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It's Yom Kippur at the Waldorf-Rose house, which means volatile blood sugar and even more party-hopping than usual. For a silly -- fun silly, not dumb silly -- plot-centered episode, it packed more emotional punch than anything this season, and introduced a lot more crazy for the weeks to come. (Plus, more smirky background Sam, which will do just fine.)
Serena, having finally finished the book, gets a fairly heartrending scene at the end of the episode where she explains that she's jealous of Blair's star treatment as the love of Dan's life. I cried a little, I'm not going to lie. Of course, this is after she makes common cause with many witches -- from boss Jane to the creature called Nikki Finke -- in order to secure the film rights to Inside. Where it gets crazy is when she goes to Blair and informs her just how well she comes off in the story. Blair blows it off, of course, but you can already see the furious wheels turning in Serena's delirious shipper mind.
Chuck and Dan are still very much in love, pissing off Nate even more than his Brothaniel issues from last week, but Dan's so tied up in the book/movie drama -- and being the neatest character on the show, yet again -- that he doesn't notice Chuck losing his mind in a fairly inventive new way: Attempting to seduce a therapist so that he can somehow Will Hunting himself into secret insights, in combo with some kind of countertransference power game. He is really getting good at being weird in ways nobody has ever been weird before. She calls him out on a bunch of bullshit, he realizes that he is very close to going actually crazy, and the therapist receives a desperate voicemail that, again I won't lie, got me pretty teary.
I used to be scared of what would happen if Chuck got fixed, but honestly watching him with Dan this season has been a good preview of what that might look like.
Ivy and Nate break into that same safe at PRADA that everybody always breaks into, and steal Bart's old surveillance folders that everybody always steals, but Nate gets a sudden case of the Humphreys and starts in on her about family loyalty. In the end, Diana can't use them anyway because they're old intel, and ends up launching her website -- in the face of a glorious smackdown from the real Gossip Girl -- with some Monegasque Beatrice goblin drama.
Oh, well, and there's the little matter of a photograph: A young Diana Payne, in Bart's own file, which she destroys with a scary look on her face. Apparently, part of this Payne vendetta has to do with Bart's past, which makes her amazing in a new confusing way. At this point the possibilities are so endless that I jumped mentally to a Jane/Diana catfight in the pool and it turns out that they are both Chuck's mom and one of them is a ghost and Jane is actually Gossip Girl and Diana is the real Jane and Brothaniel is real and he's Nate's secret twin brother that falls in love with Ivy and then Max kills him, and this season is all really the book that Serena is writing in response to Inside and at the end of the season she'll be like, "In real life Rufus died of a heart attack and I switched the boyfriends around and most of these people turned out gay" and Tom Arnold is abducted by aliens, the end.
Princess Sophie and Blair's parents take the news of her pregnancy unbelievably well, but of course wretched old Beatrice gets in there with her greasy goblin fingers and effs everything up for everybody. By the end of things Louis has told his family to get screwed for the eightieth time, and Eleanor has given her most lovely pro-Blair speech of all time, which is the third time I teared up. (I am pregnant, maybe. Maybe last week's recap was so intense that I got knocked up like any other nineteen-year-old socialite with a Hepburn problem.)
Dan makes up with Serena and Rufus, saving Blair and Nate for later, and everything is smiles and Gallic forbearance until Louis discovers the paternity results in Blair's dresser. Not sure where that's headed, because he remains committed to her and doesn't mention it, but he does contact Chuck's new therapist out of the blue, for unknown reasons, which means it's probable she is a scarf-hoarding minion of William van der Woodsen, who will eventually be giving Charlie Trout his own case of Imaginary Cancer.
In Two Weeks: Some kind of Bridezilla boot camp with apparently all of Blair's old minions, hopefully more on the Payne connection to Bart, Ivy continues to self-destruct and we figure out the deal with Chuck, Louis and everybody's new therapist. Have a great Halloween!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Diana Payne had many agendas, none of which made much sense but involve: Burt, Blair, Gossip Girl, Ivy-Chivy, Nate, Aunt Carol, stolen cell phones, the internet, print media, and possibly Jane. All of those people. Rufus got called out for his epic loserness in the halls of literature forevermore, and reacted by acting even more Rufussy than usual. Blair got to the part where Dylan and Clair had sex and then just kind of read that part over and over, and Jane Bettinger wants the movie rights. Chuck assured Serena "Everyone loves a villain," and she didn't understand what he meant because she's Serena and she was still on page twenty, just like Nate, because they both read at like a fifth grade level.* Plus this:
"Gossip Girl here, one of several sources in a swiftly crowding marketplace offering news on the lives of Manhattan's scandalous elite."
