The Lost Boy
Updated 2009-09-29 08:58:12
GG immediately puts aside our fears about Blair and Chuck's depression nap last week: "Morning in New York: Time to wake up from bad dreams, roll out of the beds we've made, and start making plans for a brighter future." Blair heads down the dorm hallway to her room, asking Chuck to take some time off for her: "With you focused on making your mark in the business world and me focused on..." She sort of shudders: "Point being, I just got out of my first class, and I was thinking if I skipped French History, we might have enough time to squeeze in a mid-morning Renaissance before lunch..." French History is the last class B should be skipping, because it's a catalog of every mistake she ever makes.
("We're #1" by The World Record plays through the opening scenes; operative lyrics here being: "In the meantime I need some mean time/ To wipe out any goodwill building up.") Continuing the whole aristocracy theme with Blair this year, she has no idea what the sock on her doorknob means, and she removes it -- wearing gloves -- and enters, only to find Lonelyboy atop Miss Georgina Sparks. A conniption results -- "I'm wearing a glove, and I still want to wash my hands!" -- and Blair throws her gloves at him while he's scrambling to dress. He lamely, Danly, grabs a book at random to claim he's borrowing it, and is disappointed but game with the result: "It's, um, Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition For A New Era . That's excellent." Heh. And here we thought his exhaustive survey ended with Forever .
Blair, assuming this is about her, assures Georgina that her scheme -- to "run me out of my own room with a half-naked Dan Humphrey" -- won't work. Georgina is delightful, stretching out on her bed with ugly/awesome Delia*s tights, tells her to stay and observe: "Maybe you'll learn something." Dan mumbles and stammers about how he was just going to hit the trail, and Blair rolls her eyes. "It just so happens I'm on my way to a very important breakfast; I just stopped by to drop off my books and pick up my mail. So feel free to 'hit the trail' all you want." She takes off, reminding Dan that the move from Serena to Georgina is less a lateral one and more of a fall. "Even for you," she says with a mean look, and vanishes.
Georgina shimmies catlike off the bed and toward him, talking about their relationship and how of course B can't handle it, "But I think Vanessa's gonna be supportive. And Serena. And Jenny, your dad..." Dan nods at this list, which is quite large to have come up with so easily, and she asks him to breakfast with her hands on his shoulders. He bounces and she stares after him with the look of crazy.
yeah you make a decent stand in
typically boring of course
Out in the hall, Dan's trials have only begun. Serena catches him on his walk of shame, and he makes up some lie about how Vanessa makes you take yours shoes off now. Which is believable, but then why is he also unbuttoned in the shirt area? Vanessa opens her door, which is at the end of the hall, and says hey; Serena starts laughing and looks around at the door Dan was exiting. Vanessa and Serena's jaws drop. "Please tell me it was Blair and not Georgina," says Serena, who's been down this road before. "Please tell me it was Georgina and not Blair," says Vanessa, who clearly likes to keep it in the family. Dan protests that he doesn't want to discuss it...
Cut immediately to Dan on the floor of Vanessa's room, discussing it. Her room is very Vanessa. The chalkboard on the inside side of the door says, "For what is -- Thanks! For what is to come: YES!" Which would be obnoxious, but paradoxically is okay, because Vanessa has been in training to be a college freshman her entire life . Dan talks about the surveillance culture and how fucking Georgina in secret is way less real than fucking her in public. Serena, whose entire character is about that, totally gets it. Vanessa, whose entire character is respectively like so, chimes in: "College is time for experimentation! Psychedelic drugs! Ethnic food!" Serena points out that this time, Lonelyboy's "experimenting" with a girl who sucked his dick under a fake name while trying to drive his girlfriend actually insane, but the way she says it is adorable.
Leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling in shame, Dan asks his sister-ladies what the punishment is going to be, and they laugh and say they're just going to make fun of him. "But without judgment," Serena of course clarifies, "Because who doesn't have a Georgina in their closet, right?" (And that's when Georgina leaps out of Vanessa's closet wearing a Scream mask and kills Vanessa to death.) Serena stands up and carelessly, beautifully goes, "Okay. I was coming to see Blair, but now that she's not here, uh, you want to button up and come with me, tiger?" Heh. Vanessa invites herself along, and mentions getting Scott from his Comp Theory seminar, and Dan mentions that Georgina's friend mentioned that the Comp Theory seminar is in the afternoon.
(I love this episode greatly, but it hinges on two things: 1) Dan's weird recall of meaningless facts, and 2) Serena figuring out shit that the audience can't even figure out. As a Team Serena diehard, I enjoy the episode because it says out loud what the show usually says quietly -- that Serena is a grown-ass woman who happens to be really good at pretending to be a brainless forest fairy, because that's where her power is located -- but the clues themselves, for us, range from poorly expressed to straight-up Orient Express Machina . Also, 3) everybody in New York apparently prefaces every sentence with, "Piece of advice?" And 4) it's possible to make Blair Waldorf look fucking hideous.)
Anyway, Vanessa gets all cagey and she's like, "I'll catch up with you guys, I just remembered I have like five more necklaces I could be wearing right now on top of the fifty-six necklaces I'm already wearing right now. Plus, I have to dig into some people's private business, because that's my only active character trait." D gives an actual literal peace out sign, and Serena smiles at Vanessa without mentioning she wasn't invited in the first place, and they leave her to be murdered by the Georgina lying in wait in every closet.
