Gossip Girl Review: Season 5 Episode 16 Cross Rhodes

 The beginning of the episode finds
 Dan writing a book proposal and Chuck reading at an article listing Dan as the second most promising writer in some category I don't remember. This should have been a clue that Chuck hasn't taken Dan and Blair's kiss as lightly as he would like to show.

Meanwhile, at the Waldorf's  a cold war is taking place. Serena is still mad at Blair leading to her ignoring her friend and pushing her which resulted in destroying  Blair's lipstick. Despite the sadness of the fact that two BFFs are fighting over a guy, we can't deny that their interactions have always been enjoyable even under those circumstances.
 Rufus goes to the loft to get the coat he had been hiding from Lily (lol!) and takes advantage of the chance to have a talk with his son. Dan makes it clear that he wants to keep the distance between him and Blair, since obviously after the kiss they can't be just friends.
He also shows us his book proposal titled "The Monarchy of Manhattan". He asks Rufus if he can undertake giving the book to the employee that would give it to his manager Alessandra.                                                                                                                             
Lola meets Nate and tries to learn more from him about Ivy. She is informed,thus, that he and Ivy had something going on and that she is supposedly in a trip to Europe. Lola uses Nate's phone to call Ivy. She asks Ivy why she is stealing her identity and whether something's been happening to her, which makes me like Charlie even more as her first instinct was to help Ivy. She, also, tells Nate about her working in a reenactment of Dan's book which prompts Nate to suggest that she invited Dan.                                
Dan and Monkey's play date really made it easier for Lola to actually invite him. Chuck who has his own motives for inviting him, erases the file of his proposal from his laptop. Chuck has found out about the proposal from Alessandra, who willingly revealed him her whole schedule to find time to meet him. Unfortunately, the date is canceled due to Dan going with Charlie to watch his book being mocked!

Back at the Waldorf's residence, Serena's innuendos and comments bring them back to the same fight. My favourite line:
Blair: I would like some more bacon. Crisp,please!
Serena: Why don't you just take mine, you don't seem to have  a problem doing that!                                                

Dorota is obviously fed up with the fighting that obviously had been happening a lot  these days and takes drastic measures.... She's locking them in the room. 

Serena and Blair talk more, with Blair constantly trying to convince Serena that there is nothing going on between her and Dan. Actually she hasn't seen him since Valentine's day. When Serena suggests that you avoid someone if you deny having feelings for him, Blair says that they should hang out together the three of them (is she even hearing what she's saying?!?). Serena refuses and Blair in order to prove to her that she doesn't have feelings for Dan, says she's going to spend the day with him. So, when Blair is leaving to meet Dan, Serena sarcastically suggests that they should take pictures...

Lola after having called Ivy to threaten her basically, she gives Nate his phone back. On her way to her job, she kisses Nate on the cheek as a goodbye. And I will never get tired saying how cute they are together...

Ivy informs Carol that her daughter knows the truth and that she has been in New York all this time. Cece comes in to the room interrupting their phone call. I don't know what motivated Ivy to stay with Cece, but whatever it was she helped her really much, making sure she wouldn't spend her last days alone.
Chuck continues his plan by visiting Alessandra and distracting her from reading Dan's proposal. And by the way, Alessandra is so unprofessional or so in love with Chuck. Either way I feel sorry for her. Chuck is crossing a line again, trying to take revenge from Dan for kissing Blair. That's so immature. Whenever Chuck is afraid of losing Blair, he starts doing things that would drift her further away.



Blair tracks down Dan from Gossip Girl and intends on spending the day with him. However, Dan isn't that willing to participate in her games and he practically asks her to leave. Of course, Blair wouldn't give up that easily. She asks Charlie to take a photo of them so that they would send this to Serena. I have to admit that Dan and Blair in this episode have been more entertaining than they had been the whole season. Blair's insistence on proving Serena wrong and Dan's newly found confidence was refreshing. Blair was also her old judgemental self as she didn't approve of the actors playing them.

