[Originally posted on May 4th, 2010.]

Nate and Serena would love to keep making out in Chuck’s kitchen, but Serena is going to be late for breakfast at her mom’s and Rufus’s apartment. Wait a second, are Nate and Serena BOTH living with Chuck now? While Dan and Vanessa are both living in the Brooklyn loft. Sure. I like that Dan couldn’t afford to pay his tuition at Yale, but he can afford to pay to live in the dorms at NYU and not bother living there because he will just go live in the empty gigantic Dumbo loft. FUCK THIS SHOW IN THE FACE UNTIL IT DIES. Oh, but I am getting ahead of myself. We haven’t even gotten to the drama yet! I’m just mad about the ECONOMICALLY IRRESPONSIBLE HOUSING ARRANGEMENTS.

Everyone is so happy to be at brunch. “Look at all this food, it’s obscene,” Lily says. Shut up, Lily. You’re obscene. I mean, you are right. It is obscene. But you are also obscene. Oh look, William is here. “What are you doing here?” Rufus asks. “I invited him,” Serena says ANGRILY. And here we have the first of many instances on this week’s show in which a child acts wildly inappropriately towards an adult/parent and absolutely no one does or says anything. Great. NOW LET’S EAT SOME OF THAT DELICIOUS BRUNCH!

Everyone is sitting down to brunch, and Serena asks Rufus to move over so that William can sit down. And then she repeats herself, “PLEASE, Rufus.” Not a nice please, a mean please. Fuck her. She’s a cunt. But also fuck everyone else? I mean, seriously, this is a table full of adults who are all multi-millionaires and have been through several marriages and raised children. None of them says anything about this? Lily doesn’t ask her daughter to be polite? Rufus doesn’t ask his step-daughter to treat him with a modicum of respect? William doesn’t say “You know what, I’m an adult and don’t really care where I sit when it comes to brunch, but also I have done enough to disrupt this family and even though that is exactly my plan, perhaps in this instance it would be no great sacrifice on my part to at least PRETEND like I wasn’t a machiavellian nightmare waiting in the shadows to ruin everyone’s lives”? No? No one? Perfect. More coffee?

Dan can’t make it to brunch because Vanessa didn’t tell him that she got a CNN internship in Haiti (haha, OK). And thus concludes this recap’s coverage of what’s going on with Dan and Vanessa.

That night, William is going to be honored at Columbia for his work with Doctors Without Borders. Neat. Neat of this show to take a noble charity organization and make it a minor detail in a VILLAINOUS PLOT. Eric isn’t going to go because he’s gay. Or whatever. Because he is mad that his father walked out on them and he doesn’t want to have a relationship with him. Fair enough. I wouldn’t want to have a relationship with him, either. Have you seen his face?

Serena does want a relationship with him, though, and she tries to impress him by telling him about an award she got at school for drinking all the hot cocoa. Uh, what? I mean, as we know, she didn’t win an award for drinking all the hot cocoa, she got an award for blowing the most dudes, but STILL. At this point you have graduated from high school, and your father is an estranged millionaire celebrity doctor with a secret nefarious scheme to win back your mother. COCOA AWARDS ARE NOT IMPRESSIVE. Under any circumstances really. Of course, Jenny tries to trip Serena up by getting her to admit to William that she has genital AIDS or something, and Serena gives her the dirt eye. But also, really, Jenny? I mean, I hate Serena, too, but are you really going to sell her out in front of her dad? Who she just met? Shame on you, Jenny, and shame on your wig.

To get back at Jenny, Serena decides she’s moving back into the penthouse apartment (from WHEREVER SHE HAS BEEN LIVING. Blair’s mom’s house? Chuck’s bachelor pad? Rikers Island?) and taking her old room back from Jenny. Jenny is so pissed! And so unbearable!

Meanwhile, Blair is lying about going to Columbia so that some bitches who don’t mean shit will think she is cool. Grow up, Blair. But so to impress them she sends a Gossip Girl blast (remember those?!) about Jenny selling drugs. Jenny accuses Serena of sending out the Gossip Girl blast (GOSSIP GIRL BLASTS!). Serena tells her that it wasn’t her, but then says that maybe Rufus should know that Jenny was dealing drugs, since Jenny thought that William should know about her hard-partying prep school days. Cool tit for tat. You guys are both awesome and you deserve to have loving relationships with your parents who are cool adults. Before she storms off, Jenny says something to the effect of not wanting to destroy her pre-existing relationship with her father but that Serena doesn’t even have a relationship with William and that a relationship built on lies is a bad idea. Whoa, Jenny, relax. You’re almost making sense. Serena is HIT HARD by this POWERFUL TRUTH.

That night at the Doctors Without Borders event, Chuck finally shows up to pay his respects to Lily’s corpse. Why is she so excited? I mean, I get that she cares about Chuck because she is his stepmom, and I get that Chuck is supposed to be super torn-up emotionally about his abandonment issues, but they greet each other like they are about to start stone cold fucking.

Very quickly, the best and worst parts of the episode follow in quick succession: the best part is when Chuck watches William’s speech about wanting his family back, or whatever, and you can tell right away that there is going to be a Chuck-William war. YES! Get him, Chuck! You are 19! The worst part is when Blair is waiting at the bar, distraught over having been caught in her Columbia lie, and meets a dude who is like “Oh, you’re Blair Waldorf? I work in admissions at Columbia and I am happy to let you know that you have been accepted.” Except that Blair didn’t apply, and also that would never happen. And then it turns out that months earlier, Chuck had secretly applied on her behalf, which also no. Just literally the single laziest Deus Ex Machina I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

Don’t get me wrong, though. That is the worst part of the episode, but there are plenty of other terrible parts! Like when they are getting ready to go to the gala event and Serena is mad that Rufus convinced the co-op board not to let William move into their building, and she tells him that he shouldn’t come to the event that evening, and he doesn’t say anything, and Lily, her mother and Rufus’s wife, also doesn’t say anything? Serena gets to bitterly dictate the social schedules of two married adults? Fuck that. And then as Serena is leaving the Doctors Without Borders event, the downstairs neighbor comes up looking for her mom, but Lily has already left, and when Serena relates this information, the downstairs neighbor immediately begins to tell a 19 year old girl about the possible infidelity, or at least emotional unfaithfulness of her stepfather. A complete stranger! Being entirely inappropriate with a teenager! Classic show!

Then again, there’s also another great part, which is this part:

Enhance.

Enhance.

HAAAAAAAAA. Jenny calls Chuck and says, “Obviously, I’m not a doctor,” which is already literally the BEST thing Jenny has ever said, but she quickly follows it up with this gem: “and it’s kind of a long story how I know this, but there’s something weird about her medicine.” Is it Jenny? Is it a long story how you know this? First of all, you don’t know anything. Second of all, the long story is you looked it up on Bing. “Is the long story that you looked up the word ‘cancer’ on Bing?” “Well, it takes a lot longer when I tell it.”

Serena hangs up on Rufus, who is spending the night in Brooklyn because Lily said she needed an evening to herself, which turns out to be an evening with her two children and her ex-husband who is poisoning her. Whatever. I hope that when Chuck gets in his war with William to save Lily that the only solution is to lock everyone in the apartment and burn it to the ground. “Vanessa, I’m sorry, you have to come back from Haiti right away, it’s an emergency.” Good, everyone’s here. You too, Dorota. OK. Go get them, Chuck.

[Originally posted on May 4th, 2010.]