Bonfire Of The Vanity
Updated 2008-11-11 09:07:03
Daniel Humphrey, I love that messenger bag! Where on Earth did you get it? What on Earth does it contain? Dry, idiotically written reportage masquerading as fiction, one presumes. As long as you are investigating fathers, let me ask you this. Why is your father always in the kitchen? The improvised actions -- what we in the business call "the business" -- that keeps him in there is getting ridiculous. How many times can one wash a single Fiestaware plate before realizing one has finally succumbed to the lesser angels of one's own psychology? How many lonely nights whipping up dinners and sauces for a family that has rightfully abandoned one? Is Rufus becoming a shut-in? Can he no longer go out into the wild world of Brooklyn due to his slow realization of the epic fail that is he? Will next week find him hiding beneath the kitchen sink, inside a cupboard? Strumming a guitar and humming tunelessly to himself, perchance?
Daniel Humphrey, I love your little face. I never knew ferrets, even the most chiseled, could be so hot. But it is what's behind the face -- inside that pointy little noggin -- that interests me tonight. And it is what's in front of the face -- the endless stream of words administrating everyone else's experiences and emotions -- that I'm hearing now. Specifically, how it is that Rufus is pretending to be "cool" with the fact that his fifteen-year-old daughter Jennifer has moved in with a similarly tweenish supermodel who isn't even trying to hide the fact that she is balls-out crazy, which is all a ruse because in fact Rufus is not "cool" with this at all, because Rufus is not cool with anything, because Rufus is deeply, tragically, permanently, adorably, annoyingly uncool.
The ruse is intended to lull Jenny into a false sense of trust and respect for her father, in order to deceive her into thinking that her opinions or choices are in fact hers, and thus she will come home, subject to even more of Rufus's awful parenting. This is the most Rufussy plan Rufus has ever come up with,- like, why not stash some popsicles under a box, propped on a stick, tied with a string, leading to your finger, and then play some, I don't know, like... Miley Cyrus? And then let her siren's song lead your daughter to the box, which you will then cause to drop on her with a simple flick of the wrist, trapping her, and then all you have to do, if trepanation's not your scene, is electroshock her brain until she's drooling. And then you win. Which is, after all, the point of parenting: to remember always that your children are the enemy, and must be destroyed at all costs, lest they outstrip you.
"Granted, Agnes' mother's more 'Courtney Love' than 'June Cleaver,' but she's a committed parent, and she's gone through similar phases with Agnes. She promises to call every day, so Jenny's safe." Rufus! You are either THIRTY or you are a HUNDRED. PICK ONE. This timeline is fucking up my brain: "Granted, she's a little more 'Maddox Jolie' than 'Clara Bow,' but she can watusi like a Pussycat Doll." Dan's like, "Don't forget that I don't care about you or anything that happens to you here in this kitchen that you never ever leave, but I have to go whore myself out to the leprechaun from the Paris Review ," and Rufus gets limply offended by the idea that Dan writes fiction that is neither fiction nor writing, in the truest sense, and gives him such a look! It's that "How dare you cannibalize the least interesting part of the life of the most interesting person you know! It's sick and wrong... But I'm 'really' 'proud' of you. And your 'sister.' Please bring me a pigeon so I can send messages to people from this kitchen" kind of look we've all gotten from our housebound relatives whenever we do those things.
The only thing larger than Blair's excitement about her upcoming Sweet (Enjoyable? Engaging? Endearing? ...Intense?) Eighteenth birthday party is the bouquet of one million white roses on the dining room table dwarfing all the best young ladies of Constance Billard. Maybe that's where Creepy Little Elise went: into the roses . "Though it seems like just yesterday Serena and I were eight and playing dress-up in my mother's vintage Manolos, my eighteenth birthday has finally arrived. The party needs to be perfect, so: blood orange Martinis or Beluga and Belvedere?" Penelope gets all stupid immediately, wanting to do like America's Alcoholic Test Kitchen and come up with the perfect recipe, like, these girls drink all the time , they haven't nailed it yet? I'll tell you my secret to the perfect party, it takes five (literally 5) seconds and ten bucks, some challah and Stilton, and ya done, dude: We call them Persephones because we roll all extreme like that. Check it: Two bottles of cheap blush champagne and 750 ml of Whole Foods Pomegranate Soda (or Pom-Blueberry if you're feeling insane ), jack some berries up in there, some ice in fun shapes, and that bitch will get people crunk before you even get the rosemary-strewn goat cheese in sizzling lemon-infused olive oil up outta that microwave. Boom. You are welcome.
This whole time Serena's been playing with her phone, because you know that's like half of her personality, and she keeps grinning and whatever, and meanwhile Blair's competing with her own birthday excitement by being excited about her mom's awesome boyfriend whom she has not met, Cyrus Rose. He also has the look of a small yet helpful magical woodland creature, which -- combined with "Lucky Charms" Shapiro from Paris Review and Serena's queer nymphy running through the park at the end -- means the goddamn supernatural creatures are about to outnumber us real Americans, just like on True Blood . "Cyrus has been one of my mom's attorneys since the divorce. He asked her out when they first met, but she didn't wanna mix business with pleasure. Finally, his amorous overtures wore her down, and she agreed to dinner. She's been smitten ever since." Nelly Yuki is all over the romance, and kind of all over anybody in an adjoining seat. Maybe that's what happened to Creepy Little Elise: Nelly Yuki ate her when nobody was looking, starting with her creepy little face. Maybe Creepy Little Elise is inside Nelly Yuki .
"One thing my mom has is good taste in men. Maybe a dashing stepdad is just what I need." Serena's phone plings for like the hundredth time, and Penelope's all, "Speaking of good taste in men, how's the sexy artist, Serena?" (I like how this season, Penelope is now the straight man and Hazel's the disturbing horny one. It's so Betty White/Rue McClanahan.) Serena's all about how Aaron is "amazing" and keeps sending her on "amazing" scavenger hunts to "amazing" places using "amazing" Google maps that he "amazingly" emails her in lieu of actual interaction or conversation. However, points for sending her to the Cloisters, which is where my wedding to Tim Gunn will take place. Blair tells Serena to shut the amazing fuck up about Aaron, because she is kind of a frenemy about all boyfriends, not just cocksucker Brookyln ones. Hazel is gripped by Black Snake Moan so bad right now, it's wild, like "her boner is lifting the table" wild. Serena runs off to jump through some more retarded Aaron Rose hoops so that he can call her an asshole some more and fuck other girls and she can be totally confused about where her life went some more, and encourages Blair to plan her birthday all she wants without Serena's input, because Serena's attention span is shorter than my patience with the Humphreys.
