Once again I found myself absolutely loving Gossip Girl every time I’ve watched this episode. This is probably one of my top favorite episodes of season five at this point. I have to say that I’m definitely loving season five so far, possibly even more than I loved season four, and I really loved season four of Gossip Girl even though Serena constantly annoyed me last season and everything with Chuck’s business ventures and Bass Industries was beyond boring. I think the reason why I’m liking season five of Gossip Girl so much more than I loved season four is because so far Serena’s storylines this season haven’t involved her love life like they did basically the entire fourth season and Chuck’s storylines haven’t revolved around his aspirations to be a successful businessman like his father, Bart, was. Also, the fact that the writers have featured the friendship between Dan and Blair very heavily so far this season is another thing that’s making season five so enjoyable for me so far. The blossoming friendship between Dan and Blair during the second half of season four was definitely the best thing about the last half of season four and perhaps the best thing about season four as a whole.
My favorite storyline in this episode was definitely Blair trying to avoid finding out the results of her paternity test despite Dan’s attempts to get her to learn the truth. What was so interesting about that storyline is that Blair wasn’t the only one who was trying to avoid something. Dan was trying to stop his book Inside from coming out so he could avoid dealing with his friends finding out about what he wrote about them through the use of fictional counterparts. Dan also spent the episode trying to deal with the fact that the writer he interned for during the summer after the first season, Noah Shapiro, was claiming to have written Inside.
It was really fun to see Dan and Dorota working together to make sure Blair read the results of her paternity test. One of my favorite scenes in this episode was definitely the one where Blair is talking to Dan on the phone and she tells him that she’s just about to walk into the doctor’s office to get the test results when she’s actually about to walk into a department store only to have Dan walk up to her and say hi to her. That was beyond hilarious. :)
My other favorite scene in this episode was the scene where Dan and Blair end up getting into a somewhat physical fight at the Jenny Packham fashion show that pretty much everyone went to. That was hilarious. :)
In the end, Dan and Blair talked and Dan admitted to Blair that he was using the whole thing with her paternity test results as a way of avoiding his own problems. I like that he told her that he’s sure she’ll love her child the minute he or she is born, regardless of who the father is because he too had been terrified when Georgina showed up at his door and told him that she’s was pregnant with his child. He also told Blair that he ultimately fell in love with Milo as soon as he was born even though Milo turned out to not even be his child. He then left her to go deal with the whole thing with Noah Shapiro claiming that he wrote Inside while she opened the paternity test results in private.
They showed Blair opening and reading the paternity test results, but they didn’t make it entirely clear from the viewer’s standpoint if Blair was telling Chuck the truth when she told him that she was pregnant and that Louis is the father of her child. If I had to bet money on who the father of Blair’s baby is, I would say that it’s Chuck’s baby, because I found it very weird that she went to tell Chuck that she was pregnant before she even told Louis that she was pregnant. Also, they showed Blair hiding the test results in her desk drawer. If Louis really were the father, I don’t think there would be any good reason for her to hang on to the test results. Besides, the producers have said that they will definitively reveal who the father of Blair’s baby is later this season. I don’t think they would be saying that if Louis were actually supposed to be the father of her child.
A part of me doesn’t blame Blair for wanting to avoid finding out who the father is, especially after the magazine reporter she was doing an interview with told her that Louis had given a statement to the magazine making it sound like having children was the last thing in the world that he wanted. Also, Chuck is a self-destructive mess who isn’t even remotely close to being fatherhood material. In the end, Louis was thrilled when Blair told him that she’s pregnant, and it turned out that he had only said what he said to the magazine so they wouldn’t bother Blair about their plans to start a family.
Aside from Dan trying to be there for Blair as she struggled with her fears of finding out who the father of her child is, he also showed what a great guy he truly is by giving Chuck a dog named Monkey so he would have a sense of companionship and comfort in his life. Monkey sure is a cute dog, but Chuck was initially going to try and get rid of him, but he decided to keep Monkey anyway. Even though I don’t like Chuck very much anymore given all of the horrible things he’s done to Blair, a small part of me still felt bad for Chuck when I watched the scene where he was lying in bed with Monkey and crying at the end of the episode after Blair had told him that she was pregnant and that Louis is the father. That scene itself was fairly simple, but Ed’s performance in that scene was extremely powerful.
As far as how Dan’s storyline ended up, he confronted Noah in front of a group of people and admitted to all of them that he was the one who wrote Inside, not Noah and basically decided that he wants the book to be published regardless of how his friends and family react to the book. The whole thing with Noah claiming to have written Inside turned out to simply be a ruse to get Dan to publicly admit to having written Inside. I have to say that the whole storyline with Dan and his book Inside reminds me a lot of the storyline that they did with Jenny on The L Word in seasons four and five where she got a book published that was basically a thinly veiled account of everything that had happened with her and her friends during the first few seasons of the show. Also, like Dan’s book, Jenny’s book didn’t put her friends in a very flattering light.
