The Ex Files
Updated 2008-09-23 08:40:07
Over the usual NYC shots and scenes, the dulcet tones of Gossip Girl wake us to a new nightmare: "Welcome to the first day of senior year and the onset of a new social dynasty. The big question is, with Serena single and on top of the world, will Constance become the house of van der Woodsen?" OMG yes. Over a breakfast of a thousand room service platters, Serena's laughing about Lily's success in getting Bart Bass to wear flip-flops on their honeymoon. Lily (!) admits that it was in fact adorable: "Every time we'd go for a walk on the beach I'd catch him staring down at his feet." Okay, that's pretty cute. I'm so glad Bart's not a cardboard cutout. As yet another plate appears on the table, Eric wonders if they're expecting more people -- like the entire defensive line of a football team, for example. Lily laughs at herself and explains that her version of motherhood involves over-ordering room service on the first day of school. Lily's parenting is like Vanessa's social skills: the spoils of homeschooling.
Serena changes the subject from her mother's painful lack of parenting skills to her late-night return, bemoaning the fact that she didn't immediately wake Serena on her return. "I feel cheated!" Chuck appears -- and I guess the good-boy hair is here to stay, which is fantastic -- and notes that whenever he does it, she feels violated. He turns to welcome Lily home, and Serena interrupts to tell him that if he dares call Lily "mom," she's going to kill him when next he sleeps. I bet that would make you feel super violated.
"Decaf, Serena. I was going to say 'Mrs. Bass.'" Lily thanks him and explains that Bart's in Beijing, but sends his best. "As he has done since kindergarten," Chuck emotes. Serena, who could give less of a fuck about Chuck's drama, or anybody's really, physically shoves him out of the way -- albeit lovingly -- and tries to get her mom back on track with the romantic details of her honeymoon. Which are not only none of Serena's beeswax, but also not something she should be asking her mother about. It soon becomes clear, however, that she's grasping at straws: "I could stay home, and then we could go to lunch together..."
Lily's flummoxed at this offer, given that it's the first day of school, but Chuck explains deftly about S's breakup with Dan: "Tragic, if not entirely unprecedented." Heh. Serena looks down at her plate, remembering to be sad about it, and Chuck congratulates his sister on her freedom: "Not without an upside: Humphrey was holding you back. You're a born queen!" He pats her wrist fraternally: "This is your year to rule. Why fight it?" Serena's not interested, she says, because being queen is Blair's whole thing, but what she means is that she's never had to work for a damn thing in her life and she's not interested in starting now.
"Plus, if she needs a eunuch, she knows where to look," Serena says, which if this show were a mystery story -- which it kind of is, especially this week -- would be a whole clue. Chuck is impotent because he's in love with Blair, which is two things he's not allowed to be. The only person who knows about both of these things is Serena. The reason that he can't have Blair is because she's in Princess Mode at home and Queen Mode at school, which means all the curious holes in her heart are being filled by the things that make her self-sufficient -- which means that she's winning on both the social and personal fronts, not to mention there's no chance of him getting her back while she's whole. And the only person who can take away at least one of these things is Serena. So nobody has even eaten breakfast yet, and Chuck's already appointed himself Chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect Serena van der Woodsen for Queen Bee:
"You may feel differently when the trumpets call," he tells the Once & Future Queen, and points at Eric, who [ joke redacted; too easy ]. "Grab the OJ. There's champagne in the limo." Lily stares and makes a hilarious sound at Eric, who swears he's kidding, then revises that statement as he scrambles to follow: "I think." Serena giggles, because she loves her brothers and the way they have created this unshakeable alliance as much as we do.
"Well, so you broke up. I didn't even know you two were back together..." Serena doesn't bother explaining how they never really broke up or got together, and yet managed to do both about a trillion times, and worries that seeing him every day will be hard. Rock-hard cheekbones and ass included, I still find him difficult to deal with even once a week, Serena. We feel you. Lily offers that it's easier every day, and she should know, because she spent four months thinking about Rufus Humphrey and by the end of it can only manage a half-hearted attempt at stalking him.
Speaking of, Rufus is trying his even-worse-version of parenting on Dan, telling him that "of course" it will be fine. "I mean, we broke up amicably. No one cheated. No one screamed," Dan says. All in good time, Lonelyboy. (Also: you cheated. That was you that did that.) Rufus and Dan, because they aren't people and don't know any, attempt to work up a half-humorous but mostly sincere rubric for custody of the school: "Like she gets the courtyard Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and I get supervised visits with the library every other weekend..." That's some Humphrey humor at its best, right there. Of course, what Rufus and his bitch wife know about custody or marriage wouldn't fill one of Rufus or Dan's cute little dimples, so ...Rufus offers some wisdom he heard on Lovelines or, knowing Humphrey men, Oprah . "You know, be honest with where you're both at. Just do that, okay?" I'm not saying it's bad advice, but I think better advice at this point in the game would be to walk before you run, because as any Upper East Sider can tell you, you have to be honest with yourself before you can be honest with anybody else -- which hardly anybody on this show has accomplished anyway -- or else you're just using them as a sounding board for your own propaganda, which is all Dan and Serena ever do to each other anyway. Mainly about what good people they are.
Rufus additionally reminds Dan that "deflection through sarcasm," i.e., "being a douchetard," is something else he can stow for awhile. Or forever. Dan "deflects" the subject to Rufus's booty call Claire, whose high heels on the concrete floor of their tiny, tiny loft this morning were like a clarion call for someone as judgmental as Dan. Rufus gives him a look and Dan promises not to be an asshole, again, for like the fifth time in this conversation. Jenny comes running out and, fearing vestigial Parent Trap blowback from the delusional Younger Humphrey, Rufus tells Dan to keep quiet about his late-night activities. Jenny, as usual, could not be less interested in their made-up lame-o drama and secrets, and simply asks to be let off school. OMG they should totally let Vanessa home-school her! They could set up a whole schoolroom in the Bedford Gallery, and Vanessa could get one of Jenny's dress forms and attach a bunch of tiny bells to it and teach Jenny Advanced Pickpocketry, combining Jenny's love of stealing with Vanessa's love of invading personal space!