Talent management representation agency man Scott Smith looks over Jenny's designs, because they are fully riding that sweet hot buzz you get in the arts community when you do things like ruin charity events, and Agnes keeps tossing her two coke-headed cents in the whole time about how she's the brains and Jenny's just whatever, and Jenny's being totally awesome and professional but eventually she's like, "Dude? Scott Smith can hear you. That invisibility joint you smoked was imaginary. Stop acting like a jackass." Agnes is like, "Girls like us are the target audience. And by 'girls like us' I mean 'girls like me' and by 'girls like me' I mean 'me' and by 'me' I mean that Jenny Humphrey is like a relatively bright and helpful Walmart greeter who can't quite reach the high shelves but has a bunch of fun trying."
Which is not entirely untrue, but that's not the point. The point is that Jenny's awesome now, and she's like, "Agnes, look at who's acting out yet again in another business meeting..." And Agnes, wonderfully, stands up and screams, "YOU WANNA SEE ACTING OUT?" And yes, I do, more than anything in this world, but instead we cut to Jenny hectoring Agnes about how she has ruined the last fifty business meetings they have by being... Exactly what Jenny already knows she is, which is an erratic supermodel sociopath. You knew it was a snake when you put it in your pocket, man. Agnes blows her off and blows her off and says she'll find them a manager, because in Agnes World everything works out except for when it doesn't, and when it doesn't you light some shit on fire .
Eleanor and Blair are both all up Dorota's ass about stuff while waiting for Cyrus Rose to show, and Eleanor's gushing crazily about how great he is, and Blair is desperately happy for her mother and completely ready for a new Daddy to love, something like a cross between Paul Varjak and Roger Thornhill, and they can be a family again, and that's how Blair works, of course, in a nutshell. So she screams at Dorota to put the VW-sized bouquet of roses next to his seat -- "Cary Grant always looked his best with white roses!" -- and Dorota works around her, and then she kind of hops in the air when B screams again, "DOROTA ARE YOU INSANE" and she's like, "I don't know?" This time the insanity is in Dorota putting out "the everyday china," which implies their family is merely "common upper-middle class," and sends Dorota for the Auberges, but just then a tiny little gnome rides a funny miniature draft horse into the room with a jingling bridle of silver and starts giving people presents that he takes out of his funny red hat, and no matter how many presents he gives, there's always more in there, even though it's a very small cap for a very small head, I don't know how he does it but I got a bitchin' copy of Beatrix Potter's classic Tale of Squirrel Nutkin so like I'm not wilding out about it.
"That must be his driver," Blair says, watching him get uncomfortably close to Eleanor's face, but then they make out and she realizes that her mom is a gnome-kisser, and it's like you can see Roger Thornhill sliding wanly into the garbage disposal of her mind, and Eleanor pulls back and he goes, "Not enough!" and grabs her for a second round, and then does the same thing to "the lovely Blair," twice, which causes her actual neuralgia, and meanwhile Dorota's like, "Fuck a bunch of Auberges for a gnome and shit" and starts putting out the everyday plate.
Okay, we've talked about New Money before, but I mean: It's Bass Industries' twentieth anniversary . Chuck Bass's money is five seconds older than he is! Ew! Chuck gives Bart a congratulatory gift of a season box for the New York Rangers, which is a... bloodsport, from what I understand, like foxhunting but with less teeth and extra mullets. Bart's like, "Are you new ? I hated you yesterday, I'm going to hate you tomorrow, what on Earth makes you think today's special? This is the twentieth anniversary of me hating your ass, and I got you this gift: it's called my disdain and it's wrapped in shiny hostility. And there's a copy of Squirrel Nutkin in there too." Chuck Bass feels some feelings of matricidal guilt and abandonment, and his face thinks about making a new expression and then it's like "Nope, I'm good."
Dan goes to some old guy pervo bar to meet the leprechaun, who is so excited to see him that he jumps to his feet, leaving his pot of gold unprotected, and introduces him to James Wolf, the senior editor at New York Magazine , who apparently forgot his meds and has decided to ask a teenage boy who writes fiction and cannot write to deliver an "exposé" on Bart Bass to New York Magazine , and all I can say is, in the books Chuck Bass has a literal monkey on his shoulder most of the time, and it is named Sweetie, and it throws shit at people. This is not our world, suck it up. So now Dan is like the Woodward and Bernstein of Bart's life and he's getting up close and personal with tycoons and figuring out how they operate and what they're like all about, and that's his job now other than high school. Get inside Bart's head and see what makes him tick and root around in his past and make a huge fucking mess of everything. This they have offered in their infinite wisdom to a boy-child-man who could not figure out the operating instructions to Serena van der Woodsen: the most user-friendly easy-to-deal-with affectionate easygoing person in the entire universe.
There she is! And it's my favorite song of two months ago, "Sex On Fire" by the Kings of Leon, playing as she hits Times Square, and looks up at the Bluefly ad for awhile before the big Bladerunner jumbotron turns to Giant Serena, and then the song plays and Aaron appears out of nowhere like the creepy stalker that he is, and they make out in the middle of a bunch of rushing New Yorkers, and nobody stabs them so I guess when they cleaned up Times Square they also made it so standing in people's way when they're trying to fucking get somewhere is not longer irritating. "Spotted: S and A, bringing sexy back to Times Square. Move over, Disney, 42nd Street is steaming up!" (This is our first clue to the fact that Gossip Girl is completely out of her fucking mind this week, but we'll have a few more, don't you worry.) Serena does that awesome sexy-looking kissing thing she does where her head bobs up and down like a guppy the whole time. I tried that out this week and I don't want to tell you how it worked out for me, because the answer is not great, so take my advice and don't do that thing.
