'Gossip Girl' Recap: 'Father of the Bride'
Gossip Girl struggles to regain her many minions in Monday’s ‘Father of the Bride.’ To achieve her goal, she traps Nate by letting him know that the faulty car that caused Chuck and Blair’s accident was actually meant for him. Gossip Girl promises to help him to figure out who was behind this sabotage, but in exchange she demands that Nate postpone the release of Serena’s new blog which was created to take her down. Unfortunately, she forces him to do this right as Serena is attempting to display her new blog for a gaggle of photographers.
Meanwhile, Blair continues to wrestle with her feelings for Chuck as her wedding to Louis approaches. Louis' sister Beatrice is intent to exploit the situation, with the help of her not-so-holy priest beau Father Cavalia, so that Louis will call off the wedding and she will inherit the Moroccan throne. However, after moving Blair's bachelorette party to a raunchy bar and forcing her to down far too many shots in the hopes that she will confess her love for Chuck, Beatrice realizes she actually likes Blair and calls off the plan.
Dan and Serena's fake relationship is in full swing. It's obvious that Serena is enjoying their time together much more than Dan is, and not just because he buys her over-priced coffee on Madison Avenue. Dan fears that his connection to Serena will create bad press as he attempts to pitch a second book idea to the suits at Simon & Schuster, but in reality they'd like him to continue "seeing" her because of the publicity it generates.
And Chuck’s obsession with getting Blair back in his life has reached new heights as he begins to track her every move. He refuses to stop until he understands why Blair changed her mind so abruptly after their accident. This leads to him shouldering the blame when Blair gets arrested at her bachelorette party after she drunkenly assumes that two cops who approach her are actually strippers and harasses them (Blair’s friends believe that Chuck set this up on purpose). A hat tip to the writers for the convenient but chuckle-worthy Officer Weiner joke here.
More schemes (as usual) are afoot throughout the episode. After Serena discovers Gossip Girl’s involvement in her humiliating blog release, she decides to get back at Nate by posting it anyway. And while it may seem that Nate then fires Serena for her insubordination, it is actually a ploy to get the video posted on Gossip Girl for the perpetrator of Chuck and Blair’s accident to see. It turns out that Nate’s politically-minded cousin Trip decided that Nate needed to experience some pain after their over-bearing grandfather declared that he no longer believed Trip to be the future of their family.
After Beatrice tells Father Cavalia that she no longer wants to destroy Blair’s wedding and cannot be with him anymore, he takes matters into his own hands and gets her mother to send her to Africa for missionary work. Father Cavalia knows that once Blair becomes the Princess of Morocco he will no longer be a member of the royal court and so he teams up with Chuck to make sure that Louis will not marry Blair.
Serena’s feelings for Dan cause her to lie to him so that she may continue their false relationship, at least until after Blair’s wedding. She even asks him out to dinner, obviously trying to spend as much quality time with him as she can. And the lies don’t stop there. The end of the episode reveals that Dan is the real author of the Louis’ wedding vows that convince Blair she is making the right decision by denying her feelings for Chuck and going through with the marriage.
Season five has proved to be one of the better seasons of the show, but there are still many plot lines that seem contrived and/or forced. Serena and Dan’s relationship in the first two seasons was absolutely fantastic and one of the reasons I began to watch the show. However, three seasons later, their dysfunctional relationship seems very static and even perhaps boring. It always seems to be one sided, and even when something happens between them it never works out. And especially in this season, Serena knows for a fact that Dan is in love with Blair but that doesn’t stop her from chasing after him. I’d like to see both of them in working relationships for once, but perhaps not with one another.
Speaking of relationships, Blair and Chuck’s love has hit as many bumps and snags as is humanly possible, and there always seems to be something in the way, be it an accident, a lost child or a marriage to a prince. Still, and I know I’m not the only one who thinks this: get them together already! They’re clearly meant for each other and their drawn out love story is starting to get more annoying than suspenseful. I’m hoping for a dramatic scene at the wedding because it will be highly disappointing if Blair actually goes through with the wedding.
One story that I’m really enjoying is that of Nate’s struggle with his family. Nate has proven to be one of the most interesting and mature characters on the show, despite his recurring habit of dating much-older women. And even when it seems that he is about to revert back to his high-school habits, he regains his composure and continues to battle with his grandfather over control of The Spectator and his own public image. I’m looking forward to seeing how this storyline turns out.
Next week’s episode centers around Blair and Louis’ wedding, and it’s sure to be one hell of an event!