Last night's episode of Upstairs, Upstairs was all about comic and dramatic misunderstandings, about canards and ruses, trickery and tomfoolery. Typical episode!

This far into the season, the whole Dan/Blair (Dir) thing has not progressed to the point I'd like it to have progressed. Are you all with me? Not that I really spend any time thinking about Gossip Girl when I'm not watching it or writing about it, but in those times, namely last night and right now, I think I would like Dan and Blair to be doing a little more smooshing, at least face smooshing, than they are right now. Right now they are hardly doing any!

Me: Dan, have you been doing any face smooshing with Blair?

Dan: [looking down at crotch] Hardly.

Get it? Haha, double meanings. But yes, my point is that the Dan/Blair love affair (that rhymes!) has been moving at a snail's pace. And now there's a whole new obstacle in its way! "A diversion." - Legolas/me.

Yeah remember last week at the end of the episode, Prince Garibaldi or whoever he is showed up with a shoe for Blair and now they are courting? Well, it was a Prince-heavy episode last night, perhaps deliberately timed to tap into the whole royal wedding hysteria that is not really sweeping the nation much at all. The Prince still really likes Blair, even though they haven't spoken in eight months and kinda fought the last time they saw each other, so he's come to New York to get a piece of sweet, sweet American pie. Blair is thrilled! Finally her dreams of becoming vaguely accented European royalty will be realized and nothing can stand in her way. Well, no, of course that's not true. Everything can and will stand in her way, because this is Gossip Girl!

The main problem is that the Prince's parents, the King and Queen von Fancycountry, have discovered that he's gone on a sex tourism trip to the New World and they are not happy about it. So they've dispatched their best assassin to track him down and bring him home. They've also devised a nefarious, tricky little plan that involves... Dan Humphrey!

Yes, you might remember that Dan likes to scribble nonsense on pieces of paper and call himself a writer, so he is always on the hunt for writing jobs. And last night he found one! Someone from Paris Match had seen Dan's big W magazine blog, because of course everyone in France is reading the W magazine blog written by interns, so they asked him to help out with some additional reporting for a story about Prince Garibaldi. Dan was so excited! Except, he felt a little sleazy. Basically his job was going to be to follow the Prince around secretly and report on his whereabouts. I mean, Dan is no stranger to following dark, handsome men around New York while desperately fiddling with a pencil-shaped object, but for some reason this particular task seemed unseemly. But he did it anyway, because it was his job. His big job for Paris Match. It is for Paris Match, right??? Hmmm....

Meanwhile, in glimmer palace uptown, Serena is worried about Dan. She's worried about Dan and Blair. Y'see, last week the Vanessa cavewoman called her up and said "Oooga booga Dan Blair kiss oooga." Serena was incensed. Not necessarily that Blair and Dan had locked lips, but that they had lied to her about their secret relationship. Serena does not take being lied to lying down! Or something! So she devised a plan. Her plan was to enslave her cousin Charlie, a girl, and send her running around town following Dan. So Dan was following the Prince who was hanging out with Blair while Charlie was following Dan. They were all following each other into a spiraling point of infinity into which the whole world will eventually disappear. Very exhausting stuff!

The gist is that the Prince told Blair that he didn't want to be spotted by anyone, so doing the usual fancy princely things was out of the question. So Blair decided to take him to regular commoner places, one such place being Veselka. Meaning Dan followed the prince to Veselka and walked in after him, meaning Charlie saw Dan walk in (not having seen the Prince) and then saw Blair arrive, so she naturally assumed that Blair was meeting Dan. Inside the restaurant, Dan saw Blair meet the Prince and was like "Whaaa" and then Charlie called Serena and was like "Dan and Blair are fucking on top of a huge pile of pierogies right now so you should come and watch and scream at them." So Serena rode her enormous trumpet swan down to the East Village and crashed through the glass of Veselka and screamed "Liars! Fornicators! Show yourselves!" Blair was like "S, the fuck you doing?" and then the Prince turned around and Serena saw that he was the Prince, not Dan, so she was embarrassed. "Ohhh..." she mumbled, Serenaly. How silly of her. Never mind! Carry on! Nothing to see here. Serena told Charlie that the case was closed and to let it go, but Charlie did not want to let it go. She still thought Dan and Blair were up to something. And of course they were.

See it turns out that the Prince's parents found out about Blair, and they are not happy. They don't want their precious dimple-cheeked son marrying some American street walker, so they're going to make him come home. But if the Prince goes back to Europe, how will Blair get a glimpse of his glorious scepter? Blair needs him to stay, so she needs to convince his parents that they're not smooshing. And what better way to convince anyone of that than for Blair to be caught kissing Dan? Hm. OK. I don't.... Fine. Whatever. At some point Dan had found out that he wasn't really hired by Paris Match, that it was actually the Prince's family (or something?) trying to keep tabs on him, so he quit the job and swore himself to the Prince's cause. So Blair told him that they'd have to be caught kissing by the royal vizier who had flown out to collect the Prince. Yeah. It was stupid even for this show.