At school, Blair's wearing an awesome red cardigan and black beret, because winter-into-fall is her best season sartorially, and she's all up Serena's ass about where was she last night, and Serena's like, "I had to do the guppy thing in Times Square, what." B tells her that boys are stupid and sucky and take your mommy away, and doesn't she remember this from when she totally rebelled against Bart Bass for no reason a couple weeks ago and pretended she wasn't wearing panties? Also, Cyrus is inconceivable. "He's five feet tall! He has a catchphrase! And he's a hugger !" Serena's beautiful smile is gigantic, because the idea of Blair dealing with anything like that is awesome to contemplate, but then the fucking phone rings with another fucking map and she's gotta bounce, and she tells B about how during the guppy-kissing he asked her to pose for him in his studio, and "be his muse," okay, she says that shit out loud, and B tells her that it's a death trap and being the muse never works out.
You know how awesome Serena normally is? As boring as this storyline is at the moment, Serena has this way of saying the most bizarre shit so matter-of-factly that you don't even question it. Exhibit A: "Plenty of women have been both lover and muse to famous artists, like Picasso." Say that shit out loud, right this second. Do it. Imagine saying that in your life, like as part of a conversation with another person. You cannot. And meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum, everything out of B's mouth is just gold: "Serena, a guy starts out in his Blue period, and everything's great, but it's only a matter of time before he's all into Cubism, and it's some other girl's eye coming out of her forehead."
Serena laughs and takes off, and B tries to enlist her in Project Gnomicide, and Serena shakes her head at the little beast: "B, enough already. You always said you wanted to be an elegant woman at eighteen, like Grace Kelly." Blair thinks about that, and remembers that she's a grownup now, and Serena's just laughs and sends rays of adoration B's way before she... Wanders away in the middle of the schoolday to a creepy post-grad's rape pad without even a second thought, but it's fine because after all, plenty of women have been both lover and muse to famous artists such as Picasso.
Dan turns off his little microrecorder and lies to Bart Bass that he's really into real estate all of a sudden, and "over the writing thing," which is two unnecessary lies, and then applies a little lube to the total handjob he's giving Bart Bass about how he's the most successful person Dan knows, and blah blah, and can he follow Bart around after school a few days a week, and Bart's like: Um, no? I mean seriously, can you imagine anything worse than getting shadowed by a Humphrey? "Do you really need those trans fats in your body? Are those manmade fibers petroleum-derived? Maybe you should stop punching Vanessa," like, it would never end.
Then Dan Humphrey shows just how completely hollow his entire lie of integrity is by doing the worst thing he has ever done , which is leverage his Dad's sex life and broken career against this man's virtual cuckolding at his father's hands, to manipulate Bart into letting him creepy-creep alongside him for awhile. "My Dad, his world is pretty narrow. He may have had a hit song in the '90s, but he didn't build half the Manhattan skyline..." Bart giggles and then he's all, "Yeah, your Dad is totally lame, like, what was he doing in the twenty years I was building my empire besides time-travelling around with my wife and having improbably-timed children and being a rock star, and then I had this whole conversation with Lily about how I sold my old building and we have to sell old buildings and it was a metaphor where 'old building' was code for 'your Dad's dick,' so clearly I'm susceptible to this transparent manipulation by a fifteen-year-old walking douche, so let's hang out all the time and I'll show you the secret to how I make my skin this frighteningly leather-like texture and then we can go to the hockey game."
So Agnes is at some wheatgrassy café hung over in a big floppy hat and Lennon glasses and like a sweater-cape, drinking VITAMIN WATER for the healthy VITAMINS and the hydrating WATER of it all, and Jenny walks in screaming at her about how she's not answering her phone and they still don't have a manager and it's Jenny so she's all, "Don't you understand? This afternoon is the last chance I will ever have to get a business manager and if I don't do it in the next two hours, my entire life is a lie!" Agnes tells her to tone down the screeching and have some tequila or a Xanax, and Jenny gets all in her face about the list of bad choices like leaving home and hurting Wufus's feewings and then Agnes has to go vomit which is what happens when Humphreys talk about Humphreys to non-Humphreys, and while she's in there shooting wheatgrass and VITAMIN WATER All over the place, Jenny rifles through her belongings, just like Vanessa taught her, and sets up an Agnes-free meeting with that guy from before.
So the weird traumatic/homoerotic subtext of having not one but four creepy old dudes trying to live vicariously through Dan's Complete Lack Of Talent is not intense enough. And Dan's just added the extra-creepy layer of Bart and Rufus's sexual conquests and competition and somehow managed to insert himself into that weirdo sandwich in some way where it's like a Möbius strip of weird now, where he's simultaneously substituting himself for Lily and Chuck in Bart's life, and Bart's so lonely and hungry for his virgin blood that he's buying into it, so then vortex of all gayness Chuck Bass comes running in just as Dan and Bart are making a date to go to the hockey game, and Chuck starts squealing about how it was supposed to be him on the date with his own father and now his former jail buddy and homoerotic rival for Nathaniel Archibald is going on the date with his father and... My brain just exploded. This is so fucking fucked up, and anyway Chuck runs away and cries and whatever and apparently now Dan's dating Bart Bass and saying shit like, "I thought your Dad could 'show me the ropes,' if you know what I mean. Um, I was just leaving."
Cyrus and Eleanor go over the budget for Blair's Intense Eighteenth, and Cyrus is like, "Eighteen dollars a peony? You're not paying for flowers, you're paying for the florist's Madison Avenue rent! Let me fill this whole penthouse with peonies for you, but please for the love of Christ let me buy them wholesale," and B is feeling her control freakery getting threatened and pushes back a little bit before saying, loud enough for her mother to stare curiously at her, "I am Grace Kelly, Grace Kelly is me." Cyrus takes the hint that she's going to go ahead and have her fucking peonies her fucking way, and changes the subject to how he heard that Eleanor loves Cyndi Lauper, which gave me a sinking feeling in my tummy, because who doesn't love Cyndi Lauper, but stunt-casting Cyndi Lauper makes everyone look desperate. You, me, the show, Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, Cyndi Lauper, Squirrel Nutkin: everybody pays for this.