"The first day of school is Draft Day, Blair and her merry band of psychos are gonna be on a tear. They categorize girls into two groups: Projects and Victims. Girls with the potential to become little mini-Blairites become Projects, and total losers -- and the girls who have the potential to threaten social order -- become Victims." Ah. See, this is why you can't keep a Humphrey down: it's not that Jenny sucks and is borderline retarded , it's because she's a fuckin' rebel! She's the Abbie Hoffman of the Upper East Side and simply refuses to let "the man" keep her "down," which is ever so threatening to the "social order" of the "upper class" puppetmasters. She don't need no education, Blairites! She's her own woman! "I was a Project last year, and we all know how that turned out..." She realizes Dan and Rufus are confused/don't care, and leaves, having pre-assigned herself "Victim." This morning, and every morning of her life so far.
Alone, the Humphrey Men immediately drop the half-assed act of understanding what she's talking about and reconfirm with each other that female human beings, with their primitive rituals, are nonsensical and beyond understanding, so why try? As long as they don't have those damned "thoughts" or "feelings" while they're giving you the blowjobs you hope someday to receive, let 'em do whatever they want!
Nelly Yuki is in charge of the binders; the rest of the Plastics surround them with mean, hungry faces, staring down. Blair's sitting in the spotlight on the steps, going through the files one by one while the juniors stare up at her in stark terror. "Melissa Murphy, junior. Let's see here. AP scores good... decent charity work... Young Women of the American Ballet Theater... season passes to the Knicks?" Melissa's dad is the team doctor, good, but she summers in... "The Adirondacks?" Blair shudders and makes a face, and even the Plastics are struck by the sudden chill in the air. "We'll be in touch." Blair is wearing a cape, with a little black velvet twist at the throat, and looks more than ever like the headmistress of a shady Home for Victorian Waifs where they beat you with sticks for taking off your clothes to bathe, and sell you to a fat man when you turn fifteen. Tell me you don't think that's an ideal job for Blair Waldorf.
Eric and Chuck arrive, discussing how Chuck's using Blair's system to screen his dates. (With I'm guessing a few modifications, given the fact that Chuck is blind to the fact that "Projects" and "Victims" are two separate categories and not just one big pile.) "Think of it as an early application process. So many slots on the Chuck Bass social calendar, it'll save me a ton of time." At least I think he said "slots." Eric remarks that this all seems a bit "impersonal," which Chuck takes as a compliment.
"Are those last season's Tory Burch flats?" asks Blair, and the girl looks down at her stupid shoes, shivering. "I... Got them on sale?" Blair's expression, while not moving in any way, somehow becomes totally terrifying. It is one of the greatest parts of this or any other episode. The little girl runs off crying, as Blair makes either one very eloquent face or several at once, because now that poor girl will never be able to sell her stupid shoes on consignment, being that they are chock full of urine.
S comes around a corner and sees Dan "studying" in the library, and is struck still for a moment before turning around and fleeing, talking to herself merrily all the way. "What is wrong with me? Agh! " Not since her mother's wedding has Serena's yellow-and-black resemblance to Charlie Brown been so clear. That was almost exactly four months ago.
Some generic-looking blonde girl with a thousand pink bows in her hair explains, as though it's not in her file, that her brother is a lacrosse player at Dalton. Needless to say Penelope, who gots the Black Snake Moan as usual, immediately must contain herself lest she start masturbating right there on the front steps . Blair invites boring blonde girl to lunch "at one sharp," and drops her folder on the totally tiny Projects pile. "Every year the Projects pile shrinks, while the Victims pile..." B can't even finish the sentence. Penelope and Isabel have a passably funny, but not Kati/Iz funny, exchange about how the voucher system is to blame, like the government doesn't even care about the Projects pile.
Chuck appears and hands over the folder he and Eric were discussing a moment ago: "Last minute transfer. I thought you should be up-to-date." Blair assures him "dates" are not her problem this year, because she and the Lord of Beaton are tighter than ever after the blackout. This whole scene is so weakly written that I don't even care about any of it except to note that she drops Chuck's folder on the "yes" pile without even looking at it, before running off to find S. I don't know if that means anything or if I just imagined it or what, but there you go.
Nate runs all over the place, without perspiring as usual, and finally gets Vanessa to stop roving Williamsburg looking for food in trash cans or clothing in trash cans or whatever it is that she does when not actively fucking everything up for everybody. Needless to say, where the rest of us have little birds that dress us, she has tiny little angry clowns from the '80s, with their sick little New Wave senses of sartorial humor. She's totally rude to him, but in a completely different way from the way she's always rude to everybody . Maybe she's been homeschooling herself in that too. She blows him off a couple times, using all those classic Archibald "I've been busy" excuses he used to throw her when the shoe was on the other foot and, you know, not being used as a goddamn earring in one of her horrible costumes.
Nate, for once not content to float dimly through a storyline believing whatever he's told and fucking people for money, puts it together all aggressively and shit. For just one second he shines like Kate Jackson: "No, wait. Just hold on for a second. You crash the party and you tell me to break it off with Catherine, and then you pull a 180 and you tell me to stay with her, and then you just bolt." You go, Sabrina! And then he just kinda loses it: "I mean, did I do something, or..." (Wait for it.) "What happened?" HA! I don't know if that would be as genius if it weren't like the sequel to "She gave me money!" but I think I would love it just the same. Next time I'm in a tight spot, I'm gonna totally bluff it out just like that: "What is happening? " (Joe R and I were talking this week about how awesome it would be if, just once, the 20/20 Sex Predator just pretended to be sleepwalking. "Chris Hansen, don't wake me up! I might be startled to death! And drop these wine coolers and rubbers I sleep-bought!")
Anyway, V's not even judging him, just trying to get away from him, because she's all consumed with the drama of knowing a secret and the martyriffic self-sacrifice of keeping that secret and she knows if she acts just sketchy enough , he'll notice and ask what's wrong, and force her to admit that she is giving up all she really wants in this life in order to save him, and then he'll make out with her. This plan, while realistic in a high-school fashion and particularly in a Brooklyn-Humphrey-Abrams way, has one weak link, which is: Nathaniel Archibald. Whom, even if he wasn't ... um, let's see how we can... Okay. Whom -- even if he didn't have many wonderful qualities besides intelligence, or what you might call "book smarts," or "street smarts," or... "smarts" -- bears the distinction of being completely surrounded by sketchy-ass people all the time. It's not possible to act squirrely enough to get his attention, because he spends most of his time with Chuck "Konnichiwa" Bass, who spends each day pioneering new ways to act bizarre and squirrely. So once again the world conspires to let Vanessa Abrams down, which in turn makes me want to throw my arms around it. "So that's it? I mean, we're not even friends now?" Vanessa says the truest thing she has ever said in her whole miserable fake life: "We were never really friends, Nate."
