Blair
Blair's mother has FINALLY woken up out of her sex coma, or whatever it is that's been distracting her, and decided to take an interest in her company's total embarrassment. I can't decide if The Dress is more hideous on a person, or on a mannequin, but if anyone else wore this in front of Blair Waldorf, she would shout, "LINENS ARE NOT CLOTHES." However, her own dress is adorable. See, Stella McCartney? This is how it's done: If you're going to make hideous clothes, at least make yourself look great.
Dan's story
This is supposed to be on VanityFair.com, except clearly they couldn't use the logo or anything, so it's just... plain. As is the text. I know someone probably had about an hour to come up with a reasonable fake Blair Waldorf piece, but if you're going to have a character who's supposedly a great writer, you'd better be able to deliver if you have to show his work. This piece is the worst: "Blair has faces. She has different faces." Thank you for clarifying, or else clearly I'd have thought you meant Blair had a bunch of the exact SAME faces, like she ordered them on an As Seen On TV deal where they throw in ten more of the exact same thing for one easy payment of 14.99.
Blair and Eleanor and Dorota
I also wholly appreciate Eleanor swanning in wearing a poncho-shawl contraption that's animal print. Margaret Colin is still so stunning, and great casting. What follows is a strange scene where Eleanor is basically trying to tell Blair that her scheming dark side is going to be her downfall -- which is not terrible advice -- but they whiff it slightly by having the two of them imply, totally randomly, that her dark side is sexual in nature. For a second I thought this was going to be all about her obsession with Chuck Bass, but no, so I'm not sure where the "sexually deviant" thing applies. Clearly it's just that Blair is too willing to connive, so... really strange scene. But the point is: Eleanor is displeased, and Blair is On Notice.
Ivy
And then the show got disturbingly literal with Ivy and Rufus's cradle-robbing romance by having her wear an actual diaper.
Rufus's Web site
This is supposed to be a page on the site for Rufus's dumb new gallery we don't care about, tracking the RSVPs for his opening. Nobody is coming. Maybe that's because this isn't a real URL. Look at it -- nowhere in there do you see a ".com." That's kind of a glaring omission. But Ivy and Rufus decide their near-nil attendee list is because Lily deliberately scheduled an art auction for the exact same night and time. And not at ALL because this Web site only exists in their imaginations.
Serena and Dan
Dan slept at Serena's -- in Little J's old room, thank you very much -- because he is a sad homeless writer clown. The two of them decide to frolic on the town on Dan's Vespa, because apparently Dan was so into his Vespa in Italy that now he can't live without one. A VESPA. DAN HAS A VESPA. Let that sink in. So he has money to buy a Vespa but no money to rent an apartment? Later this hour he gets a paycheck and says he's going to go hunting for one, but really? He went Vespa first Of course he did, because Dan is the worst.
Dan and Serena
The paparazzi mobs Serena and Dan because of their sex tape, so they flee. Even all the traffic in New York City is too busy snickering that Dan has a Vespa to bother driving down the street. Serena gets all swoony at his Vespa-driving and they decide to spend the day together outrunning the paps.
Eleanor and Blair and Dorota
I'm going to miss Dorota when this is all done. She elevates every scene even when she's just blinking. And I love that Eleanor manages to look easy and put-together in a way that's so much less strained than Lily's cold elegance. It's a smart way to distinguish those two UES ladies. And Blair demonstrates her usual inability to tell when she's gilding a lily and then frosting it with twee. That dress is fabulous and all the other furbelows of her coat and purse are totally swallowing it whole.
Nelly Yuki
And of course, Eleanor's penance for Blair is to kiss and makeup with Nelly, who looks typically great. There is no way Blair wouldn't be wooed by how bangin' Nelly looks now, especially since she's a WWD reporter. Even her stubborn self would know better than to keep treating Nelly like the enemy, not least because Nelly appears sort of eager to be friends with her, in a weird way.
