The Truth About Charlie

S05E16

Chuck pursues his revenge against Dan, setting him up for a plagiarism scandal and awesomely marking Alessandra with the very suicide scarf Charlie Trout used to masturbate himself to death. After Blair calls him off -- explaining very sensibly that a Chuck whose "goodness" is limited to not hitting objects near Blair's face isn't really all that "good" at all -- he stops his campaign... But changes his tune once the real Gossip Girl sends him proof that it was Dan who sent her the wedding-day video that nearly ruined everything.

After Dorota locks Blair and Serena in a room to resolve their shit, B comes up with a dumb plan to hang out with Dan and just be friends with him. Dan, of course, hates this plan -- and so does Serena, since it ends in yet more kisses. However, a UCB performance of selections from Inside finally convinces Blair that her deal with Dan is legit, and she ends the episode with a tender kiss for him.

While that part was rad -- and really smartly arranged -- mostly it was a pleasure to see Blair acting like herself for the first time in literal years. And of coure, she's still got Chuck on the line, her relationship with Serena to consider, and will be married to the monarchy for at least a year, so it's not exactly smooth sailing ahead.

CeCe's impending death brings all the Rhodes Women together, including both Charlie Rhodeses. Aunt Carol comes clean about her machinations, and Lola fires Carol as her mom, heading off for a hookup with Nate finally. Meanwhile, Serena takes her Blair betrayal feelings out on Ivy, who goes running to Georgina for help, but she does eventually give Blair and Dan her blessing.

The run of great winter episodes continues! Blair continues to act like herself, questions are getting answered, slow-burn storylines are finally flipping over and even Westwick seems like he's having fun again. While CeCe's last episode wasn't exactly a showcase for her wonderful ass, it did at least bring all the storylines together in a very useful and touching way. We look forward to seeing what happens , now that all the secrets of the season have finally been disclosed.

Week: Activated by Ivy, Georgina returns to (hopefully) cause some actual damage for once. Jesus owes us one.

I am very sorry about the delay -- this new computer has some tricks up its sleeve, like for example saving unwritten drafts over fully written recaps no matter how delightful they are or how many different strategies I've tried to keep that from happening. Nobody said the future would be easy. On the other hand, it's now my job to keep this searing rage and blind hatred from spilling over into the recap, which I will now be writing for the third fucking time since, oh, exactly a week ago. Which sucks, because I was really happy with the last version and pretty much could give a shit at this point, which is no fault of yours, but is a bummer considering the show finally just got good again. On the other hand, this recap will probably be a lot shorter than the versions, which will no doubt be a relief for some of us anyhow.

PREVIOUSLY

Blair declared her love for Chuck on a video that Gossip Girl gave to Dan, and which Dan then gave... Right back to Gossip Girl, which is going to be a monster problem when it hits. Then Dan saved Blair from the monster she married, which for slightly less incomprehensible reasons has Serena pissed off as well. Later, he kissed her in Chuck's bedroom, which has enraged Chuck now beyond the telling. Aunt Carol somehow devised a way to keep Lola from remembering the family she grew up with as a child, as well as shielding her from the entirety of the Fourth Estate, and Nate Archibald managed to date two girls with the exact same name without ever twigging to the idea that something was going on.

ALL THE SAD YOUNG LITERARY AGENCY LLC

While Dan gets to work finishing up his proposal for a new novel -- without backing it up or using email at any point -- and Serena hip-checks Blair in their shared bathroom -- smudging lipstick across her cheek so she looks as crazy on the outside as she has become on the inside -- Chuck is reading up on the publishing industry, the better to take his revenge on doing the thing that Dan was smart enough to do him. He sends Alessandra a Shatoosh scarf, last seen wrapped around Charlie Trout's thick neck as he jerked and pounded his way to oblivion.