Dan hides behind Jenny's gorgeous hardwood Constance Billard locker. Those get major play in this episode; have we seen those before? I want to marry them in a civil ceremony. Because "hiding," in this case, means "standing awkwardly near while slouching and darting one's eyes from side to side," Jenny points out that he'd be the worst P.I. ever. Worst P.I., yes. Best ex-boyfriend ever? Probably. I know that seeing him lurking around in plain sight and using that "hide behind the ficus that my sister is becoming" technique would soothe a good deal of hurt feelings instantly.
When Dan starts talking about his "fear" of being "caught off guard" and his "surprise" that he hasn't run into her yet, Jenny must inject a little reality into the proceedings: "Yeah. Especially because you're ... in the Girls' hallway. Looking for her." He laughs, apparently not realizing that once again even the brain-damaged can see through his BS, and she warns him to be nice to Serena when he does run into her, as he has proven he is desperate to do. Because after all this is harder on her: all he has to do is be Dan Humphrey -- which is like having a bad haircut, because you can't see it even though everybody else is suffering -- while she has to live with the eternal shame of having dated him multiple times.
Jenny spots the Plastics coming, and immediately flails around as much as possible so that they will come up and stab her or whatever and get it over with, but they're too busy listening to Terry Gross on their iPods and don't even look at her. Neither Victim nor Project, Jenny feels more "individual" than ever! And it turns out she, like her brother, totally hates it! Despite their protestations to the contrary, they are Lonelypeople ! Dan "comforts" the newly inducted Lonelysister: "Welcome to my world. It's not so bad, once you get used to birds flying into your head, and automatic doors never opening." Jenny laughs, because for once "weird" and "funny" actually intersected for him, and he deserves to be encouraged. "I guess it's better to be ignored than tortured," Jenny says shakily, knowing as she says it that this is only the defense of losers and ugly girls. Dan leaves her to stand there terrified and heads over to St. Jude's, since it's getting late in the AM (meanwhile Nate is coming from Williamsburg, people) and there was no S spotted.
Dan immediately knocks into like six people, but for once it's not because he's painfully self-absorbed: it reaches back to his last line of invisibility dialogue, plus forward into the future of this episode, plus is a lie: the last person he knocks over while blundering through the halls is a HORRIBLE DORKY MONSTER! named Amanda Lasher, who has the squeaking whining baby voice of a HORRIBLE MONSTER! crossed with the weak personality and round moon-pie face/choppy bangs of a self-proclaimed literary genius. Props to casting on this one, because she's simultaneously so off-putting you want her off the screen immediately, and because you know on sight that she is the suspiciously perfect girl of all time for Dan. Why, her Torchwood fan fiction alone would make you cry, just you wait until you see those pictures of her dressed up as Sailor Effing Moon, her opinions about Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë are both erudite and refreshingly original, and her erotic poetry -- while confused about the basics, because she's a virgin and lies to herself and her diary that this is a choice she has consciously made -- is quite full of vocabulary . And yearning!
Okay so Blair's wearing the cape, the pilgrim funeral ribbon at her neck, and a bejeweled silver headband topping an entire countryside town we'll call Pleatsville. She looks like PTSD Queen Victoria wrapped in a William Carlos Williams poem about Nantucket. Meanwhile, Serena is perverting her school uniform thusly: a low-cut t-shirt that's about as thick as gas station tissue paper, a tiny white thin shell over that, the idea of a skirt from a dream that a skirt once had, a skinny black tie knotted betwixt and slightly below the nexus of her décolletage, and a long sheer scarf or something, with about fifteen necklaces of varying length; all of which combines to somehow suggest nudity, like, you keep looking for nipple the whole time. They both look totally hot, and completely insane.
"I just hid there! How pathetic is that? ...Don't answer that." Blair tells her the breakup is the easy part, it's "having to see them date someone else that's hard." She points out that this is the reason that she rubs the Lord in Chuck's face all the time, which Serena more correctly describes as "a twisted version of foreplay," and not even Blair's capability for self-deception is equal to the task of not giggling about that. "Ignoring you," she says. Man, I hope she doesn't break up with both Serena and Marcus at the same time, because she'll be like Little Red Riding Hood at that point, surrounded by Kryptonite with Chuck all coming at her with his dick out and magic sex lasers coming out of his eyes and those limp-wristed Nosferatu claws extended... What am I saying?! That's exactly what I want .
Dan name-drops Jay McInerney, having spotted his new novel among the things he's just jostled out of Amanda's arms, but leaves out the part where his dickless self earned said novelist's eternal disdain. "The point is, whoever dates first wins. And with your ex being Dan Humphrey, you win by default," says Blair, and S kinda laughs at that, as they come closer and closer to seeing this creepy little tableau. Gossip Girl starts licking her chops! "Looks like Humphrey defied our great expectations, and Waldorf's Rules Of Order . Daring to date before Serena?" S and B stare at each other; Blair gets a little nervous. "It's only a matter of time before it's off with his head... Or hers." Serena smiles ruefully, because she knows as well as we do that this won't end without all the aforementioned heads rolling, and probably a few more. Queens always know.
Amanda's file, Nelly Yuki explains, is a bit "sketchy," since she's a sudden transfer. "Her father's with the UN, she's traveled the world, she won the short fiction award at her last school..." Serena tells B to drop the reconnaissance but B isn't hearing it: "S, this girl is Dan with boobs!" The Plastics giggle, sensing blood in the water. "Do you really want to see them read together all year?" HA! She tells Nelly Yuki to move Amanda to the front of the line, and S shakes her head. "Look, I appreciate it, but you're making way too big a deal out of this. So he was talking to someone. So what? It doesn't mean anything..." She swears she's fine, and leaves; Penelope notes that this is a lie and B hands the file over: "Call her a Person Of Interest."
Vanessa does coffee-type things at the Bedford, and spots Catherine entering in a lovely green cougar dress. "What a lovely little gallery," Catherine says, dripping with venom; Vanessa is at best unfriendly in response. "I know Nate paid you a visit this morning, and I just wanted to thank you. Show my appreciation for respecting our agreement?" V replies, holding her own, that Catherine's best option is to gratefully make like a tree and get the fuck out. Instead, Catherine hands her an envelope: "Open it and see..." V does, and sees a check for five thousand American; she looks up to bitch at Catherine about her total lack of morals or whatever, but Catherine has vanished into the mist like a vampire. Vanessa stares around, totally grossed out, and stupidly doesn't even consider spending the cash because she's from Brooklyn, home of superiority and causing trouble for normal people all the time.
