I guess not many people know that Clark Kent and Lex Luthor have a son together? Connor Kent? Wiki him, it's super weird but also kind of awesome. Anyway, I think that's what Sage is supposed to be: The half-Kryptonian daughter of Blair and Serena.
The whole thing where Blair and Chuck must both become Powerful Women before they can be together takes another tortoise step forward: He drops off yet another suitcase full of money at yet another location, takes thirty-seven calls from Uncle Jack and says "Dubai" a million times to everybody, makes a couple jokes about what a huge rapist he is, and then refuses to fuck Blair out of just being a weirdo I think. Meanwhile, Blair has the dumbest nervous breakdown of all time to where even Dorota is like, "This is embarrassing and a little OTT."
So Blair needs a girl to walk the runway in her debut show, and Serena needs a way to make Sage stop putting arsenic and bitchiness in her tea, so the two non-friends strike a deal. Sage ends up playing them both, and tossing her dress over her head, ruining the fashion show and Blair's, like, life. I always thought the worst moment of Lily's life was probably realizing that being with Rufus meant being Jenny's stepmother, and now we see that coming true. Except that Sage is infinitely more irritating than Jenny, even at her Agnes-est, and Serena has feelings, which Lily does not.
Weirdly, though, the most satisfying scenes string together the curious dismantling of Humphrey Propaganda, as both Dan and Rufus commit instantaneous face-heel turns that leave them both just sliding in the wreckage of their self-righteousness: Dan's first exposé/serial novel chapter/whatever the hell is about how Rufus and Ivy are fucking (two people, note, that literally nobody in the entire United States of America gives a shit about), so then Ivy says nonsense words that cause Rufus to go off the chain, and then she tells Gossip Girl that he's going to sue Nate and Dan, so then Dan and his dad have a fight about that time he fingerbanged her and she made him call her Serena, which I'm sorry but that is very relevant, and then she's cut him off from one more of his relations. (Jenny, by the way, totally gives her blessing to the Ivy/Rufus connection, because she is a gross person but also because she has no idea who any of these people are and probably gives no shits at all.)
Meanwhile, though, Dan gets himself thrown out of Nate's house by taking his serial novel to Vanity Fair, fucking over Nate and his entire magazine (?) just for the love of money, which only Nelly Yuki understands, because she is the latest person who is in love with Dan Humphrey for no goddamn reason and wants him to come live on her couch now so she can also stare at him while he sleeps. Although frankly I'm more intrigued/mystified by the Hitler Youth and I, Bacon Grease Claudius looks his ongoing hair monster has inspired for Chuck and Nate respectively.
Week: In case it wasn't already abundantly clear that this entire season is one long incest joke with a very scary punchline, we learn that Steven has slept with Lily, CeCe Rhodes, Claus with a C and Klaus with a K, all five Cousin Charlies under various pseudonyms, and even did the obligatory stint as Damien Dalgaard's sex slave/drug mule.
PREVIOUSLY
Daniel has been driven insane by the sight of Rufus fucking Ivy, which makes total sense. Blair and Chuck are both trying to handle their inherited empires despite mixed messages from their parents and the fact that their gilded age is built on sand, etc. Nate is looking for a scoop so that he can turn his business into some other kind of business or something, nobody cares what Nate is ever doing. Serena is dating an old man with a bitch daughter, which was kind of always going to happen if you think about it.
ATELIER
Blair Waldorf is stressin'. Her fashion line is set to debut in like ten minutes and she just realized that she got married out of high school and has no knowledge, training, or real life experience.
Blair Waldorf: "The devil is in the details, and I'm about to start worshiping Satan!"
Dorota: "That not mean anything in English talk."
Blair: "[Dumb joke about Charlotte Casiraghi.]"
Dorota: "Bitch, can you not get on board with the rest of us and just forget Monaco ever happened?"
Blair: "I have this genius fashion strategy where we don't go to Fashion Week, suddenly. So it's lucky that we didn't go to Fashion Week."
Jean Pierre: "Wait, also Charlotte Casiraghi can't come. She's the face of some other fashion line or something, so there's a conflict."
Blair: "These assholes. First they want to marry you, and then they hold a knife to your ribs on the dance floor and call you a whore. Okay, so what's Plan B? Whom do we know that is utterly fabulous?"
UWS
Serena: "Did somebody just say my name?"