Alessandra: "I'd love to have lunch, but the passenger pigeon that we apparently use in the publishing industry in 2012 will soon be arriving with Dan's 'bound' proposal."
Propmaster: "If by 'bound' you mean 'in a plastic slipcover like a sophomore book report,' then yes."
Chuck: "Have you heard of this thing email?"
Nobody: "Yes, it's a useful tool."

By Jacob Clifton

DUMBO

Rufus: "Don't mind me, I just snuck over here to wear this jacket Lily won't let me wear."
Dan: "Good, because it's horrid!"
Propmaster: "If by 'horrid' you mean 'a perfectly fine duffle coat with cute buttons that looks adorable on him,' then yes."
Rufus: "Are you still in love with Blair?"
Dan: "I am keeping my distance. She's married, and in love with five other people on this show. Also, Serena is being a bitch about it."

Rufus: "And as for your book?"
Dan: "It's a subtle metaphor of anachronism and literary playfulness in which today's surveillance and social networking culture is worked into an alternate history version of Manhattan-as-Monarchy. Sort of a New Gilded Age for the CW set."
Rufus: "I hope nobody gets ahold of it and turns it into a painfully literal interpretation of that. That would really be a loss for the world at large."
Dan: "Nobody who really loves or understands the franchise would ever do that. I'm sure we're fine."

CHEZ WALDORF

Blair tries to apologize for kissing Dan in Chuck's bedroom for everyone to see, but Serena is not having it. They are surrounded by a sumptuous breakfast feast straight out of The Tempest, for some reason, even though they will never touch the food. Serena is not interested in her mess -- even trying an ill-advised and out-of-character remark about Blair's clothes -- and then before you know it, stupid old Dorota has justified herself for once, locking those bitches in the formal dining room until they work it out.

EMPIRE

Now that Lola's on the case to figuring out Ivy's game, she's given up avoiding Nate's creepy stalking behaviors, and is returning the serve. After learning that Nate hooked up with her, Lola's even more interesting in figuring out the real deal. Chuck walks in talking about how he has a date with Humphrey to walk their pretend baby, Monkey, and Nate notices that Lola's carrying a copy of Inside, the thinly veiled work of fiction that chronicles the family she doesn't remember growing up with.

Apparently hardworking Lola is in the UCB, and they're "mocking" it -- which for some reason on this show means "solemnly reading it aloud while the audience sits quietly and respectfully" -- which Dan thanks is great, because he thinks only of himself and loves the idea of a room of people all doing that at the same time. He asks if he can break his date with Chuck, but not before Chuck assures him that their bromance is fine despite the Blair-kissing thing, because he is quote "a sadist, not a masochist." (Both Nate and Dan join the Upright Citizens Brigade when he says this.)

Chuck sneaks off at some point with Dan's laptop to make sure that the paper document he never backed up is not on it, and then switches the "bound" copy for some banal piece of crap where Clair marries the Prince of Monaco and everybody's a campy cartoon and women are all either crazy or stupid.

THE LOCK-IN

Blair's point is that she's married, she's in love with Chuck, and she hasn't hung out with Dan since they made out on Valentine's Day. Serena's point is that all these things are proof, because Blair Waldorf is a mess who never makes any sense -- but also, more to the point, she is a wiz at avoiding or denying her feelings until everyone is pulled into the black hole riptide of her endless shrieking need. Advantage Serena.

Blair's solution is that she will spend the day on one long date with Dan, sending Serena cute pictures throughout, in order to prove something or another. Serena, speaking as an idiot, touts the wisdom of this plan, and stops threatening Blair physically. Advantage Blair.

EMPIRE

Dan is, of course, overjoyed to hear that people are going to be discussing him, so while he turns cartwheels around the place, Lola takes off with Nate's phone to be so brazenly sketchy that even Nate will notice -- although, since it's Nate, that's not going to happen for a couple acts at least. She calls Ivy on his phone and -- although she starts out compassionate enough -- soon drills down into seething resentment and suspicion, scaring Ivy into hanging up the phone altogether. Lola returns Nate's phone, her lie about who she was really calling emblazoned across the call log, and drags Dan down to the UCB.

