Thanksgiving sees everybody miserable -- Chuck defeated, Nate a prisoner of Bart -- so when Lily announces she and Mr. Bass are leaving town for the holidays, Serena and Dan invite everybody to have dinner at PRADA. Interrupted in a rare show of self-knowledge, Blair decides not to flee her scheming nature and jump right back into ruining Serena's life for her. This takes the form of arranging a meet-cute between Serena and the Spences, whom she's obliged to invite to dinner after Steven apologizes and Sage bats her eyes adorably.
Blair's other scheme? Getting Chuck out of his Bart Bass funk by helping Nate draw a connection between the death of the Sheik and Bart's latest "accidental" murder, the coke- and whore-loving Bruce Kaplan. She enlists Uncle Jack to help Nate crack the Bass servers, and puts everybody at PRADA just in time to start planting seeds of doubt in Lily and Serena's minds about their respective fellas. (All of this is brilliant. Everything that happens with Blair is brilliant.)
Of course, the reality of dinner is scary as hell, since Lily and Bart's plane has been grounded and Nate takes a bored and horny Sage upstairs for some heavy petting (and computer-hacking, thanks to B's call to Uncle Jack) while Chuck watches. Downstairs, Dan acts like a little bitch the entire time and eventually gets into a fight with Steven, who announces his desire to take Serena back from him before abruptly disappearing.
After Serena gets everybody seated and gives a sweet speech, Georgina rises with a hilariously bizarre speech of her own, and delivers her greatest triumph: As it turns out, Dan has written two Serena Chapters for VF -- both insufferable in different ways -- but Georgina has made sure the more vicious of the two was published.
This is where it gets interesting, though, because when Serena asks Dan about it, he manages to have decided that he both thinks Serena is vapid trash and he is in love with her, so why is she being such a bitch just because he wrote these horrible, awful things about her? He gives a long rambling speech about how his entire neurotic obsession with the horrors of the UES is actually her fault, for being better than him, and that only by becoming what he hates most can he... Something.
Something we don't even really get a clear glimpse of until after Nate has punched his lights out -- "That was from all of us" -- and Bart's handed him his card as he's slinking out, and lonely fuckin' sad-ass Rufus has bitched him out about it: "I have a plan. And it's working." And the plan, it seems, is to write one Final Chapter (called "The Final Chapter") in which, it's to be assumed based on his hipster lack of talent, he writes the ultimate takedown: Himself, and how he was destroyed by his own need to be Inside. Or some such nonsense. I mean, what a perfect encapsulation of this show's/our country's vexed relationship with money and class, but still. Shut the fuck up, Every Humphrey.
Bart shows Lily a bit of his dark side, once Blair and Chuck -- in fine, fine form; they haven't been this great together in years -- present their evidence for the string of murders. Lily finally comes over to Chuck's side, but has to pretend otherwise for the duration of the meal, which sends Chuck back into his depression. After some high-suspense, low-drama conversation, she leaves town entirely and warns Chuck that Bart's coming after him now in earnest -- but that she memorized the 'microfilm' before burning it, because she is apparently Alias now.
So. Chuck invites Blair to go to war and it is beautiful, everything they do this week is fantastic, and we also got a great reconciliation with Lily, so that was good. It is nice to see the inherent contradictions in Dan's hypocrisy coming to light, if a bit on the nose overall -- it's the contradictions, not the hypocrisy, that have always made him (and the show) at all interesting -- although I'm sure he'll be instrumental in saving everybody from Bart Bass, sometime in the two weeks. Meantime, Nate's still under Bart's thumb, joining Dan on the dark side, but as long as Chuck doesn't do anything dumb like get on a plane Bart can crash, he should be fine.
Week: Chuck gets on a plane, which Bart crashes.
PREVIOUSLY
Dan hooked back up with Serena, for possibly nefarious reasons. Bart Bass and Ivy Dickens both had long-term schemes going on that don't make a lot of sense, but they collided in a way that took Ivy off the board, so now it's all-Bart, all the time. Which is too bad, because Lily sided with him against Chuck, sending him into a depression the likes of which we haven't seen since he was Hamletting himself off roofs.
PRADA
Dan and Serena just live in that bed now, feeding Serena all the food in the house as she slowly slips down into Liz Lemon hypothermia on a cloud of bubbly bubbles.
Serena: "Thanksgiving!"
I miss my past for you, for you
What's the difference if it's all for you, for you
If I'm just throwing away myself for you
Serena: "A parade!"
