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A ropy beginning, weird continuity stuff, some OOC plot massage and the most hideous clothing, but other than that, pretty great by the end of things. I know what you're thinking: What's up Louis's ass this week? Well, I'll tell you: Somebody leaked about the paternity test to Gossip Girl. He decides that the UES is one large conspiracy of bitches, which it is, and that this is why Blair is insane, which it is -- and Blair, amidst all her protestations, finally decides he's right when the Minions give her fake details about her wedding shower.
Seems Lily and Serena, in their infinite wisdom, decided a fun and safe thing to do would be to fuck with Blair's head about the details. Yeah. The first thing to go is her fashion sense, as she takes her Bitches out shopping while dressed like a visiting dignitary from Grandma Dolltown.
Before hooking back up with Serena, Max comes by PRADA to blow Ivy's spot, but -- after a quick confab with Aunt Carol -- she spins a quick story about how "Ivy Dickens" is actually her porn name or something. Later, Max figures out that she was never Charlie Rhodes, but she instantly starts treating him like a blackmailer and he instantly starts acting like one in response.
Nate calls Eric and Jonathan with a great idea nobody's thought of before: How about instead of just hacking GG and then not doing anything with it, what if you hacked GG and then did something with it? Before you know it, there's access to every single email ever sent to the vile creature, and apparently a button you can push on every computer that makes these accessible on the Spectator site. Serena quickly talks Nate out of publishing them, and in turn he talks Diana out of it, but in the end it's Louis that publishes the emails, causing a massive meltdown at the shower.
Before Nate can even break up with Diana, she's met with William and agreed to resign as EIC at the webizine. Turns out William's plan all along was to George Nate, down to setting him up with a hot cougar girlfriend. And so the ho gets hoed. In the end, Nate and his grandpa are running the site, Gossip Girl is taking a minute for herself, and Diana runs off yelling vague shit about how if Nate "figures it out" about her, then he will also "figure it out" about William.
If you thought Serena's hair looked like a bird's nest made of crackheads and raffia before, I have exciting news for you tonight. On the other hand, she shares Nate's customary "hilarious line readings" acting award for this week, being the only other person who appears to be having fun of any kind at this point.
Chuck and Monkey -- still wearing that studded collar Dan gave them -- decide to spend the day with Dan Humphrey, getting stoned and drunk and having prostitute orgy romps together while watching The Matrix. Eventually, though, an adorably fucked-up Dan gets a wild hair and goes rogue, crashing the shower for a second until Chuck shows up to rescue him. Blair turns her nose up at all of this until Serena sweetly points out that Chuck was, once again, just watching out for her.
The cliffhanger is that Blair shows up at the Empire just as Chuck is tucking poor Dan into bed. Well, no, the real cliffhanger is that, after saving him from embarrassing himself in front of Blair, Chuck figures out that Dan is in love with her. And instead of getting jealous or weird about it, he simply explains that he's right there with him, they are buds, it's us against the world, etc., and it's super sweet. Then they do it on a stoop. Aww.
week: Louis cries, Blair and Chuck attend therapy together, Nate continues to mogul the medias or something, and Gossip Girl hopefully takes every one of those fuckers out.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!GG, remarkably lucid this week: "A shower is supposed to make you feel fresh and clean, but on the Upper East Side, they're where I get the most dirt. And B's bridal shower tonight promises to be an absolutely filthy affair!"
However, two people have been left out of this little affair: Charles and Daniel. Why, however will they cope?
CENTRAL PARK
Chuck is walking Monkey, wearing his Humphrey black studded collar -- Monkey, silly, not Chuck! -- when those two mini-me's representing the GG audience appear. They are getting both older and weirder-looking, as expected. It's weird to see them on this 2.0 version of the story, artifacts of a more heightened and symbolic atmosphere.
Bitches: "Honestly, a mutt? No wonder Blair chose Louis over you. Totally right call, btdubs, because you are so the opposite of royalty. Still, how royally miffed are you that you weren't even invited to the shower tonight?"
Chuck threatens to unleash Monkey on them, but I think it's more his bitchy call-out -- "I should warn you, he's trained to go after fake Prada" -- that scares them off. You know it's gonna get Chucky when he starts tossing around sub-Joan Rivers shit like that.
PRADA
Dan, reading: "As for number two? In high school, D got left off the list because no one knew who he was. Now it's because they know too well. Looks like Lonelyboy needs to change his name to Banished Boy..."
Rufus & Lily: (Laugh at him, in his very face, because he is a grown man whining about this inconsequential shit.)
Dan: "Thanks for the support!"
Lily: "Um, at least they're still talking about you. If they weren't, I'd start worrying. At least, that's what I tell Serena when she starts with this bullshit."
Dan: "[Needless, pained exposition about how his book is a failure.]"
Rufus: "But the rest of the book tour went better, right?"
Dan: "I certainly was not shirking my responsibilities, resulting directly in the failure of a venture I claim to care utterly about, and lying to you about it. If that's what you mean."
Cousin Peepers comes crawling out of Jenny's old room, looking like something that could be the mess that is Jenny.
Cousin Peepers, recently fired: "Gnngh."
Dan: "Hey, are you okay?"
Cousin Peepers, retiring back to her fake room: "Bleargh."
Lily: "Ugh. I guess I should talk to her. I hope she's taking her meds."
Rufus: "I can't believe we [blah blah exposition, they agreed to throw the shower but won't be at the shower for some reason]."