She calls Scott, who lies that Comp Theory was "Nonstop excitement, lots of theories," which is pretty funny. She immediately tells him that Dan said that Georgina's friend said that Comp Theory seminar is in the afternoons, and Scott ripostes that he's not at the seminar, he's at the study group. (These conversations are totally freshman-realistic, which I love: You can tell because they are totally boring and contain basically an unending question mark of need at all times.) So then why doesn't V swing by study group and they can "grab coffee."
Which, I can't recall a single conversation that Vanessa Abrams has ever had that didn't contain coffee, the procuring or the baristing of said, or the -- often -- missed appointments for the getting of the coffee. But since Vanessa as long as we've known her has basically lived at one or more coffee shops, it's sort of like saying something more profound. Scott gets off the phone more rudely than I've ever seen somebody do, which is how you know he's a Humphrey.
(You may already know how much I love Thomas Wolfe , and hopefully you know how much you should like Thomas Wolfe. But the story "The Lost Boy," (which connects to Look Homeward, Angel the same way everything always comes back to Franny & Zooey ), I will tell you, is a pretty great short story about a boy: The boy himself, his mother, his sister, and then the brother years later. My favorite is the first part, because it's all about shame and adults being dicks, and the second part is crazy mom talk, but you figure out how the boy died in the third part, and the last part is the one that this episode is about. But it's awesome because Scott's only pretending to be playing out the brother's part in the story; in this story, he's both brothers, and he slips back and forth across the line over and over. He changes shape, just to hide:
"And when you see your brother, you can tell him that you saw the room he slept in, and that you found it just the same."
He told her then that his brother was dead.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she looked at him and said: "He died here, didn't he? In this room?"
He told her that it was so.
"Well, then" she said, "I knew it. I don't know how. But when you told me he was here, I knew it."
He said nothing. In a moment the woman said, "What did he die of?"
So that hushed convo with Vanessa was actually at PRADA, where Rufus has been giving his son guitar lessons, and they talk dorkily about that, and Rufus pretends to have an ounce of reality about himself -- "I don't know about 'one of the greats,' maybe one of the 'pretty goods'," he says -- and they start to play. And either I'm crazy, or the song that they're playing is the first chords of "Everytime," which is the song that Rufus wrote for Lily ("Every time you walk away or go away/ You take a piece of me with you") which is just... Fucking awesome. The song is the boy is the song. I love this show so much.
Spurred on by the song, Scott starts into the whole "been meaning to talk to you" dance, and of course Rufus has no idea, and tries to go on this whole "Vanessa's like a daughter to me and what are your intentions" bullshit trip ("Not to slip into after-school special territory," he says, like he doesn't live there as its regent ) and Scott tells Rufus that he likes V for some reason, and that hopefully things will work out. Which is a smooth way of getting back to the conversation Rufus just interrupted for his weekly five-second bout of parenting other people's kids, and he gets interested, but then Jenny and Eric (Hi Jenny! Hi Eric!) appear and Eric points out that '72 Bowie looks like Shakira, and Scott takes off and Jenny goes, "Why is he here all the time?" Rufus doesn't know. He just likes pretending other people's kids are his kids and the whole world is his kids and that way his ridiculous behavior makes sense.
In the meantime I need some mean time
To break down the defenses of our enemies
One less person in dress rehearsal
One less hopeless dreamer
Serena explains to Dan that she's only being cool about the Georgina thing because dating Carter and seeing the way he's changed -- the way he keeps globe-hopping for her benefit, and treating her like a person and not a volatile chemical agent like everybody else -- has given her a new belief in folks. Dan says dating Carter is just dating Chuck without the nouveau riche part, and she laughs and punches his arm, then reminds him to check for ice picks and closet lurkers. "Piece of advice?" she says, and not for the last time, "You should make sure she knows that. Because if Georgina likes somebody, she will go from zero to crazy before you know it." And she should know. She wishes him luck and he floats away somewhere, and Carter bounds serendipitously onto the scene without so much as a courtesy cut.
Carter kisses Serena wonderfully and asks her to spend the weekend with him in the Downing: A "weekend of room service and white fluffy robes?" She reminds him that he's been cut off, and he grins. "Where there's a white fluffy robe, there's a way." She stutteringly makes the decision to step things up and invite him to do things with the whole crazy family, which we know from previous boyfriends is a really big deal for her, because her family is crazy and because she knows what being an outsider is like. And of course maybe Dan will pretend to be a cater-waiter and ruin a holiday or something.
Carter's happy to be asked, but before they can discuss it some girl jumps up out of nowhere, serendipitously onto the scene, and flirtily calls him the Carter Baizen she hooked up with at Brandy Library last month. He assures her that he is not "Carter Baizen who drinks his single malt with one ice cube and claimed to be leaving with the Peace Corps the next day," but allows as how the guy sounds charming. The girl Aubrey slaps him and runs away, SAG card now firmly in hand. Serena starts getting that sinking feeling she often feels, and asks if this is a case of mistaken identity. "Obviously. You know I take my scotch neat." Heh. Serena rolls her eyes and he promises it wasn't real, whatever it was. He tries to get her back on the invite train, because he really does want to do the meet the family thing, but she rolls her eyes all over the place and flounces off. He smolders manfully, as Carter usually does.
