Reversals Of Fortune
Updated 2009-09-15 08:44:31
Gossip Girl wastes no time reminding us of the fakeout free pass/clean slate she gave everybody at Graduation -- when she PK Dicked them into going Spartacus for her -- but only on the way to pointing out how like totally scandalous these characters are because they didn't even let the slate dry before they starting hashmarking it up again.
So the first thing is that Chuck Bass -- last spotted saying three words comprising eight letters any number of adorable times outside the Waldorf residence -- is back to be a ho-bag again. Gossip Girl's like, "Well, on the one hand that's sad, but on the other hand, Blair Waldorf going bughouse crazy is the rock and roll this city is built on." So one of about sixteen Serenalikes we'll be seeing tonight appears out of nowhere and they engage in demi-entendre about how it's "so hot" in the city, which is just very moist and lubricated and ribbed for her pleasure today, and Chuck Bass introduces himself as "Chuck [comma] Bass," so it sounds less like a patented rape implement and more like a human being. Maybe that's important, I don't know. The chick's like, "Where's your limo," because limos are hot and hard and long or what have you, and because he notoriously likes to get it on there, but he quickly covers up something mysterious about that and says they have to go back to his place. She's a real winner, this one. Isn't one of the Rules, like, "Don't ever say aloud that you're down to fuck in anything with wheels. Let the man discover this naturally and think that it is his idea."
Over on the East Egg, Jenny is playing the Serena role by sprawling around by the pool and wishing for breasts. Some dude refills her lemonade. Man, if you saw this show from Jenny's perspective it would be so fucked up, homeless to Hamptons, pointy mean mom to other pointy mean mom. She's had like six careers already, she still looks like an undersea prostitute half the time, and she's the most down-to-earth character on the show besides Eric, who of course shows up to kill her buzz and remind her about real life and its siren song. He doesn't engage, however, in the expected expository about how she's the Queen now so isn't that going to be something or another, which means we'll get twice as much of that next week.
"As soon as we get in that car, it means no more beaches, and no more bonfires, and no more stalking the Barefoot Contessa through 1770 House. Our summer in the Hamptons is officially over," Jenny says, whipping off her shades like that creepy ginger, and they have a mysterious conversation about mysterious shit that is A) Serena-related, B) totes defcon, C) eyes-only w/r/t D-Hump, and D) terrifying. When Eric asks how long they can keep this amazing secret from Rufus and D-Hump, Jenny awesomely goes, "Then it's Serena's problem. As of now, we made her a promise. And it is very important to keep those. Even if they were asked via drunken text from a Turkish pay-as-you-go phone." Jet set boner!
Speaking of Ruphrey and D-Bag, they are just strolling in some flat-front slacks and adorable hair/burns combo (for the latter) and an outfit made entirely of linen ( obviously for the former, whom you know has spent the summer pretending he's some kind of like Sting Tantra Terry Gross open-design internet bubble Josh Brolin limo liberal type. Which of course is what he is.) D-Hump points out that Rufus has been drinking his coffee out of CeCe's china all summer, and now has to go back to his Welcome Back Kotter mug at home. Rufus, always able to duck his own vituperative hypocrisy like a ninja, is like, "Well, I like the real world, too." By which he means, "I can't wait to leave this decadent Hamptons lifestyle for our decadent UES lifestyle, now that I am just actually a kept man."
Dan and Rufus go to collect the children by the pool, and they all discuss how Serena was at an ashram on some kind of Eat, Pray, Love -inspired mess, and maybe she took a vow of silence, but Dan of course points out that she's a silly stupid thing that can't keep her mouth shut, and then as though anyone asks notifies everybody that his very important presence will be missing at some point today because he needs to talk to Vanessa. Nobody cares. "...Because she apparently has something to tell me about how she spent her summer." Nobody cares again . Jenny finally asks from inside her coma whether V wasn't in Europe with Nate, and thus may be intending to tell an even more boring story than Dan might be anticipating.
Which is funny as it's both an awkward segue to the next thing, and a reminder of how all of this happened last summer, when Blair and Chuck were going to reap the whirlwind all summer and ended up both becoming mentally ill instead. So even though Nate and V made it out of the country, they didn't stay hooked up, which is sad but also good because how boring can two people be, but mostly sad because as you'll see, Nate got more like Vanessa but Vanessa also got more like Vanessa .
Nate makes out in a helicopter with the ratty face of Bree Buckley, a mysterious girl he grew up with, and is currently making out with, but doesn't actually recognize. This is because have you met Nate. They finally get out and she has a huge purse, which as you know is the number one danger sign. They talk about how if Nate hadn't been sitting in that seat next to her, she would have been handing out the 'jobs to somebody else all across the Atlantic. Which doesn't really speak too highly of either of them, but then that's how Nate sees most of his hookups -- geographically -- so maybe they're a perfect couple. Chuck is going to eat her ratty self, I can feel it.
Nate continues to attempt identity theft on her all the way to these limousines that are waiting for them on a building rooftop, but she's not giving it up because she's so mysterious. I can't even listen to them talk, it's too inane. She congratulates him on remembering basic facts about her life, like how she's going to grad school at Columbia, which is also where he's going. Then he takes away her newspaper, remembers he can't read, throws it on the ground or in a trashcan and spits, because her grandfather on the cover is Jeb Buckley, who has a huge red-v-blue thing going on with William Vanderbilt, Nate's grandfather. Who, and I'm sorry, did not lobby against DOMA. At least not where anybody could see him. Anyway, blah blah, they grew up together, their grandparents are political rivals, he pulled her hair at the Clinton inauguration, her redneck cousins tried to waterboard him, they're so star-crossed. This show made me a lot less nervous when it was pretending politics, poverty and people of color were just figures of mythology.