*(Actually a real plotpoint this week.)
My question is: What can Diana Payne actually offer that Gossip Girl isn't already covering? She's got them RFID tagged and offers live streaming video of them doing things like drinking coffee and exchanging pleasantries, what else could the nation want?
CHEZ WALDORF
Blair: "I'm so looking forward to telling our parents about our bastard."
Louis: "[Something in French.]"
Jane: "Serena, have you finished that book yet?"
Serena: "That book that Louis read in two hours? Yes, after three weeks of this being my only job responsibility, I have finished it, and I am not happy."
Jane: "Remember, you're in trouble because of how we had no chance of making a film with Daniel Day-Lewis until you got us the interview, and then his manager turned us down because of a fictionalized account of your life, meaning we lost nothing because it was a zero sum."
Cyrus: "Princess Sophie!"
Sophie: "Cyrus! We like birds and smoked salmon. That's our relationship."
Cyrus: "How do you feel about Jewish stuff?"
Sophie: "I do like smoked salmon. Let's get our Yom Kippur on."
Beatrice: "I am still the worst, okay?"
Blair & Louis: "We are having a baby out of wedlock!"
Eleanor: "You're all of nineteen and not even halfway through college, so that's fine."
Princess Sophie: "Nobody in my principality is capable of doing math, so we're good."
Blair: "Against all reason, the family is overjoyed at my womanly embarrassment. Care to stay for Yom Kippur?"
Serena: "No, I have to stomp myself around town because of the contents of the only book I have ever actually read."
Blair: "It's a good thing we're both incredibly self-centered, or I would be concerned about the words you are saying out of your face."
PRADA
Ivy: "It's my first day at my fake job at that fake newspaper or whatever it is, how do I look?"
Lily: "Like a fake and a fraud. Want to come to Yom Kippur?"
Rufus: "If anybody cares, I'm not going to Yom Kippur."
Lily: "Nobody does care. Is Dan ever going to stop calling you?"
Rufus: "Probably, once I'm finished throwing my tantrum about his absolutely correct opinion of me, I will talk to my child."
Lily: "We are such fabulous parents."
INSIDE
By day it was an art gallery where they sold cat-shit coffee and which was run by a caveman goblin that liked to break into houses. But tonight, it was also a Winter Wonderland. Dylan's giant throbbing penis was both naughty and nice, that year. "My hymen!" Sabrina gasped. "Merry Christmas," Dylan laughed.
DOG PARK
Chuck: "I have to say, when you asked me where you could buy vintage magazines, this isn't what I thought you were talking about. I assumed you meant bodybuilder magazines from before the days of waxing."
Nate: "My eyebrows are offended by that remark. No, it's because Diana Payne mentioned JFK Jr. and I thought I should read some of his magazines so I can learn to be him."
Dan: "Chuck, darling! I brought you a studded collar."
Chuck: "Dan, my love! I will look great in this."
Dan: "Charles, you adorable scamp, I bought it for our pretend baby, the dog they call Monkey."
Chuck: "Dan, you are the best boyfriend and surrogate dog-father the world has ever seen."
Nate: "I feel boxed out. Good day."
Dan: "Nate, please forgive me for stealing your boyfriend and conflating you with our little brother in my scathing novel. You are holding onto this for no real reason at this point."
Nate: "I said good day, sir."
Chuck: "Dan, your controlling and micromanaging my emotional state has really made a change for the better. I feel like raping everybody today!"
Dan: "You should start with that psychologist over there, the middle-aged one that is both Asian and Jewish. In other news, I feel like an outsider on this show because of how I prostituted everybody else's lives for my own quick grab at fame."
Chuck: "There there."
Dr. Eliza Barnes: "Chuck Bass, it is nice to meet and flirt with you."
Chuck: "Dr. Eliza Barnes, my intentions are blurred."
SPECTATOR
Payne: "I am so excited about our website or whatever! Time to go live."
