Vanessa spots Jenny and wonders for a second why she's even at the ball, but then decides to tell her she's breaking up with Nate, but still doesn't tell her about the Purloined Letter or its girly Archibald handwriting. "I never meant to hurt you. Please believe that." J swallows and V walks off, and meanwhile Penelope is like, "Where the eff is Vanessa? How long does that subway thingy take?" They spot her finally, walking up to Nate, and then Vanessa becomes amazing. Not only what she says, but the way she says it, the perfect modulation of her voice, the big fat tear running down her cheek, I mean: she got me. Jessica Szzyygy deserves so much better than the old Vanessa; I hope this is a sign of greatness to come:

"I need tell you something. And while I do, I need for you not to say anything." Nate, who never says anything ever and can barely follow simple linear conversations, agrees avidly. "I've um... I've never... Felt this way about anyone before. Never. And it made me do something that I can't believe I did." She pulls out the letter and hands it over with the intensely sad, just brutal tears pouring down. "Jenny never got your letter. That's why you never heard from her again. I took it before she saw it," she admits, as grossed out by herself as we've always been, voice cracking: "And I'm sorry."

You know, actually this is not the first time that I have been swayed by the Abrams. The party where the lights went out, that was well-written because you didn't know how much she was giving up until the last scene, in Brooklyn, so you just thought it was drama until she told Dan about Nate's whole prostitution scheme with the Duchess, and then it was like, "Vanessa is kind of awesome right now." The difference being, of course, that I hoped it was the first and last time, because she's fun to hate. And then they made Chuck like her, which is central to anybody on this show making it through my metal detector, and I got worried. But now, I mean, she's just acting the shit of this episode, and you see the chinks in the armor and the sheer amount of energy it takes to be Vanessa Abrams all the time, and how much moral perfection she demands of herself in the pursuit of being superior to everybody, like, I thought it was sort of viciously brilliant that she did such a horrible thing. But to see how totally fucking rocked she feels by it after the fact, and how much she really wants this but is willing to sacrifice it in the pursuit of being the good person she pretends to be... That's well done, of course, but soo much of the credit goes to Jessica Scabran8&2cadabra. In fact, I am going to go learn her last name right this second, in honor of this scene. It is Szohr. The Szohr Award for Awesomeness Ex Nihilo goes to Jessica Szohr.