How great were the ads this week, with that song from the end of the episode and people staring at other people kissing, while dressed all fancy? So free of content or meaning, yet so evocative! It felt like being French! If there's one thing we all need, it's more kissing while dressed all fancy, with other fancy people watching us kiss. Who doesn't live for those fancy, slutty nights? Good thing the episode didn't disappoint. On into the dumb old fake credits and there's a new entry on GossipGirl, proclaiming B and N are OVER. Which makes me think Blair and Nate will end up in bed together by the end of the episode, probably with fancy old Chuck watching.

There's a strange kind of swooshy thing that the camera does, like an Impressionist painting or a buffering problem, as we check out a bunch of kids practicing ballroom dancing. Like, they're dancing like normal people, and then with no warning, they go all smooshy. It's cool, I'm not describing it very well. And anyway, finally! Group dancing! "Hey, Upper East Siders, it's that time of year again, when the mere act of descending a staircase means you're a woman. That's right, debutante season." Oh, excellent. I love debutante season. It's just like dressing up fancy and doing the same things you do every night anyway, but with a creepy kiddie-pageant chattel/auction vibe. "Young ladies for sale by their fathers! Satisfaction guaranteed!"

The basic pairs are all walking through different parts of the world: Blair and Serena, Chuck and Nate, Dan and Jenny. B is "actually glad" she's going to the ball with Prince Theodore (!) instead of Nate, because as time goes by since the breakup, she has been filling in the blanks about how "self-involved," "brooding," and "tortured" he was. "A girl wants Romeo, not Hamlet," Blair says, finally proving what I've always suspected about the Constance Billard School for Girls. Can these people even read? Do they even need to? Instead of pointing out that Romeo was the very model of brooding self-involvement, to the point where the first half of the play is just various characters getting together to talk about what a whining pansy he's turning out to be, Serena fast-forwards to the end of the play, where Romeo died. "Yeah, but he died for something exciting!" Do what? "And I want my debutante ball to be something to die for!" They laugh, but I'm honestly concerned at this point. Chuck makes him into Othello, and everybody else is pretending to be exactly what they are, like in the pastorals, but there's no Romeo or Hamlet here. Maybe it's misdirection, but mostly it just seems queasy: the whole episode is a Shakespeare mash-up, but here you go trying to have it both ways.

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