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'The Vampire Diaries' recap: Lost causes, awkward nudity, and dead girls, man.
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"Vampire Diaries" fans! There you are. I'm sorry that this recap is so late; it won't happen again. Or maybe it will. I have no idea.
I'll admit right off the bat -- this wasn't my all-time favorite episode, but thanks to a few awesome moments at the end, and one big twist, I was definitely left satisfied. Cue up those DVRs, if they haven't eaten the episode in the days I've been amiss.
Previously on "The Vampire Diaries": Elijah was here, and things were better. Simon Camden grew a beard. Matt and Jeremy had a bro-off. Caroline and Tyler got naked together. Stefan cried beautiful tears.
8:01 - Nina Dobrev is as good as ever in this episode, but man, is Elena annoying. She still believes in Stefan because she got a creepy mouth-breather phone call? Let's all remember that while we saw Stefan's man-tear covered angstface, she didn't. She just knows that she got a phone call from somewhere in the vicinity of Stefan. For all she knows, it could've been a pocket dial. It could've been Klaus.
8:02 - And that, viewers of The CW, is what a man looks like when he doesn't shave his chest. I know. You may be shocked, perhaps a bit confused. Your feelings are valid. Talk to a trusted adult.
By the way, why does Alaric sleep with his pants unbuttoned but his boots done up? So many mysteries in Mystic Falls.
8:03 - In the Smoky Mountains, TN, Stefan is acting as Klaus's pack mule. They probably picked Simon Camden for this role because he's super tiny and Paul Wesley can walk around with him slung over his shoulders like a super-bloody, super Camdeny scarf.
Our wanderers come upon the wolfpack, where everyone wears flannel and nobody washes their hair.
8:05 - Add Mayor Lockwood to the list of morning drinkers in Mystic Falls. "If you're going to bring a girl home, I wish she'd have the tact not to sneak out like a prostitute," she says. Oh, so your teenage son's high-school hookup is supposed to stick around for coffee and morning chit-chat? Please.
"She snuck out?" Tyler asks. Um... did you not notice the lack of hot blonde vampire in your bed this morning? Glad he cleared up the prostitute thing, though.
8:06 - MATT! That's all I have to say for like, the next 10 minutes. Here, have some gratuitousness.
Just kidding. Hasn't Jeremy learned that
Also, for the record. Words Jeremy and Matt could use instead of "man": Bro, dude, homie, bud, pal, kid. (Note: these synonyms vary in levels of douchiness.)
8:08 - I feel like it's noteworthy that Tyler said some werewolves like to transform "where they can enjoy it." Are there werewolf rippers?
8:09 - I also feel like Ric kind of looks like he smells bad.
8:10 - Which brings us back to the wolfpack, where Klaus is giving a lecture that goes something like: "I am the most fascinating of all of the fascinating creatures. Don't you find me fascinating?"
Ray wakes up, and they find an extremely attractive human amongst the werewolves. This guy is the dumbest, okay? Why is he hanging out with a bunch of werewolves, waiting for them to enjoy the transformation? Werewolves kill people! We've seen it happen before! He is just so dumb.
8:15 - I love, love, love the scene at the Mystic Grill between Matt and Tyler. Sure, Matt is kind of in a bad mood, but he's still so nice that he offers to hold Tyler through the pain. "Do you... uh... is this like the kind of thing you NEED another person for?"
Okay, so he's not eloquent about it, but still. Tyler tried to kill him when he wolfed out last season, and he's still down to help. That's why I love him. Remember when Stefan stole the love of his life and he was the king of grin-and-bear-it? Damon could learn from him.
In other news, the child-shooting sheriff is doing something right for once and dropping vervain in the Mystic Grill coffee. She should be pumping it through the town water supply, but we're taking baby steps toward competence.
8:17 - HRG looks so naked without his glasses! I feel a little uncomfortable, like I'm seeing his soft underbelly or something equally gross-sounding.
"She's a vampire, Carol. We do what we have to do." Apparently Bill is the baddest of all the vampire hunters. That's why Carol has to bring him in to kill the pretty tiny blonde vampire.
8:18 - Seriously, Alaric looks like he smells. Elena, meanwhile, seems like she's in an awfully good mood. She's practically skipping as she taunts Ric about his terrible-life-trauma-induced alcoholism.
Look, he's got brass knuckles in his history teacher knapsack! It's almost like Alaric is a vampire hunter.
Okay, so I understand the appeal of a water scene when it comes to like... good TV and great promo photos and tumblr-worthy images. But it annoys me that in order to get to that water scene, Damon had to launch Elena off a hill into the river. That shove was not friendly.
8:19 - Meanwhile, Simon Camden's transformation isn't looking too pretty. Also, I want to give Klaus some Chapstick.
