Au Revoir, Paris! Bonjour, Stinktown. Last night was the last of our two faaaabulous Paris-set episodes, in which we saw Blair and Charlene Bass reunited, among other dramatic things.

As famous Parisian Truman Capote used to say, "Paris is the city of amore." And he would know, living as he did in a small pension along the Danube, the towering minarets of the Hagia Sophia standing distant but proud in the window. Paris truly is the city of love, a place where you can meet a prince — a real life prince! — and even he is not the love of your life.

Do you remember from long ago last week that Blair had met a dark prince named Garibaldi, a strange and mysterious man from out of the East who she totally screwed things up with? Well, never mind all that, because whatever, she didn't actually screw things up. At the top of the episode she announced to Serena, who was wearing her Vulcan 9000™ shimmering v-jacket, that Prince Garibaldi had decided to give her another chance, all she had to do was put a drop of her blood in a vile that he will now wear around his neck "forever." That's all! No big deal. Blair was so excited. "I'm going to show him that I can be like poor people!" And you know how poor people are, always going to see street drummers and eating (or not eating) kebabs as they stroll across lovely bridges. (This one being Paris's famous Ponte Vecchio.) She was very excited for her sexy poverty date. So she waved goodbye to The Starleena, who was sitting there in her StarSuit waiting for her mission, and trotted off. As Serena watched her go (she loved to watch her leave) she got a trans-comm on her tricorder. It was her Earth Mom.

"Holy fuck, Serena. Your step-brother is dead. He shit the biscuit in some river, so you gotta go look at the corpse and poke at it with sticks, OK?" Lily is always so foul-mouthed. Serena gulped, watching newly happy Blair bounce off. Could she tell her that Chuck was eaten by river fishes? No, she could not. "OK Mom," she said. "I'll go look at the cadaver and if I'm sure it's him, I'll saw off the head and throw it Blair's feet. But only if I'm sure it's him." "Sounds good," Lily croaked. "Hey and while you're in Fancy Land, pick me up a carton of those good smokes I like. Mama's out and she is fiending."

So Serena was saddled with a terrible task. At least she was wearing very appropriate body-identifying clothes. She went over to the Rue Morgue, a dilapidated old stone building infested with bats and French hobos, and was greeted by an ancient, crooked old mortician. "Ah ouis, star child. Come, I shall show you the dessicated carcass." He led her into a dark, dank room with one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and took his gnarled old hand and slowly pulled back the sheet...

But of course we cut to the real Chuck, tossing around in bed with Fleur Delacour, his new French girlfriend. It was to be the first day of the rest of his life, the rest of his life as a be-vested French waiter. He was so excited! Fleur was begging for more sex and more wine, her hair a mess, wooden leg not attached and propped up against the nightstand. "Mon cher, why don't you want to make ze love all day avec moi," she said through a hacking cough. Chuck was tempted, but no. He could not be late for the first day of the rest of his life. So he knocked Fleur out with her own wooden leg and hobbled off with his cane in his floppy Van Gogh outfit and headed toward work. It was a beautiful day on the French peninsula, thin cypress clouds in the sky, a warm dollop of yolky sun shining on his face. Chuck was feeling like a new man, like Henry Prince, with a nice French girl back at the garret, waiting to make him coq au vain at a moment's notice. He was feeling terrific. Until he heard the nasal sound of someone whine-complaining and he turned around, his vest billowing in the wind, and there she was. Blairwonka, sitting in un taxicab, barking orders at her driver in mangled Creole. His cover was blown. "Mon dieu!" he cried, his thatched hat flipping off his head, his cane cracking.

Blair heard the noise and turned. And there he was. The young man she'd loved once, the innkeeper's son who had gone off to war and disappeared in the trenches. The two stared at each other, awash in all sorts of emotions — sadness, anger, regret, fear, a vague need to pee — and then Blair broke the moment, she commanded the driver to Mush! Mush! and off they sped, leaving Chuck to hobble and wobble there on the corner of Rue du Sadness and Avenue des Miserables. What was going to happen?

Well naturally Chuck knew he had to flee town ASAP, and he wanted to take Fleur with him. So he hired a young French boy to carry him home and he burst into the garret and said "Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Fleur! Deviamo andare!" She came stumbling out of the bathroom, her ratty wig askew, a hand-rolled cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth. Chuck kissed her and she tasted of hard boiled eggs and old aubergine. "D'accord, but we don't have ze francs." "I'll handle that," Chuck murmured, knowing he would just dip into his old Chuck Bass money. Then suddenly there was a rap at the door. Who could it be? "Beep blorp, beeeep beeeeeep, " they heard from behind the door. And Chuck knew it was her, that it was Serena in her spacesuit, come to collect him. "Bleek glark goop!!!" Serena yelled when Chuck opened the door. "Oorkz," she said, flipping a switch on her suit. "Forgot to turn on the audio translator. Anyway. CHUCK!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING???" The coroner had shown her someone else's dessicated remains so she knew he wasn't dead, and while showing a picture of him all over a tiny city like Paris, of course she ran into the restaurant where Chuck works, because there aren't many restaurants in Paris, and then she found him. But when she got there and started sputtering at him, Chuck promptly slammed the door in her face. Yay! Don't you wish sometimes that this whole show could just be an hour of these kids getting doors slammed in their faces? "Hey it's Nate." Slam. "I'm Vanessa." Slam. "Jenny." SLAM FOREVER. It would be so satisfying.