So wherever he lives now-- the Palace? -- Chuck stalls the Serenalike for a second before kissing her, so that Blair can walk in and start a huge row about it and he can complain that the Serenalike sure enough knew that Chuck had a girlfriend, and play a really weird cringing kind of shamed-badboy role while Blair works herself up into a demonic riot of crazy: "Shame on you, Ashley Hinshaw. How could you do that? Pick up someone in a relationship? Have you no pride? No self-respect? You may have an Abercrombie campaign and the security code to Clooney's castle in Lake Como, but that doesn't give you the right to try to steal someone else's man! Now take your American Girl hair and your poreless skin and get out!"
Ashley's eyes wide, she realizes that she has crossed through the looking-glass and goes, "Okay, you're crazy ." Blair's nod -- bigtime -- is a perfect moment. The girl bounces, and Chuck and Blair immediately start making out, and he is incredibly sweet and loving and tender with her, and she with him, and it's joyous to watch their faces. All of their conversations in this episode end with him suggesting that they stay in , that he's allowing that, but she doesn't figure it out until the end. This is a lot more complicated and smart than it seems at first glance, because of the personal history that Nate and Serena bring to their respective conversations with C and B which are what cause this plotline in this episode to happen, so at least there's effort there.
So in case you were breathlessly wondering about the sleeping arrangements at PRADA MARFA: Chuck is living at the Palace now, so Eric is taking Chuck's room and Jenny is moving into Eric's room. Dan will be living up his own asshole, and Serena will float several feet above the floor in a fog of sandalwood and champagne giggles. Thanks, Rufus.
Dan catches the kids attempting to throw away a bushel of tabloids -- see, they don't have magazines in the Hamptons or television, because their leisure lies in stalking famous cookery experts and fucking cougars for cashola and forcing townies to fight for their sport -- so that the amazing secret won't get found out, but Dan grabs the magazines and whatever he sees there causes him to talk about his favorite subject on earth, which is what a whore Serena is. Vanessa calls and he lets everybody know he's heading to Brooklyn, but nobody cares.
Then Serena arrives in a flock (An abashment? A misconception? A prolapse.) a prolapse of paparazzi, causing adorable Doorman Vanya and Rufus to stare with identical looks of befuddlement. Dan texts Vanessa to say he can't possibly go to Brooklyn after all, what with photographs existing and being taken willy-nilly, and her tragic boyfriend Scott is like, "But why? Make Dan come here!" But in a way where it seems like he's being supportive and not, you know, stalking Dan.
Rufus runs out to her car and asks her WTF is going on, and she's like, "No idea, please fix." He scatters the prolapse and helps her get into the building, as though they are actual pigs that will kill you when you fall in their pen, or wielding something more invasive than digital cameras. But listen to the shit Gossip Girl has to say about that: "As for Serena van der Woodsen? You left America a star, but after your exploits in Europe? You've come back a supernova. And yet, nothing explodes without a fuse. I wonder what -- or who -- lit yours?" Which is nonsensical, but once you know what she's talking about you sort of wish it were still nonsensical, because what it turns out to be is: gross.
So next morning Rufus informs everybody that he and Serena spent the wee hours talking about various things having to do with her trip and social status. I'm sure she was very patient with him, and I'm sure he only said maybe six or seven really offensive things while giving her unasked-for and irrelevant advice, and of all the things I don't like about this episode, the one thing that I don't like most is that we didn't even get a taste of that bloodbath. Although it sets up a nice undercurrent that I hope continues, where you get to see how much he just honestly likes the kid after all this time, and generally shows her more respect than anybody else in the family, and I assume becomes the father that she's always wanted. We already played it the other way with Bart Bass, and I can't see Rufus enforcing anything, ever, and who better to play opposite her James Spader-like father than his Ducky-like equal? When you pretend that Rufus is just grown-up Ducky, it hurts less.
So Rufus is all about this envelope of money that Lily gave them for "emergencies," and he's proud -- way too proud -- to note that he hasn't "used a penny of it all summer." Um, because they were hanging out at somebody else's house and eating their food, Jenny points out, and Rufus quickly changes the subject to the huge breakfast Lily has had delivered to the house to welcome them back home. Additionally, she has gotten them a table at the Vanderbilt annual charity polo match in Greenwich, which makes nobody happy. Shit, why? Polo is the best because all you can think about is:
"My aunt died of influenza, or so they said. But it's my belief they done the old woman in. Why should she die of influenza, when she come through diphtheria right enough the year before? Fairly blue with it she was, they all thought she was dead. But my father, he kept ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden she bit the bowl right off the spoon. Now what call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? And what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it. And what I say is: them as pinched it done her in."
p>Anyway, Serena does some lying about some things, which relieves Rufus and absolves him of all responsibility, so she runs off to go buy a polo hat -- which she never ends up buying, and I was kind of excited about -- but Dan follows her with a little storm cloud over his head. The children worry, but about what? Magazines, I suppose. This is one of those Serena secrets that you don't ever actually figure out what the secret specifically is, because there actually isn't one, but she feels so strongly about it that she warps the whole world around it until all they care about is the secret, and the reason for that is the plot, which hinges in the last ten seconds on the secret being something entirely different from this non-secret everybody's talking about: "I did body shots in St. Tropez" is the new "I killed someone," because the real secret is "My Daddy Issues are going global."Serena, noticing the heat-seeking missile of secrets pointed right at her, tries to evade D-Hump but to no avail. She should know by this time -- just ask Bart or Chuck, if you can't remember your own experiences -- that once Dan has decided it's his duty to poke and prod and pick at every possible part of your business you might as well just show him the books yourself. But because this secret is a double-secret with a secret twist -- being less a secret than a dual-layered cover story for a much larger secret that threatens, think about it, not only her mother's livelihood but the Rufus/Lily relationship and thus Dan and Jenny's ultimate welfare, not to mention how much a bitch Chuck will be about it -- the math is simply too complex for Serena, and she's snatched up in a split-second like a hare in a trap: "Serena, there was no ashram !"