EMPIRE
Nate suffers, ignoring Monkey as he cries outside Chuck's door; Chuck opens a bottle of bourbon with just one thumb and drinks it with just one open eye. Obviously, only Nate Archibald has the wherewithal to get everybody out of this situation alive.
Think about that statement.
DUMBO
Rufus has put on a rose-embroidered rockabilly shirt, as is the custom in Brooklyn, and is sipping Cup-A-Soup or some sad shit while remembering how one time he played a show with Lisa Loeb.
He turns the radio on. He turns the radio up.
WALDORF
Blair, verbatim: "Dorota, did you remember my noise-canceling headphones and my Bottega eye mask? Flying alone on the holidays is like Chatroulette."
Nice. And it sets the tone for the episode, in which -- Ghost Of Thanksgiving Past-like -- our Blair actually visits, for the first time in years, and stays for the remainder. (And while I'm giving props, I can't believe I completely forgot the Five Family stuff from Jenny's last real year. So much shit happened in that episode! And I forgot it all!)
Dorota: "Don't you try and go to Paris to visit your many parents every year? And something always happens?"
Blair: "Yes, but that 'something' is always I Am Crazy. So I've reversing the causal flow. I will leave before I go crazy, and then I won't go crazy. It is going to be awesome. I won't meddle with Serena's life like always, and it'll give Chuck time to get his brood on without me getting freaked out about it."
Dorota: "That's really quite insightful!"
Blair: "I mean, I have to at least try. Lonelyboy's going to Humphrey the shit out of their relationship whether I'm there to see it or not. Sometimes you gotta remember not to cough in the petri dish."
Dorota: "That's really quite insightful!"
Blair: "I mean, I have to at least try. Lonelyboy's going to Humphrey the shit out of their relationship whether I'm there to see it or not. Sometimes you gotta remember not to cough in the petri dish."
PRADA
Serena: "Food! It is fun."
Lily: "Serena dear, I'm going to Turks & Caicos with your stepfather to decompress from breaking Chuck into one million shattered pieces. Enjoy Thanksgiving with none of your loved ones, okay?"
Serena: "Okay! Or I will invite everybody we know. Chuck! Nate! Blair! NJBC! You could even invite sad fucking Rufus if you want!"
Dan: "Why would we do that?"
Serena: "Because of social skills!"
Dan: "Not familiar."
EMPIRE
Chuck, she look rough.
Chuck: "Where did Monkey go? I was comforted by the sound of him standing outside my door crying and knowing it was my prerogative how long I should go on withholding affection from him. This is a metaphor for my relationship with Blair."
Nate: "I sent him out for a walk. They have people that will do that for money. Listen, do we need to talk about the fact that Bart played me against you and I basically should not be living here anymore?"
Chuck, verbatim: "Bart Bass is a grandmaster of manipulation. He has ruined me, you'll be child's play. My advice is to lie back and think of England."
Nate: "That is both patronizing and incredibly sexy."
Chuck, again verbatim: "If I could defeat my father, do you think I'd be here drinking alone, unable* to be with the woman I love?"
Nate: "You mean like all season? You mean like every season?"
*(Cut me like one fucking break. "Unable" means you lack the opportunity or capability. Emotional erectile dysfunction is not either. This is so stupid. Every time they are split up for drama, it gets more and more ridiculous and contrived. Is it so hard to come up with compelling ways to do the thing that literally all stories are about?)
WALDORF
Serena: "Blair, do you want to come to my house for Thanksgiving?"
Blair: "Why, did Lonelyboy pull his customary Humphrey bullshit on you already?"
Serena: "Not yet! But soon."
Blair: "Okay, I will come. Be prepared for me to get completely involved in everybody's shit, though."
I'll give them also this: Dorota, disappointed in Blair's come-and-go resolution not to do exactly what she will now be doing, was subtle and well-played. There was enough of the usual Dorota bullshit that I won't bother going into it, but the hope in her eyes for Blair's mental health was, as it always is, the one redemptive quality of her character. Her bulldoggish loyalty is annoying, because like all of her qualities it makes her seem uncommonly retarded, but this one thing is beautiful when they use it right.
Sage is talking to some girl who looks like a Real New York Person -- I guess to establish that she has friends, much as in those Latisse ads that find Claire Danes and her eyelashes at a street-level bistro, "laughing it up" with her "pals" -- when Blair calls. Wait, what?
Blair: "How would you like to get back together with Nate Archibald?"
Sage: "You mean borrow his hot tub time machine and go back to before I put that sex tape on blast in front of Cotillion?"