Dan: "I think I'll pass on watching you guys set up for a party that I'm not invited to. In case you were wondering whether absolutely everything was about me."
WALDORF
Louis shows up to apologize for... Whatever the last shitty thing was that he did. As a shitty-thing-doing machine that has no other characteristics, it's getting hard to keep track. Presumably it was about our royal responsibilities in some dumb way. Oh no, I remember, it was the new perma-obstacle in their relationship. He tried to have Chuck hypnotized to do unspeakable things.
Louis: "I come bearing gifts... every perfume Santa Maria Novella has to offer. Feel free to bash the Imperial Lavender over my head if you'd like."
(Imperial = Empire, Lavender = Purple; Imperial Lavender = Chuck Bass.)
Louis: "[Gross-sounding Gallic apologies.]"
Blair: "As in every episode, I forgive you without further ado."
Louis: "By the way, I hate your friends and Serena is going to throw you a shitty party and I spent the whole flight thinking about isolating you from your friends for no real reason except to provide a reason for this episode to exist. It's getting harder but not impossible to come up with these."
Blair: "I will be throwing a boring shit-fit later, presumably."
Louis: "Yeah, probably because of your shitty friends who I suddenly hate."
SPECTATOR
Nate: "Grandfather! So nice to see you here, at the business you're secretly underwriting to create the illusion that I can do things or matter in any way."
Granderbilt: "It's all you, bro."
Diana: "Hey Nate, [magazine words chosen at random]."
Nate: "Boss girlfriend, meet my grandfather."
Wm. & Diana: "Hello! We have certainly not met before."
Diana: "Anyway, [words]. I'll show this strange grandfather to the door. If you hear hissing, whispered conversations about your destiny do not worry about it."
PRADA
Aunt Carol: "Cousin Peepers, I told you not to call me anymore!"
Ivy: "But I just got fired and Max just showed up in town. My thin excuse for a storyline is about to fall apart! Can't you hear it in my death-rattle voice?"
Aunt Carol: "I cannot see where or how this is my problem. Pretty sure I told you to fuck off."
Ivy: "Um, I told your mom to fuck off. But so perhaps I will come clean to the van der Humphreys and then..."
Aunt Carol: "-- Um, and then I will have you arrested."
Ivy: "Maybe I will have you arrested! I will have your mom arrested."
Aunt Carol: "If the truth comes out, I will lose access to my daughter's trust fund, and then what? How will I buy drugs then? Trust me, I will hunt you down."
Ivy: "Your mom will hunt you down! Literally."
Aunt Carol: "It seems we are at an impasse. Just remember how rich you are right now, and how poor you would otherwise be."
Ivy: "Good point. My flaky plot may continue, heart-pounding rate unabated."
Aunt Carol: "There we go."
WALDORF
Louis: "Things I did not get mad about include how you want to live in your own house, or don't feel like converting to Catholicism."
Blair: "But you're going to get mad about my friends, now?"
Louis: "Yes! They are connected to your residence and spiritual life!"
Blair: "How do you figure?"
Louis: "Because I am very mad, that's how! You must give things up to prove your love!"
Blair: "What have you sacrificed, then?"
Louis: "Um, my family, every episode. My inheritance, every episode. My right to the throne, every episode. My country of residence, every episode. Shall I go on?"
Blair: "If the show doesn't remember any of that repetitive nonsense, why should I?"
Louis: "Kill shot! Gossip Girl just reported your paternity test, making me a cuckold."
Blair: "Funny how, after a hundred episodes all about paparazzi and tabloid interest in our marriage, nobody seems that into investigating this most terrible of the things."
Louis: "I blame your friends for telling Gossip Girl this!"
Blair: "You really don't get how this show works, do you?"
Louis: "How this show works is, your friends suck! Like I decided today."
Blair: "We're not like that anymore. Even I have to fill out forms in triplicate for your permission to act normal. This is clearly your stank sister's doing."
Louis: "Why would I believe that? What would make you say that?"
Blair: "Literally every second she's been onscreen would make me say that, dork. Look, I'll show you. Serena! Be at my beck and call!"
Serena: "I'm too busy planning your amazing shower to engage in any of you two's silliness. Work it out among yourselves."
Louis & Blair: (Both, somewhat obscurely, believe this proves Louis's point.)
SPECTATOR
Diana: "Why did you just show up here in the middle of our Byzantine scheme?"
William: "Because you are being painted as the sexual aggressor in the relationship, which ruins my ever more grotesque plans."
Diana: "I am sorry, I don't see how that could possibly be an issue, you gross old man. If you wanted him to look like a player maybe you should have set him up with a lady that isn't old enough to be his ancestor."
William: "It's time for you to quit this magazine or whatever it is, and let Nate be EIC."
Diana: "...But that, I mean literally that makes no sense."
William: "You have three days to something or another, or else we let my dementia take the reins."
EMPIRE
Chuck: "Humphrey, are you lost? What are you doing here?"
It is a little romance game they play, called Who's Vanessa. How Who's Vanessa works is that you show up at somebody's house uninvited, force entry if necessary, and then you are the Vanessa. You humiliate the person for his life choices, and then you do sex on each other.
(Nate used to call it Who's That Elderly Woman. The rules were essentially the same, except they would trade off who was the Elderly Woman. With Dan, Dan is always the Vanessa. Chuck would never admit it, but he's more comfortable with this arrangement.)
Dan: "I thought since the whole of Manhattan will be at that shower except us, we could finally take our love out upon the boulevards."