You know how I hate gay icons and campy stuff and being told what to like and think and feel and say, and also house music? Similarly, I hate Cyndi Lauper's new album. And her album before that one, and before that one, and basically all the way back through the ages to 23 May 1989, which was the last time she tried, because she realized shortly thereafter that the gays, they're not so discerning and they don't really need you to try, they just need you to provide a repetitive and annoying beat so that they can dance to it, and for you to dress fabulously -- just like a fabulous drag queen that is secretly also a lady to start with -- at all times, and attend their never-ending parades and protests and whatever obnoxious compulsory shit that keeps you a gay icon until that's all you are, and then you become a one-woman cottage industry of Liking Gays Inc., and something that was once bright and special inside you, turns out, died a few miles back. And then and only then, you start in stunt-casting for quick cash on Will & Grace and As The World Turns and Queer As Folk and whatever's even gayer than that, like that super gay show Gossip Girl , and then I have to write about it, and that's what happened here.
How well did Harold's marriage to Eleanor work? That all depends on what percentage of Blair and Eleanor is secretly gay men from the extremely early '80s, and the answer is: all of it. "Mom and I love Cyndi Lauper! We used to re-enact 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'! Our first DVD was Vibes !" Okay, that made me laugh. I love that movie. Everything Cyndi Lauper says in that movie is fucked up to a Serena van der Woodsen degree, but the part that always gives me the giggles is when she gets off the airplane at the beginning and screams "BUENOS DIAS!" for no reason at all. Also the line, "Everybody looks brave holding a machine gun," which is most likely also Blair's favorite line. Cyrus says he got Cyndi tickets for himself and Eleanor for the night of the birthday party, and Blair frowns. "My mother's coming to my party! This year is different! I'm eighteen, and it's a grownup party! I e-mailed Dorota a new guest list! Parents are invited!" There's something heartbreakingly sweet about Blair calling it a "grownup party," no? Her whole life is a grownup party. Cyrus is like, "Well fuck it then, I'll return the tickets" but Eleanor realizes he has no way of knowing how much she despises her own daughter even with his forest gnome powers and magic hat, so she's like, "Fuck that! I'm returning my daughter ." Then there's actual babytalk and squeezing his cheeks, and lo it is a terror in thy heart to gaze on.
Scott Smith -- Which, like can he at least have a fabulous name? I gotta type out van der Woodsen about a hundred times a week, the least interesting-yet-sluttiest character ever on this show is named Jordan Steele in actuality, and this guy is Scott Smith? -- tells Jenny he is relieved she's dumped Agnes, because even though he understands they are artists and they have a passion or whatever, he also understands that she artistically pissed in one of his potted plants, and when all you live on is VITAMIN WATER, cocaine and wheatgrass you're going to fell even the mightiest ficus, plus it smells weird in there now, and he's like, "Let's incorporate you in a jiff, but wait: you're obviously fifteen. Are you eighteen?" And she says no, and he's like, "Then all you have to do is..." I stopped listening because I realized he couldn't legally tell her to forge Alison's signature on that bitch, which means she's not even going to think of it because of her Humphrey ethics and slight brain damage, which means this is going to get real dumb real fast, and Rufus is going to make that face he makes: like ice cream is illegal now.
Serena is totally dorky and squirrelly in Aaron's grody studio, which is kind of cool to see because it's the first time she's even been in the same zip code as flustered. Aaron's grody studio is probably also the first time she's been in the same zip code as Flushing. He like points his old-man creepy camera at her and fixes her hair and stuff, and she poses all fake and like a bookcase named Blair and he calls her Zoolander and then it's like she lets her inner freedom take over or something -- which mainly means lounging in a club chair and looking like somebody brained her with a cast-iron skillet -- and the whole time the music is like, "Isn't this sooo sexy? Don't you wish they would kiss and woggle their heads around like guppies some more? You haven't thought about Serena's boobs in about ten seconds, let's fix that. Isn't delayed gratification like soooo arousing? Don't you wish these two boring people would make stupid faces at each other for like ten more minutes? Sooooo hottttt." They do. And it is, ya got me, but that's because Serena's like the prettiest girl in the world, and if there were a TV show called Snappin' Photos Of Blake Lively where it's just her smiling in a variety of poses while her picture is being taken, I would watch it. I would TiVo that shit.
Chuck totally spies on the spy and calls his spy at New York to get the superspy info on what Dan's spying all about, and then Gossip Girl goes, "You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck. It ."
"Did Brooklyn Boy really think he could bury the bone in the backyard, and no one would find it? Every Bass will have his day..."
WHAT? And that's not even the worst one. The one at the end of the episode could peel paint it's so very fucked. Did Gossip Girl really think she could eat the last of the shrooms and nobody would notice? Every schnassafrass will hoody-hoo!
Serena comes galloping back to Aaron's grody loft the next morning with a bag of breakfast and some coffees and keeps referring to herself as a "muse," which is adorable, and then he shows her the installation he's made, which is a polite way of saying that sometime during last night his brain shit the bed and now he's hung all of these sheets all over the place like a creepy womby maze and Serena's face is projected all over the place in different sizes doing different impressions of what the ghost of a total stranger looks like when it feels sad or happy or bedazzled or trenchant or desperate or wins the lottery or experiences the best emotion of all time, Scheißbedauern , and they make out for a bit and Serena can't stop saying that word, she's like "I'm so aMUSEd by all of this but my aMUSEment is tempered with beMUSEment; this homemade MUSEum is giving me exophthalMUSEs and nystagMUSEs and slight sphygMUSEs!" But before she can indulge, another marshmallow fucking steps up on her man, just walking into the grody loft like it's totally normal, and Serena goes -- it's terrible sad -- goes, "I thought modeling was our thing," kind of confused- and sweetly, and my notes go: "Oh dear." And then Aaron kind of makes me like him by going, "I'm doing a series!" NICE! Anyway, she tells the new girl Danielle to drink her coffee and then walks out, presumably to have a nice long intense talk with Cecil.
