Serena's offer to help Dan find a permanent place of residence (has he really lived somewhere new in every single episode this year?) turns into a tour of tight, enclosed spaces and aphrodisiac claustrophobia as the paparazzi, still wild about that sex tape, chases them from location to location. Finally ending up back in that faulty PRADA elevator after a "heated" (for them) argument, Ol' Cheekbones and the Hoss finally end up back in bed together where they belong. Weirdly, I teared up a little. Even more weirdly, Dan's hair was totally acceptable this week.
Eleanor's arrival, and the VF appearance of the "Blair" chapter, prompts a bizarre ultimatum: Blair must give up her "deviant" side in order to retain control of Waldorf Designs, or risk the nothing that is at risk in this storyline each week. Some failed attempts at playing nice with Nelly "I Am Obviously Gossip Girl" Yuki and one bitch-out by Lonelyboy later, Blair realizes that she cannot wish away her inner grossness any more than one could expect Chuck to stop raping everybody. But will this get her down? No! In a last-minute and extremely bizarre twist, Blair sells her mother on a weird child-soldier/S&M diffusion line twist targeting the Constance Billard youth of today. (Which, presumably, means more Sage to come.)
Everybody else -- DUMBO, PRADA and the Empire Boys -- ends up in a an art-world brouhaha when Nate (dubiously) figures out that Bart's hidden his Sudanese documentation in that Richard Phillips Rainbow Lady painting "Spectrum" that's always figured so strongly in the Lily Bass visual. Nate could, of course, just go break into PRADA and take it, like people are constantly doing on this show...
...Except that Rufus and Lily have managed to get themselves into an art-auction standoff, which Ivy quickly elevates to open warfare with her infinite funds. In order to look like the best philanthropist of all, Lily donates "Spectrum" for auction before Bart can warn her about his evil documents. A quick paddle-fight later, Rufus has bid $1.1M of Ivy's Rhodes Woman money on the thing and Ivy's managed to get Chuck to pay twice that to get it back... Missing, as it turns out, the Sudanese documents. (Good twist!)
Unsure why she'd turn on Chuck at this point, since they have the exact same goal, but the more cagily Ivy speaks to that mysterious person the more I'm starting to wonder if it's really* Lola at all... And if not, could Ivy have more than Lily in her destructive sights? I'm starting to hope so, because the tragic-ass sight of Rufus and Ivy somehow thinking their gross new-money love affair with meth gives them the upper hand over Lily made me want to barf for about a year.
*(I have no guesses. Carter Baizen, but only because that's always what I will guess. Juliet, because I love Juliet. Other people Lily put in prison and forgot? Chef Guy?)
All in all, probably the most stylistically and musically vibrant episode of the season so far, with breezy performances from Eleanor and Blair and a particularly vulnerable showing by Serena. While the script leaves a lot of the heavy lifting -- why, for example, would any of them ever fucking talk to Dan again in the first place? -- to the talent, they make the best of it, and it's always nice to see even Blair and Serena having fun with their lines. And of course, like I said, I was fairly moved by the Dan/Serena reunion, which is possibly the weirdest reaction I've ever had to this show. So they're doing something right.
Week: With Blair installed as the power behind Sage's schoolyard throne and presumably doing well in business, it's only natural that unforeseen forces would cause Chuck to break up with her forever, for the eighty millionth time. Looks like Bart finally pulls Nate's profit-defrauding strings to pit him against his bestie, while Ivy gets nastier and Serena and Dan decide to go public. But with the entire cast scattered more to the winds than ever, who's really going to be left to tell?
PREVIOUSLY
Steven dumped Serena for making a sex tape with ill intent, so she immediately glommed onto Dan Humphrey, the better to prove she is not merely a drowning socialite looking for her lifeboat. Because nobody would ever suggest -- besides every girl I can think of on this show -- that Dan is anything like a strategy. Bart's idiotic plan for self-preservation -- after faking his death, traveling incognito with a literal whore circus, and whipping fake mother after fake mother directly at Chuck's head -- has come down to hiding the most official-looking official paperwork ever in the dumbest possible place. Eleanor may have figured out that giving her entire brand to a schizoid demented girl-child could have deleterious consequences, and Rufus has traded his upscale blonde sugarmama for a Floridian.
ATELIER
Fun, breezy splitscreens give us the latest in Blair's ongoing fashionista breakdown, as she attacks her various models and seamsters -- including Funny Blonde Minion -- on every level while expositing the necessaries to ever-fucking-present Dorota.
Dorota: "Remember when your slutty dress got even more slutty with Serena's sex tape playing over its debut? Eleanor's about five minutes out to destroy you on that one."
Minion: "And hey, by the way, VF just got around to publishing the Blair chapter of Dan's horrible deal. Which he sent them entirely to prove that he is exactly as awful as we thought."
