Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 6, Episode 7 of The CW's "Gossip Girl," titled "Save the Last Chance."
It appears that I spoke too soon when dubbing "Portrait of a Lady Alexander" the ickiest episode of "Gossip Girl" to date -- that was before we'd witnessed Ivy trying to screw her way through every father on the Upper East Side. At long last, the mystery none of us truly wanted an answer to was finally uncovered; Ivy's partner in crime was Serena's father, William! And William wanted her to sleep with Rufus to get back at Lily! Or something! I was too busy trying not to hurl at Ivy's doe-eyed, clingy sycophant routine to really pay attention.
Apparently it was all because of Lola, maybe? Because she -- along with everyone else in the world -- has decided it's cool to hate Lily, possibly? And William just loves sleeping with a psychotic 20-something who, within the last two years, has assumed the identity of one of his daughters and become totally obsessed with the other, because that's a healthy and rational thing for a middle-aged doctor guy to do?
At this point there are too many illegitimate love-children and identity thieves on the Upper East Side to keep track of, and with only three episodes to go, the lights in the penthouse suite are on, but it's obvious that no one's home. Don't these millionaires all have better things to do with their time and money than pursue their convoluted Revengendas? Couldn't they all just team up with Emily Thorne instead, since the Hamptons are just across the water? Where did I put my red marker, anyway? So many questions!
Sadly, don't count on any answers, because "Gossip Girl" is content to twist itself into ever-dizzying circles of deceit, coincidence and binge-drinking like the cannibalistic ouroboros of myth. Unless the writers decide to steal my "rocks fall, everybody dies" suggestion, my new bet is that Dan sets fire to the entire island of Manhattan and drives away on his vespa, cackling madly, with the wind ruffling his curly locks and an advance on his next novel tucked into his too-tight hipster pants.
In case took too many shots of tequila as a result of all of the terrible lines and blacked out before the end of the episode, the biggest newsflash of the night was that Dan doesn't really care about Serena, he's gone full sociopath and is only pretending to like her to gather intel for his Serena chapter, because ... well, why bother justifying anything any of these people do at this point?
So William and Ivy were in cahoots; Serena and Blair finally buried the hatchet (which was the one good part of the episode); Rufus and Lily reconciled, kinda; and Lily decided to trust Bart over Chuck, tossing the prized microfilm into the fire and sending all of Chuck's dreams of payback up in literal smoke. Curses!
Although everyone seemed to be trying to deliver ... their lines in ... the style ... of WILLIAM SHATNER, I will give the writers props for twisting themselves into such unimaginably convoluted knots just to tie Ivy, Rufus, William, Lily, Bart, Chuck, Nate and Dan into one double-crossing storyline. It was completely pointless, since it all ended with Lily burning the evidence anyway, but it was still spectacularly complicated for no good reason, and I admire their moxie, if not their logic. And then they went and involved Sage, and I deducted all of their bonus points, because she's just so awful.
Mostly it all just seemed to serve as an excuse for Ivy to get Bart into his underthings (and I'll be mentally bleaching my brain for years to come as a result), for William to make a bizarrely subdued (and kind of drunken) return, and for Bass Sr. to make vaguely lecherous threats towards Nate as if Bart intended to make him into his rent boy. When Nate was drowning his sorrows at the bar, I half expected Chuck to pull out a Cabbage Patch Kid and ask Nate to show him on the doll where the bad man touched him.
And that's not to mention the return of the ol' "I just happened to be walking down the street in a supposedly quiet part of town and coincidentally saw my girlfriend kissing another guy next to a limo right as I was passing and looking in that direction" routine with Rufus and Ivy -- because there's nothing "Gossip Girl" loves more than a statistically improbable encounter that leads to a misunderstanding or a break-up.
But the most infuriating part of the hour was undoubtedly Blair and Chuck's latest contrived reason for staying apart. Apparently, drunken sex pacts are now legally binding contracts, since Chuck declared that, even though Blair had fulfilled her part of the bargain and made Waldorf Designs into a profitable company all on her lonesome, they still couldn't be together, because Chuck had failed to take down Bart. And I thought that the pact with God was the most ridiculous justification for keeping them apart the show could come up with. That'll teach me. So Chuck chased Blair off again, Blair cried and stared longingly at her ornamental engagement ring, and no one lived happily ever after because these people all have far too many issues to ever be truly satisfied with anything. Ah, l'amour...
Are you as bored of reading about how repetitive and mind-boggling this show has become as I am of writing it? I'm sure we're all well aware that the definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome, but gosh darn it, the possibility of closure is just too intoxicating, ain't it? Or we're all masochists. Just keep telling yourself, "only three more episodes to go ... "
"Gossip Girl" airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.
What do you think of Ivy and William's alliance? Do you find Blair and Chuck's latest roadblock as ridiculous as I do? When did Dan get so cray-cray? Weigh in below!