Chuck: "Meaning what, hit the IFC Center to catch a film no one's heard of?"
Dan: "No, that's when Blair is the Vanessa."
Chuck: "Shakespeare & Company to see who's not buying your book?"
Dan: "No, that's when Serena is the Vanessa. Or actual Vanessa is the Vanessa."
Dan: "Since you have done so much to redeem yourself, just like every season, I thought you could do like one thing to make me presentable."
Chuck: "Are you going to dress like a person? Comb that nasty hair? Eat a goddamn sandwich?"
Dan: "Those would be dealbreakers."
Chuck: "Then no. Just smoke my cigarette and hush."
Dan: "Fine. Just take it all away and make me forget the awful torture of missing this bridal shower. I will do whatever wildly offensive thing you can think of."
Chuck: "...Anything?"
Dan: "I don't know how I can make it any clearer what I am saying."
PRADA
Lily: (Party planning. Even though they let her go free, she just can't seem to get up the courage to get out of this house. It's starting to scare everybody. Except Rufus, who thinks it's the greatest thing. One day soon they will find him dead. "He just kept making me throw this ball, and then he would fetch it. For goddamn hours." She will not be arraigned, because that is justifiable homicide indeed.)
Max: "Hey lady, you look like you're in charge. I'm looking for Ivy Dickens? Sometimes they call her Charlie."
Lily: "I am so high right now that neither of those names ring a bell."
Ivy, thinking fast: "Hey guys, it's me. I am both of those people."
Lily & Max: Stunned by this revelation.
Ivy: "Sometimes I'm Charlie, sometimes I'm Ivy. Sometimes I'm on my meds, sometimes I am not. In that instance you may call me Serena. For such an interesting person, I sure am uninteresting, huh?"
Her story is that Aunt Carol never wanted her, Charlie Rhodes, to bear the burden of the Rhodes Women name, so she made her call herself Ivy. Clever.
Ivy: "She claimed it ruined her whole life. People made all kinds of assumptions about her and used her for her money. She never wanted that to happen to me. And you know what, it worked out, because I got to be friends with poor people and know they wouldn't dick me around. Poor people like you, Max."
Max: "Well, that is over."
Lily: "I am just happy to have one more thing to hold against my bitch sister."
SPECTATOR
Diana, in confidence: "Nate, we have 72 hours to do something amazing, or I'll get fired. That way, if I do get fired it looks like just the natural order of things and not some gross plan centered on your penis by relatives, and if you come through and do my job for me, then I'll still have a job."
Nate: "Serena's blog's getting some traction. Maybe we can convince her to write something a bit more personal? Like she keeps whining we will ask her to do?"
Diana: "Unless you have pictures of Serena in bed with both Hunger Games boys, that's not gonna cut it. Even though I always said it was. Are you sure you don't have any other ideas you forgot to tell me during the million other times we've had this conversation?"
Nate: "Nope. But you know what would be cool is if we attack Gossip Girl directly, like you keep saying we will."
Diana: "Too bad we can't hack into her phone, right?"
Nate: "Oh, you know what? I probably should have mentioned at some point that we can totally do that. Let me call Eric and get him to do that very obvious thing we could have done freshman year and yet keep forgetting we can do, even after we already did it."
EMPIRE
Dan and Chuck get good and stoned, eat a bunch of sandwiches, and watch The Matrix. It is not gay, they reason, if you don't look the person in the eye. Dan, stoned and annoying as only a stoned Dan could be, won't fucking quit about how he wishes he were at this bridal shower. Finally Chuck orders them up two whores, tells Dan to be a Man of Action, and goes off to set up the video camera. It is about to be so fucking awesome.
Except for how Dan.
SHOPPING
Blair tries to make her Bitches tell her details about the party, but Serena has instructed them -- because she has never met Blair, apparently -- to keep quiet about them. In fact, they begin dropping hints, like how it was an eVite and the dress code is jeans and they are going to have Greek food from a truck. Just the most blatant obvious lies. And so off-center is this ludicrous business that Blair says -- much in the same fashion, Blair is this season, as the gay men for whom the Sex and the City ladies are theoretical stand-ins -- "If you'll excuse me, I've gotta go kill myself... Or max out my credit card, whichever comes first."
As truly as tights are not pants, Blair Waldorf is not Blair Warner, and the teens are not the nineties. The day Blair Waldorf says "max out my credit card" is the day I realize we have no business even pretending to understand this show anymore.
WALDORF/VDW
Nate: "Hey, where's your laptop?"
Serena: "No idea whatsoever. What's up?"
Nate: "I hacked into Gossip Girl, which apparently we could have done at any time."
Serena, awesomely: "Holy fuck. I have sent her so many emails!"
Nate: "Yeah, so we're going to expose all of her sources and then she'll die on the vine and make The Spectator [verbatim, straight-faced, he says this] New York's foremost scandal site."
Serena: "Yeah, and fuck me over and everybody else we know. Bad plan, bro."
Nate: "Or is it a great plan?"
Serena: "No, it is a bad plan. Do not do this. Promise me. Especially don't tell Diana."
Nate: "Oh, okay. It would have been cool, though. I won't tell Diana, promise."
Diana: "...Tell me what?"
Nate: (Immediately tells Diana.)
PRADA
Ivy: "Yeah, this is my ridiculous bedroom in my ridiculous house. Sorry my whole relationship with you was a lie."
Max: "No, actually it makes a lot of sense. What with you being so cryptic and squirrely and dumb at the beginning of the season."