And the question is raised once again: Why does Klaus want Stefan around? I thought it was interesting last week, when Klaus was annoyed that Stefan reminded him that he's not there of his own free will, but because he's "indentured." He seems to want Stefan to
I would like to commend David Gallagher for an exceptional performance, because he really is fantastic in this episode as he slowly loses control of his faculties. But now that I've done that, I'm going to go back to calling him Simon Camden.
8:21 - "If I get out of the water, you're going to make me go home," Elena whines. I guess the "SO I'M GOING TO STAY IN THE WATER FOREVER!!!!!!" is supposed to be implied?
As annoying as Elena is right now, I do love the flirtatious antagonism in this scene. They get madder... they get closer... there are chests heaving.. there's eye contact made... aaaand he caves.
Only Damon would refer to their first consensual kiss as "that whole deathbed kissy thing."
8:22 - Simon Camden runs away and bites Stefan. At first, with the two neat bite holes in Stefan's arm, it looks like the kind of vampire bite you see in old Dracula movies. I'm sure it'll start oozing and growing veins and decaying pretty soon though.
8:23 - Important fact: Elena's hair is naturally wavy. This means that over the last two seasons, in the midst of everything, she has always taken the time to straighten it. Hey, every girl needs a little me-time.
8:23 - Klaus is going to have to feed Stefan! Oh, the gifs that will ensue.
In general, in life, tears of blood are never a good sign.
8:29 - "Let's skip the part where we pretend we don't know about the vampires in this town." A lot of people on Twitter were sort of celebrating Tyler's monster coming-out party, which reminded me of something Candice Accola said to me almost a year ago, when Caroline was going through her initial transformation.
"It's actually a very, very human story," she said in our first interview. "Look at it this way -- there's a point in your life where there's something about you that your parents don't agree with. Not that this was Caroline's choice or her own doing, but now she has a lifestyle her parents don't agree with. Is there still going to be that unconditional love that a mother's supposed to have for her child? Is that going to still exist? It's not just a vampire story. It's a growing-up story."
The same certainly applies to Tyler. Now it's just a matter of whether Mama Mayor still loves him when she knows his secret.
8:30 - Simon Camden attacks Damon on their nature walk. I think Simon Camden has been practicing his weepier face for years, because he's really freaking good at the whole growly "Rawr!!" thing.
Quick thinking with the vervain grenade, Elena. I bet you always know which Angry Bird to use to take down the sturdiest structures.
8:31 - Overheard at my apartment, from my roommate's general direction: "How does Matt have this much storage space in his double-wide?" Don't worry, I reminded her that he has no annoying roommates taking up unnecessary space.
The family photo is killing me. Little Matty misses his pill popping big sister, okay??
Zach Roerig is really good in this scene -- this is a great episode for him, acting-wise -- but I'm sad to admit that Steven R. McQueen isn't really selling me. He's delivering his lines like he's reading off a cue card.
Sorry. I don't mean to be the one to snap Jeremy's neck, but the emotion in this scene feels one-sided.
8:33 - If Simon Camden doesn't get a million acting gigs after this "Vampire Diaries" job, something is wrong with the system. He's great.
8:37 - The hybrids look like zombies! I know Joseph Morgan is a big fan of "The Walking Dead," but this may be taking it just one step too far.
I bet the transformation isn't working because that human guy whose blood they're drinking is infecting them all with his incredible dumbness.
8:37 - Of course Elena trips, because Elena is currently the hot non-virgin girl in the B-horror movie, and that girl always trips.
8:38 - I might be alone in this, but I'm not a huge fan of the way Tyler revealed his "condition" to his mom. The idea of him dragging her all the way through the woods and down the stairs and locking her in the cellar -- which, by the way, didn't do much good when Matt and Caroline were trapped in there with him last season -- all the while yelling at her... just felt disingenuous to me.
That said, Michael Trevino does fantastic work in his transformation scenes, even when we only get a brief glimpse, so it's always cool to get to see Tyler wolf-out a bit.
8:40 - Hold on one freaking minute. You mean to tell me that Simon Camden turned into a wolf to threaten Elena, ran off chasing Damon, then turned back into Simon Camden, then found his clothes and got dressed before going in for the kill on Damon again... all while rabid and bleeding from every orifice?
No. No! This should be naked fighting. I am being denied naked fighting right now!
As if sensing my aggravation, Stefan grabs the heart right out of Simon Camden's chest, through his back. That never gets less gross.
He insists to Damon that he didn't call Elena, but he's a terrible liar, and he's about to cry right now. "Why don't you get her home. See if you can keep her there this time," he snaps. Um, does he really just expect Damon to babysit forever? (I mean, we all know Damon will, but how entitled Stefan acts! Rude.)