Blair: "Honey, everybody is clearly over that. Now, I want you to come to Serena and Dan's house..."
Sage: "You... Are you actually high?"
Blair: "No, just winging it. If you fix things between your dad and Serena, then Nate will forgive you. Or some shit, I don't know. Usually you just say 'Nate Archibald' and then mumble the rest because nobody can hear you over their sudden boners anyway."
Sage: "Yet this still makes no sense."
Blair: "Well, cross-apply. Nobody ever really leaves Serena van der Woodsen, they just take breaks."
Sage: "Yeah, or are eaten by wolves, or go to prison where they lose all their innocence, or disappear from the show altogether. No thanks."
Blair: "Either way it's going to happen and we both know it. Take advantage, be a prime mover."
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION #1
Dan: "Serena thinks I'm talking to Rufus or doing Thanksgiving stuff, but really I'm here for a pointless meeting with you."
Georgina: "Give me your Serena Chapter!"
Dan: "I already sent it to Graydon Carter's assistant, like happens in real life."
Georgina: "How can I be the middleman if I'm not the middle?! You're disrespecting my lack of qualifications and any reason to even be around!"
Dan: "No. I believe in the truth, so the truth is what they are going to get. Enjoy the piece, which goes up tonight. Most likely during the most dramatic part of Thanksgiving dinner."
Georgina: "I do hate being left out. Gay husband, get me the home address of Graydon Carter's assistant, like would happen in real life."
PELLEGRINI MEETS
Serena: "Oh, shit."
Steven: "Serena! I was just deciding to be in love with you again."
Serena: "Okay, well, I was just deciding to be in love with Dan again, so I'ma bounce."
Steven: "Look, I've been thinking, and maybe calling you a whore over and over, instead of asking you to marry me... Maybe there was some middle ground there."
EMPIRE
Nate: "Baby, wake up. Wake up, baby. Baby. Baby. BABY, WAKE UP."
Chuck: "No! No! Go away! Leave me to wheeze away my final hours!"
Nate: "Bruce Caplan or whatever his name is, he's dead. Last I saw, he was trying to get me into a foursome with two hookers, and I stole his phone. Cut to, he is now dead. Fell off the Bass yacht, even. So the way I figure it, Bart decided he told us about the Traffic rainbow woman clue. Which to be fair is about a thousand times more likely than the bullshit that actually went down."
Chuck grunts, growls, sighs, curls up, stretches, grumples and grumps. It is about the sexiest he has been in at least two seasons and I am not messing with you when I say that.
Less So: "Even if he did, I promise you he covered his tracks or destroyed the evidence. Or had Lily do it for him. Now get out of my room."
As Nate furrows his brow and returns to his Ultrabook (TM) with Windows 8 (R), which uses Live Tiles (TM) to make sure the information you need most is always available, Blair's downstairs attempting to gain Empire entry, the better to invite Chuck out of his Thanksgiving and into a Bass-free PRADA. But she has been banned. She joins Monkey in a plaintive yowl. The pack needs its master!
FANCY & STAPLE
Serena: "Anyway, Thanksgiving! It's a holiday."
Spence: "So you've recovered from my misogynist aggression?"
Serena: "Welllll I'm with Dan now, so. More of a lateral move."
Sage: "My dad misses you! I kind of do too. Mom."
Spence: "Yeah, I forgot that Thanksgiving, so my daughter is just going to be eating construction paper turkeys this holiday. My motherless, desperate, thirty-year-old daughter, who dresses like Stockard Channing in Practical Magic."
Sage stares at Serena's turkeys and hams, hungrily. Like an orphan, or her father.
Serena: "Fuckin'... Do you assholes want to come to Thanksgiving, or are we just going to die here?"
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION #2
Nate: "Blair, whatever you're going through with Chuck I promise you it's worse from where I'm sitting. The smell alone, you should be glad you can't get in that building. He argues with Monkey, who is a dog. He has given up on defeating Laius entirely. He didn't even bust a smile when I told him about Bruce Caplan dying."
Blair: "...His dentist?"
Nate: "That's Brad Kaplan, you idiot. This is the Bass business manager that is not the other guy. The one that I did coke with in the living room and then it got weird."
Blair: "So Sheik Hassan and Whatever Caplan Guy both died in suspicious circumstances? And they're the only people who knew about the Sudanese Embargo deal? How did we miss that?"
Nate: "Um, because it wasn't true before this actual scene?"
Blair: "Retroactive continuity! Deal with it. It is the new status quo. Literally."