Chuck
Nate is helping Chuck figure out blah blah blah Bart Bass yada, so Chuck puts on his grooviest boutonniere and gives him the sex eyes. The funny thing about this show is that I actually believe Nate is the one true love of both Chuck AND Dan.
Nate and some dude and some hookers
Nate invites the Bass business manager up to his flat to pick his brain about shady business (and while making this suggestion, strongly implies he is cooking the Spectator's books -- and we know that Bart has his people on that, so I'm afraid this series is going to end with Nate being somebody's One True Love in prison). The dude doesn't bite on giving Nate any exciting theoretical examples that might reveal where Bart hides his blah-blah, so Nate steals his phone.
Chuck
And then Chuck stares at said Windows Phone like it just grew boobs, and clearly can't decide which person to tongue here first.
Windows Phone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So then Chuck takes a prolonged look through this phone so that we can aptly tour all its features, one of which is the storing of many movies whose names are kept in tiny boxes. Dear show: There is no way this dude, who just left the the room with a bunch of prostitutes so he could go bang them in his penthouse, keeps The Constant Gardener on his phone unless it's code for its porno equivalent, The Constant Hardener. And then Chuck finds Traffic on there, and of course this unlocks his suspicion that Bart has tucked his mysterious envelope of secrets -- sigh -- behind one of his paintings.
Rufus and Ivy
Gee, I wonder how these art stories are going to collide. I simply can't imagine. From behind this looks like just another story about an older customer taking his young streetwalker quarry to get some culture.
Serena and Dan
Dan takes Serena and her cardigan and her cleav to the same dive bar where she and Dan played pool on their first date. Except Serena is great at pool and apparently she sharked him that night so that he would have to touch her. Like Serena has ever had to resort to trickery to get some dude, even Dan 1.0, to touch her. They reminisce and then Dan decides they should leave separately and Serena is all sad-eyed and nostalgia-faced as he walks out the door without her.
Rufus and Ivy and Lily
Ivy uses all of Lola's donated millions to buy out Lily's art show and cancel the gala; that doesn't work, so they just replace it all with Rufus's artists, which still doesn't solve the problem of his expensively empty gallery, but whatever. Lily gets wind of it and shows up in a hissy and... yeah, we're watching an art standoff right now. I know. Also, Ivy: no.
Lily et al
Lily drags out her iconic Rainbow Lady piece for auction, because besting Rufus by selling the best piece of art is more important to her than, say, keeping pieces that are her favorite and which she used to hang over her stairs. Lily has clearly been to the Blair Waldorf School of Acting On Your Feelings.
Nelly
Blair, meanwhile, pretends to Eleanor that she's a reformed schemer, then turns around and tries to blackmail Nelly Yuki into pretending they've buried the hatchet -- which, again, stupid, because Nelly was totally WILLING to bury the hatchet. Plus all she does is bribe her by threatening to release a photo of her in costume at a school play, which you know is totally on Nelly's Facebook page already. So Nelly is like, "Screw THAT," and busts on Blair to Eleanor, who fires her. Blair's adherence to scheming would make so much more sense if she were good at it.
Blair's phone
We interrupt this Windows Phone episode to bring you a brief Blackberry interlude. Blair has tracked Dan via Gossip Girl -- how does that WORK, anyway? Does Gossip Girl put tracker chips in people's Cheerios? -- and confronts him about how awful and immature he made her sound in his piece, and he tells her that's because she IS awful and immature, which is not necessarily wrong, even though he was just madly in love with her about an hour ago so he's also juicing some hella sour grapes here.
Blair and Nelly and Eleanor
So Blair summons her sparkliest blue dress and headband and goes to the art auction -- everyone in town has tickets to all the same events, always -- and tells Nelly and Eleanor that she's not ALL bad, but that her dark side, though useful for her creativity (really? When?), makes her a lousy president. She quits. Except she'd already been de facto fired, so this isn't so much falling on your sword as pretending to fall on your butter knife and then secretly shoving it off to the side.