S and Lonelyboy enter the courtyard from opposite sides and act awkward and ironic for about a million years. Dan admits that he was nervous about seeing her at school, and Serena likes that. Chuck slithers in (from the Constance side, because time + space + Gossip Girl ) and watches them be weird for a bit before Dan finally asks if they (he) can drop all the weirdness and fast-forward to the part where they're friends. Which is fair, considering last week it was Serena who wanted to fast-forward past the weirdness to the part where they were boning. She invites him to have lunch, and he stammers a bit before Amanda appears and Serena is stricken.
Chuck's loving it, of course, but it makes me a little uncomfortable to see Serena van der Woodsen wrong-footed. She babbles -- and I mean literally, like babbles , like to the point where even that skimpy thread of logic that links up Dan's babbles isn't even implicit in the babbling -- and wanders away feeling and seeming awfully stupid. The awful girl stares at her and then turns to Dan; Serena leans her head against the doorpost near Chuck, groaning wordlessly. He points out the irony of Dan moving on first, and says they look "very sweet" together, and rubs it in about the lunch plans. Serena rolls her eyes and takes off; Chuck snaps their chatter for GG and instantly everybody gets a blast with the headline "SERENA WHO?" Blair snaps at a Plastic: "Class schedule. New girl. Now."
Rufus is playing with his phone when Lily half-enters the gallery, watches him for a second, gets ahold of herself and tiptoes away ... but not fast enough. "Lily? What are you doing... I had no idea you were here! How was the trip? How's... Bart?" RUN, LILY! DO NOT GIVE HIM THE UPPER HAND! HE IS A HUMPHREY! "Good. Um, he's still in Beijing. On business, you know." Rufus rocks ever-so-slightly back on his heels, taking full advantage: "So... What brings you down here, Lily?" She mumbles weirdly about how she wanted to say hello, and he's like, "Um, I was just leaving." She's like, "Point taken. Later." But not so fast, Bass. "No, I just... Repo Man is playing at the Sunshine. You know how I love my Harry Dean Stanton." God, he's just unbearably hip, isn't he. Tell me that part about The Sopranos again?
They laugh about how Rufus is playing hooky, and Lily says she won't tell if he takes her with him, and they jaunt down Memory Ln. about how they just coincidentally happen to have the same amount of history, and romantic funny stories full of yearning for Ponyboy-type golden memories w/r/t to this particular movie and actor, as they do with everything on this entire earth . Color me shocked. Fifty years ago when they were young, she realized not even love could make that movie bearable -- as everybody with a boyfriend has done at some point in their lives -- and walked out, taking his soda with her. Boring story short, they go see Repo Man again so that Lily can do what she does best, which is pretend that the men in her life are interesting.
The Plastics surround Amanda like a living flood of Agnès B. "Hi, my name's Blair. You're new." Amanda starts to introduce herself, but of course B cuts her off immediately. "-- Oh, that's not important. We'd like to invite you to lunch." Amanda starts to explain that that's "sweet," but she has plans with Lonelyboy, and Iz cuts her off. "-- We know. Dan Humphrey. Bad idea." Penelope and Blair explains that doing such would be hazardous to her health: "Social, emotional... Even physical," Blair says, dropping her hockey stick on Amanda's stupid foot. "Besides, boyfriends are so much less reliable than girlfriends." Iz nods; that blonde girl with the brother from this morning's briefing is now a Plastic, of course. "We look out for each other. What do you say?" S walks up as the full-court press starts looking like werewolves, and pulls B out for a sidebar.
" Blair. What's going on?" Blair explains that Amanda will be joining them for lunch, and against S's protests, drops the concept of how Lonelyboy was planning lunch: "Lunch? As in the meal before dating?" Serena admits that she doesn't want to see Dan go down that path less than a week after their breakup, but only with her sad eyes. B's not wrong, but also: live it out! This girl sucks! Dan was bringing you down! Water finds its own level! Point and laugh and watch them destroy each other! (Did you know Agnès B.'s original name was "Agnès Troublé"? Upset Lamb! That is BANANAS. I would kill for a name that cool, I wonder what she was thinking. The things we do to ourselves.) Anyway, B takes Serena's sadness for silent complicity, which is what it is, and takes off, ordering Amanda sweetly to retrieve her stick from where B "seemed to have dropped it." The other Plastics push past the roadkill of her as she picks up the stick, and then Amanda and Serena do an awkward invisibility tango.
The Butler of Beaton looks down at Vanessa as though she is something that came out of the drain. Close enough. Vanessa asks to leave the envelope for her, and while the Butler wonders if it's possible to disinfect random envelopes without destroying the anthrax inside, the phone rings. He finally rolls his eyes and goes to answer the phone, and Vanessa leaves the envelope on a sideboard, feeling fantastic about herself. But just as she's turning to leave, she hears a giggle: it's Catherine. And somebody else! A man! In the library! Just like that tart Keira Knightley! She grabs the check to take it to the Bitchess directly, but the tenor of the sounds are such that she realizes something tarty is going on. Since it's Vanessa, she creepies up to the door with her camera at the ready. Inside, Catherine is kissing a fella. Who is it? The camera ZOOMS in on Vanessa's face like she's about to have a psychotic break, and things get jumpcutty as we realize that Catherine and Lord Marcus, her SON, are totally FUCKING. They mess with each other's shirt buttons and make out and -- having found that elusive fire within, in a very British place -- he flips her around to make out with her from behind, and whatever, it's hot. I'm not going to lie. And there's effing Vanessa Abrams, snapping away, pretending to be scandalized.
Dan stands around gawkily, waiting for his lunch date, who apparently didn't see fit to let him know she was breaking their date so the Plastics could mug her. I wouldn't put it past B to make one of them destroy her phone for just this eventuality -- but then, none of this is real anyway. See: Chuck walks up immediately to fill Dan in on what's going on with these people neither of them are involved with at the moment. "She met some new friends. They extended an invitation to her for lunch. Hockey sticks were involved. You know how persuasive our girls can be." Dan buys that, but still can't figure out why.
"She'll be bound by their laws," Chuck explains very dramatically. "Namely, she won't be allowed to date ex-boyfriends; namely: you." Dan is grossed out and swears Serena wouldn't do that. Because you know what's tacky? Not standing by while your boyfriend starts dating some random ugly girl on the first day back just to hurt you. And Serena is not tacky! Chuck smiles and smarms away, begging Dan to prove him wrong. Dan stands there and thinks, and before you know it he's whipped himself into a frenzy once again of how much he fucking hates his girlfriend. The phone rings, and he tries to blow V off, but eventually she tells him she's having an emergency of the creepy eavesdropping variety.
