'The Vampire Diaries' recap: Give up the ghost (or, A love letter to Hot Uncle Mason)

By Carina Adly MacKenzie

October 28, 2011 3:34 AM ET

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If you're only just joining us, there's something you should know about me before we begin this episode of "The Vampire Diaries": To me, Taylor Kinney is perfect. So when I found out that he was coming back, I basically gurgled with joy. (It's true. I was on the set of "One Tree Hill" when I got the message. And I made a weird noise. It's a good thing that show is ending, because I'm not entirely sure I'd be invited back.)

I say this to warn you, dear reader, that this episode recap contains little to no intelligent thoughts, because for the entire hour I was watching, my brain was basically reciting, "Hot Uncle Mason! Stay forever! Hot Uncle Mason! Stay forever!"

Proceed at your own risk, please.

Previously on "The Vampire Diaries": Klaus compelled Stefan to be really mean and also really hot. Anna and Jeremy discovered that they can touch hands, and probably other parts, too. Mason Lockwood came to town in a Chevy Bronco, jumped around a whole bunch, got naked in some mud, then got chained up and had his heart ripped out ruthlessly because Damon has zero regard for keeping other hot people in Mystic Falls. And then he came back. And it's not even my birthday!

8:01 p.m. - Damon wakes up. Very unhappy. Hot Uncle Mason watches. Very attractive.

It says something really screwy that in a town full of vampire hunters and ghosties and witches, when Damon wakes up chained to a chair with a stake in his chest, he automatically assumes it's his little bro who did the damage.

Stefan just looks kind of amused by the whole thing. He starts to help Damon out, and then halfway through he just gets sorta bored and walks away to get some breakfast.

8:02 - Every single time Carol Lockwood makes a speech, it's basically, "This town has a history of historical things and we are here to celebrate those who were most historical about it, namely me and my historic family and a couple other families with some history of history."

I mean, honestly. Do they make the kids who aren't from founding families drink from separate water fountains?

Long story short, we're introduced to Tobias Fell (who we can assume is related to Logan "Scum" Fell), the head of the history department, and he reminds us that on Illumination Night, the town of Mystic Falls turns off the lights and instead they use lanterns, because the smart thing to do in a town of death is to create more dark shadowy places and more fire.

Jeremy should probably tell people that he's back on drugs, since he's standing around laughing at nothing and all. Honestly, I really want to be mad at him for having an emotional affair with Bonnie, but I'm not. I was so invested in his relationship with Anna and it ended way too soon, and he was so traumatized. Remember how he swallowed a bunch of pills and wanted to vamp out so that he couldn't feel the pain anymore? It hasn't actually been that long. I can't begrudge him holding her hand.

8:03 - Bonnie tells Caroline that though she got rid of Vicki's weird blood magic, she can't actually banish Anna until Jeremy stops thinking about her during his alone-time. Caroline's friend powers are activated by this, but Bonnie's not interested in her advice.

Looks like Stefan finished eating his breakfast and doing his hair and eventually helped keep his brother from cooking to death. How come when Isobel spent a few minutes in the sun, she exploded into flame, but Damon and Caroline are fine?

"I'm pretty sure I just got spitroasted by Mason Lockwood's ghost," he tells Bonnie. "Whatever you screwed up, fix it."

8:04 - MATT! He and Bonnie share a long, sad look. I really want Matt to be happy and stuff, but I am feeling this Matt/Bonnie thing creeping in and I'm not sure I approve. I don't like the idea of Matt playing BFF leapfrog from Elena to Caroline to Bonnie, and frankly... I kind of think they'd be boring together? I'm sorry. Don't throw things at me.

Across the square, Elena and Jeremy and Alaric are having family lunch time! Totally normal. While Elena asks Jeremy to summon a very dead ghost vampire to cure her ripper boyfriend of his crazy. Not totally normal.

"Vicki could interact. She blew up my car," Alaric says. "I'm just saying, maybe we learned our lesson about summoning dead people." That's so adorable how the teacher thinks people actually ever learn from their mistakes in Mystic Falls.

8:06 - MATT! "Nope, haven't seen my sister, guys. Still by myself here, all alone in lonelyville." It's nice that Caroline is so concerned for Matt, but it makes me a little sad that she's so obviously 100% completely over him. Not that I don't love her and Tyler together, because I do. It's just sad when one person is over something and the other person is not.

Bonnie's grimoire flies open. "Please tell me that's a recipe for witch cookies," Caroline quips. Nope. It's a recipe for veiled matter. That sounds disgusting.

8:07 - Anna tells Jeremy that she doesn't think all supernatural spirits go to "the other side" -- which is interesting, because this is the first mention of the other side being monsters-only. She says that some of the spirits find peace, but if she's been alone in her little world all this time, how does she have any ideas?

