While Eric and Elliot try to figure out Serena's love life, Lily and Dean Reuther are busy flipping out about the Colin situation, which has been leaked to Page Six. Although Lily shows real mama-bear power in the meeting with the Dean, threatening her with just about everything she's got, it's only a matter of time before Operation Smile gets rolling again.
Jenny shows up to warn Lily and Rufus about Juliet's plans to bring down Serena, explaining about the Page Six situation too late to help. But -- psych! -- it was all a big plan by Jenny, Juliet and Vanessa to set Serena up for a truly terrible fall. Stealing Serena's SIM card means the Three Witches can send and receive texts without Serena knowing: Thanks to Vanessa, Dan and Nate have made up once again and decide to force Serena's choice once and for all. The Three Witches mess with their minds for awhile, but since nothing can stop them from loving Serena, they step things up even further.
Meanwhile, Blair and Chuck are happily in a Friends With Benefits place. Anne Archibald harasses Blair about a girl-empowering charity that can't get any Chuck on it, while Serena's old boss KC harangues Chuck about not having a girlfriend. There's a weirdly loud, confusing scene in which Blair and Chuck change the Empire's Black & White Ball to a Saints & Sinners Masquerade to safeguard Chuck's bad-boy reputation, and make some adjustment to Blair's charity situation that I still don't understand and that doesn't matter. All this secrecy and texting turns up the heat, and before you know it Chuck's gasping out how much he loves her and Blair's politely pretending he said nothing.
Lily invites Juliet to tea and tries to threaten her, but Juliet finally explains the Ben situation: Like we expected, he was a teacher that got jailed over rumors that he slept with underage S -- something Lily's already covered up once (but still may or may not have happened, I'm not sure). Lily pays her off, and gets into a huge fight with S. Chuck and Blair worry separately about the three little words for a bit, but Blair eventually strips to her underwear and runs to the Empire party to find out once and for all if he meant it. He did, they both did, they are in love and now they will be together. Before they can even kiss, Jenny-as-Serena exposes them, but they decide to take the plunge and declare their reborn relationship. Meanwhile, Juliet stalls Serena's entry to the party just long enough for her and Juliet -- also dressed like Serena, in an identical masks -- to send GG some pictures of "Serena" making out with both Dan and Nate. (And constantly changing size and shape!)
Anne explains a harsh truth to Blair -- in terms of reputation, men are rewarded while women are tarnished -- which Blair realizes is not only unfair but totally true when Chuck manages to spin his relationship with her into a positive, making B a Page Six star in her own right. Though C offers her a replacement charity, B realizes she must be Blair Waldorf first and Chuck Bass's girl second: Though they're very much in love and having wonderful sex, she needs to work on her own image first. Sweet and sad.
Vanessa submits Serena's resume to Anne Archibald for the foundation, so now Blair feels double-betrayed, and takes her turn yelling at Serena before running off. GG blasts the two-timing XOXO pictures, and even though this has already happened once to these people at this exact same party, nobody can comprehend the idea that somebody dressed up like Serena did all these terrible things.
So now B, N and D, Lily and even Eric assume that Serena has betrayed them, turned back into a drunken ho, and once again gone running pantsless into the streets. But -- unbeknownst even to Jenny and worthless Vanessa -- the truth is way worse: Juliet has roofied Serena and kidnapped her, texting Columbia with her resignation before tying her to a bed and filling her up with drugs to make her look like she's on a bender and nobody will miss her! Unnerving! (Not to mention fun music from Little J's band, where she has gone real-life crazy to the point that even Tim Gunn was horrified.)
In two weeks: Serena is a drug hostage! Everybody thinks she's at rock bottom and doing drugs in the fleshpots of New York, but really she's in Juliet's clutches! Blair and Lily are so disappointed they might give up! Only Dan (?) can save her! And then they go on the run! And make out!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
While GG talks about choice paralysis on the UES -- Dom or Krug? Winston or Cartier? Tory or Stella? -- Serena continues to have choice paralysis on her gay boyfriends. I mean, which one is Harry Winston and which one is Cartier? Such a valid comparison. "Nate is more like Stella McCartney, in that his mother keeps vegan snacks in her false leg, while Dan is more like Tory Burch because he masturbates to internet videos of homeless men fighting each other for food."
Eric and the complicated visual known as Possibly Still Bisexual Elliott have been GTD all over Serena's boy problem: Charts, graphs, pie graphs, graph charts, chart pies. Filling in Venn diagrams with colored pencils. Sadly, we don't get to see much of their research, but Dan is -- on one bullet-pointed and point-weighted list -- pronounced "Brooklyn (-1), Smart (+2), Scholar-Sexy (+3), Almost Related and Relent[lessly pretentious, presumably]." The last two don't have scores visible but who knows, it's all very complicated because Elliott seems to be somewhat more than neurotypical, as they say.
Nate meanwhile is "Upper East Side (+1), Athletic, Preppy-Sexy (+3), and No Siblings! (-1)." I don't understand how that last one gets a negative score, though. What part of Dan's siblings is a good thing? And why isn't there a graph of hair cuteness? Because Dan's hair was really cute for awhile.
Anyhow, by the time Serena arrives to pick them up for lunch, it's gone full threesome and they've made the interlocking Venn diagram include all of their facts together somehow. All the above facts are represented, but Dan is also "Excellent Writer, Sincere, Poetry," the boys overlap at "Six Feet Tall, Second Chance," and Serena is pronounced "Smarter Than She Thinks." Oh, and all three of them are "Cute." This is the kind of shit you want to find on CW's website in its awesome detail.
Serena is abashed, and somewhat weirded out by Elliott's sudden rainmannishly SAT Math score of 800 ("They go that high?") and his explanation that, much like an online dating service, they're using math words like "probability" and "set theory." Which they are not, but like Serena's gonna call that bluff. She calls them "E'sHarmony," which is a joke that makes sense out loud but is weird to explain on paper, and tells them it doesn't matter anyway.
The big cliffhanger last week, where Nate literally wandered into Serena at random at the exact second she had summoned Dan from DUMBO, causing her to stare with her mouth hanging open and smoke coming out of her face, was as usual not that interesting in its resolution: She called Dan, making her choice, but then Nate showed up and "said some things that [Serena] couldn't ignore," and but then she ignored them, ran up to her room, and has been avoiding them both ever since. "I presume they shared the cab back to DUMBO and jerked each other off like usual," Serena does not say.
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