Sushi for lunch on the Constance steps, as the Met is under construction. Serena says "this" is wrong, and B pretends not to know what she means. Serena corrects her fake misapprehension, nodding toward Amanda. "Amanda?" S nods, and B speaks up: " Amanda . We have a few ground rules here." Amanda's funny: "...For lunch?" B gives her a fake laugh and cuts through the BS: "Now that we're all friends, you should know that dating someone's ex is frowned upon. For instance, Serena and Dan used to..." Serena is bugged by all of this, but doesn't say anything. Amanda says she didn't know, and Iz and Penelope rush in to comfort her. "Of course you didn't! That's what friends are for! But now that you know... " Amanda reluctantly says she's "pretty sure" she gets the picture, and Blair pulls out a gun: " Pretty sure?"
In order to save a life, Serena sends Amanda to fetch her some gelato. That's hilarious, that Serena's protecting this girl by ordering her around. "My treat!" Amanda leaves, grateful, and S tells Blair this is not how it's going down. Blair is literally confused, like her brain won't cogitate the problem here. S runs off to apologize to Dan immediately for even letting things get so far as SUSHI, and B's like, "But it's still for your own good!" The unspoken "I'm going to do it anyway!" is not really S's problem. Except it totally is. B crosses her ankles and worries about the hit she ordered on Amanda this morning, and if S is going to bitch about that too.
Dan and Vanessa stare at the pictures of Catherine and Marcus and try to hide their boners and say all kinds of "Why can't I look away?" type of crap, and Dan's like, "Bottom line this for me. Telling Nate?" Oh God no, that would involve losing the precious imaginary thing she has over him that makes her his tragic one true love, so why on earth would she do that? Or, as V explains, "He would most likely freak out." Dan agrees. Have any of you motherfuckers ever met Nate? He wouldn't freak out in any way, because he would barely understand it and can barely manage to care about actual shit. He would laugh, and then go give Chuck his 4:30 blowjob just like any other day, and if you mentioned Catherine or Marcus to him an hour later he would be like, "Who? Nope, doesn't ring a bell. Wanna go shoot some hoops?"
Vanessa complains that additionally her hands are tied because she can't "confront" Catherine, because the Butler would remember her visit. Vanessa is using the word "confront" in this instance to mean "blackmail," which is a felony. "...And she'll drop the dime on the Captain," Dan follows up, causing Vanessa to give him the sour look you would give anybody who said something that queer at a time like this. She's like, "And yet I can't figure out how to fuck everything up using these photos of a person fucking her own child. Just can't put together how this might be of use. Tell me what to do." Dan's like, "Wow, me neither." They stare blankly into space. "Well... You're not gonna like it. Blair." OBVIOUSLY. I'm proud of Dan for figuring it out this quickly, but my God, when are they going to learn that you're supposed to play it like this: "I have a problem, what should I..." -- Blair . Always. It's that easy, people. You always ask the busiest person you know -- not the person who talks about how busy they are all the time, but the actual busiest -- because they always have the most time and resources to help. Duh.
Vanessa cannot trust Blair. Dan's like, "Nobody on this planet can except for Serena, but: if you Google revenge , you get blairwaldorf.com." That's a funny line, admittedly. He reminds V of how Blair helped with the Georgina Sparks situation when he was finally smart/brave enough to call her, and she will [always] know what to do. Plus, "When she sees this photo, she will be plenty motivated to do it." Vanessa's like, "Oh that's right, this is her future husband. So I can show her this and get Nate saved, but..." Yes. Blair will most likely slit your throat. True. But hey, you're the one with the drama queen love affair happening in your head where you're sacrificing "everything" (i.e., nothing) to help Nate in some fashion that really only makes sense in your lovely, empty head. Vanessa puts down the phone and stares at it like it's nuclear while Dan ditches her to go bitch at Serena for her hideous and venal crime of ... letting the new girl in school eat lunch with the most popular girls in school on the first day of school .
Serena finds him immediately once he's back on campus, and immediately starts apologizing for letting things get as far as SUSHI, and Dan rocks back on his heels, more smug and vindicated than maybe ever: "And that answers my question." Um, what question would that be, chumbucket? "I wonder if Serena is kind enough to realize that two wrongs don't make a right, and no matter how shitty I was for hitting on other girls in front of her, she isn't going to hold it against the girl?" Because what she's doing, Dan , is answering that question. You are correct.
"Look, Blair invited her to lunch, not me." Dan points out that she was there, and Serena's like, "Yeah, until I told Blair to knock it off and left to come find you just now." And oh, the condescension: "So you were part of it, and then you had second thoughts?" YES. I realized I was doing a shitty, junior-high thing, and cut it out, and tried to make amends. I wonder if anybody else here is also doing shitty junior-high crap they could be knocking off right about fucking now? ...Nope. "Really? Because it sounds like you're just trying to rationalize." She sighs and makes the sad face at him, but he's too gross to be overpowered that easily anymore. "Look, it's just ... We knew that this would be awkward. You know? And I just assumed that it would be more of a sad awkward, not this ... competitive awkward." Which it was, until your ass got competitive .
"I didn't think you'd enlist backup," he says, which is ... a fair point, really. I mean, it's not S enlisting the backup, but she does have this rabid pitbull that nobody can knock loose who automatically applies. But the yucky thing, which is to say the thing that Serena balks at, is not the Blair part, but the part where Serena needs "backup." That's just rude. The idea that Dan was just blamelessly walking through life while horrible girls threw themselves at his feet (or he knocked them there, with his stupid ass), as usual, and Serena like can't handle it, and went running to her bitch friends to alienate the girl and keep the two of them apart. Blair yes. Serena? Never. She throws parties, Blair throws knives. She's the Queen by existing, Blair's the Queen by rocking it hardcore. (And by the end of this episode, B's going to need to change her name to Trouble if she's going to stay alive at all, so look for movement on that front as well.) There's nothing shameful in the way that Blair accumulates and retains power -- it is way awesome in fact -- but it's just not how Serena rolls, and if she ever did it that way she'd look ridiculous, and feel ridiculous. Her power comes from magnetic awesomeness, not from scheming and fixing and destroying and planning. That's too much like asking.
