Firstly, can I just apologise for that photo up there? Yes, that one. I don't know why the only recent promotional photo for this show has all the men standing around in black coats looking incredibly puzzled and confused, while all the women do creepy poses and try to look like sexy zombies. It's just weird, and silly, and I hate it, but I couldn't find another suitable photo. As soon as I find one I will be changing it. And then everyone who reads this after that day will be wondering what on earth I'm talking about. I have no idea whose idea this was or why they thought it would appeal to their audience. It doesn't. Especially since a large percentage of the people who watch this show are female, and none of the men are showing any skin. You can't advertise a show using sex unless you do it for both genders. (Someone needs to teach the internet pop-up ads that lesson too.) Okay, ready to start?
Previously, on the Vampire Diaries... it takes forty-two seconds to recap a bunch of mostly useless stuff. Not bad. Keeping it short, I approve. Elena (Nina Dobrev) writes an email to Bonnie (Kat Graham) telling her what everyone has been up to over the summer, because apparently they couldn't think of a more creative way to explain how everyone has passed the time since the end of last season. The email starts with a grammatically incorrect sentence (which Elena says differently to the way it's typed... both versions are still wrong) and proceeds through a bunch of flashes of what everyone has been doing. Ready for quick exposition? Elena has achieved nothing all summer, still thinks Bonnie is alive (but travelling with her mum), and spends all her time having sex with Damon (Ian Somerhalder). Caroline (Candice Accola) is packing for college, which she's excited about, and chatting on the phone to Tyler (Michael Trevino) who is helping a wolfpack in Tennessee. She doesn't know Bonnie is dead either. Matt (Zach Roerig) is in Europe somewhere, having hot sex with Rebekah (Claire Holt) and some random European chick. It's like a weird threesome only Matt looks kind of left out because Rebekah seems to be more into girls. Elena wants to know when Bonnie gets back. Meanwhile, Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) is writing Bonnie's reply with Bonnie's ghost's help. Jeremy is happy to be alive... except when he keeps walking in on his sister making out with her vampire boyfriend. Gross. Katherine (also Nina Dobrev) is wandering around somewhere being human and scared and looking miserable. Hm. Oh yeah, and Stefan (Paul Wesley) has been AWOL all summer because Silas (also Paul Wesley) locked him in a safe at the bottom of a lake, but nobody really cares.
Okay! We're finally all caught up.
Elena doesn't understand that even though she's immortal, her phone is not. One of them will die if she drops it.
After reading Bonnie's email, Elena says that she has a feeling something bad will happen. Damon is not looking forward to her going to college. She's annoyed because he's not a normal boyfriend and he's not supporting her plan to leave. She skims through her contacts and considers calling Stefan but doesn't. I want to know why Klaus, Kol, Rebekah and someone called Pay My Bill are in her contacts. Isn't Kol dead? I forget. Everyone comes back to life on this show. Elena sinks into the bath and there's a vaguely trippy segue which leads to Stefan, who is also underwater. He wakes up and starts to panic, even though he's been there for weeks. Bubbles come from his mouth. I think that's wrong, because he would have run out of air ages ago. Question. I know he can't drown, right, but won't his skin go all white and disgusting and peel off? Normal people do, if they stay in water for too long. I guess vampires heal. Never mind then. Cue title... flash thing. We'll call it a flash. Title flash!
Elena is quizzing Jeremy on how he's going to tell everybody he's back from the dead. He was on drugs so he lit his house on fire and faked his own death? Eh. Good enough. Elena says maybe it's better if they pretend the house burnt down by itself, because she doesn't want her brother to seem psychotic. Caroline arrives, time for Elena to leave, she gets cold feet. Everyone encourages her to leave (ulterior motives? Probably) and she heads off. After making out with Damon. A lot.
At their new university (or college, whatever you want to call it) Caroline tells Elena that she should break up with Damon and get back with Stefan. Yeah, unfortunately not. I used to ship Elena and Damon but now I just can't bring myself to care. Sorry. Elena's too annoying. I do ship Caroline with whoever's available, though. Caroline is awesome.
Awesome.
