'Gossip Girl' Recap: "Monstrous Ball"

So “Gossip Girl” aired tonight on The CW and we are now officially halfway through the final season. The show continues to be terrible, but dare I say that I think there might actually be hope that this is a turning point? I know, I know, it sounds crazy to me too and maybe I’m just tired, but as bad as that episode was, it was better than the other bad episodes this season. Does that make sense? Just go with it…

“Monstrous Ball” brought a return to Cotillion on the Upper East Side and reminded me of one of my all time favorite episodes, “High Society.” As much as I wish I could just recap that episode, I’ll go ahead and focus on this one. Sage, who is still in high school (pause to shudder at how gross Nate is for dating her) and she’s excited about her Cotillion until she finds out that Steven invited Serena. Although, technically Serena invited herself because she was saying how wonderful hers was, but clearly she forgot all the punching that went on (let’s pause again in honor of Sebastian Stan’s flawless portrayal of Carter Baizen).

Okay, getting off track again. Sage decided she was going to set out to destroy Serena so after originally turning her down, Sage went to Blair and agreed to wear her dress if Blair agreed to help her take down Serena. Also, Blair decided thanks to a really disgusting conversation with Dan (to quote an awesome friend, “I hate your everything, Humphrey”), that she was going to embrace her status as provocative and design a sexy dress. But then somewhere along the way after warning Lily not to let Steven propose to Serena (did I forget to mention that plot point? Is anyone reading this anyway?), Blair decided that she didn’t want to hurt Serena and the two made up for like 2.5 seconds (Seriously, it happened so fast that I thought maybe I blacked out and missed a whole chunk of episode).

But Sage had another plan. You see Dan and his terrible hair decided that he wanted Blair back so first he published a nice Chuck chapter of his book and then he offered to be Blair’s date and he was basically trying to worm his way back into her good graces, even though Blair literally forgot he existed the second Chuck walked into the room (Suck it, Humphrey). But Georgina wanted the Blair chapter of the book and she was willing to blackmail Dan with the stolen sex tape (is it a sex tape when it’s on a cell phone?) to get what she wanted. However, Sage overheard them and then managed to steal Georgina’s phone and then set up the video to play while she was “coming out” with Nate. Needless to say Serena was embarrassed, Steven was horrified, Blair slapped Dan (winning) and Sage was completely smug about the whole thing. That was also the end of Blair and Serena’s truce and rightfully so considering Serena only did that to hurt Blair.

Here’s the thing though. Serena and Dan have both hit bottom. Blair has hit bottom professionally (her mother is coming home and she is not happy) and Chuck is also not doing well because Bart outsmarted him and turned Lily against him (I still do not understand any part of this storyline). Nate broke up with Sage because she was “too high school” for him and Georgina was actually pretty happy with life in general, but the point is that it’s time for everyone to fix their lives so we can get to the happy endings that had better be coming over the next five episodes.

As always, my favorite moment of the episode was when Chuck and Blair basically affirmed that they would wait forever for each other, if that was what it took. Serena and Dan got to have a little moment too, which I’m sure their fans appreciated. Oh, and Rufus and Ivy were in the episode, if anyone cares (No one? That’s what I thought). So here’s hoping that the next few episodes actually give fans something to look forward to or enjoy or at least not make us want to throw things at our TVs. That would be a great start.