Blair: "How dare he write that I'm 'conniving, manipulative, and stuck in high school?' What is he, a writer for this show?"
Dorota: "Hell have no fury like a Lonelyboy scorned."
Blair: "Oh, we got a real Gossip Girl over here you guys. Well, fuck it. Orders for the Sage Slut Dress are through the roof! Surely those dollar signs will dazzle my mother out of remembering that I'm shitting all over her legacy."
Eleanor: "-- Don't be so sure. I'll have you in the Ostroff Memorial Pedowitz Center so fast..."
There's some great, old-school business here, with Eleanor treating Dorota like the extra baggage she is -- fairly slinging purses and wraps at her useless sidekick head -- and hissing everybody into a fright.
"OFFICE. NOW."
Blair stands for a moment behind the desk, winking and wiggling -- she's wonderfully fun in these scenes, all elbows and eyelashes -- until Eleanor shoves her out and takes her rightful place. Blair, looking about a foot shorter than ever, takes her place across and begins to babble.
Blair: "I know, but my cotillion dress has already been ordered by the three B's -- Barneys, Bergdorf's, and the lesser but still relevant Bloomingdale's -- so I've achieved your goal..."
Eleanor: "-- At the cost of my company's reputation. A few sales do not make up for a runway strip show, and sex tapes, and bandage dresses without the bandages..."
Shall we shift our marketing strategy? Who knows what Blair's even thinking at this point -- that shift only goes downmarket, right? -- but Eleanor has a sort of a spiritual or psychological take on all this.
Eleanor: "The issue goes deeper than that, Blair. It's you."
Jacob: "I know, right?"
Eleanor: "You, and your... Split personality."
Jacob: "Preach it, sister!"
Eleanor: "I don't mean your ADD, marital or otherwise. I refer instead to the fact that you are, openly and unrepentantly, a pretty gross person."
Jacob: "Yea... Wait, what? No, that is not the problem. Oh man. That is the opposite of the problem. The problem isn't that Blair's a whore, it's that the show keeps calling her a whore. Like you are doing right now."
"For as long as I can remember, you have struggled between your two natures. I know that you are a beautiful, intelligent, ambitious young businesswoman. But if you want to continue to run my multimillion-dollar corporation, the deviant half has to go."
To be fair, that's not entirely invalid. But it's weird, because most of the last season and a half have been about forcing either Blair or Serena in turn basically to apologize for being alive, which agenda is what made me start hating Daniel Humphrey waaaay back in season one. When you have a show about what it takes to survive, I don't get how every single storyline circles back around to bitching about them being exactly what you made.
Not to mention that every time Blair falls into this "I promise not to scheme for one day" plot, which is like every other episode, they have to bend over backwards to even make that plot work, because she's such a fucking useless victim all the time that it basically requires she develop some weird revenge obsession on the fly, which then only counts for that episode and doesn't come up again. Wouldn't it be easier to treat the people on your show as though they were people? The only real dark deviant on this show was ever Georgina, and they've managed to turn her ass into, essentially, Marmaduke.
Anyway, Blair promises not scheme for one day, basically, in order to prove to her mother that whatever whatever. Countdown to Nelly Yuki in five, four, three...
DUMBO
Ivy: "Dude, I am so sorry that I've been sponging off you this entire time even though I have all of CeCe's money, which I lied about because I clearly have a plan that involves your death."
Rufus: "Go check the RSVP list and tell me all the fascinating wonderful A-listers that can't wait to visit Lily Bass's illegitimate husband's sad-ass art gallery. I am sure they are legion."
Ivy: "Aw, man. Not even Bex is coming. Nobody's coming. Everybody hates us."
Rufus: "How weird! I wonder what happened?"
Ivy: "Maybe it's because we are the worst."
EMPIRE
Nate: "Why are you watching Empire CCTV? Is Olivia Munn staying here? She's kind of the girl version of me."
Chuck: "Not least because Jacob adores you both beyond sense or reason. No, actually this is the PRADA security cam and I'm hoping to catch another clue as hot as that killer scoop of 'some envelope' that Ivy gave me last week."
Nate: "Does this camera footage do magical fake CSI things?"
Chuck: "Enhance... Enhance... Yes. There he is, carrying a Sudanese envelope. Perhaps the very envelope Ivy was talking about."
Nate: "Man, remember that time somebody took a picture of him walking toward a building? I really thought we had him that time. But this whole 'an envelope exists' thing is much more promising."
Chuck: "On a related note, how would you like to do a bunch of coke and get blowjobs with Bruce Caplan, the Bass family financial advisor?"
Nate: "As long as I can schedule it on this Windows TM phone with Windows 8 operating system TM and live tiles TM that basically makes it like a personal assistant in the form of a phone TM."
Chuck: "Perhaps you'd better show me how that all works. Hey, remember that time Jenny googled 'cancer' on Bing?"
DUMBO
Ivy: "You know who's a bitch?"