Vanessa asks a girl at the bursar if Scott Adler is taking Comp Theory, but the girl is wearing more necklaces than she is, and thus doesn't have to tell her. "When faced with an uncertain future, the questions we truly hate to ask are the ones we fear we already know the answer to," GG notes. Well, then, Vanessa asks if she can just find out if he even goes to NYU. The girl rolls her eyes in a sisterly manner: "My last boyfriend told me his dad invented the battery ." Heh. Turns out that there's no Scott Adler at the school. Vanessa bershons her ass out of there, because that's the limit of her stalking abilities.
"Are you going to tell your mother you were here?"
"I don't think so."
"I -- I wonder how she feels about this room."
"I don't know. She never speaks of it."
"Oh. ...How old was he?"
"He was twelve."
"You must have been pretty young yourself."
B's important breakfast meeting is, of course, Chuck. She's wearing a cute trench dress and comes accompanied by some kind of a chef. "I recommend the hot apple cider caramel," she says, and he smiles at her in that delighted way he's perfected this season: "On what?" She drops the trench to reveal a gorgeous sheer chemise and boyshorts. Note that she still looks amazing: Romantic Bright Star bun low on the neck, tendrils, the whole thing: "Surprise me." He notes that she is awesome, and he kisses her -- she curls into his lap in her little outfit like a dream secretary, and he fiddles with his necktie as usual when he says the word meeting : "I have a really big meeting in a few hours." B laughs and points out that means they have hours, and he gestures to his dick: "I have to keep my focus."
"It's with Sean MacPherson. I'm only gonna get one shot with him." (Famous, real person.) Blair points out that this means she's not a one-shot, but "some endless font of do-overs," which thank God for it, and she bounces. He asks her where she's going to go, and the thin veneer of not-crazy she's been rocking this week quickly crumbles: "No idea. I officially have nowhere left to go. My roommate is a nympho with a sock-fetish, I have no friends at school, and now my boyfriend would rather obsess about a restaurateur than spend quality time with me... And hasn't, by the way, in five days!" She slams the door, and he focuses or whatever.
Outside, girlfriend is bereft, and takes a moment to pull it together before dropping her aforementioned mail all over the floor. Kneeling by a credenza outside Chuck's office, she finds something wonderful. GG: "In biblical times, destiny was delivered in the form of stone tablets or a burning bush*. But today, true destiny is often engraved and carries an embossed seal."
You've been invited to Le Table Élitaire. G ood luck...
*(Maybe this counts as a CLUE. I can't think of a single time the words "fever" or "embers" or whatever didn't relate directly to you know who, and there are a lot of Old Testament references that end up coming back to her, because she is mighty and because of OMJC.) So we pull back on Blair crouched primly on the floor, phoning Serena immediately with much excitement.
Dan stalls for a bit before heading to Georgina's door, but because she is spooky she opens it immediately before he can knock. He says words. "I was just, uh, I... I... I wanted to talk to you about us. No... Not us us." She continues to grin amazingly. "It's, uh, look, here's the thing. But I just want to make sure we're on the same page about us..." Her smile finally falls, and she does the ankle-dip. "...'Hanging out' like we do." Boys are so gross. God. You can actually hear the airquotes. "If you want me to leave, I can understand. Uh..." She asks if this was his first of those talks -- not that he said anything -- and then assures him that he's adorable. She leans in way weirdly, over the threshold (note that for later), and kisses him, then invites him for pizza. "Don't worry. No strings," she says, and he closes the door behind her. "I like pizza..." He thanks his lucky stars, quietly: "That was easy!"
Blair's back in her yellow ruffles, walking Serena in the park. Serena has not heard of Le Table Élitaire. Blair is helpful: " The Elite Table !" Thanks, B. "How have you not heard of them?" S points out that if she'd heard of the secret society it wouldn't be a secret, and B expounds: "They're modeled after the grandes ecoles in France. Secret salons for the elite of academic institutions. Finally, something exclusive to strive for, something worthy of all my pent-up energy and attention !" This last word so emphatic that S laughs. "So I take it you and Chuck still haven't..." No. And this way they can both "focus" on something.
Blair explains further that the whole thing is actually Serena's fault: "He told me about how you killed his speakeasy plan last week, and hanging out with Carter Baizen?" She takes Serena's hand and guides her gently to a bench, making her giggle. "Listen to me, S. Listen very carefully. You're not going to Brown, you're scared to tell your mom, you're in free fall: Enter Carter Baizen." Which of course is exactly how she ended up circling the Carter basin, drinking Dom and acting like Dangerous Liaisons , if you'll kindly recall: "I get it. Believe me. But you need to pull this chute, before: Splat!"
Serena smiles, hiding her own concerns, and points out that whether or not he's a bastard, the important and still-true thing is that he knows her. The thing she wants more than anything, that she can't ever quite find the words to explain. B asks who she's trying to convince, and thus calls Serena's bluff. Wearing a huge godawful ring, she dials him and invites him to Sotheby's tonight. B assures her that guys like Carter don't change, which is ironic considering they've always equated him with Chuck, and then gets her first set of instructions from the secret society, so she jumps up and runs off: "Oh, and you really are making a huge mistake. Bye!" Serena wonders about that, and then you actually see her make herself careless; like, she orders herself not to be bothered. And then she's not.
