It took me some time to recover after this episode and let the events of it fully sink in. My jaw dropped a few times and the end of the episode nearly induced a heart attack in me, but more on that later.
We start off with Blair having another one of her Old Hollywood nightmares. You know, like in that one episode when she dreamed Serena was stealing her “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” dream? Well this time around, Blair’s nightmare doesn’t even allude to an Audrey Hepburn movie, much to her horror. Watching Chuck rush to Blair’s side to comfort her made it all better though. Could he be any more wonderful?
It turns out Blair is having these crazy nightmares because she wants to make some big speech at Parents’ Weekend, but currently is in direct competition with none other than Vanessa, who is suddenly the cover girl of NYU, stirring up deep insecurities in poor Blair. What’s that? Vanessa wants to invite her parents to see her speech? Since when did Vanessa have parents? Guess it’s better to remind us later than never. Of course, this creates a dilemma, making it more difficult to root for Blair now that Vanessa’s reason for making the toast is more meaningful, while it’s just a power trip for Queen B.
Ah, but the plot thickens. In an attempt to impress Dan’s parents, Lizzie Mc — I mean, Olivia McCutesy Famous Movie Star decides to accept the invitation to speak _that was originally for her all along_. Imagine that. Before I continue to dissect the epic steaming hot mess this creates for Queen B and Vanessa, I’ll mention Nate and his plaid shirt.
The first thing I noticed about Nate in this episode was his blue plaid shirt and how good it looked on him. Sexiness aside, Nate attempts to help Serena win Carter Baizen back, literally, in a poker game. I was a bit skeptical when Nate and Serena got to the place where the poker match took place. Aren’t these kids loaded? I’m sure they could have picked a better venue than some sketchy warehouse place in the back of some alley. Anyway, Nate and Serena meet up with some guy that looks like he strolled right off a certain university in Virginia and onto the set of “Gossip Girl,” complete with popped collar, gelled hair, and smirk. Nate proceeds to drop some major dough in increments of $25,000. Fast forward through more smirks and intense gazes, and Serena ends up losing. Oh well, Carter just has to work off his debts as a modern-day slave. Let’s see how well that works out.
Back to our steaming hot mess. Blair manipulates Vanessa into manipulating Dan (brilliant!) into changing his plans with McCutesy, and inviting her home instead of meeting Papa Humphrey and Mama Van der Woodsen/Bass/Humphrey. Of course, Vanessa’s skills of manipulation fail, and she ends up giving McCutesy the impression that Dan was afraid to introduce her to his parents because he feared she was too Hollywood. As this unfolds, Blair moves on to a new victim to manipulate… And it just happens to be the one person who loves her unconditionally — Chuck. Get this — she convinces Chuck to hit on the guy in charge of assigning the Parents’ Weekend speaker, under the guise that it’s just another game for them.
After that, pretty much everyone becomes entangled in the hot mess to the point where it blows up in their faces. Turns out Nate was just playing Serena in some scheme to screw over the Buckleys. Serena is even further screwed over when Carter leaves anyway, determined to regain his dignity or something like it. McCutesy becomes McBitchy, but then she and Dan figure out they were screwed over by Vanessa, who gets screwed over anyway since McCutesy ultimately is asked to speak anyway. Before then, Vanessa royally screws over Blair when she exposes her manipulation of Chuck, the only person that mattered. The script writers must have just written “screw over” in red Sharpie on this part of the script, because man, a lot of that was going on.
In the end, Chuck cannot speak to Blair and the saying “misery loves company” is proven true as a lonely Blair joins Vanessa in a café to brood. Until next week, I’m going to go nurse my broken heart.