Sigh
Chuck deduces -- correctly -- that Bart hid his magic envelope of SECRETS behind the rainbow lady. So he arrives to bid on it. Except Ivy is bidding on it to piss off Lily, and Lily is bidding on it because she doesn't want Ivy to best her, so the three of them go at it in a blaze of bickering and paddling. It's sort of funny, except that I hate Lily's dress. It's about ten years too old for her, I think, and looks vaguely like a lung disease.
Dan and Serena
Nate briefly baits Serena into admitting that, yes, Dan has turned into an egomaniacal shitslice. But this hurts his feelings despite the fact that his whole PLAN has been to act like an egomaniacal shitslice, so she chases him into an elevator and then it quits on them, which also evokes their history. They make up, but don't make out, because there is too much time left in the episode so we have to drag this out as painfully as possible.
Lily's phone
While they all fought, Rufus stepped up and bought the painting (with Ivy's millions, which Lily is horrified to learn is the source of their wealth). Just then, Bart texts Lily this warning. This sent me into a grammar wormhole. The verdict, apparently, is that technically both are allowed, although some believe they shouldn't be interchangeable, and I tend to agree. I prefer cannot for general usage, because to me, "can not" means you are ABLE to not do something (like, you are resisting it), whereas cannot means you... simply cannot do it. In this case, while Lily IS physically able not to sell the painting, I suspect Bart meant the more neanderthal, "Woman, you simply cannot sell that." But who knows. I do enjoy a good grammar wormhole, though. Thank you, Gossip Girl.
Rufus
Rufus, by the way, is taking an AWFUL lot of glee in making Lily miserable. He is learning just how comfortable a high horse can be... before it bucks you off. T-minus an hour.
Blair
Blair seeks solace on the Met steps, where Nelly Yuki finds her, because that is totally where you would look for a lost Blair. She makes some comment about how everyone else grew up and Blair is still the girl who thinks everyone is afraid of her and/or wants to be her, and instead of taking insight from this about how to mature, Blair is inspired to prove that she still CAN be the girl everyone idolizes while never admitting any foibles.
S and D
So, Serena and Dan finally spend enough time gazing at each other and panting about the past that they decide to have sex. I hope he wakes up with a good haircut tomorrow.
Eleanor
Eleanor, meanwhile, is guzzling a martini while sorting through the wreckage of the company she pawned off and forgot. Blair storms in and announces she wants to spin off a youth line called B -- which is cute -- that makes... wait for it... uniforms. I do not think she can possibly mean this literally, but she certainly ACTS like she does. If she had just said she wanted to recreate the image of high-school Blair and inspire millions of girls to remember exactly why the world once copied her every whim, then it would've made more sense, but she kept tossing around the word "uniform," and Eleanor was like, "Hmm, UNIFORMS," and my eyes crossed and then I had a stress dream about sitting down for a test without having done the reading.
Blair and Eleanor
So Blair and Eleanor spend the evening sketching and giggling together and it's really quite sweet, and frankly, they should have done it this way all along. What 22-year old -- or whatever -- has any business being handed COMPLETE control over a company in a specialty with which she has ZERO experience? I have a brain; doesn't mean I need to inherit a neurosurgery practice.
Chuck and nate
Chuck and Nate are debating whether it would be untoward to give in to their mutual passion now that they see somebody already cut away the backing and stole Bart's envelope.
Chuck
"Rrowr, Nathaniel."
Lily
"I'm so sorry, Bart. I didn't realize you kept the receipts from your oil dealings in an envelope behind the Rainbow Woman." No, really, that's what she actually said. In public.
Ivy
Who has the envelope? Ivy, of course, who calls someone (Lola?) and says she's got the smoking gun, and "you should come back," because Ivy isn't sure she can keep this up much longer. Then she goes out and kisses Rufus. I feel like we're headed toward Ivy being actually in love with Rufus, and with so few episodes left, the show has a lot of work to do if it wants to reunite Lily and Rufus. Maybe they'll just leave him with Ivy. Or alone. But he DOES love a lady named after a plant.