Nate: "Maybe he would buck up if we solved the crime, or at least got Lily back on our side, but..."
Blair: "-- I have a novel idea! All we need to do is break into Bart's computer. As though that has never been tried multiple times, including this very plotline."
DUMBO
Dan: "This is the saddest shit I have ever seen. And I was in a threesome with Vanessa Abrams and Hilary Duff."
Rufus: "Don't feel sorry for me, I got big plans! I'm going to be a hanger-on at Lisa Loeb's charity benefit tonight! The charity is: me."
Dan: "Come to PRADA for a Lily-free dinner of expensive rich-people food, like you're used to."
Rufus: "No way! Lisa Loeb's thing's gonna be a hormone-free potluck! ...Or at least it will be, once I get there."
Rufus: "Yeah, Jenny told me you and Serena were back together. On the Skype. You know, we Humphrey Men and those Rhodes Women..."
Dan: "Just shut up. Just shut your face."
Seriously. When I see him now, it's like I can't even hear words. Just a foghorn. Just a bleating, bitching, impoverished, subaltern lighthouse, beyond which is just nothing. No dragons, no serpents, no inhabitants of any kind. Illuminating a glass-smooth sea that never moves and smells like burnt waffle, bounded by gray beaches of blunt shale and disappointed cigarette butts. Just mmmrrrrrrrrrehhhhhh.
Rufus, literally: "Women like Lily and Serena are never gonna respect guys like us. All the love songs I wrote Lily made no difference. Poetry isn't what she wants."
Dan: "Holy shit, you are the worst. I'm going full Charlie Trout, it's final. I'm going to become the Bart Bass. In my mind!"
Rufus: "Are you sure about this? I mean, I suck. Sure. But you plus Bart? That's like the worst thing anyone could ever imagine."
Dan: "And yet of the three of us, only we two are fucking Rhodes Women tonight. So."
We used to talk about this certain look Blair would get, when even she couldn't believe what an asshole she was being. To his credit, Dan gives us that face a lot in this episode. The Humphrey Men stare at each other a while, horrified, and Dan finally gets the heck out of there.
Alone, Rufus picks up his six-string, holding it tight. Calling it Vanessa, through the tears. Sexting Vanessa things that she doesn't even get because the references are so old and lame ("What is a Cagney?"). He thinks that he's throwing, but he's thrown. Lisa Loeb is going to have a goddamn mess on her hands.
SPARKS
Georgina: "Graydon Carter's assistant, if you do not give me Dan's Serena Chapter I will have your children murdered."
Daphne: "Pretty sure Wintour gets me for an hour if I do that. I can't deal with that again. I can always have more kids, but I can never get back those parts of myself. Of my soul. Sorry, but you cannot read the Serena Chapters. Either version."
Georgina: "Do what?"
Daphne: "...Oh, shit."
EMPIRE
Okay, I'm not going to go all 'one-sixteenth Cherokee' on you, since I'm not actually the worst, but dressing Blair up like an Indian brave and making warpath drum noises on the soundtrack? Not cool. America is finally figuring out what a gross racist Gwen Stefani is and has always been, we need to stay on the same page.
The point is, she gets Chuck at least off the couch with the promise that Lily and Bart will not be at PRADA. And that even if he won't marry her, she's at least pathetic enough to throw him a pity bone, which see above re: dressed like a racist stripper. Oh, man. Seriously, it's everything wrong at once. And yes, I did say several times that Blair was 100% wonderful in this episode, but the truth is, this is the first time I'm seeing this scene, because my Tivo died at this part.
My Tivo, you see, is one-eighth Cherokee.
PRADA
Lily & Bart: "Just kidding! We're all up in your Thanksgiving, effing up your plans!"
Serena: "I guess I can find a way to be thankful for this."
Lily, verbatim: "Darling, you went grocery shopping! I'm so proud."
Serena: "On fuckin' second thought..."
Everybody up in this piece, effing up the plans. What a shitshow this will be.
Dan: "Wait. So it's Nate, the Basses, the Spences and Chair? What a shitshow this will be. The Spences don't even go here!"
Bart: "Steven Spence. The man who fucked my wife."
Dan: "And my girlfriend."
Steven: "Yeah, two real exclusive clubs there."
Serena: "Dan, why are you being a huge cunt about this? I didn't shut down the friggin' airport."