Gossip Girl: "Not so fast! Everybody, a certain website or something stole a bunch of phones at the Jenny Packham show, and is about to go live."
Payne: "I guess we aren't going live. With our newspaper or blog or whatever it is."
Diana Payne is still not familiar with how Gossip Girl knows everything that happens all the time, so she thinks there must be a rational reason that Gossip Girl would know to blow her spot right now, this very morning of Yom Kippur. And honestly, why would she be: Occam's Razor suggests that Gossip Girl's omniscience is just covering up for a complex system of moles and double agents, and so obviously Ivy, the most moly and the doublest agent of all time, is the probable leaker.
CHEZ WALDORF
Blair: "Mother will alter the dress to hide the baby bump, and Louis and I will fly back to be close to Dr. Crane for the third trimester. A honeymoon can wait!"
Parents: "We are overjoyed that you are so totally knocked up right now!"
Beatrice: "Um, did anybody notice that this is ludicrous?"
Sophie: "Beatrice, please. Go get your brother some crepes or French toast or something, and rub his princely feet."
Beatrice: "Or else Blair is going to take over this baby like she's taking over her own wedding, bringing down the monarchy and losing us all our heads, somehow."
Sophie: "In this episode I just do whatever people tell me, no matter how dumb it is."
BETTINGER BRUNCH
Serena: "Dan, thanks for meeting me for brunch. I just finished painfully sounding out your novel phoneme by phoneme, and I want to apologize for being so upset at your blatant character assassination that has already compromised my fledgling career."
Dan: "What's important is that you forgive me."
Serena: "Sure, whatever. I forgive you and I wish you a lot of happiness. Apparently with Blair. So anyway, listen, can I have the film rights to your book?"
Dan: "I will totally promise you that without talking to my agent. Since she's never really doing her job, I know she won't mind. We're going to play Hide & Seek later in Central Park, I'll tell her then."
Serena: "I'm so glad we're 'friends' again, after what 'I' did to 'you.'"
Dan: "Hey, Alessandra. What are you doing?"
Alessandra: "Watching a matinee and buying shoes and other stuff that's not my job."
Dan: "Listen, can my random friend have the movie rights to this bestselling novel? We both just graduated high school, so I'm fairly certain it will work out."
Alessandra: "Uh, no. I may not be a literary agent, but I am your literary agent."
Dan: "What I'm hearing is maybe."
Serena: "Jane! Dan just verbally agreed to give us the film rights without discussing it with his agent. Did I do good?"
SPECTATOR
Payne: "And you had me believe crazy was just an act? I think you might be suicidal!"
Ivy: "Are you even talking to me? What are you talking about?"
Payne: "Gossip Girl's omniscience strains credibility, and so therefore I will destroy you."
ibid., verbatim: "Since you lie like most people breathe, your oath means very little."
(British people be talking like that all the time.)
Diana threatens to expose Ivy to somebody or something if she doesn't get juicy gossip or something, so she sends her to Yom Kippur, which as everybody knows is the most exciting and sexyfied holiday of the entire year. Nothing says scandal and heartbreak like Yom Kippur.
Nate: "Why are you and Charlie always yelling at each other?"
Payne: "Ladies and their secrets, Nate. Hey, can you get me into the Waldorf-Rose-Grimaldi Yom Kippur?"
Nate, verbatim: "I doubt it makes for riveting journalism."
Payne: "I am obsessed with Blair or some shit all of a sudden."
Nate: "I'll get you an invite, but I don't do Jewish stuff. That's actually what the Archibald family crest says in Latin, No Jewish Stuff."
NY1
Alessandra: "This interview is key because it's your first visual appearance in the media. You wanna make a strong impression."
Dan: "You really sound like an agent right now."
Alessandra: "These days, a book needs as much press as it can get, no matter how many glowing reviews there are. Public television is the last bastion of the intellectual. Other phrases."
Dan: "I tend to babble and you are freaking me out."
Alessandra: "I am being an agent right now, it's freaking me out too. This is the perfect platform to position your book as year's Best Picture. Mention Harvey's interest. People in Hollywood are sheep. If someone they respect wants the book, they all will."
Dan: "I should probably tell Serena that I was lying when I promised her the movie rights, and that we're obviously giving them to Harvey."
Alessandra: "Don't bother. I am sure she'll telepathically understand based on no information. As a literary agent I prefer to let other people infer basic details rather than being clear with them about what I'm doing as my job."