It does bring around a nice thought: Maybe that's why Aunt Jenna isn't in this episode. Maybe she's found peace. (Gotta say, though, a mention would have been nice. It's bothering me that Jeremy hasn't once wondered about Jenna since he started seeing ghosts, like, five minutes after they buried her.)

Stefan shows up and barely reacts when he sees that everybody's reading his diary. "Forgot how much I used to care." Then he tells Elena to loosen up, which... has he met Elena?

8:09 - Jeremy takes Anna to the bathroom at the Grill to have The Talk. It's obviously the worst place to make out, because no matter who is hooking up in there, Elena always interrupts.

I feel really guilty about loving them together, but I think Jeremy and Anna have more chemistry than Bonnie and Jeremy. Plus, after the whole Klaus debacle, Bonnie suddenly feels older and more mature than Jeremy; he's still got some kid in him, but she's an adult. Not to mention, Malese Jow wrings incredible performances out of her scene partners. I don't know how she does it. She's basically perfect.

8:11 - When Damon shows up at the Grill, Alaric basically throws a temper tantrum, but on my end, it's totally justified. Yes, Damon knew Alaric would wake up, but still. I don't break my best friend's arm just because I know it'll heal. "We're not a team! You tried to kill me! We're not friends! I don't like you anymore!"

8:11 - I love how Kat Graham deepens her voice during Bonnie's creepy chanting scenes. She sounds so authoritative and competent. And now Grams is here!

I've got to admit, these are the moments when my job kind of sucks, because it's part of the gig to dig around for spoilers, but I wish I hadn't known that Grams was coming back. If you weren't spoiled for that moment, it probably packed a much bigger emotional punch.

Wait, but... why do Elena and Jeremy use the same bathroom? That's... weird.

8:12 - Mason arrives at the Grill to do some drinking while hot. "God I miss whiskey," he says, before smashing his tumbler against Damon's forehead. And yet... not a single person in the bar even blinks. Mystic Falls is such a screwed up town.

8:14 - Lexi is super mad and also wearing the skinniest jeans in all of history. "You're off the rails, big time," she tells Stefan. Apparently, this is all old hat to her -- she's done the whole deripperfying thing a million times. She smashes his head against a car window (in what may be the worst special effects moment in this show's history... that was so weird) and... nobody on the sidewalk even blinks.

8:15 - Bonnie's crying makes me cry, you guys! And I love that Caroline calls Grams Miss Sheila. And I love that Grams doesn't comment on Caroline's new vamp status... she knows she's still Caroline. And I love Jasmine Guy's voice. And I love her eyebrows. I'm so glad she came back for this scene -- particularly given the fact that Bonnie did her grieving off-screen in Season 1, it's nice to see some payoff happen where we can see it.

Unfortunately, Sheila comes bearing the news that yet again, Bonnie dabbled in magic that she didn't know enough about. Though she thought she was helping when she pushed Vicki away, she actually allowed the "old witch" to take advantage and "wedge the door open" so that the other ghosts could get through and get a physical foothold.

As for why the witch is so mad, Sheila says it's "Original vampire business" and that Bonnie should stay out of it. (Ha.) She needs to destroy the necklace to get everyone back on their respective sides.

Caroline breaks the news to Elena about the necklace, but Elena doesn't care. "I just walked in on Jeremy kissing the reason. I'm completely okay with that." Uh, hey, super-awkward conversation to have right in front of, you know... Jeremy.

Elena whole attitude here rubs me the wrong way. First of all, if she's mad at Jeremy for kissing Anna because of Bonnie, she should probably turn her anger toward the mirror. She was still with Stefan when she gave Damon a final kiss -- isn't Jeremy allowed that, then, too? Second of all, if she's mad at Jeremy for kissing Anna because Anna is a supernatural creature... again. Mirror.

Damon got Caroline's text! Continuity is so awesome. Meanwhile, Mason does a shot on the Dalaric tab, and I melt, because honestly, so cute, right? You guys. He's so cute.

Anyway, he says he knows something about a weapon that can kill Klaus, which seems awfully convenient. If only Katherine had filled him in on just why she wanted that moonstone, this all could've been wrapped up quite nicely.

Before he'll give up the goods, though, he wants to see Damon grovel. But because he is awesome and the coolest ever, he accepts, "I didn't have to kill you. I do a lot of things I don't have to do," as Damon's heartfelt "sorry for murdering you in a super mean way" apology.

8:20 - Lexi stashed Stefan in the old Forbes jail cell. She seems pretty confident that she can fix Stefan, though she's never really dealt with him after compulsion before, I assume. Still, if Rose's theory about the "humanity switch" being a crock is true, they might be able to get through to him.

