Just like the previous episode, I found this episode to be a major snooze fest. There was very little that I liked about this episode. For starters, Serena spent the episode feeling unsure about whether she should choose Ben over her family. I couldn’t care less about Serena and her perpetually complicated love life. Since she wasn’t sure about if she wanted to choose Ben over her family, they secretly spent time together.
Meanwhile, it was Eric’s eighteenth birthday, but he decided to cancel the party so he could help Damien by being his drug mule because Damien was threatening to reveal the truth about Lily forging Serena’s signature on the affidavit. In the end, he still had a party and Ben ended up confronting Damien and was able to get him to leave Eric and his family alone. I love Damien, so him being in this episode was one of the few things about this episode that I liked.
However, Ben helping Eric and Serena’s family made them all grateful to him, so Serena and Ben were able to be together and not have to hide their relationship anymore. They ended up having sex at the end of the episode. I hate that Ben helping Serena’s family allowed them to be together without having to hide it. That really pissed me off. I’m also getting really bored with the whole thing about Lily forging Serena’s signature having to be kept a secret. Now that Juliet is gone, it seems rather pointless to keep talking about it. I just wish they would move on from all of that.
Blair’s storyline and her scenes with Dan was another one of the few things about this episode that I actually liked. In classic Blair fashion, Blair decided to speed up her career plans for the future and ended up stretching herself too thin working for W Magazine, which led her to be fired/quit. At the end of the episode, Blair was feeling upset about losing her job and ended up going to Dan’s loft for comfort. Blair admitted that she screwed up with her job and told Dan that she couldn’t believe that he was the one she wanted to turn to for comfort. They ended deciding to order a pizza and watch a movie together.
Dan and Blair’s blossoming friendship is definitely my favorite thing about the second half of season four. Their scenes together have always been pure gold when they were basically frenemies, but now that they are a real friends it makes their scenes together even better. I’m totally over being a Blair and Chuck or a “Chair” shipper as most Gossip Girl fans put it now. I really want Dan and Blair to be together now.
Chuck and Lily continued to deal with the sale of Bass industries, which isn’t even remotely interesting to me anymore. As for Nate, he spent the episode hanging out with Raina Thorpe. I personally find the Thorpe’s beyond boring, and I hate that the writers sucked Nate into their storyline. Nate’s family drama is so much more interesting than his scenes with Raina in this episode were. I really do prefer Nate having storylines that focus on his family rather than his love life.
As much as I hate the storyline with Russell and Raina Thorpe, I do like that Damien got involved with them. That does make the Thorpe’s kind of interesting.
Meanwhile, Vanessa returned to apologize for everything that she had done to hurt her friends. That seemed rather pointless to me in this episode. I’m so glad that Jessica Szohr won’t be a series regular for season five. Vanessa has really run her course as a character, if you ask me.
All in all, I really hated this episode for the most part. The only saving graces of this episode were Blair’s storyline, the scenes between Dan and Blair, and the fact that Damien was in this episode. That being said, I give this episode a rating of a D.
