Outside, check in hand, Damien gets beaten up once again by Ben Donovan, who warns him to stay away from Lily and the usual litany of warnings, because this time he actually will kill Damien. He yanks the check out of his hands and he's like, "Don't let these cheekbones and soft girly voice fool you, I am a hard bastard. I got the Captain beaten up in jail and I will hire ex-cons so fast to kill you." Um... Hands up if you can remember why that happened. I have encyclopedic recall of this show and I can't remember, is how dumb it was. Something about Juliet dating Nate, was it? Ah well. I still miss Juliet. (And Tripp.)

"I always knew you read too much Shakespeare to be sane," Damien says for some reason, and then he totally goes, "Bygones," and then Gossip Girl says some more incomprehensible shit about the Rolling Stones, and then guess what: Vanessa Abrams, little pitcher/big ears, finally with a haircut that makes sense, overhearing the whole thing and seeing her chance to get back into the crew by ousting its newest member. Her like one move.

(Maybe she'll try to have a threesome with Ben and Serena, because not only is that her other move but it's obviously something everybody would try, if you had a shot at that. They should just make her do that all the time, that would be awesome. Or, or, she could be the Chuck from the books -- since Jenny is already kind of the Vanessa from the books -- and she could get a pet monkey and turn gay. And then she could finally be with Dan. Everybody wins!)

Even for Nate, this whole "getting Raina to the party" thing is going pretty slow. Chuck shares a manful handshake with Kidd and then calls Nate, who is nearly in tears about his inability to Be Places with Raina in tow, and Chuck tells him it's fine... But really, back at their apartment, it's because Raina has already decided that she wants to be with Nate forever and ever, through all kinds of weather and in all kinds of places. Starting with the butt.

The van der Woodsens are just sitting down to pretend to eat birthday cake when Chuck shows back up and they can all talk about their many different masterful schemes and worries in the wake of the party. Serena loves the part about Rufus threatening to clobber Russell Thorpe, and giggles, "So sad I missed all of this! And did anyone else see Vanessa, or am I having ether flashbacks?" Hilarious on many levels; I love that Serena would firstly assume that Vanessa's utterly random appearance for five seconds presaged some kind of mental event and secondly decide that her overdose is now a hilarious in-joke, but even better is the response: "Probably the latter? Although I did notice Blair wearing two different shoes." This episode was so insane and the party was so insane and these people are so insane, that they can sit around saying this shit and not just assume there's a gas leak in the kitchen or something.