You have displeased Grandfather greatly. Rather than spending your Monday evening drinking brandy in the library, chatting with a senator, you spent it watching Gossip Girl. At least hook Gramps up with a recap, yo.

Last night, perhaps more than ever before, Gossip Girl was about the problems of rich people. What is a rich girl to do when she stops twirling in her fancy party dress long enough to realize that her Grampa wants her to go into politics? An important issue that Nate dealt with last night. What if you didn't get into college, so you were forced to go to fancy parties, drink champagne, and lob not-so-witty bon mots at middle-aged ladies? Blair, I don't feel your pain. And what if you scuzzed around Los Angeles in the 80's, a refugee from a wealthy family, and slept with both Slash and Trent Reznor, two of the music industry's undeniably handsomest musicians? While Dorota could actually answer that question too, it was presented to Lily van der Humph last night.

We begin with young Nate. Thinking he'd been banished forever by his mom's rich family, Nate was content to sit in his mansion with his poor girlfriend and her little Brooklyn friend and watch college basketball. In fact he wanted to watch four games at once! Four groups of sweaty college boys fighting over balls, all at the same time. "Uh... do you want us to leave?" Dan asked, sensing a disturbance in Nate's pants. "No... stay," he cooed seductively. Actually what happened was that outside Natalie had run into his cousin, Tripp Vanderbilt, who said "You must come see Grandpapa at his country manor!" Nate figured that since his wicked father had done wicked things, no one in the Vanderclit family wanted anything to do with him anymore. Quite the contrary!, Tripp urged. "Come to Brideshead. Revisit it again."

So after Dan and Vanessa tore him away from his precious basketball, they limo'd off to a snowy mansion, where Dan kept making "gee shucks" poor people hayseed comments, while Vanessa guffawed dumbly. Haven't these kids been surrounded by Manhattan mansions and fancy folks for like two years now? Would they really be that impressed that Popo Vanderbilt arrived in an auto-copter? Well they were, as Dan pointed up to the sky and toothlessly hooted "That birdy's wings is flappin' in circles!!" He was then startled by a car horn and ran into the bushes. Vanessa coaxed him out after an hour or so and they went inside. It turns out that Old Father Moneybags was thrilled, simply thrilled to have his beloved granddaughter Nate back in his life. He gave the kids a tour of the fancy mansion in a way that actual old money would never do ("Oh, this old shack? It's falling apart. Come, let's go drink gin out of huge diamonds on the west lanai.")

Then it was time for the football. Nate tried to hide his giddy erection smile behind a mean veneer of gritted teeth and floppy hair, but it was to no avail. As soon as he started prancing around the touch football field, he was tackled by his beloved cousin Tripp. Dan meanwhile was hyuk-hyuking at some ladies "purty sparkly earlobe decorations" when he was slammed to the ground by a young fellow wearing a fur hat and smoking a fine cigar. "Well played, old chum," he said to Dan's crumpled heap. "Quite." So on the game went, and eventually Little Lord Fauntleroy decided to man up and quit playin' grab ass with the male cheerleaders who were standing in short shorts along the sidelines. He tackled Cousin Tripp and ran to the end goal home base thing and had the little ball thing in his hands so he'd made a point for his team. The old men, rusty and creaking captains of industry all, clapped and nodded their heads. The orgy was going smashingly.

Meanwhile on a stony veranda overlooking this erotic, long-winded foreplay, Vanessa was approached by Tripp's fiance. She had the curiously working-class, far too Irish for real money name of Maureen, but that didn't stop her from giving Vanessa a lecture about "the next 30 years." Because it's only natural to assume that a girl of seventeen, like Nate, would still be dating the same person when the time came for marrying. Maureen cautioned V. that a life of politics was the only thing in Young Master Achibald's future. "But... he wants to dance," Vanessa intoned. But no. Nate is such a naturally charismatic and dynamic fellow, so he'd be perfectly suited for the political sphere. "Dear... Ladies...and Gentleman... of... the Senate ..." "I'm sorry, I'm sorry can we stop?" "Yes, what is it Senator Feingold?" "When did gay sex robots become eligible for public office?"

Back in the windswept hellscape of Manhattan, Blair and Chuck were circling each other like two sad thoroughbreds, their coats shiny and glistening, stamping their hooves and snorting while their curious blonde jockey, Serena, watched anxiously from a corner. Actually what was happening was that Blair was acting out by stealing sunglasses and saying quippy things and snogging that Carter guy, while Serean just sort of gawped at her and said "You can't do that..." and Chuck just kept showing up at her house and saying "Is Blair here?" Eventually Dorota had to yell at them in Polish, which was exciting, and Serena got her concerned face and Chuck scoured the bottom of the riverbed for nutrients, as catfish are wont to do.

Then they got worried because they figured that Blair had gone off to a secret sex party so she could fill her holes with something other than bitter Bulldog blues, so they followed her to a mysterious townhouse. When they broke into the apartment by shooting the girl who answered the door right between the eyes ("Roman Polanski must be in town," was Chuck's funny rape joke), they found Blair weeping and thrashing on the floor, begging an old man to let her in. Since usually that scene is the other way around, Blair and Chuckles were totally confused. Turned out that this wasn't the big sex party everyone was talking about. No, it was just the way to get into that big Bronxville fuckfest they got goin' on at Sarah Lawrence. This befuddled old coot was the Dean of Ladies for that strange little school, and Blair was begging him for acceptance. He said no, because she'd hazed a teacher. "Balls to it, then!" shrieked Blair. If she was going down, she was grabbing a table cloth and taking some fancy shit with her.