Rufus: "Lily Bass. What was the question?"
Ivy: "She's scheduled a huge benefit tonight at the Conrad for the Art Production Fund."
Rufus: "That bitch! I bet this is to ruin our gallery opening. Since everything is about us, on this show we're barely on or ever welcome on. Speaking of being annoying meth addicts, I see you're still rocking that shorts-and-leg warmers look that demonstrates you don't know how to operate shorts or leg warmers."
In all fairness, it is a very freakin' cute look on a very cute girl, objectively. Reminds me of whenever Marissa Cooper would slouch around in her shortie nightgown and Uggs and I would get so jealous of California weather I couldn't see straight.
Rufus: "She's not just sabotaging me -- or not, depending on whether she gives a shit -- but also my immensely talented artists."
Ivy: "We'd get all those art-world people back if her event were cancelled..."
Rufus: "She'd never cancel a huge benefit for me!"
Ivy: "God, you're retar... I mean, you're right. Yeah, Plan A was totally 'ask politely.' Guess it's time for Plan B."
Rufus: "Plan B must be taking over the APF fundraiser and burning through more money than she does, like we're the total new money Real Housewives trash we are."
Ivy: "Uh, yeah. Plan B is that. Totally not calling in a bomb threat. Or just killing Lily already."
PRADA
Lily: "Good morning, Daniel! I hope you enjoyed not being homeless for like one night."
Dan: "Eric's room is spotless. It even still smells like him. He was a little wonder, wasn't he? Would you like some obsequious coffee?"
Lily: "Wouldn't help. I been drinking since I got up. But thanks."
Serena: "Just having breakfast wearing both a men's suit and my She-Ra costume, no big. How's the benefit going?"
Lily: "I forgot how nice to was to throw a party without that supercilious faggot Rufus Humphrey questioning my every move..."
Serena: "Whoa!"
Lily: "-- No offense, Daniel. It's just that poor people suck."
Dan: "I'm living proof. And besides, you weren't ever really married. But I think of you as my mom, which makes Chuck and Scott and Eric my brothers..."
Lily: "I don't know who any of those people are, now that I've disowned Charles and it's just down to you, shittiest of my sons."
Serena: "Dan, you remembered my simple coffee order? God, we must really be in love after all. Good thing that cardboard collage of pictures of us still hangs in my closet, where I feed it with my blood."
Dan: "Hey, remember when I fucked your best friend in the same suite as you, at Blair's house? I later lived in your room there, for a minute."
Serena: "Speaking of, did you know that the Blair chapter came out today?"
Dan: "Really? I'm such a jerk I don't even remember half the jerk shit I pull."
Serena: "What I love about it is, everybody hates both of us. It's like the only way I'll ever have you to myself, is if you don't have another character to play against me in your neverending game of punishing me for being alive."
Dan: "It's true. I am settling for you. Which is why I suddenly want to find a new apartment, despite being on this show where literally nobody lives in their own house and just sponges off each other's parents with aplomb. Nate hasn't had a mailing address literally since sophomore year, and yet somehow I absolutely need to find a place to live. Today."
Serena: "Well, do you want help looking? I'm very competent. At what? Maybe at this!"
STREET
Dan: "Well, I can't live in Brooklyn. If I did, I couldn't hate on absolutely everyone around me for not living in Brooklyn."
Serena: "I see a LES walk-up in your imagination. Which, come on. We both know you want to live in the West Village, at least until something else is declared the new whatever. So let's start there."
Paparazzi Wolves: "Not if we eat you first!"
Dan and Serena jump on a Vespa, and he pops a literal wheelie getting away from them. It's pretty much the only thing Serena's had on her to-do list since S1. Now she can die.
Paparazzi Wolves: "Make another sex tape!"
Serena: "I can't plan that far ahead!"
Gossip Girl: "Okay, that's pretty fucking cute. I hate these two more than the rest of them put together, but that was cute."
CENTRAL PARK
I don't know anything, but there's a fountain prominent in these scenes that makes me think of the Bethesda fountain from when Serena and Blair made up for the first time on the show. Are there like a million angel fountains in Central Park? Not knowing is a bonus because it makes everything more symbolic or not.
Serena: "Dan that was literally the most amazing thing that has happened in my memory. Which is like fifteen seconds long, but still."
Dan: "Yeah, well. I guess we don't have to look for an apartment today. Between this hassle of the wolves, and your giant tits up against my back for the six blocks we just scooted."
Serena: "Let's go get drunk at a poor people bar. Maybe one we've already been to. My hazy plan involves playing out our original romance in slow motion."
Dan: "My hazy plan involves you paying for everything, giving me a place to live, and somebody to abuse emotionally. And also sex, but to be honest that is a distant fourth. So I guess in a way, we really are playing out our entire romance."
