Wonder if there’ll be a bathroom on the right? Let’s get started!

Looks like we’re starting to investigate the Lockwoods. Damon, Stefan, and Elena have Alaric over to their little summit to discuss, and we get a glimpse of Mason heading out of the mayoral (ancestral?) mansion for a run, just in case we forgot who he was between last week and this week’s little recap at the start of the ep.

Ric says he doesn’t know anything about the Lockwoods, but doesn’t Isobel? She did a ton of research on paranormal shit in the area. She never came across anything but vampires? Lycanthrope, he says, but Damon says he’s never once seen a werewolf, or anything that could be a werewolf. If they exist, where are they?

Intercut with this is Tyler following Mason on the run in the woods, so clearly we’re going to be seeing something, I hope.

Ric says, okay, well, why are you convinced the Lockwoods are something besides human? Vervain didn’t affect them, but the anti-vampire sound did, and Mason has exhibited extra-human strength, says Stefan. Well, says Ric, technically Isobel’s office at Duke is still there, just locked up, because she’s technically still “missing”. (Yeah, right, that office got packed up and put in storage when she didn’t call in for a single day, bet. No one’s holding an entire office hostage because someone went missing, but it’s fine.)

Tyler follows Mason down into a dungeon in the woods, complete with weird iron things attached to the walls and scratch marks in the stone.

Damon wants access to Isobel’s study because: “If Lockwood was Lon Chaney, then Tyler is probably Lon Chaney Jr., and that means that Bela Lugosi - who is me - is screwed.” Which I love, honestly. It makes perfect sense he’d make a Lon Chaney joke, and I hope all these kids had to go look it up. And it gives us our title sting!

Matt goes to Caroline’s, but she can’t answer the door because of sunlight. Can’t Bonnie spell her a ring?

Damon, Ric, and Elena are going to Duke, but Stefan can’t go because he has to watch Caroline.

Ric gives Jenna a song-and-dance about “cleaning out my wife’s things”, and I maintain she should be told about all of this. She’s the head of the Gilberts in this town! She’s a FOUNDING FAMILY, does that suddenly not mean anything?!?!

But seriously, she deserves to know, and I think everyone would be safer if she did. It’s unconscionable that John left her to deal with this shit and never even hinted that she was out of a loop. What an asshole.

The ruins in the woods were apparently the original Lockwood plantation, and if it hadn’t burnt down, they’d still be living in it! GROSS! Tyler asks his mom about the freaky basement, and she says they don’t talk about those kinds of rooms. “Why not?” Because it would expose our racism and inhumanity to other human beings, Tyler. I know American schools - especially in Virginia - don’t want to teach you how this country was founded, but your family enslaved other people. Not something anyone wants to talk about, especially not genteel white women who think we solved racism in 1964.

Which is what his mother says, except her exact words are “No one likes to reminisce about the old slave days.”

Old slave days.

OLD. SLAVE. DAYS.

REMINISCE.

I just… ew. Okay. Moving on.

Mason comes in and asks what they’re talking about. Tyler says he’s considering having some friends over to the swimming hole on the old property. Carol tells him to be careful: if anything happens, their family is liable because they still own the land.

Here we go: Stefan asks Bonnie to make a daywalking ring. She says she can’t, but Stefan thinks she’s powerful enough to figure out the spell from Emily’s books and stuff. But minor quibble: Bonnie doesn’t know if she can trust Caroline. She killed someone. Bonnie doesn’t want to participate in anything that will make it easy for Caro to do it again.

In the car on the way to Duke, Damon maintains he saw Jeremy’s ring before he snapped his neck. Debatable.

Caroline complains she doesn’t get to choose her ring, so … is it going to match? Bonnie warns her that if she spells the ring, she can unspell it, too, and if Caroline does anything that Bonnie interprets as evil, she’ll take away the option. Oh, no, it doesn’t match. It’s also black, like the men’s rings, but it’s clearly for a woman and not made at the same time or part of a set or anything. Bonnie spells the ring, it works, ta-da!

A grad student opens Isobel’s office, which is full of weird shit. She says she’ll get the lights, but she gets a crossbow instead and tries to kill Elena (whom I’m guessing she thinks is Katharine). Damon jumps in front of the arrow and takes it instead, he’ll be fine, and Ric disarms Grad Student.

Elena pulls out Damon’s arrow in another room, for some reason. I’m beginning to think the show runners think you have to have, like, a new scene when you come back from commercial? You don’t, everyone can be just where you left them, it makes way more sense, y’all.