Back at the wheel being slowly turned by a bored-looking mouse that is Nate's brain box, he and V. were talking about their supes exciting summer plans. They were taking a Pierogi Tour through Central Europe. To awesome places like Belarus, and Krakow, and Riga. They were so excited. Nate said "I can't wait til we're just like lying there and they start the chanting and then the Greek guy wearing the Arlequino mask comes out and mounts us..." And Vanessa laughed strangely and said "Um... I'm not sure you actually know what a pierogi is." Nate blinked at her. "No, I do." The rest of the night was awkward, until Nate got a phone call from Tripp and Granslappy. They were totes out on the town and Nate wanted to join them! So he did.

Then it was time for a big family reunion, again, and another excuse for the lazy Gossip Girl writers to come up with some geigh-ass party for everyone to somehow be at. Blair was there to get drunk and insult old ladies, which she was doing by trotting out old, boring saws like pill addictions and DUI's. I wanted some real dirt about like murdering people or going to Sarah Lawrence or being mounted by a Greek guy wearing a Carnevale mask. But no, it was all milquetoast typical boozebag rich lady stuff so no one was really shocked. Sereenz and Pablo Honeydew showed up, hoping to stop whatever was maybe going to happen if the writers ever got around to penning something exciting, but instead Blair sloppily seduced Chuck in a parlor and then she ran off crying. Serena meanwhile slapped Dan, who was also there for no reason, across the face because he had slept with that teacherlady and then she laughed and oh lord above, they're not going to get back together are they?

Meanwhile Vanessa found out that Nate was on planning working for the mayor this summer instead of touring various Holocaust sites while getting fat on potato dumplings. Ohhh she was so mad! But Nate doesn't know who who he is. He needs to find himself. So maybe following Father Time's advice and going into a creamy, dull, furtive and guilty sex-filled life in politics is the best thing. The only thing. As long as he still has a few good years of touch football in him. Oh sassy molasses, as long as there was still touch football...

So he decided to work for the mayor and cancel Pierogi Fest '09 and Vanessa decided she was mad about this so they sort of broke up. Before this though, Nate and Blair had a heart to heart in Mrs. Havisham's living room, all covered up with sheets as it was. Blair said she didn't know how she'd gotten where she was. Everything was so terrible and out of control and Nate's mind flashed back to the night before, when he'd gone out with Grampz and Trippy and there had been the dancing and the schnapps and then the hooker fire and the high speed auto-copter chase and then all the making out and he nodded his head and said "Yeah, I know what you mean."

So they sat there, these two young kids, remembering the good old easy days, and you just wanted to hug them both close and say "There's so much worse to come, so much shittier stuff." You'd kiss their foreheads and walk away, leaving them there to sit and ponder, all those worries rattling around their hardbodies like pinballs.

After the party had ended, Chuck made one last attempt to win Blair over. But Dorota, that lying and loyal maidservant, told Mr. Chuck that she was asleep. She was, in fact, anything but. She was in her boudoir with one Natalie Vanderbilt Archibald, his mechanical sex organs whirring and realigning to adjust to his statistical projections that heterosexual intercourse might be happening for the first time in his 300 year history. Blair was all watery-eyed and purring and she said "Don't go..." And so he didn't go. And who knows if they did it or not, but somewhere Tripp and Grampapa stood in a dark-wooded library, wearing their pointy party hats and chaps, "I Love the Nightlife" playing softly on a boombox, waiting. Eventually they fell asleep in armchairs, their whole party ruined because mean old Nate didn't bother to show up. "He's disowned again," barked Nono, grumpy and disappointed the next morning.

The other thing that happened was that the writers decided it was time for the obligatory "Make a list of who you boned" moment for those 40-year-old teenagers, Lily and Rufus. So they did and Rufus it turns out was the worst band lead singer ever, because he didn't get with any groupies, while Lily's blousy cocaine bliss days that will soon be depicted on a new spin-off were apparently filled with many many sexcapades, with the likes of dirty rockers . Rufus was very mad and he stormed out, even though he'd remembered, painstakingly, to order the egg rolls. "Only let me have a few," Lily had purred about the fried food. A few? I think one is usually enough of those things.

So Rufus raged off and Lily sat in bed, wheezing while she shoveled lo mein down her gullet. And honestly I can't remember if they reconciled at the end of the episode and I frankly don't really care.

Meanwhile, Erik did Kabuki theatre in his room, a soft snow falling on his story of a princess who cries cherry blossoms.

Jenny kept turning the crank on her lower back to get the length of her hair just right. Too short. Crank. Too long. Crank. She'd never get it right, she feared. Never ever.

While lying next to Blair that night, Nate's metal synapses fired and whirred, and he dreamed of a huge football field. Tripp and Grandaddy were there in old-timey uniforms. "A game then?" they asked him. And so they played, hard and fierce. In the end, Nate had the final scoring touchgoal and won the set. Grandsy and Tripp hoisted him up on their strong, meaty shoulders and began to carry him off the field. "Where are we going?" he asked, his giddy erection smile impossible to hide. "We're going to Greece, my boy" Gramps said as he slapped his thigh.

Blair awoke suddenly and heard the sexbot murmuring softly to itself in its sleep.

"Mm, pierogies."