Lexi tells Elena that they can starve Stefan of his bloodlust, but it's not pretty. Then she does something with her mind -- I'm not sure if it's a ghost power or a vampire power, but again, it's highly convenient -- to effectively starve Stefan as if he was spending years locked up without blood. Is this something she did while she was alive, too? This coercion doesn't seem like it'll be particularly effective, especially given the fact that Stefan is completely not interested in getting help. In his journals, he seemed at least slightly open to the idea, if skeptical.

I'm just going to throw this out there: Why is Elena's first thought "Let's wake up dead people to detox Stefan" and not "Let's wake up Elijah to compel it away!" Can't a vampire undo another vampire's compulsion? Wake up Elijah!

8:26 - Damon casually mentions that he "hit a snag" with Michael, so we can assume he hasn't heard from Katherine. But we can also assume that Katherine's not dead, given the fact that she didn't get through that wedged-open door and raise hell.

It's really nice that Mason, Sheila, and Lexi got right down to business as soon as they showed up. Anna and Vicki dawdled around all summer before making any significant moves.

Also, Mason and Damon look awfully cozy, playing Goonies. Where is Alaric? These three would have the bestest time spelunking together.

8:27 - Meanwhile, back at the jail, Stefan is hallucinating and desiccating as Lexi starves him with her brain. Again, these special effects just don't seem up to the usual "Vampire Diaries" standards.

Elena asks Caroline and Bonnie to hold off on operation ghost nuke while Lexi works on Stefan, but Caroline is skeptical, because somewhere out there, Jeremy could be kissing Anna again. Really? Really now?

8:28 - "He kissed her?" Kat Graham is knocking it out of the park this week! Caroline's friend powers are now fully activated and she's all charged up in eliminate-the-bitch-who-kissed-your-boyfriend mode.

8:29 - Frederick the tomb vampire! I have to admit, I might not have recognized him. Season 1 feels about a million years away.

Meanwhile, history department boss Tobias Fell has gone MIA, leaving Alaric to do the ceremony, which consists of saying, "On behalf of the Mystic Falls High School historical society, let's light 'em up!" So moving.

The tomb vamps want to kill the founding families... and they started by brutally murdering Tobias Fell and stringing him up, bloody, from a tree. Listen, if I was a member of the Founding Families, I would just stop GATHERING. They make themselves such easy targets.

Also... that's gross.

8:34 - Stefan offers Elena promises and apologies and I love yous galore, but Elena stands her ground... kind of. It's not easy for her to accept Lexi's "daily regimen" of Stefan torture. She needs to get some air, and heads out into the hubbub, where the super-competent sheriff's department has arrived to take away Toby's body.

Meanwhile, Caroline and Bonnie don't find the necklace in the soap bowl, so obviously the necklace is nowhere to be found.

Jeremy calls -- and now that there are bodies in trees and stuff, even he is okay with them taking away the ghosts' physicality. He's so grown up now, putting people's lives above potential ghost sex. Still, when Caroline suggests that Anna may be hiding the necklace, he believes her.

8:36 - "Your motives are deceptively pure," Damon tells Mason as they creep deeper into the secret Lockwood caves. Those Lockwood ancestors are tricky, though, and they've set a near-perfect vampire trap, what with the stakes and the vervain. (Come to think of it, it's a pretty good human trap, too.)

8:37 - Back in the square, Jeremy is having a particularly honest moment with his big sister as he comes clean about his feelings for Anna. "I can touch her, Elena," he says. "I can kiss her again." He's lost so much -- can't he just catch this one break? It's hard for me to side with Elena here, even though she's obviously right, because she's being pretty hypocritical. Not only is she holding on to less than one good year with Stefan, but I don't believe that if Stefan died and she had the potential opportunity to bring him back to her, she wouldn't move heaven and earth to do that.

"Are you going to love a ghost for the rest of your life?" she asks him. No, probably not, but that doesn't mean he can't love her right now. "He's at the beginning of his life, Anna. You're just holding him back."

I cried a bunch as Anna revealed that she did, indeed, steal the necklace. I'm not even mad at her for lying about it. Everyone else on this show has done worse for less. She's such a kid in this scene, scared and alone -- there are hardly any traces of the girl who turned vampires and waged a one-woman war on Mystic Falls to get her mother out of that tomb.

8:43 - See, you guys! Hot Uncle Mason didn't ditch Damon in his time of need. He just went to get some tools. Then Damon asks him again why he's being so awesome. (Come on, Damon, accept Mason's awesomeness.) "I jammed my fist into your chest," Damon says. "I ripped your heart out. There's no way this whole buddy-trust act is real."

Mason's pretty much over that; he just wants to help Tyler get through this whole siring thing in one piece. "I don't need revenge, Damon," he says. "I need redemption." He should write poetry.

8:44 - Bonnie and Caroline happen upon a car wreck, where Carol Lockwood is in danger of being the next founder to bite the dust. Where is Tyler while all of this is happening? Splashing around in a pool of people blood with Rebekah? No worries; it's Caroline to the rescue. Again.