But for now we have to watch the regular show. And in the regular show, Chuck came downstairs and Serena was waiting by the door and he was all "I knew you wouldn't leave" and she said "Chuck you have to live again! You're going to lose the Empire!" And you just knew that the writers were yet again pleased that the hotel was named Empire so they can use it like a double entendre to sound all serious and junk-garbage. SLAM. Chuck didn't care, though. He never wants to go back to New York or Chuck Bass or anything old again because he is so sick of being on this show still very brokenhearted about Blairney, his one true love. "Chuckkk," Serena said in her mush-mouth way. But he would not listen. Later Chuck sent her the deeds to the Empire (get it?) and Serena knew she had to talk to Blinky.

Of course in the meanwhile, Blinksy was about to go on another date with Prince Garibaldi. He had been suitably impressed by her attempts at looking like a poor peasant, so he laughed it off and said "Come!! I will take you on a long carriage ride to a ball at my castle. It will be a long journey through darkest woods and you will be beset by wolves and perhaps several succubi will attack and murder your coach driver, but once you are there, IF you are there, you will reign for all eternity as my beautifully damned black queen." This is an offer no girl would refuse, so of course she got into the carriage and was whisked off, pre-castle journey, to Harry Winston, a fruity old gay man who accidentally discovered a diamond mine while looking for quaaludes in the Congo and now he just lives in a house made of diamonds and often throws great handfuls of them up into the air and yells "Diiiiaaamonddssssss!!!!!" So Bleighton went to his house and he threw diamonds at her and she was so happy, but then suddenly a beautiful engagement ring was brought out and Blair was admiring it and Serena and Robert Langston came running in. "Sacre shit!" everyone yelled. "Serena what are you doing here?" "We didn't know you were here. That's Chiggles' ring. He was going to give it to you the night you shot him or whatever happened last season that no one cares about or remembers." "Oh, yeah, that..." Blair mumble-murmured. "Chuck is going to disappear forever and soon he'll be dead of syphilis. Have you seen that old French woman he's been palling around with? Napoleon wrote about her in his Elba diaries! He can't just go live with her forever." Blair shook her head. "No. Prince. Garibaldi. Black queen," she stammered. Her mind was made up. "Black Queen???" Serena spluttered. "This is no time to be talking about Nate's magazine subscriptions. You need to go help Chuck!"

Blair ran outside in her orange poof dress and there was Garibaldi, waiting to take her to the Hades of Eastern Europe and there was Serena's birthmark pulsing knowingly under the Parisian Tuscan sun. "Ohhhhhhh FART KNOCKERS" Blair yelled. She was going to go rescue Chuck. The Prince did one of those bibble-bibble-bibble lip/finger noise things and watched her go, Serena moon-zapping after her in her Space-Traxx™ Nighttime Flightsuit. When they got to the station, Blair ran in, right past Fleur de la Snore. But then Serena came running out of the same cab and Fleur recognized her from the garret the day before and she was all "Merde. What's going on? Who is she?" So Serena handed her Seasons 1-3 on DVD and Fleur said "These won't play on a French DVD player" but it was too late, Serena was gone. And then, all of a sudden, we saw Chuck in his Giverny getup and Blair was approaching him in her sno-cone and they locked eyes and it was if a million sad galaxies suddenly sprung into being. "Chaggles..." she murmured. "Blistix..." he gulped. "You can't leave, Chingies!" Blair said sternly. "But I have to, Blimpmocks," he whispered. "No you don't. You have to live! You have to carry on with living and life and being alive. Changing your name — a rose by any other name would still smell like Welsh cologne and ham grease, like you do. Do you see my point? Do you see it?" And Chuck did see it. He saw her point in all its beautiful fluffy orange glory. "Where'd you get the necklace?" he asked with a soft kind of flirtation. "Oh, you know, it was a gift," Blair said, touching the Harry Winston she'd just run out of the damn store with. "It looks good on you," Chuck said. "But you look better in pearl."

So that's basically that. Chuck is going to come back to New York (Duhhh) and Blair will not be wed in a mystical ceremony to Prince Garibaldi. I think probably he and the old French slattern Fleur will eventually get together, once Chuck dumps her in NYC, and the minute she is officially married to Garibaldi, he will lift her black veil and she will be beautiful and pale, porcelain with shining ruby lips and thick, glossy black hair. They will reign for hundreds of years, never growing older, staying beautiful, sometimes laughing to each other on lazy wintry afternoons about those two kids they once loved in Paris, how they are long dead now, how that old world has long ago crumpled up and disappeared.

