Gossip Girl: Fully Dressed, Without a Smile

Chuck's freaking out about the low occupancy at his new hotel (Empire), but still angry at Blair, so he tells her to shove it when she suggests he open the club part (Gimlet, cute) early...

Then asks Serena to help him publicize the club part opening early. He explicitly tells Serena not to let Blair help, but of course Blair finds out immediately. While Serena stresses over the opening -- and Olivia's sham love life -- Blair decides to help Chuck get his liquor license early. By calling Uncle Jack. So I guess we're back to manic bulletproof Blair, the scariest of all the Blairs.

Chuck finds out about the Jack thing and freaks out on B, but since Serena's working on the opening she ends up choosing to stay with Chuck rather than running wild in the streets with Blair. This gives B some grief, which she expends in the form of abuse and rage on Dorota and her Mean Girls. When flowers arrive from Jack, with condolences for granting them a fake license, she heads for the Gimlet opening, which is going forward regardless of the legalities.

There's a mind-meld phenomenon where Blair and Chuck eerily co-decide to call the cops themselves, since they're getting shut down either way -- which is fine, because now the plan is to have it be a real speakeasy until the license comes through, and in the meantime it's the most-photographed party of the year. Serena, who doesn't know about any of this, gets super-mad at Blair for setting her up for failure -- and I don't mean Serena Mad, I mean Actual Mad, like we're heading into the big Blair/Serena breakup for this year. And since she's still looking for vengeance on Nate, that means she's got maybe two friends. If you count Vanessa. And she might have to.

But at least Serena's job is safe, because over in DUMBO, Nate creepily makes Dan watch the Endless Knights vampire trilogy for the sex scenes, which are a bit too realistic -- especially considering her costar was also her boyfriend -- and Dan has all manner of freakouts until Olivia assures him the relationship was just for publicity's sake. (Highlight: Watching Penn Badgley and Blake Lively discuss fake publicity relationships without breaking character or barfing.)

Meanwhile, Serena is tasked with breaking up the happy couple and getting Olivia back together with the creepster, named Patrick. It's all very complicated, but the end result is that Serena saves the day, Dan is now dating Olivia in public, and Creepy Patrick's new fake girlfriend will be Miss S herself.

Speaking of creepy, the Rufus storyline is beyond grotesque. There's a Prince Hal wig, a Joey Ramone costume, Lily and Vanya recycling the same three little kids so Rufus will still believe in Halloween, and then some heavy petting.

In Sad-Face Eric news, he and Jonathan are so grossed out by Jenny's newfound obsession with preserving herself in the midst of the Constance hierarchy that they do some treachery and earn themselves a yogurt to the head. Lily, sympathetic about the fact that her daughter just ordered a yogurt hit on her son, mildly tells Jenny to cool it. Jenny does this by inviting the boys to Gimlet, separating them, then having her Mean Girls throw eggs at Jonathan until he cries. It's pretty much totally amazing. The sad result is that Eric tells Jenny she's neither his friend nor his sister any longer, so she tosses her sewing machine/soul and commits herself fully to a life of evil and black pantsuits.

All very bleak. But there are great clothes, no Vanessa, and even Nate only stops by to be hilariously mean. Next week: It's election night for Tripp van der Bilt, which means a whole lot of Congressional folks and hangers-on will be privy to Serena's cake-hurling, backstabbing all-out war on Nate and Blair.