The New Year's Eve Of Magical Thinking

S05E09

It's been a few weeks since Blair and Chuck's car crash, and this time without Gossip Girl has driven the Upper East Side insane. They're sending Serena nonstop emails and blasts about the intimate deets of the scandalous feats of Manhattan's elites, but she's not reading them.

And why? Because she cannot read.

Prince Louis and Emperor Chuck come together to figure out where Blair keeps disappearing to, and while Chuck pretends to enlist Dan's help in figuring out what she's up to, as usual it's Dan who becomes the human bait in Chuck's twisted plans. But the truth -- that Dan and Blair are accessing a secret passageway that leads through a magical condo into a hidden church where Blair has been getting psychotherapy from priests ever since she miscarried and then used her weird codependent powers over God to wake Chuck from his post-accident coma -- is so weird that nobody can believe it.

So yes, the deal with God was that if she went through with her wedding to old lily-lipped Louis, and convert to whatever made-up form of Catholicism she thinks she's up to, then Chuck would not die and join Jenny and Eric and Inspektor Pilot in the Happy Hunting Ground of people that Blair is over with. Which is stupid, like so stupid even Serena tries to tell her how stupid it is, you can see priest guy being like, "Swear to Jesus if that girl comes in here one more time tryna talk about fucking Chuck Bass," even Vera Wang thinks bitch is going crazy, but you know you can't talk old Blair out of shit. So she just keeps tearfully telling Chuck they can't be together and refusing to tell him why, but that hopefully it won't turn him into a dick like has happened every single time she has broken up with him. Needless to say, by episode's end he's declared war on both God and Humphrey.

While they're doing that, Serena for no reason decides to "pretend" that she is back dating Dan Humphrey to protect him from the gossip of Louis and Chuck, which is code for she's managed to find a way to make him be her boyfriend without actually realizing that's what he's doing, and therefore once again triumph over Blair Waldorf.

She's also the de facto new Gossip Girl of Manhattan, as Nate helps her understand, but it's a short-lived lovely glow, since the thing that happens is that the real Gossip Girl approaches him for a secret allegiance, with some tempting tidbits about how the accident that caused Blair's miscarriage and subsequent descent into mental illness was actually intended for him all along.

week: Lily's search for vanished Cousin Peepers unearths the real Charlotte Rhodes, codename Lola, who is currently enrolled at Juilliard -- of course -- while we get ready for the wedding of the century with a bachelorette party and those twinges of fear down deep in the belly that generally signal Georgina Sparks is on her way back into our lives.

PREVIOUSLY

Blair ran off with Chuck for the millionth time, but thanks to a fry cook and Nate's cousin they were run off the road by wolves. She was pregnant with a prince's baby. It was very much a cliffhanger about whether or not any of them would survive, and meanwhile all twelve of Chuck's parents had a meeting about acting sneaky. Oh, and the real Charlotte Rhodes turned out to have suffered a terrible fate of some kind that was bad enough it even gave Aunt Carol pause.

NOW

You might think, then, that this episode would begin there, but no. It has been months since whatever happened, happened, and we're going to fill in the blanks with some flashbacks. Not the normal kind of flashbacks where they make sense or lead to a comprehensible present day, but the kind where Kathy Acker was apparently in charge of writing this episode and just decided the movie The End Of The Affair would work as well as an episode of this show. Like, once this show was about references -- Lily as tragic Russian heroine, Chuck as Shakespearian varlet -- and then occasionally it would dip into sort of parallel-universe things just for fun, or for heightened reality.

And then after high school, the whole poetics of the thing got moved around and none of those things were true anymore, and the overarching story became about fairytales and princes and how there's no such thing as a Powerful Woman and whatever, maybe by comparison to One Tree Hill this show is still comparatively brilliant, I wouldn't know -- although I can say Hart Of Dixie is one of the larger and shittier wastes of talent and time I've seen in a long while -- but at some point the details became the point and the story just completely stopped mattering and I can't think of anybody who would even recognize the trainwreck harpy anima-complex monster Blair's become, so we're getting these things that are like the idea of the old references but are actually just rewrites of other people's stories without regard to established character, and it's exhausting trying to come to that with new eyes.

