Thom Browne's my favorite designer but just like your favorite anything sometimes you want to punch him in the neck for doing it wrong. Thus we have Chuck's nautical monkey jacket, which is actually just a collection of military semiotics boiled down to their essential shapes and then arranged like a Klee abstract, which sounds great in theory but ends up looking like Garanimals did a military line for budding young gay sailors. Which actually fits into Chuck's sartorial repertoire quite nicely, so never mind. He's previewing his storyline this season for Nate on the phone: moving out of the Palace, buying a place of his own, giving the company to Lily. So that's every question I had over the summer, answered in three sentences, and I am grateful.

Nate's is a little hairier because he has so many details all the time. We remember he left the Mayoral internship because of his chronic problem with being a cougarbait rentboy, but now apparently he's getting the silent treatment because he wasn't invited to the polo match. So far, I follow. Chuck tells him to call Bree since they're mad anyway, but Nate says he doesn't want to use her to send a message. Which he does, but whatever. So then Chuck tells him sleeping with the enemy is hot ("Why do you think I had the whole Ivanka thing?" he asks, forcing me to picture their Humble Caveman faces bashing at each other in a silent dance of death and absolute supremacy) and Nate once again says he's not a shitstirrer, which means now that he's going to use Bree to start some shit, but the way they get there is genius: Chuck reframes the argument from pettiness to the idea that Nate needs to declare himself as a man and an individual, which is like all he's ever wanted to do. Chuck rivals Blair in the minimum amount of words he needs to use to cause a situation to completely explode.

Serena is terrified by Chuck and Blair's sex games, accusing her of going from "Jane Austen to Anaïs Nin," which is the kind of accusation that you get from people who've not actually read any Anaïs Nin, and accusing her worsely of being under Chuck's spell and doing this stuff just to please him. Blair swears that this was her idea, and when she is rebuffed it's because Serena knows what it's like when people make you think your actions are your own idea more than anybody: D-Hump and A-Rose being two of many, but also Georgie, and Lily, and Blair herself. Who does a good talk, but still Serena -- and you and I, and Blair -- can't figure out if she's telling the truth and this is something she controls. "I even get to choose who to humiliate! Models, tourists, Upper West Siders..."