Dan: "And yet I am going to yell and call you a slut for it anyway. Or let me guess, did you also invite Cutie the Chef, and Professor Sam Page, and Carter Baizen, and Damian Dalgaard, and Justin-Bobby? That actor that smelled like pee, perhaps? That development guy whose job you stole? Or just Tripp? I would be cool with Tripp, actually, if we can't have Carter."
Serena: "I don't know who any of those people are."
Dan bitches for literally one hundred years. It is now 2112 and we are all futuristic vampires that sleep hanging upside down in what are colloquially called "meat lockers." I am dating Stephen Dorff, our vampire leader. We smoke electronic cigarettes after we do it future-vampire style, which also takes place: upside down. People are still assholes about Olivia Munn and they still think this is vaguely feminism somehow. Brittany Snow was the first person uploaded onto the internet. Food is just these pills.
Serena: "On the upside, Blair and Chuck are here. So now we're even. Go fuck yourself, Feelings Guy."
Blair: "Before you ask, yes. Chuck is drunk as fuck. But you know who looks great? Steven Spence."
Serena: "Yeah, whatever. Dan's being a real tool. Hey, did you notice the Basses are here?"
Blair: "I'd better send a sneaky text to Nate about that."
Lily: "Oh, Charles. It is so hard to pretend I'm not overjoyed to see you."
Chuck: "What are you even doing here?"
Lily: "I fucking live here? How about we say bygones?"
Chuck: "Bart is going to kill us. Both. How can you not see that?"
Lily: "Well, happy Thanksgiving. You are how drunk I'm going to be in a minute."
Bart: "Don't talk to him."
Lily: "It's Thanksgiving."
Bart: "Among my people, it's less a tradition of gratitude and family, and more about celebrating the time we put everybody on an entire continent in concentration camps, just because we felt like it. And by 'we,' I mean 'shitty old white guys.'"
Sage: "Nate, can we talk? Don't worry, I'm not pregnant."
Nate: "I know that, first of all, because what I produce is mainly confined to glitter and unicorn wishes. It will not get a girl pregnant unless she is half-butterfly, or Taylor Swift. But more importantly, don't talk to boys like that. Don't talk to anybody like that."
Bart: "Nate, I have some menacing creepiness to get all up on you."
Nate: "Sage, let's go upstairs and have that chat. In the computer room, where the computer is. The computer that came with Windows 8 (R), which uses Live Tiles (TM) to make sure the information you need most is always available. The computer with access to Bart's Evernote account where he writes down all of his countless murders."
Bart: "Uh, it's OneNote, whippersnapper."
Steven: "I'm glad at least one other of Serena's exes are here!"
Dan: "I am not her ex. I am her now."
Steven: "I'm gonna have her nekkid by the end of this song, son."
Dan, awesome: "You don't know anything about Serena. Or, sorry, are you still under the impression that her name is Sabrina?"
Steven, also awesome: "I know that she needs someone to take care of her, and I know you can't. Boom!"
Blair gloats, Dan and Steven bitch at each other wonderfully, and Lonelyboy is minutes from the door. But Chuck, Chuck is somewhat less than that. B swoops.
Chuck: "So you think tricking me into having Thanksgiving dinner with my father is going to end in us getting married?"
Blair: "Whoa, it makes total sense that you would read this situation that way. But no. I have a plan to ruin Bart, or at least get Lily back. Uncle Jack is getting Bart's passwords, and Nate is upstairs inputting them. Boom."
Chuck: "But Mommy love Daddy more than poor Charlie Trout!"
Blair: "Not if somebody actually got hurt. She's strictly a white-collar, fake-affidavit, fight over the inheritance type, that one. She'll put apple-cheeked young teachers in jail for years, plant evidence and call the cops on her own daughter to reinforce the importance of curfew, have a baby and never tell the dad even after they're married. But murder?"
GEORGINA SPARKS JUST WANDERS ON IN THERE
Serena: "Well, fuck it. Just fuck it."
Georgina: "Hey, Dominick Dummy. What's with these two different Serena Chapters?"
Dan: "I guess you'll never know. For a few more minutes."
Georgina: "Come on. We all know your bullshit. One of them is a Charlie Trout blowjob like you for her write every single season, and the other one is how much of a slut she is, like you also write every single season. You are not a complicated fellow."
Dan: "I have a mysterious plan!"
Georgina: "No, your eye's just off the ball. Do you wanna win, or do you wanna win Serena?"
Dan: "There is no winning without Serena."