She admits that there was no ashram, but asks him to stay out of the lies she tells her family, and Dan makes a valid point that A) he is her family and B) she is also lying to him as Dan qua Dan, having written him many letters of colonics and bikram yoga that turned out to have been lifted straight from Gwyneth's newsletter Goop, which is the best joke in the entire episode, because now that Drew Fucking Barrymore's doing a fucking roller derby movie with Ellen Fucking Page and they're kissing in magazines, Gwyneth could actually escape her decade-long onus of being The Worst by simply acting more like Serena and less like Vanessa, but she doesn't have it in her and if she did her weakened arms couldn't pull hard enough to get it out.
So Dan's like, "What's really going on?" and because again, this episode is built on people having conversations that don't make sense so that the end of the episode will blow your mind, she doesn't have a meaningful answer to this meaningless question, and he shows her pictures from "all over the internet" which he happens to have on his phone that depict her doing blowsy slutty things like laughing and drinking beverages fully clothed, and she gets the fuck up out of there as well she should, because without Lily there the entire world is going to revolve around Dan's misplaced and creepy sense of justice, and you have a limited window. Dan is, of course, deeply disappointed in Serena. Both as a sister and a friend, but mostly as a human being.
Thom Browne's my favorite designer but just like your favorite anything sometimes you want to punch him in the neck for doing it wrong. Thus we have Chuck's nautical monkey jacket, which is actually just a collection of military semiotics boiled down to their essential shapes and then arranged like a Klee abstract, which sounds great in theory but ends up looking like Garanimals did a military line for budding young gay sailors. Which actually fits into Chuck's sartorial repertoire quite nicely, so never mind. He's previewing his storyline this season for Nate on the phone: moving out of the Palace, buying a place of his own, giving the company to Lily. So that's every question I had over the summer, answered in three sentences, and I am grateful.
Nate's is a little hairier because he has so many details all the time. We remember he left the Mayoral internship because of his chronic problem with being a cougarbait rentboy, but now apparently he's getting the silent treatment because he wasn't invited to the polo match. So far, I follow. Chuck tells him to call Bree since they're mad anyway, but Nate says he doesn't want to use her to send a message. Which he does, but whatever. So then Chuck tells him sleeping with the enemy is hot ("Why do you think I had the whole Ivanka thing?" he asks, forcing me to picture their Humble Caveman faces bashing at each other in a silent dance of death and absolute supremacy) and Nate once again says he's not a shitstirrer, which means now that he's going to use Bree to start some shit, but the way they get there is genius: Chuck reframes the argument from pettiness to the idea that Nate needs to declare himself as a man and an individual, which is like all he's ever wanted to do. Chuck rivals Blair in the minimum amount of words he needs to use to cause a situation to completely explode.
Serena is terrified by Chuck and Blair's sex games, accusing her of going from "Jane Austen to Anaïs Nin," which is the kind of accusation that you get from people who've not actually read any Anaïs Nin, and accusing her worsely of being under Chuck's spell and doing this stuff just to please him. Blair swears that this was her idea, and when she is rebuffed it's because Serena knows what it's like when people make you think your actions are your own idea more than anybody: D-Hump and A-Rose being two of many, but also Georgie, and Lily, and Blair herself. Who does a good talk, but still Serena -- and you and I, and Blair -- can't figure out if she's telling the truth and this is something she controls. "I even get to choose who to humiliate! Models, tourists, Upper West Siders..."
Serena explains to Blair that the honeymoon is supposed to end. Her voice is very amazingly firm in this whole scene, like, she understands that Blair is close to losing something and she really doesn't want her to, so she has to cross her eyes and force herself to actually exist in the world long enough to explain these things before Blair gets blown away again. "It isn't real. The real part is when you settle down with each other. The three-month milestone." Sweet. Blair pronounces this not a milestone but a gravestone: "Settling down means death. Less sex, more silence. We found a way to avoid that that works for us." She gives a brilliant smile, but it's a bummer.
The only thing worse than being controlled by your actual boyfriend is being controlled by/trying to please your imaginary mind-boyfriend. Either way, you're abstracting away from who you actually are, who is somebody Blair's always had trouble reaching. She's turning Chuck Bass into a movie. "...Sure about that? I mean, if you don't mind me saying so..." Chuck tells Nate to stop playing the Jules & Jim card and move along, and Nate agrees, because of course Nate is a huge Truffaut fan, and he's like, "What if Blair is doing all this creepy shit to please you? And has no idea that she's even doing it? Because that's her entire life?" And separate from the homoerotic orbit they're in all the time, Nate really does know more about Blair's narrative addiction, because while Chuck's role was to play monster, and then prey, and then redeemed, Nate's only ever had to play Nate.
"If you love him, then lock him down. Open relationships only invite chaos!" Blair points out that it's not really an open relationship (and stop getting A-Rose all over it now that he's my brother and Chuck is yours) because they are actually monogamous. "It's just one of our games, like the rest." Serena attacks Blair's vulnerable spot, which is time management: "B, college is about to start. What happens when one day you don't get there in time?" Before Blair can press her and try to make sense of this particular objection, the paparazzi arrive again and S fakely groans, "I still have no idea why they're following me!"
Which is awesome, because it means Blair gets to be distracted by her favorite game, Thinly Veiled Mean Girl Jealousy About Serena, from the actual subject at hand, which is the secret of the paparazzi that we don't know yet, which I'll just tell you is that Serena is working with them. So Serena pretends to be fakely horrified/privately thrilled, while the layer under that is the grimly pragmatic, concrete realist Serena that nobody ever notices because she's so good at being Serena. Blair makes fun of her for being a sucker for the attention, and it's awesome. She grins back over her shoulder at them, and Blair gets to play the stalwart and the appalled witness, which are two of her favorites too.