EMPIRE
Nate: "Well, breaking into Bruce's phone was as easy as typing in the numbers he kept tracing absentmindedly along my sinewy thigh. But there's nothing here about the International Bank of Sudan."
Chuck: "Maybe it's a coded message to himself referring to some movie from a million years ago that was even dumber than Cloud Atlas but every bit as racist."
Nate: "...Oh, yep. Here it is. Traffic. Clearly this is a reference to them hiding the Very Important Envelope within a painting. Clearly."
Chuck: "You are very like Serena in that you're so dumb that literally anything could just be intuition. You just never know."
CONRAD
Rufus and Ivy enter the APF event. Rufus looks every bit his usual hot mess, but Ivy has upped her ante to infinity: Crimped hair, fright makeup, the whole nine. She looks like maybe a rock star in a 1984 episode of General Hospital or something. She looks like she's taking five from rolling around on the hood of a sudsy Mazda to get her stepdad horny enough to buy her and her friends some beer. It is the most awful thing she has ever done, and I include trouncing the heart of Chef Cutie that time so hard he became a killer of Vanderbilts and killed Blair's stupid baby.
Benedict Tate, APF PR: "Um, a guy who fell down the plastic surgery hole and an honest-to-God prostitute? Sorry, but we're not serving those today. We have a big bad Bass event."
Rufus: "You clearly don't know Ivy Dickens. She's the cousin and the sister and the impersonator of this one other girl on this show. I can't explain why she decided to dress like this, but I do know we are here to ruin this event."
Benedict Tate: "Sorry, but I don't actually care. You guys couldn't look sketchier if you were played by Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters."
Ivy: "Would a bajillion million gazillion dollars change your mind?"
Benedict Tate: "Yes. Except we still actually have to have the event so you can't just run off with all the paintings."
Rufus: "What if I supplied you with paintings vastly inferior both in technique and value? They're from the Catshit Coffee Emporium & Art Shack, which if you haven't heard of it yet, you're about to. It hearkens back to a time when artists were the real stars of New York."
BOWERY BUMS
Dan: "Wait, you mean people sometimes pretend they don't know how to play pool, and then make boys teach them even though they already know how?"
Serena: "Uh, yeah."
Dan: "But I don't get why!"
Serena: "Then I'm not going to explain it to you. Fucking idiot."
Dan: "Remember when my adoration of you actually outweighed my constant self-righteous judgment of you?"
Serena: "Yeah, that was a real romantic six seconds where that happened."
Dan: "I think we both know it was better once I turned to full-time awfulness."
Serena: "Certainly worked for me. I love being treated like an out-of-control nymphomaniac that shops all the time."
Gossip Girl: "Spotted: Them, paving paradise. Them, putting up a parking lot. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, or maybe until you turn a corner and there it is. From before."
Lol, Gossip Girl pastiche. Anyway, the wolves are back. Serena wants to keep drinking -- until, presumably, he fucks her on the pool table -- but Dan would rather orchestrate some complex scheme where she ducks out the back and he rides off on his stupid Vespa. They decide to sit tight and giggle some more. I think what we learned from the season premiere is that Serena can go missing exactly however long she wants, and nobody will give a shit.
TRAFFIC
Chuck: "No, I totally believe that the word 'traffic' means that Bart hid his paperwork in one of the paintings in PRADA. How does that not make sense?"
Nate: "Thank you! Just this once, the sweet taste of vindication. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go just wander into Lily's house and start fucking with their priceless art."
Chuck: "Wait, do you think anybody will stop you or question you or wonder what you're doing?"
Nate: "On this show? No. And at worst, it'll be Serena. Who has somehow become stupider than me after all this time."
WALDORF
Nelly Yuki: "...So I called and I called and I called and I called, and then I just never heard from him again."
(Whom? Lonelyboy? The Flo Rida guy? Nate Silver? We'll never know. Eventually, actually, when she is revealed as Gossip Girl, perhaps we will.)
Blair: "Is that the end of the story? Because Jesus Christ you're tiresome. Anyway, tell my mom we're best friends and I apologized, and you can go ahead and fuck yourself on the way out."
Nelly Yuki: "But that wouldn't be THE TRUTH, Blair. And my blah-blah integrity demands that I blabbity-blah THE TRUTH."
Blair: "Good God. This hour I've spent with you is every bit as painful as that would be. Just split the difference, you asshole. Just do me a favor, you fucking loser."
Blair produces a picture of Nelly Yuki in her Mrs. Manson Mingott fatsuit from the best episode: Blahdow. But before Nelly Yuki can do anything interesting -- as is par for the course, this season -- Eleanor busts in and Nelly Yuki immediately tattles about Blair's blackmail attempt.
Blair, like a tool: "This is all Nelly Yuki's fault! She was clearly lying because she's always been jealous of me."
Nelly Yuki: "The only clear things are that Daniel Humphrey was right about you, that I am dangerously obsessed with him, and that I am Gossip Girl."