Lonelyboy gets an email from a "lovelace2@anonymousurl.com," which domain you probably know better as noteventrying.com, and the email says that Dan needs to know something about Bart Bass, and who knows how this guy even knows about the supersecret exposé anyway, but whatever, it's time to go meet Deep Throat. Because what this story about sexually confused young men getting exploited by their elders needed was even more clandestine meetings with creepy old guys. With names like Deep Throat.
Dorota's got the roses back on the mantle for like the sixth time, and some dessert parfaits happening, and she tells Eleanor that she has "glow, Miss Eleanor, like Chinese lantern!" Dorota is weird inside, just like Serena van der Woodsen. I knew it. Blair immediately makes a list of all the shitty things about Cyrus, like the old "wrong fork" chestnut and the "slurps his soup" routine and whatever -- "He wears sport socks !" -- and finishes up with how he's short, and pushy, just like Blair, but also: "Nothing like Daddy." Because underneath the Roger Thornhill fantasy was a very specific, debonair reality that Blair needs to put together in order to fix everything for everybody for all time, and Cyrus is fucking everything up. Last Christmas, she figured out that Roman wasn't the threat, so now she's trying to replace Harold, and nobody will cooperate, and that's so sad because without being able to scare or dick people into cooperating, she's nothing. Invisible.
Eleanor's like, "Yeah, he's nothing like your father, like for example he doesn't kiss dudes," and I guess sport socks come with that territory. I wouldn't know. Eleanor asks her to come shopping with her for the Cyndi date, characteristically a million miles from where she needs to be, and Blair tells her to go to hell. She leaves, pissed, and B flips open her phone: "Screw Grace Kelly. I need to scheme." Dorota shakes her head fearfully -- "Oh, no" -- but Blair has a plan: "That tiny man must have some big secret I can exploit, and with his trusting nature, finding it out shouldn't be too hard."
Deep Throat's kind of hot, in a truckery-teamstery-bear porny kind of way. I hope Dan's prepared for what comes next! J/K, nothing is happening except for Deep Throat quickly explaining (in his Big & Tall blue plaid fleece-lined hoodie, I don't know why my notes got so specific about that but in case there's a genius reason I've forgotten, I'm just letting you know) that "In '87, your friend Bass bought a building in midtown to convert to condos. The market crashed, and he couldn't raise the funds to complete it. So wouldn't you know, that building burned down... Kinberg Building. Bass collects the insurance? He goes on to build an empire."
Dan brings this information back to Rufus, who is still in kitchen where he lives now, and he's like, "It was just like in All The President's Men ! I'm thinking there's no way this could be legit, but all of the facts check out! The date, the building, the fire! The insurance." Rufus is like, if I could get out of this kitchen I would totally sing you a song about how I'm judging you so bad, because if you exposé Bart's arsoning ways then you expose Serena and Chuck to all kinds of trouble but more importantly, Dan , if you harm one hair on the head of Eric or Lily van der Woodsen-Bass, I will come into that kitchen and beat you both senseless before going on a Brooklyn-destroying crack fueled Vanessa hunt. So anyway, Rufus is right but as usual he's going about making that point in such a douchebaggy wussy sensitive '90s way that you just automatically want to do the bad thing just to make him cry.
And then because the douche quotient isn't high enough in this magical oubliette of a kitchen, Dan whines, "Daaad, I'm writing an important stoooory for a quality publicaaaaation , why can't you just admit this is a good thiiiiiing for me?" Rufus stares at him and thinks what we're all thinking, but Dan is just past the safe line, on the other side of the kitchen island, and so he can't punch his son in the face. Then -- right then! -- Alison calls to say that stupid Jenny has, true to form, asked her to sign the papers incorporating her as a high school dropout before she's even learned to read or how to stop somebody from slowly lighting everything you own on fire while explaining step by step what they're doing and double checking to make sure you really get it. Rufus is like, "I'll point my finger at you later young man, right now I have to figure out how to get my daughter to quit trying to make her dreams come true. Without leaving this kitchen."
Blair sits down to lunch with Cyrus and lobs a couple of serves, but they're lead, and Cyrus keeps saying shit like how Eleanor is "a diamond in an ocean of coal." Yeahthat Eleanor Waldorf really is a diamond: tacky, and covered in the blood of innocents! Finally B gets bored and asks about his ex-wife, pushing a little harder, and Cyrus caves, and then tells her the most ridiculous fucking story in the history of linear narrative.
Alice and I were very young when we got married. We were very fond of each, other but never passionate. And then I got drafted, I was sent to Vietnam. And I fell deeply in love with a Vietnamese girl named Kim-Ly. It means "Golden Lion." I knew I could never stay married to Alice if I could feel a passion like that for somebody else. And I planned to bring Kim-Ly back to America, but first I had to go back by myself and end my marriage.
Okay? But there's more!
While I was breaking the news to Alice, Kim-Ly was killed in a surprise attack on her village . I was devastated. But I always knew in my heart that what I'd felt for Kim-Ly was true love. And I think I was too much of a romantic to stay forever in a loveless marriage. So ultimately, Alice and I parted as good friends. I'd always hoped I could feel something like that again, and now I have, with your mother.
DUDE, that wins the universe! Gossip Girl can't even quit right now! The time warp of the Upper East Side is actually spreading out in time and space and has already reached the Viet Nam conflict, whereby his marriage dissolved -- because he was in love with a Vietnamese girl named GOLDEN LION, y'all -- and yet he has a son who is at most 23 years old that somewhat recently graduated RISD... Or else he's in his mid-thirties which makes his putting the college moves on Serena even creepier, except... I lost track. Anyway, B has no problem buying this story because she lives in the UES and she's used to it, but unexpectedly, she falls in love with Cyrus Rose, the whole story, the doomed drama of it all, the... the Golden Lion of it all. I have to say that Leighton Meester has chemistry with everybody, but there are sparks shooting out of the TV whenever she's talking to Cyrus Rose, for real. She's so appalled by him and charmed by him and appalled by how charmed she is by him, it's like the opposite of the Chuck thing which makes it the same as the Chuck thing, if you see what I'm saying. It's adorable.