Vanessa is at the same coffeeshop where she and her tragic boyfriend Scott were stalking Dan earlier, making fun of Dan for having problems like paparazzi and tanning, and he's like, "You got me." He changes the subject back to Vanessa, because you know she gives him about ten minutes of repetitive bullshit along these lines every time he sees her, and by the way, her weave looks like something found clogging Adam Lambert's drain. It looks like a scary monster. There's one part where it looks good -- when she chases Dan outside in a second -- but every other scene it's like a phony pony they need to put down already. Like my notes just say, her HAIR .
Okay, so she hooked up with Nate like one time, in Prague so it doesn't count, and then she came and now she just hangs around this coffeeshop all the time, which is why she's there on at least four occasions in this one episode, since she wouldn't bother coming all the way to Manhattan to hang out in Dan's house like she does in Brooklyn, so that's just... What she does, I guess. She lives under bridges and feeds rats to her hair and hangs out in this coffeeshop with douchey half-Humphries hating the rich and stealing from the poor. I hope she can forget her hobo roots and socially acclimate at NYU when school starts next week. JUST KIDDING! She will never do that.
"I think you guys would really like each other," V says of her tragic boyfriend, repeating the theme of how stupid girls are and only do what boys want even when they think they're doing what they themselves want, because the only reason she wants Dan and Scott to meet is that Scott wants to meet his half-brother Dan. And then, God willing, cut off and cure and tan his skin and make a tailored D-Hump suit and mask out of it, and live out his life as the eldest Humphrey, with none the wiser.
Oh but it gets better because she's been working this shit all summer and still hasn't gotten anywhere ("okay, maybe there's been a little bit of flirting," she says, in response to something that is just chillingly not a question about that), which is amazing because that's exactly how it went down with Dan, she never got anywhere and just kept putting stranger and stranger outfits on herself in an attempt to compete with Serena. And now she's got herself a half-Dan half-Serena boyfriend that won't even kiss her, and that's like literally everything it takes to make Vanessa Abrams happy, because she is justifiably self-hating.
Dan pays for their coffee with one of the many benjies crowding his designer wallet, and Vanessa shits herself entirely. He valiantly tries to make it a joke a few times ("Do you know how hard it is to break one of those things?" and later "Have you seen the stitching?") but there's no humor when Vanessa's in the house. You know this. So he explains way more than he fucking needs to about how it's not actually shameful to have a wallet because it was a gift from Lily, and could she fucking get off his ass for like one second, but no.
"Oh my God, Dan Humphrey's been seduced by wealth. It had to happen. Even Frodo eventually gave in to the power of the Ring." Oh, fuck you, Vanessa. She seriously is the best character in the entire universe because she makes me feel like TV is real. After doing this job for so long I can't just give in and do that anymore very often, but man, Vanessa makes me feel like I'm five years old, honestly wondering why Gargamel has to act like such a dickhead all the time.
"I'm still me. I just have a nicer wallet. And as for your friend, I'd love to meet him." Vanessa laughs, like she believes a word of that, and then compounds the horror: "How about tomorrow? We can do 'Brooklyn things,' like go to the Dumpling Truck and play 'signed or unsigned' on the Promenade."
The other good thing about fantasies and cartoons and things of this nature is that they're not real. I mean, it's fun to think about "What if a wizard hated little blue people," but mostly it's fun because you know little blue people are highly unlikely. What makes Vanessa so violently disturbing is that she actually exists and there are more of her than there are of you. And you just might be one and not even know it. Those are the two really scary parts. Because there's no authenticity out-clause about liking things just because you happen to like them: You can't make hipster exceptions, because that's how it happens. One Brooklyn thing becomes three Brooklyn things, and then you yourself become one large Brooklyn thing, complaining about hipsters, and it's all motherfucking over.
Dan runs off to "do something" for Rufus -- which he honestly thinks of the polo match as being, because he's the exact same D-Hump he's always been and also, nobody in the universe actually enjoys polo -- and V asks if she can walk him to the subway, and he says no, because he's on the 6, just like Jenny from the Block, for whom legitimacy one remembers is "like breathing." Vanessa stands up in, oh, some hotpants painted in some kind of neon Navajo design, and the waitress brings her some sunglasses, and I thought for a second that Vanessa said, "These are my friends!" but in fact of course she says, "These are my friend's," and runs out with her hair finally looking good for one second to see Dan getting into a limousine, and whatever was left of her sense of decency and does a Brooklyn thing of its own, if you know what I mean, right in her Cheerios.
Dear Vanya calls up to alert Rufus to the fact that "the camera people" are going through the Humphrey-van der Bass garbage, and as he wonders about this sudden uptick of interest in Serena, the kids show up and blow her spot, such as it is. Under Rufus's hooded swear they are mumblers and it doesn't take long before they spill the beans, such as they are.
When Chuck gets home, Blair's there like a cocker spaniel, wiggling and suspicious. He tells her he was with Nate, and she giggles at herself. He suggests "a little go-see at a modeling agency downtown," where they can pick out their next victim/fake-threesome, and they test each other carefully. She swallows, he smiles delightfully and once again offers to just stay home. Thinking it's some new kind of trick, she laughs lightly and stalks off to get her purse. They are both disappointed and afraid.
Rufus pores through the pile of magazines that contain all of Serena's misdeeds -- going topless on Valentino's yacht, dancing on tables in Barcelona, body shots with Prince Harry -- and Rufus points out that there's a guy in lots of them that you can't really make out. Not even Dan recognizes him, despite having had numerous experiences with him, but we know from last season that she spent this time abroad with Carter Baizen, who will now appear in the next scene to answer Rufus's question.