So, both. He is regular Jean Grey and Dark Phoenix at the same time. He will never be able to trust her until she respects him, and she'll never respect him until she sees him as one of them, an Upper East Sider, instead of this bastion of truth and integrity she's always managed to see him as. He's not wrong. He's just missing the other half of the story, which is -- just like Vanessa, just like Jenny -- the only person who can make you feel inferior is yourself. He tells her this story, so that's the story they tell.
The thing about Nice Guys is that they put their shit on you, and then get bothered when they notice you're covered in shit. Of all the callbacks and full-circling this season is trying to do, this is actually the subtlest and the smartest one: She's always mostly existed in the snow globe of his stupid fluffy head, since the pilot. She loved it, because it gave her something solid to stand on: She wanted to be so good, and he was the definition of good. She wanted to repent, to improve, and he was the definition of critique. She wanted to be better, so she was better. For him.
I mean, maybe he's right. Maybe she has to do some demolition on her idea of Dan before her wish -- her first wish, the one that took her away before the show began, to become a real person -- can come true. We always talk about how Chair is this folie à deux where the people use each other to construct their identities, something to push against. And I've been writing about Serena and Dan doing that for six years now. It just never occurred to me that Serena didn't know she was doing it, or that Dan did. So yeah, maybe this is how he wins her: By shoving himself off the pedestal. Because if that's the plan, then Dan is a good man. It's maybe the only way we all get out alive, actually.
And speaking of characters finally being used correctly again: It's Georgina that gives him the push. Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. Remember?
Lonelyboy: "Daphne? I've decided which version I want you to publish."
Dan was a fever once, too. And every fever breaks.
DINNERTIME
Blair: "Lily, are you enjoying those toasted almonds? I sure hope so. Especially after that horrible murder on your husband's boat."
Lily: "The what now?"
Blair: "Yeah, Bruce Caplan? Just fell right over the side, and nobody saved him. Weird that Bart didn't mention it. You know?"
Serena: "I just remembered you're gluten free. Which of course you are."
Steven: "I'm used to watching other people eat, it's fine. Listen, do you want to leave Dan for me?"
Serena: "Leave Dan? Why would he? He hasn't done anything horrible to me lately, just everybody else I know."
Steven: "Yeah, but isn't he basically an Upper East Sider at this point?"
Serena: "His neurosis won't let him believe that, so I won't either."
Steven: "He's just a rebound from me!"
Serena: "Um, actually you were a rebound from him. Not to mention from a coke addiction, a near-death experience, and almost complete dissociation."
Steven: "So basically you're still a giant whore? Cool, Spence out!"
Serena: "...Sure, whatever. You're old and dumb anyway, and your daughter is a megabitch who dresses like Augra from The Dark Crystal just discovered fuckin' Claire's."
UPSTAIRS
Also awesome today: Sage Spence. I know, right?
Sage, verbatim: "Nate, I came up here to make out, not to watch you and Chuck play Wikileaks."
They finally crack the code, and start going through the files. Lookin' a little desperate -- although let's adjust for the fact that it's Nate Archibald -- old Sage sort of drapes herself across Nate in a variety of ways, to the point where eventually Chuck just shoves them onto the couch so they can make out and he can do the actual activity they are doing. The whole thing is brilliant. She catches Chuck watching, indicates verbally that she's into that, and the childlike joy that breaks like sunrise over Chuck's face is more beautiful than springtime.
DOWNSTAIRS
Chuck, joined by Blair in such a way that his body makes a place for her at the table before he seems consciously aware of her presence, address first Lily and then both Basses with whatever they have uncovered. Bruce died falling off the Bass yacht, and the Sheikh was driving a Bass Industries-provided car when it burst into flame.
Blair: "Which is hilarious, because that's exactly how I lost our baby and then my mind."
SCHEME #2
Once Lily's taken herself upstairs for some serious Power Hour binge drinking, Dorota helpfully alerts Blair that it's time to multitask -- much like the new Ultrabook (TM) with Windows 8 (R), which uses Live Tiles (TM) to make sure the information you need most is always available -- so she betakes herself over to Serena, who has just been bitched out by Steven Spence and is now looking forward to a lifetime of getting bitched out by Dan Humphrey.
Blair: "Maybe you should consider his offer. The one he made before he called you a huge whore. Again."
Serena: "Blair, you know as well as I do that Dan's always been the one. Which is to say, variably."
Blair: "Actually, he's not. He's a huge twat. Always has been. But I tried to be cool because we've broken up every episode this season..."
Serena, verbatim: "I don't want to lose our friendship again either, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't say any more."
Blair: "Okay but can I just say that he's a self-promoting hipster weasel who's thrown every one of his friends under the bus?"