Ivy: "Max, I'm just trying to explain why..."
Max: "No, I get it. It's okay. I've moved on."
Ivy: "Stop pressuring me! Look, will fifty thousand shut you up? You can open a restaurant in Portland."
Max: "I keep saying I... Hold up, fifty grand? Yeah, I will totally blackmail you if you want."
Lily: "Oh, stranger Max who is dating both my daughter and my fake niece/surrogate daughter now that Jenny has died in the muddy old Thames. Are you coming to the shower? Charlie and Blair are already pretending they're friends, so one more fake person shouldn't be a problem."
Max: "No, I'm going to take the money and run. Being treated like a whore sometimes turns you into one, like, immediately."
Lily: "I've been married eight times, trust me. Hey, look at this random picture."
Max: "It's very ... nice?"
Lily: "Am I acting weird? I'm really drunk. Anyway, this is our whole family. Minus almost all of our children, for some reason. And there's Charlie's mom!"
Max: "That is not Charlie's mom. I have to go digging around now so I can blackmail her some more."
SPECTATOR
Diana: "Nate, this is so great! If you were Ivy I would probably slap you for sitting on this all this time, but since you're Nate here's a doggie treat."
Nate: "Serena said we can't use it."
Diana: "No, fuck your friends over. I think you're just trying to save your ass so people don't see all the salacious things you've sent in to Gossip Girl."
Nate: (Honestly doesn't even know that he never sent anything to GG.)
Diana: "Let's just see how many of your friends you've betrayed over the years... Oh shit, you never emailed her once."
Diana's Heart: Grows three sizes in this moment; it is so stupid.
Diana, verbatim: "You really are a good, honest man, aren't you? I didn't think anyone like you existed anymore! Let's have sex and I won't use this to save our company because you're so amazing."
I love how on this show now when they say "good" they mean "actual white-hat-wearing" good, puppies shooting out your ass good, and when they say "bad" they mean "total evil." It makes things so simple. Anyway, Diana calls William because now Nate is Good and she is Good and Granderbilt is Bad.
PRADA
Lily takes not just a tiny morsel but a huge helping of satisfaction lying to Blair about the party. It's probably the funniest scene in the whole episode, watching her dick Blair around: "Serena's out getting the dessert for the party! Hawaiian shaved ice, with all the best flavors! Including everyone's favorite: Tuuuuutti Fruuuuuutti!" Just brilliant. Anyway, Blair is losing her shit.
Ivy: "Isn't it kind of fucked up messing with Blair's head like this?"
Lily: "Well, it might be the only event in Blair's entire life where she's not in control."
Ivy: "Um, yeah. That's what I mean. Bitch crazy. She pukes up pies is how much she hates not having control. It's kind of her entire thing."
Lily: "Good thing Blair bears not even a tiny resemblance to herself this season, then. Anyway, what about Max?"
Ivy: "I paid him to leave town. Sorry about my multiple identities."
Lily: "Like I said, the only upshot from that is that I get to hate your mom even more."
Ivy: "You don't really bear much of a resemblance to yourself this season either."
Lily: "It takes an ass to fill every seat, darling."
SNEAKING
Serena looks at the website thing and Louis watches her looking at the thing and he wonders what it is but he's sure Serena is doing dirt because Blair's friends suck; she finally catches him spying on her and is like, "Staring problem, mister?" So he skulks away.
Meanwhile, Max pulls out an old school play program from Ivy's junk that he brought from LA, just this tiny box full of the most important shit out of all her shit like high school play programs, and notices that Aunt Carol and somebody named "Charlie Rhodes" were both involved in the production, but that Ivy Dickens was also there -- she's an actress! -- and that Aunt Carol is the real Aunt Carol, but probably Charlie is somebody none of us has ever met.
That Max, I'll tell ya, that Max, he's a regular Nancy Drew.
EMPIRE
Needless to say, Daniel has disappointed not only Charles but the whores they were meant to share. Whore No. 1's dialogue is pretty awesome:
"We tried, but he wouldn't stop complaining about some girl named Serena and 'wanting to be a man of action,' and so when he mentioned something about a shower, we were like Yeah!, but then he never came in to join us, and by the time we got out, he was gone."
Charles, you should have known better. You should have stuck around and made sure he went through with it. That's obviously how it was supposed to go. You let your friend down, Charles, and more than that you failed each and every one of us. Dan in a shower, Chuck in a shower, Daniel Humphrey and two girls and Mr. Chuck Bass, in a shower. The girls just disappear from your mind, don't they? Like one of those optical illusion things. It's not even gay if you don't look 'em in the eye. And yet, you fucked it up. Right up. On the other hand, you now get to also go to the bridal shower, so things are kind of still happening the way they ... absolutely always do.
WALDORF
Blair: "Louis, why are you spying on Serena's computer? That's wicked creepy."
Louis: "I don't speak very good English. I'm not sure what you are asking."
Blair: "That's cool. Listen, I think you were right about my friends sucking. They are throwing me a horrible shower."
Louis: "Also, look at this Gossip Girls!"
Blair: "God, Louis. Just get dressed."
Louis, of course, sends the hacked database to the Spectator, where it somehow instantly goes live despite nobody at that magazine wanting it to be published or doing the hours of programming that would make this even slightly plausible. Somehow a searchable, relational database is instantly accessible through this website, I'm saying, linked from the homepage, with nobody setting that up, or doing anything other than Louis pushing literally a Big Red Button on Serena's computer, which accomplishes this.