Speaking of things crumpling up and disappearing, let's go back to a whole stupid storyline about New York and Nate and Dan and the most exciting actress since Nancy Travis, Katie Cassidy. Watching Katie Cassidy work is like watching a young Kim Delaney. She's truly riveting on screen, holding the frame with the utter blankness of a female Chad Michael Murray. So it's really exciting that she has such an able sparring partner in Chance Cranford, truly one of America's finest hair actors. There's this whole story where she is trying to be his "life coach" and he is so dumb that all he can do is alternately suck his thumb and play with himself so he just goes along with it. She is trying to get him with with Sarlaac, when she is back from Paris. This involves keeping Dan away, because Serena is trying to make a decision between Dan and Nate or something stupid like that that started last season. So Katie Cassidy is like "Hey let's get Dan with Vanessa so he's out of the picture!"

Katie and Chacey go to Dan's house and he and Dan share a tender, boner-filled hug and then Dan says "Who's this?" really politely, while pointing sorta at Katie Cassidy. "Oh, this is my new friend, a girl," Nate says. "Awesome," goes Dan, and just tosses the baby into her arms. You know, sure. Just met this girl, might as well go let this stranger carry your maybe-baby into the backroom and change it and touch its genitals and stuff while you make soup-eyes at Chace Crawford. Good parenting, Daniel. So anyway, all of this garbled highjinx ensues with Vanessa coming over and she and Katie Cassidy become best friends really quickly. (I mean, it makes sense. Jessica Szohr is another extremely compelling actress.) Everyone's blissful and happy and then Dan goes off to nap on the couch and Katie is all "Hey, Dan told us he likes you, V!!!" Nate isn't sure he likes this, because it is a lie, but again: sucking his thumb and playing with himself. That's about all he's capable of. So he nods at Vanessa and says "Yes. That is true thing. Dan like. Vanessa." Good lying, Nate!

All of this is very, very complicated but the important thing to know is that Katie and Chace go off to teach classes at Julliard and Vanessa stays back (she's on sabbatical) and wakes Dan up with champagne and snacks and he's all "Oh fuck it, let's make sex" and they do and then V is like "I'm so glad that Nate told me you liked me" and Dan's face goes "Hunhhhh??????" He never told Nate that! He would never tell Nate that...

LIES! Basically they all come out in the end and everyone's awkward but Dan decides that he does want to smush with Vanessa some more and Nate kind of likes Cassidy. So Dan and Nate have a manly beer in their manly clothes on the manly Brooklyn roof and before they know it they are tenderly holding hands and staring off at the fuchsia sun setting behind the buildings of Manhattan and Dan is giving Nate's hand a little squeeze and maybe old dogs can learn new tricks.

Of course Serena comes back all ready to pick one of them, but then she sees this whole domestic scene played out and she's upset, especially about the baby. Oh yeah, there was a moment where Nate told Dan that Serena is going to Columbia because he read it on Gossips Girl and Dan was like "Huh, I just wonder why she wouldn't tell me." And then later in the episode it was like, Oh, right, sorry Serena, I have a son. Nice work, Dan! "Why wouldn't Serena tell me about this regular college decision. It's so confusing. Oh well. I'm certainly not going to tell her about this baby I just got, because that's not a big deal." Poor Serena is now all alone because her menfolk have coupled off and dunh dunh dunhhhh, it looks like that was what Katie Cassidy wanted all along. We saw her taking things off her Bulletin Board of Stalking and talking on the phone saying "I did it, it's done. I miss you too" and all that was left on the BBoS was a picture of Serena. So it's Serena she's after! But for what? For who? Billy Baldwin? Carter Baizen? Jack Bass for some stupid reason? No, I bet you it's America Ferrara, who finally realized while away at theater camp that she loves Serena and needs her to be single.

Elsewhere in the episode Rufus Humphrey, amateur hematologist, went to his creepy old lab and did some important experiments on the Danbaby and found out about a rare bloodtype and so it's very likely the baby is not Dan's. Again, shocking. I can't wait to see the spinoff: Ru Humphrey's Bloodwork, a new crime procedural premiering Sunday on the PAX network.

And also at the end of the episode Erik did a long grand jeté across the screen, that setting sun a burning red bindi behind him, and suddenly both Nate and Dan felt a ripple in their loins, and so did Erik, and as he soared through the sky he turned to the camera and he said something soft that we couldn't hear and then there was a loud crashing of organ pipes and Prince Garibaldi appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Erik! Pulled him into the darkness! He laughed and said "He is mine...." and then ran into the shadows and everything was quiet except the ticking like grandfather clocks of Nate and Dan's hearts, echoing through all the sad empty lofts of Brooklyn. Next week, everyone goes back to college.

SLAM.