Vanessa is getting some breathtaking footage of Tripp and his fiancée (wife?) Maureen walking out of one room and into another room: "All this behind-the-scenes stuff is really great!" NYC Politicos: They use doors like the rest of us. Grandfather William tells Chuck that he's outdone himself, and there is much glad-handing on both sides as we learn that the big party will take place in the Empire ballroom. Tripp's equanimity -- and ambivalence about being William's Congressman Ken doll -- are obvious as usual: "Even if the night ends in defeat, at least we'll have a good party!"

Maureen pinches Tripp's tender skin between two long claws until he screams, reminding him that we don't talk like that in her patented Cheated-Out Soap Acting technique where she stares ninety degrees in the opposite direction of whomever she's talking to, which makes her look impaired but mostly gives her the air of a pretty girl with a winning smile who is either much hated by her director, or can't act for shit, or probably both.

Tripp reminds everybody that the election is not a lock, and William pulls Nate away so he can exposit further to this point, and bitch at Nate for not using Serena properly as a tool with the whole Photoshop-bong fiasco, and then Nate can stare into space. Mostly this scene is about Nate's hair, which is architecturally precise in its tousled what have you.

Serena comes to Olivia's room in a sparkling dress-length sweater to drop off the goddamned Jimmy Fallon interview, and Serena pretends to be sympathetic, which is a lie in at least two ways because A) like I care and B) Olivia is being stupid. And by "Olivia" I mean the writer of this episode, because all three plots hinge on two very specific things: The horrible story Olivia told, and the amazing thing that Tripp's about to do. And both of them are lazy, first-draft thoughts, that shouldn't have made it out of the room. The latter because it's a cliché and the former because it is a non-event.

(I mean, SPOILERS, but here's what went down. I'm telling you upfront because it is actually so stupid, and so complicated in the way it unfolds, that people were actually confused about it. I literally had close personal friends ask me to explain what went down, like whether they missed something. Do you know how much it hurts my GG-loving heart to have to say, "You're not confused, it's really that stupid"?