Monsters of Television

The Ripper

The Vampire Diaries’ gang is all here, and the complications are multiplying quickly. Off like a horse at the races, we are immediately back in a big ol’ pile of supernatural craziness.  There’s also some tender human-type craziness, too, which is nice.  With Stefan sort of out of the picture for a bit, I imagine Damon will get an even larger piece of the action–not complaining at all.  How the show balances Elena’s love and loyalty to Stefan with the hint of her attraction to Damon will be interesting.  Will they retread old ground?  Will they let the characters develop a deeper, if less sexually charged, relationship, unique in its own rights?  Will Damon spend this year being a better man as he tried to spend last year becoming a weaker man?  [You may recall how critical I was of the dropped ball with Damon’s character last year–see my review of the finale for more.]  There are other questions (will the Jeremy storyline be as lame as I fear? Will Awesome Vampire Caroline take over the show, as she should?), but I am guessing we’ll have a strong focus on Elena and Damon’s story, and for that reason, I’ll keep my attention there for now.

Coming in to this new season, I was most hesitant about Stefan’s story, but the final scene did much to alleviate those concerns. As noted above, I’m not quite sure what is the plan with Damon [and not sure that I’m a fan of the longer hair, but maybe it is just in that awkward stage? Guess Somerhalder was too busy flying from Africa to New York to Paris this summer to get his hair done (for reals, did you follow him on Twitter? Guy went all over the world a few times, lucky guy).] Now that I’m also aware that Somerhalder is “not yet officially” dating Nina Dobrev, I’m curious how that is influencing my viewing. I see them touch or look at each other, and I think, “gosh, they must be having fun,” when poor Elena is supposed to be in the middle of an angry/emotional/depressed (pick one) scene.

Since we jump in pretty much where we left off, let’s do a quick rundown of where everyone is at right now:

“Poor Elena,” btw, is an understatement. It is her birthday, but all she can think about is the missing Stefan. Elena is sad but more or less holding it together.

Stefan is working for Klaus, doing whatever he says, even if that means ripping the heads off poor, innocent girls. [His outfits are now all black, btw, to indicate the darkness of his soul.] Basically, the entire episodes asks the audience to look for Stefan’s humanity, as Damon and Elena have been doing for months. That is actually a pretty sharp setup because it makes me care way more about Klaus’ DIABOLICAL plan [bad guys always have plans that deserve all caps].

Damon is still hanging with Andie, taking small breaks to chase down his brother and catalogue Stefan’s list of horrific crimes. He is keeping Elena in the dark. The best part of Damon’s life (at least, in my opinion), is when he hangs with Ric. [The buddy show that will eventually spin off from TVD better star Damon and Ric (sorry, Stefan).]

Ric is not holding it together as well as Elena. He is drinking a lot, sleeping on Elena’s couch, and otherwise acting like a sad sack. But hey, his girlfriend died twice, so that is a bitter pill.

Jeremy? Also losing it. He keeps seeing ghosts, but apparently these ghosts are completely incapable of conveying a message of any sense because all Jeremy has gotten out of them in two months is, “help me.” He hasn’t told Bonnie, the one person who could maybe help him because, um, why? Unclear. Better come up with a good reason that Jeremy would keep all this to himself, TVD, otherwise you have drama for drama’s sake rather than actions motivated by realistic character psychology (for all its excesses, TVD does usually ground its action in likeable, self-aware people).

Bonnie? Watching paint peel at her dad’s place out of town [don’t worry, she keeps up with Jeremy through his “facetime” feature on whatever phone the CW is hawking this week.]

And of course, my favorites, Awesome Vampire Caroline and her hunky friend Tyler. I write “friends” because that is what they are pretending they are, to everyone (but Matt’s) amusement.

So, that’s the landscape. We have a lot of characters that have done very little all summer but keep their feelings to themselves while they go through the motions. [So much for trips to the beach and hanging at the local drive-in, I guess.]

The show jumps right into to Stefan’s nightmare existence with he and Klaus on the hunt for a guy named, Ray. We figure out at some point that Klaus is hunting werewolves—to kill them or not is unclear. But he certainly kills the two girls who won’t tell him where to find Ray. Well, they do eventually tell him, after a mix of compulsion and torture. And he doesn’t kill them—Stefan does. With some violence, he chomps right down on the girl Klaus said to kill quickly. The other girl he is ordered to take him time with so she suffers. Klaus smiles as he walks away from the house while the viewer just hears screaming.

That’s a pretty terrific way to start a show, btw.

Meanwhile, Elena wakes up to another lonely, depressing day without any word from Stefan. Oh, and it is her birthday, but she’s not exactly eager to celebrate. Awesome Vampire Caroline calls her while out shopping for the party, cause Caroline is always eager to celebrate. We learn that Sheriff Forbes is helping with the hunt for Stefan, but Damon refuses to let Elena follow up any leads with him. Meaning all Elena knows about Stefan is…nothing. As she says, she doesn’t even know if he’s alive.

