Girl, so much gossip! The title of this show is really quite apropos.

It starts out with Blair and Serena promising each other that they will stop picking their scabs and devote themselves to shopping instead. For S, this means leaving Dan and Nate alone, not stalking them on Gossip Girl, and not ruining their relationships by being Serena. For B, this means not trying to maim Eva or otherwise ruin her.

Five minutes later, Serena's got Dan cozied up next to her on the couch, investigating Eva while Blair stalks her, and then telling Nate evil facts so he'll tell Chuck. Of course, she was a prostitute in Prague -- albeit with a year of nursing school under her belt, which I guess explains her bullet extraction skills -- but Chuck doesn't care. She sold a fabulously expensive watch that Chuck got her... to pay for his valet's mother's mortgage. She likes puppies, kitties, Operation Smile. She's perfect. So perfect, in fact, that Chuck decides to give her five mil to start her own charity so she can change the world the same way she changed him, blah blah blah.

It is at this point that Blair Waldorf loses her goddamn mind.

B ganks Chuck's passport from Ivan and hides it in Eva's stuff, proving that she knew who Chuck was when she saved him, which is a dealbreaker because of all the times we've seen this storyline. He tosses her out, then learns from Lily that Blair got his passport from the valet and staged the whole thing. Eva still leaves him -- we gather more from context clues than the dialogue -- so he trots on over to Blair's and explains, in his Bass way, that she has awakened the monster inside him and now it is war, and he will destroy Blair utterly. Which destroys Blair, almost utterly.

Dan's suffering so mightily from the loss of his pseudo-child that he's given up bathing, and his hair has come out of the closet. Seeking refuge from the nonstop smothering "support" that only Vanessa Abrams can provide, he runs to S so she can teach him the art of not giving a shit about anything in this world. S and Dan come close to getting back together, but then Juliet talks V into confronting them, and by the end of things Vanessa and Dan are back together. A highlight: Rufus giving Dan the real talk facts about how not to cheat on your wife or ever leave your scarf anywhere.

Juliet wraps up another day of Serena Ruining by confessing to Nate that Prison Ben is her brother, and then taking him up to a fake apartment that belongs to some out-of-towners. Lonely again, Serena's just lying around on her bed dressed like I Dream Of Jeannie for when Blair comes running wordlessly and plops facedown in her crotch to cry her guts out and wonder when Chuck's bullet will finally hit.

While Chuck Bass Batman-voice speeches are always rough to watch -- and a distracting lot of the episode is people standing around declaiming things, as if it's some kind of primetime soap opera about rich people who have no problems -- the sheer velocity of everybody's terminological inexactitudes rocketing around the place is more than enough to steer us straight. Also: An absurd amount of hilarious faces, Vanessa looking like the full-on cracked-out harridan she's always been inside, that ridiculous Serena dress, and Dan's absolutely mesmerizing haircut. Plus extra credit for drunk Lily van der Woodsen, which is always a treat.

Next week: Chuck and Juliet probably just up and kill everybody at once to save time and then Georgina comes and kills both of them because Milo is actually a Soviet weapon from the Cold War and then Poppy rises up from a swamp somewhere and feasts on all of their brains and all that's left is Rufus crying in the wreckage and Vanessa going, "I know you feel bad about this, but probably I feel a little worse."