, and that they might as well publish the excerpted stories in various high-profile magazines or whatever."
"You could sit on a bench with David O. Russell and somehow ruin a D-boy's life just by sitting there. You could deliver coke to actors and get entire productions shut down and then have a conversation with a random movie producer whose job seems to consist almost entirely of supervising what color the walls are of various sets, and that will get you a job. Doing what? First one in the morning, last one to leave. Just doing whatever."
Nate, dirty: "While that sounds great, I would have to get my family to approve me pulling out of this other thing."
Nate's Family: "We do not care. We pretend we're not related to you. How many times and how many ways must we make that clear?"
Cougar: "Well, just remind them what George did for JFK, Jr."
Nate: "I was literally in utero when that happened. I honestly don't know who that is, or what the reference is to."
But you're sitting there asking yourself, when Diana Payne comes for Gossip Girl, will she still be able to defend herself with her personal standard of barely comprehensible gibberish?
Gossip Girl: "Watch out, Nate! Looks like sex play may not be the only game you're a pawn in..."
I'd say the bitch still has it. You can even picture Veronica Mars saying it like, "I don't know what the fuck that means." What if you had a friend that talked like that all the time? I wouldn't make out with that friend, that's for sure. I would lure her out onto something tall or high or over rough waters, and then push her off. And on the way down she'd be all, "Spotted: One Gossip Girl who won't be harboring any illusions now that she's been dropped in the harbor" or something and everybody would be like, "Jesus, thank you."
PROPPED-UP PRICKS
Dan: "So it looks like something called a conversion disorder. People become blind, paralyzed, or unable to feel after experiencing a psychological trauma, i.e., Blair leaving you forever... It's a little like PTSD."
Chuck: "If you say so."
Dan: "Oh, I say so all right. I realized the only way to be a part of this ridiculous storyline is to get even more ridiculous, so that's what I'm doing."
ibid., verbatim: "You should see someone. Treatment involves trying to make the patient feel again."
I... Like where this is going. Let's stick with this train of thought.
Dan: "Well, how about instead of pain, you try to feel good things?"
Yes. Yes, do continue.
Dan: "...I could tickle you."
See, you zigged. I thought you were gonna zag but you zigged. Still, there are ways in which this might not be a total loss.
Reality: They start talking about Dan's stupid book. They talk about it for a long long time. The sun sets and rises and they say words like "Vanessa Abrams" and "Charlie Trout" but I can't even hear them, because what just happened is too amazing.
Preferably: Tickling. A freewheeling lollapalooza of naked, boners-out tickling on the floors of Chuck's apartment, roaming from room to room like a tiny muscled Roomba with two backs. Like those roly-polies Escher used to draw, giggling filthily, from room to room, until Nate comes home. And then. Oh, then.
ABANDONED HICKS
Ivy: "I can't move to Portland with you after all. Sorry I told you to quit your job and pack your things and move to Portland with me, okay?"
Max: "Ivy, I am the most appealing dude that's been on this show in a long time. How can you give all this up? I bought Funyuns for you, Ivy. Funyuns."
Ivy: "I just hate you, I guess."
Max: "That is very sad. Bye."
So like, what? Why is this happening? Why did Ivy let Serena talk her into living with her under the assumed identity of a very real person that is related to Serena? When did this change of heart occur. "I was going to get the fuck out of Dodge, but then I changed my mind and thought, what better way of keeping my deception a secret than to live with Serena in a big house."
Meanwhile Gossip Girl's got something pithy to say: "How well do any of us really know each other? Even families have their secrets."
DOPED-UP PYX
Beatrice: "I thought bulimia was the key to dethroning Louis! But no."
Sexy Priest: "What about the pregnancy outside of marriage?"
Beatrice: "No, apparently that's fine in this storyline on this show that makes zero sense."
Sexy Priest: "Well, would you like to fuck in the back of this limo?"