Sage: "No, nobody was talking. We're dour folk, across the Park."
Serena: "Weird. Anyway, do you want some berries? I bought them at the farmer's market..."
Sage: "I'm a kid of the now, van der Woodsen. The only berries I'm interested in are BBMs."
Steven: "Put it down and look your step-thing in the boobs. I'm fine with you being a little jerk to me, which is why you're a little jerk, but I won't have it in front of other people. It makes me look like a bad parent, which is accurate."
Sage: "Are you saying I have to break up with Nate Archibald?"
Steven: "No, how did you eve... Yes. Yes, that is what I'm saying. Fix your grades and become a participant in school things, or else."
Sage: "You're a shitty dad. Stop acting otherwise just to impress this chick. She couldn't pick the good parent out of a lineup consisting of the parents on this show and one other person."
Serena: "She's right, you know. And don't even get me started on my dad stuff..."
Steven: "How about gettin' started on my 'dad stuff'?"
Serena: "You just connected some dots for me, actually. Yikes."
Steven: "But seriously, sorry my daughter is so horrible. Maybe we should break up so you won't notice that I have nothing going on, in addition to being old and incredibly gullible."
Serena: "Why am I being punished for your shitty daughter?"
Steven: "For the plot twist, where you offer to mentor her in the Ways of the Rhodes Women."
Serena: "An affliction I have longed to pass on for nigh these many decades. I accept your challenge. All I need's your credit card. Oh, and an ATM card for when we get to the 'buying drugs' part."
BASS APT
Nate: "I heard you on the phone earlier this morning. I couldn't really tell if it was Blair or Uncle Jack, because of how you always talk exactly the same, like a sex murderer."
Chuck: "It was Uncle Jack. His 'people on the ground in Dubai' are helping me track down the blah blah blah that blah blah."
Nate: "See, like right now I feel like we're about to have sex or you're going to kill me."
Chuck: "We got a partial plate off the blah blah and the restaurant it was blah blah."
Dan comes slumping in looking like the ghost of Slacker Past despite wearing a t-shirt and slumpy wool pajama pants that cost more than most of my either. How can somebody with a body like that be so inimical to its appearance? Damned insulting. Meanwhile though, Nate has the haircut of I Claudius and he's wearing a tie and jacket and "working" on a laptop, and Chuck's wearing your basic grey wool suit, a spankin' new Hitler Youth high & tight, and four different shades of purple. Now yeah, it's probably like nine in the AM, but man. If you're crashing with Nate Archibald at the Empire, you up your game. Like, you can't really bitch about Chuck thinking he's better than you when what you are telling the world with your demeanor and presentation is: he is right.
And to add insult to injury, Monkey is following him around. Which I am sure gets Chuck's goat, even though you and I both know it's because Dan smells like he's got cured meats in those pockets. His hair alone, I... Dan Humphrey is exhausting. We are never getting back together.
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Dan, verbatim: "Chuck's barbs don't bother me..."
Like, ever. Get outta here with your "Chuck's barbs." Exhausting.
Dan: "Anything beats having Georgina watch me sleep."
Nate: "That joke never gets old. I also have the attention span of a hamster, so most things stay pretty fresh. Pretty, um, swag."
Dan: "I'm just glad that only one of us is homeless at any given time."
Nate: "Well, as your roommate and publisher and former lover and current haberdasher, I want to be the first to tell you a thing you already knew, which is that we are publishing your serial thing where you basically took your boring book and boring Gossip Girl and smashed them together into a newer, more boring thing."
Dan: "I never thought about it that way, old chap. You're right. I am the gossipest of the gossip girls now, plus the horribleness of Dan. What a mutant we have foisted."
Nate: "Do you think you should call the poor bastard you're 'skewering'?"
Dan: "Get outta here 'skewering.' Who talks like this?"
DUMBO
Ivy: "How are things with our mysterious life together and our routine that involves art galleries in some way that we never clarified? And who will be your date to whatever? I nominate myself, Ivy Charlotte Rhodes Serena van der Woodsen Peepers Dickens."
Rufus: "I'm not sure I want people to know I'm a pedo quite yet. Cold feet about people knowing that. Maybe I'm being silly."
Ivy: "Well, did you get permission from your children?"
Rufus: "Jenny sent her wholehearted blessing, but I haven't 'connected' yet with Dan."
