“I’m not sure, but I think last night may have been the greatest night of my life.” There really wasn’t much going on in this episode. There were really only two storylines, neither of which was very good. First, Chuck wakes up in an unfamiliar hotel room with what looks to be a tattoo on his wrist. It turns out it’s just a stamp for the “ultimate gentleman’s club,” which, judging by the flashbacks, is a reenactment of Eyes Wide Shut.
Chuck doesn’t actually remember anything about being Tom Cruise for a day, other than snippets of images here and there. He remembers a lot of masks, and meeting a beautiful woman who seems to have begun to give him the night of his life, before drugging him and dumping him in that hotel.
He goes back to the building where the party was, and finds that it’s for sale. The woman in question was actually the nanny of the owners. He manages to get in touch with her, hoping to finish what they started, but ends up with something completely different.
It turns out that Chuck’s invitation wasn’t exactly meant for him: it was meant for his father. Elle, the worst nanny in the world, apparently snuck out of Greenwich, where she was supposed to be looking after some children, and hosted this sex party. Once she realized that Chuck was the wrong Mr. Bass, she drugged and dumped him so he wouldn’t remember anything about their nearly magical night.
Apparently, Bart belonged to some weird exclusive sex club with a super-secret membership full of politicians, Wall Street executives and other captains of industry. She gets all weird and skittish about it, saying that if they ever found out she had let an outsider in, she would be in big trouble. This claim is bolstered by the fact that she goes missing shortly after meeting with Chuck.
I’m still unclear as to the point of this whole storyline: we’re obviously going to pick it up next week, but it’s just a weird place for this show to go. I know that Chuck does his own thing (hanging out in Opium dens, for instance) but an exclusive sex club? That’s a little weird for a teen drama.
“I made friends with a family of squirrels and had a lot of time to think.”
Less weird for a show of this type is the “hot for teacher” storyline with Dan and Rachel. Dan and Serena’s relationship is basically flopping around like a fish out of water. It’s in its death throes, and really just needs to be put out of its misery. Luckily, Blair and Gossip Girl are here to aid in the mercy killing.
There’s obviously something going on between Dan and Rachel. First of all, he calls her Rachel. Second of all, he compliments her on his clothes. It may not be as overt as Blair claims in her Gossip Girl post, but it’s definitely there. Even Serena can sense it, getting all weird when Dan and Rachel are in the same room together.
So the headmistress finds out Blair posted on Gossip Girl that Dan and Rachel were having an affair, she expels Blair, ending her dreams of Yale. Blair’s father goes to bat for her, calling it a freedom of speech issue, while Rufus fights for Dan and calls the post slanderous.
This all comes to a head at the parent’s meeting, where, thanks to a slightly misleading picture of Dan comforting Rachel snapped by Serena, Blair is able to produce hard evidence of the affair that gets her back into school and gets Rachel fired.
After the meeting, Dan goes to apologize to Rachel for his dad voting to get her fired, and she decides to just say “screw it,” to any professional ethics she has, and kisses him. The episode ends with them taking each others clothes off while the headmistress explaining to Rufus and Lily that they can’t actually fire Rachel, since Dan denies the affair. Something tells me that denial isn’t going to mean very much in the next few minutes.
So, Rachel definitely deserves what she gets. Even before she so obviously crossed the line by getting naked with Dan, she overstepped her professional boundary. If you’re a teacher, especially a high school teacher, you don’t let kids call you by your first name, and you especially don’t have breakfast or candlelit dinners with them. What the hell was she thinking? She just showed poor judgment all around, and even if she didn’t want to do it to Dan, students, parents, and colleagues had every right to call her out on her inappropriate behavior. I’m definitely on Team Blair for this one.