PRADA
...And the party, of course, is perfect: Everything in Tiffany Blue, with stacked boxes everywhere, including a small speech dais and the cake itself. It is awesome! Very, very cool. But then:
Blair, verbatim: "Louis, look, it's a Tiffany's party! This isn't casual at all, it's elegant! Witty!"
Louis: "...It's you."
Barf Me Out: To the total max.
Spectator Thing: Goes live just as they're entering, and of course everybody's text messages get blown up right as this happens, because in addition to subscribing to every pointless thing GG herself does, everybody also wants to know what's going on with this shitty Elizabeth Hurley website that doesn't even make sense.
Of course, now is when Serena makes her speech.
"I'm not usually one for speeches, but I have to say how lucky I am to have Blair Waldorf as my best friend. I may be the maid of honor, but the true honor is just knowing you, B. There is simply no one like her... No matter how hard some of you try! Congratulations to the beautiful bride. You have become the strong, confident princess I always knew you would. I love you so much and wish you and your prince nothing but happiness. Cheers! And one more thing. We have a surprise for all the ladies tonight. We'll be handing out boxes. Most of us will open ours to find it empty, but one lucky lady will have a diamond ring inside. But you have to wait until I say so to open it. Enjoy!"
Ugh, Princess. You know, maybe that's the whole thing. Maybe the root of the problem this year is some egregious misread whereby that's supposedly Blair's deal. Some memo somewhere that said that made sense. Because if you try to make this a princess story -- with all the shallow, pretty-clothes, total lack of agency that implies -- then all the other weird warps of character and storyline really do start to make sense. All you have to do is subtract everything that makes Blair Blair, and then you have a really fun princess storyline, about princesses.
I mean, I loved the shoe thing once it was explained to me, there are levels on which there is awesome, but there's Diana and Grace Kelly princess, which is how it started, and then there's Disney Princess, which is what it immediately became. No wonder the fangirls were so insane about this stuff: They were reacting allergically to the entire idea, and just centered it on Chuck instead of realizing it, itself, for the woman-hating princess crap that it actually is.
Solution: Instead of Louis, make it Tripp. Instead of Princess, make her Blair Rodham Clinton, and watch her ambition play out that way. The Tripp story Serena never could have accomplished, and Blair was born for. You wouldn't even have to have this yucky weird aging-up thing where the teenagers are getting married and having babies, if you did that: Political go-hards start this young. That's Nate's current deal, in fact. And that is the Blair we know. That's the Blair we know, raised by Eleanor and Harold.
...Oooo, or alternately, this Louis thing could still make sense if he was gay, because of Harold: Regressing to daddy's little princess. Not pretty, not funny, but Blair is not a pretty or a funny person, and it's not like this story is less gross than that would be. Just something. Something to say that the story we're unsubtly being told we're being served is not exactly the story we're being served. But in the meantime, I guess the only narrative line you can follow to where we're at now is the whole "Palace" and "Empire" thing, which seems to mean nothing this season anyway. I don't know. "Princess," though. It grates, doesn't it?
Her royal stuff was always Queen B and the French aristocracy: She was already queen of an island nation, not a wannabe princess for some principality that doesn't even matter. I'm not saying you couldn't cross the streams into real life, plausibly, I'm just saying if you're going to transpose the very painstakingly symbolic crown/tiara/Jenny stuff into real life, you have to make up for what you're losing. And what you're losing can't be Blair, which is what has happened. Serena is the one who picks between suitors, and defines herself against it; that's her tragedy but it also is something she gets real power from. Blair is the one who pursues, and forces the issue. Switching them around just waters them both down into nothing. It's not growth or dynamic if they're both just putting up with shit with which they would never put. You push further into the future, not sideways into somebody else's past.
Anyway, deal with what you're dealing with. Judge on the merits, not the what you wish. I always say that but sometimes it's hard. So, Serena, riding the high of most cogent sentences ever said at one time, offers the Minions a halfhearted, bitchy apology for calling them wannabes, but even that is to be denied her: "We didn't hear your speech, we've been too busy reading. Sorry!" Serena's like, "That hurts in at least two ways." Then she sees what they were reading, and it hurts in several more.
Meanwhile, Dan is in the Waldorf elevator gettin' his Humphrey on: "Hi, okay, yeah, I'm, as you can tell by my casual attire, I'm crashing this party, but it's only because I needed to stop whining, start becoming a man of action, and a man of action wouldn't just do nothing, a man of action would, uh, would show up and finally confront the person he's been meaning to have a conversation with for a very long time now. I wouldn't expect you to understand what I'm saying. Who the hell are you people, anyway? Must be friends of the groom."
This one bitchy young Mineo queen with hella gayface who's managed to photobomb every single scene -- he was over Serena's shoulder during her speech, and is now somehow in the elevator to the apartment to listen to Dan's speech -- just gives an eloquent "ugh" on his way out. Extras!
Serena: "Nate, I told you not to publish that thing magically."
Nate: "I didn't! I am coming to the party!"
Serena: "Well, if you didn't, and I didn't, whom does that leave? Because I also told you not to tell Diana."
Nate: "I ... did tell her. I forgot not to do that part. I didn't figure it out."
Serena: "Well, just fix it. Fix the Internet somehow."
She yells at everybody at the party for no real reason, and meanwhile everybody's doing the whole "Why did you tell?" "I didn't tell" and all that. The anarchy of snakes finding out that they are snakes. It's pretty sedate.
Louis: "[Garble garble cluck click cluck.]"