Eleanor: "I also believe everything he writes, like an idiot. So you are no longer the president of Waldorf Designs, which was stupid anyway, effective immediately."
Blair: "Oh no! That changes my life in literally no way whatsoever!"
APF
Lily: "The fuck is this noise? Why are you taking down all of my awesome paintings and putting up these shitty ones?"
Rufus: "Well, we thought we'd piss all over your life for reasons I think are my own."
Lily: "Uh, no. I will get this taken care of. You sit tight, losers."
Benedict: "So here's the thing. These assholes just bought all the paintings."
Lily: "But see, those were a carefully curated group of works I chose specifically for this event. And so how the hell could this shitshow possibly compete with..."
Benedict: "Lady, quit giving me grief. Oh, no? How about a little WASP Kryptonite? You asked for it, you got it. I never imagined you'd object to raising more money for such a worthwhile cause. Rufus and Ivy have broken our fundraising records. Doesn't that make sharing your hosting duties a small price to pay? Or will I have to set the bitchy art world on you?"
Lily: "Gotcha. Little baby wanna play? Oh, Mama can play. Let me just bring in some of my super-extra-amazing art and we'll see who wins this pointless contest."
Benedict: "I literally could not care either way, ya dinks. Just keep throwing money at me like idiots."
ENGRAVER * CHOCOLATIER * NOTARY
Blair spots Dan in some boutique buying chocolate-dipped strawberries, the better to woo his simpleminded love, using Gossip Girl. She waits until he exits, then jumps on him exactly like the complete asshole she has to be for this episode to even make sense.
Blair: "Your article has ruined my life, Humphreak!"
Dan: "I doubt that highly."
Blair: "But suddenly my mother thinks I'm a useless tool with no character consistency and a completely unrealistic throughline! That I'm gross when I don't need to be, and spineless when I should show self-respect! That in the service of overall meaningless plot developments I've been rendered impotent, without agency, a harridan and pathetic by turns! They're saying I make zero sense! And that my relationship with Chuck verges on disgusting!"
Dan: "Yeah but all those things are true."
Blair: "Still, I blame you. I'll summon Vanessa Abrams! I'll do even worse, like that's an actual possibility!"
Dan, verbatim: "Do you hear yourself? You're trying to bully me into retracting an article about you being a bully."
It goes on for a while. It's pretty obnoxious. He's such a hypocrite that in order for him to talk down to her, triggering some deeper understanding for her about the fact that she sucks -- basically the only thing he ever does on this show -- she has to start out so awful and deluded and shitty and dumb that you kind of just want to hit her.
Dan: "...In summation, you are horrible and everyone hates you and you deserve nothing and you should probably go kill yourself."
Blair: "Thanks, Dan. You're always so right. I am worthless. All women are worthless. I gotta call Nelly Yuki and invite her to Lily's art benefit tonight so I can tell everybody how much I suck and have it appear in WWD."
Dan: "Oh, are you going to that?"
Blair: "No, but I'm on this show. Is it really worth explaining, at this point, why the entire cast will be at that thing?"
Dan: "Not this late in the day, no."
PRADA
Chuck: "Keep looking at the back of all the art in the house, Nate. Don't get distracted. Don't lose your train of thought."
Nate, verbatim: "The back of artwork is really boring!"
Serena appears; they stare blondly, both having forgotten what is even going on.
Nate: "Nothing, just writing a story on Lily's art collection for the Spectator."
Serena: "Oh, yeah? Is it fucking somebody?"
Nate: "Hey, why are you reading words?"
Serena: "It's that first short story Dan wrote about the love of his life."
Nate: "Charlie Trout?"
Serena: "No, me! I forgot entirely about Charlie Trout."
Nate: "I have the whole thing, like, memorized. But listen, if you're thinking of turning back into Sabrina I'd like to remind you that you have literally done that seven times and every time you end up even closer to death."
Serena: "You're insightful, but I got a powerful lot of holes in me."
Nate: "Also, you were about to be engaged less than twenty-four hours ago. You had butterflies in your tummy saying sure whatever. Are you telling me the turnover is really that fast?"
Serena: "Nate I literally can't remember why I walked in here just now. You think I'm really gonna be pining after Barry Watson at this point? That could have been ten years ago, for all the effect it has on me."
Nate: "Okay, how about Dan Humphrey is a dick?"
Serena: "Well, that's true. He is a selfish egomaniac who sold us all out and continues to sell us all out for money and attention and face. He is certainly pathetic. I'll give you that. But..."
Dan: "-- Fine. Here are some stupid strawberries I bought. And fuck all of you."
Serena: "Dan, wait! I said but! There was a but!"
Nate: "Jesus, those two. Anyway, I guess this art search is a bust."
Chuck: "Maybe they're putting the art in question up for auction? Maybe they took the horses as money for oil and now they're going to turn the horses into art and use that art to buy cigars, or something."