Dan: "You are the worst at this."
CHEZ WALDORF
Parents: "Blair, where will you give birth to your child?"
Blair: "Lenox Hill, where I was born. As was my mother. And her mother before her. And so on."
Parents: "And for school?"
Blair, verbatim: "I've already sent a copy of the sonogram, along with an application, to Constance/St. Jude's."
(Everybody pretends that Constance Billard wasn't an absolute disaster for every single person that ever went there.)
Sophie: "While a New York education may be adequate for a non-royal, Grimaldis always attend boarding school in Switzerland. Furthermore, the child must be born in our wing at the Princess Grace Hospital Center in Monaco."
Eleanor: "I still don't understand that you are royalty and that our grandchild is going to be the ruler of an entire country one day."
Sophie: "It does seem to be a stumbling block for you guys."
BARNES OFFICE
Barnes: "Mr. Bass! I was just on my way out to do some Yom Kippur stuff. As a convert, the high holy days are really important to me, which I guess is why I'm only working a half day."
Chuck: "I really need some guidance. And by guidance, I mean a hand job."
Barnes: "Come right in. For a trained psychologist I sure am easily manipulated."
Chuck, verbatim: "Now, would you like me seated, or... Prone?"
Barnes, after a lot of this: "You are totally trying to fuck a psychologist in her office? That is maybe the most bizarre cry for help I've ever heard."
Chuck: "[An oddly anti-Semitic comment that makes you think about how this is a show about WASPs written largely by Jews, and honestly that should have gotten weird before now anyway.]"
Confused Gentile Privilege: "I am outraged on behalf of somebody else anyway!"
PRADA
Ivy: "Hey, Lily. Any hot goss? That's what we're calling gossip right now, or it's British."
Lily: "Well, this situation where Rufus is being bitchy to his son for no reason is..."
Ivy: "-- No, I meant do you have anything interesting to say."
Lily: "Oh! No, dear."
Ivy: "Yeah, I didn't think so. Have another chardonnay."
Lily: "Look, just don't break into that safe I'm indicating to you right now that people are constantly breaking into. It contains files on all of our family members, even the ones that don't exist anymore."
Ivy: "I sure won't. You betcha."
Lily: "It wasn't Nate that was conflated with Eric, it was Jenny. And that's you."
BETTINGER/WALDORF
Max: (Rules.)
Dan: "Anyway, movie producers have many names. Here, I'll..."
(He drops their names everywhere.)
Dan: "Butterfingers! Sorry about that, TV."
Blair: "I have arrived at your place of business to talk about myself!"
Serena: "I am so glad to see you, so I can start talking about myself."
Blair: "I think I have stumbled into Rosemary's Baby and they are treating my body like I'm a brood mare for the heir. Turns out the princess dream is much like any other dream where a man comes in and saves you, which is to say that it sucks. My mind is fraying at the seams even more than usual. And I think they may pull a Not Without My Daughter and kidnap me to Belgravia."
Serena, verbatim: "That sounds horrible. But can you convince Dan to put his movie with our company?"
Jane: "Get that pregnant teenager out of here and stop acting like Serena!"
Blair: "Serena, quit your job. This woman is a bitch."
Serena: "Both of y'all chill. I have certain ideas about my identity."
ibid., verbatim, shooing her out: "My job is important to me, B. You have six months to deal with your problem. I have six minutes to deal with mine."
Blair: "Not knowing that S is freezing me out because of having deciphered from Dan's book that he is in love with me, I will just assume that I have no friends left. Belgravia, here I come."
EMPIRE
Chuck: "Nate, your only skill is as a fucker of MILFs. Tell me how to bed a psychologist so that she will give me mental health."
Nate: "Why don't you ask your great new boyfriend Dan about that?"
Chuck, verbatim: "You speak Old Lady, what's my play?"
Nate: "Just pretend you give a shit about things she likes. Like if she was a Jewish convert who for some reason worked on Yom Kippur, you could stalk her to Temple or something. Or if she were a shady old-lady journalist with no apparent agenda or strategy, you could steal a phone or break the fast at a stranger's house or whatever."
Chuck: "Hey, chum. You seem glum. What's on your mind that is more important than my weird plan that makes no sense to sleep with this lady?"
