Spotted: The girl who has everything finally gets something she’s never had before: Detention. And she’s not taking her community service lying down.
This week on Gossip Girl, Blair complains to Serena about her punishment, while forcing Dorota to do the dirty work in the park. Pa Waldorf comes to meet his daughter with a picnic basket, and commends her on taking her punishment so maturely. Dorota, hands still sore from the manual labor, tells Blair that her “martyr act” stinks like the garbage she’s got Dorota picking up.
Serena goes to surprise her teacher, Rachel Carr, at her favorite breakfast spot, but finds Dan there already, bonding with Carr about being poor and lonely. Serena was going to show Carr her King Lear essay, but Miss Carr’s creepy adoration for Dan’s Cordelia shout-out in a short story (awkward literary reference #1) makes S think better of it, and she bails.
Meanwhile on the bourgeois side of town, Chuck Bass wakes up with vague memories of masked women. There’s an insignia on his wrist; a stamp rather than a tattoo, we hope. Chuck calls Nate and asks him to meet at a strange address.
Blair runs into Carr outside school, where Miss Carr tries to relate Blair’s litter pick-up to Henry David Thoreau’s On Walden Pond (that’s #2). Blair approaches the Plastics and demands their help taking down the “Commie Corn Husker,” but they refuse to help, afraid of getting their own trash duty. Blair gets all Gladiator General Maximus on them, giving a rousing little speech about how their petty manipulation will “echo through eternity.” The Headbands aren’t buying it… until Head Mistress Queller forgets she has an intercom system, and takes to the front steps to tell the students there’s a new rule at school: no cell phones during school hours. Blair’s lackeys see Miss Carr happily confiscating Blackberries, and sign on for take-down.
The Plastics meet in the women’s bathroom, where Blair has Dorota meet her with a designer bag full of new cell phones for her friends. Hazel wants to check Gossip Girl, and Nelly wants to check the DOW, but Blair insists: all texting efforts go toward finding dirt on Miss Carr.
Back to the Basstard: he’s investigating “the Chuck Bass version of Narnia” at the address with Nate and Vanessa. Only it’s not a wardrobe, but a big, fancy (and deserted) Manhattan mansion. Mr. Bass received an invitation in the mail to the “ultimate private gentleman’s club,” where he met the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen (even in a mask) and did naughty things to her. But he doesn’t remember much, and woke up alone in a hotel room. Now he wants to figure out where he was, and with whom.
The Headbands are having a hard time lassoing up any dirt on the Midwestern Mother Theresa, so Blair tells them to make something up. Before they can get their tiny brains warmed up, she sees Dan and Miss Carr talking in the hallway… or the Dan Humphrey version of talking to a woman, anyway, which involves fumbling over compliments and stuttering uncontrollably. Carr seems to encourage his awkward half-flirting. Before you can say “Cougar,” Blair’s got her new phone out (in the middle of the hallway—bold, B!) and texts Gossip Girl a Mary Kay Letourneau alert on Miss Carr.
Dan immediately starts getting high fives from his fellow dudes, and can’t figure out why. Jenny finally clues him in that there’s a rumor on the web that he’s hot for teacher. Dan denounces the rumor to Jenny, and then to Serena, and they figure out that Blair must be behind it.
Nate and Vanessa make puppy eyes at the piano while Chuck tries to jump-start his memory in the mansion. Chuck points out a framed photo of his masked maven holding a newborn. Must be the family’s mother, Vanessa astutely observes. They find a realtor’s card for place, and Chuck calls her up.
Dan sneaks up on Blair in the Constance ladies room. Blair makes a snide remark about Dan having lady parts, and denies any knowledge of the rumor. Meanwhile, Serena tells Miss Carr about her writing insecurities, brings her up to speed about the rumor, and gives her a Wikipedia-style lesson on Gossip Girl: “It’s a website where a girl posts gossip. Or at least we think it’s a girl.”
Chuck convinces the realtor to let him see the mansion owner’s file. He calls and asks who the woman was, and finds out he met a nanny named Elle who nurses in Connecticut. Chuck leaves his number and hopes she’ll call back.
Blair is called into Queller’s office, where Miss Carr awaits. The judgment is swift and harsh: on her way to Yale, Nelly Yuki threw Blair under the bus. Blair gets expelled for putting the school’s rep in jeopardy.
Blair retreats to her bed, where she laments the imminent revocation of her Yale acceptance. Pa Waldorf wants to know if Blair posted the rumor. She says yes, but that it wasn’t a lie. He promises to talk to his lawyer and that she won’t be punished for telling the truth. Back in Brooklyn, Vanessa calls Dan a Templeton (from Charlotte’s Web, and that’s literary call-out #3) for “ratting out” Blair to Miss Carr. Dan says she brought it on herself. Rufus interrogates Dan about the truth to the gossip, as Vanessa receives a sexy mask and an invitation in the mail.
