Episode #10: Bonfire of Vanity

-    Episode starts with Dan telling Rufus he is surprisingly calm about Jenny moving out to live with Agnes.  Rufus says he had lunch with Agnes’ mom that afternoon and promised to call everyday.  Dan tells him he’s leaving to meet with Noah Shapiro who is writing him a recommendation for Yale.
-    All the girls are meeting to discuss Blair’s 18th birthday party.  Blair is trying to have the perfect party.  Penelope asks Serena about Aaron and she tells them how he sends her these maps to his favorite places everyday.  They all gush about how romantic that is.
-    Jenny and Agnes are meeting with Scott Smith, a business manager, for their new company.  Agnes is trying to take over the meeting and says she is the brains behind the operation.  Jenny is annoyed and is trying to act professional, but Agnes isn’t letting her.  They can’t keep it together and the meeting is over.  Jenny says that was there last chance because Agnes has acted out in every other meeting, but Agnes assures her she will find someone else.
-    Blair is excited to meet Cyrus, Eleanor’s divorce lawyer turned new boyfriend.  Blair is expecting him to be more like Cary Grant, but when she meets him she’s disappointed because he’s the exact opposite.  She even mistakes him for the driver.
-    Chuck congratulates Bart on 20th anniversary of Bass Industries.  He bought his dad season tickets to the Rangers so they could hang out.  As usual, Bart doesn’t want anything to do with Chuck and says he’s too busy for hockey games.
-    Dan meets with Mr. Shapiro and James Wolf of New York Magazine.  They want him to do an expose on Bart Bass.  Dan is apprehensive because he doesn’t want to make an enemy like Bart Bass.  They say they won’t publish his name and won’t publish anything that isn’t true.  Dan agrees to do the story.
-    Serena is roaming the streets with one of Aaron’s maps.  She ends up in Times Square on the Jumbo Tron.  Aaron pops up and asks her to pose for him.  They share their first kiss, at least the first one we know of, with everyone on Times Square because it’s up on the big screen.
-    At school, Blair has been looking for Serena, when she finally finds her she tells her about Cyrus.  Blair is less than happy and says he’s 5 feet tall, has a catch phrase and he’s a hugger.  In the middle of her tirade, Serena gets a text from Aaron and says she has to go.  She is going to pose for him.  Blair says she shouldn’t pose for him, it’s a bad idea.
-    Dan has a meeting with Bart where he asks if he can shadow him a couple days a week.  Dan is playing the angle that he’s looking for a new career path since writing didn’t pan out the way he thought.  Bart says he’s too busy for a shadow, but Dan pours on the sob story about how his dad didn’t amount to much.  I guess that pulls on Bart’s heart strings because he agrees.  Chuck walks in just in time to hear Bart inviting Dan to a hockey game.  Chuck isn’t happy Dan is there and he follows him.
-    Jenny has been waiting for Agnes all day and finally meets up with her at a coffee shop where Agnes is hung over.  Jenny says she gave up everything for this and Agnes is supposed to be her partner.  Agnes says she will find them a new business manager soon, but it doesn’t seem to be first on her list. When Jenny is going to throw up, Jenny goes in Agnes’ purse to get Scott Smith’s number.  Jenny goes to meet with him and he says he would rather work with Jenny, but she must get the contracts signed by a parent because she’s only 15.
-    Cyrus tells Blair he would be delighted to fill the penthouse with peonies for her, but $18 a stem is too much.  He wants to buy them from someplace else.  Blair snaps at him and says she wants to get her flowers from her florist.  Cyrus also mentions he bought tickets for he and Eleanor to Cyndi Lauper the same night as Blair’s party.  Blair comments they love Cyndi Lauper but Eleanor can’t miss her party.  Cyrus says he will return the tickets, but Eleanor insists on still going to the concert instead of going to the party.
-    When Chuck follows Dan, he ends up at the New York Magazine office.  Chuck calls an old friend who is an intern there to find out what Dan is doing there.  He doesn’t get much but he does find out he has a meeting with the boss.
-    Serena poses for Aaron.  It’s a flirtatious photo shoot.
-    Serena goes to meet Aaron at his apartment.  When she arrives she sees the Serena exhibition.  Serena is very impressed until another girl shows up and she realizes she’s not the only girl that is posing for Aaron.  She leaves very quickly.
-    Dan finds some dirt on Bart and meets some guy behind a building.  The guy tells him that Bart bought some condos in ’87 and couldn’t finish the project so he set fire to the building to get the insurance money.
-    Blair doesn’t understand how Eleanor could love Cyrus because he is everything that she hates.  He’s nothing like her father. Eleanor says Cyrus is someone she can trust and she’s very happy.  Blair still isn’t happy and wants to find a secret that she can exploit.