Her mum is pretty cool too. Anyway, Caroline and Elena are happy because they're in college and suddenly Bonnie appears, drifting around them like a sad ghost. Ew, no. Go get a life, Bonnie. (Too soon?) Anyway, they set up in their new room and drink blood. Hm. Two attractive young vampires arrive at uni (college). Sounds like the start of one of those weird horror movies which has sex and gore in equal amounts. This isn't True Blood, though, so none of that. Their blood-drinking is interrupted when a random girl with glasses and pigtails pushes her way in. (In the Vampire Diaries horror movie, she'd be the first victim.) She's their new roommate. They can't figure out why Bonnie isn't there. I know why Bonnie isn't there. She died, and instead of letting her friends do the healthy thing (grieve and move on) she's hanging around like some invisible ghostly stalker.
Speaking of invisible ghostly stalkers, Bonnie is with Jeremy at school, telling him to tell Caroline that she's at the Grand Canyon. Jeremy points out that she's only prolonging the inevitable and she should tell everyone that she's dead. Hey, maybe they can pretend she fell off the Grand Canyon! That would solve the problem of her missing body. Um... where is Bonnie's body anyway? Didn't she die in some cave somewhere? Is she still down there? Probably decomposing by now. Gross. Bonnie still wants to lie to her friends because she's a douchehat (her hat is just so douchey) so Jeremy complies.
Elena is calling Damon to complain about her roommate... while said roommate is still in the room. How very awkward. They talk, Damon walks around his house, rounds a corner and sees Katherine. Oh. He says bye to Elena and hi to his ex-girlfriend who has the same face as his current girlfriend (weird). Katherine's hair is incredibly messed up. Apparently being human means she can no longer have perfect hair. What nonsense! I'm human, and my hair... yeah, okay, I see their point. Ugh. Damon looks at her distastefully and says "Katherine," in a completely pointless way. If people have been watching the show for the past four seasons, they'll know enough to recognise Katherine. If people have just started watching now, the name Katherine isn't going to mean anything to them anyway, so no big.
Field full of people... check out hula-hooping girl. She's awesome.
There's some kind of party going on in he Mystic Falls park, and a little girl in purple clothes is hula-hooping insanely well. Rebakah wanders over to Matt to say that it's tragic they're not eating at five-star restaurants anymore - he makes a face like whatever. Then they make out against a tree and presumably traumatise half the kids in Mystic Falls. Oops. In between face-sucking kisses they try to have a conversation about how Rebekah is leaving town (to go to New Orleans?) and Matt should come with her, but he can't because he has a job, and that chick they had the threesome with (it was in Prague, in case you were wondering) stole a pair of earrings and Jeremy's Gilbert ring which brings you back to life. The chick's name is Nadia. I like the sound of Nadia. Can she please come back? Thanks. Rebekah tells Matt not to miss her and wanders off, leaving him smiling like a well-kissed looney. As he moves away we see Stefan (or, rather, Silas) lurking in the background like a lurker.
Back at the uni (college), Elena and Caroline are talking to their new roommate. Megan. Or Meghan. Or however she spells it. ...Okay, I looked it up, because it was bugging me. It's Megan. Anyway, Caroline lays down some ground rules about how Megan should not be nosy, no one knows if Tyler is going to show up and a random dude wanders by to give them an invitation to a party. He thinks Caroline is hot. Yeah, I'm not really surprised. In Mystic Falls, a 'high school student' who looks about forty decides to shove Jeremy for no apparent reason. Jeremy shoves back, harder, and throws the guy and his friend to the floor. Angsty.
Seriously, though, why would you pick a fight with this guy? Look at those biceps! Damn.
At the Salvatore... mansion (because it totally is one) Katherine is getting drunk. She gets drunk easily now, because she's human and she doesn't like it. Damon politely offers to turn her again but she's wussy and afraid that she might die for real because they don't know how the cure works. Eh. That seems like a shoddy reason. The phone rings, so Katherine picks it up and pretends to be Elena. Oh. Jeremy's been expelled. Oops. Damon wants Katherine to leave, but she's scared because she made a ton of enemies and now that she's human, she's weak and she's finally realising how hard it is to run in heels. Damn straight. She wants Damon to protect her. Uh, no. She's killed/tried to kill him, his brother, his girlfriend, his girlfriend's brother, his girlfriend's brother's girlfriend, his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, his girlfriend's best friend, his girlfriend's best friend's boyfriend, his girlfriend's other best friend and about a zillion unrelated people. Why would he want to protect her?