Not only because it's dumb and doesn't really succeed very often -- which isn't to say I haven't enjoyed the show this year, I'm still pretty into it -- but... The reason Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You are awesome isn't because they're based on old shit, it's because they are additionally awesome unto themselves. The quality of the original thing doesn't automatically bleed backwards into the new thing just because of the reference, like some kind of osmosis. It was a grace note that those things were present, once upon a time: Not the meal itself. Serena loved Fitzgerald and Henry James because she was lit up from within by the literary energy of those characters, those Daisies, and that lent another level to the way you connected with the show; now it's just a continuity note to the character herself that she supposedly reads books, which is kind of the opposite of the original intent. I dunno. It's tough.

By Jacob Clifton

So in that movie, of which we're about to watch an abridged version, a guy falls in love with this lady but then he's so jealous that it makes him act horrible. He nearly gets killed by a stray bomb, and for some reason the lady breaks up with him at that time. Turns out she was runnin' up that hill, and made a deal with God where if she stopped dating him, he would stay alive and not be killed by the bomb. Then somebody dies of a lung infection they get from walking around in the rain, which abruptly solves everybody's problems.

Speaking of walking around in the rain, it's a good thing the Prince of Monaco gets to do that all by himself, or he might not run coincidentally into a child billionaire named Chuck Bass who is also walking around in the rain.

Chuck: "Sorry about your fiancée's miscarriage. What else is new?"
Louis: "[A garbled mess.]"
Chuck: "Since you're just out here walking around in the rain, with a compromised immune system thanks to your royal inbreeding, why don't you let me walk you home? It will give me a great opportunity to complain about how Blair mysteriously stopped talking to me after running away with me and then thinking I was going to die. Like in that movie."
Louis: "[More crazy talk, followed by a hugely fake cough, followed by him coughing a tiny amount of blood into a handkerchief, followed by him swooning onto a divan.]"

WALDORF

Chuck: "You go get changed, princeling. I'll stand here in the foyer until Blair appears at the top of the stairs and is shocked to see me standing in this exact place where this always happens."
Blair: "...Chuck? What are you doing here in that one place in my foyer?"
Chuck: "Just bringing your fiancé home and wondering why you're mysteriously avoiding me."
Blair: "Speaking of that..."

Whoosh.

Louis: "Hey, where did Blair go?"
Chuck: "She just vanished. It was peculiar."
Louis: "Oh yeah, she's always doing that. Since I'm only freakishly territorial and paranoid on every other day, I'm not worried about it right now."
Chuck: "We should hire detectives and stalk her to find out where she's going all the time. She's not with me, and she's not with Serena I presume, and if she's not with you it is a mystery. Since there aren't any other love interests on this show right now for her."
Louis: "No, I'm fairly sure she's cheating on us. On me, I mean."
Chuck: "But with whom?"

DUMBO

Chuck: "Hey, Daniel. We just time-traveled here from Manhattan to ask if you've seen Blair at odd hours going back for weeks and keeping it a secret."
Dan: "Hey guys. Good thing I'm twitchy and sketchy all the time, or it would look like you're onto me."
Chuck & Louis: "Hey, would you mind spying on Blair for us?"
Dan: "I would never."
Chuck: "Please?"
Dan: "Okay, I'll do it. Now if you'll excuse me, I have sneaky darting looks and shifty eyes to do everywhere."
Chuck & Louis: "Okay, well, it was nice seeing you."

They leave. Blair is standing in Dan's room looking cray-cray.

Blair: "Dan, they must never know about our secret arrangement they have already figured out."
Dan: "Somehow this is going to end up sexless and ridiculous, I can feel it."

WALDORF

Dan: "Oh hi Serena. I'm not doing anything sneaky with your friend Blair."
Serena: "I didn't ask. I am too busy trying to remember how to form words so that I can write my blog for Nate's internet periodical media concern."
Dan: "Okay, I just wanted you to know that I'm not here looking for Blair so we can go on one of our mysterious secret journeys."
Serena: "Okay, I guess I should notify you in turn that I am Serena van der Woodsen and I don't give much of a damn about anybody else or what they are up to."
Dan: "Glad we had this talk."