Ivy: "How out of the loop are you, on a scale of..."
Rufus: "I still think he's in Tuscany?"
Ivy: "Oh, girl. ...Actually, look what just updated, my ex-boyfriend's app he thinks is a newspaper. It says Dan saw us fucking."
Rufus: "So I guess he's back from Tuscany."
WALDORF
Jean-Pierre: "Who is our new It Girl? She is impossible to find! I have called all of our contacts! They say there is no more It!"
Blair: "This is New York, we'll find something."
Jean-Pierre: "Perhaps this laissez-faire attitude is ..."
Blair: "I told you no French in this house."
Jean-Pierre: "What about that girl up there in that photo shoot? Not the prim one like a bookcase, the other one. Serena. Not you, Blair. Serena. The other one. The one that is not you."
Oh, you know what, actually that episode -- one of the best, and certainly the one that got me hooked -- was also about finding the face of Waldorf Designs. So, that's kinda cool.
UWS
Serena: "When I was your age, my mom married seven men in succession."
Sage: "That must've been tough and very fascinating to hear about."
Serena: "It fucked me right up. I was a druggie and a slut, and I killed a man. Later on, I stole a horse and a boat. Boy, I sure wish I had gotten better grades in high school."
Sage: "What do those things have to do with each other?"
Serena: "Just be nice to your dad, okay? This is my first conversation in my life."
Sage: "You are so pretty and so very, very smart. I didn't think those things could go together, but now I get it. Thank you. I'm going to go throw away all my drugs, and rededicate myself to chastity now... Mom."
Serena, touched: "That went well, I think. Score another one for old SVD-Dubs."
Sage: "You are so retarded."
(Le ring-ring.)
Serena: "Fuck you want? I'm changing lives up in this bitch."
Blair: "I know we're not friends, but I have a business offer. Mutually beneficial."
Serena: "I don't know what those words mean."
Blair: "But we're like family! We can hate, yet still love."
Serena: "No, girl. You're just somebody I used to know. It really isn't like that. You always had this romantic view of us, but I'm afraid that was kid stuff."
Blair: "But I am always saving your bacon!"
Serena: "Go find somebody else to save. I'm saving Sage these days. This is my new family. You are my old family that never really was my family. Get a life."
WALDORF
Blair, not making a ton of sense: "Serena doesn't wanna be family, then that's fine. She can dive right from the gene pool to the cesspool."
Which sounds like Blair, and sounds like English, but is in fact neither. Blair goes from zero to sixty on the not-making-sense road, and quickly begins to hallucinate. Man, I've been waiting for this chick to crack for what, like eight years? And this is it, the funny filters and voice modulation and stupid Dorota saying stupid Dorota shit, and she faints onto a fainting couch. I guess there's some amount of pressure on her, from the Powerful Women thing and Eleanor's horrors, but the show completely forgot about those things anyway, or what they meant, so now the rest of it makes less sense.
And I mean, the thing about Blair was always that the pressure came from inside: She couldn't see how hard she was making things for herself, because she was trying so hard to fix them. This is all external pressure and logistics, which it occurs to me has been one of the problems since Paris: going to the airport without your passport-type stuff. Coffee-juggling intern stuff. Handing out binders to her minions was once a punchline, not the plotline: The pressure she's under has been steadily externalized. Either way we're watching Leighton Meester stress out, so I can get why the difference is elusive, but one of them makes her look cartoonish and idiotic, and the other makes her look human.
SOME RESTAURANT
Serena: "Have you seen this girl, brunching? I am trying to mentor her!"
Waiter: "You just missed her, but she said you'd take care of the check."
Serena: "She told you 'a person' might show up at 'some point' and pay this bill, and you said that was cool? Good thing I wandered in here, you have no idea what a close call that was."
Just kidding, she's like, "That girl is like a clone of me. She thinks just like the Serena we have never actually shown on this television show that is half about that Serena. It's like lookin' in a mirror at a person who might exist."
WALDORF
Doctor: "It seems like you're a crazy person. That's my diagnosis. Lie down and don't get up, and I guess have an IV of fluids to water down your crazy. Don't have murder sex with any rapists you know."
Blair: "But I have to save the fashion!"
Doctor: "Right, that fashion line you haven't invented and didn't show at Fashion Week, that you still think is going to be a hit. Hmm. Perhaps you've been crazier for longer than just today."
