Eric and Cute Eliot are here! Eliot is back from Yale, where he is majoring in Venn diagrams (at least that’s what I heard him say). He and Eric are clearly half-assing this one. Eliot has grown out his hair, which I’m not digging %100, but it does seem very College.  

Serena is wearing something pale and shimmery like she always does. Her marble-mouth says “I just want all of this to blow over,” but her outfit says “Everyone look over here at me!” I want to say that Serena is coated in sequins in the middle of the afternoon because the show wants to indicate to us that this a Serena-centric plot today, but Serena pretty much dresses like this all the time. Also, almost every plot revolves around Serena. So it’s hard to say. 

Jenny is dressed in a dark, evil version of the dress Serena is wearing, which is pretty cool.

However, New Jenny is still wearing only black, baggy things. I love New Jenny’s superior scheming skills, but fashion-wise, New Jenny is pretty weak. Little J, you might be carrying Vanessa on this whole revenge scheme, but Vanessa is killing you in the batshit fashion division. Time to step it up. Have a look:

You can already tell that Vanessa isn’t going to have a huge piece of revenge action, because she looks like she should be singing about peace and love while she strums an acoustic guitar.

In the episodes where Vanessa is supposed to be sympathetic, or capable of pulling off a plan, they dress her like a normal person. Today, she is not a serious part of the plot, so she can just wear an Aladdin costume. For comic relief. 

Blair is wearing this lacy, prim, Stand by Your Man dress. It’s like an updated version of something early Betty Draper, or last season’s Blair Waldorf, might wear. The busy, black and white print reflects her conflicting feelings. There’s one other important thing about this dress:

It opens down the front. 

Dan has his shirt tucked into his jeans so that he can pretend that he and Nate are living in an episode of Seinfeld, where these “may the best man win” and mistaken identity plot lines always have hilarious resolutions and then everything goes back to normal. 

Nate and Dan are a lot like Chuck and Blair. They try to stay mad at each other, but they are always drawn back together again. 

Even though the boys have decided that Serena needs to choose between the two of them, the bigger problem here is that there is not enough Nate to go around. Jenny made an enemy of Serena when she tried to break them up so that she could have sex with Nate. Juliet was ready to drop her Serena destruction mission for a chance to be on Nate’s arm at the ballet. And Vanessa is pissed that her boyfriend loves Serena more than he loves her, but Dan has clearly demonstrated that he loves Nate more than either of them.

Nate breaks just as many hearts as Serena does, but since he is the only character on the show who might be dumber than she is, it’s hard to hold him at fault.  Did you know that at the end of the Gossip Girl books [spoiler alert] Nate has to choose between Blair and Serena, and he chooses the Sea over either of them? No joke. 

Now lets look at what everyone wears to the weakly Big Event that Every Character Will Attend

Blair wears a formal variation of the dress she was wearing earlier, but not for long. 

This one unzips down the back, so Blair has to shed it like some kind of lizard skin. 

It’s a nice echo back to the Victrola episode, when Blair decided to drop her Queen B, Total Control persona and dance around in her underwear instead. 

Witches. These Jenny episodes are always extra ludicrous. She’s always involved in these fantastical narratives about queens and banishment and handmaidens. So it makes total sense that Jenny is dressing like and actual witch now. 

I kind of love the title of this episode. None of these characters live in Bushwick or go anywhere near Bushwick in this episode. This is what Gossip Girl has been telling us all along: your neighborhood is more than where you live, it is your way of life. That is why Juliet can be “Team Brooklyn” even though she lives her entire life on the Upper West Side, and why the Upper East Side can still get to Jenny even though her primary residence is in Hudson now.

In every single Gossip Girl episode ever made, the characters go to a Big Event, wearing dresses and trying to pull off a plan. Normally, you can accurately predict their success based on how good or bad they look, but TONIGHT three of the key players are wearing the EXACT SAME (beautiful) dress and Blair is in her UNDERWEAR. The only thing we can tell for sure is that SHIT IS GOING TO GO OFF THE RAILS.

also, those masks remind me of this:

Scary stuff. 

Blair and Chuck reunite for a moment and everything is rosy. Sadly, Anne Archibald and Patriarchal Society have to come along and make crazy eyes and mess everything up.

Look at those GIANT pearl earring. She is a parody of a society wife. 

Blair has to cover up her carefree lingerie with a serious-lady black capelet and explain to Chuck how first she was the Queen, and then she was the Empress, and now it is time for Blair to become Secretary of State.

So that kinda sucks. More importantly, Juliet totally DRUGGED and KIDNAPPED Serena! 

And of course I would be remiss in my Gossip Girl fashion recapping duties if I did not mention that Eric and Eliot were wearing this:

I love how they had the idea for this costume that afternoon, and by evening they were able to obtain matching golden laurel crowns. Somebody give these two a show on Bravo.