"Eric has always been so serious and grown-up," Lily explains about her horrible depressing party theme. "This will be his last grasp at childhood." Honey, no. He had no childhood because you are deranged and because he comes from a long line of ladies who treat every occasion like they're Leni Riefenstahl and Edie Sedgwick at the same time. Back with Chuck, Lily discusses their scheme some more and then just as she's worrying about Russell taking the bait, of course, the second she's saying it, Russell calls.

Magazine, opera, blogs, presents, art history, crazy crazy crazy. Even Dan is less enjoying himself and more worried that she might literally expire like the dog at the end of Stone Fox. "Sleep is for the weak! You're only here to avoid Ben and Serena!" He's like, No, actually now I'm just waiting to see what happens to you in terms of neurology. The second Serena shows up with Eric for her help with their Damien scheme, Dan's out the door: "This just went from Women On The Verge to Saw II. I don't like gore porn, really." Serena herself notes that B is strung out, and B just laughs. "A takedown only takes two minutes! Tell me the plot points."

Raina's all, "Look at the lake! We don't have that in Chicago. Or kissing, or corn dogs, or karate, or flowers, or trees, or sunlight, or the Gregorian calendar." Nate's just like, "Silly, that's not karate! It's tai chi!" They show each other their hidey-holes about how they were always having to do shit like hang out in the Vanderbilt castles and eat gold-encrusted unicorn fritters and chase Ortolan buntings across the White House lawn every secret annual Freemason's Day and whatever, so then he teaches her to ice skate because they never invented that in Chicago either, because it is an urban wasteland. It's just homeless people, a giant pit and some tumbleweeds and that big silver bean, and that's it.

While Dan's downstairs getting a sandwich, Blair pulls Penelope off gift duty and puts her on drug deal duty! Any old minion that would be kind of crass, but it's Penelope so it's fine. "All the details are on a purple sticky note on my computer," she explains, and Dan comes back in time for a suuuuper cute scene.

"I wanted to tell you that... You were right... About that thing." Oh? Now which thing was that? "I, Blair Waldorf, need Dan Humphrey's help." As a friend and peer, not as an underling. "Asthma finger Verlaine malingering," she mushmouths in a way that would make S proud. Ahem. As my friend and peer, not an underling. Eventually she gets there, and then the pretty lady pulls her out of there so she's just like, "It's all on my desk! Just start!" and the first thing he sees? Penelope's purple Post-It with the drug deal directions. Of course, since you can't really question anything the van der Woodsens do at this point, because they are bizarre pretty aliens from Planet Money, he's like "Ten crates of tulips for an 18-year-old boy's birthday? Absolutely, why not."