Chuck arrives at Mr. MacPherson's office, where a mean-looking girl in a dumb dress tells him to GTFO and stop wasting people's time. "I have an MBA from Tuck. I'm not the coat check girl," she explains, baring her teeth at his charm. "Well, then I'm sure you're aware his club on 63rd isn't doing as well as it could. Uptown isn't downtown. I have some ideas he should hear." She assures him this isn't the first or last visit promising same, and then goes, " Piece of advice ?" Because that's what you say. "Piece of advice? You really want him to take you seriously? Find a way to show him that you respect his past." She eyebrows at a wall of photos, and the vintage McMullan of Sean at some Studio 54-looking thing, 1) helpfully bookmarked on 2) an open page of the 3) Sotheby's auction catalog for 4) tonight. The girl doesn't look up as Chuck snags it and walks out. Hmm.
Bree Buckley is wearing another hideous fucking late-'90s summer dress, this one as usual in colors that are so ugly they are surreal. I guess she's gauche, I guess that's what we're supposed to take away from all this monstrous fashion. But this unending parade of nastiness is still not a patch on the hell Blair is about to look like, so who knows. I talk a good game but I find a lot of fashion really confusing. Anyway, she and Nate are walking around in public talking about one day when they can walk around in public, and Bree complains that her family still won't talk to her after last week's Long Weekend, and that she even went so far as to write on her dad's Facebook wall. But maybe one day they will go out in public, they discuss in public, and finally Nate offers to call up his peeps and see what they're doing, and then they can make their public debut. That way, either nothing will happen or they'll call her and bitch, but either way they'll be doing exactly what they decided not to do the last two episodes in a row, so...
This is a paparazzi-baiting scenario, which is fun because of Serena's thing in the first episode, which reminds me of how pissed I was at myself for not remarking on the Lady Gaga thing there -- I'm you're biggest fan/ I'll follow you until you love me/ Papa/ Paparazzi -- which of course was also Scott's MO, come to think of it. So now we've got four Kaspar Hausers looking for their dads -- using four different media/surveillance schemes to get there -- including Nate in the middle, who went through all this same shit two years ago with the Captain, and knows how bad it can burn you, but which hasn't stopped him pressing the bruise with William Vanderbilt, who is basically his father figure in this season's setup anyway. The song is the boy is the song.
B's all happy when Chuck shows up with auction catalog, assuming he's there to make up. He does apologize, but explains that he's there for a particular photograph. She's excited: That's why she's there too: "My prayers have been answered! A secret collegiate society wants me! Initiation's easy, all you have to do is contribute to their salon's art collection as a fee, so..." It's sort of sad and very smart of the culprit, because of course Blair's terrified of the real world, the whole "they forget there's a class system" aspect of NYU, and this is a way for her to be in the world but not of it. Proof once again that she's better than her actual station. So all she has to do to prove that she's better than the lowly people who don't like her is to buy her way in. It's the same photo, of course, so Chuck rolls his eyes.
Blair nods: "I'm more of a Helmut Newton girl myself, but they want vintage McMullan. Who am I to argue?" Chuck explains how it's a photo of Sean MacPherson, and he has to show "respect for his history" if he's going to get into the demimonde world where people don't worry about the "raucous element" that gives Chuck life: If he can still be Chuck while becoming Bart, he can both have his integrity and honor his father's memory. Last year taught us that it can't be one or the other -- he can't fill Bart's shoes, but he can't do otherwise -- so the only way Chuck can be saved is if he finds a way to make Victrola 2.0 work. Which means finding a partner who can play the Serena game, where your bad acts are adorable instead of criminal. "Show him 'respect'? He's a club owner, not a mafia don," Blair says, which shows a serious misunderstanding of what those words mean. Chuck blows her off -- "You can buy your Table People a wonderful Henry Diltz" -- and she reacts as anyone would, telling him to suck it. He caresses her face and tells her it's his needs over hers, and all she can do is threaten to withhold sex, which is what he's already doing.
Scott arrives at Vanessa's dorm, and she pushes him -- again -- back past the threshold. "I like you," she starts, and he says he likes her too, but she won't be interrupted: "That's why I'm gonna give you thirty seconds to explain why there's no Scott Adler enrolled at NYU." He hems and haws and then abruptly goes, "I'm Rufus and Lily's son!" And she awesomely stares at him: "Oh my God."
"And -- you just wanted to see the room, didn't you? That's why you came back."
"Yes."
"Well --" indefinitely -- "I guess you've seen it now."
Scott explains that the Rossons told him he was adopted back in middle school, but he didn't seek out his birth parents until last year. They told him, remember, that the birth parents didn't want to know about it. "They lied to you, Scott. Rufus and Lily went looking for you, and your parents said that you were dead." Scott's surprised; they review the exposition together: How they said he was killed in a boating accident, but that was his younger brother Andrew, etc. Vanessa, whose ethic is always one of inconvenient truthiness, advises him to tell Rufus immediately. Which is one of Vanessa's few good ideas, because the truth is that Scott is being hella creepy.
Scott says he wants to talk to his family first, and tells Vanessa that she can't say anything about it before he does, because she has feelings for him. She goes for it, despite the fact that any rational person would have processed by now that the worst part of his scheme would be how he's whoring her out, but whatever. I'm sure they have actual feelings for each other, despite Vanessa being the worst person on Earth and Scott having no discernable qualities whatsoever, so it's okay. Most couples are like that in real life anyway.