"Well, you tell me. If I have lunch with someone else tomorrow, are Blair's minions gonna break her fingers?" Yes, but only because they don't know any straight guys to knock your head in, basically. Serena is disgusted, finally -- finally -- and the flames start licking along her face, a little bit. "Just so you know," she says, brushing past him, "If this were a competition? I wouldn't need Blair and her posse to win." GET SCARED. NOW. I know that fake smile; it's like a dog showing teeth. Remember when we talked about the neckties, the wolves in the neckties ? It's part of that. My mouth smile says, "Okay, we're playing this by the rules," but my eye lack-of-smile says, "You are on thin fucking ice." Amanda, hair whipping about in the hot backdraft vacuum of Serena's exit, informs Dan that she's not into being intimidated by bullies, and asks him out. He thinks a beat and decides he's not afraid of bullies either. Which is fine, but they're both retarded because this isn't about "bullies," it's something else entirely. Something better and scarier and infinitely more powerful, pointed right at your dumb little heads.
Blair sits on a couch in a pretty flowery dress, hair pulled to the side. She looks adorable. Vanessa towers over her, apologizing and over-explaining: "I'm so sorry Blair but like I said Catherine knows where the Captain is and she threatened to expose him if I ever took Nate away from her but with this I was hoping that you might..." B finally shuts her up, speaking sharply through a swollen throat: "-- Who else knows?" V doesn't get it immediately, and B spits: " Who's seen this? " Shaken, Vanessa tells her she's only showed it to Dan. Vanessa, you're beside the point now. Get out. You're done. Blair sends the pictures to herself (and it says "Blair's Phone," like they have each other's names and numbers saved, maybe in case Nate gets lost or something). "If you or Humphrey ever breathe a word of this... One word. To anyone. You'll regret it for the rest of your lives. Do you understand?" Vanessa nods, saying she doesn't particularly want anybody to know any of these sordid details, she just wants Nate okay. Blair stands up, bereft, and promises to take care of it. She sounds like a ghost. Vanessa, unable to pass up the chance to be obnoxious and rude just one more time, is like, "I'm trusting you, Blair." Like you fucking have a choice, Blair points out, and V acts all sympathetic for a second before Blair chases her out of the apartment with only her eyes. Once she's gone, Blair crumbles. If she's not the Princess anymore, who is she?
Dan, Amanda and Amanda's irritating breasts enter some bar where Dan is uncomfortable because ... God knows. It's not under a bridge and they don't play pool there. Amanda points out that "everybody" comes here, which for a normal person would be a value-free or positive statement, but because Dan is better than everybody that ever existed, this is not the place for him. "Dan, it's time to send a message," she says, dragging Dan into the bar. And that message would be? "Fuck my rich girlfriend, I'm dating a butterface before the body's in the ground."
Penelope spots them, and nudges Iz, who immediately warns P to step off her lump crab before noticing the tragic duo that just walked in. "What Dan Humphrey does with the other serfs in the village is his business," says GG, which is exactly perfect, "But when he brings his new maiden to court, it's a declaration of war. Sound the trumpets, strumpets!" Penelope and Isabel shoot amazing bitch grin lasers at the gruesome twosome, and hit SEND.
Next morning, Jenny's looking totally gorgeous as she beats Dan about the head and face with a very heavy pillow, shrieking at his sleeping form. "What were you thinking? " (I was about to say that this is the fourth episode in a row where Jenny's smarter than everybody else and I should stop talking about how dumb she is, but then I remembered the rest of the episode. Still a Humphrey.) Dan's like, "I was ... sleeping?" Um, no. "I was talking about you and Little Miss Hannah Montana on Gossip Girl." (Kind of dated, but I do see a resemblance, in that Hannah and her various personalities are the only things I can think of on earth quite as instantly and automatically gross as Rachel Ray.)
Hilariously, Dan corrects her: "Oh no, her name's Amanda." Jenny continues to rule: "Oh, her name's Amanda . Do you have any idea what you're doing? Not only is it social suicide, Dan, it's mean! Do you really think Serena deserves to be treated like this?" Dan skips right over what Jenny's actually saying and starts talking about how he's a victim, of course. All "she started with this Girl Mafia..." Jenny, knowing it's useless to explain how fucking useless and weak that childish "you started it" bullshit is, just throws the pillow in his face and tells him to forget the Girl Mafia with a quickness and talk to Serena: "Apologize. Before it's too late." Or else you are going to be living in OneRepublic of Hurt.
It's like when the smoke comes out of the chimneys one color or the other, or when Elizabeth came into her reign up a tree in Kenya. The trumpets were sounding, and she never even knew. Chuck strokes Serena's face with a hothouse blossom until she wakes. "CHUCK! BOUNDARIES!" He grins and shows her the breakfast he ordered for her. "...Mom and I had a girls' movie night. She made me watch Paris, Texas . She kept talking about how amazing Harry Dean Stanton was." He chuckles and tosses her a phone, for the "morning headlines." She grins at his back as he leaves, because he is a rascal, but when she sees the GG blast she just falls over sideways into her bed, groaning. It's been two years since she had to destroy somebody as bad as Dan.
Vanessa shows up at Constance looking for Blair; Jenny's immediate response -- " What has she done? -- is as hilarious as it is urgent. Vanessa complains that the answer is nothing, and she won't take V's calls. Jenny sighs and realizes she's going to have to talk to the Plastics; Vanessa apologizes for that. They're like, "Are you for real?" as she approaches, but tell her B's taken the morning off for brunch at Centolire, and will not be interested in seeing her. Jenny turns to go, and Penelope goes, "Oh, Little J? Just because we've been ignoring you doesn't mean we've forgotten. You can't hide out at Eleanor Waldorf's atelier anymore. Your day will come. We're just picking our moment." Poor Jenny's like, "Ain't that a bitch."
Serena comes around a corner, and now it's Dan apologizing, but Serena is kinda done. "So this is how you want to handle it? Using another girl to embarrass me in front of my friends? Is that your idea of sending a message, Dan?" Dan notes her interesting choice of words, and S opens her locker roughly. "I can't believe you would do that." He apologizes again, and she notes -- somewhat unnecessarily -- that she would never have done that to him. "No, but you would try to coerce a girl not to go out with me in the first place." Rather than have that fight again, Serena breathes for a second and makes a new offer: "Fine. Tonight, the three of us." Dan agrees, then gets a little whiplash: "...What?" I must admit it's a surprising, although not unheard-of move.