Serena calls up Aaron and asks him to go to "one of her favorite spots for a change," and he's like, "Me? Jump through hoops for you ? Are you retarded?" And the answer is kind of, because she wants to go to the "old puppet theatre in Central Park," and he's like, "I'll be totally doing that, when I magically go all Benjamin Button on myself back to when puppets were awesome, but until them I'm getting hummers from every girl in the entire world right now." She hangs up with a hateful face at Imaginary Cecil, and Gossip Girl tries desperately to get her ass under control: "Looks like B's prophecy came true: One day you're a muse, the next, you're old news!" But GG, plenty of women have been both lover and muse to famous artists such as Picasso.
Blair makes that face where it's like she has changed horses midstream and no longer wants to do evil to Eleanor and Cyrus, but hasn't quite worked that out for herself, so she's in the phase where she refuses to admit the existence of horses or streams or that gravity exists, and so she must destroy everybody even though she's totally creeped out by herself watching herself do this, but also like she deserves this punishment from herself for even daring to think about deviating from the plan? You know the face I'm talking about? She tells Eleanor precisely enough of the GOLDEN LION story to draw a connection to Harold's cheatin' ways, and Eleanor crumples up a little bit and wanders around and B stares at herself in the mirror, like, "What. Am I going to do. With you."
Scott Smith's secretary fucks everything up by accidentally calling Agnes to confirm Jenny's next super-secret betraying meeting with Scott Smith, and you can see a little switch behind Agnes's eyes go click and you realize the super-dramatic upcoming death on this show might just be: EVERYBODY.
"Echo" is playing at Blair's party. Seriously. Didn't that album come out approximately seventeen years ago? Weren't we like in kindergarten when this song came out? Weren't most of our household appliances powered by wisecracking dinosaurs when this song came out? Wasn't God still tinkering with the animals of Australia when this song came out? Wasn't Ed Westwick a teenager when this song came out? Whatev, Queen B. Have some VITAMIN WATER and buy something from Bluefly and listen to this CD that came out before CDs were invented. Isabel is wearing a gorgeous black dress -- everybody's in black and white, just like I'm doing at my own birthday prom this year -- and Nelly Yuki is wearing a lovely simple silver sheath dress and those glasses and a giant necklace, and Hazel's wearing a flapper headband and weird patterned tights, and there's Penelope with that face of hers. Hazel points out a "totally cute guy" in the corner, and Penelope points out that he's a busboy, but nobody points out that he's also the gayest thing in the building besides playing Cyndi Lauper at your birthday party, or that he looks like Draco times a million, or that having sex with gay guys is the unbreakable rule of Penelope, as we all remember.
Blair shoves over all of everybody using basically her ass so that she can sit closer to Serena and caress her and brush her shiny shiny hair and pick little bugs out of her shiny shiny hair and eat them for protein, and she's wearing a white shirt that is entirely ruffles so she looks like the ghost of the idea of a pirate, and it's hot. "You were right," S says. "The whole muse thing kinda backfired." She says muse ten more times and finally cuts it out, and Blair's like, "I don't say I Told You So now that I'm eighteen, so I'll refrain and by telling you that actually say it after all." Blair and rhetoric are a powerful pair. Serena's like, "We had this amazing night. I modeled for him, and he did this incredible installation..." Nelly Yuki randomly screams "He totally loves you!" Which B doesn't want to be hearing for at least three reasons, and she punches Nelly Yuki in the face and then throws her out a window, and Serena's like, "Then Danielle was also modeling for him! I'm going to die!" Instead of asking what "modeling" is code for that would make this important or interesting in some way, like "gun running" or "kidnapping children," everybody just assumes he got in the backdoor, I think, and B tries to tell her that it's a good thing that "Pablo" has moved on, but she's not convinced.
Speaking of frenemies, Agnes meets Jenny at the door of her house with her arms full of dresses of Jenny's design, all of them, everything she's ever designed or made in the arms of one very tiny, very scary girl, and then Agnes lectures her about stealing the contact list and signing contracts without her, cutting her out of the business, and how three weeks ago Jenny was "a little intern, pinning my hem," and how she inspired Jenny to start a line, brought Max the Roofie Photog of RISD, made up the guerilla fashion show, like seriously this unraveling Proustian tale of betrayal, while obviously walking everything to a giant trash can, piling it all in there, drizzling it with lighter fluid for approximately sixty years, lighting an entire matchbook on fire and staring at it for awhile, then tossing it on the clothes so that they all burst into flame, and the whole time Jenny's like, "Wait, what is going on here " and then when she notices her entire life's work is burning to a crisp she screams "YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR MIND!" and Agnes goes, "YES I AM INSANE!" Which: she is. Agnes doesn't lie, dude. It is very awesome. Then they just scream and scream and scream like the scary part of Fantasia . Man, I love watching Jenny unspool.
Tiny Cyrus Rose stares up at Gigantic Serena, and it's awesome, and they figure out that she's dating his son, who is Aaron, and Cyrus tells her that actually Aaron is into her because he doesn't take just any gigantic hoss girl to the Cloisters, and Serena almost picks him up like a baby and tosses him in the air, but then she decides to go get treated like bullshit by Aaron some more, and takes off, and then Eleanor comes over and asks if he cheated on his wife, and he admits that he did, so she throws him out and then almost throws herself at B's feet, all ashamed and at a loss: "I thought he was... different. I have to go lie down." B feels really bad for her, but when the devil inside you constructs elaborate plans, you don't wanna mess it up by being nice.
Except then Cyndi Lauper walks in basically without even slightly trying to hide the fact that she's there for a paycheck, and it turns out Cyrus bought out her concert so she could come play B's birthday, and B's oh fuck smile is, as usual, a thing of beauty, and then she remembers that the person who loves Cyndi Lauper the most is Dorota, and shoves Dorota at her so she can go get Cyrus -- "I wanted a Harry Winston choker for my birthday. Instead, I got a conscience." -- and Cyndi Lauper stares at her like, "I don't even fucking care what that means or what's going on, just give me my fucking money," and then Dorota tries to climb inside her clothes with her, to keep her company in there.
