Hush, Momma's schemin': "Just so happens that Epperly's perfect partner also owns the perfect hotel to host tonight's kickoff party. Two birds, one Bass!" Right. Like this is the one time getting Chuck to screw somebody else isn't going to knock her off her rocker. I mean, I am so into this Era of Chuck & Blair, I think it might be my favorite thing this show's ever done with this relationship, but it's asking a lot of herself.

"Bedrooms in the back, kitchen's in the front, '90s rock relics everywhere!" The tour was short, you see, because this is a loft. In which two mild children and their wuss of a father couldn't manage to carry on and keep calm for more than five minutes despite their collective lack of backbone. Clearly large enough for both Ben's checkered history and Dan's ten-ton crate of bullshit.

Ben ducks his head and acts like Vanya and thanks everybody a million times, and Dan's just like, "Don't look me in the eye. I have to yell at my dad now." So Ben scatters and Dan's like, "Serena's stalker?" Which it took me like the entire episode to decode Dan's problem here, but it actually makes sense: He was not around for Juliet, like at all, so the whole thing of Juliet is for him metonymic of Ben. He doesn't watch this show, he lives inside and provides a moral compass for this show, if you see what I'm saying: It wasn't Jules that kidnapped and ethered and suicide his sister-lover, it was Ben via Juliet.

Which, maybe this is the usual unconsidered, unexamined Life Of Dan, or maybe Dan's just letting jealousy drive the old jalopy of his heart, but this does make way more sense than it did live, when I was just like, "Wow, Dan's even more full of shit than usual." Which took me by surprise, because I'm kind of in love with him this year, but don't get too clever: He goes Full Humphrey this week, for the first time in a while, and it is gross. Anyway, Rufus tells him this was Serena's idea, and Dan of course shuts his trap so fast his hair wiggles.

Poor lonely Eric's sittin' over there on a big old rock thing looking like Romeo's monologue when Damien comes running up -- huffin' and puffin' like Ben chased him the whole way from last week -- and says he has to break their date. (You know Eric's getting it in the teeth this week when his first line of dialogue is a sweet and shiny "I already got the tickets and the ginger-sesame-caramel popcorn!") Damien, who is being kind of sincere but also kind of scarily socio, is like, "We can't see Country Strong, I gotta 23-skidoo! Ben Donovan threatened to... No, I can't tell you."