Previously: Damon’s got some plans but dot dot dot.
Content Warnings: Rape, murder, mind control.
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Friday Night Bites
Emmy: We start the episode off with Caroline tiptoeing around the room to try and escape from Damon, who she knows is a vampire now because she saw the fangs and the face and everything from earlier. He’s “sleeping” until she touches the doorknob and looks back to check if he’s still sleeping. The bed is empty! She looks around as he says “Good morning,” and Damon’s doing his favorite thing again, where he pops up in front of you.
Marines: He truly needs a new hobby.
Emmy: Caroline backs up away from the creepy vampire, asking him not to, you know, kill her, and Damon advances. Caroline picks up a lamp and Damon’s all
Title card! Yay for every cold opening so far being all bloody and violent! I wonder if the trend is going to be: the beginning of every episode is an attractive woman being vampire-mauled, the ending of every episode is Stefan and Elena talking about their Big Feelings.
Mari: This cold open was especially hard to watch because this vampire mauling was very much linked with sex. Caroline is wearing some neglige she 100% wasn’t wearing at the end of the last episode. It’s clear she’s terrified and here against her will. To use a Snark Squad tried and true phrase: that’s rape, asshole. Also, I don’t remember many specifics from when I originally watched this season, but I remember being shook that they introduced Caroline like a major character and had her vampire mauled in episode 2.
Emmy: Honestly, I rewrote my description of the opening like six times because I was nervous I’d trigger someone if I went too much into details about what was happening. It really is a pretty disturbing scene and is very much linked with nonconsensual sex, so it was really very uncomfortable. Especially when I’m certain next time we see her, everything’s “fine” because of the mind-control shit Damon likes so much.
We cut to teenagers doing teenager-y “before school things” like talking and throwing footballs around. (M: Instead of sleeping until the last possible second, my high school method.) Bonnie informs Elena that she should take things slow with Stefan and admits that at the Grill she touched Stefan and says that she got a bad feeling. Elena thanks her for her concern, but says that she feels good and things are finally getting back to normal. She’s certain that Stefan is a big part of that “finally getting back to normal” stuff. There’s something to unpack here about her being in a relationship being what is returning her to “normal” but ugh it’s so early in the episode to be annoyed so I’m going to skate past it.
Mari:
Stefan walks up to Elena and Bonnie, the latter of whom literally cannot get away fast enough, making an excuse about not knowing where Caroline is. Of course, we know Caroline is being chewed on by Damon, but go ahead and look for her in Gym class, Bonnie- sorry, I mean History, cause that’s the only class y’all actually have. (M: Plot twist: the History teacher is also the gym coach.) Stefan notices that Bonnie does not like him, and Elena assures him that it is just because she doesn’t know him. If Bonnie knew Stefan, she’d obviously love him.
Matt and Tyler are throwing a football between them, and Tyler starts snarking about how Matt lost Elena to Stefan. He actually has a funny line here: “Oh look, they’re walking… walking… yep, right into the sunset!” Matt informs him that he’s a dick, and we cut back to Elena and Stefan, where Elena invites Stefan to her house for dinner so that Bonnie will love Elena’s new boyfriend. Back at Tyler and Matt, Matt is now annoyed at his friend’s ribbing and asks what the hell he is supposed to do about the fact that Elena is all about the vampire boy new boy. Tyler grabs the ball and throws it at Stefan, assumedly to make him look stupid when it hits him in the head? Unsure.
Mari: Truly the only way to a woman’s heart.
Emmy: Of course, because Stefan is a vampire, he hears it coming and whips around in a millisecond and then throws it back hard enough that Tyler comically staggers backward.
Obvious vampire shots… It’s like he’s not even trying today.
Elena’s all turned on by this show of masculinity and presses Stefan about playing football for Mystic Falls, saying it would be a good bonding experience. She reiterates that the reason no one likes him is because no one knows him. If they only knew him, they would all love him like she does. Stefan laughs and is like “no, football isn’t really something I want to play” so we know he’s probably going to be in football at some point.