Nate: "What's this one doing here? I am still mad that he made me half a gay."
Dan: "That's so weird that the one thing that has actually penetrated your short-term memory problems is the most inconsequential thing of all time."
Nate: "Serena, let's go do media things. What's this guy doing here? I'm still mad at him."
Serena: "Just a second, I am finishing this blog. It's funny you mentioned Blair, because she is currently having a fitting at Vera Wang for her wedding dress."
Dan: "I will not act on that information. Nate, when will you stop being mad at me?"
Nate: "What the hell are you doing here?"
Dan: "Not hanging out with Blair in secret, I'll have you know."

PRADA

Rufus: "Dear imaginary Jenny, thanks for calling. Here's a random Alexa Chung reference from a couple years ago."
Lily: "It was so fun having imaginary Jenny and imaginary Eric here during the time-jump over Blair's miscarriage. They sure are sweetly imaginary in my imagination."
Rufus: "I know that look! Now that Cousin Peepers has vanished you are thinking about producing another random child you forgot we have."
Lily: "No, I am pulling a Bart Bass and having Cousin Peepers hunted down by dogs."
Rufus: "I am weirdly judgmental about that for no other reason than that's what I do on this show."
Lily: "I don't care about your opinions."

VERA WANG

Dan: "There you are! Man, these New York brides with their eating disorders, am I right? Not that you're fat, of course. Why, you're looking positively svelte ever since your miscarriage."
Blair: "How amazingly insensitive in at least three different ways, but you're correct. I am having my dress re-tailored because I am no longer going to be pregnant at my wedding to European royalty, like was totally realistic before now. But anyway, I just decided to have a meltdown about this dress because it reminds me of how things were before. You know, when I was pregnant and marrying a man I didn't love so I ran off in the middle of the night with my old boyfriend and we were beset by wolves. Those were the days."
Vera Wang: "Blair, you look pretty but I can tell something's going on. Did you get cold feet about the wedding and run off with a guy and then have a car accident and lose your baby? I thought so. Let me go get some more gowns."

Chuck: Has a spy within the Vera Wang network who at this point alerts him from outside the store that Blair is with a guy in there who is like 60-70 percent probably not gay and could stand to eat a sandwich and get his hair under control.

ibid., verbatim: "Let me guess, dark curly hair? With the pale visage of someone who doesn't get out much?"
ibid, ditto: "We need to move this stakeout to Vera Wang."

MEDIA INTERNET THINGS

Nate: "Most Surreal New York Moment?"
Serena: "The earthquake? No, Paz de la Huerta."

No fucking joke. I forgot to tell you guys this last year but I was sold for about six months on trying to start a rumor that I was being called "the Paz de la Huerta of American letters." The campaign never really got off the ground, and now that joke has sailed, but I was so proud of it. Also, though, isn't it sort of scarily accurate?

Nate: "Serena, why does your email keep beeping at me?"
Serena: "That's because I am getting new emails at a constant rate."
Nate: "What do they say?"
Serena: "I am too good a person to read them. Apparently in the absence of Gossip Girl these past few months, I am the only other person on earth that people have heard of, so everybody just emails me everything all the time. I coulda broke Weiner, coulda broke WikiLeaks, coulda saved Matt Drudge a lot of hat-wearing effort, but I simply couldn't bring myself to read these emails. These electronic ... mails."
Nate: "Why would reading emails make you a bad person? Normally I get your harebrained nonsense, but I'm really not following this time."
Serena, verbatim: "My blog is about my own experience, not using information to hurt people."
Nate: "Got it. If you read Gossip Girl emails, you'll turn into Gossip Girl. Well, I mean, that's just science."

By Jacob Clifton

SECRET SOCIETY

Blair: "Dan, why won't you talk to me about my wedding dress?"
Dan: "The only thing I want to say about your wedding dress is that you shouldn't be getting married in it."
Blair: "Then go back to shutting up. I have crazy-as-shit reasons to do this, as you well know."
Dan: "Chuck and Louis think you are cheating on them. And you kind of are."
Blair: "Look. I love lying to everybody all the time. Why would you deny me that? Especially when I have entered realms of mental illness usually only trespassed by Chuck Bass on various rooftops?"
Dan, taking her hand: "You're right. We are best friends. I am slowly being drawn into your insanity."

