Oh my god this show is still on. Still on! After all those twists and turns and lover's burns, it soldiers on. Despite everything, it believes it is still interesting at heart.

Last night was something of a Half-Solve episode. Things were all sort of half-solved. We know that Blair and Chuckles are straight up donkey doin' it, but we don't know where they'll go from here. We know that Nate and Dan are lonely weirdos who should seriously just make out with each other instead of pining for Serena, but we don't know when that will happen. We know that Serena is gross and dumb, but we don't know when someone will just tell her. And we know that Vanessa is a character on this show, but we don't know why. See? Things were half-solved. And I guess a Half-Solve episode is better than a No-Solve episode, which has been the rest of this season so far.

So. Blair and Chuck are totally mashing genitals against each other for pleasure, and everyone is throwing up all over the place because of it. Because it is so gross. "Hey Blair, let me put my penis inside you behind these bushes." THROWUP. "Hey Chuck, why don't you stimulate my vagina with your mouth some more." RETCH. "Oh my gosh, let's pant and wheeze and sweat here in this limo because we just rubbed our genitalia together to the point of climax." RALPH. Sex on Gossip Girl is never not completely gross and disturbing, and this was no exception. I know most people are clapping their hands and crying with giddy laughter as their cats gnaw at their ankles and yet another lonely day passes by because Blair and Chuck are together again, but I am not one of those people! Oh, go ahead, gnaw away, cat, pass away, lonely days. But I am not happy about Blair and Chuck. Because it's all about sex, and having sex with Blair Waldorf would be like having sex with a lukewarm robot. Warm enough that it feels sort of real, but cool enough that you can feel the metal and skin-fabric. You know. IT"S GROSS, is what I'm saying. Grossity gross gross.

But they're doing it anyway and that was a plot point. Absolutely nothing changed or developed in their fucking, just more and more fucking and more and more gross fucking jokes that made everyone at home never want to fuck again. (Don't worry, we won't. I mean, we're adults who watch Gossip Girl. Are we really like "Heyyyy slow down, sex life!!"? No. No we are not.) So let's move on to the next story.

Dannnnnnn and Serena and Professor Lasky. See, Serena and the Professor have been doing a little dance around each other for the past few weeks and everyone has been so fascinated with it that they decided to do more of it last night! Yaaaaayyyy!!! So basically Serena doesn't know if she should date the Professor but the Professor is always all sexy and romantic and being like "Let's go on a vacation to Lamprey Island together and there we'll roll around in piles of seaweed and we'll slurp cold raw clams out of their shells and hermit crabs will nestle up against us." And Serena finds it really hard to turn down a romantic trip, especially to Lamprey Island! So she's all, "Let's date." Plane tickets booked, car rented, spot on creepy Lamprey Island ferry run by eyeless man named Zeke Turner reserved. A done deal. Excepppppt! 1) Remember when America's most talented chameleon Katie Cassidy took sex pictures of Serena and the Professor sexting each other live and in person? I'll give you a moment to barf up your breakfast. OK? Done? Well, yes, this happened. So there is always that intrigue hanging over the proceedings. 2) Serena talked to Blair and Dan and they were both like "Wait, if he really loved you, he would quit his Professorship. Because he's a billionaire so it doesn't matter anyway." Because money is all these kids care about. "He has money, why would he want to do anything intellectually fulfilling? Ridiculous!" So Serena is all "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm" all of a sudden, thinking maybe Teach could be polishing her apples a little more attentively than he's been doing.

All of this leads to Serena walking down a hall at Hogwarts with Professor Lasky and saying "Yo, Profzees, we gotta b-up!!!" She meant break up. She's very street. So he was all "Awwwww whittle tits" and shuffled off. Problem solved. In sweeps Dan to take Serena to the ballet and Dan is so very, very excited. Like a boner from here to Fort Pond Bay excited. Because, narratively speaking, he's just up and decided he has a crush on Serena again, because why not. It's a good plot! What will happen to all of this romanz?

