Gossip Girl: Sotheby’s Is The Hot Freshman Hangout

This episode of Gossip Girl was incredibly disjointed. Major plot points happened off camera. The guest stars had more to do than many of the series regulars. College sucks.

The Couture

Blair catches Georgina and Dan making out and is appropriately revolted. Serena and Vanessa find out they’re hooking up when Dan does his walk of shame down the hall. Serena advises Dan to make sure Georgina knows he is not serious about her.

While Serena is with Carter a woman claims she slept with him a month ago. Carter swears he has never seen her before. The hotel where he is staying declines his credit cards. He insists he did not order any room service. Serena is skeptical.

Blair gets an invitation to join La Table Elitaire, a secret society with a very bogus name. As part of her initiation, she must buy a photograph of 70s club kids at a Sotheby’s auction. Meanwhile, Chuck’s quest to open a club continues. His goal is to impress an Ian Schrager-like club and hotel owner. His assistant advises Chuck to buy the same photo Blair wants to show that he knows the man’s history. Chuck proposes they both skip the auction in favor of sex. Both get texts about the auction and realize they are trying to distract each other. Blair steals his shoes in an attempt to stop him from attending the auction. Once there, they bicker as they bid on the photo. At one point, Blair appears to distract Chuck by performing a sexual act on him.

Serena ends up buying the photo to pay them back for their campaign to make Carter look bad. Apparently, Carter figured this out off camera. When Chuck and Blair explain that they were trying to protect Serena, rattling off his suspicious behavior, Serena realizes Carter was looking for her dad on his own. Serena gives Blair the photo. Blair hands it over to Chuck, deciding she believes in him and does not need to join a stupid club. Chuck finds out that the assistant is a friend of Georgina’s. The club owner never actually wanted the photograph. Chuck decides he wants to buy an entire hotel, cashing out his shares in his father’s business.

Serena realizes Georgina faked Blair’s invitation. I can’t believe that Georgina can out-manipulate everyone. After talking to Serena, Dan tells Georgina he wants to take a break. Too bad she has a Dan screensaver on her computer.

The Bargain Bin

In the most disturbing scene of the episode, Rufus gives Scott a guitar lesson. Nobody wants to see that. Vanessa figures out that Scott does not really attend NYU. When she confronts him, he reveals his true identity, explaining his parents told him that Rufus does not want to meet him. Vanessa tells him that his parents lied. Rufus and Lily searched for him.

Vanessa tells Dan only that Scott is lying about his last name. Somehow, armed only with Scott’s first name and his high school sports team mascot, Georgina finds Scott online. Dan remembers that Scott Rossen sent him a fan letter about his short story. Instead of realizing that this means Scott is scamming him, because nobody is a Dan fanboy, Dan egomanically assumes Scott is stalking him.

Scott’s mother shows up at the auction, claiming she lied because she was afraid of losing him. Scott is about to break the news to Rufus, but at the last second Scott says that he is Andrew’s brother, and wanted to get to know his dead brother’s biological parents. He was scared that Rufus would not want to meet him. The Humphreys conviction that they are the best people on earth kicks in and they buy this preposterous story. Scott tells Vanessa he wants to leave town. I cheer. Georgina overhears him reveal he is Dan and Serena’s sibling and heads to Boston. This is the cliffhanger, and it involves two peripheral characters.

Nate is in about two seconds of this episode. He and Bree make their relationship public at the auction, but there are no scenes of him with Chuck or Blair or anyone viewers care about. Bree runs into Carter. Apparently he did something shady to her family. She plans to reveal his whereabouts to get back into her parents’ good graces. This would be interesting if I cared about Bree. I barely care about Carter.

The Quotes

I’m wearing a glove and I still want to wash my hands — Blair

‘72 Bowie is a dead ringer for Shakira - Eric

When it comes to an eye for an eye, Chuck is a man of the cloth. - Carter

She took my shoes? - Chuck

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