Another thing that I absolutely loved about this episode was the fact that Serena was barely in this episode. She was basically just a prop in Charlie/Ivy’s storyline since they both returned to the Upper East Side together. Serena helped break the news to her family that Charlie/Ivy was coming to stay with them again since Charlie/Ivy was afraid of how everyone would react to her being back in New York after how crazy she had acted the last time that she had been there at the end of season four.
I have to say that I absolutely love Charlie/Ivy as a character, but her flakiness and going back and forth about whether or not she really wants to stay in New York is very annoying, but given that I’ve already seen all of the episodes that have aired so far this season, I know that eventually Charlie/Ivy stops going back and forth about whether or not she wants to stay in New York after this episode. She was right about Lily and Rufus being hesitant about her being back in New York, but they ultimately supported her decision.
Not only did Charlie/Ivy have to deal with Lily, Rufus and everyone else’s reactions to her being back, she also had to deal with Carol coming to New York who was trying to force her to leave New York, but after Blair suggested to Charlie/Ivy that if she had anything she could use against Carol to get her to back off, she should use it to her advantage, Charlie/Ivy told Carol that if she tried to expose Ivy’s true identity, she would tell everyone about how Carol had hired her to impersonate Charlie so that she (Carol) could gain access to the real Charlie’s trust fund. Blair’s suggestion worked and Carol started to act like she was okay with Charlie/Ivy’s decision to stay in New York. Ivy also told Carol that she had Carol’s mother reinstate her access to Charlie’s trust fund.
A part of me wonders if there even is an actual Charlie and if there is, if the writers will eventually have her show up, or if the real Charlie died at some point. Maybe there was never even an actual Charlie and Carol has simply been pulling some huge con for years in order to get her mother’s money.
I continued to find Nate’s storyline with him having a fling with Diana while he also works for her very interesting. Although, I thought it was extremely ridiculous and idiotic of Diana to fire her entire staff at The Spectator just so she could have sex with Nate in her office. I’m glad that Nate stood up to her and told her that he would quit working for her and get an internship somewhere else if the only reason she hired him was so that she could have sex with him. Diana also helped plan the Jenny Packham fashion show, which she had to agree that all of the guests at the party would turn their phones in to the people working at the party, because Jenny Packham was apparently threatening to call off the event if they didn’t.
Due to the fact that Diana had fired her entire staff, she had to have Nate interview various people at the party. She apparently had found out that one of the men at the party had been having an affair and had Nate unwittingly expose his affair to his wife by having Nate ask him about a trip that he had supposedly gone on with his mistress. The guy’s wife immediately told him that she was going to be filing for divorce. Nate felt guilty about essentially ruining the couple’s marriage, but Diana didn’t seem to feel too bad about it, which I think is very wrong. She also told him that she wanted to expose people’s secrets and that she also wanted to take Gossip Girl down, but Nate told her that taking Gossip Girl down would be a lot harder than she thought, because she herself (Gossip Girl) doesn’t expose people’s secrets, she’s merely sharing the rumors and secrets that her readers send to her that they know.
Diana and Nate decided to look at the information that the people at the party had in their phones while they were still turned in to the people working at the party. At that the end of the episode, Ivy couldn’t find her cellphone in her purse just as Nate and Diana were going through the party guests’ cellphone, they found her phone, which had the name Ivy entered into it, so they didn’t make the connection that “Charlie” is Ivy.
One last subplot that they had in this episode was that Rufus had apparently been meeting with lawyers to see if they could get Lily’s house arrest sentence reduced, and he was able to get them to end her house arrest early. Lily and Rufus went to the party together, but Lily had trouble being out in public again because she thought everyone was judging her, but Rufus told her that she served her sentence with dignity and grace, so she should try to move on with her life. I thought that it was very unfair that she was able to get out of her house arrest sentence early when she had Juliet’s brother, Ben, sent to jail for several years for a crime he didn’t commit by forging Serena’s signature on the affidavit stating that she had had a sexual relationship with him just so she could get Serena reenrolled at Constance. She should have had to serve her entire house arrest sentence.
All things considered, I absolutely loved this episode. I think that Gossip Girl has been on a major role so far this season. The interactions between Dan and Blair in this episode were pure gold. I’ve also found it very refreshing that Serena wasn’t in this episode very much. Plus, I also think it’s very refreshing to see Serena’s storylines not revolve around her love life so far this season, and it’s been great to see Chuck have storylines that don’t involve business ventures of some kind. I’m also loving having Kaylee DeFer be a series regular, because I love the character Ivy, because she’s not after the van der Woodsen family’s money, she simply wants to have the family she didn’t have growing up. I think that makes her very human and real as a character.
All that being said, I give this episode a rating of an A+.
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