Set your phasers to fun! Last night's Gossip Girl was so full of intrigue is was like a carnival ride through the tunnel of mysteries. If said tunnel was dimly lit and didn't make much sense.

Oh boy. A lot happened last night. Basically we saw the full, glorious, bellowing power of Julliard hall of fame inductee Katie Cassidy's whole scheme machine. And, dare I say, I was a little impressed! I mean once that big old lurching thing actually gets groaning into motion, it's... well, it's what Judy Collins was talking about when she sang about iron wheels rolling through the rain. (That reference is very near and dear to my heart, so please someone get it.) She basically ruined Serena's entire existence. Paper thin and glowing in afternoon sun as that thing is, it's not that much of a feat, but it's still something. Starleena van dirmen Blixen: 1997-Now. RIP.

So let's unpack this whole thing. Basically Serena broke up with Professor Chips and now she is trying to vagina-decide between Dan's haircut and Nate's penis, which makes a bell ringing sound every time he takes off his pants, like a stationery store door in Vermont. This is a verrry tough decision to make. And the boys aren't making it any easier. Oh isn't it funny when Dan and Nate fight? They're like two Gummi Bears who found a last salvo cache of Gummiberry wine and they've decided to battle over it. Mostly it's cutesy bouncing and lots of giggling and really the whole thing is just an excuse to rub jean-covered boners against each other. (So much like every Gummi Bears episode, really.) Gosh those two are such gigglemonsters! They were playing a game of Orange Ball at one point, throwing small orange balls into a hole (INSERT JOKE HERE, ALSO INSERT PENIS HERE IF THIS IS NATE'S BUTT) and it was just the silliest thing. Their whole thing is silly. But anyway, their whole thing was a big part of the episode. Basically they know that they're both pretend in love with Stramina and they want her to give them an answer. Which will it be, biiiiitch? Trouble is, Serena doesn't know how to answer!

See wha' ha' happened is that remember Vanessa? She's the egregious stinkbeast that everyone, absolutely everyone, hates and she lives in a hole in the dirt, crying and farting and eating the dirt. But then a girl, future dean of Yale Drama School Katie Cassidy, came by and made sex-friends with her so now they are an especially gruesome twosome and are trying to murder Serena. Unable to do this on their own, because cloven hooves can't properly manipulate doorknobs or cellphones, they called in the cavalry, which is just code for Taylor Momsen and her exquisite RatHead 5000™ hairstyle. Yeah, Jenny was back helping these sewer toads plan an evil adventure and it just made no sense. Yes, their scheme didn't make a lick of sense, but the basely cruel plotting behind it didn't make much sense either. Why does Jenny hate Serena this much? And why is she willing to totally throw her sea lion's penis of a brother completely under the bus about it? Didja think about that last night? Why Jenny was so willing to be so cavalier with Dan's twinkling emotions? It didn't really make any sense.

But! Whatever! I said Serena didn't know how to answer and that's because Jennifriah had stolen Serena's SIM card (is this a thing? is it for playing The Sims? I have absolutely no idea what a cellphone even is) so she and her witches two could control Serena's cellphone convos, so long as they were via textz or email. And Serena being a child of this most curdled and entitled and hideous of young generations (anyone between the ages of 18 and 23 currently reading this? ya burnt) all she ever does is text and email. (My anger at you kids is due to the fact that last night a friend of mine who works in theater publicity told me that her 19-year-old intern didn't get a Clueless reference the other day and that makes me want to stick hatpins in my eyes.) All Serena does all the time is text and email to various idiots, including Nate and Dan, so the three harpies had plenty of opportunity to mess with Serena's vagina. What they did is they told, as Serena, Dan to go one place and Nate to go there too, but told them separately, and that's where Serena would meet them for "I chose you!" moments. So of course Dan and Nate showed up to the same place and were like "I chose you..." and tenderly kissed while autumn leaves fell around them "What the hell!! What the frickin' frick!" Serena just happened to stumble upon them in all their boner-pained confusion and she was like "Mumbllllle" and they were like "We're sick of your mumbling. You decide who you want by midnight tonight or it's OVER." Ha, good thinking boys. The best kind of relationship is the one that begins with an ultimatum. Those always end well.

So that was some fool business that was going on in Serena's life thanks to those three misery sacks. But it wasn't all! There's also the matter of Columbia to attend to. Basically, America's answer to Vanessa Redgrave, Katie Cassidy, leaked a story to Page Six about Serena's sex affair with her professor, Dr. Jonas P. Dickknickers. Everyone read it and everyone was like "I thought Dr. Dickknickers was gay!" and it was just the talk of the town. How embarrassing. The Dean of Frowning at Columbia heard about it, and poor Jayne Atkinson had to do another scene with Blake Lively about it. Luckily the luminous Kelly Rutherford (I intend no sarcasm there, this lady needs her own show) was on hand to school the Dean of Being Concerned About Students' Social Lives in a little lesson about things, so put that in your poop-pipe, Columbia. Serena was impressed that her mother stood up for her at the meeting, but less impressed later. See Lily then went on to call up nü-Meryl herself, Katie Cassidy, and was like "Come the fuck over here, bitch." So Katie Cassidy did come the fuck over and Lily broke a teacup over her head and then shoved a live pigeon down her throat and was like "You wanna talk? Huh?? You wanna talk to newspapers about MY DAUGHTER? Well how you like the taste, stoolie? Huh?? How you like the FUCKIN' taste?" Katie Cassidy calmly took the pigeon out and was like "You know, I did leak the story, you are right. But! We both know, Lilly Sniterswittson, that this was not the first time Serena has lowered herself onto a teacher's pointer. NOT THE FIRST TIME AT ALL." Lily flinched and opened the locket around her neck and poured more of the delicious ether it contained into her tea. So that must be it, huh? The dude what's in jail? Kinky Cassidy's broheim? He's the teacher at boarding school that Serena made love to, right? Gross! Lily then proceeded to pay Katie Cassidy money to shut the hell up, which Katie later told Serena about, which made her sad.