We cut to History Class, aka The Only Class at Mystic Falls, and Bonnie is doodling numbers all over her notebook, along with crosses and squiggles. I’m assuming the numbers are important because the camera lingers there for a while as Mr. Tanner does the worst thing History teachers do: pop quiz you on the year things happened. Elena is still pushing Stefan about playing football and he’s like “dude no I’m not playing football” and why is she so adamant about this? It’s kinda weird.
Mari: Maybe Tyler’s plan to prove that Stefan was a weirdo loner loser by throwing a football at him inexplicably worked, but instead of deciding to date Matt, Elena is just trying to get her weirdo boyfriend to join a team sport. That’s the best explanation I got.
Emmy: Tanner calls on Elena to give him a date and Stefan gives it instead. Tanner throws out another date (an event that isn’t connected to the event he just mentioned with Elena-what is he doing?? Literally quizzing over major dates in the world?) and Stefan calls it out again. And then this scene happens, and I have included a big string of GIFs so you can see Tanner’s shitty expressions.
We cut to Matt and Tyler practicing football, and Tanner is apparently the coach because of course he is.
Mari: OMG I swear I had no idea when I joked he would be the gym teacher. WOW.
Emmy: At this point, I am convinced that it is either laziness on the part of the writers, or they literally couldn’t pay a single other actor who had lines.
Elena comes onto the field because she’s a cheerleader and invites Bonnie to dinner and Bonnie’s all ugh I hate your boyfriend whyyyy but agrees eventually. She asks after Caroline again, wondering where she is. At least someone cares.
Tanner and Stefan are standing on the sidelines, and Tanner is informing Stefan that varsity tryouts were in the fall and therefore Stefan is S.O.L. I just think it’s funny that Stefan thought he had a chance when it’s Tanner who is the coach. Stefan apologizes for making Tanner look stupid in front of his entire classroom of students like five times, and Tanner decides that maybe watching Stefan get tackled a couple hundred times will help his soul. Matt’s weasels are cheesed that Stefan is on the team, but Tyler reminds him of the “hundred tackles” thing that would be possible if Stefan is on the team and Matt cheers up a bit. Yay for uh… team spirit?
Caroline arrives to practice in Damon’s convertible. She kisses him and gets out as Elena informs Bonnie that Caroline’s new man is actually Stefan’s older brother. Caroline has a scarf around her neck and tells Elena that she got “the other brother” and hopes Elena doesn’t mind, then tells the cheerleaders that she’s sorry she’s late, but she was “busy” and they need to practice now.
I don’t know a single teenage/college-age girl who can show up wearing a scarf and all her friends don’t immediately start ripping on the obvious hiding of a hickey, but okay, Elena and Bonnie aren’t going to say anything about it. Whatevs. They just roll into cheerleading practice, where Elena is struggling to keep up. Probably because she’s missed practices due to her very real and still present trauma that everyone keeps forgetting about. Caroline asks her to just observe today and Elena notices Stefan running onto the field in football gear.
We get a bunch of shots of Stefan rocking this football thing. So rude. It’s like letting Dash from The Incredibles run track. It’s not impressive when you win, you’re a million times stronger than all the other people. But Elena, of course, doesn’t know that he’s a super-strong vampire and just makes Eyes at him instead. Tyler asks Matt to set Stefan up to get tackled and succeeds in breaking a few fingers that Stefan just cracks back into place when no one’s looking. Gross, Stefan.
Stefan comes into his house later, and Damon is sitting on the couch, reading Stefan’s journal. RUDE. (M: I already hate him so much!) He says that he’s considering starting anew, letting Stefan live a normal human-ish life, and living a normal human-ish life of his own. Stefan looks like he almost believes him until Damon starts laughing and I sigh. Stefan, honey, did you just meet Damon? Damon starts needling Stefan about Elena because it’s the easiest thing ever to accomplish and then ghosts out because he’s got a date.
We cut to the Gilbert house, where Bonnie is telling Elena that she has now managed to predict which commercials will happen during the breaks on television shows. She also continues to see 8, 14, and 22 constantly. Elena asks if she’s asked her Grams about it. Bonnie sighs and says Grams will just say she’s a witch, and she doesn’t want to be a witch.