They go into a brownstone together like they are fucking, and Chuck snaps pictures or whatever. He walks into the street without looking, and a taxi almost bumps into him going about twelve miles an hour, but then comes to a full and complete stop several yards away. Much like the fake cough of the Prince, it's so staged and lovingly dwelled upon that one must wonder why it happened. You won't have to wait long.

SPECTATOR

Serena & Nate: "[Endless blond chatter about events of our era.]"

Gossip Girl: "Hey, Nate. I thought you were a journalist with integrity!"
Nate: "...Why?"
Gossip Girl: "The important thing is that the paparazzi didn't cause Blair and Chuck's accident. Look more into it. If shit weren't so boring right now I might tell you more or just say whether the fuck I'm saying, but first of all I don't roll like that and second of all, I have nothing else going on at all."

They talk about how Dan is lying to everybody, like usual, and Blair is lying to everybody, like usual, and maybe Blair and Dan are in love, which they obviously are, and then everybody yells at everybody else for being sneaky and spying on Blair. Serena looks at pictures of Dan and Blair entering their secret love den while holding hands, and such is her delusion that she is just like, "This proof means nothing." I'm holding onto the idea that both Blair and Serena have to pretend Dair isn't happening because if it does, the whole universe comes apart as far as they're both concerned. I just really like that.

Somehow, Serena turns this into an opportunity to give another speech on how amazing she is and how she refuses to be the new Gossip Girl and how knowing facts about people destroys innocent lives and whatever. Finally she's so exercised about it that she shoves her computer at Chuck and Louis and runs off yelling at them, with her hands over her head, about random things.

PRADA

Bart's and Chuck's and everybody's private detective, Andrew Whatever, calls while Lily's upstairs doing whatever she does up there for months at a time. I love how this same group of like six people is constantly siccing the exact same private detective on each other, like, how amazing must he be at disguises?

Rufus: "Oh, you can't tell me why you're calling Lily? I hope it's not about tracking down Cousin Peepers, because that will make me really mad for reasons that are as nonexistent as they are irritating."

SPECTATOR

This whole episode Serena has been doing this monologue with herself -- occasionally with input from Nate Archibald -- about her Year-End list of Most things, like, "Most addictive show about desserts" or "Most embarrassing penis in a text message" or whatever. Right down to the actual fucking party has already started and she's still coming up with these bizarre things for this list that never ends and nobody ever responds to her or answers her or pays any attention so she's just chirping these inquisitive little questions, "What is the most amazing transformation of 2011?" and then thinking really hard into space about it.

Facts: The pictures from the wolves' own cameras can't tell you if they were close to enough to quote "run Chuck and Blair's car into the wall." Which, I'm kind of confused now about this part too, because what does that even mean? Is Nate picturing some kind of Road Warrior or Grease II scenario where the motorcycle wolves were actually butting their vehicles into the towncar in order to send it spinning off into the Central Park woods? Because that's not how physics works, by a long shot.

By Jacob Clifton

SPECTATOR

Nate's Solution: That towncar driver probably has no plans on New Year's, so let's invite him back to a party with the same people that almost left his children orphaned a few months ago and see if he can remember anything he forgot to tell the cops.

PRADA

Lily: "I am so excited for New Year's karaoke! Will you hate me if I sing 'Miss World' again?"

False. "Doll Parts." Please, "I fake it so real I am beyond fake?" That song was actually written about Lily Rhodes. But I bet if she sang it to Rufus he would figure out his life and whatever, he's off on a tear while I was thinking about Courtney Love.

Rufus: "You called that private investigator we are constantly calling at the drop of a hat because our children are always disappearing or being born under mysterious circumstances in convents or getting blown up by dudes you once fucked!"
Lily: "I really don't see what the problem is."
Rufus: "Actually, me neither. Judgmental and shrill is just my default. Resume your business."
Lily: "Hey Andrew, did you find Cousin Peepers? Oh, you say she's been enrolled in Juilliard this whole time? Thanks!"

DAIR

By Jacob Clifton

Dan: "I think you should go to Nate's party tonight with Louis. Or without him."
Blair: "It's going to be tough, faking it at a party with my family and friends."
Dan: "Maybe that means something?"
Blair: "I assure you that it does not. Regular stuff no longer means anything to me, now that I am in the middle of a psychotic break."