Damon is having himself a bubble bath, and Andie is giving him some lip, refusing to get him more champagne. She says, “I don’t drink in the morning… I’m not your slave.” Their banter has gotten more fun—I prefer spunky Andie to compelled Andie. Damon, being Damon, gets right up from that tub, with bubble bath rolling down his well developed chest and nether regions while the CW set designers do a good job of finding objects capable of blocking the viewer’s ability to see those nether regions [can you imagine if this show were on Showtime? Damon would just stop wearing clothes. Hmmm, maybe this show should be on Showtime…]. Elena walks into the living room, determined to get Damon to let her go look for Stefan this time, but when she turns around, there he is, wearing only the remnants of his bubble bath. [Damon is so fun.] As per usual, he refuses to let her join him on the hunt (taking Awesome Human Ric with him instead), explaining that Klaus still thinks she is dead, and Damon would like to keep it that way.

At this point in the episode, the partner and I had to pause the DVR and ask, wait, who died last season and how? So here’s another rundown (from my admittedly feeble memory) in case you are confused, too. Elena died, but thanks to Bonnie’s magic and Uncle/Daddy John’s sacrifice, she was able to come back. Jeremy also dies, and that reawakening was way more vague [Bonnie somehow made it happen even though giving someone the ability to stop death pretty much removes the stakes for any human in a show set in a fantasy world. Death is the one consequence that is final. Jeremy doesn’t seem to be handling his return so well, though, so maybe the show has another way to make coming back to life pretty undesirable. Jury is out.] Jenna is way dead—first she became a vampire, then she tried to be noble but got cut down by Klaus real fast. Elijah is also sort of dead—that knife is back in him, and Klaus has stored him with the rest of his family in a “Rent a Unit” somewhere. Is that everyone?

Tyler eats lunch with Caroline, who is annoyed Matt is avoiding her. “He thinks we’re dating,” Tyler says, and Caroline does her best to fake laugh at that totally ridiculous but super alluring notion. Tyler’s mom, we learn, is also suspicious that they are dating, or at least that is how Tyler is interpreting his mother staring at Caroline all the time.

Damon and Ric find a super bloody house and the two corpses of the young girls Stefan dispatched. This scene is a bit grosser than is usual for TVD, for when Damon sees these bodies, he knows they are in pieces: “Stefan. It’s his signature. There’s a reason they call him the Ripper. He feeds so hard he blacks out, rips them apart, but then when he’s done, he feels remorse. It’s the damndest thing,” Damon reaches out and one of the corpse’s head falls from the torso on which it has been carefully placed. “He puts the bodies back together.” Ric is horrified.

After the scene with the decapitated head, we shift to a more comic one involving…you guessed it…Awesome Vampire Caroline (there are only a couple of character on this show with a sense of humor, so it isn’t hard to guess—Caroline or Damon, that’s pretty much it). Caroline is talking to Elena about Stefan, and Elena is complaining about Damon keeping her in the dark, when Tyler pipes up from the background, “maybe he doesn’t want to find him.” Elena assure Tyler that Damon wants to find his brother, who saved his life, just as badly as Elena. Tyler won’t be deterred: “But you kissed him! Probably screwed with his head,” as Caroline emits a horrified and shushing “Tyler!” Elena gives Caroline a pretty awesome look, while Caroline tries to look abashed.

After Elena leaves the room, Tyler informs Caroline that he is bringing a date to Elena’s party, and Caroline is immediately annoyed: “slutty Sophie is your date?” Tyler explains, with some frustration, that he’s super horny—it’s a wolf thing. Caroline assures him that she knows what he means—it is a vampire thing as well (heightened emotions and all). The show’s writers just let that all hang in the air for a moment so we can appreciate the hot tension between these two.

Klaus finds Ray in a bar and some torture commences, with Stefan throwing wolfs bane soaked darts into the dude’s body and head (yikes). Klaus is informed by a minion that Damon continues his hunt for Stefan, and Klaus suggests it may be time to deal with the Damon situation. Stefan quickly pipes up that he can handle Damon—and promises to return.

Damon finds Elena being depressed (what else is new?), to which he responds, “It’s your party, you can cry if you want to.” Then he gives her a gift, something he promises he didn’t buy. He returns to Elena her necklace that carries the verveine, something Alaric found in his apartment. She’s touched and asks him to put the necklace on for her. There isn’t anything overtly sexual in this scene—it just shows that Elena trusts Damon and he cares for her. It is a nice little scene.

They go downstairs arm in arm (the party is at Damon’s house) and Elena sees a rather enormous kegger raging, with one dude finished a keg stand. She wryly asks Caroline, “this is keeping it small?” Elena next finds that Matt and Jeremy are smoking weed—Matt cause he’s depressed (isn’t everyone?) and Jeremy cause he’s tormented. Jeremy starts to tell Matt about his troubles—he says he is seeing things—but that’s about as far as they get in this scene.