Dan comes to Bart and tries to pry into the arson stuff, right, but then Bart flips the script and goes, "So it's out. I've had that man's death on my conscience for twenty years." WHAT? You heard me, Bart fully BURNED A DUDE TO DEATH. That is SO rockstar. Bart Bass wins the Golden Lion award for WTF this week. Chuck comes running up to put a stop to it, and reveals that Dan's working for the leprechaun and all that, and Bart gets up in his face with his big nasty leatherette face and asks how much money he wants, and Dan says "I don't want your money," and then ... wanders out of the apartment. Dan? Chuck follows him to the elevator and begs him not to fuck everything up, and Dan's all, "It's ethical for me to destroy your family, because this is bigger than us and your petty stupid feelings of wanting to protect your family and your Dad," and Chuck Bass fully begs him not to do it. Says "please," does Chuck Bass. I know, I didn't believe it either, but it's intense, because he agrees with Dan that it's not about their sublimated homosexual desire for each other right now, but about something even bigger than that, before which he is totally vulnerable, and that is his Daddy the murderer. Oh, I hope Dan does the right thing. Not the Dan-right Right Thing, but the Actual-right Right Thing.
Blair stands behind Cyrus for awhile before asking why he's still there, and he yells in the Inconceivable voice, "I sent my driver to dinner because I thought I'd be at the party ringing in your birthday!" She gives him a tiny indulgent smile and takes him to task for giving up so easily, and he's like, "Check it. I can't get involved in a land war with you, because you're the daughter: you win. But I didn't give up." Blair immediately and rapidly applies a radical reassessment to the situation and puts it together: "You outmaneuvered me! You deliberately let me win, counting on the fact that Cyndi Lauper would prey on my emotions!" Ordinarily I would question this, but after the Golden Lion I don't have anything left to give.
She laughs and totally adores him, and he's like "Yeah, I'm a lawyer? And three feet tall? So I tend to use what I've got." She tells him well done, and he points at her: "Not enough!" so she upgrades to "genius," and warns him she's still coming after him, and then asks him to come back upstairs with her: "Stand next to me while I tell my mom the whole truth about the Golden Lion. She'll be furious with me, so I may need an attorney." He hollers and throws himself on her and she's like, "Man, it is so fucked up that you exist, but also kind of cool," and she says out loud that he is not what she was picturing. He says he wasn't exactly expecting her either, I guess because if you asked Eleanor about her daughter your mental picture would be a cross between Hitler, the mom in Gilbert Grape , and some kind of quantum phenomenon that only exists for about ten minutes at a time.
Dan reads back over his story at the mailbox, as one does, and I suddenly realized what he was doing, and I started crying, and those were tears of Scheißbedauern and they were tears of joy and tears of a surprising amount of love for a fictional character. I don't really like anything more than watching somebody exceed their own limitations. He's the one person who knows Chuck's side and knows Bart as a man rather than a father, which means all that creepy inserting himself into Bart's relationships has given him the omniscience to see what the problem is and how to fix it, and just like that he reaches into something complicated and messy and broken, and with just a tiny little nudge, and for no reason other than he knows he's the one that can and that means he's the one that has to, heals it:
5.19.91 by Dan Humphrey
His hand held a firm grip around the glass Scotch. It was like the glass was a part of him and if he let it go he'd lose a piece of himself. He took one long gulp and finished off the glass.
"Keep them coming, Joe," he spoke across the bar. The surly bartender poured some more of the brown liquid into his glass. He tilted it towards Joe and took a sip. As it hit his mouth, his lips curled and he swallowed. The glass was still clutched in his hand.
Charlie Trout had spent every Birthday at this bar since he was thirteen years old. And this year was no exception. Charlie sat on the exact same stool, drank the exact same brand of Scotch and ordered from the exact same bartender year after year. One would think Charlie Trout's Birthday party would be full of friends, sexy women and located at an exclusive Manhattan club. But that was not the case. Charlie's Birthday was always just a party of one. Or two, if you count Joe the bartender.
Charlie's Birthday didn't just signify his aging. It also represented the anniversary of his mother's death. She died while giving birth to him all those years ago and Charlie's been living with that grief ever since. Charlie's father, media tycoon Bernie Trout, had never once wanted to celebrate his son's Birthday. There were no elaborate Birthday parties for little Charlie. There weren't even Birthday cakes. Nor any wrapped gifts. A Lego set or a toy fire truck were never waiting at the foot of Charlie's bed when he awoke on his Birthday morning. All he ever got was just a deposit into a savings account.
This caused Charlie to believe his father held him responsible for his mother's death. If it weren't for Charlie, Bernie's beloved wife would still be alive. It was Charlie who killed her, Bernie must have thought. And that was why Bernie could never truly love Charlie.
It's good to know that he writes even worse than we thought, but I don't want to point and laugh because A) I'm still kind of basking in this nice Dan feeling, and B) it's all there on the page. I mean, what do you say? "This gives me heartburn, but no Scheißbedauern at all." Bart sits on Lily's couch where Eric came out to her and cries about the dude he BURNED TO DEATH, and the butler brings him the story, and the note says: "I'm so sorry. You should read this. Dan." He has really nice blocky handwriting, like my Dad's.
Aaron eats dinner with Danielle and a hundred candles, and Serena comes in and gets clotheslined by Cecil for the fiftieth time running, and she gets sassy with him and he totally flips it on her again: "I'm seeing a lot of people. You and I just started hanging out, okay? Did I miss a talk where we decided to be exclusive? Look, I don't know how it works in high school, but I like to date more than one person at once. You're free to see other people, too." Serena points out that this is the same condescending bullshit he always hands her and leaves, although I'm kind of on his side at this point because what, you need an embossed invitation to reality at this point? Date him or don't, but stop acting like a Humphrey about this like reality owes you one. Come on, S.
Rufus literally strumming his guitar and singing to himself just as I prophesied, although he's managed to get as far from the kitchen as the futon, and Jenny's all nude-lipstick pissy with him, and he refuses to sign the paper and basically calls her a wicked worthless person for... Well, he's not clear exactly and I don't really care, so the important thing is he calls her a piece of shit for about twenty minutes and she finally bounces and goes and cries in an alley, so you get to see her totally off the rails for what seems like the fiftieth anniversary of earlier in this episode when she freaked out the first time, and then you forget all about Jenny because Gossip Girl has decided it's time for a good old-fashioned cry for help. I can't even punctuate this for you because I don't understand what it means, but it's so deranged that it makes me feel lightheaded and woozy, like it's a magic spell that makes crazy:
"Poor Little Orphan Jenny looks like she needs a Daddy Warbucks but Daddy Warbucks don't grow on trees at least not on a tree that grows in Brooklyn."