Um. Let's see. The Dean of Meddling wants Serena to quit school but Serena doesn't want to quit school. Good thing for the future of the United States, deans of Ivy League universities are apparently now accepting text messages. So the girls used Serena's ghost phone (they hooked her SIM card up to their RAM capacitors and then downloaded her link files to their usenet servers, before hardwiring her PDA SEO to connect to her dashboard, for megabyte purposes) to text the Dean of Who Cares to say "Hey, Deanzy. Consider this my official FUCK A DICK. Van der Woodsen: out!" So they quit school for Serena using a cellphone! Isn't that awful? Can you believe such a thing? Let's check in with the three nasties' plan. School: done. Boys? Almost done. The three witches were going to lower the boom on that situation at a costume party that the show decided to have because it's a stupid show for idiots. The plan involved reason-why-Deb-Winger-quit-the-game-'cause-who-can-compete-with-this Katie Cassidy wearing the same dress as Stargrox to the costume dance and wearing a HORRIFYING MASK (night terrors, that thing gave me) and kissing both Natalie and Danica. ON THE MOUTH. Gosh it was just so gross for Nate and Dan but they had to pretend to be like "Ohhhh lady kisses! Sweet! I'm in boner heaven right here." It was embarrassing for everyone and then Dan and Nate found out that they'd both been kissed and they went up to the REAL Serena, who was at the party farting into the punchbowl, and they were like "Honey girl, you were given a cleeear ultimahtorium and you did NOT take it up. So you can go stick your posy where it's dark 'n rosy, mmmkay?" And then they sauntered off into the night to go make real boners for themselves, and to do things with those boners, to cherish and love each other's boners forever, to get married to the boners, to dip the boners in bronze and put them on the mantle, to grow old with the boners and die right next to them, knowing they'd lived a good, bonerfull life together.

Boys: DONE. But there was one more element to the whole plan. Blair. They wanted Blair to be upset with Strafeena for some reason, so they did a thing where Blair and Chuck are.... oh god I can't even get into it. The plot line was so immensely stupid it's not even worth talking about. Basically Blair wanted to get into a middle-aged lady club for idiots so she has to be good and Chuck has this new PR lady who was like "You have to be bad so we can book hotel rooms", so you see where they ran into a problem? In the end they figured it out somehow, who cares it's really dumb, and the lady PR girl walked up to them and was like "Since people saw you kissing, room bookings are up 500 percent! Also, I'm being sent to a home for brain damage victims!" Yeah, people saw them kissing, and it was all fake-Serena's fault. Marian Seldes's arch enemy Katie Cassidy pulled back a curtain at the costume party while Blair and Chuck were kissing, thus exposing their mouth-fucking to the rest of the hedonists at the costume gala and it was........... Oh, brother. I have no idea. Honestly. The Blair/Chuck thing? I'M OVER IT. So what? Who cayuhs? I'm very Joy Behar about the whole thing.

Serena's dead, basically. The boys are off exploring each other's boners. The Dean of Nosiness got a sext saying that Serena was quitting Columbia, so of course it's official. Blair thinks Serena did bitchy things to her. OH AND. Haha. This is the best part. Serena actually IS DEAD. The coup de grâce of Katie Cassidy's whole plan was that she put chloroform in Serena's costume mask so that when Serena put it on, she fell into a deep, deathly sleep. Then Katie got her in a cab and drove her out to Hobo Alley and then left her for dead. Actual thing that happened. Katie Cassidy chloroformed Serena and then kidnapped her, essentially. Good character. Well done, everyone. So it was really funny to see that happen, with Serena all "Uhhuuhhuhhhhhh" in the back of the cab.

And it was really funny to see Erik all upset about Serena! I don't really remember why he was mad at her himself, but he talked to his momz and his momz was all "She quit school, fucked every teacher that walked, got drunk at the costume jig, and now she's blowing a hobo on Drifter Lane. It's just like your sister." Erik nodded his peachfuzz head and said "Yup. Just like her." Then he went upstairs and there was his newly long-haired boytrick, the one from the Assassins episode last season. Remember him? Horsey mane of hair, face full of bones, round pond eyes. I like to think his name is Gideon, that he plays polo on long swaths of impossibly green grass in secret corners of Long Island, that he takes Erik's cheek in his big hand and kisses Erik's forehead and whispers into the skin "It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right." And even though nothing is particularly troubling Erik at the moment — who cares about Serena, she always lands on her feet — it's still nice to hear. It's going to be all right. And then Erik meets Gideon's mouth with his and they lean into oblivion together, like Nate and Dan across the river, like Vanessa and her dreadful harpies two (though, Jenny and Vanessa did not know about the whole murderous chloroform thing), like Lily and Rufus in their weeping, rumply sexual embrace.

And at the end — when Gideon is lying panting and smiling, Erik smoking his Gauloise, a thin trickle of dawn light seeping in through the window — the whole city will feel safe from scheming. How open and bare and naked and exposed it is! How truthful we all are like this! Lying in heaps, tangled of limb, hair a fright. Eyes wide open. Mistaking the ceiling, perhaps, just then, for a tiny piece of pearly, popcorn heaven.