Due to the fact that I’ve got a headache more massive than Damon’s ego, I’m going to try to keep this recap as brief as Stefan and Elena’s reconciliation.
The Brothers Salvatore stay in town: Though Damon and Stefan intended on leaving Mystic Falls — “But we’re a team. We could travel the world together. We could try out for The Amazing Race,” Damon said — that all changed when the sheriff showed up to report another vampire attack. It was Logan, who wanted Damon to track him so he could subdue him with wooden bullets and find out how the brothers are able to walk in the sun. Damon, meanwhile, wanted to know who’d turned Logan. Neither talked, but Damon had plenty to say when he got home: “No, I’m not okay,” he told Stefan over the phone. “I was ambushed. I was shot. Now I’m vengeful. I’ve just got to find him.”
When he did find Logan — driving to a secluded location to turn Caroline into a vampire — Damon was about to stake him until Logan said Damon wasn’t the only one who wanted to get into the tomb underneath the church and that there was another way to break the spell keeping Katherine and the other vampires mystically captive: “We can help you.” They were supposed to rendezvous at the church to discuss, but Alaric Saltzman (Matthew Davis) staked Logan before he got there. You intrigue me, Mr. Saltzman, and not just because you called the Mayor a “full-grown alpha male douchebag” when he took his son Tyler outside to fight Jeremy like a real man. P.S. Is Tyler turning into a werewolf? Is that why he said he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him in front of a full moon after having another fit of aggression? And why he enjoys drawing freaky s— like Jeremy, who was inspired to get out his sketch pad after seeing a family journal filled with demon-looking creatures from the 1800s? READ FULL STORY »
I have a weakness for grieving men on TV — you experience the vulnerability without having to deal with the palpable pain. Hence me finding Damon Salvatore extremely attractive in this episode. Definitely his best hour to date, and he didn’t even murder anyone (though, of course, he tried to).
We remember Zachary Quinto stopping by our offices early in Heroes‘ run, and telling us that he’d actually noticed people switch sides of the street so they wouldn’t have to walk by Sylar on the sidewalk. That’s the reaction you get when you play a villain. When you play a bitchy villain, like Ian Somerhalder does as The Vampire Diaries‘ deliciously evil Damon Salvatore — who just made EW’s list of TV’s Best Bitches (in the issue on newsstands tomorrow) — the fans cross the street to get to you.
Sure, The Vampire Diaries is a show about blood, stakes and endless fog in the forest, but lest we forget, the show is also about teen angst and last night (your regular recapper, Mandi, had the night off) we took a ride on the roller coaster of post-adolescent drama — best friends, unrequited love, loss, loneliness, the works. All you need to know is that meant tons of pensive, forlorn staring.
For a moment — when Vicki had her hand around Elena’s throat and threatened to rip her little head off if she tried to keep her away from Jeremy, to be precise — I thought Vicki might actually be worth keeping around on the show. Later, however, when it didn’t occur to her to have sex with Damon as she complained about being bored (I thought Stefan said all the urges meld together, so why couldn’t she think about blood and sex when Damon was giving her those eyes?), I was ready to kill her myself. I know she couldn’t bed him if we were supposed to feel sorry for her when she couldn’t control her fangs around Jeremy at the school Halloween party and got staked by Stefan after she attacked Elena. (You go for the neck, not the shoulder, Vick!) But if she wasn’t going to be Damon’s love slave, then I’m fine with her exit. She did manage to get the Salvatore brothers into the same room without them threatening to kill each other — instead, they argued over the proper way to raise young vampire Vicki, with Stefan pushing his no-humans philosophy and Damon his “Snatch, eat, erase” motto. But that was gonna get old. Having a vampire with an addict mentality and impulsive personality is interesting in theory, but not when it makes her behave as stupidly and selfishly as she did when she was human. Are you sorry Vicki is gone? Let’s take it to a vote in the poll at the end of the post, friends. 
On last week’s awesome episode of The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, 
Esquire has 
Even in 1864, Damon was a smartass. Just one of the many things that made this flashback episode the best Vampire Diaries yet. See also: the rampant shirtlessness and the hear this, CW censors? sound effect for Damon snapping Vicki’s neck.
Yesterday’s 
It looks like this show is about to get really, really good. Everything we wanted to happen is: Elena has pieced together the truth about Stefan (cue the flashback montage!), Bonnie is ready to accept who she is (enter GRANDMA JASMINE GUY, which made me feel as old as the first time I heard someone say they were born in the ’80s), and Vicki should be dead (drink, Damon, drink!). Yes! 