Nate: "Cousin Charlie will do whatever it takes to succeed at this job, and I won't. Whatever the holy hell that means."
Chuck: "The irony. I wish that we were Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, and then trade bodies for just one day, and then be in each other's bodies, and then you would be Jamie Lee Curtis in Lindsay Lohan's body having sex with some psychologist, and I would be Lindsay Lohan in Jamie Lee Curtis's body doing shady journalism."
Nate: "...I just got the weirdest boner."
WALDORF
Blair: "I'm having a barely recognizable spat with S over something I don't even know about, and have decided to leave New York City behind. Think of yourself as an aging ballet dancer, and me as Sarah Jessica Parker."
Louis: "I don't know about this. This seems like a dumb idea."
Sophie: "Hey, how are you guys doing?"
Blair: "I am resigning from America is how I'm doing! Call me a Belgravian national!"
Louis: "...So there's that, apparently."
PRADA
Rufus & Lily: "[Super weird, super long, sort of half-mumbled, neurotic couple conversation about different kinds of Chinese food and let's get this kind and let's get that kind and whatever, like how parents are always so cute and weird and it kind of sounds like a person talking to himself, only there are two of them, doing it as a team. It's so romantic!]"
Ivy: "Rufus and Lily, get out of here and go to the Waldorf party."
Ivy, verbatim: "And maybe if you were to see a family in good working condition, it would remind you how important it is to fix yours."
Rufus: "You little shit, what a patronizing thing to say."
Lily: "Remember, she's mentally ill."
WALDORF
Eleanor, verbatim: "My God, you'd think the Jews had suffered enough. I don't know how Cyrus can stand all this fasting."
Payne: (Stands there like she has any reason to be there.)
Eleanor: "I'm Eleanor Waldorf, who the fuck are you?"
Ivy: "This is Diana Payne, she owns my ass."
Eleanor: "Right, you have that website or blog or something. Welcome to my home where you weren't invited. Please don't bother the royals."
Payne: "I am totally going to."
Beatrice: "Diana Payne, would you like some juicy goss? Blair just decided to move to Belgravia."
Eleanor: "Wait, what? Is this because of how she showed up at somebody's place of business to whine about the situations she has entirely created for herself, and then acted hurt when they were more interested in doing their job because they were at work?"
Beatrice: "Yeah. You didn't know?"
Eleanor, verbatim: "Please. Blair will do whatever she wants. Waldorf women are not afraid to break the rules. And besides, who is she hurting if she does? It's not like she's signing a legally binding contract."
Beatrice: "Like my mother, I literally just do whatever words people say in every scene. If you'd ended that sentence with 'blintz,' I would now be heading over for a blintz. Instead, I am about to draw up a legally binding contract about something."
Payne: "How do you feel about your daughter abandoning you for Monaco?"
Eleanor: "I live in France anyway, so this is all pointless to a kind of insulting degree."
BETTINGER
Jane, out of fucking nowhere: "Dan's agent and Harvey are close to a deal. Maybe your good friend F. Scott Fitzjackass had you nailed in the book. If something doesn't fall right into your lap, Serena, you don't have a clue how to work for it."
Serena: "That was fairly uncalled-for, and yet I feel the need to cross moral boundaries in order to prove her wrong. Unlike usually, where I do that exact same thing in every episode."
Serena: "Dear Nikki Finke, here is an anonymous tip that I got the rights to this book."
Nikki Finke: "Dear Harvey Weinstein, please enjoy this anonymous and uncorroborated tip that somebody else has the rights to this book."
Harvey Weinstein: "Dear Alessandra, without checking or confirming any of this I am going to just do whatever Deadline Hollywood tells me to do. That's how I got to be where I am today, making sudden moves based on anonymous hints at the websites of cranks."
Alessandra: "Dan, that deal you made in good faith and then forgot to rescind is biting us in the ass! In really questionable ways, narratively."
YOM KIPPUR
Payne: "Beatrice, you know how I run this tabloid website about famous people, and you're always going on and on about the honor of the Grimaldi family and all that? So clearly you would chat with me on the record about all kinds of shit, right?"
Beatrice: "Listen, what about that priest that I was fucking that totally vanished from this entire TV show. I just do what they tell me."
Payne: "So, spill all your embarrassing secrets into this microphone, won't you?"