LUCK

Chuck & Louis: "Let's have a talking like this contest."

SPECTATOR

Dan: "I love this party, Nate! And your office! And your outfit! You're my hero, did I ever tell you that? All this time I was hanging out with Chuck doing weird threesomes and smoking pot, I was wishing it was you. I love you so much, man."
Nate: "Welcome to my party, guy I'm still mad at!"
Dan: "...Like a dog with a bone. A bitchy one."

Louis: "Maybe they're just talking? And this is coming from the guy who just apparently still hasn't noticed the two of you were pulled from flaming wreckage in the middle of cuckolding me."
Chuck, verbatim: "People don't rent secret apartments to discuss feelings, and frankly, an affair with Humphrey is the one thing that explains why she's not confiding in you and why she stopped speaking to me."

How so? How does that follow? Finally, Serena has just had it with them, and heads into the ladies' room to ask Blair what the hell is going on with her. If she'd noticed months ago, maybe they would have had this conversation earlier, but you know, there was this whole list she was supposed to write and it just kinda crept up on her and...

Meanwhile, Louis and Chuck decide that the sensible thing to do is to detour the office slideshow to include a slide proclaiming Dair 2011's MOST SECRET AFFAIR. It's a stroke of genius, or a genius of a stroke, but either way I think "Louis & Chuck Plan" just superseded "Serena Plan" as my very favorite kind of Plan. Nate's omnipresent and weirdly restive assistant surprises Louis as he's doing this amazing activity and he fully lies to her that he was doing "Monegasque business" on Nate's computer. I think I'm actually going to miss him, when he finally gets the scarlet fever or whatever he's going to get.

BATHROOM

Serena: "I know this might be hard, but I'm going to stay on you until I get what I want. Blair, for the first time since you almost died months ago and lost your damn mind, I'm going to ask you to tell me what is going on."
Blair: "Okay, well, I thought Chuck was going to die because he was in a coma, so I just completely ignored the unimportant fact that I had miscarried -- since that has zero effect on a woman, physically speaking -- and dragged my ass to the hospital chapel to make a solemn vow that I would marry Louis and never sleep with Chuck again if he would just wake up."
Serena: "That is severely fucked up, but do go on. What happened ?"
Blair: "He woke up. Like right then. So I went to his hospital room and apologized for breaking up with him, and I've been going slowly insane ever since."

Serena: "...So you feel like you have magic powers over life and death, basically."
Blair: "I always had those, silly. It's just that now I have a contract hit out on him. If ever I run off with him again, God will send wolves or paparazzi or slow-moving taxicabs to kill him. And that'll be my fault."
Serena: "Bitch, seriously I think you're having some kind of PTSD. These are not normal thoughts. This is... We need to get you some help."
Blair: "The only help I need is Jesus. Assassin Jesus, the holy hit man of heaven, who will come kill Chuck whenever I decide."
Serena: "Maybe it's just that you've been such an asshole to God so many times that this is his way of getting back at you. I can see that, but that's the only way God enters into this."

Blair: "Dan understands and supports me in my psychosis."
Serena: "We could all have t-shirts made that say that. Doesn't make you right. Meanwhile, both of your boyfriends think you're sleeping with Dan."
Blair: "I can bear the shame of that."
Serena: "Okay but like this whole thing is about you getting married to Louis, so it's not really about whether it's okay for Louis to think that."
Blair: "Please, like he even cares about that. This week."

Nate: "Chuck and Louis, I am mad at you guys. Thank God my assistant didn't believe you were doing 'Monegasque business.'"
Serena: "Everybody, I have an announcement! The reason Dan and Blair have been seen embracing and going into strange apartments alone together is because... I am secretly dating Dan Humphrey."

Nate, I can see him buying that. Louis, whether or not he believed her we'd never know because he would just talk like he was choking on his own viscera, and it doesn't matter anyway because soon, he actually will be. This doesn't make any sense whatsoever, and yet they all chill down? It's so hard to care about any of this.

Nate: "Well, I'm back to being mad at you."
Dan: "Sorry we lied to everybody about our secret relationship and staged elaborate scenes with crazy Blair that involved her vanishing in the middle of the night and going to strange secret tunnel apartments. It was a Serena Plan that got out of hand, I guess."
Everybody: "Oh my God, you're the worst. Whatever."