"Look, you're gonna date other people, and I'm gonna date other people. We can either let everyone else tell us how we should be jealous and compete, or we can just deal with it and try to preserve at least a little of our friendship." Dan asks if she's saying the three of them should go on a date, and she asks him in a very Lily-like manner to find another way to say it, but yeah. He agrees, almost calling it a date again, and as she walks off he notes that this shouldn't be weird in the slightest. ( "I'll bring the bread you'll bring the wine/ This party's over one last time: Burn it all down." )
Vanessa, who can't seem to go fucking five seconds without creeping and sneaking and spying, watches Lord Marcus fondle Blair's hand on the table and make sweetie-pie conversation, and makes a fatal mistake of judgment. Inside, Marcus is like, "Oh we will have such fun over hols with a crackling fire and the snow and stars and whatever," and Blair pulls her hand out of his sweaty, creepy grasp, fake-smiling with a cry voice "Sure it won't be awkward?" He, of course, doesn't get it, putting her even higher at the table. "Juggling two women under one roof? ...You are sleeping with Catherine, right? Or do you prefer Mom ?" He stammers and stutters, and Blair quietly laughs at him. "Hooking up with your dad's second wife? I thought my family was twisted, but you people take the cake." Marcus swears it only happened a few times, and lies that he stopped it when he met B. She doesn't even bother. "I really opened myself up to you," she says mournfully. He asks if they can work it out, and she really busts out a laugh this time: "Oh, please. I just want to get through this without throwing up in my mouth." Which is a step in the right direction: I'd really like her to get through both of these storylines without throwing up at all.
"Get through what exactly?" asks Catherine, arriving haughtily. "I got your message. What's going on here?" Blair tiredly tells her to sit her ass down, and Catherine begs her pardon. "Oh no, not yet," B says, sending her the photos, "But you will." Catherine receives the message, looks at him and breathes, and sits her ass down as told. "What do you want." Marcus has a headache identical to his mother's. "Let's talk about your exit strategy," B eyebrows brightly.
Fucking meanwhile Vanessa has taken the photos to the Duke, because she is a moron. "Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless, and ye dig a pit for your friend." I read that in a book this one time.
At the threesome date, Dan and Amanda are being obnoxiously literary, and Serena's actually laying herself down and asking questions about their conversation so that worthless Amanda can say snotty shit like, "Rainer Maria Rilke? Letters To A Young Poet ?" Serena's attitude is pitch-perfect throughout, just this extremely wonderful indulgent grin and slight eyebrow raise that manages to perfectly express both A) "Do go on, troll, because your shelf life is dwindling by the second," and B) "Well, why don't I just go fuck myself then?" It's a thing of beauty. Dan jumps on the "Serena is a retard" train about how he gave her a Rilke volume, but she never read it, and they keep crawling up each other's asses until S is like, "Oh hey, you know what? I'm going to the bar. You have bored me back into alcoholism." Dan barely notices, because he thinks he's winning.
The bartender asks if she wants another soda, and she's like, we are well past that point. "Belvedere martini, two olives. Please." I love that her call brand is Belvedere, like, none of this Grey Goose Avril Lavigne shit for me, I've been drinking Belvedere since that Canadian child was born. Penelope asks if she's okay ("I will be!") and introduces her to the captain of the Dalton lacrosse team, Jenns. (So I assume that he was at the big gay Madras party, then, being on Dalton's lacrosse team, and thus has met not only Serena but also her gay brother Eric, her gay brother's buddy Jenny, and the rest of the entire cast, including creepy little missing Elise, but whatever.)
"Even the most chivalrous knight is not above a little romantic retaliation," says GG, as Dan continues to laugh hollowly at whatever bullshit the ugly girl is saying. "It turns out Lonelyboy is a worthy opponent, and it's time for S to bring in the cavalry." A word which, divorced of its martial connotations, would seem here to be defined as some kind of... erotic brain hemorrhage. Serena flips her hair around maniacally, fellates her martini glass, shifts her eyes around like she's about to do a one-woman bank heist, and generally acts like she just remembered she was in a softcore on the Lifetime Movie Network. The greatest of all networks. She takes a moment to make sure that Dan is either watching or giving her tacit permission by continuing to be a cocksucker, and then redoubles her efforts to look like she's having a sexy psychotic break. And what's great about Serena is: still hot.
Jenns is sitting in the booth with them, telling some dumb lacrosse play-by-play story to Serena's barely-interested drunken exclamations, which finally drives Dan to make some half-assed snarky remark about how boring Jenns is. Dan does not understand the purpose of Jenns, either in this situation or ever, if he thinks "interesting" is on the list of things Jenns needs to be. "Dan's not a big sports fan," Serena says, slipping a dig at his masculinity in the one place he can't protest, because manly or not he's better than sports. Brilliant!
"Yeah, he likes poets, and Letters to Poets." Amanda excuses herself a moment, and drunk Serena grins and makes one of those hilarious "Awwww! I don't really care!" Mean Girl noises. Jeez, I love her. Serena heads off to get yet more drinks, even though she was just rolling around in the booth like a tired toddler, and Dan -- after Jenns tries to bond with him over how she's "smoking hot," which wouldn't work if Dan had never even met her in his life -- deserts poor Jenns and follows.
Damn Serena is drunk. "So is this your great peace plan? You invite me out so you can rub lacrosse guy in my face?" Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, Lonelyboy. Serena points out that she didn't plan this, but Dan's not buying it. Because even though Serena has never lied one time in her entire life before she met Dan, the fact that he's forced her to keep quiet or lie outright about the majority of things that happen to her in a day, that still makes her a liar. Valid, but not really the biggest problem in that scenario. "I thought it was okay that we date other people," she says, pushing it, and he makes fun of Jenns. (Who is exactly who she's going to end up marrying, basically, so be nice.)
"Well? He's fun, non-neurotic... I thought that would be a nice change." Good point: he hasn't implied, much less said explicitly, that Serena is a misguided whore a single time all night. That is a nice change! Dan says calling him boring and neurotic is "classy," which Serena flips on him with a quickness: " Classy? Like you asking another girl out our first day back at school?" Dan whines that they were broken up, but I'm afraid the Drunk Girl Drama Train has left the station. She gets completely, overwhelmingly, The Black Tears Of St. Lauren Conrad intense: "So what, Dan? It hurt. What did you expect? I loved you, and just because we broke up doesn't mean I can just turn it off like that!" Her emotions are raging out of control but she's still talking sense. Girl can hold her liquor; frankly, it would take this much for her to lay it out for him.
