Dan comes in all crazed and hurried, wearing his school tie, and Vanessa offers him a red-eye (the caffeine obsession begins!), but I don't know what's up his ass. School starts in like four hours, and he has first period free anyway, so maybe he's in a hurry to meet up with Serena, who's had trouble scheduling him, and frankly I don't know what's up my ass either because why am I even trying, but so anyway he thanks V for the coffee and apologizes to Sarah and V both for yakking their ears off last night. "He tends to ramble, as you'll get to know," mentions V (which again: obvious, and more about marking your territory than actually adding anything substantive to the conversation, but Dan did the same thing with Nate awhile back, so whatever), and he nods: he rambles. It's like the one cute thing about him. Besides the other cute things about him, I suppose.

Sarah puts a sweet 'n creepy hand on his arm and assures them both that she's a great listener, "as he'll get to know." And I love it, it's so true, because she wants all the information, because she is crazy soup: not just stuff for the S agenda, but anything at all. She wants B's shit, she wants Little J's shit, she wants it all. You never know what will come in handy when you are the Devil Herself. "Any new developments?" No, Jenny and her boyfriend are still inseparable, and Jenny has spent two weeks becoming quote "even more insufferable." Vanessa begs him to give her a break, like we all are: "Asher's her first love!" Dan corrects that it's "infatuation," not love, which is pretty much not his call, and Sarah works both sides of the equation, gesturing toward her friend Vanessa and accreting sisterhood girl power: "Yeah, but to a 15-year-old girl, I mean, there really isn't a difference." Vanessa nods at her for the assist, and Dan concedes the point. Except the biggest current or past 15-year-old girl in the room is, of course, eternally Dan, so maybe he shouldn't give up so easily.

Case in point: Vanessa mentions how it took Dan exactly one second at a ninth-grade birthday party to fall in love-or-infatuation-who-can-say with Serena van der Woodsen, and he counters that yes, but it took him two years obsessing over it before anything happened. Which, I do love this knight-errant side of his personality, like, "If I sit in my bedroom quietly yearning and not masturbating or eating or sleeping for two years, I will earn my lady. If I write her name one thousand times in this diary, she will be mine. If I change the name in every song to 'Serena,' it will finally happen." That's the awesomeness of Dan.