8:45 - I'm crying again as Jeremy and Anna say goodbye. She just wants to find her mom; she wants to know she's okay. "This doesn't have to be goodbye," he says desperately. He is being a jerk to Bonnie right now and he deserves it if she dumps his ass when all of this is over, but I still can't hate him for his (major, glaring) weakness right now. Even Anna knows that he's talking crazy.

8:47 - "You wasted your whole life taking care of me and now you're dead and you still have nothing better to do," Stefan snaps at Lexi. Ouch.

Then there's a bunch of talk about the necklace representing hope to him, which I honestly think is the weakest moment in this episode. People don't assign that kind of symbolism to pieces of jewelry they find on dirty bar floors during a police raid. How obnoxious is it that Lexi "wasted" her life helping him, coaching him back to help, and the stupid necklace is his symbol of hope? This is dumb.

8:48 - Damon needs to be invited in to cave they reach, which, I suppose, implies that it once served as a home of some kind. Wolves like caves, right? Mason heads in on a solo expedition.

8:49 - Jeremy does the right thing and takes the necklace to Bonnie's haunted witch house, but she's less than pleased to see him. I'm not sure how I am on Jeremy's side and on Bonnie's side in this little tiff, but I'm chalking it up to some great work by Kat Graham in this episode.

This might be my favorite music cue thus far on the entire series. For the soundtrack junkies, this version of "This Woman's Work" is by Greg Laswell. It's the perfect backdrop to some really strong moments and some really tragic character moments for the kick-ass women on this show.

How beautiful is the shot of Bonnie and her Grams chanting together? What a powerful scene.

It's so good I barely cared that a second later, Mason evaporated.

I absolutely adore Lexi, but I almost hope this is the last we ever see of her. She deserves a moving exit, not just a sad one, and the fact that her unfinished business was Stefan -- and that Elena let her off the hook for that -- is really powerful. Their friendship, though it's told mostly through memories, is such a huge part of the guy we know Stefan to be. I guess it's just sad that in her last moments on "our side," she had to be with ripper Stefan. Not real Stefan.

I barely have words for how amazing the reunion between Anna and Pearl is. I'm so glad that Kelly Hu returned for it. It's rare that you can convince an actress of her caliber to get on a plane and go to a different city to shoot one scene where she doesn't even have a line, but it's a testament to the show that Hu did it, and it certainly resonated. I had to pause to cry.

Once again, I'm really going to miss Malese on this show. She's so talented.

As the spell is completed, Sheila tells Bonnie, "You are stronger than all of this. I'm so proud of you." I think Bonnie really deserved and earned that moment with her grandmother, particularly in this episode.

8:55 - Damon and Alaric bro-bond-make-up scene! Seriously, though. I know they have always "flirted," but this time, they are straight up flirting. "I was just pretending with that other man, Alaric! For it is you I truly love!"

8:56 - Elena is stronger, now, but she's still talking about hope, hope, hope, which makes me feel like she didn't get that far in this episode. Still, it's better than nothing, and I have a tiny glimmer of an expectation that she might actually go through with the tough stuff next week. "I'm going to go home, take care of my brother, be a friend to Bonnie, and everything else that I have to do," she says. "I won't love a ghost for the rest of my life."

Oh. So she does listen to herself when she speaks. Okay.

8:58 - Bonnie has no interest in listening to Jeremy's excuses. She's very tough here: she faces reality head on. The reality is that she loves Jeremy, but Jeremy doesn't love her, and that sucks. And he shouldn't have bothered trying with her if he wasn't over his loss. She's so great in this episode, honestly.

Also, the necklace is fixed, but really, you didn't think we were going to get rid of the great grand symbol of hope that easily, did you?

8:59 - Alaric's discoveries? Some ancient viking symbols on a cave wall way below ground. It just looks like a bunch of angry stick-figure villagers and deer and maybe a devil, and then we see a very familiar looking shape... the necklace.

Next week: So. Much. Stuff. I'm just going to embed the promo at the end of this post, because honestly, I'm way too teary to be clever right now.

MVP is a tie this week between Malese Jow and Kat Graham. Malese's final scene totally ripped my heart to shreds, but Kat's overall performance this episode was just epic. I'm so glad she finally is getting a real chance to shine... I just hope that's not crippled by Bonnie's heartbreak, now.

It's funny, because I've been doing some thinking about the Damon/Elena/Stefan triangle this week, and I had some opinions to share! But this episode but that story on the back-burner in favor of some good old fashioned spooky fun. It was really refreshing. I'll probably post my triangle troubles later on this week, separately.

Now it's your turn! I love reading your comments and thoughts on the show, so leave one in the comments section below or tweet me at @cadlymack.