It's the anniversary of Bart's death -- not that Lily even remembers! -- so Chuck is hallucinating Ghost Bart calling him a pussy all over town and goading him to foreclose on some homeless deaf blind vets or something. Blair gets totally freaked out about his encrazening, and even goes to Lily to help. But it turns out really this is all because of "feelings" and suddenly there's a whole storyline out of nowhere about how Chuck is pushing Blair and feelings away until Blair points out in a tearjerker scene that Chuck is pretty much awesome.

Then Chuck stares in a doorway at a hospital and has spontaneous therapy feelings and stops hallucinating and learns to care again or whatever, but he runs into that hot lady from Mulholland Drive at Bart's grave and just barely restrains himself from Hamletting, "...Mother?" I dunno. The acting is good, the continuity is cool, but the story itself is purely One Tree Hill, and really inappropriate, and seems like a big part of next year's story. Doesn't it sort of shit on Chuck's entire storyline last year if his mom is alive?

Maureen blackmails Trip into -- get ready for this -- staying married. For the fourth time, she does this. Luckily, M's got THE LETTER from Carmen Sandiego, which in fact does involve Lily's summer trip, and threatens to take it to Rufus just to be mean. Keith and Lily were "alone all night" in his hotel room, but nobody knows what they were up to -- This would have been around the time of his marriage, right? Just like she fucked Rufus the day before she married Bart? -- and Lily's not talking. So now Serena and her parents are pawns in Maureen's plot to be the Jackie of a New Camelot, with Serena as the Marilyn. Of course, Serena is horrified by having reality pointed out to her and throws a fit -- but then Maureen gives the letter to Rufus anyway, proving that she's just doing it to be an asshole.

Because it wouldn't be a Stephanie Savage script without people boxing each other out all over the place, Nate tells Dan to hook up with disgusting Willa Weinstein in order to box Paul Hoffman's gay ass out of Vanessa's heart. But because of Willa Weinstein's way of speaking like she has a concussion, plus being gross anyway, it is a no-go. Dan "finally" tells Vanessa he is in love with her, and she shuts it down immediately and awesomely pretends it didn't happen. Meanwhile Jenny and Eric do some complicated Constance maneuvers involving YSL purses and the conspicuous consumption of the Handmaidens, but Jenny wins because she has infinite purses because she is a drug dealer now. It's been so long since I thought of Little J as a role model.

Eric doesn't know that part, and finally concedes that no matter how many Yucky Kiras or Vanessa-Looking Handmaidens he corrupts, Queen J will always win. So then everybody is a family again. Except for Rufus, who is thinking about hooking up with his sexy fellow housewife Holland Christianson or Holland McCormick or whatever name is most likely to be a hot black lady and not a pair of WASP babies. Campbell, that's right. Holland Campbell.

So the reason this week's "party that everybody on the entire show is at" takes place at the hospital is because finally Serena has had it and yells LIAR and makes Trip drive her back to the city, even though he's like "I would give anything to be with you! Except my career, my marriage, or anything real!" But they fight and Trip swerves to avoid three -- count them -- three random wolves having a get-together in the middle of the road, sending Serena's giant head through the windshield.

Because he is lovable scum, Trip moves the possibly-paralyzed ass of S into the driver's seat and calls Maureen to come pick him up so that everybody will just think that Serena got drunk like she does every day. (Trip comes up with ways to both have and eat his cake more times a day than Serena makes that mush-mouth face.) So Nate, of course, punches him right in the chappaquiddick, and then everybody cries over Serena's terrible wounds, which amount to a slight laceration on her forehead and suddenly enunciating.

Sooo satisfying. Congrats on making it halfway through the strongest season of the best show of all time. XOXO and I'll see you next year!

Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why high school shows shouldn't graduate.