Dorota: "She crazy for long haul."
SPECTATOR
Serena: "You look freshly fucked, where's Sage?"
Nate: "Right? She just disappeared."
Serena: "I looked for her at Barney's! By which I mean, I went to Barney's."
Nate: "You aren't really taking this seriously. You should give it up. She clearly hates you and thinks you're stupid. You're only embarrassing yourself."
Serena: "Her deal is that she wants to wreck my relationship. And she is succeeding, for reasons that are still not clear. And now I'm lying to him that I'm a good stepmother, and I just fuckin' hate her so much, and..."
Nate: "Just come clean. Have you noticed that's what I always say? To each and every one of you bastards that comes to me with problems? I'm going to tell you the secret of life, are you ready? Here we go. You know what happens when you're honest? No problems. Or at least actual problems that you solve with actual solutions."
Serena: "You're right. I know what I have to do now. He's the most important person in my life, because I am a stalker who just met him. It's so simple. Just kill her."
As she's leaving, she brushes past Dan, who randomly hurls shit at her like a monkey.
Dan: "Here on one of your famous blackmail missions? Hope you got it all on film!"
Serena, verbatim: "Suck it, Humphrey."
Dan: "Whoa, you actually do look pretty naked. Did you guys..."
Nate: "No, the newer version of her."
DUMBO
Rufus: "Wait so but how did he see us fucking if he was in Tuscany?"
Ivy: "You probably should have told him, using the telephone. Being that our relationship brings shame on him, as well."
Somewhere Jenny is just laughing until she can't stand up, you know?
Jenny: "Eric, pass me those scones and put down your phone, because I think my dad just had a stroke. You're gonna wanna take this in."
I just wanna know who gets to call Vanessa in Haiti and tell her the good news, and if somehow it can be me. Is there some kind of incantation where I can Lost In Austen myself into this show just to make that one phone call?
Ivy: "Rufus, you're too good of a guy. That's the problem."
Rufus: "Is it? Because I'm kinda the worst, from what I can tell."
Ivy: "Your own son trashed you in the press..."
Rufus: "It's a blog or something. And also, he didn't really trash me so much as put me on blast. I mean, I don't look great here either."
Ivy: "It was bad enough when he fictionalized you in the first book. But realisticizing you for the sequel, which is the same book? Dastardly. Libelous. Defamatory. Justice."
SPECTATOR
Nate: "We are so simpatico! I get great advertising numbers, you get eyeballs and to be horrible to everybody."
Dan: "It's really a win/win, isn't it."
Nate: "And the online comments -- a thing old people think matters -- suggest that a new readership is really into this."
Dan: "People who actually read? Over-35s who love vintage indie rock and dirt on other people's divorces?"
Nate: "No, mostly illiterate homophobes and a very persistent woman who offers to increase the girth of your penis using video techniques and discounted handbags from famous designers and one weird secret to a flat tummy."
Gossip Girl: "Hey, in other news of people you could give a fuck about, Rufus Humphrey is suing his son, Dan Humphrey. Who are they? I don't know either. This is just the first tip I've gotten in weeks. Serena really fucked my brand."
WALDORF
Blair, videoconf'ing: "Jean-Pierre, you are ruining everything! The runway, the wigs... Shit, is that Nelly Yuki?"
JP: "Yeah, to interview you again, a day later. They seem to have a lot of inches to fill."
Nelly: "This ain't Women's Wear Whenever You Got A Minute, Frenchie."
(Blair whines at Dorota for one million years. It is real unattractive.)
Blair: "I don't know who else to call! Dan hates me, the minions developed rudimentary self-esteem after talking to Poppy Lifton, and I'm pretty much an asshole with no other friends. I just want somebody who can read my mind, is that too much to ask?"
Chuck: "Blair. Hello."
Sometimes you don't know whether to barf or applaud. It would be so much better I think to see the world in selfishly myopic black and white, like a shipper or a person with borderline personality disorder*, so I would know how to feel about this. Because on the one hand, that was ultraqueer and not the kind we like. But on the other hand, there's something to be said for leaning into it. I think I can take it, this time.
*(You already know I'm thinking it, so I might as well say it: REDUNDANT.)
