Awww! Last night’s episode was as close as “Gossip Girl” gets to an after-school special!

Chuck decides to save a Brooklyn landmark!

Dan gives his newly homeless and suddenly poor pal, Nate, a safe place to crash!

The van der Woodsens and Basses become a real family!

Blair plots to ruin Vanessa!

OK, so that last one wasn’t quite so nice. Still, there was an awful lot of caring and friendship going on beneath the surface of all that sexual tension and Dangerous Liasons-style plotting.

Let’s start first with the man of the hour: Chuck Bass—and his interesting sense of style. (Which finally got made fun of by a bunch of Brooklynites, complete with a tossed tomato. Which was totally freakin’ awesome.)

So young Mr. Bass gets drawn into a scheme crafted by Blair to bring down Vanessa. Oh, excuse me, that “little troll.”

I’m not exactly sure how Vanessa would be ruined by sleeping with Chuck, but that’s a minor detail: The proposition is made far more interesting once Blair offers herself to Chuck as a reward for succeeding.

But who’d have thunk it? Chuck ends up developing a fondness for Vanessa—however unspoken—and the Brooklyn bar she’s trying to save. He’s drawn in by the history of the old speakeasy and promises to get his father’s company to buy it.

That leads to the uncomfortable conversation Vanessa overhears between Chuck and his father, that old meanie, Bart Bass. But dumb ol’ Vanessa: Clearly, she hasn’t learned the old lesson that you can criticize your own family as much as you want, but no one particularly likes when someone else does it.

Yet Chuck stands up to Blair for her, after B. sets Vanessa straight about their bet. And is anyone else worried that Blair’s headed for a bit of a breakdown? Last week she had that inappropriate hissy fit at Yale. This week, she hysterically berated one of her schoolyard flunkies for the fashion crime of wearing tights as pants. And of course, mad jealousy over Chuck and Vanessa prompts her to fling herself into his arms.

Chuck’s having none of it, though. He gets all seductive and turns Blair down flat, saying that she needs to chase him for awhile.

There was another romance going on last night, too—between Dan and Nate.

How cute was Dan, calling Nate “bro” and asking him out for a soccer game? So sweet. Maybe their next date will be dinner and a movie.

Anyway, Dan finds out that Nate’s been squatting in his family’s apartment, which has been taken over by the government. So he invites his new pal over for chili, Scattergories and—a few huffy misunderstandings later—a place to sleep that actually has electricity.

Speaking of significant others, we finally got to meet Eric’s new boyfriend, Jonathan, who seemed nice but kind of, you know, bland. (Although he may be the one we have to thank for getting Eric to stop using Sun-In and restoring his hair to a normal shade. Eric looks way better as a brunette.) And how DID those two young scamps meet, after all? We never did find out.

The show did a little end run around the van der Woodsen/Bass housewarming party, too. Serena and the rest of us assumed that just because Bart is a nasty, cold control freak, he must be a homophobe, too. It turned out that Bart didn’t really have a problem with Eric’s boyfriend: In a weird way, he was protecting Eric by wondering if he wanted to come out of the closet publicly, since press would be at the party.

And those new family rules—1 p.m. curfew, no partying on school nights? HA! The show would fall to ruins!—were actually instigated by Lily.

By being a stricter parent, she was trying to make up to Serena and Eric for all those years when she was jetting off without them to Ibitha with Claus, Klaus and what was apparently a clown car full of men. As Eric put it, “Since U Been Gone” was Lily’s ringtone.

But no worries, because even though Serena vented about Lily’s terrible parenting to In Style magazine—oops, can we say awkward?—the family eventually put it all behind them and bonded over what looked suspiciously like an ice cream log from Friendly’s. All’s well that ends well, especially since Bart had the story killed! Giggle, giggle!

So what’cha thinkin’, “GG” fans? Will Chuck and Vanessa actually get together? Will Blair ever say those three little words to Chuck? Who’s the cuter couple: Eric and Jonathan, or Dan and Nate?

Until next week, when Serena’s new love interest, Aaron Rose, is introduced, XOXO…

(Photos courtesy of the CW)