Beatrice: "Yes, because it makes total sense that I would do that. You see, my personality-free brother has always been the favorite, but he never cared about his title or our family the way I do. I had hoped his marriage to Blair would mean permanent exile to New York."
Payne: "Sibling rivalry! Backstabbing! Familial manipulation! You really are a royal family, aren't you?"
Beatrice: "You are such a hack. This episode is so stupid."
THE GIRL THAT BLEW THE SHOFAR
Rufus: "Since apparently my self-esteem and entire reality depend on everybody babying me and not saying the truth about what a fucking failure I am as a man and father, I reserve the right to be rude to our hostess if she calls you Lily Bass."
Lily: "Since apparently my house arrest has made me batty as shit, go for it."
Eleanor: "Cyrus, isn't it time for you to blow the shofar?"
Cyrus: "Sophie just randomly produced these legal documents regarding the upbringing of our future grandchild. Blair's supposed to sign them before Sophie returns to Monaco tomorrow."
Eleanor: "Alas, just as I prophesied."
Blair: "Fuck it, give me a pen. There's nothing left for me here now. Now that Serena didn't go to lunch with me one time. It's all scorched earth now because of that."
Cyrus: "But like, any time you take your child out of Monaco for more than six hours, you have to inform Palace security. And you can't go to New York for more than 48 hours at a time. And if you break any of these rules, you face the possibility of losing custody of your child to the Royal Family."
Everybody: Gets their panties in a total wad about that even though the only weird one is the New York one.
PRADA
Nate: "What going on in here?"
Ivy, verbatim: "I'm not off my meds, but I've kinda lost my mind."
Nate: "Safecracking? Seriously?"
Ivy: "Yeah, I have zero sense of perspective about any of this, so I just jumped straight to a felony."
Nate: "Ivy, that's terrible to abuse your family like that! I certainly can't be involved because of JFK Jr. Now, let me just see if I can give you the combination to the safe, which is the opposite of what I was just saying mere seconds ago."
Ivy: "What are you going to do?"
Nate: "I am going to call Chuck because he knows the combination to the safe."
Ivy: "Wow, you're a regular Dillinger."
Nate: "I don't know what that word is, but are you being mean?"
BETTINGER
Jane: "You must be Dan Humphrey. I can tell because of the huffy judgmental face you're already making in the middle of my office."
Dan: "Where is Serena?"
Jane: "I'm such a fan of your scathing novel! I like to call it 'Gatsby for the social media age.' I am a lonely woman."
Dan: "Why did Nikki Finke tell Harvey Weinstein that you have the option?"
Jane: "False leaks are for amateurs! Just like in every scene, I am going to fume about Serena."
Dan: "Me too. We are starting a club."
Serena, jumping out from behind a door: "...Fuck both of you! I dropped the hint to Nikki Finke and I'd do it again. And why? Because you are both assholes. You have been unbelievably mean to me for no real reason, you lied to me, you made me apologize for no reason, and even now you're sitting there judging me. You think this was wild and unhinged behavior? I can send Nikki Finke unverified anonymous tips all day. Try me."
WALDORF-ROSE
Louis & Beatrice have a long, annoying French-fried conversation about whatever, this latest thing with the contract and the baby, everybody gets involved, Payne's staring and grinning like a lunatic, and of course Princess Sophie figures out in about five seconds that Beatrice was the one that included all the really weird things to once again torpedo this whole idea, and then just because of how dumb everything is, Sophie decided that although it was deceitful and crazy, Beatrice had the right idea because of how Blair reacted to her insane demands, so she decides that Blair actually has to sign the contract.
Louis: "This is that part in every episode where I throw off the burdens of aristocracy or something and act like I'm sacrificing something that's never made clear, and then later it all goes away again for other ill-defined reasons and the whole situation resets to basic default for the episode, yes?"
Yes.
PRADA
Ivy, verbatim: "Even one of these would not only launch the website, but blow Diana's mind."
(Nope.)
Nate: "And my ethics."
(Sigh.)
Anyway, it's this tissue-thin thing where Nate feels so bad for doing this pretty egregiously shitty thing, and then for no real reason kind of shrugs and goes along with it, and they talk about what assholes they are for doing it, but what can ya do
Nate, suddenly: "Actually, though, you're even worse than me because these people are your actual family."