The kissing would have to happen at the big Pink Party that Lily was having at her house. Now normally when Lily has a "pink party" at her house it involves several bottles of wine, stirrups, and lots of pre-party stretching and breathing exercises, but, much to Rufus's dismay, this was not one of those pink parties. This was a formal Pink Party for breast cancer research. Lily was very excited to have the party at her home, because she is now on ankle-bracelet house arrest for a few months after she completely ruined that guy's life. Boo! Lily is upset about this, but what can you do? At least she can do some socializing! Well, actually, no she can't. Nate's bitchy ice-mom came by to say sorry Lils, but the Pink Party has moved to another location because you're a shitty criminal who everyone hates now. Oh well. So Lily began the seppuku process, so ashamed was she to be a social pariah. Luckily Rufus and Erik intervened and said "No, no, Lily. Put down the ceremonial dagger and listen to us. We'll get the party back on track. Don't you worry." So the two of them skipped off into the city to see what they could do. And somehow they did it! Somehow they convinced all those frigid white bitches to agree to come to Lily's house, so the party was back on. No one knows how Rufus and Erik pulled it off, but boy were their jaws tired.

So everyone dolled themselves up in pink and headed over to van der Woodsen manor and the party began. All the society ladies were hissing mean things about Lily, which made her sad and she poured a little more ether into her champagne. Dan was talking to Charlie and they were having a nice jokey conversation until Blair stomped up and dragged Dan away, making Charlie suspicious. So she followed them with her camera phone and took a long, lingering video of their staged kiss. Meanwhile the weird vizier guy saw them kiss and nodded his head contentedly. Is that what royal advisers do? Just walk around parties watching college students kiss and accept it is gospel proof of something? I really hope that's what royal advisers are doing, checking off various kisses on their little clipboards. So the plan half worked! They convinced the royal attendant that nothing was happening between the Prince and Blair, but unfortunately Charlie ran to Serena and was like "Look, look, they're smooooching!" Serena got really upset and told the Prince that he'd been played, that Dan and Blair had been secretly hanging out for ages, and the Prince was like "I'm sorry, what the fuck are you talking about? I just got here from Europe this morning. I'm tired and am looking for my date. What are you even talking about? What are any of you ever talking about? Why do you live your lives like they're all ruled by some imaginary set of social strictures that in no way actually exists? You people are so exhausting to be around. Just go away. Just go the fuck away and calm down." Well, that's what I wished he said. Instead he just blinked his eyes and said "...Europe..?" Strong words from a strong prince.

Serena and Blair fought and Blair was all "You always want to be the center of attention, you're such a mean bitch," and Serena was like "Whatever, I'm done with you and Dan," even though Dan and Blair kept insisting that they're just friends. Oh well, sigh. Blair ran after the Prince and Serena, strangely, called up the Prince's driver, who she met in Paris, and that made little to no sense. Then Lily decided to clear the party by leaving the apartment and thus alerting the police, and that was dumb. She and Rufus then decided they'd just be weird homebodies for the next several months and that was that.

Dan went back to the loft and then there was a knock knock on the door and there was Charlie! She was apologizing for taking the video or something so Dan told her to come in. They had a sorta flirty conversation about various things and Dan admitted that he kind of has a serious boner for Blair and Charlie nodded and smiled and obviously she's going to become obsessed with him and everything will go crazy. She also told Dan that Vanessa was the one to initially tip off Serena, and that pissed Dan off because he'd been trying to reconcile with Vanessa. As if summoned by magic, Vanessa then appeared at the loft door and Dan was like "We both like pierogies and my dad has a crush on you, but we're not friends. Sorry." Oooh, burn. The old pierogi brush-off. Harsh words from a harsh Dan.

Then the episode was basically over? Oh god, there's a whole nonsense plotline with Raina and her mom, who Chuck's dad burnt down many years ago, and Nate is helping to investigate the mystery and good lord could anyone care any less? Is there any way in the world a single person could care any less about this epically boring subplot? I really don't think there is. I think it's about as boring as it could possibly be. The most interesting thing about it is how unbelievably boring it is.

So that's that. Blair still has a chance with the Prince, she hopes. Serena is mad at everyone because she feels ignored, so she's calling up her old European chauffeur friend. Lily and Rufus are having a private pink party, the real kind of pink party, in their bedroom. Vanessa is drawing sad pictographs on the walls of her cave, leaving record of herself, proving to future scientists that she does, in fact, exist. Chuck and Nate and Raina are all going "ZzzZZzzzzz" because even they are so bored. Dan and Charlie are about to hump themselves into another dimension, because what the hell. Dan has always liked fucking people named Charlie. It's just a thing Dan likes.

And Erik, of course lonely Erik, he's back at Lily's glass mansion, cleaning up all the Pink Party rubble. Champagne flutes and confetti, napkins and paper plates, bottles and cigarettes. All the artifacts everyone left behind when they fixed their hungry eyes on the horizon and set off into the night.