UWS
Serena: "If this little shit isn't home by now, I'm just going to move quietly back into PRADA and hope he never figures out I lost his daughter."
Sage: "Serena! Mom, I mean. I was just telling Dad about the great opportunity you got me!"
Serena: "There we go. Much more realistic. Wait, what opportunity?"
Sage: "Walking in Blair Waldorf's fashion show tonight!"
Serena: "Whatever. Maybe I can get you guys focused on each other and you'll leave me out of it."
Steven, ver-effin'-batim: "This is great news! My two girls getting along!"
Serena: "Those lambs are never going to stop screaming if you keep saying shit like that."
GG: "They say don't hate the player, hate the game. But when you invented the rules, losing really stings."
Okay, which actually is the other half of the problem. She didn't invent the rules. She was a hot mess, but it came as a surprise to her as much as anybody else. The time she took away the headbands from the minions was the first and last time she ever expended any effort on this stuff. I mean, Dark Phoenix was a nice dream, but... Serena's pressures, before Paris, were all external: Dan, boys, Dads, horses, boats. Carter Baizen. The pressure of being looked at and the shapes it bends you into, the skills we learn from that.
But now she's constantly forcing herself into this impossible shit by being unnaturally proactive, which just creates pointless dramz and makes her a nuisance for everybody else. When you think about how both of them are acting out-of-character (or really, I don't believe in that concept because what airs is canon, and Paris was like more than half of the episodes of this entire show ago, so this is even more of the status quo than S1 would be, crappily enough) it almost bookends itself. But not quite.
WALDORF
Dorota: "I knew nobody keep you in bed except Mr. Chuck, that's why I call him."
Can we just fast-forward this crap? Not every week, there's still eight weeks and I'm sure it'll have its great moments, but I can't with this right now. This is the actual conversation. It makes me feel like we are all assholes on this planet we call Earth. I hate absolutely everything about it. Every word and letter, every jot and tittle, every paradiddle and syllabub:
Chuck: "I would love to spend the day with you under the duvet, but you're exhausted. And I know from my brief stint as a candy stripper that an IV can be quite a hindrance. So how may I serve?"
Blair: "I can't pull you away from taking down Bart."
Chuck: "Well, my hands may be momentarily tied when it comes to my mission against my father. Task me, Blair."
Blair: "I can't. Tasks are for minions or Dan Humphrey."
Chuck: "On second thought, I know exactly what you need done. And I know exactly how you like it. No instructions necessary."
(He pulls out of cunnilingus as suddenly as he dove into it, bending it like Beckham back to the vertical, soaring up and away like a nosedive recovery, and disappears into the aether. Presumably to rape more people in a hospital, since apparently that's a hobby of his we didn't know about.)
Blair, literally fanning herself: "Dorota. I'm feverish!"
SPECTATOR
Oh, speaking of dialogue I'm still upset by a week later:
Nate: "Elton John won $150,000 from The Sunday Mirror and all they wrote was, he was on some sort of diet where he chewed his food but didn't swallow."
Dan: "Well, don't worry. I'm pretty sure my father swallows."
...What? What does that mean? What do you mean when you say that? Are you calling him fat? Is that a waffle joke? Because you're a nasty little guy, Dan Humphrey, and we're talking about your father's sex life, and you're standing there with Nate Archibald, Successful Prosti-tadpole, and so all that together sounds like, well, it sounds like your father sucks dicks. And I'm putting that as delicately as possible.
Now, far be it from me... No, you know what? Not gonna bother. I'm not going to give you that much, show. Just gonna roll with it.
Nate: "This is why I said you should call them."
Dan: "And it's why I didn't! My father is not naturally litigious. And if we actually had a civil trial, like, he would have to talk about fucking that girl on my sofa, with my Cabbage Patch doll staring at them. Looking like her. Honestly, he just wants to give me one of his bullshit Rufus Humphrey Speeches and go back to eating jam. And sucking cock."
WALDORF
Blair: "Wow, that scene where Dan talked about his father blowing dudes seemed really long, but I'm amazed that you managed to create a whole fashion show during it!"
Chuck: "I have the power of Satan and infinite money, baby. But Uncle Jack just called me about the..."
Blair: "Nobody cares, babe. Just go take care of it so we can be Powerful Women... Oh great, and now this bitch."
Serena: "Put this kid in your fashion show."
Blair: "No."