Serena flees the paparazzi, realizing things never go her way when she rubs the lamp, and Carter appears out of nowhere, all, "I was in the neighborhood!" Actually, Gossip Girl reported her return and he came looking for her, explaining darkly that she can't avoid "what happened" forever. He grins, but she very pragmatically reaches back and undoes her halter, squealing "Oh, no!" in her best Marilyn voice before darting into the thick of the cameramen, nearly grinning back at him over her shoulder. "Spotted: Serena van der Woodsen, giving Carter Baizen the slip. But what happened between them when TMZ was MIA? Something tells me the truth is just out of focus..."
Wouldn't be GG without old GG talking crazy. Nate calls Chuck, having received a free car, a polo invite, and a note from William Vanderbilt: "Most unfortunate you missed out on the summer. Good thing fall internships begin next week!" Chuck, with Blair on his arm, offers Nate his sincerest condolences on being part of a family, and Nate decides for the fifth time running that his moment has come and he needs to break off from his family once and for all. "And I think I know how I'm gonna do it," he says, and you know this is going to be a plan so stupid even Serena would just cluck and shake her head.
In that very same coffee shop, V is complaining to Scott about how Dan lied about his mode of transportation and also that he was "helping his dad tomorrow," which was true but not as true as Gossip Girl's report that he's attending the Vanderbilt polo match in a Dior suit. Scott pretends he doesn't know what "Dior" means, by virtue of saying he's going to pretend he knows what "Dior" means. Vanessa drags us all back into the snarly mess of her head about God forbid Dan think she's judging him, and Scott points out that she is. He has no idea. "I'm not judging! I get it," Vanessa lies. "If I had a limo that followed me around, I'd take it too," Vanessa lies. "I'm his best friend, and I support him no matter what," Vanessa lies. "Even if he were rich and dressed like Truman Capote," Vanessa lies, and truths. Scott tells her to explain what a great friend she is to Dan, so then he'll understand what a great friend she is. Scott and Vanessa are two creeps in a pod.
"Too bad he's at that polo match with his family," Vanessa grins, and Scott's Lincoln Hawklike demeanor seizes on this info. His whole family, yes, and Nate's family. "And I'm sure Blair and Chuck will be there, if the murder-suicide I predicted hasn't happened yet." HA! Good one, Abrams. Scott tells Vanessa to do what she would obviously do, which is call Rufus and invite herself to the polo match, and bring him along. She laughs as though that's not her entire MO: "You think I should invite myself to a charity polo match?" Really she's laughing because Scott is an amateur, but he's learning.
Model wannabe #1: "Needs a sandwich." Chuck thinks she looks just right, but Blair's not having it. #2: "Adam's apple!" #3: " Catalog! Chuck, none of these girls are even worth humiliating. Looking in the mirror will do that for them." He takes her hands and stares lovingly into her face, begging her to admit she hates this in the most solicitous good-boyfriend way, and she fakes it for a second before admitting that she's sort of over the game. He watches her realize/admit this with just boundless love in his eyes, but still can't let it go without the tiniest little nudge: "Okay. If that's what you want." She asks if that's what he wants, and he says he just wants her to be happy, and I believe him. The next girl is another Serenalike, and there's a flash of attraction between them, and a toothy smile with giant boobs, and Blair grabs him to take him home. At first I thought the Serenalike stuff was either a coincidence or a Chuck-is-weird thing, but it's not, it's a Blair-is-weird thing: Serena's still the only thing that can give and take Blair's happiness away, and she sees her shades and shadows everywhere.
Jenny finds herself ridiculous for being disappointed by the DUMBO loft, when she and Eric go over there to get some stuff. It looks a lot smaller, they agree. Jenny packs with some wonderful body language while they discuss Lily's absence and CeCe's dwindling health, and talk about Rufus's parental performance. Eric points out that his plans for the summer were shot entirely by the CeCe issue, and has had to take charge of "two kids that you didn't raise in a house that you don't own," which is how Rufus always acts, but it's a good point. Jenny calls their life a reality show premise, and Eric says this is compounded by the Serena stuff, which is both a reality show and a Gossip Girl spectacular: "The last time she went off the deep end, it got really messed up." They wonder blondly what really happened over the summer, which means they've let go of the secrets-which-are-not and have moved to the actual Serena/Carter puzzle at the center of it all, of which everybody has just like one piece.
Serena comes into the PRADA living room with Rufus and D-Hump staring her down, and Rufus shows her the magazines, and Dan makes shitty inappropriate jokes as is his wont, and Serena immediately shifts into game face, giving Rufus her most Serena smile: "Rufus, I know I shouldn't have lied, but I was in Europe and I had just graduated, and I got a little carried away. And what happens in summer stays in summer. Right?" He's not sold, but basically because he thinks he's supposed to be acting stern and fatherly until she hangs herself.
"Look, the only reason I didn't tell you is because I thought if I did, you'd think I'd gone off the rails again." Rufus asks honestly if she did, and that care and respect that he has for her really comes through again. It's such an honestly nice note, you guys. It occurs to me that he's always pretty much thought she was great, actually. Even when he treated her like a bad influence it was usually about Lily and not Dan at all. Also: Serena never actually goes off the rails, so it's kind of a given, but she thinks before answering. "No. No, everything I said to you last night was true. I... I'm done." He nods and agrees to forget about it, and then smiles grudgingly. "And in what is perhaps an ironic twist... Due to your current social status, the Polo Society has asked if you will throw in the first ball at the match tomorrow." She agrees, and he runs off to notify them, saying that Lily will be proud.