Nate: "The rainbow woman is gone. The rainbow woman is gone!"
And so it is.
APF
Lily: "Oh, my Richard Phillips rainbow woman has arrived, fresh from my house."
Rufus: "That's pretty intense just to strike back at our needless, petty bullshit."
Lily: "It's true, I do love the rainbow woman. But not as much as I hate everybody."
(Famous Art People do Famous Art Stuff, for a while. It's nice.)
Lily: "Rufus, I'd like you to meet Spencer Sweeney, Patrick McMullan, and Fab Five Freddy."
Rufus: "Sure, yeah. Nice to meet you guys."
The art auction begins, complete with Ivy Dickens -- looking like raw, greasy scrote, I should remind you -- whispering bitchy shit to Lily about her age, because that's the kind of show we're suddenly watching.
Lily: "Listen, you vile little interloper, you and Rufus may have rubbed your last two nickels together to replace my art, but the only people that you're making fools of are yourselves."
100% correct. They are so fucking gross. It's like when Vanessa and Pilot Inspektor decided to teach the UES a thing or two, but even worse because they are so yucky together and individually, whereas Vanessa and Scott were just pathetic individuals. Ten points to House Slytherin, sixty points from House Huffledork.
Lily: "You can pretend to be Lola, you can pretend to be Serena, but you will never be me."
Ivy: "I don't want to be you. I want to be better. Rufus already thinks I am."
Uh, yeah. That's the number one sign you're on the wrong side of history, freak. Points, again, to Slytherin. Ivy makes out with Rufus, and they both keep their eyes on Lily the entire time, and it is to vomit a million and one vomits.
BLAIR
Blair: "Hi Mom, hi Nelly Yuki. I just wanted to tell you guys real quick that I suck and I am resigning from that job you already fired me for. Making it three times as pointless for me to do this, since it also involved the three of us leaving my house and coming here, so that I could say this thing that doesn't need saying."
Eleanor: "When I fired you, I only mostly meant it. I was just trying to scare you, instead of parenting or making rational business decisions."
Blair: "You will always be why I'm fucked up, mother dear. But in the meantime, I quit. That's right, I quit the job you already fired me from."
Nelly Yuki: "Oh my God, we heard you."
Eleanor: "Why won't this conversation end?"
Blair: "I just have one more thing to say. That job you already fired me from? I quit. That's right, I quit that job I don't have. I'm done. It's over."
Eleanor: "Got it. Is this your having-a-stroke side you're showing us now?"
Blair: "Look. No matter how hard I work, I will never be you, and I think it was just my dark side trying to hide that. So effective immediately, I resign from Waldorf Designs."
Eleanor: "Jesus Christ."
LIMO
Nate: "Talk to me as you attempt to reach the Conrad in your car, or someone from the APF on the phone."
Chuck: "Okay, yeah. I'd like to discuss it with you while it is happening."
Nate: "Have you yet reached the Conrad in your car?"
Chuck: "No, not as yet."
Nate: "Have you reached anyone from the APF by phone?"
Chuck: "I am on the phone with you, actually."
APF
Art Bullshit: "...I like that your artists reflect the same socially relevant projects..."
Art Bullshit: "...I like that you can see the street art influence..."
Art Bullshit: "...Not talking about the '80s but the '40s..."
Art Bullshit: "...Dubuffet, Pollack, Ray Johnson..."
Crowning Art Bullshit: "Yeah! When artists were the stars of New York, instead of celebutantes!"
Rufus is in catshit coffee heaven. Just like when artists were the stars. Although I have to admit, I got a nasty little giggle about the "I like" stuff because art people do really do that at least once in every sentence that comes out of their mouth, "I like" in this case meaning, "Note please that I have noticed."
Lily: "Can you please stop your gross child bride from bidding on art she can't afford? Auctions kind of depend on that. You know, not lying."
Rufus: "Heh, she already bought all the paintings and now she is going to buy 'Spectrum' and all because we are childish and petty."
Lily: "With what money, exactly?"
Rufus: "Blahdow! With CeCe's money!"
Lily: "Look out below, because I am about to descend to your level."
Ivy and Lily enter a two-person bidding war that quickly crests to $750k before we cut away from those heady sums. As entertaining as it could possibly be to watch a bunch of assholes pretend to bid at a fake auction for fake art, that's how entertaining this part is. Which is to say it's rather exciting, and the background players are being super awesome, and -- shocking no one -- Lily's irritated auction bidding face is glorious. But you still begin wondering what's up with, like, anybody else.
PRADA
...Or have I spoken too soon?
Serena: "I'm sorry it sounded so terrible -- and so absolutely true -- but it was out of context?"
Dan: "In what context can selfish egomaniac be positive?"
Serena: "Tell the truth and shame the devil, you little pantywaist. But whatever. Today was fun, and that was weird because you're such a douchebag. Let's review. I tell you I love you, you dump me for my best friend..."
