Well Sinead O'Gossip Girl. Shock me, shock me, shock me with your deviant behavior. Deviant, I mean, for this show. Which returned after a brief hiatus last night. Let's talk about it!

Everyone had New Year's and did things that were eventually revealed to be more than meets the eye. Serena was reenacting early scenes from Evita, dancing with old men in seedy Buenos Aires bars while ceiling fans whirred overhead and a sweaty, wheezy Aaron Rose (as Che, I guess?) watched in the distance, nibbling on gaucho cheese, thinking furiously about the wicked Fitzgibbons. While dopey Dan was... I dunno. Moping around his Daddy's loft in his underpants, listening to My Morning Jacket.

The ruined couple, Blair and Chuck, were apparently swallowed up with missing each other. Chuck sought comfort by time traveling back to the 1880's and going to an opium den, where he thought not to read the daily papers, nor comb his rangy hair! He'd forsaken all pursuits which are deemed fit for proper gentlemen. Why, he was seen receiving a Sally Hemmings Stovepipe Surprise from a common scullery maid. Miss Blair, meanwhile, was trying to get into something called the Colony Club which is for rich ladies who wear argyle and spend their time talking about people who are in high school, despite their being in their 40's. They all ride a special extended van around town together and are ably chaperoned. They went to the zoo last week. Oh they had such fun! P.J. and Dawn told Marjorie that she could wear the new sunglasses those nice people sent her in the mail, and she felt just like a Hollywood movie star! Then P.J. told them it was time to go back home and Donna threw one of her... fits. Which made everyone tired and so they all fell asleep on the way back to the Big House With the Ivy On It where they all live. A nice club!

So we began the meat of the episode with Dan standing in his kitchen looking at pictures of Serena frolicking in Belgium Argentina. Dad was off somewhere and Jenny was on her way to school, and Dan was getting that fluttery feeling down somewhere below his belly button. So, ogling the Serena pictures on the glowing computer, he reached down into his chinos and began to str— Then Pa Humphrey came back in! "Oh hi!" said Dan. "Nothing to see here!" Rufus looked at him knowingly and said "I'm going to walk you to school, you hairy-palmed son of a bitch." Dan thought this strange but went along with it anyway.

Yes Jenny is back at school and she is friends with little Gayfruit again which is nice for them but all they kind of do is bicker. Having some astral projection with Chuck, Jenny decided that she wanted to be nice to an Asian person so she decided to rescue Nellie Yuki from the feta-cheese-crusted clutches of that wicked Greek girl and her filthy cohorts. Erik sighed and thought to himself "I'd rather be blowing dudes..." but he went along with her little plans anyway. Mostly they involved the Great Stuyvesant FroGurt Caper and then common blackmail. It worked in the end, too well! They all assumed that Jennifer wanted to be Queen Bee, but she didn't, so Nellie Yuki said "peace," and ran after the old bitches. Then Erik said "I'm going to go blow a dude," and Jenny was left standing on the street with nothing to consider but how, as my roommate pointed out, her roots seem to have been re-dyed mid-episode. At least the supporting girls got a lot of airtime this week! That is always fun! That little red haired girl is funny.

Speaking of supporting girls! So much Dorota this week. So pleasing. Now that the obliterated young rapscallion Chuck had been retrieved by his uncle Jack Bass (like jackass!), Blair can feel sad and angry again. Jack Bass is basically Clawdeen come to life. So that's nice. You know, to see an old friend. I wonder how Catra is doing. So Blair and Chuck are in stupid, blasted love but Chuck enjoys being a tortured orphan too much. He bought back The Box Victrola and spent his days lazing on the couches, being felt up by burlesque performers. Much like Clinton's last days in office. HEY-O ZINGER TRY THE VEAL I'M HERE FOR THE REST OF FOREVER.

