Yes! String-quartetified Muse at a Yale dinner party! That is the very shit about which I am talking! Gossip Girl, stop playing crazy and go for it because that is the best musical choice ever explored on this musically perfectified show. Anyway, going in order of awesomeness is hard this week because all three storylines are pretty great, to the point where if Life hadn't this week guest-starred both Marguerite Moreau and Todd Stashwick, my two biggest TV crushes ever, it would have no competition at all for the best, best thing.

However, any storyline that involves both Rufus and Vanessa is automatically at the bottom of the applications file, so: Jenny and Vanessa team up to get Rufus to reconsider Jenny's insane dropout plan that will obviously be leading straight to cokewhoredom, but he reconsiders after about six people -- including Eleanor and hot-as-hell Lily -- explain to him that his life is useless, but Jenny's might not be if he lets her drop out of school at fifteen and become a cokewhore.

Meanwhile, Jenny is totally trying to get Lily to cheat on Bart with her Dad, because she has fucked up ideas about marriage, because her parents are Rufus and Alison Humphrey: the people who produced a tiny Dan Humphrey and didn't drown him immediately on seeing what a little asshole he obviously was.

Oh! And Eric has a new boyfriend: one who doesn't walk dogs. Total burn on Jenny!

Speaking of, Dan and Nate and Chuck get all kinds of weird and gay on each other, and it is awesome. Nate tells the Yalies he's Dan so that they won't kill him because the Captain ruined our economy, but the real Dan shows up after Nate meets some Canadian-looking girl whose mother was in the Navy (?), and he gets totally closed-mouth chaste embrace-blocked. Next, Chuck -- who's only at Yale so he can have an orgy with the Skull & Bones dudes -- sends the studs to tie Dan to a statue in his boxer shorts using oddly thorough knots. Nate throws a random punch at the guys to protect Dan's honor, runs to his rescue, and then takes his time with the untying. Cannot toss blame, as Dan should really log more boxer time to be honest, and then English TA Overbite Eyeball girl shows up again, totally blowing the mood.

Later everybody apologizes or something, it's boring and there is a lot of cheekbone action and everybody's got these bizarre gigantic eyebrows, but then when Nate finds out that Chuck sold out Dan's sweet ass to protect him, he totally dumps Chuck. Like, Chuck goes "We'll talk about this in the car" and Nate sniffs, like miffed wives everywhere, that he's taking the train. But it's only because Nate doesn't know that Dan and Chuck got so intimate in the jailhouse and now Chuck must destroy Dan lest anybody find out his terrible secret. And for once, I didn't even use rhetorical tricks or anything to try and make any of that sound gayer. It was just that gay. Gayer than rhetoric can create.

Additionally, the orgy with the Skull & Bones hotties? Totally a setup so that the multiple sets of foreign prostitute triplets he hired to rub up on them -- yes sir -- could take scandalous pictures of them with their LIPSTICK CAMERAS and thus put the entire underclass at Yale under Chuck's evil thumb. I also did not make any of that up even though it seems like I did. And I'm not saying I wouldn't, because I totally would? I'm just not awesome enough to come up with that.

But oh, Serena and Blair. So first Serena gets a handwritten invite to Yale, but decides to stick with Brown because it would literally kill Blair if she even went on campus. Then Blair gets cocky and tells her to enjoy being a freshman vegetarian lesbian at Brown, where stupid people go, so Serena changes her plans and totally charms the Dean. Blair responds by choking so hardcore she actually awkwardly pecks the dude on the cheek as she's leaving.

But then Blair steals her way back in to the super-secret dinner party -- where the aforementioned string tribute to "Time Is Running Out" is making everything perfectly perfect -- using some rare kitty-cat figurines that kind of make sense in context, but Chuck sells her secret "Famous Person Dinner Party" answer to Serena, who refuses to use it until... Blair does something else horrible, whatever, maybe it's so horrible I blocked it out, but so then at the party Blair exchanges the stolen answer (George Sand) for the name of the guy Serena KILLED! This is maybe the worst thing girlfriend has ever done, and it causes Serena to almost die, but Blair is not done! Before you know it, she explains that Yale's only interested in Serena as a Page Six PR stunt because she is a vapid whore, and then throws a purse at her head.

After the ensuing -- and effing brilliant, like slo mo-worthy -- catfight Serena tells her to never talk to her again, and it's so sad. But THEN the next morning, they totally make up and it is AWESOME, and they find out that they were both right: Blair's too neurotic to get into Yale and Serena's only getting in because she's a celebrity. Serena, of course, is like "Lalala, I like bubblegum" at this revelation, and stumbles over a magic gnome that grants wishes on the way to her limo, while Blair silently plans all the things she's going to binge and purge later, but at least the tension's over for now. What a delightful episode! Next week: Vanessa Abrams as Annette " Madame de Tourvel" Hargrove. I'm freakin' dyin' over here with this long-ass recaplet already, but come on: called for. Two weeks is fourteen days too long. See you in XOXO!