Dan: "The way I see it, as the center of the goddamn universe, is that everybody you date is just another rejection of me. The protagonist."
Serena: "Meanwhile, you said you never wanted to see me again and ran off to Tuscany with Georgina. And then I died. And nobody even cared."
Dan: "To be fair, you had just orchestrated a sex tape to ruin my relationship."
Serena: "Your fake pretend one, yeah. Just like you sent Gossip Girl that tape that ruined Blair's wedding and pinned it on me."
Dan: "Wow, I totally forgot about that actually. But you're still a bitch so I win."
She chases him into the elevator, raining down real talk on him, but he gives as good as he gets. Serena was not making a shitload of sense by the end of last season, so he's got a fair amount to work with. Anyway, they realize that they are the worst and that they have no reason to do anything but hate each other, so of course the elevator stops working and they are stuck.
Dan: "Wow, this is some contrived shit."
Serena: "Some contrived shit that already happened to us on this show."
APF
The bidding proceeds apace, as Charles comes running up the stairs in a beautiful sequence. Lily gets to call Ivy "gypsy trash," which made me laugh so hard I had to hit pause, but otherwise whatever. Chuck enters the bidding, so then all three of them make mean faces at each other and bid and then somehow Rufus ends up with a paddle and puts in the winning -- because the others are somehow distracted all of a sudden -- bid of $1.1M of somebody else's money... Just as Bart Bass is texting his wife to not sell that shit under any circumstances.
LATER
Lily: "Listen, sorry I called you gypsy trash and whatever, but..."
Ivy: "Don't even try it, bitch."
Lily: "Well, it seems like you mostly wanted to be seen publicly 'besting' me, which you've now done. So can I buy the painting back from you?"
Ivy: "No. And not for any reason."
Lily: "You gonna hang that in your little loft? Really?"
Ivy: "I will keep it under the bed or store it in Queens or something, just to be a little asshole about it."
Lily: "I knew you couldn't do better than me, but Jesus. You couldn't even try? I mean, at least I pretended you weren't my whore."
Rufus: "Your mistake lies in thinking I have any pride for you to attack, Lily. Good day."
ELEVATOR
Dan and Serena discuss the other episode where they were stuck in this elevator, like we're supposed to meaningfully connect events from this TV show to the original Gossip Girl TV show where these actors, confusingly, all played characters with the same names. They say bitchy, random nonsense for awhile, and then suddenly fall in love with each other just as the elevator starts working. Sound arbitrary? I am literally recapping what happened. Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, nice. Although to be fair, I also teared up.
It's like when a movie you haven't seen since you were a kid comes on, like, Neverending Story okay, and you can barely remember who the characters are or what the main deal is, but the second Artax starts goin' down in that swamp, your ass is right back there.
MET STEPS
Blair: "Hey, Nelly Yuki. How'd you know I'd be on the Met steps?"
Nelly Yuki: "Shot in the dark, considering you have been here exactly once since graduation."
Blair: "Say some random shit that will inspire me in an exceedingly unlikely way."
Nelly Yuki: "You can make fun of how unpopular I used to be, but the person no one cares about anymore is you."
Blair: "You know when I was popular? When headbands. Excuse me, I have to go take back that job I don't have, for about the third time."
Nelly Yuki: "...What just happened?"
This time I really think one or more of them has a stroke. Off a barely-there joke about Brooklyn Without Limits-style sustainable shopping, this is the end of the scene.
Nelly Yuki: "Where are you going? You won't look good in hemp!"
Blair: "But you will, while you eat crow!"
I have been looking at that exchange all week, trying to figure out what the fuck they are talking about, and I just can't get there. Is Blair Waldorf Gossip Girl? Because that was some GG-caliber nonsense. The individual phrases parse, the idiom exists, and yet put them together and what do you get? Like, nothing. That means literally less than nothing.
APF
Rufus: "Thanks for putting your painting in this fake auction, Todd Diciurcio."
Todd Diciurcio: "It is very glamorous to be on this television show in 2012."
Chuck Bass: "Whatever."
Ivy: "I thought we were on the same team!"
Chuck Bass: "Yeah, um, no. We're on opposite teams. You want to take down Lily, and I want to take down Bart. And sad to say, this lovely painting is for my storyline."
Ivy: "No! My storyline is being a bitch for no reason and doing petty shit that makes Rufus look even worse than usual!"
Chuck: "Well, my storyline is about an envelope attached to that painting. For now."
Ivy: "Then give me $2.2M for it."
Chuck: "Fine, whatever. You're such a fucking urchin all the time."
Gossip Girl: "Spotted: Ivy moonlighting as a gallerina. Better hope this masterpiece isn't a forgery!"
