Does anyone even watch this Gossip Girl show anymore?  This show is getting harder to follow than Queen Mum after a few drinks (that was funny, right?)!

Let’s break it down by character; otherwise, this shizz is way too hard to follow:

Dan Humphrey and Olivia Burke
Olivia for some reason doesn’t want to show bf Dan her appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.  She goes to great lengths to keep footage of the show from him, but he eventually comes across the clip.  It seems Olivia told Jimmy Fallon the story of her first date with Dan, in which he emerged from the bathroom with his shirt on inside-out.  Fallon starts calling him “Bathroom Boy,” it’s hilarious blah blah blah.  Dan ends up not really caring, just being bummed he forgot their one-month anniversary, yadda yadda all is right with the world.

Nate Archibald, Vanessa Abrams, and the Congressional Campaign
Nate’s cousin Trip van der Bilt is running for Congress.  Nate’s helping out while Vanessa documents the whole process for one of her snoozy short films.  She gets footage of Trip saving a drowning man in the Hudson River, but when reviewing the tape before selling it off to a local news station, learns that the whole thing was set up to make Trip look like a hero.  She warns Nate ahead of time so Trip can plan his PR plan of attack ahead of time.  What ends up happening instead is Nate tricking Vanessa into forking the footage over by sending a fake journalist to purchase the tape.  Vanessa later figures it out and gives him one of her b.s. moral authority speeches about how he isn’t the Nate Archibald she once knew.  Nate redeems himself later by taking credit for the whole set up, even though he had nothing to do with it.

BONUS: We all thought it was Grandfather William van der Bilt (p.s. love it how they all call him “Grandfather”), but it turns out to be Trip’s sneaky wife Maureen who was behind the whole shebang.  She confesses this to Grandfather with a shizz-eating grin on her face, because she knows he’s underestimated her in the past.  Grandfather responds that he actually doesn’t think about her much at all.  Disssssss!

Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen
The girls are still pissed at each other over last week’s snafu with Chuck Bass’s Gimlet bar opening and whatnot.  Blair finds herself a new best friend in the form of some babe named Brandeis whose got a penchant for designer clothes.  Blair takes Brandeis to Trip van der Bilt’s election party at Chuck’s Empire Hotel, where Serena is attending with her new fake boyfriend actor Patrick Roberts, who she is dating only to keep her job as a publicist.  Patrick gets mondo drunk at the party and lets our friends know that Blair’s buddy Brandeis is not only a psych major at NYU, but a high-class call girl - she’s at the party looking for new clients!  Things get crazy, Blair gets drunk-as-a-skunk Patrick kicked out of the party, Serena tells Blair about her new friend’s actual calling in life, Blair gives her one of those takes-one-to-know-one lines, and S pushes B’s face into a cake.

Whew! Serena ends up feeling like a whore after all, quitting her job, and trying to make up with Blair - but Blair won’t have it.  Blair’s got a real life now, with school and a real relationship, while Serena’s floundering through life, alienating her family and friends.  Blair wants no part of it.  Could this be the end of Serena and Blair?!?!?!?

The episode ends with Blair crawling into bed with Chuck - she’s got no friends, but at least she has him, she says - and Serena running into newly-elected Trip at a bar and him joining her for a chat.  Both these scenes seemed foreshadowing to me.  Will Blair lose Chuck too?  Will something happen between Serena and Trip?  I certainly hope both of those questions are answered with a big fat NO.

Next week?  It’s supposed to be the big threesome episode we’ve been hearing buzz about (OM3!).  Who do you think it’ll be?  I’m half-assuming it’ll involve Olivia (you know how loose those Hollywood types are!), but I’m hoping Vanessa will be involved because maybe THEN she’d shut up.  Serena would be too obvious, no?

Maybe our girl Gossip will show up.  xoxo!

Ugh.  Most confusing Gossip Girl ever.  I don’t even know if I’ll be able to recap this one.

So I suppose the biggest deal of the evening was Blair Waldorf and Vanessa Abrams duking it out over who’d get to deliver the freshman toast at the NYU parents dinner.  Vanessa was all set to deliver the speech, and seemingly no effort from Blair begging and pleading with Josh Ellis, Head of Freshman Affairs, could stop her.

Unfortunately, across town, Dan Humphrey was busy inviting new celebrity gf Olivia Burke to the parents dinner so she could meet his parentals, Rufus Humphrey and Lily van der Woodsen.  Olivia decided to call up Mr. Ellis and accept his invitation to give the freshman toast so she could impress the fam, unknowingly bumping Vanessa from the position.  Looks like Olivia will be delivering the toast!

