Chuck finally pulls himself together, mostly, in time for the reading of the will. Lily receives some huge portion of the Bassets, Uncle Jack gets a fair amount of his own, and Chuck inherits a majority share of Bass Industries. Chuck first blows the whole thing off and hands it over to Jack, but a few helpful words from stalwart Blair, and a loving letter from beyond the grave, gives him a moment of self-confidence and he takes it back.

Jack goes fairly nuts about this, because he is scary as hell (in case last week's episode, in which he did everything but personally toss poor Chuck over edges both metaphoric and concrete, didn't make this abundantly clear), but eventually ropes Blair into throwing Chuck a celebratory brunch with the Bass Industries board, which Jack then ruins by tempting Chuck into a night of hos and llello, invokes a morality clause, and gets himself put in charge. Then Blair, scorned for randoms and gonorrhea carriers, dumps him, going so far as to throw his bouquet at his feet. So Chuck's still doing great.

Lily and Rufus spend the entire episode alternately fighting and making love while they run up against many an obstacle to their search for their mysterious baby, Pilot Inspektor. While the adoptive family first tells them to go hang, the babydaddy eventually meets with them secretly and tells them the horribly sad story of how Pilot Inspektor was killed in a tragic jet ski accident.

Of course, the real clincher is that this is a lie, and Pilot Inspektor is actually their other son, who lived. The reason for this subterfuge is that having lost one son to watersports, they don't want to lose a second to all the money and legal counsel at Lily's disposal. I would call these people prudent, except they don't even know about the horrors of Lily and Rufus's parenting, so it's more like they're just plot devices.

Meanwhile, the Plastics overhear Dan freaking out about how he can't tell girlfriend Serena about their brother, and put out an APB over at Gossip Girl for the dirt. Serena gives this huge scandalous secret -- GG thinks Dan might be cheating -- about the same amount of attention she gives anything else in this world that isn't Serena van der Woodsen, which is to say minimal, although she does make it all the way to Brooklyn so she can get lied to about it by Vanessa Abrams. However, it's the now constantly scheming Nelly Yuki that breaks the story, after stealing Lonelyboy's phone literally out of his pocket. Nice one, Nelly Yuki. I really hope she's Queen by the end of January, because she's got a learning curve on her and I like it.

Serena freaks out about their brother and Dan's total lying obfuscation for about three seconds, then gets over it because it's actually not that big a deal. She and Dan have a very funny conversation about how skeevy stepbrother-fucking has a long and lovely literary legacy, which sort of tells us they're going to be all right.

Even as Blair, Jack and Chuck are descending into some unimaginable hell -- and I'll remind you we still don’t know what happened New Year's Eve! -- everywhere else is Cuteness Central. Nate -- who starts the episode getting blown kisses by Uncle Jack, weirdly/characteristically for him -- randomly gives Dan the most brilliantly sweet-hearted speech about how much he misses his friendship and loves him, and Dan forgives him for closed-mouth kissing his little sister a couple of times one million years ago. Meanwhile, Jenny and Eric have a tiny, dumb little spat about her friendlessness/need to third-wheel him and Jonathan, but quickly make up in the most adorable fashion possible.

And when Rufus and Lily return home, agreeing that the death of Pilot Inspektor is a sign they shouldn't be together and will never be a family, they open the door on their four children, cute as buttons and playing boardgames, having obviously constructed this family for themselves under their noses a long time ago. To be honest, for a second it felt like Chrismukkah, and that's a very good thing. XOXO.