Sensing that broken-hearted look their downlow has weathered many times before, Chuck tries to get Nate to go back to being his secret boyfriend using the lost language of flowers: "Heading to the florist? Are you going with the calla lilies or the Casablancas?" Calla lilies aren't just for funerals anymore! Well, they're incredibly toxic, just like every single person at that wedding, so there you go. Nate, having promised that he wouldn't tell anybody about Operation Jack Squat, immediately tells Chuck that he knows. Chuck responds by... Telling him the exact same story, but also leaving out the fact that nothing happened. Which apparently Chuck doesn't know, which I'm not sure was clear last week since all he said about it was how he expected her to be home later, implying that going up there was reason enough for him to get high-handed about it. So now Nate's totally confused because Chuck was like, "Well did she tell you this?" And Nate's like, "Um, yeah?"

Chuck's point is that she went up there without knowing she was being manipulated, but... She was still being manipulated. He keeps acting like that's the loophole but I don't see how that could be true. If I handed you a gun and said, "That person killed your mom and you're next," and you shot the person, but then it turned out to be your mom and I was lying, I can't be like, "Look, you're the one that shot your mom." I would at least have to admit that I'd played a mean prank on you. Not to mention your poor mom.

Nate goes, "No, you deserve to be alone!" sort of out of nowhere, and Chuck changes the subject to how retarded Nate is. Which ordinarily would be awesome, except the whole point of this show is that it's fun to be the peanut gallery. When the show starts looking directly at you and making jokes so we can laugh at them and feel superior -- when everything is a broad, trashy wink -- then the show's not being written at all. It's just a xerox parody of something that used to be good and is now desperate for attention.

While Chuck makes hay of the fact that once again Serena has lied for no fucking reason about something minor and thus Nate has nowhere to stand regarding his prostituting of their shared ex-girlfriend, Serena is upstairs moaning at B in something that almost approaches language. You could swear she's more over this show than I am. They say hateful underminding things at each other: "But that's what makes you guys so good together. You love games. It's who you are!" Serena says, and Blair explains that no, it's Nate and Serena that belong together, because -- like Dorota and Vanya -- they are too stupid to live: "No games, no lies, no secrets. Just pure honesty. That's how it's supposed to be. I know that now. How do you do it?" S feels bad because on some level she knows that was a burn, but also: She did lie about a croissant once.