After Ruthie runs back upstairs, Annie just stands there, staring at the stairwell like an idiot. Eventually, RevCam comes in and walks up behind an oblivious Annie. She's startled when she finally notices him there, because she's an idiot. Eric just returned home from dropping Dopey and Plot Contrivance at the airport. They're on their way to New York to visit Columbia and to look for apartments. Insert hysterical laughter here. Eric asks Annie why she's staring at the stairs. She asks Eric if he knew about Ruthie's Marine pen pal. He didn't. Do these two ever have actual conversations with their children, or do they just lecture and stalk? Annie is concerned. I know you might be thinking that, because of the way Ruthie was dressed and the whole anonymous nature of the internet, Annie is perhaps worried that Ruthie might actually be talking to somebody with rather inappropriate designs on her, like some child pornographer or Roman Polanski or something. But no, that's not it. She's worried that Ruthie is telling this Marine embarrassing stories about the Camdens. How is it that I, a single gay man, have better parenting instincts than these two? Annie asks Eric why they can't ask Ruthie to let them read her emails. Eric manages to say, with a completely straight face, "Because she has the privilege of privacy in our home and we don't read her mail, coming or going, unless she asks us to?" The best part is Stephen Collins's delivery. He says it as though Eric has never said those words in that order in his entire life. And he probably hasn't. Annie says that the need to convince Ruthie to tell them what's in her emails. RevCam declines to participate in Annie's latest nosy plan, so she stomps off by herself to make sure that Ruthie isn't embarrassing them all by telling Sgt. Morgan how her brother is pretending that he hasn't married some woman and how her older sisters share a brain.