Dan -- and again, though I find him vile and would never associate with him, I do love him -- is a teenage boy, so even though for her this is a totally shameful laying down of arms and being disgustingly weak and vulnerable by saying it out loud, for Dan it's the opposite: just, like, facts of which he was unaware. His face is like, "Oh, that's what's been going on this whole time? I ... My bad."
Serena turns to the bar to be alone with her soon-to-be out of control emotions, and he thinks to comfort her, then pulls his hand back, because this is uncharted territory. Once you make Serena cry you'll remember it forever, because bitch don't crack. "All right. Um... Maybe we should..."
(Time out, because what Dan doesn't know is that he's just written himself a multiple choice question. Think of like Mad Libs , only your life hangs in the balance: Maybe we should ? There are infinite verbs you could plug in there; the majority of them are probably silly or unworkable, which narrows it down. But the actual words that are on the UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES list? They are few. All you have to do is find a word that will make her feel better, and less like a joke whose boyfriend just went after the first subhuman nerd he could find; whose retaliatory date may or may not have opposable thumbs. Just make her feel better. What do you think Dan's going to do? Time in.)
"...Stay away from each other for a while." You can hear it crack, like embers suddenly blazing back to life.
Here's the thing. You want to talk about the potential to threaten social order? There is nothing more powerful than a woman who acknowledges and is willing to use her power without shame. Who doesn't think of it as anything demonic or strange or dangerous; who doesn't think about it at all. Who gets to just live. There's nothing more threatening to social order than a woman like that, which is what Serena naturally is. I'm going to draw a line out of this show into real life now, because I am lucky enough to have enough girls like Serena in my life that I know what I'm talking about. But in another year, in lots of other countries, she'd be dead by now. There are places right now where girls are being cut on, to keep them from learning this secret. Carrie White and Kitty Genovese died to keep this secret. Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony used this secret to make the world better for us, who came after. Societies, nations, countries, economies, to this day they are built on this secret. Marriage was created to keep this secret. Every little girl learns to keep this secret at her mother's knee; it can take a lifetime to find it again. It's a fire.
She was just learning it, the limits and the rules and the beauty of it, when things got bad that night. So she locked it up, tight. She didn't want the fire getting out. She didn't want to be a fever ever again, because she saw what it could do if you weren't careful, and she knew she wasn't interested in being careful yet. Dan wasn't the problem, he was a symptom: she knew she needed to keep the secret, and she used him to do so. His words, his hate, his judgment, his annihilation of everything she was, the way he snuffs the fire: it helped. It brought the fever down. All he had to do was make her feel better. It was always better to feel stupid than to burn, until now; tears will dry on their own, but you can turn them to steam any time you want. Just want it.
Serena nods to herself. Not worth it. Never worth it. Especially now, now that she knows she was never a killer after all: This time, it'll be okay. This time she can burn. "You're right. You and Amanda should probably go." The challenge in her eyes is bright and hard. "Are you ... ordering me to leave?" That fake smile returns, flirts along her lips: "Consider it a suggestion. Why should I go, Dan? These are my friends here, and it's not exactly your kind of place." She pushes past him; she takes up more space than ever before. Dan asks the bartender for the check, completely unaware of what he just did or how easy it would have been to go the other way, and Chuck appears -- suspiciously conveniently, for like the tenth time this week -- and Dan tells him to start wearing a bell. "Kinky. I'll think about it. I hope you're not leaving. You're about to see the real Serena!" She drinks at the other side of the bar, getting blearier and sexier, chatting with the bartender. "I've seen enough," Dan says, completely oblivious, and tries to leave. Chuck smiles, in his purple suit. "...Not by half."
Nate enters the Hudson apartment at Blair's invitation, and asks what was so important. "Well," she smiles a bit, "I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that your girlfriend Catherine is a lying, manipulating whore, sleeping with her stepson. I know. It's hard to picture. I have photos if you'd like to take a look." She's sincere for a moment: " I'm sorry . ...But the good news is that I convinced them both to leave town. And that's not even the best part! Catherine and I made a deal. I promised to keep my mouth shut, and she agreed to pay off the Captain's restitution. Congratulations, Archibald. Welcome back to your old life!" He stammers, and her phone rings. "Wait. Hold that non-thought." She tells Catherine to shove it, but the music -- and Blair's tune -- switch up like a rock dropped in the ocean. "What do you mean? Vanessa talked to the Duke? No, I told her to stay out of this..." She hangs up, sad again. Deeply sad, actually. "Okay. Maybe I only have bad news."
Chuck heads over to egg Penelope and Isabel on, to make the night complete: "Serena's not thinking straight, she's making this about Dan. It's the new girl that defied you." He pours some kind of magic depilatory that works faster than Rachel True's witch powers in The Craft into an empty glass, and reminds Penelope of a Nairtini she served the Danish exchange student in ninth grade. (Ours was Finnish. If only I'd had access to a Nairtini or the dark eldritch forces of Manon, she'd be bald and I'd be happily gay-married and probably overseas adopting my second baby right now.) Everybody smarms unendingly.
DUMBO. Lily is caught mid-relaxing breathing exercise when Rufus opens the door. He acts all astonished and she says Serena ditched her, so she brought over a movie: Pretty In Pink . "...It's only a supporting role, but Harry Dean Stanton is excellent..." Rufus whines that it's 9 PM and she's like, "So I should have called, but whatever," and he gives her the Humphriest of all faces. "Lily... What are you doing here? She's called out. " I don't know. Um. Bart is doing business, as he did most of our trip. The kids are living their own lives, and my life... Is in an empty house or in a crowded restaurant... And I don't know which one makes me feel more alone. I need a friend. That's why I came to see you yesterday." Rufus tells her to go shove her friendship where the sun doesn't shine, because she committed the great crime of agreeing with him that she should marry Bart Bass, and obviously needs to be punished forever and ever. "I can't be your safety net anymore. It's not fair. You made your choice to be Mrs. Bass. You need to go do that. We both need you to go do that."
She nods sadly and turns to leave before he can bust into "Rest In Peace," but the click-clack of heels on concrete once again announces the arrival of Harvey-face. Rufus kisses her, just barely keeping himself from looking at Lily while he does so I'm sure, and Lily feels like a total retard. "This used to be your favorite," she says, putting a bottle of wine in his hands and leaving. I assume he ... thinks about it for not even one second, cracks the bottle and drinks it with Claire. Ah, well. It's what she needed to hear. And I know that the universe has it out for Rufus Humphrey, and I know that Lily, as the most beloved character on the show, is going to come out on top. Plus, I will ... never shut up about Serena, and talking about Lily impedes my going on and on about Serena. B