When Rufus is gone she turns one of her patented Goddammit Humphrey looks on Dan, and he melts immediately, because way to replay the worst part of yesterday, but after shrugging it off Dan goes back to the usual: "There was one guy who was in a lot of those pictures with you who...Who was that?" She admits it was Carter Baizen, and says it got weird, and she took off. Realizing that she has said too much already, she takes that last little bit and twists it into an amazing lie, which is that Carter has become a stalker and is a dangerous person. This is amazing because it is balls-out, but also because Dan bears the scars and blowjob shame of Serena's last stalker, so he's the only person likely to believe it. It's grandiose. She begs Dan to keep Carter away from her at all costs and runs off, and Dan immediately calls Blair so they can join forces and fuck everything up like they always do. Meanwhile, Scott is fingering his birth certificate in a sinister manner at that same fucking coffee shop and talking to his mother about nothing whatsoever.
Lots of hats at the polo, where Jenny is noting that in the last season premiere she went to the VITAMIN WATER WHITE PARTY as Eric's date in a dress she made herself, but now her life is awesome and she has a place card with her name engraved on it. Rufus sweetly offers to protect Serena from the ubiquitous paparazzi, but -- in a lovely summery saffron-orange toga dress, note -- she promises she won't do anything worth publishing, and runs off to find Blair.
Nate and Bree Buckley go blah-blah and then he drags her over to Grandfather, shoving her and the free car keys in William's face like a little prick, and then wandering away after like one second so that Bree is stranded awkwardly in enemy territory. Bree and William stare at each other and then William remembers that he is a grown-ass adult and doesn't need to play Nate's retarded games, and goes back to dealing with his invited guests.
Blair and Chuck sit boredly at a table, pronouncing their terrine bland and juleps weak, and that's all the polo words we know, I guess. Alexandra Richards walks by in a cute grey number, and Blair makes up lies about her that a publicist would make bank on: "Look at her, floating through the party with her perfect pout and flawless figure..." All I see is gums. Of the sort you'd expect at a polo match. But then, I guess a real socialite is a good get for this show, and you gotta keep them happy. She looks enough like Serena, albeit in the same way her inbred Vermont cousin would, that the metaphor stays intact. They talk about how A-Rich would be a good score if they were still playing, and there's some long-distance flirting, and Blair's almost reluctant about how the game's over.
"Everything is so... White," Scott says, and Vanessa goes, "Welcome to my world!" It's Vanessa's world, we all just live in it. And have fun in it, instead of sucking constantly and being unbearable. Scott spots Dan, which surprises V because they only met once, but of course even without the stalker/half-brother aspect, he's sort of noticeable in the Dior suit, being that he looks fucking incredible. Rufus leaves Dan to get a drink at the bar, so Scott sends V and her scary hair over to bother Dan some more, so he can approach Rufus alone.
It takes her picoseconds. "Nice suit," she says. Those are the words that come out of her mouth. Dan, relatably enough, asks if she really needs to go all the way to Connecticut to be a bitch to him when she'd already done such a great job in Brooklyn, and -- admittedly -- just before she can apologize for all that, Blair appears and drags him away to do whatever dumbass thing they're going to do to Carter, leaving Vanessa standing there and becoming more bitter by the second. Perhaps it is a trick of the light or simply Vanessa's lovely and mesmerizing eyes, but I could swear her nasty hair starts growing some snakes. There's a hissing and an undulation. Maybe she'll finally push him so hard he actually figures out how horrible they make each other.
Scott introduces himself to Rufus, but then acts totally spazzy when Rufus tries to shake his hand. I mean, if we knew more of Scott than his creepy eyelashes and spooky lips and ability to be more Vanessa than Vanessa, this would be a monumental moment: Finally meeting the father you've been angling after for more than a year, kissing Dan's literary ass and dating his castoffs. That's heady. But since the Aaron Rose scars are still healing and Scott has a stupid face and crummy parents and that's all we know, it's more interesting because way to out-awkward Rufus Humphrey . "I've always been a fan of your music," Scott says, which whether coincidental or insightful are of course the perfect words to say to Rufus to make him fall forever into love with you. He's probably already rearranging the bedrooms in PRADA MARFA before they've let go of each other's hands.
(But then, who knows what it was like for Scotty? Dead brother, weird parents. We don't know any more about his home life than we do Vanessa's, and this show's always been good about keeping family dynamics in hand, so maybe it's still early days. He could have been kept in a box for all we know, like Profit or Kaspar Hauser. Do you know him? I love feral children because that's what we are. But he's my favorite because... I don't know why. I don't really want to know why, actually. He had a little wooden horse in his hands when he stumbled into town and the only words he knew were "I want to be a rider, like my father." I mean, how does that happen?)
Blair approaches Carter, whose last visit to the show was when he was Valmonting all over her liaisons and intentions, and he's none too happy to see her. Especially when she informs him that the polo invite was totally a trick so that he could be served with a restraining order. Specifically, to stay a hundred feet away from Blair Waldorf, who will be attaching herself to Serena's side until his threat is dealt with. Dan and Blair are very cute noting his distance from them, and as B's calling for security, Serena comes floating up all, "Hey guys!" Her realization that Dan and Blair are bullying Carter because of her lie is delightful. She's just like, "What? Oh, right. The stalking. My bad."
Carter's offended about the stalking lie, and pulls a classic GG move: "You wanna tell them the truth, or should I?" Whenever anybody says that on this show, you get the fuck out of there. Leave your shit and get out . They talk about "the truth" and what it is, and Carter intones spookily, "Sooner or later, you're gonna be alone, with no one taking your picture. What will you do then?" Unrealistically cryptic! It's unrealipstic!