Serena: "Well, yeah. Duh. And your kindness and protective nature is a balm to my soul. But I have to go talk to him if he's ever going to prove you completely correct."
UPSTAIRS
Bart: "Lily Bass, so help me God if you don't stop drinking in the dark and get the fuck back downstairs so nobody knows I'm rattled, I will beat you bloody."
Lily: "See, the thing is I need to feel safe if I'm going to help you hide your crimes. I need to feel like I'm on the inside with you, rather than expendable. I remember when you blew up that poor autistic girl's mom whose husband I fucked. Do you?"
Bart: "Of course I remember! That was the most boring storyline of all time, until he tried to blow up Blair in turn. Look, I don't have time to reminisce about my many murders. How about shaking you until your teeth rattle, would that help?"
Lily: "Help me drink faster, maybe."
OKAY NOW IT'S DINNERTIME. THE ONE BEFORE WAS JUST A FALSE ALARM I GUESS. OR MAYBE THEY WERE WAITING FOR STEVEN TO LEAVE.
Serena: "I just want to thank a fraction of you for joining us here, at our first Thanksgiving together as a couple. This time around. A toast! To many more years of love, happiness, and good friends!"
Georgina, the uninvited, stands up with the bizarrest grin. It is amazing. Everybody stares like she's going to give a scary speech, or do a magic spell, or say somebody is gay. But she just tells them to get out their phones.
SERENA VAN DER WOODSEN:
GOLDEN GIRL FALLS FROM GRACE
A FAUX LOVE STORY
Jesus Christ, even the title. Daniel Humphrey, you utter urethra. And this shit is choice, son:
"...Serena is nothing, she's a golden shell. Give her love, and she'll do anything you want..."
"...With daddy issues like these, it's not hard to push the right buttons. And once you do, the most powerful girl on the Upper East Side has no power at all..."
BEDROOM
Serena: "The fuck, Humphrey? Did you write this when you were in hate with me?"
Dan: "No! I wrote it yesterday! In bed with you! Because it is the truth!"
Serena: "Is this like... Are you Vanilla Sky-ing me right now? Because this is making me feel like I actually have no reality. What about the burgers after Cotillion? What about the Vespa? You popped a wheelie, Dan. What about the Vespa?"
Dan: "Girl, I even got Vanya to stop the elevator so I could fuck the stupid back into you."
Serena: "..."
Dan: "Surprised? Because here's the real shocker, I am in love with you. You are the one."
Serena: "Yeah, the one who's gonna kick your ass. How dare you? I let you into my house, into my whole world, my heart..."
Dan: "-- Your world. Exactly."
Serena: "What's this now?"
Dan: "Just because you feel humiliated doesn't mean I intended to do anything but humiliate you."
Serena: "So because you feel bad about yourself, and you once had to ride the bus to prep school, this psychotic shit is supposed to make you feel better? How's that working out?"
Dan: "I FEEL GREAT ACTUALLY."
Serena: "Dan, you've been poor for less than one fucking season of this entire show! How can you not see this is all in your head?"
Dan: "This is the kind of stuff Blair does to you ever week."
Serena: "How is that relevant?"
(Uh, you love her more than me, for starters.)
PRADA
Blair: "Jesus. I don't even feel like gloating. That much."
Charles: "Lily, oh my goodness you look upset. Are you okay? Do you want some water?"
Lily: "Oh, Charles. I forgot how sweet you are..."
Charles: "So you're on my side? You get the truth finally?"
Bart, outta nowhere: "Truth about what?"
Lily, scared: "Oh, um. About how Charles is dead to me. Begone, little motherless boy!"
Cat Power: "The child, he is a sinner..."
Chuck: "Happy Thanksgiving, Lily."
Blair: "On the upside, you know from the rest of us that you'll survive getting Humprey'd."
Serena: "I know. But it's like, fuck everything. I'm even a failure as a hostess."
Blair: "Are you kidding? This was some Season One caliber entertainment. NJBC's in the house, Lily's upstairs getting crunk, Dan's not even tryna cloak his shittiness in superiority, Nate's probably gonna punch somebody in five, four, three..."
Chuck: "I really thought I had a mommy this time. Dammit already."
Nate: "BOOM! That was from all of us."
Before Dan can slink off back to Brooklyn where he fuckin' belongs, Bart slips him his card. "I see in you, as I always have, a much shittier version of Charlie Trout. Come and be my Dark Prince. Shadow me in the ways of being truly sickening. And not in that gay Rufus way."