Chuck: "I'm not here to ruin your wedding, that's what you're for. I'm here to save Serena from Dan. We're pretending this is about Serena still."
Louis: "Why don't you meet up with his drunk ass at the bar and I can tattle to Blair on you both. Acting like grownups is so rad."
SPECTATOR
Diana: "I called you here because I saw a side of your grandson today I hadn't fully seen before."
Granderbilt: "And here I was, pretty sure that you've seen every side of him at this point."
(Gross.)
Diana: "He's not a boy anymore, William."
Granderbilt: "You made sure of that, as per my creepster instructions."
Diana: "William, I am being serious. He is Good! I am Good! I am no longer at war with Gossip Girl, but with you!"
William: "That is so cute. Explain in more detail."
Diana: "Let me explain in more detail. I was planning to tell you that I've ended up caring more about this paper and your grandson than you ever will, but then someone went off to do this dumb thing about Gossip Girl..."
William: "And it wasn't you?"
Diana: "Not that Nate will believe me. I'd imagine he's pretty upset."
Nate, appearing: "I am very upset about some things!"
SHOWER
Blair tries to go soak up the love and tell everybody thanks, but they are too busy calling her, and each other, bitches and other swears. She orders Penelope to explain why nobody is paying attention to her, and in order to -- I don't know what, it's a Serena Plan -- Serena yells that it's time to open the Tiffany boxes. Which will distract exactly one person. And that one person is Ivy, who of course gets the diamond ring, and of course it is huge and tacky and stupid-looking.
Ivy, for real: "I've never seen a ring like this before, never mind owned one. Which is why I should put it someplace safe."
Serena, patronizingly: "Ah, poor people."
Max: "I am back for no reason! You are Ivy Dickens! The real Charlie Rhodes is in Florida!"
Ivy: "Let's speak privately."
Bitches: Bitch yet more at Blair and each other about various dumb GG things that wouldn't even matter back in the day when the scandals were actually scandalous; the blonde one did some dumb thing, Kati or Iz whichever one is Asian did some dumb thing, Penelope made out with a hot dog but only like one time.
Blair: "Oh, Dan. Oh thank God, someone who isn't mad at me."
Dan: "Actually, I totally am. I forgot my plausible deniability about this being a Serena thing when it was a Blair thing the whole time. I've been there for you when no one else was, and I refuse to believe that it's about my book because I didn't write a bad word about you in the entire thing..."
Chuck walks up behind Dan to shut him up, so of course she just yells at both of them like the horrible fishwife she's become, and then Louis rides in to save the day and tell everybody to fuck off. Without her boys to yell at, Blair randomly swings around on Serena and starts screaming at her this impossibly stupid thing about how Serena probably released the GG files to sabotage her night, which even Serena knows is out of bounds.
S: "I created this night. For you."
B: "Louis was right, none of us here are really friends. We just pretend to be so we can get stuff to talk about behind each other's backs."
S: "Not that I owe you a goddamn thing for Danning out on me about this, but yeah. I saw the website. I told Nate not to publish it. Diana presumably did so anyway."
B: "That's all the people that saw it?"
S: "Well, Louis did when he was creeping over my shoulder, but I'm sure he wouldn't mess with my stuff..."
B: "Oh, Louis. You are even more fucked than usual."
Sorry, B! Must be hard to keep your head above water when your prince is causing everyone around you to drown...
That's like the only questionable or loopy thing GG says in the whole episode. I think being under attack makes her focus up something dreadful.
SPECTATOR
Nate: "Can someone please explain to me what's going on here? I mean, are you two working together? Have you been working together this whole time?"
Wm. & Diana: "Uh, no! This is a dream! Go back to bed!"
Nate: "That hasn't worked since I was 17!"
Diana: "Fine. I... Called Granderbilt to invest in the company after ... they threatened my job?"
William: "Yeah, yeah. And then I said maybe, but... We are good liars."
Nate: "Okay, but what about the Gossip Girl thing?"
Diana: "I have no idea who actually did that, because it's a separate boring storyline, but whatever makes my exit easier."
She abruptly packs up her shit and quits before William can even say the part about how Nate, who is literally a child without even a whiff of a college degree, is now Editor in Chief of this supposed media supergiant.
PRADA
Max, verbatim: "Come on, Ivy. Tell me the truth. Why does that woman think that she is your aunt? Why does she think that you are the nice young woman who played the Queen of Hearts in our local production of Alice In Wonderland? Yeah, I found this in a box of your things!"
I don't know why that is so funny to me. "Why does that woman think that she is your aunt? Why does she think that you are the nice young woman who played the Queen of Hearts in our local production of Alice In Wonderland? Yeah, I found this in a box of your things!" It's just so amazing. I tried to pick out the most amazing parts, but it's really a gestalt of everything there. Each and every word is essential to the whole. Everything weird about the show now, in one hilarious speech.
Ivy: "Look, I told you I'd get you the fifty grand. I still can, and then we can go away together."
More Amazing Max Talk: "Ivy, everything you say is a lie. But the money is real."
She gives him the diamond ring and tells him to scamper. It's the weirdest thing, it's like she's forcing him somehow to blackmail her, with this hysterical catgut voice: "Just LEAVE ME AND MY FAMILY ALONE, my boyfriend I keep planning to run away with, AND STOP HARASSING ME AND MY FAMILY, and okay I still love you, and DON'T MAKE ME CALL THE COPS BECAUSE I TOTALLY WILL, so now come kiss me on the mouth," and then he's all, "Fine, you sketchy broad. I'll 'make myself scarce.' Now go have fun with your 'family.'"