Nate Archibald is busy working hard on cousin Tripp Vanderbilt’s congressional campaign.  He’s also keen to help Serena van der Woodsen with the whole Carter Basin situation, and tells her the Buckley’s have shipped Carter off to Texas to pay off his debts to the family at an oil rig. 

Nate thinks only way to pay off the debt is to play a high-stakes game of poker with P.J. Buckley (didn’t she spend time playing poker with her step-father in Monaco, after all?) - and Serena agrees, for some insane reason.

Blair finds out about Olivia’s new role as toastmaster and throws it in Vanessa’s face, then uses her primo powers of manipulation to convince Vanessa to trick roomie Olivia into backing out of the toast.  Vanessa tells Dan that Olivia is freaked out over meeting the ‘rents and convinces him to disinvite her to the parents dinner and make her chicken dinner instead.  As a result, Olivia gets all freaked out that Dan’s cooling on her, so Vanessa tells her that Lily and Rufus are really judgmental when it comes to “Hollywood types.”  OMG VANESSA IS SO BAD AT LYING!

But!  Back to Blair!  The girl still hasn’t secured her position as freshman toaster.  She concocts a little plan: she and bf Chuck Bass will resume their cheating man/scorned woman act in order to embarrass Mr. Ellis.  Chuck will flirt it up with the administrator and Blair will catch him in the act. Chuck is all for it, obviously, and does a bang up job - Ellis ends up planting a big ole smooch on the Bassface.

But no!  Embarrassing Mr. Ellis wasn’t Blair’s actual plan - she was, in truth, selling Chuck out!  Apparently, Blair had struck a deal with Mr. Ellis to check #27 off the TriBeca Scavenger Hunt List: Kiss Chuck Bass.  With that exchange, Blair got her speech.

In the meantime, Serena is all set to play poker and totally blows it, losing all of Nate’s money.  However, the guy’s got faith in her and raises the stakes with a photo of cousin Tripp with a bong - an image that could ruin his political career.  Serena, of course, loses again.  The money and Tripp’s campaign are lost.

But are they?  It turns out Nate actually wagered a doctored photo.  He wanted the image to be released so that it looked like the Buckleys were gross enough to sink as low as all that and victimize the poor Vanderbilts.  Serena, pissed that she’d been used, calls up P.J. and tells him to truth, and pays off Carter’s debt herself.  Unfortunately, when she tells Carter he’s in the clear, he isn’t happy.  He wants to do things his own way, now that he’s a good man.  Carter doesn’t need her charity, he wants her respect.  He leaves; Serena is left heartbroken.

At the parents dinner, Blair is all prepped to speak, but unfortunately, Vanessa isn’t done fighting yet.  She’s keen to deliver the speech herself, as her super self-righteous, condescending mother Gabriella will be there, and Vanessa wants to convince mom that NYU is the place for her (Gabriella Abram’s opinion on private education: “Knowledge should not be for sale”).  Vanessa confronts Blair, but not without a hidden microphone.  Blair confesses, unknowingly mic’d in front of everyone, that she had stolen the toast, that she had been willing to do anything to get it, including lying to Chuck, “the one person who trusts me more than anyone.”  BUMMER!  Chuck is noooot happy.

Meanwhile, Olivia is busy acting like a super stuck-up Hollywood type in front of Lily and Rufus, on account of she’s pissed that they’ve pre-judged her as exactly that.  Dan eventually figures out what’s going on and he and Olivia confront Vanessa - who’s been acting very un-Vanessa this episode, am I right?  Vanessa confesses all that has gone down and apologizes, telling them how important it was to prove herself to her mother with this speech. “I wish Rufus and Lily were my parents,” she tells them - and mama Gabriella overhears!

Lily gives Blair a mini-lecture about how important trust is in a relationship and the girl seems to take it to heart.  However, when Blair goes to ask Chuck’s forgiveness the next day, he won’t have any of it.  Chuck knows how little respect she has for the people she manipulates, and he won’t be one of them.

The episode ends with Blair sitting down at a cafe with Vanessa, who’s just been stood up by her mother for breakfast.  The two bitches left in the dust!

What did you think of Vanessa’s new manipulative streak?  Is she falling into a life of private school games?  Does anyone care?  How does the real NYU feel about all this publicity?

And seriously, could I get a litte more Gossip Girl narrative up in this mix?  xoxo!