Lily decides to spend her last days as a free woman focusing on the important things, like a Royal Fever-inspired Taschen coffee table book highlighting American royalty like the Rhodes Women. CeCe's already in town, along with Dr. William "Fake Cancer" van der Woodsen -- either of which would explain the high-pitched barking of lapdog Rufus -- but then we're joined by a couple surprise Rhodes Women: Aunt Carol and her daughter Charlie. Turns out Carol's life on the West Coast went downhill and, as judgmental poor people on this show always are, she's become quite the hypocrite: All this time she's been Dan Humphreying her shallow rich sister, she's been taking money from old CeCe in exchange for the odd family obligation like supporting Lily during this very legal time.

Charlie's another thing altogether, Jennying out on Serena's rich-girl lifestyle and -- like all Rhodes Women eventually do -- getting a scary obsessive crush on a Humphrey. In the end, despite Carol's wishes, Charlie stays in town the better to baby-talk her way into the van der Woodsen circle and then become some kind of Dan- (possibly Serena-) stalker.

But of course what's important is the blowback from the Blair/Dan kiss frame on which we froze. While there are no real reactions to it, besides some nefarious plan by Chuck that I'm not sure I fully understood, there are reactions from the players: Dan has devoted himself to Blair utterly for the last five minutes, but in a cruel twist of fate it's made Blair suddenly decide it's time to be with Chuck again. After Vanessa involves her shit in our business, and Chuck finds out about the kissing, some complicated stuff goes down with the photo shoot that results in Blair deciding she's still too good for Chuck after all. Dair shippers, I wouldn't worry about it: She's clearly just afraid of her Dan Feelings and running to the nearest manwhore port to weather the storm.

Meanwhile, Raina gets a strange call from her dad about how her mom is still alive or something, I wasn't paying attention during that part, but I think maybe a Ouija board is going to make an appearance. Lily takes a bunch of family photos with her two husbands, who have reconciled, but nobody seems to notice that the majority of their family's children (Chuck, Inspektor Pilot, Jenny) aren't involved. Chuck's too busy brooding at photos of himself brooding, and Jenny is never to be mentioned again, I guess. In the end, we're treated to foreboding about Charlie, a possible search for dead Mama Raina, Vanessa informing Serena about the kiss, and the reappearance of Blair's third suitor: Old Prince Louis is back from wherever, toting a shoe and a smile. Now that's a worthy Dan rival.

Great opening and closing sequences, a fair amount of new mysteries and a cliffhanger about Lily's jailtime: Perfect setup for the last episodes of the season, but not a whole lot else to hang your hat on. The scenes of Lily and Carol discovering their mutual dependence on outside money, as well as about a hundred well-timed punches to the jaw for perennial victims Rufus, Dan and Vanessa, make for a fun ride. Here's hoping Charlie doesn't turn out to be some rehash of the worst parts of Georgina and Jenny's storylines, and that Dan finds something to mope about besides Blair and Serena, before next week, when the big kiss fallout actually descends on everybody's heads.

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