Eric shows up and tells them that they are not on the list, there is no list, because Serena has entered a 72-hour lockdown. No Lily, but also no Eric and no Blumphrey. Just Serena, that one magazine she's been trying to read all season, and all the diaphanous scarves and toga dresses you can stuff in a giant purse. Blair explains that Juliet was the perp in both the OD and the coke pictures, but Eric is unconvinced: "Whatever screwy series of events got her in the front door, she's here now. And she's getting the help she's probably needed for a long time."

I love how she went from a suicidal drug addict to just, you know, troubled generally. This is like Girl, Interrupted where she never figures out why they put her in the mental hospital and nobody actually knows why she's there so the whole time they're like, "It's because you're... You know, like how you are?" Diagnosis: Serena. Nobody would turn down free therapy, you know what I mean? But really, three-day radio silence so some doctor can say, "You have stunningly textbook abandonment and approval issues centering on men because of your dad, and thanks to your rockstar mom that's also twirking with some serious hypersexualization from a young age, you have a codependent relationship with a bulimic prone to addictive behaviors which borders on the sexual, and guess what: You're going to spend your entire life being objectified as a sexually attractive woman, which means the entire world is working overtime to make you crazy anyway. Suck it up."

In the best storyline of the entire episode, Anne and Nate Archibald talk about parties. That's literally the entire storyline: Talking about parties, deciding what parties are worth, are parties better than this thing or that thing, what would you give up for parties, what would you give parties up for. Parties: Good or Evil. Parties: Fact or Fiction. Nate is pro-parties, his mother is also pro-parties, but there's a curveball that makes this conversation a little bit more surprising than you might think.

See, there are many parties. (As Nate points out, it's the holiday season!) But Anne cannot go to the parties, because her drug-addict kidnapper of an embezzling husband is or is not getting out of prison. Not even Lily will deign. So between many parties and the Captain, which cannot exist simultaneously, Anne has to pick one. At first she picks the Captain, but then just at the most ironic moment she picks many parties. Parties wins again.