Serena: "Yes."
Blair: "Okay."
Serena: "Sage, do not fuck this up."
Sage: "Serena, I will most certainly be fucking this up. You halfwit."
WALDORF SHOW
Blair deals with the paps. They are the saddest paps for having to cover a fake pretend fashion show, but she gives good face and so they linger.
Steven: "Serena, when I said extracurriculars I thought you knew I meant, like Mathletes. Or dressage. Maybe like a mock government of some..."
Serena: "Uh, modeling is just as good as those things. Think about who you're talking to. Think real hard."
Steven: "Okay, but I have to make a quick gay joke about Anderson Cooper."
Serena: "That's my old man. Always timely with the zingers."
Blair: "Serena, you'll be sitting here in the front row, and Steven will be sitting back there to Kristen Cavalleri."
Serena: "This is very disrespectful!"
Blair: "You just showed up five minutes ago."
Serena: "Yeah, who was going to be your model if I didn't walk in here?"
Blair: "Shit, I don't know. I just kind of assumed you'd come through for me, even against your will."
Serena: "No. This -- this -- is my line in the sand. I am going to bitch."
Blair: "No you're not. Sit there to Nelly Yuki and act like this is a real fashion show."
Serena: "Who?"
Nelly Yuki: "I will cut you."
Whoa, Nelly Yuki is Gossip Girl. It just hit me, like a bolt from the blue. I will probably have another theory week, but right now the auguries are just saying Flo Rida, Flo Rida, Flo Rida. Wait, I guess that could also be about Lola or Ivy? Damned obfuscating auguries.
HUMPHREYS
Dan: "Sorry I didn't let you read it first, that would have been classy if I did that. Let you read my exposé of your perversions, before I published it."
Rufus: "For my part, I apologize that you didn't find out about Ivy from me."
Dan: "Kind of I did. Please don't ask. But Dad, listen. She's a con artist. Literal. She got Serena to buy her two houses, she nearly got us all killed by a beautiful rogue chef de cuisine, she went all Heathcliff on CeCe Rhodes without anybody knowing, she got Aunt Carol access to Lola's trust fund and stole checkbooks, she turned your ass out in the middle of a funeral..."
Rufus: "I kind of blame Lily for all of that."
Dan: "Okay, go back another season. That would be the year she made me fingerbang her on Queller's desk while calling her Serena, then threatened to jump out a window after throw a bottle of vodka at a freshman's head. And that, Rufus, she did not need to do. That was her, all her. Putting her stank on it."
Rufus: "Aren't we all actors, though, really? I mean, you're leaving out the time she and Lola pretended to be hookers to bring down a hired killer so that Lily's dead husband could stop traveling with a sex carnival and come home to take that old hag off my hands."
Rufus: "Where is this hypocrisy coming from? Where the fuck do you get off being so judgmental?"
(For real. He actually wants to know the answers to these questions.)
Dan: "You, all right? I learned it by watching you!"
They go on and on, but they're both such morally bankrupt assholes that it's like watching a parakeet attack a mirror. Dan runs off to find somebody else to fuck over, and Rufus immediately calls Ivy to yell at her, because she is the closest woman in earshot.
BACKSTAGE
Nate and Sage hit on each other and it's dumb. Blair shows up and drags Sage away to put her in "something Serena might like even better," which sounds schemy, but I never saw the trick behind it. Left alone, Nate grabs one of his advertisers and thanks her for taking a risk on his imaginary company.
Erica: "Dan Humphrey's inaugural serial, good get! I'm sure his piece week will do even better. For Vanity Fair, where he is publishing it."
Nate: "What? But I don't own that. What?"
See? Dan Humphrey is fucking exhausting.
ALSO SO IS SAGE
Who gets to the end of the runway before shucking her dress and running around in burlesque-y underwear, which causes everybody to flip out into a fairly devastating "Emperor's New Clothes" indictment of the circle jerk of fashion.
People: "...And different! She pulls it off... I like it..."
Serena: "Fuck you decadent creeps! Have you lost your damn minds? This isn't fashion-forward, or provocative, or couture, it's... It's exploitation, and it's embarrassing!"
People: "Maybe she has a point. We are pretty gross people. Maybe Blair's just as gross as we are, and this whole thing is a disaster and not genius like we told each other for no reason. You're always 50/50 with fashion."