Serena catches Carter getting into it with a guy at his hotel desk, apparently having killed his credit card before ordering three bottles of '95 Dom reserve, and refusing to pay. Serena offers to pay for him, obviously, and he tells her that's not the point: This also was not him. I realize the whole point of this story is showing Serena what it's like to be the people worried by Serena's own sketchiness -- which is hardly ever her fault, at the outset, although she does tend to fuck it up for herself beyond that point -- but you'd think she'd be feeling some déjà vu about this. Carter gets upset and she promises that she believes him, trying to convince them both that she does, and he calls her a bad poker player -- boy likes poker and poker metaphors -- and she's like, "I want to believe you've changed? You're just making it hard for me." He points out that without trust, they are nothing, and strokes her face and wanders off. He should just go to Rufus's house. They got waffles.
Blair has transformed herself into a hideous monster. Shiny unremarkable dress, truly stupid-looking braids tackled all around her head like a baldness scarf. Chuck doesn't even blink, just offers her "her favorite vintage" of champagne ('95 Dom, which we knew at one point but hardly registers as a CLUE here) and his apologies. He suggests that they both stay out of Sotheby's tonight, and figure out other ways to do their thing, in order to save the relationship. She tells him she already got her bidding paddle, and he suggests they find another use for it, because -- again -- they're such terribly jaded eighteen-year-olds that only weird sex games can possibly get them up and running.
Dan meets Vanessa at, you guess it, a coffee shop, and even though she was just asked to STFU about Scott, she's apparently reasoned, that doesn't mean she can't act totally sketch and cryptic about him and fuck everything up for everybody by telling Dan nothing whatsoever except that Scott is a dangerous individual living under an assumed name. Dan points out how fucked up that is, and Vanessa has the balls to get attitude about it because Dan just doesn't understand the situation , except for how she's the one creating the situation and then refusing to talk about it , so they sit sort of mired in their own retardation until Georgina shows up and chases her off with a nonsensical dumb joke -- "Blair actually locked me out, and by the size of the sock on the doorknob I didn't want to knock" -- and Dan invites her to the auction for no reason, and then Georgie talks Dan into high-powered spycraft to find out what's up with Scott. Instead of, you know, asking Vanessa to cut the crap for once and stop making it all about her.
Chuck and Blair -- he looking as fabulous as he's ever looked, she looking worse than she ever has -- are making out when they both start getting updates about the photograph, and they make a few gestures at turning off their phones while secretively reading their phones, and finally Blair figures out that they're double-crossing each other, and is so piqued that she runs off with his shoes. Meanwhile, Dan and Georgie have gone all the way to DUMBO for some reason so they can look up Scott on the internet. They are helped in this pursuit inordinately by Dan's bizarre recall -- Scott was MVP on his high school soccer team, the Lions -- which is so ridiculous that Dan has to go, "Wow, I don't know how I remember that." (You know what's better than spackling on some self-aware wink-wink? Constructing your story strongly enough that you don't have to do so.) "At least he was honest about sports. Typical." (What?) Georgie finds out that he's actually named Rosson, which causes Dan to wig.
Scott comes back to Vanessa's dorm room for the thirtieth time today, and says that he almost went back to Boston, but then didn't, because he loves her or some shit, so he called his parents and they had a big fight, but now he needs Vanessa to go with him to talk to Rufus. Which they will be doing, of course, at Sotheby's, because Vanessa cannot be within a hundred-mile radius of a society function, where the rest of cast actually belongs, without getting her muddy Uggs all over everything.
Dan shows Georgina the letter Scott Rosson sent him last year after the whole New Yorker thing, when Dan magnanimously called a much older boy in order to patronize him, only to be cut off by the adoptive parents. He calls Vanessa and leaves an unnecessarily cryptic voicemail that tells her nothing she didn't already know: "Hey, Vanessa. Uh, it's... it's... it's me. Look, Scott is not who he says." Also, he could be dangerous. Because thanks to Vanessa's bullshit, now Dan and Georgina think that Scott is a stalker. Which is pretty much exactly what she, for whatever reason, intended Dan to think. Dan invites Georgina to the auction -- oh, Rufus is going to be there representing Lily's interests in some way, which is why Serena and the Humphries are going -- and then she acts super-spooky with her laptop for awhile. GG: "Turns out photographs won't be the only thing up for grabs tonight. A priceless secret is on the auction block, and bidding begins now!"
Everybody arrives at Sotheby's while the Lissy Trullie cover of "Ready For The Floor" plays. I haven't heard this version. Operative lyrics, as Nate and Bree -- needless to say, looking like hell -- showily kiss for the paparazzi and the rest of the characters arrive and have their pictures taken:
I am ready, I am ready for a fall
I can't hear your voice, do I have a choice?
You're sinking below, I'm using my force
You're my number one guy
Serena appears in a truly fucking insane dress -- lovely dark red in color, boob-caged like a Mondrian -- and asks B to exposit why she is there, so she does, hysterically, and then S apologizes to B for not listening to her about Carter. "It's for the best, S. Most guys just are who they are." Chuck appears in a cloud of smoke and Blair physically jumps behind big old gigantic Serena to get away from him, because he's pissed about the stolen shoes, and she tells him they are POWs and aren't going anywhere until she gets the photograph. "And don't think you can distract me with another ounce of Dom," she CLUES, and Serena giggles as she runs off. Chuck mentions that Carter's not there, and she starts to get suspicious. "Probably best. This place doesn't accept IOUs. Some guys just are..." Serena pulls a CLUE literally out of her ass: " Who they are? That's exactly what Blair just said." Chuck walks away and the camera lingers on her thinky face for a million years, hoping you'll buy that she just figured out something.
