Um, this hoedown just blew my mind so I can't guarantee full linearality. Here's the shit, cervical cancer not included: Gave a cute tattoo girl my CW T-shirt. It was fun like it always is. Move to Austin if you're not cool enough where you live currently. Anyway, dumb drama. Lexi & Aaron and Serena & Dan goes like this: imagine if you will an unholy creature born of Aaron Rose's artistic pretention and Dan's... congenital same. Her name is Lexi. She is like if Aaron and Dan and Vanessa had a horrible baby, and she used to date Aaron, but now she's got her sights set on Dan. I've already made the catshit coffee joke ten times so the fact that she embodies it I can't even say how nice that makes me feel. Her Humphreyness bugs Serena, of course, because Serena is still weird but is now also full of shit.
Turns out Dan is ready to fuck, and Lexi is ready to bone a guy on the first date -- which they quaintly act like is a quality of character and not of, you know, 2009 -- so of course Serena "extends herself" (her words) to Aaron, so Dan won't win. On the other hand: devil you know, or Girl Version Of Dan you don't? Given any scene in particular, she's either an assface or the perfect dark Illyana Rasputin mirror to Dan's bullshit. Time will be the judge, but before time comes us, you and me, and I can't speak for you? But me says: "Cute, but kind of an assface."
Then things get stupid and backward-moving, although a lot of awesome shit gets said. Dan basically says the simultaneously best and worst thing he's ever thought or said, which is basically that he was dating a secret whore (Serena) and got a virgin experience (X-mas) last year, but now the whole "meaningful sex" thing means "sex is very meaningful since I haven't had sex since X-mas 2007, when I first had sex." Which is both honest and pretty obviously the worst thing he's ever said to Serena, but also the awesomest, point being Serena's not cool with Dan hooking up with Lexi, and Dan's not cool with the obverse, but luckily Serena's hatred of Lexi is so justified it would blow your mind so she wins, because OMG Lexi makes Vanessa Abrams look like the coolest cool that ever Tensta'd.
Speaking of Abrams? She... Totally rocks this week. Contrary to reality, but strangely still in character, Vanessa's usually horrific sense of moral superiority leads her to a fat-teared, beautiful and bizarrely sympathetic confession to Nate about stealing that stupid girl-handwriting letter he wrote to Jenny a bajillion years ago. I knew it! I knew Dan acting like a person would inevitably lead to not hating Dan, and then like a virus it would spread to Vanessa and she would start doing fucking awesome things just like he did. Fuck this, dude. She emotes better than Nate and she's prettier than Nate -- by a hair -- but the fact that she followed up Dan's scant awesomeness with scant awesome of her own just means they are fucking with us. When Vanessa falls to her brutal death next sweeps, we'll look back and remember this is when they made us love her gorgeous assy ass.
Jenny -- prior to returning to Constance just to fuck with everybody -- creates a dress for Penelope while Hazel (looking FUCKING HOT suddenly) looks on, but when Iz shows up in an accidentally see-through dress, the Plastics talk her into giving Vanessa the transparent gown as retaliation for getting caught on Gossip Girl kissing Nate. If you're paying attention, that all makes sense, but honestly it is silly: V stole a letter from N to J, N thought J didn't love him and J thought N didn't love her, so V gets caught snogging N on GG and then J goes crazy in the atelier, which all the Plastics support (and GG besides) because Nate is Nate and thus causes otherwise intelligent young women to go apeshit and act retarded.
...Speaking of Edward Cullen, can I tell you how sparkly Chuck's tuxedo jacket is? So sparkly. And its breath smells of freesia. And dick. Which is what Chuck brings to the table, because get this: Blair and Chuck get into a Chronicles of Riddick fight about Who Knows Who that ends up -- and trust me, setting up this fake scenario is more painful than getting caught on a rooftop lubeless with a rapey Chuck Bass -- with them choosing dates for each other. And if you don't know the old Just Like Me But Different Game, you're not gay and you're not fucking a dude. Which both Chuck and Nate are, so like what's the ish.
Fake Blair is cute but uninteresting (fail), while the Fake Chuck is skinny but Totally Intense like Chuck, to an adorable degree. Oh, and the stakes are Chuck's Limo vs. Blair's Dorota. Yes. Blair just bet Dorota, fully knowing blowjobs are in the job description, because she must win. But what's darling about this, separate from the white slavery, is the fact that really they're just fighting to see who brings the better gift. Never mind that they're basically saying, "I love you so much I'm going to buy you somebody to fuck who looks and acts just like me. Hope you like it, I spent hours and days picking it out. And by 'IT' I mean the fake me that you will fuck." Obviously this results in the Brummagem Blair and Hoax Chuck Bass totally hooking up, because B + C = ∞.
