“We heard you watching Gilmore Girls all night… again.”
It’s the culmination of Blair’s entire life: she finds out whether or not she’s gotten into Yale. Naturally, she’s a nervous wreck and staying up all night to ponder how much better she’ll fit in than that Rory did. Since the dean told her that Yale needs someone like Blair Waldorf, she thinks she’s pretty much a shoo-in. If she were, however, we’d have a pretty boring episode.
As it stands, Serena and Dan both get accepted, while Blair gets… waitlisted. You may as well replace “waitlisted” with “shot with a dart full of gonorrhea,” for the horror that it elicits. After the headmistress talks her down from the ledge by assuring her that most waitlisted students get into the college of their choice, Blair goes off the rails when the new English teacher, Miss Carr, has the audacity to give her a B on a paper.
Blair tactfully, in a very Blair-like fashion, tries to explain to Miss Carr that second semester seniors get a free pass as to not mess up their GPAs, preventing them from getting into a good college. Miss Carr, fresh off a stint of Teach America, doesn’t understand Upper East Side grade padding, and tells Blair that the B stands.
As Blair explains later, she “can’t not act out” when someone wrongs her, so she plans a very high school prank on the new-in-town Miss Carr: She invites her to have dinner at the Boathouse in Central Park from which they will go to the opera at 8. Problem is, The Boathouse is closed, and curtain is at 7, not 8.
Blair has a change of heart at the last minute and runs to find Miss Carr to apologize. The two make nice, but the second Blair speeds off in her limo, Miss Carr is on the phone to the headmistress. Blair gets detention for the first time in her life, and her admission to Yale hangs into balance. Instead of serving her punishment and keeping her head down, Blair declares war. She’s planning on waiting for the perfect time and then going black ops—no accountability. Hope that doesn’t blow up in her face…
“I would say ‘get a room,’ but yours is right above mine. Please try to remember that.”
Lily and Rufus are now officially together. While Eric and Jenny, by virtue of the fact that they’re practically brother and sister anyway, don’t seem to have a problem with it, it’s still causing a lot of awkwardness between Serena and Dan.
Further complicating matters is the fact that while Dan is thrilled that they both got accepted into Yale, Serena isn’t so sure she wants to go. She had always wanted to go to Brown; it was just the idiotic competition with Blair that made her decide to even apply to Yale in the first place. When she finds out that Blair didn’t bother to apply to any other schools, she decides to officially decline Yale’s offer.
Of course, not even Blair would buy that this decision was all about her. What Serena isn’t telling anyone, and may not even fully realize herself, is that she’s pulling away from Dan. For his part, Dan is doing the same thing, ignoring her calls and perhaps even becoming inappropriately interested in Miss Carr.
“But your shenanigans, planting coke in his gym bag, surprising him with a transsexual hooker…”
While Dan and Serena may be weirded out by their parents getting together, no one is more upset than Chuck. He still blames Lily and her affair for Bart’s death and wants nothing to do with her. He’s living alone and spending all of his time coming up with dastardly plans to remove Jack as head of the company.
While his plans are comically devious (#26: Crash his plane) they are not unfounded. It turns out Jack has a bit of a drug problem and kind of sucks at running a company. He’s driving down Bass Industries’ share prices, so he really should be removed. After his attempts are unsuccessful, he turns to Lily, hoping her 20% stake in the company can help him convince the board to get rid of Jack.
Unfortunately, Bart’s will was clear: If Chuck violates the morality clause, then his guardian is in charge. End of story. What Lily forgets until the night of the opera is that at the time of Bart’s death, they were in the process of adopting each other’s kids, which means that paperwork exists that would make Lily Chuck’s legal guardian. Chuck puts aside his distaste for Lily and signs the papers, becoming her son, if in name only.
Jack is automatically out as head of Bass Industries, which does not sit well with him. Coked out of his gord, he follows Lily into the ladies room and attacks her. Chuck figures out where she is and busts down the door and gets Jack away from her, saving the day.
The next morning, we get to see a side of Chuck we rarely see: the human side. Lily calls him over to her apartment to thank him for saving her the night before. Not only that, but she tells him that when he turns 18, she’s giving him the company back. There’s actually a genuine smile on Chuck’s face; it’s amazing. He thanks her, and what’s more, he says he’ll move back in with her. I keep on waiting for the devious smile that lets us know he’s up to something, but it never comes. It seems that Chuck Bass just wants to be part of a family. It’s a really sweet scene, and I’m looking forward to him being part of the household again.
On another note, Kelly Rutherford is looking mighty pregnant. I wonder if they’re going to work it into the plot or not. Would it be Bart’s baby or Rufus’s? Dun dun DUN… on the other hand, they took great pains using props and camera angles to hide her belly, so they may plan on ignoring it completely. Dun Du—oh.