Georgina: "Hold that motherfucking elevator! The last time I was left alone with this particular crew I ended up freezing my zhopa off in Siberia..."
Dan: "What is it like to be truly hated?"
Georgina: "Try feared. You'll get to like it."
LATER, AT THE PRADA HELLRAISER FIREPLACE
Sometimes at a certain hour of an evening, wherever Bart Bass is goes kinda Silent Hill on ya. The shadows drip down like molasses and pennies go rolling up the wall and strange sounds can be heard issuing from the flames. The voices of the damned, by demons driven. The many murders of Bartholomew Bass, the Hudson Bay Butcher. But sometimes, after drinking a certain amount, that's exactly the ambience you want.
Bart: "May I join you? In these ragged shadows?"
Lily: "Come closer, night."
Bart: "I was thinking about murdering the shit out of you."
Lily: "For real? That's so weird because I was thinking about going to Miraval. Which sounds made up maybe, but is definitely far far away."
Bart: "I'll be up shortly. After I stand around from various angles, posing like a bad guy, as the flames rise. RISE!"
IN BED WITH SAGE, WHO IS A YOUNG GIRL
Nate: "I committed fraud and now I am beholden to that guy you and I hacked earlier."
Sage: "I don't care. At all."
Nate: "But I really feel weird about it, because Chuck is the Blair to my Serena and I love him more than anybody. Especially Dan."
Sage: "No, like I literally don't care. Ethics are for other people. Don't worry about it."
Nate: "Wait ten seconds and I'll forget what I was even talking about."
She does. He does. Nobody cares. Speaking of:
DUMBO
Rufus: "[The usual Rufus head-shaking judgy bullshit. Like, Dan is right that those people are vultures, but also wrong because everybody is wrong all the time because only Rufus is ever right about anything.]"
Dan: "[Whatever incomprehensible thing about how he is turning evil and that will make everybody win, and also once again Bart Bass is less of a pussy than Rufus, and also shut up Rufus.]"
Rufus: "Congratulations... On being an ass. Now, get back to Brooklyn so we can get our -- some might say inevitable -- Grey Gardens downward spiral underway."
Dan, verbatim: "What I want isn't in Brooklyn, Dad. I have a plan. I have this whole time. And it's working."
But again, to be fair, he seems almost as alarmed by himself as I have been for this entire show, which is an improvement. Like Blair, ridin' that pony that is her insanity, never quite sure if it's been gentled or just biding its Dude Ranch time.
EMPIRE
Charles: "Dammit Lily, haven't you stepmothered me enough tonight?"
Lily: "Charles, obviously I was lying to you. I'm sorry I have been such an idiot, but you were right this whole time, and you rock. I'm actually leaving the country to get away from him, is how scared I am."
Charles: "Did he do the thing with the fireplace and the..."
Lily: "Yeah. Anyway, I wanted to give you the heads up that I memorized that 'microfilm' before I burned it, with the help of a jeweler's loupe -- and the new mind powers I've received courtesy of a magical dwarven wizard that lives in the roots of a great oak tree in Central Park, pretty close to Strawberry Fields, you can see it from the Dakota, name of Berkner Flickadik, real nice guy -- and I'm going to be emailing that to you. With my new mind powers, from this limo. So be on the lookout for that. Love, Mommy."
Bart: "Dear Nathaniel. Your ass is still mine. Love, Bart Bass."
Nate: "Fine, I'll see you in the morning so we can set up your son's murder. I'll call my cousin Tripp, he's real good at blowing up planes and train and automobiles."
Serena: "Dear Steven..."
Steven: "LOL can't talk reading this thing about how you're a giant whore. NAILED IT"
Blair: "Bass, I swear to God if you called me over here to jerk me around again..."
Chuck: "Blair, Lily's with us. I am full of Mommy Power. And not just any mommy, a Rhodes Woman. I feel like I'm actually glowing with takedown power right now."
Blair: "You are, I can see it. So what, you're just telling me maybe it's on again?"
Chuck: "No. I'm telling you I want you to come to war with me."
Blair: "Thought you'd never ask. Let me go get my racist warpath drum."
Just kidding, it's awesome. As twisty and silly as the path to the moment was, they moment paid off. They were never the kind to face toward each other, like Dan and Serena, or stand with backs to each other, like the NJBC. They have to go to war, side by side. That's how it happens: You take off your clothes, and eventually you can put on your armor. I just hope Chuck doesn't die or anything.
WEEK
Chuck dies.
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 fall on Tor.com.