VITAMIN WATER ESTATES

Ivy calls Aunt Carol to tell her that, for the fourth time, the jig is up. Lola's onto her... And is also living in New York City and hanging out with the same family that Aunt Carol somehow subtracted from her childhood memories. CeCe appears, clearly about to die, and they share a little loving moment.

While Chuck sends the "bound" copy of his literary travesty off with somehow the same courier who is going to be schlepping this paper document all over the Town Without Email, Ivy has a little meeting with the Nurse about how CeCe is going to die at the end of the episode. Ivy balks at calling Lily, even though she tromped all the way to the UES last week to tell her this exact thing, and then abruptly gave up after getting dicked around by Lily and Rufus the entire episode. Ivy and the Nurse discuss cancer, what it is exactly and how it works, and then, flummoxed into a dead end, look it up on Bing.

By Jacob Clifton

ALL THE SAD YOUNG LITERARY AGENCY LLC

Chuck shows up to ravish Alessandra so she doesn't notice that the proposal she already read and approved has now been transformed into something banal, and he is totally charming and funny and sexy, because this is the first fun thing he's gotten to do since around the time he got shot in Prague.

UCB

Dan meets all the people and congratulates them on getting to read his words, and then admits to Lola that he was once forced to fingerbang Ivy and call her "Serena" while she was wearing Serena's debutante gown, which is odd when you think about it, because we're given to understand that she was only pretending to be crazy that time. True commitment is the hallmark of a born star.

Nate calls Lola, having noticed that she's now stalking his friends using his own phone and then lying to his face about it, but since it's Nate all she has to say is, "I'll explain later" and he calms down. Dan's trying to get ahold of Alessandra -- who is busily blowing Chuck at this time -- and then gets distracted by the sudden, manic arrival of Blair Waldorf, who is still carrying around that antediluvian MacGuffin known as Dan's Big Book Of Physical Blu-ray Discs.

Dan repeatedly spits in Blair's face and tells her he doesn't want to spend time with her anymore, and then she attacks a girl for wearing a headband. It's an odd joke that doesn't land, because it's just a headband, but I guess the point is that Blair is a bitch. FYI.

PRADA

Lily welcomes Carol into her home unannounced, and is too drunk to notice that Carol's asking unbelievably searching questions about the love lives of Serena's clique for some reason, and then they talk about how much they all love Ivy even though Lily and Rufus flaked on her so bad she fled back to VITAMIN WATER last time. Serena tries to explain Blair's Dan plan to them, but it makes so little sense that she realizes she's been played for a rube, and then heads off to discover Dan and Blair doing some serendipitous thing that will spur the drama forward. Left alone, Lily attacks Carol with an icepick, but they are distracted by the news that CeCe is about to drop dead.

INSIDE

"Clair's a dictator, and you don't even have a doorman. For her, Brooklyn is just a place for her limo driver to pass through on her way to JFK. Why do you care what she thinks?"

Dan realizes abruptly that it is awkward sitting here with Blair while they listen to a tale of how he is in love with her even though he thinks she's psychotic and that her best friend is a retarded slut, but she won't be dissuaded. It's only once she tries to hold his hand -- you know, how friends do -- that he realizes they're on one of those Insane Blair Dates where even she is not allowed to know that they are on a date, like the time they went to the seaside in adorable outfits.

Lola approaches to ask what it's like when they make out, and Blair alerts her to the existence of Gossip Girl, a popular website for those In The Know. This, of course, radically recontextualizes Lola's existence. (Also, Blair: "Log on and learn everything you need to know about me, stat. But you can skip my entire freshman year of college." WORD. But then, N.B., if you build it right in the first place you never have to hang a lantern on it.) Blair, of course, then takes the kissing question as an opportunity to make out with Dan some more, so of course Serena walks in at precisely this time, because subconscious agendas have been second to blind coincidence for a few years now on this show. She stomps off, giant hoof feet shaking the place to its foundations.

