Ian and Moe were on Gossip Girl last night! Well, their names were at least. As the camera panned over Blair's carefully planned seating chart for her mother's Fashion Weeks show, there—among other New York notable types (Tory Burch! Anna Wintour! Adam Moss! Leanne Marshall from Project Runway!)—were Moe Tkacik and Ian Spiegelman, two of my very own esteemed Gawker colleagues. I'm so jealous that they got invited to a teen soap's imaginary fashion show. It's also just really fun when GG acknowledges the media that is so often acknowledging GG and the circle game continues in its weird, delightful, though admittedly incestuous way. Maybe next year I'll get to go! The clip featuring the seating chart is above, if you care to try to pause and find other names. Vanity Fair has a nice close-up, too. Read on for more recap. It's tough to know where to start on such an overstuffed (in a good way, I think) episode, so I suppose we might as well start with the grownups. Lily and Bart love each other in a brittle, Connecticut way that involves jewelry and expensive art collections that one buys to impress the other—almost like a roommate would, freshman year of college, with like Sublime and Scarface posters or something (old person!) Anyway, in the end Lily found out that an old nude photograph she'd taken, a Mapplethorpe, had been confiscated by the circle-the-wagons Bart. She was upset, until he showed her the entire dossier he had on his Nordic bride. One envelope in particular, whose contents are still a secret to us, seemed to shut Lily right up. Meanwhile her daughter Miss Serena was budding into a young socialite, traipsing about town with something hilariously called Poppy Lipton. She continued to (inadvertently) woo away former queen bee Blair's bitchy posse of friends, wowing them with paparazzi photos in which she did some awkward pose that looked like enormous strawberry face minus the enormous strawberry. All of this made Blair upset, especially when Serena was invited to sit front row, with her gaggle of vague "socialites," at Blair's mom's little fashion show. Shrieeeeekkkkk!! They were supposed to watch backstage together, it's their most cherished tradition. But times change, young Blair. Time and people and places zoom away from us faster and faster as we get older, and no amount of screaming and double crossing can stop the terrible march. But it doesn't hurt to try! Yes indeed Blair was in full scheme mode, pulling an innumerable amount of stunts at her mother's show's expense. She fucked with the seating, she chased away the models, and she switched out the final dress—worn poutingly by, of course, van der Woodsen. Oh, and that green Lisa Turtle cocktail party frock? Designed by Jenny. Wicked, bobble headed Jenny, who has insinuated herself into the Waldorf fashion world faster than you can say "child labor laws." The only, heh heh heh, problem is that she hasn't been going to school and Pa Humphrey is mad mad mad (because he pays a bamillion dollars for the silly school, because he is an idiot, or maybe the kids aren't all that bright, I mean, they couldn't go to Stuyvesant or any of the other good New York City public high schools? I mean, I know, the public school system is nowhere near perfect, and some high schools are probably not in great shape, but c'mon). He set up a meeting with Headmistress McCarnadoogle or whatever and Jenny told the old battle axe that she was fleeing academia with no intention of returning.

Her brother, meanwhile, was being mentored by Noah Shapiro, the editor of the Paris Review. He grizzled and growled stories about real writing, and encouraged Dan—a 17-year-old boy, still beholden to his parents, by law—to go and do something dangerous. Have someone shoot at your head! Drink something! Take something! Zanily insert your penis into something! And who better to provide such opportunities than old Chuckles Bass (Charlie Trout, in Dan's story)? So yeah, the two boys went gallivanting around town drinking whiskey and eventually getting arrested for punching some dude out. In the jail cell Charlie Trout revealed a terrible, sad secret: his mum died while giving birth to him, which makes his dad, Bart, despise him. It was a true and bitter moment for Charles Catfish, and Dan seemed upset for him and maybe, just maybe, he seemed to be feeling those first tugging pangs, that strange chipmunky flutter, of love. Just maybe! (Chaz Sturgeon did ask him earlier if he was gay, after all.) But then Tuna Steak found out that Dan had been writing about him and so he angrily left him to rot in jail. Noah Shapiro to the rescue! Sort of! Dan parted ways with the crusty old mentor and set off to not write a story about Ma Flounder's untimely demise. Lessons about writing and integrity sort of learned in a pat kind of way. (Oh, and look. If you were missing Chace Crawford this episode, he and the other two gents are on the cover of Details this month, talking about their fleeting fame). Um, yeah. There were also tons and tons and tons of bitchy references—to things like Kirsten Dunst's rehab stint, to Tinsley Mortimer (who made an all too brief cameo along with Michael Kors!), to Marc Jacobs' drug problems (cruel!), and all other manner of zingy little one liners that began, I must admit, to feel a little exhausting last night. It's just tooooo muuuchhh. I like a little winky winky sly reference here and there, but dag. They laid it on pretty thick last night. Though, what's important is that in the end Serena told Blair to grow a pair and stop being so damn insecure, Jenny enraged her father, and Dan made sweet, tender love to Chuck while the music swelled and two halves became whole. OK, that last part didn't actually happen but it would have been really funny because Dan is maybe the most tiringly earnest character on the show and Chuck is the most ridiculously devious so to see their union would be like watching Jimmy Carter get it on with George Bush. Or something. Next week it looks like we finally get our Blair/Serena catfight, in the midst of some disastrous college visits. If you look closely at that photo, you can see a desperate Blair, clinging to her old friend, her eyes shut tight against the world, wishing beyond wishing that everything could stay the same. But it can't, dear. It can't. But it's still a fight worth fighting, Blair. A fight called Life.