Gossip Girl – Season 5 Episode 1
by The Hudsonian
**This episode originally aired in September 2011. If you are unfamiliar with the series, turn away to avoid spoilers, or bleeding corneas.**
Rich kids and their lustrous lifestyles. How much drama could there possibly be?
You didn’t get the rhetoric in that question?
The episode begins with the cast each receiving their “save the dates” from Blair, where she’s set to become a princess of Monaco. Naturally, the audience would assume Dan and Chuck would take this news harder than most – both have done the dirty, dirty with Ms. Waldorf – but they hide their emotions well.
Sort of.
When approached about a story he wrote, Dan realizes it’s from the book he wrote, and that the book is missing. He points the finger at Vanessa (she ran off to Spain, or somewhere that’s not New York) and needs to track down the manuscript so the book doesn’t get published and expose Blair.
Serena adjusts to life in California on the set of the movie she helped get off the ground, only to be beaten down and prevented from rising by Marshall, who’s kind of her boss, and doesn’t like that the spoiled rich girl is better at his job than he is.
Chuck displays a new-found respect for life, and for the duration of the episode behaves like CW’s version of Jim Carrey’s “Yes Man,” a man-whore/thrill-seeker, but one who’s not funny. Nate works on adopting similar principals, but his prop-like character just takes up screen time for the “real” people of this show.
Blair tries to deal with Louis’s mother in planning the wedding, but not only are there “family tradition” hurdles that must be cleared, there’s also the fact that Louis, her fiancee, constantly sides with his mother. Gee, seems that this kind of thing doesn’t go down well with someone who’s all about getting what she wants. Who’d have thought?
The episode ends with Serena tricked by Marshall into quitting her job but being brought back in by the lead producer; Dan getting Louis to help him thwart the printing of the book excerpt and incurring Blair’s wrath for it; Chuck suffering severe road rage in his attempt at living life, but brushing it off and forging on; and Nate finding that Chuck’s ‘Yes Man” attitude only gets him so far when he cons a day player into sleeping with him and feels horrible about lying to her.
I went into this series with a mostly unbiased mind, but its intriguing plot threads and timely humor pleasantly surprised me. If upscale, spoiled rich kid drama isn’t for you, you may be happy to know that the cinematography is very well orchestrated, almost making you feel that you are one with the cast.
Of course, I’d feel better about being caught up in Gossip Girl’s tangled web of high society living if I had even a fraction of her money.