Blair tries to bullshit Serena yet again about this, but Serena is over it. They have a fairly yucky conversation in which Serena's stupid point -- that nothing matters when you are in love -- is somehow supported by Blair's point, which is correct but expressed in such a loony, shitty way that it makes Serena look like the stable adult, to wit: "We're not servants to our emotions! We can control them! Suppress them! Stomp them out like bugs!"

So somehow a conversation that started out being about the selfishness of romance and not pushing your agenda or projections on other people became about ... how you should always do those things. Anyway, Serena is about to drop the mic a third time, but then somebody thinks to call her about how CeCe is going to die at the end of the episode. It's like Ten Little Indians plus the Party At The End Of The Episode, but you put them together and it's just people rushing to the hospital for the least emotional death ever portrayed on this show.

ATSYLA LLC

Chuck is finally done fucking Alessandra, just in time for her to get four voicemails from Karp about how Dan's book proposal has been replaced with an unsatisfying fan fiction version, and this will probably end the publishing industry. As soon as everybody gets the telegrams or however we communicate these days. Chuck, still working that shit, makes his gleeful way out and into the day.

UCB

Dan is talking to the actor playing Dylan about the ineffable majest of being Dan fucking Humphrey when Blair busts back in to whine at him about how she keeps sabotaging her friendship with Serena. Dan -- rightfully, although with a shittiness that is becoming chronic -- tells her he doesn't want to be her friend, and she knows that, so why would he help her with this? It's not like he gives a shit about Serena, and he's entitled -- as a straight young male -- to revile B for putting him in the Friend Zone, so where the fuck does she get off? It's really attractive.

Meanwhile, Nate asks Lola how she's enjoying Gossip Girl, and whether she's using it to stalk Ivy or what. She promises to explain it to him, so he calms down for a third time about it, and but then she sees Gossip Girl happily exclaiming that "Charlie Rhodes" is going to the hospital, hopefully because she has lost her shit again, because that was the only time her character did anything besides creak mournfully and tell the same lies over and over and feel sorry for herself, so she takes off to grill Ivy now that she knows where she is. But then who will play Clair? Certainly not any of the other people in the troupe who have been rehearsing this, no. Only Blair, a rude stranger, will do for this performance that people are paying money to see.

HOSPITAL

Ivy explains CeCe's condition quickly to her daughters, admitting that she's been in hiding up in East Egg since the car accident, and Carol hisses and digs her nails into her fake daughter's flesh. After a short break for Dan drama, below, Ivy tries to explain how her love of CeCe is real and how she was an accomplice to the secret cancer the second she recognized CeCe's symptoms and medications a while back, but Carol isn't hearing it. Luckily, Ivy points out that "Charlie" couldn't just leave the hospital without a word, so she's at least safe staying with her fake grandma for a little longer.

UCB

Meanwhile Alessandra shows up -- not because this is an event entirely based upon a book that she represents, which would actually make sense -- but because Karp has discovered that Dan's new book is a sham. Meanwhile, Dan is signing copies of his book in the lobby, thanks to the nobody who asked him to do so. They discuss how this could have happened, and Dan admits the embarrassing truth that he only had the one cuneiform tablet of his proposal, and no backups. Instead of simply emailing Karp the copy she's already read, Alessandra runs around like a lunatic while Dan calmly settles in to watch the play. But after noting the Shahtoosh scarf around her neck and the lemon wedge in her mouth. At some point Alessandra realizes that this storyline is ridiculous, and heads back to the office to fix the situation, while Dan promises to go home and make a separate illuminated parchment manuscript as quickly as possible.

By Jacob Clifton

HOSPITAL

UCB

Sabrina: "When did you forget who you are? You wanted to be the most powerful woman in America... Only there's nothing powerful about you right now... You always get this way when you're around Charlie Trout."
Blair/Clair: "I don't know who I am without him, Sabrina."
(Dan: "You guys are doing a really good job here, making fun of this. In no way. When you're insecure about your writing, non-funny non-mocking is the only kind of criticism you'll accept.")
Sabrina: "Look, I get it. I do. You're afraid of what people might think if you change your mind, but you can't care about them. You never used to. You're Clair Carlyle. You're in control of your own destiny! And most of Manhattan's."
Blair/Clair: "How did you get so smart?"
Sabrina: "Can't take the credit. It's Dylan."