Well, remember the other thing I mentioned, the thing about America's premiere stage artist Katie Cassidy having illicit doggin' daguerreotypes of Serena and Professor Lasky? Those came into play. See, remember Vanessa? Well, Vanessa makes no sense. None whatsoever. So she popped up to make no sense last night. Nate was feeling a little wistful about Katie Cassidy so he went over to her supposed apartment with a box 'a her shit and was all "Ding dong, Nate lady calling!" But no one answered. The building was cold and quiet. Nate wandered outside and there was a very, very old doorman, sweeping up dried leaves, staring at the swallow-streaked sky. "Sir, I'm looking for Katie Cassidy?" The old man looked at him strangely, his eyes glassy with cataracts. "Katie Cassidy? Oh, no. No sir. No one by that name here. No one by any name here. Place here is full up, full up with ghosts. Oh no, sir. No Katie Cassidy here. No sir, no sir. Ghosts is all we got here. Used to be lotsa life, children runnin' around, all kinds 'a noise and good times. But that was a long, long time ago. Now it's just ghosts. Children grown up and moved away. Children'll do that, y'know." Nate was stunned! If she wasn't living here, in this mysterious ghost house, then where was she living??????

Naturally when one has such questions, one calls one's cavewoman friend and says "Oooga boooga, find out where she lives and break into her house." Hahahaha. That's actually what Nate did last night. He called Vanessa, told her the situation, and they decided that Nate would distract with a sexy lunch date on the college campus while Vanessa, seriously, found Katie's actual apartment and BROKE INTO IT. Honestly! Hand to God! That's what happened last night. Good thinking, Gossip Girl writers. Good thinking indeed. Makes total sense to me. So whatever, Vanessa broke into Katie's apartment and found the sex photos of Serena putting a mortarboard in places a mortarboard shouldn't go (tassel and all!) and she was like "Gullllllllp." They excited her very much. But meanwhile back on campus, Katie was all "Oh Nate, I'm so sorry I lied, the thing is.... I'm very poor. I live in a studio on 126th street full of Ikea furniture!" Hahahahahahahha. Shut the fuck up. That's awesome. Can I have your shitty studio apartment full of trendy furniture in Morningside Heights? Thanks. This show is really about all kinds of people, isn't it? It's like when Serena and the Professor were in a cab together and he was like "This is our first time alone in a while..." and I wished that the cab driver had said "Um, well I'm here. I'm a human being. I'm from Senegal and my wife and kids live in the Bronx. So, you're not really alone. I'm here. I'm real. I'm a human."

So yeah, that's what Katie was all embarrassed about (lie!), and Nate was like "Ohhh cinnamon, Vanessa!!" So he texted her and said that she didn't need to go to the apartment but Vanessa was already there and had seen the horrifying photos so done was done. After their little romantic rendezvous, Katie headed home, opened up the door, and there was Vanessa! Really just sitting in her apartment! And rather than scream and scream and scream and call the police, like a normal person would upon finding a vague acquaintance sitting in a chair in their supposedly locked apartment, Katie was all "Hey, what's up?" And Vanessa was all "Look, sex photos." And Katie was all "No, I'm not going to send those anymore, I love Nate." Because she's mad at her brother whatever whatever. But the writers decided to make Vanessa's character evil all of a sudden, so she stole the flashdrive and decided to ruin Serena anyway.

Once again we return to the ballet, where everything was beautiful. (Cooper Nielsen!!!!) In typical Gossip Girl fashion everyone was there, for various stupid reasons. Blair brought the Professor because he'd quit his job and wanted to be with Serena, meaning Dan was gonna get tooooootalllllyyyy boner-blocked. Katie Cassidy went as Nate's date, but not for long! Vanessa had an invitation because... Vanessa. So all the players were in position. Serena's dean, poor poor Jayne Atkinson, was there and Vanessa's idea was to tell the dean "Hey dean, want to look at some hot photos of one of your students and a professor experiencing the holy and ancient act of private parts-mingling?" It was a good, puke-inducing plan. But Katie Cassidy didn't want Vanessa to do it! "Pleeeeease," she begged. Pleeeeeeeeease. But Vanessa didn't care. She didn't care so much that she made up lies and told truths, truths that Nate had asked her to break into Katie Cassidy's house (what an insane truth!!!) and lies that Nate was over there telling Blair all about Katie's evil deceptionous (word) ways. That was enough to flip Katie, and the two non-characters, but truly brilliant actresses, stomped over to Jayne Atkinson, who was gulping down a martini and trying to get her agent on the phone. "Deeeean! Sex!! Pictures!! Fucking!!!!" The dean was all "Who the hell are you?" to Vanessa, and it was TREMENDOUS. Best line ever. I love you again, writers.