Even Alexa Chung (I LOVE YOU GIRL) is like, "This is weird. I have to go back to my eleven other jobs and not be in this pretend fake fashion show." Blair is sad to see her go. I'm more enraged that we only got one line out of her. I was picturing, like, a fistfight with Poppy Lifton or a fashion shoot where she gives Sage some wise styling advice or something. Some sage advice if you will.
DUMBO
Ivy: "I was just trying to protect you, I thought the Spectator would retract it. Or I mean, like, un-blog it. Or whatever they do."
Rufus: "It's cool that you wanted to stand up for me, but getting between me and my son is a bad idea."
Ivy: "I wasn't thinking about the consequences! I am just impulsive, because of how I am a child and you should not be fucking me. See how the many things are related?"
Rufus: "There are other ways to fight back. Online petitions, protest songs on my guitar..."
Ivy: "How's that worked out so far, Sunshine? The only way to deal with the world of the Upper East Side is to fight fire with fire. Dan may have been an innocent Brooklyn boy once, but while you weren't looking, he became as ruthless as any Park Avenue prince. And now we have to set him on fire."
Rufus: "Not listening. I'm just happy the truth came out without me having to sack up or be a man about it in any way."
Ivy: "Yes, I'm very flattered by that as well."
SPECTATOR
Nate: "Why does Erica think Vanity Fair is publishing the rest of your serial?"
Dan: "Oh, my bad. It's because they are."
Nate: "What? Like what are you talking about? We had a deal."
Dan: "Yeah, but not really. I mean, it's not like I respect you or think of your business as a real thing."
Nate: "What is wrong with you, dude?"
Um, his crunchy emo hair that looks like one of those Walmart ladies where their hair always looks wet? The fact that he is wearing a black-and-white striped boatneck tee, which when combined with the hair makes it the most punchable mime on this side of the Atlantic? Everything about his personality?
Dan: "You hesitated. Very not bigtime of you. First you wanted me to warn Rufus, like I'm some kind of 'normal person' with a 'basic sense of etiquette,' and then the second there's a lawsuit about your newspaper, you flipped out..."
Nate: "Yeah, both of those things are normal. They are the correct response."
Dan: "What do you want me to say? Vanity Fair is the bigtime, and the bigtime is what I am. Yolo."
Nate: "Yeah, um. You should probably find another place to live."
Dan: "Typical Upper East Sider. I figured you'd say that. Typical. "
Nate: "...Amazing."
RANDOM BOXING (STUDIO? AREA? SHOPPE?)
Chuck offers to buy a boxing man his own boxing gymnasium, if he just violates his nondisclosure agreement about bodyguarding -- I presume -- Bart, that one time in Dubai. Maybe more shit happens in this scene, but I sure do doubt it. I can't even think of a thing awesome enough to have happened in Dubai to justify this much fucking around about it. Russell Thorpe blew up multiple buildings and eventually tied Blair Waldorf to the roof of an exploding building, like something that would happen to Sheridan Lopez-Fitzgerald -- how you gonna compete with that?
Oh, and Chuck refers to himself as the man's "compadre." That's kinda notable.
OUTSIDE WALDORF SHOW
Blair: "Serena, that was so bitchy! You sabotaged my pretend fashion show!"
Serena: "You're so bitchy. You sabotaged my creepy relationship!"
Sage: "You are both bitches. It was I! I sabotaged your things with panties! Just to be awful!"
Steven: "You get in this car right now. You are ineffectually grounded again!"
Gossip Girl: "Isn't Sage so fascinating?"
UWS
Serena: "I feel like I am somewhat to blame."
Sage: "She is! She filled me full of coke, threw me on the runway, told me to act like a whore. Isn't this kind of thing why you forced me to spend the day with her?"
Steven: "Stow it, Sage. I don't want you to feel like you're not valued in this household or the most important thing in my life, but you clearly did this whole thing yourself to get rid of Serena. It's not even that clever of a scheme. Now apologize."
Sage: "Serena, I'm sorry... That you are retarded."
Serena: "That's okay, I'm used to it."
Steven: "Great! Now who wants waffles*?"
*(He said "tea," but I think we both know what he meant. This show really is one six-year-long incest joke.)
Also, Sage the High Schooler looks older and skinnier than everybody else put together. She is like the painting Bianca Lawson keeps in her attic.