Vanessa walks Scott into Sotheby's like a dog trainer in a hideous effing giant turquoise ring, and Scott literally walks up to Rufus and goes, "Remember when I told you there was something I wanted to talk to you about today? That's why I'm here." Without pretext, rude as all get out: vintage Humphrey. They come on the PA and say the auction is starting, so Rufus -- even with that very key, very hyped-up statement still hanging in the air -- blows them off to go check on some Lily thing. Vanessa grabs his arm and commences comforting the shit out of him, but right then his tragic mother appears across the crowd and he wigs out. There is not a moment in this whole scene where Vanessa isn't rubbing, smacking or otherwise attempting to comfort his right arm; it's awesome. So he makes all kinds of faces and heads over to talk to his tragic mother.
Some Sotheby's cutie starts the bidding, while Blair commences giving Chuck an over-the-slacks so he won't be able to concentrate on the bidding. The McMullan is, of course, the first item up for bid. While Blair roughhouses his crotch and Chuck recites sports scores, they throw them paddles up repeatedly. When the price reaches $7100, Blair tells him in no uncertain: "Enough. I need this, and you're gonna let me have it." He assures her that he's not doing it, and she tells him that she plain and simply needs "this society": "You don't turn down destiny," she says, completely forgetting his destiny altogether, and he hisses, "It's not destiny if you have to barter your way in. You're special enough on your own. You don't need some group to say you are."
Aww. She points out that getting this photo is similarly pathetic for him: "Since when does Chuck Bass pay for a partner? The Chuck I knew bribed no one but me." And then all of a sudden the thing is sold: To Serena van der Woodsen, who gives them not one, not two, but three fierce motherfucking looks before swishing her hair around awesomely, doing her gorgeous hip-walk thing she does when she's modeling, and taking off with every ounce of their mojo. Everybody else is gracious enough to let her complete the entire sassy catwalk before getting back to business.
Tragic Mom stands directly in front of a framed photo of Little Edie and exposits the shit out of you, answering questions you didn't even know you had: "1) After your phone call, 2) I got in the car. 3) I came straight to New York. 4) I had Lily's address. 5) The doorman told me about the auction." So that explains it. She tells Scott that she's not there to stop him, but to stand by him, and apologizes for all the lies: It had more to do with dead Andrew than it did with Rooster and Lily St. Regis, and she only acted like, and forced his dad to act like, they were crazed kidnappers because she was bereaved. But now she's fine with it, so whatever. She's like about as interesting as her kid. They hug and are tragic. Somewhere Vanessa's hugging muscles are burning, because if ever there were a tragic hug she deserved to be in the middle of, it's this one.
Georgina is alive with excitement, the whole "racing to an art auction to confront a possible stalker" thing, and Dan asks if her last boyfriend was Batman. (Um, her last boyfriend was Jesus, so kinda.) Things get very concrete and there's not much to say beyond the plot. Dan attacks Rufus with Scott paranoia, and Georgie announces herself to Rufus while paying nonsensical/expository lip service to the fact that they've already met under a different name, and then Dan goes, "He's dangerous!" And Rufus goes, "Dangerous?" And Vanessa appears and goes, "He's not, he just wants to talk to you," and Rufus literally goes, "Talk to me about what?" But of course Vanessa is not fucking going to say anything, so then Scott appears and... Totally lies.
"I haven't told you the truth. My last name is... Rosson. This is my mom." He takes her hand. "I'm your son's brother. Andrew's brother. And I, uh, just really wanted to meet you." GG laughs at Vanessa, whom once again has been screwed out of being part of anything interesting, but honestly: Your cover story is that you engineered a secret life and have been living under another name for the last four months because you just had to get to know the biological father of your dead adopted brother? Thank God it's dumbass Rufus he is telling this inane tale, or we'd see some real fireworks. You know Lily would just grab hell out of his lapels and shake that head at him: "Nuh-uh. What's really going on here? Rufus, I can handle this." Which, speaking of: Between telling her daughter to quit college last week, and letting their kid slip through his guitar-callused fingers this week, I'm starting to think Lily is actually going to kill him.
Blair and Chuck attack Serena and ask what the big idea is, and she explains the CLUES and how they've been sabotaging Carter's chances with her: The girl, the '95 Dom -- which S knows is B's favorite -- and the whole thing. "So we started a stealth campaign to destroy his credibility," Chuck says expansively. "Room service bill, the girl on the street..." Blair mentions a warrant they don't even know about yet, and suggests that Carter take a DNA sample down to the 24th precinct tomorrow. B swears she did it to save Serena, and Chuck says he just did it because he hates Carter. "All Carter cares about is himself. When we ran him out of town six months ago, he traded his Dubai ticket for Greece."
Remember, he was turning Blair all evil and Serena bought him a ticket out of the country with that Rhodes look in her eye? Well apparently what happened next is that Carter went to Greece and, per Chuck, "Spent the next few months checking in and out of every resort and hotel from there to Fiji." And now he's back, because he's broke. Serena realizes that in fact she is the mystery culprit after all, like some kind of Phillip K. Dick novel, and finally explains WHAT HAPPENED IN SANTORINI : Carmen Sandiego, aka Keith vdDubs, was supposed to be getting married two years ago. (Huh? Right about the time her brother was committing suicide and she was coming back to the UES? Did I skip a year in there? Retroactive continuity is a harsh mistress. This is like the Final Five thing all over again.)