Serena meets Rachel in the park, where she asks for clemency on Blair’s behalf. Miss Carr doesn’t budge on the punishment, and leaves for a “meeting,” but also leaves her planner on the park bench. Serena finds the address of the meeting and follows her. S calls B and breaks the bad news. B tells Dorota to give Handsome to a homeless man, because she doesn’t deserve her cuddly Yale present.
Rufus and Lily walk into an emergency parents’ meeting about pending Online Honor Codes (look out, Facebook), and Harold and Rufus exchange a few defensive dad words before going in.
Miss Carr’s “meeting” is actually with Dan for coffee, because she wants to thank him for being her friend. (Yeah, because meeting the student you’re accused of having an affair with at a romantically-lit dinner establishment is a GREAT idea.) They have a veiled conversation about how they both have crushes on each other, with Rachel telling Dan he can call her in five years. S approaches the window of the restaurant just as Dan strokes Miss Carr’s hair back and goes in for a hug. She catches the moment on her phone and walks away just as Carr rejects the hug, and finally catches the “maybe this is inappropriate” train on her way out.
Meanwhile, Chuck continues his Eyes Wide Shut mystery, and meets Elle. She informs him that the invite wasn’t for him, but for his dad (RIP Big Bass), who was a member of an elite group of classy lechers. Elle is a nanny by day, club escort by night, and when she found out that she’d hooked the wrong Bass, she drugged his drink and left him in a hotel room hoping he wouldn’t remember her. She’s scared the group will do something drastic if they found out she brought in an outsider, and asks him not to contact her again.
Vanessa puts on her mask and heads to Nate’s. Turns out he sent it to her, and they head into his house for some kinky masked monkey love, while I fall asleep from the pure boredom that is their relationship.
S goes to B, says she was right about Miss Carr, and shows her the proof. Blair sweeps off to the parents’ meeting with the photo, and tells Dorota to get her dog back from the homeless guy.
Back at the meeting: the Constance parents debate slander issues, when Blair rushes in and asks Queller to check her email. She pulls up the photo on the projector, and Rufus and Lily look on in shock. B asks Q to check her email, and the head mistress pulls up the photo of Dan and Rachel at their candlelit coffee date. Outside the meeting, Serena confronts D, who explains he was just being “friendly.” The meeting gets out: Miss Carr got fired, Rufus thinks Dan is a perv, and Blair is back in at Constance. Serena admits that she wanted to believe the worst about Dan because deep-down she wants to break up. They hug it out and let their relationship go (again).
Dan tells Rufus that Miss Carr shouldn’t have been fired, when he was the one who screwed up. Rufus reminds Dan that meeting a student whom she didn’t even teach, off hours, away from school, was not only improper, but idiotic of Miss Carr. Rufus voted to get her fired to protect Dan’s reputation. Dan storms out. Serena goes to Rachel’s house to give back the planner, and apologize for giving Blair the photo. Miss Carr hands back Serena’s essay, which she apparently read after being fired, and then asks S to leave.
Blair’s happily hanging with Handsome again, when her dad walks in: he heard her admit that she sent in a lie, and lied to him, and he’s disappointed that she’s not as mature as he thought. She justifies her actions, saying that Yale was on the line. Yale doesn’t matter; he wants her to be a good person. Pa Waldorf takes Handsome (apparently Eleanor doesn’t want a bulldog) and heads back to Paris, brokenhearted.
Gossip Girl gives us a physics lesson about equal and opposite reactions as Chuck receives a call from Elle’s employers saying she’s gone missing and asking for his help. Dan goes to Miss Carr’s house and starts to apologize for everything until she kisses him and pulls him into her apartment, telling him, “I don’t teach at Constance anymore.”
But not so fast: now HM Queller is saying that she needs to give Rachel her job back to avoid a wrongful termination suit. They don’t have enough proof, and she believes Dan’s story. Q is on her way to tell Carr, but wanted to tell the head of the Parents’ Committee (Lily) first. But Miss Carr misses her phone call, busy getting it on in the dark with Dan.
-Meghan Carlson, BuddyTV Staff Writer
Image courtesy of the CW
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
Meghan hails from Walla Walla, WA, the proud home of the world’s best sweet onions and Adam West, the original Batman. An avid grammarian and over-analyzer, you can usually find her thinking too hard about plot devices in favorites like The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and How I Met Your Mother. In her spare time, Meghan enjoys drawing, shopping, trying to be funny (and often failing), and not understanding the whole Twilight thing. She’s got a BA in English and Studio Art from Whitman College, which makes her a professional arguer, daydreamer, and doodler.