Serena & Dan: "Okay, now we both know the real deal, and it's that Blair's brain -- never really a paragon of mental health -- has completely shit the bed. And we're cool with that. And we're going to continue to pretend to be in a relationship for some reason. And I'm going to kiss you at midnight. This is how we're playing this."

By Jacob Clifton

JUILLIARD

Lily: "Rufus, why are you at Juilliard in the middle of the night on New Year's? Along with a bunch of other people?"
Rufus, verbatim: "You went out for champagne over an hour ago, and singing karaoke by myself got a little bit humiliating."
Lily: "Don't open that floodgate. If you start thinking about ways your life is humiliating..."
Rufus: "I called Andrew Tyler to ask if he could tell me the thing that he couldn't tell me earlier, and he couldn't, so I hired him to spy on you so I could come find you."

That actually happened. In the middle of Lily spying on Charlie, Rufus hired the exact same guy to spy on Lily. And the reason that he did this was that he thought Lily was out buying champagne and he got bored. So he hired a private detective.

Rufus: "But then I was so goshdarned irritating that he ended up just telling me the whole deal anyway, so that's another grand of your money I've pissed away for no reason."
Lily: "I'm just glad we're here together, as a family, on New Year's. Here at Juilliard. Without our children."

A random blonde girl walks by that is clearly not Cousin Peepers, so of course they go running after her and sack her and sit on her chest and they're like, "Cousin Peepers! Cousin Peepers! We need more children to have a storyline!" and the random blonde girl is like, "I'm not the Charlotte Rhodes you're looking for, I'm this other Charlotte Rhodes that goes by the name 'Lola' and if you ever knew what happened to me you'd never talk to my mom again and also the fact that somehow -- without my own knowledge and with a completely different face -- I've been all over the tabloids, hanging out with Serena van der Woodsen, having a debutante ball at your house, none of that apparently made any kind of impact on my life here in this relatively tiny city where we all live."

By Jacob Clifton

First of all, your name is Lola. You know it's bad luck to give yourself your own nickname. First of all. And second of all, Really? Being a Rhodes Woman who came from Florida to New York City with famous relatives all over the place and the same age as the other Charlotte Rhodes who also came from Florida to New York City with famous relatives that you've never talked to and don't recognize? Really? And you just explained this to weird grownup strangers that are hunting you with dogs? On New Year's Eve? And the terrible thing that happened to you that would cause the ostracized Aunt Carol to be even more ostracized is that you go to Juilliard?

How funny if this is all a red herring and Lola never comes back? This was just their idea of nipping that storyline concept in the bud. "Oh, you think Lola matters? Ask Pilot Inspektor. Ask us if we give even one tiny motherfucking fuck."

REHASH

Back at the magazine or whatever, everybody apologizes to everybody else, the wedding is back on, Louis informs Blair of Serena's mastermind quick save that solved everything somehow and Blair says another part of the weirdness that explains everything somehow is that she's suddenly converting to Catholicism. Like her Crazy Plan looked at Serena's Crazy Plan and decided to one-up it.

That chauffeur with nowhere else to be is super happy to be at this lame party, and also more than happy to reiterate the events of that horrible night which more than likely injured and traumatized him at least so badly: "Those photographers got really close to the car, but the bigger problem was that my brakes felt like they had no pressure. I swear I checked them before my shift started!"

Ah, the old brakeline slasheroo. You'd think with his own checkered wolf-and-MVA history that Tripp would be more creative than that. Or maybe this also was Maureen. Maybe the end of the show will just be a Usual Suspects breakdown of how every single thing was actually Maureen: Maureen slipped Georgina some tainted coke and an endless supply of thumb drives the night of the Sheppard Wedding, Maureen came up with the supermodel Ponzi scheme originally, Maureen and Carter Baizen are actually running a horse-thieving ring, Maureen is Chuck's mother, Maureen got Agnes into drugs, Maureen killed Allison Humphrey, Maureen invited Rachel Carr to an opera at 8:30, Maureen is Gossip Girl, Maureen pretended to be CNN to lure Vanessa to Haiti, the whole bit.