Eventually Katie and Vanessa sputtered out their story, but not before Serena and the rest of the gang could all amass around Jayne Atkinson (who had killed herself at this point) and start yelling at her. It was cacophony and chaos! People were mad at the professor, and then not. Blair stepped up and said that she was the one who'd boned the professor, and K & V couldn't prove she wasn't because Blair dropped the mini-disc or whatever it was in her champagne. So Serena was off the hook, the Professor was just a grade-A creepweirdo and Katie Cassdy was burnt. So, so burnt. Outside the ballet, she stood all sad while Chuck, Blair, Serena, and Nate all circled around her like skinny, stupid hyenas and berated her. Guys! Bullying is dangerous! "You're a filthy peasant!" Blair screeched, tossing a pile of horse shit at her. "Commoner!!!" Chuck bellowed, rapping her soundly on the back with his cane. "Hideous wretch!!" Serena screeched, scratching her with her long, yellow fingernails. "My feewings hurt..." poor little Nate said in a tiny voice, kicking a can with his little boot. Katie was ruined. And what's worse? The Professor, her cousin, was like "You tried to get me in trouble for dippin' the wick in a little undergrad snatch? Not cool, cuz. Not cool at all. You are cut the fuck off. No more cheddar, bed wetter. Can't believe you'd cock me like that, goin' off the handle 'cause I'm gettin' it wet with a little coed cooze." (The Professor talks so gross.) Then Nate went off to go chase Serena, who is back with the Prof, but Dan went to chase her too, so it is all very confusing, but the important thing is that Nate no longer likes Katie. So basically Katie is going to go kill herself.

EXCEPT. Vanessa has no friends, so she'll be Vanessa's friend. And you know who else has no friends? Jenny of Hudson-on-Hudson! Yesssss, they totally video conferenced with Jenny about an as yet unknown revenge plot, so YES, GUYS. Prayer does work. Thank the congregation for all their blessed hard work. We are going to get a storyline about Vanessa AND Jenny!! Best characters ever! Yup, that's going to happen. In the meantime, after their video chat, Vanessa and Katie were there on the bed, so they decided to just nestle up into each other, let their hands do the walking, find hidden spaces and caverns, find safe places. They tangled in an annoying cavewoman, great-actress heap and a thick, acrid steam filled the room. It was beautiful, in a Gowanus Canal sort of way.

The best scene of the whole episode was Dan talking to sad Rufus. Rufus was there with a pile of floppy waffles, really his whole life a floppy waffle, and he just looked so glum and dejected. Dan was leaving, Jenny was dead, Lily was off somewhere draping herself in cardigans and other strange full-body wraps that she seems to favor, and Erik was interviewing at Wesleyan. Wesleyan! Oh my, Erik is going to become one of those, one of them. Those huddled, knobbly masses draping themselves over street corners in Greenpoint, fitting into narrow slits on the L, dancing with noodle-limbed abandon at Sugarland on special occasion nights. It's going to be so bad. So bad in a few years' time. But for now, he's just interviewing. Just going for a visiting weekend, just falling in love over and over again with every idealistic young thing in tight denim. There he was, skipping off into a gay glittery (broken glass glitters) life, while his step-dad was back in the glass-walled aerie in New York, fiddling despondently with floppy waffles, hearing the tin and rush of time ebbing away filling the room. Oh lives! What a round of a song! I'll start and then you'll come in later and I guess... I guess I'll probably be done before you, and I'll just look back and you'll still be there singing, some verse or bar that I only vaguely remember now, but I do remember loving it. What a sad thing! Erik at Wesleyan! Dan with a broken heart! Nate nowhere nearby to comfort him! Blair doing her gross business! Serena in a splintery Adirondack chair on Lamprey Island!

And all of us! Reading this! Writing this! Life!