So Serena asked Carter to help, secretly, and he said he had "access" to a boat. Which is why they got arrested, which is the only thing we already knew about WHAT HAPPENED, and so what Serena didn't know is that he's been looking for Keith this whole time, including when they ran him out of town last time. "And did he find him?" they ask, and she gets that look and takes off with the painting. B shoots Chuck a look and he calls his "guy at the precinct," and of all people, who should be listening, with a gimlet and attentive eye, but Bree Buckley. Of course, at this point I thought it meant that Keith was supposed to marry her sister-cousin, because that's still the only thing we know about her, but it turns out she wasn't listening for vdDubs news, but for Carter's name.
Look Homeward, Angel : "Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?"
Rufus is still confused as to why Scott planned and played out this massively weird hoax on everybody that doesn't even make sense, and Scott's like, "Yeah, my story is not hanging together at all," and Rufus invites him and Tragic Mom over for some fucking waffles and endless talking. Scott says he's had enough of all that, but that this has been "a good first step." Toward what? Knowing people that have literally no connection to you whatsoever beyond the fact that you have hoodwinked them for no actual reason?
"You've got... You've got a great family, Mr. Humphrey, and my brother would have been proud to know you, All of you." They shake hands, and Rufus puts his arms around Scott, and holds him tightly. And Scott's heart melts; he smiles hugely. "You don't know how much that means to me," Rufus says. Which makes me think, suddenly, that he does.
The Lost Boy : "Well, then, good-bye," the woman said, and they shook hands. "I'm glad if I could show you. I'm glad if --" She did not finish, and at length she said: "Well, then, that was a long time ago. You'll find everything changed now, I guess. It's all built up around here now -- and way out beyond here, out beyond where the Fair Grounds used to be. I guess you'll find it changed."
Rufus watches Scott walk slowly to his mother, and take her hand; she hugs him while Rufus watches.
They had nothing more to say. They just stood there for a moment on the steps, and then shook hands once more.
Serena's not raising Carter on the phone; Blair approaches and asks if it's even worth the risk. "I don't know, you tell me. You and Chuck are two of the most self-centered, damaged people I know..." B's not following. "Well? Somehow two wrongs make a twisted right." (Take my dress, here.) "You don't think it was worth the risk?" She puts the painting into Blair's hands, taking care of their relationship as tenderly and quietly as always, and rolls her eyes: "Here. You know what to do with this." Blair drops the Table Élitaire invite and smiles: "Damn him..." S nods to herself with a job well done as usual, and then picks up the invite, noticing the CLUE of the distinctive "G" in "Good luck." She takes off to avenge some more shit, still sighing and rolling her eyes as she goes, because this place is a fucking circus and she has to hold her breath to even focus enough to live here.
B presents Chuck with the painting: "Because I love you. You enormously stubborn pain in the ass." He delights in her. "And what about Le Table Élitaire?" Point being, she says, she believes in him . "And if this is what it takes for you to believe in you, then..." She gives a heavy sigh and kisses his cheek: "It's worth it." He smiles, so sweetly!
Serena tosses the invite down in front of Georgina, who has been the emcee for this whole Chuck/Blair thing -- although she has no idea that it inspired their own plan to reconcile their differences in the attempt to "protect" Serena from herself. "Does Le Table Élitaire even exist, Georgina?" Georgie holds her champagne high. "I'm sorry, but my French is a little rusty. Maybe you should start with excusez-moi ." Serena explains the CLUE about the "g" on the invite -- which, she reminds us, as caused her no end of trouble in the past -- and from beneath a mighty Bumpit Georgie admits that Le Table Élitaire does exist, and that her friend Devyn -- the mean-looking girl at McPherson's office -- was a Dartmouth member, before of course she went to Tuck for grad school, and why do I know this much about that pointy-girl's c.v.? She still dresses like a hostess at Brandy Library. "I doubt the NYU chapter has ever heard of Blair Waldorf. If there even is an NYU chapter," she laughs. Props for originality, though. If you did that shit to Rory Gilmore she'd commit suicide and you know it.
"Oh, good," Serena says mordantly. "So you haven't changed at all. What about Dan?" Protective as usual. "Dan is Dan. But when it comes to Blair Waldorf, I don't have to do much but sit back, light a match and watch her go up in flames." Word. Serena points out that eventually Blair will push back: "And when she does, I will be right behind her." And then Serena does maybe the coolest thing she's done in a while, which is fix those eyes on Georgie and say very carefully -- very much a Rhodes Woman in her mother's absence -- "Now. We've had enough of you tonight." She stands aside to let Georgie pass, and then physically shoves her using only the powers of her eyeballs to make her obey. Totally awesome.
Outside, Serena joins the Humphries at the car, and they talk about dinner, and Dan wants to find Georgie, but Serena just shakes her head and tells him they need to talk; Rufus invites Vanessa along, of course, and they sail away... Just as Georgina's coming out to look for them. Left out in the cold, again. Inside the car: Serena, Vanessa, Dan; Jenny, Rufus. A happy family. Everybody she wished would accept her, in the opening of the episode. Outside the car: Just Georgina, in the new shape she took on, that still didn't do it. Georgina, again. Talk about a victimless crime.
Georgie calls him once they're back at home, hanging out in Serena's room at PRADA, all her colors faded to black and purple. She realizes immediately that Serena told him about the Blair/Chuck plan, and she stutteringly explains that she sent the Élitaire invite last week, before they hooked up -- right around the time Blair was accusing her of all this shit -- but points out that it's Blair and Chuck, of all people. "I mean, talk about a victimless crime!" He admits this point, but says he wants to chill out regardless. She's incredibly sad, but she doesn't protest. "Right. No strings. I'll see you later."
