Plot-heavy, touching, funny and scattered: lots of pieces get moved around, characters (Eleanor and Jenny particularly) show colors we've not really seen before, Blair/Serena and Nate/Chuck have much-missed scenes together, Dan is awesome some more, and Jenny comes up with a storyline of sorts. All in all, a good showing -- even if it's 90% setup -- that makes the upcoming episodes feel monumental in a way the story hasn't since Bart's death midseason. I actually didn't realize how much had happened until I tried to write it all down.
Serena returns from España having stolen Poppy's weird-looking boyfriend Gabriel, whom she met in her previous life as Bad Savannah, and to whom she may or may not be married. She spends Cyrus Rose's entire Passover meal freaking out and pretending she's back with Dan, who is working the dinner as a waiter in order to help pay for school. This latter development freaks Rufus out so much that he decides to sell his art gallery, because what you should do when you don't have enough money is make less money. I can't wait to see how Lily gets her grubby hands all over Rufus's newfound poverty; on the upside, she finally realizes that telling Serena that she's turning back into Bad Serena is the quickest way to make that happen, as we've seen multiple times, and instead just tells her that she got into Brown, and to stop acting psychotic.
Meanwhile, the Grandfather gets Nate into Yale, which freaks Nate out because of the whole dynasty thing and because he's learned that the Grandfather is the one who got the SEC to investigate the Captain to begin with. It also freaks Blair out, because she's as desperate to get into college as she is to pretend she doesn't even want to go to college, and the ease with which the van der Bilts do these things is both a goad and an enticement. Her new plan -- becoming a career socialite and pushing Nate into ambition and alcoholism -- really upsets Eleanor, who knows Blair deserves to be the dictator of an actual country and not just the Whitney. Cyrus's offer to get her an interview at NYU is brutally rebuffed, which Eleanor and Cyrus don't even have time to worry about due to the intense tension of having Cyrus's wedding at the totally doomed Seder. As usual, Blair spends most of the episode fucking things up for everybody, but spends the last act in a truly unprecedented orgy of apologizing to everybody she can track down.
So van der Bilt puts Blair into a terrible spot, which means advancing her social position by manipulating Nate into taking the Yale position. Of course, since this is everything Blair wants (right now) tied up with a little bow, it explodes in her face. She ends up losing whatever social cache the Grandfather has given her when Nate gives a hateful little speech at Trip's wedding, thanks to Trip telling on her; both van der Bilt and Nate blow her off. She runs to Serena's arms while she's making up with Gabriel, and they cuddle and S tells her everything is going to be fine. It is awesome.
At exactly the same time, Chuck and Nate are having a little cuddle of their own. Chuck explains that Blair is full-on fucking nuts right now, but trying to at least appear human for the first time in her left, and seriously needs somebody like Nate in her life right now. So for the eighth episode running, Nate and Blair end up in each other's arms out of stark fear, and once again it's bizarrely romantic.
While all of this is happening, Jenny tells Chuck straight up that she's not interested in being a part of any family that includes his rapist ass, and he ends up apologizing for the pilot and promising he'll be gone long before she and Rufus ever move in, if they ever move in. This is awesome: because maybe people will drop it now, because it's smart to make that a plot point in itself rather than just a weird scary dropped thread, and because it somehow shifts the narrative accountability to Jenny, who now basically has the power to decide whether Chuck stays a Bass der Woodsen or kills himself.
So: either everybody is changing or they're not, everybody else spends the episode trying to decide if anybody else is really changing and then discussing it with each other, and the proof of those changes comes about in radically unrelated ways that nobody notices. Which is probably the best narrative evocation of senior year I can think of. Serena's in at Brown, Dan and Rufus are still working on paying for Yale, Nate is going to Columbia and Blair hopefully to NYU, and everybody's happy for a second. Except of course for Poppy Lifton, who it turns out is using Gabriel against Serena in some unknown way.
Next week: GEORGINA SPARKS is in a motherfucking CULT. What else do I need to say?
Well, it looks like we're heading into an unbroken five-week run that will take us to the end of the season, so whatever momentum we've got here is only going to get stronger -- especially when you assume we'll get revelations about Blair's post-funeral activities, the Poppy Lifton thing going nuclear, Pilot Inspektor, Chuck's relationships with Nate and Blair to get fabulous, and the Lily Rhodes flashback episode, which should include Gia Goodman and Dick Casablancas, God willing, because you know how much I love Dick. XOXO, and see you next week.
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Grieg's "Anitra's Dance" from Peer Gynt plays over the scene; it's nice because it's recognizable classical music, but interesting given the whole roaming-the-desert Mosaic theme Blair presents us with later. Even more interesting is the fact that you can pretty much throw a dart at the collected works of Ibsen and hit some part of the Archibald-van der Bilt-Waldorf story. The music cues of this little Blair/Nate folly are all pretty great: after this, they're all remixes of Jazz Age classics. So even though we've got poor little flower girls and Eliza Doolittles facing off against each other in the dream, it's no wonder that Nate's looking more like an Atlantic City Amory Blaine. Well, maybe that's just his face.
So Cockney Blair is wandering some classy joint selling flowers when she sees Nathaniel, sitting with a glamorous figure whose gigantic hat obscures her face. She gets all excited and tries to sell him a flower for her, but then the figure raises her head: it's post-Higgins Doolittle Blair, looking ravishing and more than a little disgusted at the intrusion. "Please, Oi'm tryin' to earn money so as Oi can go to Yayo. It's moy dream, it is! Always 'as been!" As Nate gestures the maitre d' over to remove her, Blair laughs at her: "Yale? You foolish little girl. That dream is over. Time to wake up."
Normally the Audrey Hepburn dream sequences are either so vague they don't make sense, or so literal they are bullshit, but in this case it's interesting, because Blair's ongoing madness is getting so bizarre. She wants to go to Yale, but she can't get in, so she's blowing it off and saying she'd rather be a society wife, but specifically the society wife of Nate. Who is also at the end of a parallel journey she's been on, if you substitute "Chuck" for "Yale," and in both cases it represents the lazier and less terrifying choice.
Because every character in your dream is you, of course, but especially right now: they're both right. She really is making fun of herself. She really has given up one dream for another while simultaneously knowing better, and refusing to give up her dream. But most of all: both Blairs are selling out. From deep inside the post-feminism given her by both her parents, in different ways, she knows that "flower girl" is just as much a metaphor for "prostitute" as marrying Nate.
One thing Blair Waldorf has never had to contend with is being an object, the way Serena and Nate are: she's too prickly and too stubborn for that. (And Serena's in there too, being played by Blair: "The Rain In Spain" falls mainly on drunk highschoolers.) Which means she loses a lot of ground, not having the ability to hide her selfishness and intelligence as well as those two, and lacking the shapelessness that gives them such a leg up in fulfilling everybody else's desires. (This is, of course, the point of Peer Gynt, and why most Ibsen women eventually shoot themselves in the head.) But, she gains the ground of at least knowing that it's two sides of the same problem, and that she hasn't yet found the elegant solution for both -- how to get what she wants, without giving up who she is -- which is what the dream is asking her to do. Which is, after all, a lesson not even Lily's mastered yet.
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