Nacho, a real life polo player, brings Serena the news that the first chukker is about to begin, and she bounces without so much as a fare-the-well, while ninja hobbit Carter melts into the night. It all happens way fast. Blair and Dan look at each other starved for information, while in the tents A-Rich and Chuck hit on each other, and elsewhere Scott and Rufus do the same thing. I don't recap conversations where people say "bootleg" or "vinyl," but basically Rufus tries to relate to Scott as his fan-slash-Vanessa's BF, and Scott just sort of stares at him longingly. Hey Scott, if you really want attention from your estranged father you should just flash your tits like that stripper you call a sister.
...Who, saffron toga flapping gorgeously in the last of the summer light, has just jumped onto a polo horse like Joan of Arc and gone galloping into the forest. You know I love Serena, especially when she does shit like this, but I have to say of all the inventively bizarre solutions Serena has come up with over the years, this is by far the best. That's a whole letter grade just by itself. Everybody stares at how awesome she is, and she does a lap for the paps before disappearing, Carter's stolen horse hot on her heels. That shit makes me feel sorry I hated this episode so much. That's just brazen. Flagrant.
Meanwhile, Bree Buckley's pointy face and Nate Archibald's confusing face are having a face-off because of how he just totally fucked her over and sprung a whole minefield on her for no reason, and he tries to explain it's because she's so awesome and rebellious just like him, but he's no Chuck and she's no Nate, so she isn't fooled. Instead, she tells him the longest story he or anyone has ever heard, and since he forgets it while it's happening I guess I should record it here: She was totally rebellious and crummy to her family like Nate is being, but then she missed her cousin's tragic wedding where she was left at the altar, and so now she's back here wearing a tiny crucifix and feeling guilty about life.
Substitute "gay brother's suicide attempt" for "cousin's wedding nightmare," though, right? That's pretty interesting. Anyway, Nate patiently waits for Bree to shut up, and then changes his tune immediately and kisses her in a barn and says that he wasn't really using her, because he totally likes her, because after secretly dating every girl on this show at some point, not to mention cougars and the whole thing with Chuck, he's used to the down-low.
Carter, ahorseback, finds Serena posing beautifully and pointlessly, as one would have imagined, in a sun-dappled glade. She informs him that he is not her boyfriend, and he says he's the keeper of her secrets, and he calls her an attention whore for flashing boobs and stealing horses, and she tells him she gets enough attention anyway. "Yeah, plenty from everyone except the one you want it from," he says, like a Jenny Jones audience member trying to get her off the pole, and Serena is sad, and starts crying and saying that her father totally wanted to see her all the times she and Carter tracked him across the entire world, but it was just weird coincidences that they didn't manage to connect to him.
Theory: Serena's father is Carmen Sandiego.
Carter tells her that is crazy and that her dad just can't handle anything, least of all her, and by the way fuck him, because Serena is awesome and her dad is just stupid. But meanwhile, Carter is not stupid because he totally likes Serena and would have spent the whole summer with her if she'd let him. Which is the magical key to girls with sudden cardboard Daddy Issues, apparently, because she grabs his hobbit face and goes to town on him, and then they do it.
Somehow this storyline was a lot less gross when it was Blair puking up pies everywhere.
William menaces Bree and Nate into accepting the free car so they can get away from the polo match without the press catching her being such a traitor, and goes on and on about how Nate is his own man and William just wants him to be happy. Which I'd be happy to believe, but is now clearly a lie; either way he talks too fast for Nate to win, so they take the car, and then William pulls out his phone and calls poor old Trip and woggles his eyebrows about how they're going to use this little R+J situation to their political advantage. Man, these people. The one time Nate's got it together enough to actively avoid accidentally becoming a prostitute, people just go there anyway.
Blair looks around for Chuck for awhile, but one of the staff tells her that he left, and after some prodding nervously admits that a blonde -- "Tall, stunning and every man's fantasy," quoth Crazypants Waldorf -- left around the same time. Gossip Girl revels in her pain and Blair's like, "It is finally happening, just like Serena told me it would six hours ago."
Vanessa just goes ahead and brings the whole fight to Dan, in such a hysterical and hilariously OTT way that it's sort of endearing. He literally does not take part in the fight she has for them: "I know stuff's going on with your family, so I'm just gonna go. Honestly, right now I'm not sure [ why I came ]. Maybe people just change. Maybe it's okay if we grow apart. You're at a polo match in a $3,000 suit. And your name's in the program. And after I take a bus across the state line to apologize, you ditch me for Blair Waldorf and totally disappear." Seriously, have this fight on your own, lady. He just sort of stammers in horror at how gross she's being, until she runs out of steam.
Then he's like, "Um: Borrowed suit, from CeCe, who also gave Jenny a dress if you want to shit on her life for a change, and I'm not hanging out with Blair, we're protecting my sister/friend Serena from shit so terrible I don't know what it is, and Lily's mother is very sick, Rufus is struggling to keep it together, and his entire family is in total upheaval and nobody knows where anybody is going to live or what's going to happen when college starts, and all of these people are nuts on a good day, and you got the rapist who may or may not be a part of the family acting like a fucking superspy with the craziest one of us all, and none of this concerns you, and you have GOT to quit with the Rich People Suck thing for like five fucking minutes, Little Miss We Hooked Up In Prague."
Which is remarkably like every imaginary fight we ever had with Dan in the first season, if you think about it. So that's nice. Not to mention the coolest bunch of words Dan's ever said at once, and I'm not just saying that because Vanessa is working every single nerve. She splutters and goes to her go-to, which is the wishy-washy gross "Just as long as you be yourself," which is where he always went when people called him on his Rich People Suck thing too. She points out that he's not actually rich, which just makes it more ironic and stupid, and then tells him she wants Old Dan to show up at NYU, because she actually liked that guy. SAME GUY, IDIOT. Do you hate poor people yet?