Bonnie predicts where the serving spoons are and everyone’s weirded out that she’s right, but she and Elena have been best friends since they were infants, so that’s really not that surprising that she knows where stuff is in their house. (M: Sure, but also Elena doesn’t know where they are!) The doorbell rings, and Elena vanishes to go get it. Bonnie sighs and says, “birthday candles” and then opens up a drawer that has birthday candles in it. I’m so disorganized that you could probably open any drawer in my house and there would be at least one sad little birthday candle.
We cut to dinner and they’re all silently staring at each other. I’m watching Stefan intently during this scene because I’m curious- is he eating the food? Will he cough it back up later? Is he super-running bits and pieces to the trash so it looks like he’s eating? (M: I hope it’s this one.) This seems like a big deal not to mention. IT’S A VAMPIRE SITTING DOWN TO EAT PASTA.
Bonnie continues to be bitchy about everything regarding Stefan and things are awkward until Elena forces Bonnie to talk about the witch thing again.
We cut to a little later when they’re all sitting and talking together on the couches about how Stefan is now part of the football team. Caroline says she wishes that Elena hadn’t sucked so bad today at cheerleading practice, and Bonnie jumps to Elena’s defense and says that she’ll work with her. Damon mentions that Elena doesn’t seem like the cheerleading type, and Caroline informs him that it’s because her parents died. Man, she is so boring now that her parents are dead. She was so much more fun before all of this trauma!
the face you make when your best friend says you were more fun before your parents died three feet from you.
Cut to the Grill, where Tyler is groping Vicki at her workplace. She’s understandably annoyed about it. Jeremy is drinking his feelings with what looks like a soda, and Matt walks over. You think for a second he’s going to be nice because he knows Jeremy likes Vicki… and then he says,
“She’s my sister and I love her… but sometimes, she can really make you work for it.”
WORK FOR WHAT MATT. WHAT EXPERIENCE DO YOU HAVE “WORKING FOR IT” WITH VICKI? Why are so many interactions with the Donovan family and Jeremy creepy? Jeremy says that he finds it pretty easy and leaves Matt with the sick burn that his sister’s a hoe.
Mari: At this point, as much as I already hate Damon, I’d rather watch him and Stefan giving each other hate eyes over any scene with Jeremy and the Donovans.
Emmy: As Jeremy walks out, Tyler shoulder-checks him. Jeremy informs him politely that this is rude. Lol no, they go at it right then and there over their fire hydrant Vicki and inform each other that the next time they see one another, it’s ass whoopin’ time. So we have that to look forward to. (M: -_-)
Matt asks Vicki what she’s doing as the two guys walk away, and I’m annoyed with Air Supply Matt, who up until now I have really liked. It’s not Vicki’s fault that the two boys interested in her are becoming violent over her, and she’s made it very clear to Jeremy that he is now just a friend. Saying “what are you doing Vicki” makes it sound like she’s purposely pitting them against each other, when it’s their own egos and testosterone doing that. No, she shouldn’t be with Tyler because he is by all accounts and appearances a giant douchebag, but she is free to date said douchebag without Jeremy getting violent over it and making her feel bad.
Back at the Gilbert house, Damon walks into the kitchen and tells Elena that he likes her because she knows how to laugh, and she makes Stefan smile, which is something he hasn’t seen for a while. Elena brings up the fact that he was talking about Katherine earlier and Damon tells her that Katherine died in a fire. Elena asks what Katherine was like and Damon says that she was, “beautiful. A lot like you in that department.” I gag because although I haven’t ranted about it yet, I will at some point complain about the fact that Katherine and Elena look exactly the same. “She was just very complicated and selfish, and at times not very kind. But very sexy and seductive.”
Elena considers this, then asks which one of the Salvatore boys dated Katherine first, and I laugh. Thank god it’s obvious because that would have been annoying to string along for another few episodes. Damon says that she should ask Stefan, because his answer differs from Damon’s about who dated her first, so obviously they both think they had the right to date Katherine.
Damon tells Elena to quit cheerleading, because he was watching her practice and she looked miserable. Elena laughs a little and says that it used to be fun, she used to love it, but things that used to matter don’t anymore. Damon says she should just quit then, but Elena says that some things could matter again. Damon agrees, but says it seems unrealistic to think it could matter again.