We don't get his answer, though, because instead we're transported to the cliff/waterfall/lake where Stefan is. The cupboard/coffin he's trapped in says 'Pierce & Franklin 1892' on the front, in case you were interested. Inside, Stefan wakes up again, there's more air, again (where is it all coming from?!) and then he sort of passes out and goes into a dream. Hm. In Stefan's dream/hallucination, everything is shiny and a hallucinatory Damon is trying to convince him to turn off his humanity. Stefan says no. Also he's been missing for three months. Man, he has the worst group of friends ever.
Elena and Caroline are still sort of annoyed about their roommate. Well, Elena's trying to make the best of it (I guess she got tired of being a whiny brat after two seasons of it (or four, depending on who you talk to) but Caroline is annoyed. She goes through Megan's stuff while the new girl is in the shower (of course she does) and finds a bottle of 'protein water' in the fridge. She decides to revenge drink it, because that's clearly the best way to piss Megan off. After her first swallow, though, she collapses and chokes and her skin burns. So... vervain in the water, then? Awkies. Does this mean Megan knows about vampires, or is it just really bad luck? Megan comes out of the shower in her towel and is all "What's going on?" Believe me, Megan, I wish I knew.
Me too.
There's one of those long moments in between scenes which are meant to be suspenseful but in which the ads usually end up distracting anybody (it's hard to be worried about Elena and Caroline's fate when you're thinking that you could really use that vacuum cleaner). Once the long moment ends, Megan asks if Caroline is all right. She makes up some excuse about water going down the wrong way and apologises for stealing Megan's water. Megan says it's fine, but once she leaves the room Caroline panics about Megan being a hunter and knowing that they're vampires. Elena calms her down, and says that the best way for them to convince Megan they're normal is for them to be normal. Cue the party.
There's a random silhouette of a girl dancing in front of the party, but I don't think she's important. Elena has cool hair. The dude from earlier says hi, but Caroline is kind of unfriendly. Because she's with Tyler. Elena is suspicious because Tyler hasn't called, but Caroline points out that she's been having dreams about her ex-boyfriend-who-is-her-boyfriend's-brother so clearly no relationship is perfect. They start up towards the party and get stopped at the door. Someone owns the place, and they haven't been invited in. Megan shows up at the door and the guy from before (Jesse... wow, I remembered that. I'm really on a roll) appears behind them. Everyone is puzzled about why they're just standing there awkwardly. They try to make up an excuse but are both terrible liars. Vampires should be better at thinking on their feet. Caroline is still convinced that Megan knows what they are.
In the Mystic Grill (I think) Damon is annoyed because Jeremy got expelled. He compelled the principal to make it a three-day suspension instead. Jeremy is annoyed because he's stuck at high school. Millions of people all over the world can sympathise with that feeling, Jeremy. Damon gets up to leave and runs into Stefan Silas. They have an awkward hug. It's just weird.
Yeah. That was really uncomfortable.
Outside the party, Elena and Caroline are wandering around trying to figure out what to do. Theories are tossed around. Most of them suck. Suddenly, Megan calls. She's screaming and terrifed; says someone is chasing her and she needs help. Unfortunately the vampire duo can't get in the house. They tell her to get outside so they can help, and then someone throws her out a window and she crumples on the ground next to them with bite marks in her neck. Soooo... random vampire on the loose. Jesse? Maybe. Can't they just look for whoever's choking and passing out because Megan drinks vervain? Damon passed out that one time when Caroline drunk vervain and he drunk her...
Speaking of Damon, he and Stefan-Silas are having a drink. Damon still seems to think that him stealing Stefan's girlfriend is a good enough reason for Stefan to not speak to anyone at all for three months. Um no. Wrong. Anyway, Stefan-Silas reads Damon's mind and finds out where Katherine is living (at the Salvatore house) and then Jeremy turns up. He looks weirded out by Stefan-Silas, so we can assume he knows the truth. Whether it's his hunter senses tingling or Bonnie's ghost telling him remains to be seen. Nope... hunter senses it was, as Jeremy explains to Damon as soon as Stefan-Silas leaves. Also Bonnie explains that since she carelessly died (seriously. It was a dumb move) Silas would no longer have been turned to stone. How unfortunate. Jeremy asks Damon what Silas wanted, and Damon looks suspicious. Obviously the answer is Katherine, although I can't imagine why.