Ivy: "...Oh, that's right! I totally forgot that part. Okay, let's just put a kibosh on this whole thing and go to Yom Kippur."
Nate: "That was even more useless than my usual storylines. Maybe Dylan Hunter was right and I really am just half of a gay youth."
Ivy: "Psych! I am totally bringing these leather dossiers full of ancient information back to Diana. But in the meantime, could you give me some condescending words of wisdom that are also totally hypocritical because you're in the exact same position as me?"
Nate: "Done."
OUTSIDE
Chuck: "Dr. Barnes, I can't believe I stalked you all the way to Temple so that I could bother you some more, and you won't even chill and hang with me for like one minute?"
Barnes: "You could've had fifty, but you wasted them. Knowing your reputation, I expected nothing less than an entirely inappropriate manipulation. Allow me to lay down some basics about your mental health science. You never had a childhood, and so you behave like a child in the worst ways. You pay for intimacy so you're always in control and no one can get close to you. Your superficial connections and lack of authentic emotion leave you isolated and alone. Not just tonight. Always. I wish you all the best, but you're gonna need more than that to live a happy and normal life."
Chuck: "She really gets me. Or at least the shallow cypher of a character I sometimes can be."
BETTINGER
Serena: "You would not believe the day I am having! Allow me to complain to you about my job for a second."
Dan: "What? I am totally angry at you! All I did was tell you that you could have the movie rights, and then renege on that agreement without warning. How could you do that to me?"
Serena: "I'm sorry, Dan. I'm sorry that your flaky double-crossing bullshit scared off Harvey Weinstein, and I'm willing to take the ethical fall for it for some reason. I'm sorry that I wasn't really a virgin the first time we did it. And I'm sorry that you wrote such a hateful book about me."
Dan: "It wasn't just about you, it was also about Daisy Buchanan, and Amy March, and like five different Gwyneth Paltrow roles. My lack of creativity is multivalent, it's one of the most amazing things about me is how thin I can spread my complete lack of originality. I'm a self-important hack. It doesn't mean anything, Serena!"
Serena: "It means that you are in love with Blair!"
Dan: "Oh. Well that part, yeah."
This bugs S for some reason, I guess we don't really need to know what it is, but I suppose it comes down to how, one in every five times, Dan is the love of Serena's life. And for what it is worth, he has never been eaten by wolves or sent to jail, so maybe she has a point. Maybe of all the loves of her life, he is sometimes the loviest. But he never really liked her that much -- he's seemed to mostly hate her guts for the entire time they've known each other, to be honest -- so I'm not sure where she got the idea that it was mutual.
SPECTATOR
Ivy: "Here are leather dossiers on all the main characters. The information in there is probably two or three years old at least, given that Lily and Rufus have been married for approximately one hundred billion years."
Payne: "Wait, who even are these people? Eric van der Woodsen? Jenny Humphrey? Pilot Inspektor? Russell Thorpe's Dead Wife? That One Boyfriend Of Eric's?"
Ivy: "I don't know, I'm new."
Nate: "Thank God we didn't risk our ethics or something. The hubris of technology."
Ivy: "Holy Christ, Nate, you've been talking about this literally since the one scene where you and Chuck were looking at naked man magazines together. Get a new topic."
Nate: "I'm just saying I'm glad we broke into that safe but then didn't take anything."
Ivy: "Got. It."
Payne: "Okay, everyone, now the real work begins. Get to your desks and start writing. I want a constant stream of content 24 hours a day. I want WHUPHs and Tweets, I want Pokes and Likes, I want a bunch of texts and SMS and mobile imaging, I want touchscreen capability and tons of apps, I want a thing where you can listen to your music from anywhere, I want scalability and HTML 5.0, I want cascading style sheets and rubies on rails, I want a thing on the side of the screen that has a menu and a thing on the other side of the screen where you have buddies, I want pop-up ads and opt-in opportunities and a pyramid scheme and user referrals and RSS and layouts and realtime things like that!"
Her Staff: Is just literally these two children who have dropped out of college, one of whom is an imposter of some other girl who dropped out of college, a girl wearing a backbrace, a couple of squirrels and Ruth Madoff emptying the garbage cans. Nobody knows what she means or what she's talking about or why they are there. The "website" is actually just some hologram Christmas wrapping they tacked to the wall for no real reason, and all they really know is that when she stares at it, you better go very still, because she's about to start issuing more incomprehensible demands about this shit.