GOSSIP GIRL. What the FUCK. Every way you punctuate that it just gets more and more fucked up! This has to stop. You need to start talky-talky in English again. You are a blogger writing about the boring behavior of stupid teenagers, for other stupid boring teenagers! Show some respect for yourself and your calling!
Jenny apparently has run away for the eighth time and this time has made it as far as... Williamsburg, where she slept on the couch at the Bedford Avenue Gallery. I bet Vanessa has a special window that she leaves unlocked so she can come and go as she pleases without using doors or locks because they're so conventional. Anyway, Little J wakes up and calls Scott Smith down to his office on a Sunday, and she's sooo supertalented that he's like, "Nothing would make me and my family happier, I'll totally see you in about two hours after the intense commute that I take each weekend to spend a few precious moments with my family."
Bart comes into Chuck's bedroom and Chuck is kind of snarly and sad, and Bart stares at objects for awhile before busting loose. "I want to apologize, son. I never blamed you for your mother's death. I read that short story that Dan Humphrey wrote about you and your mother. I had no idea you felt that way. It's my fault. I know I've had trouble being close to you." Chuck looks ... just so small, and narrow, and young. It's like all the Chuck drained out of him and he's just a little boy. "But it's not for the reasons you think. It's just hard because... Every time I look at you, I see her." They consider her picture on the dresser, in its contrasting-stitch leather frame from Target, and Chuck's like, "Oh, because you miss her and it makes you love me so much that it might kill you. That is not at all what I thought was up."
"I've made some terrible mistakes in my life, but I don't want to make another. I wanna know my son." Chuck starts coming apart. "So. Any interest in going to that hockey game?" Chuck's face hasn't ever had a reason to do Happy, so he just looks like he's having Scheißbedauern and like he's about to cry for an hour. He is.
Rufus is back in that motherfucking kitchen with Dinah talking about how Jenny told him to eat shit yet again, and Dan's like, "By the way, I totally didn't ruin the van der Woodsen-Basses, and on an even more amazing note: I fixed CHUCK . So I'm back to full Humphrey power, and will now tell you how to properly parent, which is that you need to let Jenny win, because you're being a d-bag and you're locked into a stupid battle of wills with a fifteen-year-old girl, because you also are one of those." Meanwhile at this same exact second , Scott's like, "Oh, so your parents are idiots? Well, divorce them." And Jenny goes, "I have been thinking that since I was born, let's do this shit." Well done, Rufus.
Serena tells Blair about how Aaron's "casual dating thing," also know as um, dating, is just not for her. She likes doomed codependent relationships with dudes from Brooklyn that you can't get free from even it's killing you and forcing you to dress like a Madam from the Olden Days. B says that this is actually because her "free spirit façade" is bullshit and she's actually "totally conventional"... just like Blair. Yeah, Blair, normalcy is coursing through your veins. Then it's so awesome I can't even recap it, just go:
Serena : It's not a façade! I believe in freedom! People following their hearts, doing what they want! You know I always wish I'd lived in the '60s!
Blair : You believe in long hair, peasant skirts and sandals, but ... You in an open relationship? I don't think so.
Is Serena eating breakfast in the bathroom? That's pretty free-spirited, meaning nasty, but I really don't recognize this room at all. I can only identify kitchens now if they have cute ex-rockstars lurking around in them and crying dewily. Blair talks about how Cyrus is "not that bad," and then goes downstairs to discover that her machinations have pushed Eleanor and Cyrus onto the fast-fast-fast track: "We've been up all night talking about love! And death! And the brevity of life!" And now Cyrus is moving in, effective immediately. Gossip Girl, holding onto her grip with white knuckles, calls this the kind of surprise that hits you over the head like a squash racket, whereas there are other surprises that sneak up on you when you're least expecting it. Gossip Girl, that is the definition of the word "surprise." Even when you're making sense you're still being spooky and weird, cut it out.
Aaron, sneaking up like a surprise, comes to take her to the old puppet theatre, but first: more emotional abuse. "How could we even break up if we're not going out? Are you even sure that happened? Serena, I really like you. Even though I grew up on the Upper East Side, I don't want the same life that my parents had. Social obligations and forced conversations, saying no to all the things that I wanted to say yes to, just like Nate in the pilot when his hair was all fucked up. I thought you felt the same way, but if you don't then you're a worthless piece of shit. And if I was wrong about you not being a worthless piece of shit, then I apologize for being wrong about that."
She's so blown away by this amazingly manipulative crap that "Sex On Fire" starts playing and she drags Aaron out of the house without putting clothes on so that she's just dorking it up all over the streets of NYC with a negligee so short that if a butterfly flapped its wings in Peru an hour ago, you'd see both London and France, if she were even wearing underpants, which means more like you would see Rio de Janeiro? "And sometimes the biggest surprises are the ones you spring on yourself," Gossip Girl points out, and so I guess GG means that for Serena, running around in your underwear in public and looking at puppets without shoes on is the equivalent of joyously accepting the fact that you are going to catch Chlamydia from Aaron Rose. Which is a really long list of shit you should not be doing in the first place, much less celebrating, but whatever Serena, enjoy whatever wonderful things that will no doubt result from all this.
"Scampering about in a slip is one way to shed old skin. But will embracing free love be as easy as flinging off a pair of Fendi flats?" They kick off their shoes and run through the forest like the total queers they are, and GG tosses one more shoehorned-in, stupid Neil Simon reference just for the motherfucking pleasure of it: "Looks like someone's going barefoot in the park..." I'll go barefoot upside your melon if you don't pull it together next week, lady.
In which: Lily once again takes up for Little J, things "heat" "up" with S and A, and the Captain returns for N, causing predictable jealous girlfriend meltdowns from V and C. I can't believe it's Thanksgiving again already! So much can happen in a year, just think about where you were when Blair ate that pie! I'm like a totally different dude! Anyway, don't dwell on it. You know I love you. XOXO.