This, to me, is a bit of a dangerous thought process. You’re right- cheerleading in the grand scheme of things isn’t that important, Damon, but she cannot just stop everything that used to bring her joy just because she is grieving and depressed. Everything is hard right now. Sometimes we have to make ourselves continue to live life in little pieces to become who we were again. Continuing on can help speed the healing process a little, and you could do worse than an activity that combines socialization and exercise.
Mari: I’m imagining that Damon’s relationship pitch to Elena will at least partly be “embrace your darkness and sadness.”
Emmy: We should keep a list of predictions and see which ones we’re right about. We can call it the Bonnie List.
Elena thinks about this for a moment, and then tells Damon that she’s sorry about Katherine’s death, since he lost her, too. Damon’s expression fascinates me. While he is awful and we don’t know anything really about his relationship to Katherine, his expression does indicate that no one has ever acknowledged his loss of someone he apparently cared deeply about. It’s a touching little moment that I really like, because Elena is a decent person doing a decent thing.
Mari: This is all very true, and it speaks highly of Elena. I’m having a hard time giving a shit about Damon, the teen girl rapist right now, tho.
Emmy: Oh yeah. I’m not buying the “Damon is a good dude” parade they’re trying to throw. That worked on 2009 Emmy. 2020 Emmy isn’t fooled by the sad music and a cute face.
They are interrupted by Bonnie, who is there to help them fold napkins or whatever they’re doing.
Bonnie has left Caroline and Stefan alone. You would think that they would all know that it is a terrible idea to leave Caroline anywhere alone. She is telling Stefan about how Matt and Elena were each other’s firsts, so he shouldn’t be so hard on Matt for having Air Supply playlists at the ready right now. Stefan, however, is not fooled by any of this and wants Caroline to take her scarf off. She informs him that she can’t take it off, but can’t explain why. Of course, Damon senses a disturbance in the Force and pops in to interrupt them. He asks if Caroline can go check if Elena and Bonnie need help, and Caroline is my favorite for a minute:
Mari: Yes, they will keep reminding us about how non-consensual all of this is. I hate this for me.
Emmy: Stefan reminds Damon that Caroline is, in fact, a person who has feelings and isn’t a puppet who also functions as a Capri Sun whenever Damon gets kinda peckish. Damon informs him that she is actually a Capri Sun puppet and he couldn’t care less what Stefan thinks. He also reminds Stefan that now that he’s been invited in, he can come in and “do whatever [he] wants to do with [Elena] because that is normal for [Damon.]”
We cut to Elena and Stefan sitting on the bed, talking, and Stefan shushes her with a finger. Ugh. They then get to making out and pulling off clothes. But when Stefan pulls his shirt up over his head, it’s Damon’s face, not Stefan’s! Elena screams and backs up, but it’s just a dream as she wakes up in her room alone. The camera pans over to the slightly-open window, where Spooky Crow© is sitting and staring creepily.
Stefan monologues over Elena walking out of the shower (staring at a framed picture of herself in a cheerleading uniform? Who has a framed picture of just themselves on their vanity?) and he is thinking that there has to be some shred of humanity and goodness left in Damon. He wants to protect Elena and make Damon see that he isn’t evil. Stefan goes and gets a box down, and we cut to the football game.
There’s an effigy of what I assume is the opposing team’s mascot surrounded by sticks, ready for the pyre. Has anyone actually gone to one of these mascot-burnings? (M: Nope.) They always look so fun on TV. Elena gives Stefan sex-eyes over his football gear and when he asks where Elena’s uniform is, she says she quit, that she’s a quitter.
Stefan says that she isn’t a quitter, that she has suffered a great loss and isn’t the same person. She needs to be looking ahead and starting over, and okay Stefan, another A+ for you with the handling of Elena’s grief. It’s been FOUR MONTHS since she literally had her parents die right in front of her. So many other people expect her to just move along and stop inconveniencing them with her sad feelings. This is different from what Damon did, because she had already quit. Stefan is simply supporting the decisions that she has made.
