A soft smile and another in a long series of grand gestures that ultimately mean nothing, under the bridge in winter. Leaving the park, Rufus walks right past CeCe, who followed her daughter; she watches him pass and looks out, into the wilderness.

Chuck knows a bar where all they play is Xu Xu Fang -- a nice trick, since they don't have an album out yet -- and it's appropriately menacing for the pose he's striking today. Imagine if Belle & Sebastian were really, really mean and that's Xu Xu Fang. They like horses, or they think they are horses, or something. They're fun. He ignores yet another call from Blair as the P.I., Andrew Tyler, enters looking haggard and offering half-assed condolences. "Skip the sympathy. This is business," Chuck says blearily. He's wobbling on his stool, further gone than we have seen him.

Being Chuck Bass is a difficult business. But I think that one of the reasons he and Blair get along so well is this: the control and abandon they share, the moderation they lack. Chuck performs his burlesque to get attention from his father, while simultaneously hating himself for indulging; Blair's relationship with excess, with food, is performed for attention from her mother, and at her warped behest. Jenny tempts Eleanor away, just as Dan does Bart: they turn the volume up, up, up. Cyrus Rose has tamed the beast in Eleanor for now, leaving a space for peace and happiness in Blair's life; Bart Bass has died, taking away with him not only the possibility of failure but the possibility of redemption, approval, acceptance. And if Eleanor had died, and Bart had lived: what would Lily's affection and general disinterest in discipline have done to Chuck, eventually?

I see signs now all the time:
I believe in anything
That brings you back home to me