MEANWHILE
Nelly Yuki is a writer, just like Dan! And I mean that!
"Can Blair Waldorf step into her mother's shoes, or is her Achilles' Heel of the stripper variety?"
...Wait, no. It's crappy like Dan writing, but... crazy like Gossip Girl writing. That is exactly the kind of nonsensical fucking thing GG would say.
NELLY YUKI IS CLEARLY GOSSIP GIRL & WILL REMOVE HER GLASSES IN THE FINALE TO REVEAL A BEAUTIFUL CRIMINAL MASTERMIND & IT WILL BE KIND OF RACIST
Blair: "Oh, my problems! Oh, my health problems and mental ones! And fashion! Damn that Serena for pointing out how stupid fashion people are, making me look like a pedophile. No better than Rufus, am I."
Chuck: "How about some sex murder voice talking?"
Blair: "Yes, and also some champagne."
GG: "Tolstoy wrote that all famil..."
Nope. How insulting. After six years I can't believe you haven't said that shit before now, you fucking hack. Chuck and Blair's stupid nonexistent baby thinks that's weak sauce.
MONTAGE
Steven: "Way to handle my awful daughter, lady. I love how it's all we ever talk about, ever."
Serena: "Whatever keeps me in diaphanous scarves and clothing that covers less than half of my body, mister. I've put up with way worse than this."
GG: "See, because of Tolstoy or something. Or is her Gordian Knot of the Berry Farm variety?"
Sage: "Hey, buddy. Ready for me to rub these bones all over your skin?"
Nate: "I got this priest haircut to make it creepier for when we do it."
GG: "Now I'm wildly swinging over into a metaphor about doggies out of nowhere. Or is the style Nate's into more of the Gangnam variety?"
Bartender: "So like are you gay, or...?"
Dan: "That's just my hair and outfit talking. And the fact that I'm kinda gay. Fill 'er up."
Nelly Yuki out of nowhere: "So, you're turning evil."
Dan: "Get outta here turning. Have you ever seen me in a relationship?"
Nelly Yuki: "I would like to see you in a relationship on the floor with my pants. Or wait... No, I meant... Do you want to come live with me? In a dungeon?"
Dan: "-- Hey look, actual women."
Actual Women approach. Nelly Yuki is so scary she's like the person that watches Georgina watch Dan sleep. She's the monster at the end of the book. The little person in the red hood that runs all over Rome and turns out to be a big surprise.
Actual Women: "My dad got me a walk-on line on this show nobody gives a shit about anymore. I acted like I was acting excited, but I made sure he knew I was only pretending. That'll show him. I said That'll show you, Dad!"
GG: "Or are Lonelyboy's complaints about to finally be less of the Portnoy variety?"
Chuck, just because: "Dave the bodyguard drove Bart to meet someone that weekend named [get this] Lady Alexander. Dave wasn't in the meeting, so that's all he could tell me. I don't know who she is, what she does, or even where to start looking for her."
("...But I'm pretty sure she's my mother." Lol.)
Blair: "Well, I'm happy to help. We are the same Powerful Woman now that I have lost Serena. Let's toast that by boning."
Chuck: "You've had too much champagne to make a change in our plan. I would never, ever, EVER take advantage of a woman who has had too much champagne. EVER. These girls rape so easy these days."
GG: "Or are Chuck's rapes of the more legitimate variety these days? A little birdie told us a woman's body has ways of shutting that down. XOXO."
WEEK
Hurricane Sandy: "I'm hopelessly devoted to getting this show preempted. Better shape up and push it to week. Disappointed? Tell me about it, stud."
BUT THEN
Lady Alexander proves to be both shocking and obvious, I'm sure. Sage ages another hundred years and tosses some more bullshit Serena's way. Steven is befuddled by some things. Nate forgets he's mad at Dan for actually fucking him over this time, and whatever. Blair and Chuck dry hump through a duvet. Nelly Yuki starts carving strange shapes into Dan's flesh up in Bushwick and nobody even notices he's gone, and that's the end of Dan. Meanwhile, Ivy's horrific plan for Rufus and Lily and Bart and each of their cumulative eighty children is finally revealed.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Gossip Girl, The Good Wife and Homeland 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, his novel The Urges, and a novelette, "The Commonplace Book," appeared this month on Tor.com.