Stefan tells her that he has a present for her and gives her a necklace. He says he’s had it forever (lol) and he’s never wanted to give it to anyone until now. She notes that there’s a weird smell and he evades that it’s an herb, then thanks her for pushing him to try out for the team, that it feels nice to be part of something. They kiss and it’s cute. And then Caroline pops up like a horror movie monster again and asks why Elena isn’t in uniform.
We cut to the burning of the mascot and Tanner is talking over the intercom about how great they are and how they’re going to win because Stefan is the greatest. Tyler has feelings about the new kid being popular and starting on the front lines of the game.
Tyler goes to say hello to Vicki and sees Jeremy, who is drinking in full view of probably a million teachers and parents. Vicki tries to stop him but Tyler runs right over and informs Jeremy that he can have Vicki when he’s done. Jeremy punches Tyler and of course Stefan hears this from where he is next to a giant speaker and in the middle of a screaming, thrashing crowd. Tyler and Jeremy begin to beat the hell out of each other and all the principal characters begin moving that way to try and stop the fight. Stefan pulls Tyler off Jeremy, and Tyler tries to punch Stefan in the chest, then stares at him because his mighty punches have never been just stared off.
Jeremy crawls over and gets a freaking bottle to stab Tyler with which seems like a lot when the fight was essentially over. People yell, Tyler gets out of the way, and Stefan’s hand gets all bloody and stabbed. Elena forces Stefan to show her what happened to his hand and it’s already healed, because vampire. Elena’s confused because she knows what she saw.
Mari: Dating a vampire is being gaslit daily, apparently.
Emmy: We cut to Caroline ordering the cheerleaders around. Elena ask Bonnie about what the “bad feeling” she got from Stefan was. Bonnie assures her that she’s Stefan’s #1 fan now, and Elena pushes her. Bonnie says that it wasn’t clear like a picture, not like the 8, 14, and 22 she keeps seeing, but when she touched Stefan she got a cold and dark feeling that felt like what she imagined death feels like.
Elena goes to put something in her car and when she turns around, Damon’s directly behind her because it’s the only way he knows how to travel. Damon, I refuse to do “obvious vampire” shots for that trick anymore. It’s now just part of your character. Damon says that he’s hiding from Caroline because she talks more than he listens, but he doesn’t really see it going anywhere anyways, so it’s nbd. Elena actually stands up for the friend who has been kind of awful to her recently, and Damon says that he hadn’t meant to make her uncomfortable.
Elena, unlike many other main characters, is having none of this shit and calls him out on it, saying that if he didn’t mean to make her uncomfortable, he wouldn’t put an alternate meaning in everything he says. He agrees that he has other intentions, but she does too, and says that he can see that she’s attracted to him. He says he bets she’s even dreamed about him. But I mean, she screamed and jumped away from him in the dream so it’s not like she’s having daydreams about your popsicle, Damon.
Damon does his rapey mind-control thing and tries to kiss Elena, but she slaps him and informs him that she’s not Katherine and she isn’t playing this game. Damon is so shocked at her resilience to his charms, he wiggles his jaw as if a ninety-pound human could do any damage whatsoever to a hundred million-year-old vampire with a slap to the face. (M: I enjoyed it, though.) (E: It was kinda like Hermione punching Malfoy. Very pleasing.)
We cut to Matt and Stefan talking as Matt asks if Stefan’s hands are okay. Matt goes on to say that what Stefan did was good, and he’s sorry that he’s been a dick to him in practices. Stefan brushes it off and they shake hands like they’re friends. Aw. Matt. That doesn’t make up for victim-blaming your sister earlier, but it’s cute.
Damon is there, of course, and claps and is all douchey about the fact that Stefan’s pretending to be a high school football star now. He says that he knows there was vervain in the necklace, so apparently that was the herb Stefan was talking about earlier, and it has mind-control blocking properties. Damon seems to think that he could seduce Elena “the old fashioned way” or eat her. Stefan informs him that he won’t hurt Elena because Damon still has some humanity and goodness in him. He seems to think that the fact Damon hasn’t killed him yet is proof of this? Um. Okay. He says that after 145 years, Katherine is dead and Damon hates Stefan because he loved her and Damon tortures Stefan because Damon obv still loves Katherine. “And that, my brother, is your humanity,” Stefan finishes. I… I don’t see the logic here. Mari? Comment section? Help? Is it that he thinks if someone is capable of love, they can’t be a true monster? I mean… I read somewhere that Hitler loved his dogs and horses but he was still evil so…
Mari: Right, I feel like the whole “torturing me for 145 years” thing cancels out the “loved one person one time” thing in the overall humanity equation. Stefan’s math is wrong.