WALDORF
Eleanor: "You know how they wrote up a legal contract that was insane for you to sign? I maybe have made an absurd joke about that, and put the idea in Beatrice's head."
Blair: "Since nobody is actually that stupid, I don't understand why you would feel bad about that or give it a second's thought."
Eleanor: "Now I will awkwardly segue into a short, sweet speech about what a great woman you are or something."
Blair: "Most people when they get knocked up at 19 don't really have everybody kissing their ass and following them from place to place showering them with rose petals and gifts. Not, particularly, on the Upper East Side."
Eleanor: "I am chock full of drugs right now. That may be a clue."
Rufus: "Eleanor's druggy chitchat has somehow made me want to forgive Dan for those imagined slights I've had my petticoats ruffled about all week."
Lily: "All it made me do was crave pills."
UPSTAIRS
Serena: "Blair, I'm sorry I didn't drop everything for your nineteenth nervous breakdown. I find your pregnancy annoying and inconvenient, but not as annoying and inconvenient as you showing up at my work for no reason. I should be a better friend. But, I hasten to add, in ways that are mutually beneficial."
Blair: "I get it. Sometimes my made-up hysteria about nothing doesn't really compare to your own self-esteem and desire to make your way in the world."
Serena: "No way, you got me all wrong. I am totally willing to sabotage myself in order to feel needed, it's why I surround myself with a-holes. No, I was just saying that I was so bitchily 'doing my job' and not 'indulging your nonsense' because I was so jealous that Dan is in love with you."
A huge, tiny grin.
Blair: "Don't be ridiculous, S. That book is pure fiction whether I'm the star or not."
SPECTATOR
Diana gives the useless dossiers back to Ivy, explaining how "news" works and what "news" is and how "new" things are more likely to be "news," and then there's some awkward stage business where she keeps back one folder, removes a photograph of herself as a young woman from it, calls Ivy back to give the folder -- Bart Bass's own dossier, you know, that he was keeping on himself -- to her, and then takes the picture that she just took out of the folder, stares at it for a while more, and then sets the photo on fire. So apparently Bart was investigating himself? And turned up a picture of her from ten years ago? And now she has this information, leading us to believe that she too is investigating herself? Maybe they were part of an amnesia cult. Maybe that's how they got their kicks back then.
OUTSIDE
Dan: "You're right, you're not the love of my life. Or maybe you are."
Serena: "I am so done with this conversation."
Dan: "Also, you are getting the rights to my movie after all."
Serena: "Oh, don't feel guilted into it just because you flaked on a promise and then came to by job to get me fired and treated me like shit yet again."
Dan: "I assure you that I don't feel bad about any of those things. Also, I want to write the screenplay myself. As a college sophomore, I feel that nobody will have a problem with that."
Serena: "Okay, Dan. Thanks for everything I guess."
Dan: "Serena? Serena, I'm going to have to let you go. My dad's calling. Probably to apologize to me for being offended by all the offensive things I wrote about him. Let's talk soon."
Chuck: "Dr. Barnes? I have had some random epiphany for the fifth episode in a row and I realized that you were right and I need therapy to stop raping people and all that."
Barnes: "I am sure this will end well."
Blair: "I'm sorry you had to choose between me and your mother. It's the last thing I wanted, and it was quite a surprise because of how it happens in every single episode. On another note, why are you rooting around in the drawer where I keep my paternity results?"
Louis: "[Something in French.]"
Gossip Girl: "What if Louis had a personality? And that personality was EVIL? Just kidding, neither of those things is actually true."
Two Weeks: Louis pays Dr. Barnes to brainwash Chuck into assassinating Senator Jordan on behalf of the crypto-communists secretly led by Eleanor Waldorf. Dan puts all of his screenwriting skills to the test while wrangling the egos of Shia LaBoeuf and special guest star Paul Lynde. Diana Payne's secret agenda comes to fruition an Nate and Ivy are finally conflated into one single Upper East Ur-Skek that is half as boring as either of the separately, but also half as adorable. Rufus whines about some other shit, and Blair feeds her old minions one by one to a yak, in a desperate show of power meant to intimidate the Belgravian Army into a stalemate in the ongoing war between their sense of old-world propriety and her futuristic cyber-womb.
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.