Meanwhile, Alaric is being his awesome self outside the house, noting to Damon, “I am every parents worst nightmare. I’m the chaperone teacher from hell,” as he stares at all of his drunk students around him. Elena tells Rick that Jeremy is smoking dope again, which prompts Damon to ask if his stash is any good. “You’re an ass,” Elena says as she drinks some of Damon’s whisky. [At this point, my partner points out the strangeness of underage kids drinking to excess being presented as normal, but weed gets Elena’s panties all in a twist.] Elena asks Alaric to talk to him. Damon finds it amusing that Ric has somehow inherited these two teenagers. “You’re screwed,” he tells Ric.

Awesome Vampire Caroline is drinking directly from a bottle of liquor as she watches Tyler dance with Slutty Sophie (and their dancing is rather slutty). Matt gives her a bit of trouble, so Tyler comes over with Sophie to see if Caroline is okay. Sophie tells Caroline it is a great party. Caroline gives her a withering glare, compels her, and says, “thanks, now leave it.”

Damon has to rush off to pick up Andie, which allows Ric to tease him back, “You mean your fake compelled girlfriend wants you to be a chivalrous boyfriend?” “Well, it’s a complicated dynamic,” Damon admits.

Elena tries to escape from the party and finds Caroline drinking some blood in Damon’s room. Elena expresses frustration that Caroline wants her to go on with her life, when she doesn’t even know if Stefan is alive. Then she sees the map Damon has been keeping, along with newspaper clippings about all the murders in each town Klaus and Stefan visit. Angry now, Elena mutters, “Damon’s been tracking him without me.”

Unfortunately, Andie won’t ever be leaving the TV station. Stefan finds her and torments her a bit by stalking his prey. When she sees him, she is at first relieved, but Stefan just stares at her with hard, empty eyes, and Andie quickly picks up that he is not here to do any good. Damon arrives to find Stefan at the station. At first, he is cautiously sarcastic, “you don’t write, you don’t call…” But Stefan isn’t playing games. He has compelled Andie to stand on a ceiling beam, unable to move and terribly frightened. Damon shows a moment’s panic—he does care about Andie. Stefan is cold, telling Andie she is free to move, and she walks off the beam and falls to her death. Stefan grabs Damon and grunts, “I said, let me go.”

Tyler and Caroline fight. He points out that she turned him down and now she’s all jealous: “should I not be dating…cause if I shouldn’t be dating, all you gotta do is say something.” “What would I say,” she deflects, but he won’t let her shut him down. “Don’t do that Caroline. I’ve already been there once with you, okay, and you said no. You shut me down. I’m not going back there again unless you make it crystal clear…” and she kisses him—it gets very steamy very fast. “Let’s get out of here,” Tyler says.   [Hooray!]

Elena is angry with a returning Damon, who spits back, “you were an idiot—we both were.” He doesn’t tell her that Andie is dead, but he does inform her that he hasn’t been tracking Klaus’ victims—he’s been tracking Stefan’s. Cruelly, he informs Elena that Stefan won’t be back soon, “not in your lifetime.”

Matt and Jeremy are back at Jeremy’s house eating ice cream and giggling like girls at a slumber party (munchies are funny). Matt tries to get Jeremy to talk more—because he distinctly heard Jeremy call out Vicki’s name. Jeremy admits the truth that he keeps seeing Vicki, but Matt won’t listen. He says (paraphrased), sure there are these supernaturals, but ghosts? That’s silly. [Good to know that despite knowing the truth about his friends, Matt will continue to be the show’s clueless character.]

As Klaus feeds tortured Ray some of his blood, Stefan realizes he is building an army of hybrids. Klaus replies, “you put on a good show, Stefan, but you never stop caring about family, do you?” The irony is intended.

A thoroughly demoralized Alaric leaves Elena’s house, telling her not only that he is no role model, but also that she is now 18 and capable of running the house herself. “You can do better without me,” Ric says as he walks out the door. [Please, please, please let him move in with Damon.]

Tyler and Awesome Vampire Caroline start taking off their clothes as they passionately make out in his bedroom. It’s about as sexy as you might imagine. [Nicely done, TVD.]

Damon tears apart Stefan’s room and Elena gets a mysterious phone call. She picks up and hears silence. “Stefan, if this is you, you will be okay. I love you, Stefan. Hold on to that, never let that go,” she whispers, as a desperate Stefan tries to hold on.

The show probably should have ended on that note, but instead we see Caroline try to sneak out of the Lockwood mansion unsuccessfully. Mrs. Lockwood stops her and then shoots her with darts three times in the back. Uh oh.

The Vampire Diaries is back, and it hasn’t skipped a beat.