Gossip Girl episode recap for 'War at the Roses'

There’s a birthday bash taking over the Upper East Side and Queen B is the guest of honor. So, in true Gossip Girl fashion, a major party is on the agenda.

On this week’s episode (Monday, November 2 on the CW) Chuck and Blair sign a peace treaty which results in hate sex, Serena tries to keep her cool around teacher-man Collin, Dan and Eric try their hands at sabotage and Rufus and Lily celebrate a one-year anniversary.

The main players:

Last week, Chuck and Blair called a truce and shook hands to declare their warring over and promised to transition into civil territory. But a handshake is not a binding document. So Serena and Nate take matters into their own hands and draft a literal peace treaty for Chuck and Blair to negotiate and sign to ensure peace in the Upper East Side from here on out.

Both Chuck and Blair agree to terms, sign the treaty and put their arguing behind them. And once they’ve dotted their the i’s and crossed the t’s, they really have no reason to speak to each other. They say their goodbyes and go their separate ways.

But you can’t expect these two to keep apart for very long, now can you? No, they do end up coming together once again. In an ironic twist, it is all thanks to Dan who winds up bringing them together while attempting to tear them apart.

You see, it is the one-year anniversary of Lily and Rufus—a cause for major celebration in the van der Woodsen and Humphrey household. But Rufus and Lily, who originally wanted a special family celebration, have decided to keep things low-key since Jenny won’t be able to make it back into the city to join them. We all remember what happened last time Jenny returned, right?

Well, it seems that her big brother wants to get back and Chuck and Blair for making Jenny feel alienated and unsafe in Manhattan. So he devises a plan to break up the Chuck and Blair peace treaty so that Chuck will be willing to pull some strings and make is so Jenny returns again as a way to infuriate Blair.

Dan’s first attempt, with the help of Eric, is feeble at best. They send out a Gossip Girl blast about Blair and Jack Bass (Chuck’s Uncle) being together last summer in hopes of enraging Chuck. Then Dan attempts to go over to Chucks and confront him about how Blair can’t be trusted. But the plan fails and Chuck and Blair see right through the Gossip Girl blast. They expected enemies would make an attempt to disturb the peace and know that the blast sent out was a lie (because Jack Bass happened to be on a whole different continent last year). And to prove that they are on good terms, Blair even extends and invite to Chuck for her big birthday bash later that evening. He accepts.

But Dan isn’t ready to give up his sabotage plans just yet. Even though Eric bows out from helping (he’s above too much scheming), Dan goes ahead and crafts a plan to humiliate Blair at her own birthday party—a party where important people (the college dean, fashion designers, high-powered business women, her closet friends) will all be in attendance. He manages to steal the peace treaty (due to Nate’s negligence) and discover a secret tidbit, an embarrassing moment, that Blair never wanted anyone to know about— a video of her, drunk in Stockholm the year before, singing a horrendous rendition of “Stand By Your Man” at a karaoke bar.

At the party, everything seems to be going off without a hitch. Blair impresses her guests, including the Dean of Columbia who ends up inviting Blair to lunch and explaining that they should “get to know each other better.” But just when it looks like the birthday girl can do no wrong, a random girl shows up under the impression that it’s a Blair “Roast,” and pops in the illustrious karaoke DVD to expose Blair’s humiliating scene to everyone in attendance. Of course Blair winds up mortified and immediately blames Chuck for the ruckus.

But when she confronts Chuck about it, he denies any part of it. And Dan steps in to claim responsibility for the prank, saying it’s on behalf of Jenny. But, even Dan’s supposed friend Nate sees through Dan’s guise and knows it is all about him getting revenge on Chuck and Blair. And to make matters worse, Rufus and Lily, who decided to attend the party last minute, witnessed Dan scheming and humiliating people. For Dan, this is a new all-time low.

Blair eventually gets over it after a talk with her mother mentions that a good party gives people what they don’t expect—and that’s a fair assessment of what went down at the Waldorf’s. Because between Blair’s karaoke DVD and Rachel Zoe getting pushed to the ground and covered in chocolate, there a more than a few talking points to make the event memorable.

Dan winds up feeling terrible about how he acted and regrets ruining Rufus and Lily’s anniversary. To make it up to his parents, Dan and Eric craft a bunch of paper pom poms (first anniversary is traditionally a paper gift) and puts them in the living room of the van der Woodsen apartment as a surprise. Dan apologizes to Rufus and winds up talking (as friends) to Vanessa to feel better and regroup.

Chuck and Blair also end up, ahem, regrouping. Chuck winds up being the only one left at the Waldorf’s after the party and tells Blair that the treaty is over. He says that they were never friends and that he feels nothing but hate for her. He rips up the paper and Blair retaliates by saying that she hates him as well. But you have to remember that hate is a pretty powerful emotion, and after a few more “hateful” exchanges, Chuck winds up grabbing Blair’s face and mashing his mouth into hers. Yep, hate sex ensues with a whole bunch of cheesy editing effects and weird music. And it looks like this enemy lust will continue in upcoming episodes—something to look forward to.

At bat:

Serena is a funny and predictable girl. You see, she ended up sleeping with a man before finding out that he is her business teacher at college. Once she found out, she decided the best thing for both of them would be to stop seeing each other and simply wait until their teacher-student relationship had ended before pursuing anything romantic.