Twist! They are an evil team of doing it-ers! Finally, something to like about Beatrice! Take the clothes off of the priest. No wait, leave them on. No wait, this is weird. Never mind. Go on about your business.
UNBELIEVABLE REMIX
Serena: "So remember how we're living together in California?"
Ivy: "Yeah, I guess. I guess that happened."
Serena: "Well it turns out that my pretend job is going back to New York! So suck on that!"
Ivy: "That's one way to make me a series regular. A weird awkward nonsensical way, I mean it doesn't even make basic sense, but fuck it. Let's move to New York together."
Serena: "Let's refer to Max as your crazy roommate a couple more times, so that when he follows us to New York we can have him thrown in the Ostroff and you can be like Everything is spiraling out of control because of my lies! Deal?"
Gossip Girl, how you doing?
"They say blood is thicker than water. But it's also a lot harder to clean up when it spills!"
Sure, sure. Of course. Why not say something like that?
RESCUED BY THE PROLIX AFTER LANDING ON HER COCCYX
Dan: "If I'd known any better, I'd think you're starting to like Brooklyn."
Blair: "It isn't Brooklyn I'm here for. You're the only person I can have a furtive, emotionally loaded conversation with right now. How's Chuck?"
Dan: "Uh, he's... Okay. Sort of. Long Freudian story."
(No mention of the tickles. Not one single reference to Tickle Party 2011.)
Dan: "How are you?"
Blair: "Pregnant. ...I had hoped denial would last longer as a coping mechanism, but breast tenderness and morning sickness made that impossible."
Dan: "Out here in the boondocks we have this thing called a woman's right to choose."
Blair: "I guess so. But like, I love Louis, and sex with Chuck at that child's Bar Mitzvah was a loving act, so this is a kid that came from love, so I'm going to keep it either way."
Dan: "I'm so sure. Also, obviously this baby is Chuck's."
Blair: "I only slept with him once, I slept with Louis a hundred times. He may be mild-mannered, but he's surprisingly virile. So by the sheer law of probability, it must be his. Haven't you read The Power of Positive Thinking? Put your giant intellect aside and just focus with me on wish fulfillment."
Dan does no such thing. Does the opposite of that. Crawls right up her rectum with this Vanessa Abrams hectoring bullshit about her choices and her life and "Even Blair Waldorf cannot bend DNA to her will" and this shit, which I get that he's the tough-talking friend she can rely on that loves her and all that, but fucking shut up right now, Humphrey. Time and place. We are not Penelope Trunk. We have no excuses.
Blair: "I am about to marry a fabulous man... Who happens to be a prince. I can't be this close to having all my dreams come true only to have them yanked away by one transgression at a stranger's Bar Mitzvah."
Dan: "Maybe not, but we're on a TV show. So I'm going to make it my mission to bug you and bug you and bug you to get a paternity test. Okay? Does that sound annoying or gross at all? Because I have this Humphrey streak in me."
Blair: "Your behavior would be controlling and systematically abusive, if it weren't you."
Dan: "But it is me, so feminism doesn't exist right now. Only when other shippers are getting serviced does misogyny enter this picture. Or if you decided to sell yourself for a hotel, maybe."
Do you understand that I still regularly receive letters from these sad lonely asshole girls that are pissed off because I don't like Dan Humphrey -- a fictional character in a story -- enough? That I have a "clear agenda" and that I don't understand la psychologie des femmes or whatever and that I'm somehow using dark wizard powers to destroy goodness or change the storyline around from imaginary space-case cuckoo world to the show we're actually watching? Do you know what that fucking does to a person? To a person's sense of humanity, and where we're at as a culture?
Blair: "And what if I lose everything?"
Dan: "You'll still have me."
Aww. Those two. I tell you what. GG! Take us home, ya crackhead. "Maybe it's not blood bonds that make us a family. Perhaps it's the people who know our secrets and love us anyway, so we can finally be ourselves."
week: Dan finally beats some sense into Blair, and she loves it.
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.