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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Gossip Girl: Dan and Blair engage in an office rivalry. Good Times! (My thoughts on episode 4.13: Damien Darko)


Let me just start off by saying that I absolutely loved this episode for the most part. This is definitely one of my top favorite episodes from season four. The main highlight of this episode for me is definitely the Dan and Blair storyline with them working for the same magazine as interns, because I always love watching them when they have scenes together and this episode was no exception. I think this episode had the best zingers between Dan and Blair that Gossip Girl has ever had. My personal favorite was Blair telling him that the scarf he was wearing when they were walking to work together suggests that he’d like to sell used cars. That was classic Blair. :)

Once again the writers had Dan’s schemer side come out in this episode when he was competing with Blair to impress their boss, Epperly. If you ask me, he’s one of the few people who can hold their own against Blair. I really do think that Dan is a much more suitable match for Blair than Chuck is. I also thought that their catfight at W Magazine’s party was beyond hilarious. The fact that Dan went to Epperly to try and convince her to give Blair her job back after they had both been fired really shows how much healthier Dan and Blair’s friendship is compared to what Chuck and Blair’s romance has always been like. Although, I thought it was really heartbreaking when Blair told Epperly that Dan was never really her friend at the end of the episode after Epperly gave Blair her job back. Dan and Blair are so much fun to watch together, and I really want to see more of them together.

Speaking of Chuck, I’m really glad that the episode focused mainly on the storyline with Dan and Blair, because I found Chuck’s storyline with Bass Industries and his romance with Raina Thorpe to be only mildly interesting. I’m really starting to get sick Chuck’s storylines almost always revolving around Bass Industries and his desire to become a successful businessman like his father was. I just wish the writers would stop writing all of theses aspiring businessman storylines for Chuck and just having him start acting his age for once instead of always having him acting like he’s a middle-aged businessman.

Once again I loved Nate’s storyline because it focused on his concerns about his father taking the terms of his parole seriously and the fact that Russell Thorpe hired him to work for his company instead of focusing on his love life. It’s good to know that Nate is smart enough to know that Russell Thorpe is up to no good. I just wish the writers had focused on that storyline more than they focused on Chuck’s storyline in this episode.

This episode featured Damien quite a bit, which surprisingly made me really enjoy Serena’s storyline with Ben, because they were focusing more on the fact that Eric was hanging out with Damien than the fact that Serena wants to date Ben. I’ve always loved the character Damien, and I hope the writers continue to periodically bring him back to stir up trouble. Although, now that Taylor Momsen will only be a recurring guest star and given the fact that Connor Paolo has decided to stop guest starring as Eric, I don’t know if the writers will be able to come up with ways to incorporate Damien into storylines for season five since he’s almost always interacted primarily with Jenny and Eric when he’s on the show.

One thing that this episode left me wondering about was if Damien is bisexual since Eric spent the night at his place. Although, they never explicitly stated that they were sleeping together. However, Damien did call Eric the end of the episode and asked him if they could hang out, just as friends right after Ben told him to leave Serena and her family alone.

Lily continued to get the cold shoulder from Serena and Eric. She discovered that he was no longer dating Elliot when she called Elliot’s house to Elliot’s mother told him that he wasn’t there. Eric coldly told her that he learned to lie and keep secrets by having her for a mother. At the end of the episode, Eric told Serena and Ben that he was spending time with Damien because Damien had been giving him sleeping pills, as well as other kinds of pills, and was basically the only one that had been paying any attention to him lately. Serena was also mad at Lily after she learned that she had tried to pay Ben to stay away from Serena, but he refused to take the money. Lily really needs to stop lying and trying to pay people off when they are getting involved with members of her family and causing trouble for them in some way. It almost always blows up in Lily’s face in the end. Lily really needs to learn to find other ways to deal with the problems in her life.

I liked the conversation between Eric and Rufus that they had after Serena and Ben had confronted him about his friendship with Damien and told him that they would get him help if he needed it. I’m also glad that Rufus offered to let Ben stay at his loft with Dan after Serena asked him to offer Ben a place to stay. That will definitely make things interesting.

I’m so glad that Ben told Serena off and said that he didn’t reciprocate her feelings when he was her teacher at boarding school, he still didn’t and he never would reciprocate her feelings for him. The fact that he was once her teacher and that Lily had him wrongly accused of having an inappropriate relationship with Serena when she was at boarding school, which led him to be sent to prison for several years would just make a romantic relationship between Ben and Serena too weird, if you ask me.

All in all, I really did absolutely love this episode, especially everything with Dan and Blair. While I didn’t care for the storyline with Chuck and Raina all that much, the Dan and Blair storyline really overshadowed my lack of interest in Chuck’s storyline, but in a good way. Like I said, Nate’s storyline with his dad was also very interesting to me. The stuff with Damien was really great too. That being said, I give this episode a rating of an A+.

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