I mean, what would you do? That is some Cousin Peepers behavior.
BROOKLYN OR SOME SHIT
Chuck deigns to join Drunky Dan on some stoop somewhere and cuddle close for warmth and put his arms around him and whisper into his hair.
Chuck: "Why don't you tell me why you antagonize Blair at her own wedding shower?"
Dan: "I am a man of action!"
Chuck: "I told you to get some ass, not make one of yourself. Look, little buddy. It wasn't until I saw you confronting Blair that I realized I had it all wrong."
Dan: "What are you saying, Charlie T?"
Chuck: "You're in love with her."
Dan: "I'm in love, but not..."
Chuck: "Hush. You can blame it on your tell-all novel, or your perennial status as an outsider, but we both know Blair doesn't care about any of that. She follows her heart, and she chose Louis. We both lost. At least this time you have someone outside with you. Now... can we please get you home before someone sees me sitting here like this?"
So very much kissing. Just mashing of man-face on man-face. Boners everywhere, right there out on the boulevards. Elsewhere, Nate feels a shahtoosh scarf knit itself about his throat, and a certain sudden yearning for home.
PRADA
Blair: "Seriously this time, what the fuck."
Louis: "I saw the chance, I went for it. To ruin your life, I must be vigilant."
Blair: "Oh my God, how many times."
Louis: "As many times as it takes. But I noticed that you and Chuck were both at Sleep No More, so clearly I have the upper moral hand in my strange topsy-turvy view of reality."
Blair, unnecessarily and wrongly: "I only did that so I could prove to Chuck he hadn't changed, and in that case, you were actually right. PS, Beatrice sent out the blast about the paternity test, Louis."
Louis: "Well, okay. So that's one thing out of a million..."
You know what, Louis? Fuck you.
Blair: "You know what, Louis? Fuck you. You have let our relationship somehow turn you into a total fucker. I am not clear on how it happened, possibly it is uneven and careless writing that has made this seem so sudden and creepy, but in any case get the fuck out."
Louis: "But I was hypnotized into performing unspeakable..."
Blair: "OUT."
He leaves. Probably he will be back. Probably, like the last eight times, we will pretend this never happened. What on earth does he have to do -- for understandable narrative reasons, or more and more frequently otherwise -- to piss her off for more than a day? I guess you could say that this is her pulling a Yang, and she's just going to let more and more shit go until Meredith has to cut her out of her wedding dress, but that would involve the show operating on a level that I'm no longer convinced, at all, about.
More likely it's what it looks like: Every episode following the same predictable pattern for no real reason, and then a different pattern that will also be repeated over and over once whatever wedding massacre and/or miscarriage eventually goes down, and somehow that will also come out of nowhere and mean something for that one single episode.
AFTERMATH
S: "I couldn't believe you would think I of all people would release that information to the world. Do you have any idea how many things I've sent in to Gossip Girl over the years?"
B: "Well, I checked, and I sent twice as many as you, predictably."
Just those two girls, pretending to eat ice cream in a somewhat destroyed living room, being cute and sweet with each other, talking about who is the crazier bitch. It feels almost like coming home, comparatively.
B, verbatim: "I knew in my heart you didn't send it. Louis just put all these ideas in my head that my friends were a destructive force. But I think he's self-destructing, and he's taking our relationship down with him."
Serena promises, talk about abusive shit, not to tell anybody that it was Louis who permanently altered the entire landscape of the UES and the show for incredibly careless, vindictive reasons, just for when Blair gets over his latest shenanigans five minutes from now and doesn't want anybody asking where those bruises came from because they are back in love again.
S: "Also, can we talk about Chuck for a minute? Awesome, right?"
B: "Just had to find some excuse to crash the party, didn't he?"
S: "What? Um, he wasn't crashing. He was trying to stop Dan. He was doing you a favor?"
Serena's always been a Chair shipper, but I like the idea that right now she's more focused on how crazy Blair is and how she's just amazed at how B has misread this situation, yet again. It's better than seeing her as the simple prop of furniture in this scene, because that makes it so badly written -- "You thought he was Bad but he was Good. Good!" -- that I cannot function.
So we'll just say it's better for everybody if B sticks with Chuck, because that keeps the Dan Thing from rearing its head. Because I know from personal experience, beyond any past identification with S, that in this case I would lose my motherfucking shit if I were Serena, and those two got together. Just blood rain and screaming and lamentations. And I would take every single one of these motherfuckers down with me. If I were Serena, I mean.
SPECTATOR
Nate: "It's really mysterious that Diana would screw me over like that. I feel like I'm missing something... Actually, you know what, fuck it. Later, Hurley. What's ?"
William: "The lesson is, don't ever care about people. Use them to make yourself look virile. Now, order of business is, you are the Editor-in-Chief of this magazine or whatever it is. Looks like Diana's plan, which wasn't actually hers, will probably work and Gossip Girl is running scared."
ibid., verbatim: "Congratulations. You've earned it."
How? How. How. How. How?
WALDORF
S: "Max, why are you lurking in my home that you don't even know where I live?"
Max: "The doorman let me in."
S: "Then why the fuck do I have a fucking doorman? Anyway, I'm Serena, so I'm cool with it. Why don't you apologize for standing me up at that play you didn't stand me up at, at which I could easily have found you using my phone instead of buying Hurley's bullshit?"
Max: "I am very sorry for... That thing that was totally on you. Are you my girl?"