Serena feels bad for Dan, but they agree telling him was the right thing to do. He asks after Carter, but he's still ignoring her. "You're a pretty tough one to shake," Dan tells her, and she points out that her lack of belief in him might be reason enough. Meanwhile, Rufus is "attempting crepes," so they go save the family from that.
Chuck shows up at MacPherson's with the photo, and Devyn admits that she mentioned his meeting to Georgina, who created the whole plan: "Georgie and I go back. The girl has an MBA in deviant behavior. And you're going to need a better sense of humor in the club business." Point. MacPherson comes in, admires the photo of himself, and then Chuck shakes his hand: "Chuck Bass. Big fan. By the way, when your lease at the Empire Hotel isn't renewed, thank Bright Eyes here." YES! MacPherson stares at her pointiness and presumably fires her.
Scott once again comes to Vanessa's room, where she's wearing a very mod, very yellow ensemble. (He's wearing purple and green, which means he clashes -- with himself, but also -- with her, and there's a purple molding behind him that frames him in all-purple, so he clashes even worse with her, but you know who's all about purple this week? Georgie.) Vanessa begs him not to leave her alone with this secret, because A) that's shitty and B) it's Vanessa, but he points out that giving him up for adoption was Rooster and Lily's choice, and he doesn't hate them for that, but now this identity is his choice, and...
He's right. This is where Vanessa's ethic gets in the way, because he's totally right. Lily doesn't have the "right" to know anything -- even if secretly at this point I think R might, or at least suspect -- because Lily already chose otherwise; Rooster has more of a claim since he never chose to give Scott up, but that's still on Lily. Scott doesn't have to say anything, and sticking Vanessa with that secret -- which she extorted out of him by threatening his cover story -- is the mildest possible collateral damage imaginable, but whatever. They cry and hug and their mascara runs and we still don't know why they actually like each other. And hanging on every word, just outside the door: You know who.
"And again he was in the street, and found the place where the corners met, and for the last time turned to see where Time had gone."
Carter arrives at PRADA, asking Serena for at least the tenth time this season what the fuck she wants from him, and she brightly explains that the whole thing was a frame-up courtesy of Blair and Chuck, who are clinically insane. He nods, and says he already figured that out, listing the CLUES quickly, and when she asks him why he didn't say so, he points out that he did . Well done (and totally WSVDWWD). "If you're looking for the first excuse to bolt, trust me, you're gonna find one. For my sake, I figured sooner was better than later." She kisses him, and the song of the summer starts: Miike Snow's "Animal":
I change shapes just to hide in this place
but I'm still an animal
Serena says she's done finding excuses, when she's done kissing him, and he takes his time with his counteroffer: "Who says the offer's still on the table?" She calls him a terrible poker player, and he breaks out in the... I will go ahead and say it's the loveliest smile I've ever seen on this show. Which is not really about smiling, but when it is about smiling gives you a heckload of loveliness competition in the smile arena. This one leaves them all behind. Who knew Carter Baizen was hanging on to that little trump card? Shit. She invites him to breakfast, and they pull up another chair.
In your eyes I see the eyes of somebody
Who could be strong, tell me if I'm wrong
And now I'm pulling your disguise up
Are you free or are you tied up?
Blair joins Chuck across the street from the Empire Hotel, where the MacPherson club in question is located: "I just came from Sean MacPherson's office. I wanted to thank his assistant. She did me a favor. I was thinking too small. Why settle for some club in a hotel when you can just buy the hotel?" Blair's taken aback; he's not done. "I've been meeting with the board of Bass Industries all morning. I told them I want to cash my shares out... Risk it all, on my own. They think I've lost my mind."
Nobody knows it but me
When I slip, yeah I slip
I'm still an animal
So has he? No. But then how can he be sure? "Because you believe in me," he says, kissing her madly. She's moved. They are fucked; this is just a song he's singing, and he thinks she wrote the words. It's how she got him off the roof once. "I booked the penthouse for us. What do you say we christen my legacy?" He holds up a bottle of '95 Dom. "Or do you need to be bribed?" She gives him an indulgent smile; they head across to his new Empire.
Serena kisses Carter goodbye, just as a car is driving up: It's Bree Buckley, finally being awesome. He greets her unhappily. "Heard through the grapevine you were back in New York and dating Serena Van Der Woodsen, no less." And what does she want?
You Can't Go Home Again : "His enemy was time. Or perhaps it was his friend. One never knows for sure."
"Are you kidding? I'm headed home to face the family firing squad. Considering what you did to us, being able to find you is gonna go a long way in getting me back in. I'm sure they'll be in touch." He swallows and nods. This is the price of the new shape. "Oh, and go ahead and run, if you want. You know how much daddy loves to hunt." She rolls up the window and drives off. He's scared.
Nobody knows it but me
When I slip, yeah I slip
I'm still an animal
Georgina looks at her desktop while she's booking her train to Boston: A picture of her and Dan at the rooftop party, the night she found love, the night she started designing a family around it. A safe place. She destroys the picture with a flick of her wrist, in a hail of sparks, and sets off once again.
I change shapes just to hide in this place
But I'm still an animal
I'm still an animal
Is she going to destroy Scott? Enlist him? Bring him back and lob him into the room like a bomb for Lily's homecoming? Last time she outed Eric; this time she'll burn it all. XOXO.
"Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, this is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there...
"It was only when he got there that his homelessness began."