 Lola's attempts to track down Ivy through Nate weren't as hidden as she thought, as Nate saw the call to Ivy. She promised she will explain him when they meet later for lunch.
Blair trying to prove more to herself than anybody else that she doesn't have feelings for Dan, she hangs out with him, even though it's pretty obvious that he doesn't want that. She tries to hold his hand in order to support him and insists that friends should feel weird together. Dan desperate to get away from Blair, asks Lola if she needs him. She ,then, asks whether the kiss that Dylan and Clair share in Dan's book is passionate or cute. Blair's response is that Clair and Dylan could never share a passionate kiss and that it would be just cute. Therefore, she asks Dan if he can show her. Dan denied but that didn't stop Blair from kissing him. Dan, after the short kiss, can't resist kissing her again...
Blair is clearly in denial of her feelings for Dan at this point but she can't sustain that denial for long.  We can see this by her insistence. She doesn't want to be there to prove Serena wrong, she is there mostly to prove herself wrong. In the last episode she responded to Dan's kiss and once again she was clearly affected. It's almost like their first kiss when she refused to go out of her room for a week. Except this time, her defensive mechanism, denial doesn't work like it did back then. Part of her wants to kiss Dan. She wants to hold his hand. And she is using friendship as an excuse to do that.
Serena walks in just in the wrong time. It's so sad that she has to witness yet another kiss.What's even more sad is that Blair's message has made her hope again. Of course, she is aware of Dan's feelings for Blair for a long time now, but she didn't know that Blair was in love with Dan too. All this time, she dismissed the suspicion that Blair had feelings for Dan. She just assumed that Blair kissed him to take revenge for the video or just because Dan was Serena's.It's not until now that she clearly sees that there is something more.
Fortunately for them, Nate is coming at the time Serena is leaving and asks Blair why Serena left so abruptly. Blair, then, figures out that she had seen the kiss and runs to get her.

Blair quickly goes outside to explain Serena the reason she was kissing Dan. Serena tells her that she can't stand watching her lying to herself and to all of them about  her feelings for Dan. And Blair's response makes it more clear than it has ever been since then that she is in denial.
"-I don't. I'm married. And I promised Chuck I'd wait for him.And there, there's the claws and the prenup.
-Oh come on we both know that if you have feelings for someone nothing else in the world matters...
-That's not true, we are not servants to our emotions, we can control them, supress them, stomp them out like bags..

Blair goes back to Dan needing her friend. But Dan is the one insisting this time. He doesn't want to be her friend. He wants her... And I think this time she starts to get it.

Just on the time Lola was ready to explain everything to Nate, she sees a picture at Gossip Girl of Ivy getting in the hospital. So, they quickly go. On a fun fact, just not many scenes ago, she didn't even know what Gossip Girl was... I'd like to believe that it was deliberate and it wasn't just another case of bad writing.
Meanwhile,everyone arrives at the hospital to see Cece. They are all surprised to learn that Ivy was with Cece all along. Does it seem wrong to anyone else how little anyone except Ivy cares about Cece's condition?

 Dan is really surprised when he finds out that Alessandra hasn't read his proposal (the look on his face is precious) and moreover that his book proposal is thought to be taken from a book.
Alessandra tells him that she can fix this if they give the editor the real proposal.

After failing to find the file in his laptop, he notices that Alessandra is wearing a scarf. More surprisingly, he understands exactly who gave this to her and why, which proves that Dan and Chuck's friendship, even if it was short-lived, was more profound than most people would assume.

Carol asks Ivy to go and doubts her pure motives. Ivy tells her about her grandmother who had exactly the same Cece had. And she is very convincing but we can recall many times she was convincing in the past even though we knew she wasn't honest. Ivy is a very skilled lier and has proved that. She has a unique way of getting out of trouble and surviving through the most difficult circumstances. The last time the show had such a skilled deceiver was when Jenny was around and I suspect Ivy is better.

When Lola left, Blair was more than willing to play the part of Clair. Therefore, she was forced to read parts of Dan's book that she hadn't before. Even though I can't tell what was worst Dan's book or the actor playing Serena, the scene they were playing made Blair finally face the fact that she is in love with him and that he loves her for who she is. Blair has many insecurities, and one of them is that she will never find someone who loves all of her sides and what scares her the most is the realisation that she turns the men in her life dark. Dan through his book, recognises the connection Chuck and Blair have and Blair's fear to discover her self beyond Chuck. Dan also shows her that he has always been there for her including the essay competition he went to, even though he wasn't even liking her back then. Blair is obviously touched and heads out to find Dan before the show is over.



