Serena's new boyfriend Gabriel pulled a classic grift (what con artists call the Internet in Africa Oopsie Daisy) and got all of the money. If only Serena had listened to Chuck and Blair's creepy and vague suggestions that something just wasn't right about him. Now she has to figure out how to get everyone's money back before they find out that they got DUP'D. Obviously. A classic teenage dilemma. "I hope mom doesn't find out about the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar swindle that I helped lure them all into. Maybe I'll just light some incense. That ought to cover it." Naturally, Serena calls Gabriel and tells him that she thinks she's pregnant. PROBLEM SOLVED. One thing that con artists are always doing is instantly believing everything that anyone says to them in a voicemail message. Chuck is like, "you guys are amateurs, and you ruined my pants. Let me take over this operation." Meanwhile, Dan discovers that his dad got straight CONN'D out of his college money (what college money?) and everyone discovers that Georgina is back.
I challenge you to a game of cat and mouse shoes. A GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE SHOES!
Gabriel does believe Serena's pregnancy vm because he's a master criminal.
They meet over tea and scones or something, and that is when Chuck Bass springs his trap! "You are not leaving my hotel until you pay back all of the money, and you ruined my pants." Man, Gabriel. What a pro. He can just walk into a room and instantly not know where any of the exits are. He explains that Poppy Lifton and he were just playing rich. A FAUXIALITE! After they started tricking investors to give them money to pay for their FAUXIALITE balls, they began needing new investors in order to pay off the old investors. If you had to draw a structure for their plan, you might end up with a pyramid! Or a drawing of Bernie Madoff's face! Now Poppy has even schemed Gabriel, stealing all of the money for herself. And Gabriel really did love Freckles Serena, he says, and Serena makes her best acting! face to show how touched she is. But too little too late, Roy Dillon. If you liked it then you should have put a not ripping off her entire family and all of her family's friends on it.
Dan, meanwhile, goes crying to Lily about what happened.
So now Lily a) wants Serena to stop with the Harriet the Spy* shit, and b) decides that she is going to pay off all of the bad investments herself and just tell everyone that the deal fell through, but in the case of Rufus she is going to secretly pretend like the deal is going great and send him "dividends" every month, which sounds like just a masterful plan. Basically the best plan.
Eventually, Serena decides that her mom can't tell her what to do. It's every parent's nightmare: the day your kids realize that your power over them is illusory and that they're completely free to stage undercover sting operations at the Russian Tea Room in order to bring down a felon. Meanwhile, Nate tells Chuck that if he loves Blair he should just tell her, but otherwise he should let her go so that Nate can have her. What a pussy. What he should have done was punch Chuck that if he loved Blair he should just get punched, but otherwise he should let her go so that Nate can punch him. So Chuck tells Blair that it was all just a game, but that's a lie, he really loves her, which is why he told her, because he can't make her happy, because he's 45-years-old and twice divorced and has an idea of what he's talking about based on a lifetime of hard-earned experience. Seriously, who does he think he is, Spider-Man? That is some Spider-Man shit is what that is. (Spider-Man, also a teenager with little to no idea what he's doing.)
So, just when it seems like the plan has worked and the cops have shown up to arrest Poppy, they arrest Serena instead! Lily called them! She had her own daughter arrested! We're gonna need a bigger throw pillow!
Rufus was just about to propose to her, too. But that is when he found the folder with a spreadsheet of all the payouts along with "bags of money in each amount." Bags of money in each amount? Lily's plan to cover up the fraud was even better and more flawless than I thought. But Rufus is mad! Lily was emasculating him with her money! Yeah, right. He's in love with her and she's fucking loaded like Queen Rich of Cash Mountain but he's going to be a bitch about it? Relax, Rufus. And he is about to relax, but then he finds out that Lily had her own daughter thrown in jail, and for a split second he realizes that maybe there is a parent in this world who is even worse at it then he is, and he self-righteously walks away. Fair enough. Except that he immediately proceeds home and asks his children to return the engagement ring they bought for him before slinking off into his bedroom to pout, so as bad as having your daughter arrested for a crime she didn't commit to keep her from exercising any kind of ill-conceived but ultimately correct justice on a con artist resulting in two completely horrible lessons to instill in your teenage child on the cusp of adulthood is, Rufus remains the worst.
Next week: just looks fucking miserable:
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*The film adaptation of Harriet the Spy stars...wait for it...Michelle Tracthenberg! Coincidence? Coincidence.