8:45 - "Are you a sucker for a lost cause or what?" Alaric asks Elena, cutting the tension on a moment where they had a little more chemistry than I'm comfortable admitting. He's right, though. She is a sucker for a lost cause. It's getting annoying. Still, she basically invites him to be an honorary Gilbert (so he's totally doomed now!), and he accepts, deciding that he's keeping the ring. He has a reason to live!
8:46 - "Can you just give me a minute to appreciate that you're not dead?" Oh, come on, Elena. This is Damon we're talking about. "Appreciating" him will take far longer than a minute.
8:46 - MATT! He brought Jeremy beer, proving that all Donovans don't care that Jeremy is young and impressionable.
Matt says that he appreciated the way that Jeremy understood Vicki. "You really got her. You got her better than I did most of the time." Perhaps that's because they were usually both tripping on the same hallucinogen?
I remain creeped out by Jeremy pawing all over Vicki's flimsy tank top.
"Matty," she says, when she shows up in the kitchen. Okay, I'm sad now. "I can come back. Help me come back." The single tear just really gets me, okay? Kayla Ewell is so ridiculously pretty in this scene.
...And so is Malese Jow. Hi, Anna. How come Vicki comes on little cat feet, but Anna has to announce her presence by shattering a window? They're going to have to fix that on a teacher's salary and/or a busboy's wages, which are probably all getting spent on Elena's hair straightening product, because she doesn't have a job. "Don't trust Vicki," Anna says.
Okay, I trust you, Anna.
8:53 - Klaus's army is failing him, so he is mad enough to break stuff. Joseph Morgan is magnificent in this scene -- he may be the best cast villain on television. However, I hate this scene. It becomes clear that in order to create his hybrid family, Klaus needs the doppelganger dead. Which is completely different from last year's storyline, in which Klaus needed the doppelganger dead.
With everything going to hell in a handbasket and his vow never to return to Mystic Falls, I don't really understand why Stefan wants to be healed. He's clearly not having fun on their vacation, he's given up on Elena... why not just let the werewolf bite do its job? His submission to Klaus here gives me the uh-oh shivers. I wonder if Klaus hates it as much as I do, since Klaus seems to want their friendship to be genuine. "I failed you and I'm sorry. Do what you have to do."
Klaus takes a bite of his own hand like he's taking a very violent bite of an apple. He's kind of crazy, y'all! I'm annoyed that they didn't have Stefan drink directly from Klaus. I was all ready to make 100 screen grabs to tweet at Wesley.
"It appears you're the only comrade I have left." Um, you killed your entire family, dude. This should not surprise you.
8:56 - Whaddaya know, Damon thinks Stefan can be saved. "I changed my mind, because even in his darkest place, my brother still can't let me die. So I figure I owe him the same in return."
He makes Elena tell him that she was worried about him -- and once she starts talking, she can't really seem to stop.
"When I drag my brother from the edge and deliver him back to you, I want you to remember the things you felt when he was gone," Damon says. I'd say that he sounds a little too confident about her feelings, but she's staring at his mouth, and she has ample time to deny that she felt something. She doesn't.
Then Alaric shows up with all of his worldly possessions. Not now, Dana!
8:58 - Okay, I've never been a teenage boy, but I'd imagine that if I was a teenage boy, and I woke up naked with my mother staring at me, my first instinct would be to cover up my business. Come on, Tyler. Your mom can see your junk. Cover the junk.
It is sweet that Carol tries to call off the crazy psycho hunter she just summoned to kill the only girl who has ever understood her only son, but it's just too little, too late. Bill tells Carol that his family has been committed to this fight for almost 150 years, and he's not about to stop now.
Oh... and did he forget to mention, that family he was referring to? The Forbes family.
As in Caroline Forbes, queen of the cliffhangers! She's been in there for over 24 hours and her hair still looks fantastic. That's my girl.
My heart breaks for her right now. She thinks her MIA dad has come to save her. He has not.
Next week: Stefan is one of those serial killers who keeps a helpful list of his victims. That will make the research team at "60 Minutes" really happy when the time comes.
Okay, so. Stuff I loved about this episode. Matt and Jeremy bro-time, Damon and Elena almost having the talk, Simon Camden being really good at being rabid, discovering Elena's true hair texture, Klaus losing it, and Stefan's t-shirt.
Stuff I didn't love about this episode: McQueen's weird monotone (sorry, sorry), Tyler letting it all hang out for Mama Mayor especially after Simon Camden managed to keep his clothes on during his transformation, Klaus being after Elena again, and the minimal Caroline. All episodes need more Caroline.
MVP goes to David Gallagher for being so very unlike Simon Camden. Hopefully we'll be seeing him on our screens more often.
Drop me a line in the comments section below. Do you think I'm being too hard on this episode? What did you love? What did you not so much love? Why do you think Klaus chose Stefan to be his indentured servant?
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Photo/Video credit: The CW
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