Draft:All the Pretty Sources

"All The Pretty Sources" is the eighth episode of the fifth season of The CW television series Gossip Girl. Written by Austin Winsberg and directed by Cherie Nowlan, the episode aired November 21, 2011. The plot centers around the release of the list of all the tips that have been submitted to Gossip Girl over the years during Blair and Louis' wedding shower.

The episode was viewed by 1.48 million people and earned a 0.7/2 Nielsen rating/share in the 18–49 demographic.

Plot
Louis (Hugo Becker) returns from the trip he was on in the previous episode, in time to attend the wedding shower being thrown for him and Blair (Leighton Meester) by Serena (Blake Lively). Blair is confident Serena will throw the perfect shower because she knows Blair so well but Louis wonders if Blair's friends really have her best interests at heart.

At the Empire, Dan (Penn Badgley) and Chuck (Ed Westwick) try to avoid thinking about why they were not invited to the shower by watching movies, eating, smoking, and drinking. Dan gets more and more drunk and obsesses over why he wasn’t invited. Chuck advises him to be a man of action.

At the Spectator office, Nate’s (Chace Crawford) grandfather William van der Bilt (James Naughton) gives Diana Payne (Elizabeth Hurley) an ultimatum: make the Spectator and therefore Nate, a success in three days, or he will fire her. Nate obtains a list of every tip that has ever been sent into Gossip Girl and who sent it. Nate shares the list of sources with Serena and his plan to publish them in order to take down Gossip Girl. Serena warns him not to publish because she has sent in many tips herself. Diana overhears Nate’s conversation and pushes to publish the list immediately. But when she realizes Nate is a good man because has never sent in a tip to Gossip Girl, she changes her mind.

Meanwhile, at Rufus (Matthew Settle) and Lily’s (Kelly Rutherford) apartment, Max (Brian J. Smith) shows up looking for Ivy (Kaylee DeFer). To keep up her ruse, Ivy lies and claims her real name is Charlie and her mother forced her to go by Ivy so people would not know she was a Rhodes and treat her differently. Ivy offers Max $50,000 to leave and start his own restaurant in Portland. He agrees but as he is leaving, he recognizes Carol Rhodes in a photo. He returns to his apartment and looks at a program for a play that shows Ivy listed as a different person from the real Charlie Rhodes.

Serena, Blair’s minions, and Lily conspire to make Blair think the shower will be a casual affair with Greek food and a denim dress code. This leads Blair to believe her friends do not have her best interests in mind. Louis spots the list of sources that Nate sent to Serena and publishes the list to the Spectator when Serena leaves the room.

Blair arrives at the shower and realizes the theme is perfect, a mashup of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Tiffany & Co. While Serena is giving a toast in honor of Blair, the guests start buzzing about the list of Gossip Girl sources. Serena assumes Nate and Diana published the list. Nate denies he had a part in it and confronts Diana at the Spectator.

Dan, drunk and taking Chuck’s advice to be a man of action, crashes the shower. He confronts Blair, demanding to know why he was not invited. Chuck tries to stop him and eventually gets Dan to leave the party. Chuck can see Dan is clearly in love with Blair but Dan denies it.

Blair realizes it was Louis who published Gossip Girl’s sources and confronts him. He admits to publishing the list to make Blair see how bad her friends are. Blair tells Louis to leave so she can think about the future of their relationship. Serena reveals to Blair that Chuck was not crashing the party but trying to stop Dan from making a scene.

Max reveals to Ivy he knows she is lying and she offers to give him the $50,000 to leave her alone. She gives him the diamond ring she won at the party as a down-payment. Max apologizes to Serena for standing her up and asks her for another chance. He then calls Ivy and demands $500,000 to keep quiet.

Diana resigns from the Spectator to cover for William who makes Nate editor-in-chief.

The episode closes with Blair paying a visit to Chuck at the Empire, admitting she knows he has been a good person.

Production
In the wedding shower scenes, Blake Lively wore a printed minidress by Mary Katrantzou and Leighton Meester wore an orange Dior cocktail dress that costume designer Eric Daman listed as one of his ten favorite looks ever worn by Blair.

Music featured in the episode included Me and My Brother by Francisco The Man, Somebody I Used To Know by Gotye, Swell Window by Zee Avi, The Bad in Each Other by Feist. Two Cousins by Slow Club, and Up Up Up by Givers.

Ratings
"All the Pretty Sources" first aired on the CW on Monday, November 21, 2011 and was watched by 1.48 million people. It earned a 0.7 Nielsen rating and a 2 share in the 18-49 demo, a rating increase of 0.1 from the previous episode, "The Big Sleep No More." The episode earned the highest average viewership of the season to date.

Critical response
The episode received generally favorable reviews. Steve Marsi at TVFanatic praised the effective use of the classic Gossip Girl formula in which all the characters gather at a party where the drama unfolds, with all the characters in "rare form." Jessica Pressler at New York Magazine's Vulture praised the character moments for Dan and Blair, highlighting Dan's moping about his status on the best-seller list and Blair's escalating panic over the assumed casualness of her shower. However, both critics highlighted the how implausible it was that Louis could figure out how to publish the list of sources to the Spectator website.