Emmy: Tanner yells for Stefan off-screen and Damon basically says “you’re wrong about me, you meanie” and attacks Tanner, ripping out his throat. Blood sprays everywhere and Tanner looks very, very dead. YAY. Let’s throw a brief party for the death of Mr. Asshat Tanner.
For those who were curious; in the books, there was a Halloween haunted house that Elena and the others worked. Tanner was a “druid” in the Stonehenge-y room there, and during one tour the druid was missing but the sacrifice looked especially realistic. It was freaking awesome.
Anywho, Stefan is sad about his football coach getting whacked, and Damon says that he will do this, “anyone, any time, any place” and Stefan stares in horror as we cut to black.
In the locker room, Matt is pissed at Tyler. He says that Tyler is a bully and lists off beating up Stefan in practices (which Matt allowed…), messing with Vicki, and beating up his “girlfriend’s” little brother. Tyler is all of us for a moment and reminds Matt that Elena is into older dudes now. Matt slams him against the lockers because apparently reminding Matt about his recent dumping is over the line. Not the rest of the stuff. Like trying to rape his sister.
Matt finds Tanner’s body and we cut to ambulances and sheriffs showing up. Bonnie is crying and notices that there’s an 8 on a building, and a 14 on the coroner’s license plate, and the space the ambulance is parked in is 22- the numbers she’s been thinking about all day. She starts hyperventilating.
Matt is sitting in his truck, alone with his Big Feelings, and I feel a tiny bit sorry for Matt again. He’s had a really rough month or so, what with the dumping and sister-mauling and finding a dead body. Jeremy is under the bleachers with a can of what we can assume is probably not Fanta to his head. Vicki kneels in front of him and tells him that “it” [their sex/relationship?] wasn’t just for the drugs. Jeremy gives her a smile, and she leaves.
Elena asks a very good question, which is what the hell kind of animal comes out of the woods, travels all the way into a populated place, and attacks a person in the middle of a town, and Stefan just kinda shrugs. Elena is still sure that he cut his hand, and he assures her that everything is fine.
We cut back to Stefan in his house, writing in his VAMPIRE DIARY about how he wanted to believe Damon wasn’t evil, but he’s definitely evil. We fade to see Elena sleeping in her bed as Stefan says there is no good or kindness left in Damon. No love. Only a monster who must be stopped. And as Stefan is saying this, we pan over to Damon, who is watching Elena sleep. He reaches out and strokes down her face and hair.
Obviously, this is the show trying to tell us that Damon isn’t evil and Stefan is wrong because Damon obviously cares in some kinda way about Elena! He’s not evil, guys, he’s not a monster! He’s got goodness and kindness because he didn’t mind-control her into sexing with him [this time] and he didn’t rip out her throat!
But you know, he stood over her while she was sleeping and touched her a lot and in most countries, that’s illegal and definitely not good or kind. So. You do with that what you will. He also did try to mind-control her into having sex with him and it didn’t work only because of the vervain.
Elena wakes up and of course, Damon is gone. She sits up and turns off the light, and the credits roll! Well, we didn’t end with Elena and Stefan sharing Big Feelings. Let’s see if the next episode starts with a bloody death of Hapless Couple No. 3, or if we’ve broken the mold!
Mari: I think I’d miss Hapless Couples if they stopped showing up.
Next time on The Vampire Diaries: Stefan escorts Elena to the Founder’s Party in S01 E04 – Family Ties
Emmy is a teacher/poet by day and a blogger/cat mom by night. She spends a lot of time watching scary movies and then jumping at every small noise for the next five or twelve hours. Her dream job would absolutely be kitten/puppy cuddling, or maybe professional napper.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