Carter laughs murderously as he picks up his clothes in the glade, says hey to the official-looking people collecting the horses, and wanders away to find Serena. Meanwhile, Blair goes shoving into Chuck's apartment, where he's lying on the bed reading a magazine in a smoking jacket and girly slippers, as one does, and goes impressively nuts -- checking the closet and shit -- before he laughs at her and explains that he left because he had a headache, and left her a bunch of messages that she didn't get because she was too busy acting bizarre.
Blair sighs and feels dumb and happy, and asks him if the games are maybe necessary after all. She worries about being boring, and he promises her that they'll never be that. She points out that He's Chuck Bass, and he gets that wise loving smile again and says, "I'm not Chuck Bass without you." He pulls her down to sit with him on the bed, and she admits that running there from Connecticut was pretty exciting, and he grins and kisses her hand. She asks where Alexandra lives, and he asks one more time to stay home.
Vanessa, having vented her spleen on both sides of at least two bridges, laments a shitty night, but Scott disagrees because he had a great time. "I'm sorry I brought you. The Humphreys are going through a lot, and I don't even know if Dan and I are even still friends..." Good growth, Abrams. Believable, if sudden, but then she did the same jump like three times in this episode all along. Maybe the key to Vanessa is figuring out that she's a hothead like Blair, and just gets in over her head in the moment?
It's hard to figure out, because she's so viciously earnest about everything that you assume she's also being a bitch on purpose, but this episode especially there's a running thing where she's like, "Wait, I just totally went nuts, fuck," which actually also happened with Jenny and that Nate letter, and her tears over that affair were very real and very sympathetic and made me respect her a lot more. I guess we've just not seen her do this enough, or the dots haven't been connected enough, so that she just seems like two different flip-flopping insane people, but if you look at it that way she's just basically normal and kind of lovable. I mean, if you made a book of all the mean drunk texts I've sent boys in the last year alone it would blow up in your hands like Shark Week. Doesn't mean you feel that way the next day, or even necessarily when you're saying it. You know?
Alternate and truly dreadful theory: I am exactly the same kind of asshole as Vanessa Abrams, which is why I hate her.
Scott points out that the Humphrey Woodsens are basically good people, with complicated lives, and she agrees. "And you and Dan have been friends for so long, maybe you shouldn't write that off because of one argument." Like she was actually going to, dude. They do some close-talking about nothing, and then she kisses him and notifies him, in a very Vanessa way, that she has made the first move. Then they kiss more. This is basically incest. If Dan and Serena were incest, this is like double-cest, plus the even worse identity secrets and total loss of dignity that it's going to represent once Vanessa finds out how it all went down. Awesome.
"Growing up means one thing: Independence." Rufus brings the kids through the prolapse of paparazzi outside. "We all want it..." Nate kisses Bree in the free car and the light turns green just like on West Egg: "Sometimes we use other people to try to get it for ourselves." Blair sits in Chuck's dining room, pretending to be a dissatisfied customer while he stands there looking hot and smarmy in a dotted bowtie, and then they make out. "Sometimes we find it in each other..."
S sits in the car before going upstairs, and leaves the following voicemail for Carmen Sandiego: "Hey, it's Serena again. I don't know if you're getting these messages or if you even check this number, but I just want you to know that I'm not gonna stop trying to get your attention. I'm gonna do whatever it takes, for however long. Bye." Ugh, that phrasing is just too much. I really hope this plot takes an unexpected corner next week, because the way it's written here, it distorts Serena's persona and backstory in a really gross, retroactive way. Having an absent father doesn't make you gay, or a stripper. (If you were already going to be one of those things, sure: It helps.) But this isn't just about sex and being sexy -- it's not just about "what/whom" Gossip Girl said lit the "fuse" of Serena's "exploding" "supernova" -- it's also about celebrity, the need for celebrity, and it's about the It Girl thing that Serena's always about. And in this instance they all seem painted with the same broad brush.
But then again, this single-minded -- that word "grim" again -- the grim realism with which she's approaching this task, using what she's got, every asset from her tits to her family, determined to flush him out, that's very Serena. This show is about surveillance, and particularly Serena's relationship with surveillance. When they took her photo, she kept saying, it takes away a little bit of her soul. Until she realized, the day she bought that pregnancy test for Blair -- no, before, when Blair was a bookcase -- and explained this part of the world to her, that yourself is the one thing you never run out of. That, to quote Eliza again, the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.
And you know, that's really when she started using the culture for herself. She's used GG and the tabs against Bart, she's used it against Rufus and Lily, she's even used it against Blair; she's been victimized by it more than any of them, but that stopped a long time ago. She kissed Aaron Rose in Times Square, ten stories tall, jumping from muse to goddess and not for the first time. And then Graduation, when she called GG's bluff sixteen times in an episode, bringing the world crashing down around her. So maybe it's just the wording, coincidentally: Maybe this is the strongest, smartest choice Serena could have made, and the lies are just about protecting Dan and Lily from how far she's willing to go. Maybe the cameras are her hounds now.
"Sometimes our independence comes at the cost of something else," GG notes, while Dan drinks alone in the loft and thinks about his identity and Brooklyn things, and Rufus hands over his proudly unspent Kept Man Emergency Fund to the coalition of paparazzi: "And that cost can be high." Jenny assures him that this will keep Serena out of the press, although the guy says there's one photographer they haven't found... With whom Serena is meeting at a bar, urging him to run the pictures on every continent.
"Because more often than not, in order to gain our independence we have to fight."
The girl on the horse is lovely in motion, cinematic and luxurious. Her body leans forward into the future, sharp eyes scanning the horizon. Her gaze lies far beyond the lens, desperate for something; her mouth gapes, without a smile. She will ride forever.
"Never give up. Never surrender."
XOXO.