S: "I guess that I am, according to your Hill People customs. I guess you just have to say that, and then it happens. Despite us going on less than one single date, ever. Goodnight, 'my guy.'"
SPECTATOR
William: "Aw, don't take it so rough. All I did was ruin your life and career and relationship for no clear reason."
Diana: "I was so dazzled by the fact that a child didn't submit factoids to a child website that I have completely reevaluated my entire life and don't care about those things anymore. Such as my life or my career. Too bad about my relationship though."
William: "He's young. He'll get over it."
Diana: "I guess that's what's important. White men's feelings."
Wm. & Diana: (Have strange secrets that they share and that would have pissed Nate off and still have the ability to piss Nate off, but remain a strange mystery. Please, please, please let Hurley be Chuck's real mom. There have been so many of his mom. Hurley's the only one stagey and bizarre enough to be the truth. Or else she could be Bart Bass with a surgery. Or she could be the only person that has slept with both Bart and Jack. Or she could be Jack with a surgery, but that would be sad, because he finally became hot after years of Dexter, and we'd never see him again. Or she could be the person that caused Bart and Real Mom to split up, letting Jack swoop in and have been Chuck's real dad this whole time. Just something, something to hang a star on. Something like fake cancer and crazy therapists, or horse- and yacht-rustling with Carter Baizen in Santorini, or even Jesus Camp Georgina loses the Bible fund. Something.)
MONTAGE, VERY AWESOME FAIRLY RECENT SONG
This song makes me sad because it tells a very true story about how sometimes you have to be strong and let the other person go and just be the bad guy. Just Henderson the Harry out of somebody's ass, sometimes. And sometimes you have to make that decision against everything your heart and your body is telling you, and maybe you have to explain over and over to people why you made the right choice and broke things in the correct way for everybody concerned, and probably still come off looking real sketchy. And when you make that call, sometimes it can feel like you have broken an apparatus inside yourself that won't be fixed. Ever, possibly.
And I guess by this song I mean, from a weird angle, Chuck's story this season has been helping me deal with that. I wouldn't have talked about that at the time it was being very real, but that was last week, so now I can say that: Sometimes boys and Blairs don't recognize an exit interview for what it is -- which is just good sense -- and then maybe a year later you run into them and have to have the whole conversation all over again, but be even more the bad guy, like let them yell at you and flail hands all around, kiss you goodbye and say you broke their heart and then walk out on you, just so they feel like they're the rejecting one and not only the rejected one, because you don't want the person to feel like that.
Sometimes that can happen, sometimes at a play or sometimes at a gay bar where you weren't expecting it at all. This does not feel really great, probably. And then maybe you end up doing all the drugs, and show up on your friend's Internet TV show acting a mess, and but you know that you followed through and did the right thing. (Or if you are Chuck, probably the solution is dick all over the place and some masks and God knows what.) It is a cold comfort, but you are a rational chap and probably you factored that in mostly. Or maybe your recaps got a little weird in places, maybe that.
And so but when this thing does happen, this is a song that is a nice thing to feel sad with, even though what you have done ensures karmically that you will be seeing this person everywhere you fucking go from now on, it is a good song for that. It is also very pretty.
Gossip Girl, still somehow maintaining: "Loyal readers, I'd like to apologize to all of you for the awful and embarrassing breach of security that happened tonight..."
Max: "Ivy, I just spent your diamond ring on a black hat because I am Bad now for no reason. I would like five hundred thousand dollars instead of fifty, because it is more."
Payne: "It was good while it lasted. I wonder if I will ever know what this storyline was supposed to be about. I guess I will watch this show with my grandchildren to find out."
DÉNOUEMENT
Chuck tucks Dan right the fuck into bed. It is weirdly hot.
Gossip Girl, because it is important: "Whatever I choose to do to win back your trust, one thing is certain. This is not the end between us."
Wow, show. You actually managed not only to have Gossip Girl talk in English language, but voiceover some pretty impressive shit. Because as she was saying that, guess who showed up just now, silently watching Chuck carefully and sweetly take care of his once most-hated enemy? Yeah. Well done, show. And also, well done on the music: Gotye has been an obsession of mine since that original two-second bite at the end of that one episode when Lily had Serena arrested for no reason, and Kimbra makes me feel exactly how this show used to.
Blair: "I had to come. You've really been Good this whole time, haven't you?"
GG: "...Because try as you might to fight it, you know you love me."
You know? I kinda do. As silly as it was getting here -- Serena being all, "Don't you know Chuck was all about Dan being all about you, and thus did a humane thing?" -- it worked out, I think, rather impressively. The look in Chuck's eyes alone, as she said that silly White Hat line, I mean...
I try to say goodbye and not choke, Gossip Girl. Any time, any time you want, you can make me stop punching windows beside your head, and go back to playing dress-up like we used to. I don't mean to say these things. You know I love you, baby. XO &c.
WEEK
Fountains of blood result, as Blair's spawn gains sentience and begins to gnaw through her spine. After Prince Louis chews the baby out of her and the family gathers to pray over her to Our Heavenly Father, Serena takes the newborn -- Daniel Charles if it's a boy, Sophlanore if it's a girl -- out into the living room at PRADA to nurse. Chuck arrives, with gifts aplenty and a White Hat on his head. And with one look into her eyes -- the mesmerizing, smizing eyes of beautiful little Sophlanore de Medici Waldorf Joseph Smith Rose Grimaldi -- he falls to his knees, smitten forevermore.