-    Dan goes back to Rufus to tell him about his All The President’s Men moment, but Rufus isn’t impressed.  He knows this secret is harmful and it could potentially ruin the lives of Serena and the rest of her family.  Dan doesn’t seem to feel too much remorse about the situation.  Dan says if the story is true then the people deserve to hear about it. They are interrupted when Rufus receives a phone call form Allison who said Jenny was trying to get her to sign the contract papers.
-    Blair meets Cyrus for lunch to find out his secret.  She wants to know about Cyrus and his ex-wife.  He tells her he married when he was young and was shipped off to Vietnam for the war.  While there he fell in love and knew he had to end his marriage back home so he could bring Kim Lee back to the states.  When he returned home he found out Kim Lee was killed in a surprise attack on her village.  He knew he couldn’t go on living a loveless marriage and him and his wife divorced as friends.  Blair was totally enamored by his true love story.
-    Serena calls Aaron so she can take him to one of her favorite places for a change, but he’s hanging out with the model that interrupted them that morning.
-    Eleanor finds out that Blair had lunch with Cyrus and knows Blair was trying to dig up dirt on him.  She says she knows Blair didn’t find anything on him because he’s a good upstanding man.  Blair takes offense to what her mother says and even though she knows there isn’t dirt behind it she tells Eleanor Cyrus was just like her dad and cheated on his first wife.
-    At Blair’s party, Serena tells Blair what happened with Aaron.  Blair tells her it’s good she found out now before she got in too deep.
-    Agnes gets a phone call from Scott Smith’s office.  They wanted to talk to Jenny but they called Agnes instead which led Agnes to find out what Jenny was doing behind her back.  When Jenny gets back to the apartment, Agnes meets her at the door and tells her Rufus was there.  Agnes has all the dresses and takes them to a trash can and pours lighter fluid on them.  Agnes said it was her idea for the models, the photographer and the fashion show.  Agnes pulls out a lighter and Jenny tries to stop her, but Agnes sets the dresses on fire.
-    At the party, Serena meets Cyrus.  She is wondering how he knew who she was until he mentions he’s Aaron’s father.  He says Aaron is quite smitten with her.  Serena is flattered and leaves to find Aaron.
-    Eleanor confronts Cyrus about cheating on his ex wife and when he confirms it, she asks him to leave.
-    Dan goes to meet with Bart where he asks him about the fire.  Bart mentions something about the death of that man is still on his conscience.  Chuck intervenes the conversation and tells his dad not to say anything else because Dan is writing a story for a magazine.  Bart tries to offer him some money to kill the story, but Dan says he doesn’t want his money. Dan walks into the elevator and cuts his tape recorder off. Chuck stops Dan and asks him not to write the story because it would ruin the family.
-    Cyndi Lauper comes to the party and asks for Blair.  Apparently, Cyrus bought out her gig so she could come sing at Blair’s party.  Blair realizes she’s done wrong and leaves to find Cyrus.  He’s outside and they talk.  She realizes Cyrus out maneuvered her and calls him genius.  She tells him he better be good to her mom and they go back upstairs together.
-    Dan leaves an envelope for Bart with the story he wrote about Chuck and the tape from his recorder.  Bart reads the story and goes to apologize to Chuck.  He says Chuck is wrong and he doesn’t blame him for his mother’s dead.  Bart says he has trouble being close to him because every time he looks at him he sees her.  He says he wants to know his son and asks Chuck if he wants to go to those hockey games.
-    Serena goes to Aaron’s apartment where he’s having a romantic dinner with another girl.  He says she can date other people because they never talked about being exclusive. He is talking to her in a very condescending way.
-    Jenny goes back home to Brooklyn and tries to get Rufus to sign the contract.  He won’t sign because he doesn’t want to condone everything that she’s done to get to that point.  He doesn’t want to support the person she’s become.  Jenny says she’ll find another way, but she has no where to go.  She leaves and goes into an alley where she is left crying.
-    Dan talks to Rufus about how he isn’t writing the story on Bart Bass. Rufus says something about how Dan saves their family.  Dan says it’s time for Rufus to save theirs.  Dan says he needs to get Jenny back even if that means she wins.  Dan says it’s so important for Rufus to be right that it gets in the way.
-    Jenny goes to meet with business man and since she can’t get a parent to sign the papers he suggests that she emancipate herself from her parents.  Jenny looks baffled but agrees.
-    Serena and Blair talk about Aaron being Cyrus’ son and how casual dating isn’t right for her.  Blair says she knows because she’s just as conventional as she is.  Serena says she believes in free spirit and people following their hearts.
-    Blair has accept Cyrus and says she won’t see him that often, only the once or twice a week he came to pick Eleanor up for dinner.  But she’s is surprised when she sees Cyrus in a bathrobe at the table.  Eleanor tells her Cyrus is moving in with them…the same day.
-    Aaron goes to meet with Serena to take her to the puppet theater.  He says he doesn’t want to have the same life as his parents and he thought she felt the same way.  Serena says he is right and leaves with him…wearing nothing but a slip and they head to central park closing out the episode.