Which speaking of forever, get a load of Rufus and Lily, who don't command the majority of screentime but -- as usual -- are the kings of this episode's takeaway. After Lily's whole surveillance freakout on Bart last week -- which was off-limits for many reasons, even though he pushed it first -- she runs once again to Rufus, and they end up basically hosting the big episode party together. Chuck is not feeling this, especially when Lily makes Rufus admit that letting her go moments before her wedding -- that exact moment defined by science as the Humphrey Moment where fucking it up is most likely to occur -- was idiotic, and he calls his Daddy. Better acting than anybody on this show (besides Meester, and Crawford last week) brings the show into total alignment with the stars... At which point I called foul, because Chuck totally called Daddy to get into his heart. Which is now how Chuck works, so then after the commercial break (and my concomitant heart failure) he played fair: called Daddy to come save Mommy from Rufus, while also telling Mommy that Daddy was coming, and to prepare her statement. Of course, then Bart dies or not, so it's mostly about how she's duh about Rufus which duh. But it seems clear this will be more complicated than that.
Of course, none of this Chuck awesomeness takes into account the idea of Bart TOTALLY DYING -- INSTEAD OF FUCKING VANESSA OR EVEN BETTER LEXI THE ASSFACE -- IN A CAR ACCIDENT on the way to saving Lily and Chuck from a life of Rufus's bullshit, so... I don't think God exists. Based on the merits of this episode of Gossip Girl, I mean, there is no God but Gossip Girl. Next week, we got Lily maybe losing (and gaining?) a husband, any number of people gaining a bro, Lily slapping the shit out of her brand-new (desperately in need of a mommy!) troubled son... Dig it, Leary fans. Dig it like I dig only you and Fallout 3 -- and frankly, after this shit goes down, there may not be a difference, but I'll stick by you nukes or not. XOXO.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Instead of talking to us, GG decides to open the episode with a checklist of crap to buy in order to survive winter in New York, and places in New York to take the crap you just bought, and the last item is a date and the last place is where you take the date, which is the senior Snowflake Charity Ball. Blair and Serena are surviving the cold in the Constance Courtyard while Blair goes through her notebook, which Dorota has printed out to read DATE OPTIONS, and list the stats of a bunch of different boys. Serena is bored by this prospect, but B issues this decree about how this is the biggest dance of the entire... Okay, you know how much I love balls, but isn't this sort of ridiculous? I mean, they can't all be the society page-dominating, crème de la crème events that B always makes them out to be? I mean, that's so Blair, right, so that's probably exactly what's going on here.
"Blair, it's addressed to Current Resident." "THAT is ME! They are offering ME 20% savings on ONE ITEM. What will it be? What shall I choose? And as you well know, Yale makes important admissions decisions based on things like shower caddies and wine rabbits. Bed Bath & Beyond is the kingmaker of affordable home furnishings! THIS IS THE SINGLEMOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN OUR YOUNG LIVES."
Serena's feeling giggly looking at all the options, who've already invited her -- "You think Angelina Jolie even considers a project without an offer on the table? I'm a strictly pay-or-play dater" -- and Chuck walks up to needle and irritate and pigtail-pull. Blair defiantly/openly affectionately tells him she's looking for something long term, and names a name. "Are you kidding. Have you ever seen him without gum? The oral fixation alone drive you insane." Blair reluctantly crosses him off and says another name, sort of loud-crazily. "Outscored your verbal on the SATs," Chuck protests, and Blair suggests that intelligent men are good for whispering mellifluous nothings in your ear. Any guy who tries that with me is getting the shoe-face. That's where I put my shoe in your face. "You only think you'll like an intelligent man. The moment he gave you a history of the word mellifluous, you'd rip out his sweetly flowing tongue." See what he did there? He's saying, "I'm smart too!" Serena spots Daniel talking to a boy on the other side of the courtyard and leaves Blair to be bothered, disgusted and mutually adored by Chuck.
And why? Because Serena's playing a little game of her own, and it's remarkably similar to Blair's little game, and it goes like this. "Hey Dan, check out this thing! Your favorite book, favorite translation, first edition. You may remember it from the time you and Amanda Lasher made fun of me and called me retarded, which caused me to become evil for a couple weeks? Magic evil powers, the whole thing? No. Well it's called Letters To A Young Poet, does that ring a bell? Isn't that the greatest present ever? Because it's NOT FOR YOU. It's for my BOYFRIEND, who is exactly like you but better in every way, hides his emotional manipulation like you but better, has no room to stand as far as judging me for my vigorous sexual appetites, is totally in college, and deserves AWESOME GIFTS like this one -- which is not, I stress, for you. Although I did buy it at the rare bookstore you told me about this week, so really in a way, it's like we're giving Aaron this present -- which you would really love -- together. Which is creepy in every possible way simultaneously! Aren't you bummed you dumped me?"
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