Dan: "Smooth move with the lie that makes zero sense, sis."
Serena: "Yeah, it's a real sacrifice for me too."
Somebody Stupid, I think Louis: "Dan and Serena, you have to kiss at midnight!"
Serena: "Well, I guess we have to kiss each other now. What drudgery! I just wish I could have thought of a better way to save Blair and enable her craziness in a way I'm not benefitting from."

They kiss.

Serena: "Wow, that was..."
Dan: "-- Totally platonic, like we really are brother and sister?"
Serena: "...Oh my God, that's exactly what I was going to say. How weird! I certainly wasn't going to say anything else other than that. Maybe we have a psychic twin connection! Because yeah, that wasn't a turn-on at all. Boy howdy."

MORE FACTS

Per the car service, it was Blair who ordered the car, so Nate at first thinks they need to figure out who knew she'd be going in it, but there's more to it that we'll deal with right after Serena -- even though it's past midnight -- wanders through the scene still making her List of Most Things. How long is this freaking list? Most Sloppy Sandwich: The Sloppy Duck Sandwich, at the Dutch. Most Colory Color: Pink. Most Necklaces Ever Worn At One Time: Serena, whenever she's hanging out blogging. You know, just hangin' out, bloggin' in my necklaces.

Nate: "Serena, have you changed your mind about turning into Gossip Girl?"
Serena: "In a small way, the events of this episode actually made a damned bit of difference to me, because they reflected on my own life. You see, it's not the secrets that cause the problems, but the assumptions that people make about them."
Nate: "I still don't know what you are talking about."
Serena: "I am going to go through all the emails and see if there's a positive way for me to use what's in them."
Nate: "So you're the new Gossip Girl. Like I've been saying this whole time."
Serena: "I guess so. I prefer to think of myself as the new Gwyneth Paltrow."

You and me both, honey.

Lily: "Well, I'm sorry that I spoiled our New Year's celebration by stalking innocent students."
Rufus: "That's what we already are always doing. That is literally my role on this show. Once we cured your pretend cancer it's just been this. Lurking, stalking, whining about things, sneaking around. I miss Charlie too. But I can't say I didn't hate the little bitch for distracting you from me and paying attention to me while I do banal, self-absorbed things."
Lily: "You're right. Whatever happens to the mentally ill girl we agreed to take into our home, that vanished suddenly and without warning, it's not really our business."
Rufus: "Let's sing more karaoke and be alone together and never leave this apartment and die here alone, singing karaoke."
Lily: "I feel like that is already happening."

EMPIRE

Chuck: "Blair, thank God you came to my apartment like you do at the end of every episode and I always think you're going to say you're leaving Louis and then you never do. I'm sure this time I'll get what I want!"
Blair: "I just came by to say that I hope you don't turn evil. This insincere, paint-by-numbers storyline about your spiritual rehabilitation has turned out to be one of the paradoxically most touching of the season, and I'd hate to see that reversed in the same way it always is."
Chuck: "What I hear you saying is that Uncle Jack is probably coming back into the picture."
Blair: "Just stay Good, in the goofy childish White Hat way this show now defines that concept."
Chuck: "I mean like could you maybe give me a hint as to why you broke up with me and won't talk to me or look at me?"
Blair: "I am far too motherfucking crazy to do that. Adieu."

WALDORF

Serena & Dan: "Blair and Chuck's pain is like a funny joke to us. Let's eat candy!"
Everybody Else: "Actually, same deal. This is ridiculous."
Blair & Louis: "Our marriage is so not doomed. This is a great way to start a life together."

One last fact, which we already knew but Nate doesn't, is that Blair and Chuck were actually in the car ordered ... for NATE! Which is interesting, because of course now that you can assume all guest stars will revert to slavering lunatics desperate for blood within two episodes, why would Tripp be any different, and also maybe it keeps Max in play, but more than that, it twists the Serena thing in a cool way:

Because now Gossip Girl has helped Nate understand that his life was, and is, in danger, and she's the perfect person to help him with that, which means he has to side against Serena... But what is GG going to want in return? If it were me, I would make him write an editorial on how one of his closest friends from high school has lost her fucking mind and needs to be put in the hospital, but I don't see her going that way with 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.

By Jacob Clifton

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