Gossip Girl: How to Succeed in Bassness

It is Halloween on the Upper East Side and a cauldron of trouble is starting to brew.  Rufus is the one most intent on celebrating Halloween, carving pumpkins to look like the members of Kiss and planning on dressing the family as the Ramones.  Lilly on the other hand is more preoccupied with Jenny’s closet, in one of the strangest scenes of the season.  Lilly asks Jenny to get ride of old clothes asking if some even fit her anymore, I REALLY don’t know what to make of this scene, perhaps they’re implying Lilly is trying to turn Jenny into her mini-mi since she failed at getting Serena to follow in her footsteps. 
 
Unfortunately, Jenny has problems of her own ruling over court at the Met steps.  I’m enjoying that Jenny finally has legit plots of her own again, after the fashion fiasco last year she didn’t really do anything for the back half of the season.  Now that Little J is the Queen Bee she has got to defend her turf, and that means getting frozen yogurt dumped all over Eric when he dares to sit above her on the steps.  This was one of those difficult fights where you don’t know who to side with; I think I’m on team Jenny though because she explained to Eric that she didn’t want to enforce the rules but had to for the greater good.  He really did just sit up there to taunt her, and really when you’re that rich who cares if one bad outfit is ruined by fro-yo.  The two didn’t really do much in the rest of the episode, but by the end Eric has now disavowed his friendship with Jenny completely. 
 
The hotel Chuck bought has already opened and not doing well, Chuck thinks a big prohibition themed party for the club opening will be just the trick to bring in business.  Conveniently Serena became a publicist last week so he seeks her help and makes a point of asking her not to tell Blair.  The backstabbing and double crossing on this plot got too complicated, and I think even the writers got lost in what happens.  Serena decided to plan the event without telling her boss, who finds out but is cool with it if the party will get Olivia and fake Robert Pattison back together.  Blair tries to find the sneakiest way possible to stick her nose into Chuck’s business, and when she learns the club is still awaiting a liquor license she calls Chuck’s evil uncle Jack for help.
 
Dan Humphrey is fretting about the fact that his girlfriend stared in the Gossip Girl world’s version of Twilight with her ex-boyfriend.  I enjoy the Nate and Dan friendship, I don’t know why but the two just seem to have a hilarious chemistry and play well off one another.  Nate gives Dan the DVD’s of Olivia’s movies so they can check out the love scenes, which are rumored to be more of an actual sex tape than acting.  And of course, thanks to Serena the ex-boyfriend in question is now going to Chuck’s party as Olivia’s date.
 
As is the case in most Gossip Girl episodes, for the final act all the characters are assembled at a party.  Of course the liquor license from Jack turns out to be falsified, and the party gets busted, though they sort of implied that was Chuck’s plan all along so why they had to involve Jack at all doesn’t really make sense (hence my saying that plot makes no sense).  Olivia and Dan got caught making out and Olivia’s ex is left dateless, so Serena swoops in and lays a big kiss on him thus changing her job from PR girl to escort for the PR service.  The ending felt dramatic, but retrospectively I can’t really tell why because nothing really happened and status quo was pretty much maintained.  I liked this episode while I was watching it, but in the end it was pretty uneventful, other than the Eric and Jenny battle.  And also, was Vanessa even in this episode?  I honestly don’t remember.