Nate confesses immediately to Queller, without prelude. She points out that his family is totally this close to becoming the Coopers, so why would a good person fuck it up, but also that he is totally boring and useless in every way, which cancels out even the fact that he is a ridiculously nice kid. "From what I can see, you always seem to be toeing the line of mediocrity, Nathaniel. Your grades are average at best, almost as though you're not committed to school or your future." He's like, "I am not committed to school or my future, so that makes sense. I am quietly going more insane than any person has ever gone, and I do thank you for noticing, but mostly my girlfriend finally slept with me and is now treating me like shit, which makes me feel dirty, so I have to play out these escalating romantic scenarios until I actually blow something up, but first I thought I would throw myself on the grenade of a pool party, because when it comes down to it I am deeply unoriginal. Punishment please." She grills him for like five seconds about even the basics of this confession, and he produces the key, but its ribbon has gone missing. For Queller, that's a key point of evidence, weirdly, so she asks him to describe the ribbon, and he can't, so she's like, "I AM NOT KIDDING RIGHT NOW."

A smiling Blair approaches Vanessa, who says to fuck right off and not even mention the tape, because it's all this big secret thing that makes her super-special and interesting and gives her a toehold into the Dan and Serena world that she just cannot seem to tear herself away from, and she brattily says that this tape is going nowhere, no how, no way, because her intention is to suck as long and as hard as it takes to get her ass murdered by Blair. "I wasn't going to grovel, and the fact that you even went there makes it clear you have no idea who you're dealing with." Vanessa actually scores a palpable and hilarious hit: "What are you gonna do to me, blackball me from eating yogurt on the Met steps?" That was tight!