Lola shows up to find Ivy.But surely she isn't expecting that her mother was a part of the scheme. It turns out she didn't even know she had a family besides her mother. Quite a shock for her and quite a shock for the rest of the gang, who didn't expect to hear that Ivy was a fake.

Dan confronts Chuck for messing with his career. Chuck then admits that he did this for Blair. Dan's response though is the greatest hit to Chuck, simply because it's true. Dan says that he didn't believe that he had a chance with Blair, but seeing his reaction he understands that he might have.

Serena follows Charlie to ask her to leave the hospital. S doesn't believe Ivy's excuses and her claiming that she feels them like a family. She expresses her belief that Ivy kept them in the dark of Cece's condition trying to take advantage of Cece. 

 The real Charlie in the meantime, wants to go out of the hospital. Her mother tries to explain her. Her excuse: She was stealing her money to protect her from the toxic family she's been hiding from her. Lola, however, doesn't believe her and makes a point that the only one who has ever lied to her was her mother. Bad day to be Charlie Rhodes for sure! Poor Charlie, learning that her identity has been stolen and moreover that the person behind the scheme is her mother. Worse what motivated her mother to conspire against her is money!

Blair comes to the hospital after she's been alerted by Dan. She confesses that she does have feelings for him and that she's been denying it all along.

 Blair, then, comments on her ability to pursue her denial, which we have to admit is admirable. When she says that this ability is awful, Dan's response is perhaps one of the sweetest things he could have said.
"No, it's not awful, it's you, how could it be awful?" 

 
 Right after, it's the first time we hear Blair use Humphrey not as an insult but as a declaration of love. We've heard her numerous times saying things like " I had to spend the whole day with Humphrey".

Blair tells Dan that whatever they have it has to wait.. Dan doesn't seem willing to wait. And just on the wrong time again Serena comes in. Her timing in this episode is impeccable. Actually since that time there hasn't been a Dan and Blair kiss or romantic gesture that she hasn't witnessed! (except for the very first kiss..)

 Blair admits that Serena has been right all along and that she has feelings for Dan. She also promises that this time she will stay away from him, not because she is in denial, but because their friendship is more important. 

 
 Serena is moved by B's words and appreciates the fact that she is honest this time. So, since they both have feelings, she gives them her blessing and declares that she is not willing to be another hinder to their relationship.

Charlie passes in front of them. Serena asks her to go for coffee to get to know each other. But Charlie doesn't want to have anything to do with her new-found family. Who can blame her? She's had just met them, she obviously needs sometime to absorb all the information.

Blair calls Chuck and asks him to stop trying to make Dan's life difficult. She tells him that she is the one to blame for what happened and that he shouldn't blame Dan for her confusion. His response is equally sweet as Dan's in the previous scene: How could I ever be mad at you? When Chuck asks her if her feelings have changed about him waiting for her marriage to be over, she admits that she is not sure. I can see why Chuck is intimidated by that. Even when she was getting married to another man, she wouldn't stop expressing her love every chance she could. Now, she doesn't.

Chuck conforms with Blair's request and sends Dan's real proposal to Alessandra. This episode really made me question Alessandra's intelligence and I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't understood yet what happened.

 Cute Lola and Nate scene again!After everything that happened Lola has no one to turn to other than Nate. And Nate surely enjoys having that role. 

Blair goes to meet the others after calling Chuck. Dan tells her that Chuck has posted Alessandra the proposal, and he, certainly, has understood the important role Blair played on that part. He is about to go, while Blair wants to stay to support Serena.

Blair wants to kiss him and she fights with herself about whether to do it or not. She finally does and Serena is again lucky enough to witness the whole scene. Poor Serena we can see that she's clearly hurt... 

Chuck's attempt to leave Dan alone won't last much time as Gossip Girl/Georgina sent him the email that proves that Dan has sent the video.
Chuck didn't want to let Dan and Blair have a relationship before, let alone now that he has proof that Dan has been the sender of the video. He is given the excuse he needed now to intervene and try to break them up.

 
This is the time for the family to say the last goodbye to Cece. It was sad to see Cece in that state and certainly her manipulative ways and frequent interferences will be missed. 

The episode ends with Ivy calling Georgina. We can certainly expect that when Ivy and Georgina team up, things will get interesting to say at least. What did you think of the episode?