PREVIOUSLY

Gossip Girl stole herself back from Serena, giving Nate a meaningless clue to her identity which -- for lack of anything better to do -- he is now using in a game of cat-and-mouse that involves bitchy late-night chats with her. Dan was summoned to a Roman writers' retreat, and after Serena lost her mind completely he took Georgina along the better to ruin lives. As is his wont. Ivy and Lola put together some sort of plan to take down Lily Rhodes-van der Woodsen-variable number of Somethings-Bass-Humphrey-Bass, who has left Rufus for Bart, the father of her only real child, who has returned from the dead due to the mysterious magics of Elizabeth Hurley. Blair and Chuck hooked up in Monte Carlo, where the horse-beatings continue in grand fashion, while Serena has returned to her previous incarnation as a common coke whore/murderess.

LESS PREVIOUSLY BUT STILL PREVIOUSLY

The first of the structural gimmicks in the episode appears immediately: A form of enjambment in which the lines from one scene inform the action of the next. Sounds fun in theory, but the whole thing is so silly and repetitive that it's much less enjoyable in practice. Repeat several times, interpolating between absolutely every line of dialogue, forever:

Person: "[Double entendre regarding Blair and Chuck, fucking.]"
Blair & Chuck: [(Fucking.)]

ITALIA

Dan: "This is the worst my hair has ever looked."
Georgina: "Keep striving, though. Listen, we're Under A Tuscan Sun! Literally! But also figuratively, as I'm a pointless middle-aged mom in her second adolescence, and you are a gay dude."
Dan: "Except I don't remember how any of this happened. Could you exposit at length, until I'm sore and exhausted and sick inside?"
Blair & Chuck: [(Fucking.)]
Georgina: "Sure. Once we got to Rome, I decided that you should just skip the retreat and sit in some kind of ruins, typing on a very old typewriter."
Dan: "That sounds remarkably unpleasant and sweaty."
Blair & Chuck: [(Fucking.)]
Georgina: "Well, nobody can hack an old black typewriter."
Dan: "Look who you're talking to."
Georgina: "Anyway, let's rewrite the same book you already wrote and pretend it's interesting."
Blair & Chuck: [(Fucking.)]

PRADA

Gossip Girl: "My literary technique for this episode will be talking about how this is the last season of this show, and but also how I will finally be exposed in the finale. It's all very subtle."