But we all know that Serena doesn’t make the best decisions and has a difficult time keeping her hands off a man who, by all accounts, should be hands-off.

So in this episode, she flirts with Collin (the teacher, played by Sam Paige) during office hours and bites her lip and twirls her hair in that suggestive way, but continues to play along with the whole waiting game.

But when she finds out that Collin has scored an invite to Blair’s birthday party (as a guest of the Dean’s), Serena panics. Because she, like the rest of the viewing audience, knows that she cannot possibly be in a room with him, outside of a school setting, and expect to keep her clothes on. So she calls Juliet for help (because Blair wants to hear nothing related to Collin). Since Juliet’s goal in life seems to be to sabotage Serena, she is all ears and willing to act as a buffer between Serena and Collin at Blair’s birthday party.

But when Serena catches up with Nate to warn him that his recent ex Juliet will be at Blair’s party, he comes up with a different suggestion—he will go to the party with Serena and act as her buffer instead of Juliet. That way Serena gets to make Collin a little jealous and Nate doesn’t have to deal with Juliet.

But when Juliet finds out, she manages to get an invite anyway—by way of Collin. Yes, these two were seen last week commiserating after Juliet and Nate broke up, leaving plenty of questions unanswered. However, it turns out that Collin is Juliet’s cousin (small world, I know) who is paying for her to go to Columbia and doing her plenty of favors since he is a faculty member at the school. He has no idea that she is scheming to take down Serena. But Juliet’s plan that she’s concocting with her jailed brother, Ben, is all about getting Serena expelled from school and taking her down—and they don’t care who gets in the way, even if that person happens to be part of their own family. So Ben tells Juliet that she has to somehow catch Serena acting inappropriately with her teacher.

At Blair’s party, both Nate and Juliet (obviously) do a lousy job of being a buffer and Collin and Serena wind up alone in her upstairs bedroom. They agree that maybe they can’t wait and decide to go back to his place afterwards.

Once they get to his apartment, Serena plays coy once again and says that they’ve come so far and that maybe they really should continue to wait the six weeks until class is over to be together. Collin agrees. And just as Serena is about to leave the apartment, she plants a major kiss on him and the pair have a mini make-out session—all in front of a blinking camera light, craftily hidden on a high book shelf, by (you guessed it) Juliet.

So basically Serena is having a hard time keeping her clothes on and Juliet is jumping through all kinds of hoops to make her “take-Serena-down” plan a reality.

We continue to wonder why Juliet and her brother are so anxious to sabotage Serena, but we enjoy the not-knowing part of it and look forward to the way this storyline will continue to unveil itself. But, we find it kind of funny that Juliet and Ben are working so hard to get Serena expelled from college—Serena would probably do it on her own eventually if left to her own devices.

Warming up:

At least Rufus and Lily had a little bit of screen time tonight. The pair is celebrating their one-year anniversary—which is a miracle on it’s own considering the rough and rocky road they had last season.

We like that instead of sitting at home by themselves, they got out to Blair’s party and seemed to be having a good time—that is, until Dan ruined everything.

But in the end it seemed to all work out and they appeared to have salvaged what was left of their special day.

But things with Lily and Rufus can’t stay this good for the whole season, can it? We shudder to think what potential rough spots could be on the horizon for this pair. But we do admit, we want to see these two a little bit more—even if it involves more drama and a marital mess.

On the bench:

Sheesh. Just when we think Eric is going to get some decent involvement, his storyline fizzles out and he is barely a blip on the Gossip Girl radar once again.

I personally love Eric’s character and I really wish the writers and producers would use him more. He seemed to ready to bond with Dan to take down Blair and Chuck, but when their first attempt failed, Eric just kind of disappeared.

He showed up once or twice, hair nicely spiked, dressed decently—and that was about it.

More Eric—I demand it.

Best plays of the night:

- I appreciate that Collin calls himself a lobster man and Serena retorts with “I like Deadliest Catch” which is a show about catching crabs. It is funny on more than one level.

- The Chuck and Blair negotiations were PRICELESS. Just watching these two interact is reason enough to watch the show.

- I love that Dan’s first attempt at sabotage failed miserably. A Humprey attempting to beat Blair and Chuck and their own game is humorous. Chuck to Dan “You really don’t know how to stage a run in, do you?”

- Serena: “I would never put my academic future at risk.” I literally snorted when I heard her character say these words.

- Of course Nate would leave an important document (the peace treaty) that he didn’t want anyone, including Dan, to see right out in the open, available for Dan to simply pick up and leaf through like a magazine.

- Lily to Rufus: “I know you think you’re rock and roll, but you are wearing a $2000 jacket.” Amazing.

- Rachel Zoe winds up on the ground covered in chocolate goop while Cynthia Vincent laughs at her. I DIE. Priceless.

- Blair singing “Stand By Your Man” drunk at karaoke was AMAZING!

- Of course Dan would take to arts and crafts to make everything better between him, Lily and Rufus. He’s the paper pom pom master.

- Chuck and Blair hate sex is awesome. I didn’t care for the cheesy effects or the crazy facial expressions (they literally looked like they were going to eat each other), but seeing Chuck and Blair together again in some capacity gives me more of a reason to watch. And judging by next week’s preview—it’s just going to get better.