Katherine is sitting in the bath and apparently she and Elena both have a thing for bubbles. It has absolutely nothing to do with covering up naked people, nope, nope. It's just a fondness for bubbles. She's shaving her legs and I think she needs to learn how to use a safety razor (you know, those plastic pink ones?) because that looks dangerous. She flirts a little bit with Stefan-Silas when he walks in, and then he tries to strangle her. As you do. She grabs her razor and stabs him in the face (oh that's why she wasn't using a plastic safety razor) and runs down the stairs speedily to escape death (but still has time to grab a bathrobe). Damon and Jeremy show up in the nick of time, Jeremy takes Katherine to safety (she killed him. Why is he helping her? Oh wait, Damon killed him too. WTF is wrong with this boy and the people he hangs out with?) and Damon begins to confront Silas.
Campus security have shown up to take Megan's body away and a woman comes over to question Elena and Caroline. She says that they found a note on the body and are convinced Megan's death was suicide. She wants to know where Megan's mobile (cell phone) is. Caroline took it in case there was anything vampire-related on there, but of course she's not going to say that. They're both thoroughly confused, as one would expect.
I said look innocent, Elena, not comatose.
Back at the Salvatore house, exposition is being provided. Silas will trade Stefan in exchange for Katherine. He won't say why he wants Katherine, although he was trying to kill her earlier so I assume he doesn't want her for very long. He also points out what a terrible brother Damon is to seriously think that Stefan would just vanish off the map for three months. Damon is fed up of doppelgangers. He calls Jeremy and tells him to bring Katherine back. Unfortunately Jeremy's phone is on speaker, Katherine hears it and she grabs for the steering wheel, crashing the car. Meanwhile Damon is worried and Stefan is watching his thoughts and comparing them to "...a spool of pink taffy." I don't know what pink taffy is, but if he means fairy floss (candy floss) then I totally get it.
Matt is still at the park, where he has a brief exchange with Bonnie's father and then spots a mysterious woman. Is it Nadia the street rat? I hope so! He follows her down an alley where we discover that yes, it is Nadia. Oh good. I like her. She gives Matt back his ring (or is it?) and then a dude comes up behind him, grabs his head and says something in a European language. I could hazard a guess at which one but I don't want to get it wrong. Matt's eyes go completely black and then back to normal, and he collapses.
Elena and Caroline arrive back in their room, where someone has taken Megan's tablet. Um, probably campus security, guys. Elena goes through Megan's phone and finds a photo of Megan with her dad. How incredibly creepy.
In the middle of the road, Jeremy seems to be dying after his car crash but Katherine doesn't care and she limps off anyway. Fortunately Bonnie's ghost is there to yell at Jeremy to wake up, because her sacrifice would be even more totally pointless if he just died anyway, and then Damon arrives and saves Jeremy with vampire blood. He gets weirdly emotional about it too.
Tyler left Caroline a message saying that he can't come to uni (college) because helping the random werewolf pack (helping them do what, exactly?) is more important. Caroline cries.
It's incredibly distressing.
She and Elena are still best friends and they're happy to be there together. Aw. I want to know why Elena is wearing fake eyelashes in bed. That's just weird. Do people actually do that?
Stefan is still trapped underwater and the mysterious magical air bubbles are back. He hallucinates more conversations with Damon about turning off his humanity. Then he hallucinates Elena, who tells him not to turn off his humanity. Nothing is actually achieved at all.
Jeremy is fine now, so Damon has a brief and also completely unhelpful conversation with Elena on the phone. Then he hangs up, and explains to Jeremy why he didn't mention any of the things which are going horribly wrong; he doesn't want Elena to drop everything and come running back to help. I think he should at least tell her that Stefan isn't Stefan though, because that might, y'know, save her life. Oh well.
In the town square, Bonnie's dad, who I think is the Mayor, is giving a speech about family and how much he loves Bonnie. Her ghost is watching tearfully, and then Stefan-Silas comes along and compels the Mayor into letting him give his own speech. It's a pretty weird speech, in which he says how much blood he's had over the summer and how he can now mind control a lot of people at once. He proves this by controlling the entire gathering and then slitting the Mayor's throat. Bonnie freaks out, screams and runs to him, but of course she's a ghost so nobody can see her. Silas then tells everyone there to find someone who looks exactly like Elena Gilbert. Or else. Okay, he didn't say that last part. But it was totally implied. What do you think of this pilot's cliffhanger? See you next week!