...I give. Remember that one time she glitched out toward the end of the episode and suddenly wouldn't shut up about the Beatles? That was so amazing. Sometimes I think that Gossip Girl is actually just the internet gaining sentience, and that's why she talks like this. Like Horse_ebooks or Daniel Manitou, just a robot trying desperately to talk about people the way actual people do. Hoping nobody notices. Failing the Turing Test at every opportunity.
PRADA
Serena: "I'm so glad you meaned me into eating strawberries with you."
Dan: "Sometimes I forget why I'm even like this."
Serena: "The good thing about having zero friends or prospects or marketable skills is that it regresses me all the way to when we met. Back the last time I vanished, back when people actually gave a shit that I constantly do that."
Dan: "Well, even then I kind of was the only person who cared. In my smothering, vicious way."
Serena: "...Listen, you want to stay here tonight?"
Dan: "I have my pride, madam. My pride, and this check from Vanity Fair I keep waving around."
Serena: "No, I was saying do you want to stay here tonight. This is not like a complicated code I'm talking in."
Dan: "I said I have my pride."
Serena: Literally pops out one boob.
Dan: "This is my idea, but I would like to stay here tonight."
Serena: "Oh brother."
WALDORF
Blair: "Mother dear, I should not have quit."
Eleanor: "Daughter dear, you didn't. You were fired. I can't do this again, it's late."
Blair: "My point is that while I may be a deviant managerially, one thing I've always had is an untrained, child's approach to fashion. A business that we all know requires no education or talent."
Eleanor: "We bought this bullshit when it was Jenny, I guess I can buy it now. Go on."
Blair: "People didn't dress like me in high school because I got straight-A's..."
Eleanor: "-- Oh what, now we're saying everybody dressed like you in high school?"
Blair: "...They dressed like me because they were fascinated by my ferocity."
(Valid.)
Eleanor: "You did instill fear in the hearts of many."
"I need to stop trying to be you, and use my power to form the fashionistas of the future... With a line for high school girls, inspired by my Constance uniform. These won't be the uniforms they have to wear, they'll be the uniforms they beg to wear. Ones they see on the girls they want to be. They own this town."
Kind of? Not really, but okay?
Eleanor: "Uniforms do represent power and authority, and instill a sense of belonging."
Blair: "The girls I dress won't follow trends. They will set them, just like I did."
So to review: High school uniforms, inspired by high-school uniforms. Power, authority, mob leadership. So, the Jungmädelbund? That's what we're doing here? I wonder what Cyrus Rose would have to say about that.
"NAZI ENOUGH!"
Chuck and Nate discover that someone has removed the Sudanese Envelope from its 'Spectrum' hiding place, just as Peepers is calling (Lola?) to report on the "silver bullet" she and her partner (Jack?) will use to take down Lily (Bart and Chuck) and bemoaning the fact that she ever signed up to climb aboard the SS Humphreak. As if to pin the tail on the hell of her life, Rufus appears with a bottle of Dom and a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. "An unexpected yet brilliant combination," that asshole chortles, "Just like us!" Uh, who is the champagne and who is the pizza here? Ivy is the extra cheese. CeCe's money is the champagne. So I guess that makes Rufus a greasy paper plate you can see right through to objects on the other side.
Oh wait, is this the episode where Gossip Girl started talking about the Beatles for no reason? I swear this happened in another episode. Ah well, she starts randomly talking about the Beatles and it's like impenetrable what she's even implying.
Gossip Girl: "The Beatles sang, Living is easy with eyes closed..."
Lily: "Bart, sorry I sold your painting with your Sudanese paperwork in it. To the person that broke into our house last week looking for it."
Gossip Girl: "But even with our eyes open, we all still have blind spots."
(Something I didn't even bother to take notes on but is probably Chuck drinking scotch and thinking real hard about envelopes.)
Gossip Girl: "Or maybe we're just looking in the wrong place..."
(As Eleanor finally sees the cold, hideous beauty of the thing she made.)
Blair: "Like the Hitler Youth. Exactly, now you're getting it!"
Dan: "Hang on, are you sure you want to have sex with me?"
Serena: "It's sort of the spiritual equivalent of Jenny handing Chuck Bass her virginity, so I'm going to say yes."
Gossip Girl: "...But when we finally do see the light, it's strawberry fields forever!"
I mean. Best episode of the season. But that means less and less as the end of the tunnel gets closer and closer. Strawberry fields, as they say, while wearing hemp and eating crow -- an unexpected yet brilliant combination, as the old saying goes -- back when artists were the real stars, ya gypsy trash moonlighting as a gallerina. You know I love you.
WEEK
Presumably Sage is central to Blair's creepy plans, so there'll be that to contend with. Dan and Serena work together to find new ways for him to make her miserable. Chuck breaks up with Blair FOREVER THIS TIME IT'S REAL NO TAKEBACKS. The mysterious Jack-or-Lola appears, hopefully, and Bart successfully turns Nate against his bestie through the power of blackmail.
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.