EMPIRE

Dan comes in screaming about the scarf and the whole thing, and Chuck shows his hand by admitting that he's coming at Dan hard because of Blair... Which confirms for Dan that not only is he in the running, but he's on top. It is a fairly swag moment. Before he can go be mean to her some more, though, seems like somebody finally remembered to call him -- the only other person in this family that CeCe actually likes -- about her impending death.

HOSPITAL

Serena: "I'm having a shitty day and I'm pissed at Blair, so every sweet and rational thing you say just enrages me more!"
Ivy: "I never really had a family. You were so good to me, like a big sister I never had. I really care about you guys."
Serena: "GGGGGGGGRAH!"

Serena pitches Ivy out into the street, empties an entire can of garbage on her head, and then scales up the outside of the building, screaming barbarically. Meanwhile, Lola and her mother are having a knife fight outside the cafeteria about how Carol brainwashed her secret daughter to forget the family times that even Serena remembers sharing with her. It is just a Rhodes Women Smackdown in that place, Lily bouncing off the ropes and CeCe snatching Jenny by the hair and Krysten Ritter and Brittany Snow are there shoving Eric van der Woodsen back and forth until he drops his books and Rufus is just in the corner crying, praying to the ghost of Bart Bass. Real ugly situation they have created.

After Lola punches her mother in the solar plexus, she goes looking for Serena for some reason. Meanwhile, Blair has followed Dan to the hospital so they can have a totally appropriate conversation about their dumb feelings. They decide to wait until she's not married and no longer in love with Chuck and the million other problems she's created for herself out of literally thin air, and she kisses him right in front of Serena one more time before heading over to apologize to Serena some more.

But the fight, it's taken too much out of our S, and she limply admits defeat. "Go ahead, bitch. Everybody on this entire show is in love with you, that's fine. I've been thinking about going back to alcoholism anyway." They're about to hug when, for no reason, Lola comes by and punches Serena in the throat. Final blood.

EMPIRE

Blair calls Chuck to tell him to stop ruining Dan's life and just accept that she is a fucking crazy person who gets to be in love with everybody on the entire show and they can just pipe down about that, and but then she makes the very salient point that, much like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, being a "good person" doesn't just mean being good around her, or protecting her, or loitering in her wedding for no reason without speaking up, or because he has an Initiative microchip in his head that keeps him from harming humans: He has to seriously be nice to everybody. Especially Dan, her new boyfriend. Chuck begs her not to become even more ridiculous, but she hangs up on him and he decides to send Alessandra the facsimile of Dan's original teletype over the wireless.

By Jacob Clifton

EMPIRE

By Jacob Clifton

AFTERMATH

For some reason, the fact that Nate is clearly not working with a full deck is no more a dealbreaker than the fact that every word Lola's ever said to him is a lie, so they are finally together. Which means he's officially been with more Serena Doubles than anybody on the entire show. If he'd ever slept with Svetlana he'd have the whole set, but no. Nearby Dan tells Blair that Chuck has recalled the dogs of war, and she kisses him but heads inside to take care of Serena while CeCe dies and dies and dies...

Which is exactly when GG sends Chuck the email proving that it was Dan that sent her the video in the first place. Which somehow reignites his ire, even though he got exactly what he wanted out of it and then refused to do anything about it, but I guess you can't entirely unhunch all at once.

week: Smiles! Laughter! Funny jokes! Enjoyment! A renewed respect and probably apologies for the hard working people who make the show I still so dearly love! Or else just a full-color photo of yours truly going Betty Draper Apeshit on the shattered remains of what was once a two-week-old Toshiba Thrive. XOXO.

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.