Gossip Girl

Keep your friends close and your friends who secretly hate you and want to destroy your every chance at happiness even closer. No, you know what? Maybe you should get away from those guys. This week in Gossip Girl’s “The Princesses and the Frog” Nate (Chace Crawford) friend-dumps Chuck (Ed Westwick), Serena (Blake Lively) tries to undermine Blair (Leighton Meester), and sweet little Charlie (Kaylee DeFer) sharpens her claws on Vanessa (Jessica Szohr).

Blair’s fairytale is threatened by an unexpected wicked witch: Serena. S pretends to make nice with Queen B after their fight last week, but secretly she’s still seething — seething with concern for Blair’s emotional well-being, of course. Not with jealousy. Whether her motives are pure or sullied, the fact remains that she totally stabs Blair in the back. S calls Louis’s parents to tell them he’s slumming with a colonial, and next thing you know, Blair’s facing down a disapproving maman who also happens to be a princess. Louis’s mom is so aghast at her survey of Blair’s scandalous past (helpfully curated by Serena) that she ships in 10 princesses and demands Louis marry one of them immediately.

That’s the news from fairyland. Meanwhile, over in Mordor (Chuck’s twisted lair of sadness), tensions are rising. Raina (Tika Sumpter) wants to find her mom, Nate’s torn between his loyalty to Chuck and his desire to tell Raina that Bart Bass probably killed her, and Chuck drinks and drinks and glares and drinks. It gets worse when Chuck’s private investigator brings him a note suggesting Bart and Avery Thorpe were having an affair — an affair she broke off just before her fiery demise. Watch Chuck’s chest frame by frame and you’ll actually see his heart break. (Many of you probably watch Chuck’s chest frame by frame anyway.)

While everyone else struggles with love and death, the Humphreys try to deal with dinner. And they fail miserably. Dan (Penn Badgley) and Charlie have been hanging out a lot, and Charlie’s crushing hard on him, but Dan’s learned his lesson about dating his step-relatives and he’s not feeling it. However, Charlie’s got an ace up her sleeve: Vanessa, who’s blowing town to study abroad and wants to... get Dan a girlfriend she’s never met from a family she hates? That part doesn’t make much sense, but whatever.

Rufus (Matthew Settle) is throwing a dinner party at the loft for a band whose record he wants to produce, and Charlie volunteers to cook. Instead, she throws an Upper East Side style catered shindig — not exactly the vibe to land an indie band. Everyone knows indie bands hate delicious food. Rufus manages to save his music deal, but a humiliated Charlie tells Dan that Vanessa sabotaged her with bad advice. But, wait: Twist! Turns out Vanessa gave her solid advice, but Charlie decided to make V out to be the villain so Dan would come to the rescue of a damsel in distress. Aww, baby’s first Upper East Side Machiavellian power play. She took to it like a duck to water. A scary, scary duck.

A drunken Chuck bursts into Blair’s royal soiree, slurring a sloppy confession of love and trying to shove an engagement ring on her. Here’s a hint to the lovestruck suitor: Don’t propose when you’re so drunk you keep missing her finger. Blair, aghast, kicks him out and flees the scene, but Louis follows her, confesses his love, and, though it may cost him the throne, proposes.

Blair comes to see Chuck, and Chuck initially thinks she’s come to be his boo again. When she explains that she’s going to marry Louis, he gets scary, exposing his long-dormant violent side. Blair manages to fend him off, leaving with a cut on her cheek. The sight is enough to convince Nate to abandon Chuck and side with Raina — but Raina’s falling to the dark side herself. Last we see her, she’s on the phone with Jack Bass (Desmond Harrington). Ruh roh! Chuck’s fresh out of allies to help him fend off Jack this time.

And boy does Jack appear to have a purely evil agenda:

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