Blair couldn't help him anymore because the 'Colony Club' was coming over and she needed to be in it because it meant the beginning of her adult life as a fluffy New York idiot. The ladies came over in their argyle and murmured a few things and banged into walls. Dawn and P.J. stood in the kitchen chatting over coffee with Dorota. "Do they need to be watched right now?" she asked them. Dawn sighed and said "No, they're usually OK for a few minutes alone. Sometimes Phyllis starts to get angry and will maybe tear out some of her hair, but usually if one of us runs in and just claps loudly once and says 'No, Phyllis! No!' she'll stop pretty quickly. What you don't want to have happen is for Claire to start antagonizing Judith because then Valerie will start crying and shrieking and she might break things. She can get a bit violent when she's upset and confused. Let's just hope Blair doesn't mention the Bass family." But she did! And Claire started poking Judith with her squishy, suspiciously-too-soft, stubby little pointer finger and Judith said "stop it stop it stop it" over and over again so Valerie flew into a rage and clobbered Blair. Then Blair said, "I need to go rescue Chuck" and Dawn and P.J. rushed in and calmed the whole group down and said "No, Phyllis! No!" and clapped their hands and when they got back to the Big House With the Ivy On It where they all live, Valerie had to spend Thinking Time in the Downstairs Office with Dr. Keffelberg and the loud buzzy head itch machine. People from the nearby village claim that on the nights when there's a lot of screaming coming from the home, you can smell burnt argyle for miles.

Anyway Chuck was on a roof doing his best Jeff Bridges in Fearless, minus Isabella Rossellini prying strawberries out of his mouth and the climax of Górecki's Symphony 3 playing in the background. This show could use more Górecki. Anyway, Blair talked him off the ledge and they rubbed their faces together like lion cubs and Jackass stood and glowered. Then! Ohhhhhhh snap, when they put Chuck in the limo and Jackass said "I'll take it from here," Blair said... "He can't know about New Year's." Which means that Clawdeen and Blair totally did it! Which is like, illegal, because Clawdeen is like 35 and three quarters. Blair is bad news.

Meanwhile, most aggressively boringly, in Serena Wanna Humph Humph land, it turns out that she broke it off with old Whiskers McTavishanty about three hours after leaving for the Belgian Congo Argentina. So Dan said "see you in hell, right hand!" and grabbed Serena by her face bone and they made out. Somewhere Lily shrieked and Rufus vomited because Serena and Dan share a half brother. And after much stupidity ("South Boston Adoption Agency, how may I further the plotline?") Rufus and Lily decided to track down their love child son, while Dan found out about the wicked business from the pre-rescue Chuck. Then Serena showed up at the club (everyone showed up! the show's addiction to climactic parties continues unabated!) and Dan was all "um, this is freak nasty." Rufus called just before Dan told Serena and said "no, keep this a secret. Until, like, sometime around May. You know, for swee— Springtime! Springtime! I meant Springtime." So Serena tried to kiss Dan, but he was still all "if we kiss that means our half-brother will become deformed" and the two kids from that long forgotten show Young Americans looked up from their sweaty pile and were like "we are half siblings and we're doin' it, come on bro!" but Dan said "No, Rejected WB Show from 2000! No!" and clapped his hands.

So everyone inched off into the inky night. Blair with her terrible secret, Chuck with his terrible uncle. Jenny with a newly-adorned sense of independence, Erik with a newly-adorned pearl necklace. Serena and Dan with a strangeness between them, Rufus and Lily with a foundling between them. And the ladies at the Big House With the Ivy On It, where they all live, laid down their heads for the evening.

That night they all dreamed.

They dreamed of the day that Dawn and P.J. took them to the lake. Oh what fun they'd had, splashing in the water, playing in the sand. They forgot all about what worried or troubled them, what set their fluttery hearts to the scary dark places. It had been a lovely afternoon.

And they went swimming. They went swimming and because it was fresh water and there was no salt or stinging chemicals, they could open their eyes. And there, in that murky water, they saw him. At the far end of the lake. There was the lost Humphrey boy. His cold sapphire eyes open, his mysterious mind clicking like gearworks.

And maybe it didn't actually happen. Maybe it was just in their dreams. But for a moment, the ladies of the Colony Club, from the Big House With the Ivy On It where they all live, they saw him. This child lost to history. There he simply was. Dwelling in that light-starved place.

Just waiting for us to find him.