Anyway. Elena pulls out the arrow and they have to have some ridiculous conversation about how Elena won’t ever speak to Damon again if he kills Grad Student. What a threat, Elena. Good job. Damon will definitely stop being a vampire because you’re being a meanie doo-doo-head.

Grad Student read Isobel’s research and says that Katharine can’t be alive, and Damon Salvatore died in 1864. Ric says if she read the research, she knows how it’s possible.

Caroline’s vampire instruction is not as fun as being at the swimming hole with Matt, who finally said he loves her, and she’s annoyed that Stefan just wants her to eat fluffy cute little animals and Stefan tells her that her natural emotions and behaviors are going to be amplified, so all of this feels worse than it would if she were still human. He says they should hunt, because everyone should eat first, and then they’ll go to swim with everyone. Adorable.

Grad Student (who maybe had a name? but if she did, I missed it, so.) brings out all the research and asks Elena if vervain really works. “Not at all,” says Damon from across the room.

Mason swings by the party to remind Tyler to be gone by dark. Tyler asks why, and Mason says because they’re liable, and kids after dark are going to be too drunk and someone’ll end up at the bottom of the lake. Fair, but not the real reason, Mason. Is it time to were-out? (I still don’t think they should be wolves with those eyes, but I can’t expect everyone to have were-imagination, either. Dragons would be so much cooler.)

Mason drives by Stefan and Caro, and he and Stefan exchange serious glances. Caro asks why Stefan has his “serious vampire look” on, which is different from his “worried vampire look”, and both are different from his “it’s Tuesday” vampire look.

Some rando is hitting on Matt, telling him it’s the full moon and they should hang out. Caro walks up and tells/compels the girl to leave, and Matt is annoyed because she was harmless, and Caro’s been unreachable all day. He stalks off, and Caro complains to Stefan about how her entire personality is killing her. Poor Caro. At least it’s wholesome vampiry.

Back at Duke, they find an Aztec legend that explains the werewolves and vampires in Mystic Falls. Never white people mythology, you’ll notice. I mean, I guess vamps are, but they could have gone with Norwegian skinwalkers and they didn’t. Aztec legends. In Virginia.

So. 600 years ago, the Aztecs were plagued by vampires and werewolves. (And Spaniards, but whatever, right? gotta have some brown people cred for your legends, I guess.) They made it impossible to tend crops or hunt. So an “Aztec shaman” (which I am certain is not anywhere near the right terminology) cursed them. Vampires would be susceptible to the sun, and werewolves would only be able to turn on the full moon - and not able to control it.

This is all intercut with Mason prepping the dungeon for the full moon. Apparently, due to “centuries of rivalry”, werewolves are now “hardwired” to hunt their “prey of choice”: vampires.

Oh, look, my least favorite trope ever. Delightful. This season’s gonna be great. /s

I don’t know where this came from, even. Is it Twilight? Is that why we have to deal with this nonsense? Is it Anita Blake? Who’s responsible, I just want to talk.

Apparently the vampires tried to genocide the werewolves, so that’s why Damon hasn’t seen one. (All werewolves? All vampires? They were ALL affected by this “Aztec Curse”?)

Shocker! The kids are still at the lake after dark! Caroline tries to talk to Matt again, and Elena calls Stefan to fill him in, especially on the “werewolf bites kill vamps” bit of lore.

Tyler ends up taking Amy, the girl who hit on Matt, into the weird basement to make out. Amy asks if everyone else is coming, and Tyler says they are, so she keeps following him.

Mason, who was in the basement locking himself up and adding holy water to his bottle so he can extra kill vamps, I guess?has to lock himself in his car, which I’m guessing isn’t going to work out so well.

(There is an absolutely bizarre ad at this point. I think it’s for work clothes? They show a Stihl chainsaw and it’s all weirdly gritty and grey-filtered, like it’s a true crime documentary or something? And they flash the working guy, and then a title card with things about the clothes. “HEAVY CANVAS”, “DOUBLE RIVETS”, whatever the fuck, but it’s the most ominous clothing ad I’ve ever seen in my life. Are the clothes to save me from chainsaw death?!)

At Duke, Elena asks about dopplegangers, and Grad Student says that there isn’t much. Doppelgangers usually torment the people they look like.

Amy’s compulsion wears off mid-makeout, so Tyler is alone in the basement. Stefan is in the woods looking for Caroline and Matt, but obviously finds Mason’s cast-off chains and car. Mason lunges at him in wolf form, but then takes off through the woods.

Ric warns Grad Student not to say anything to anyone. She says Damon already warned her, but if Ric needs anything, he should FEEL FREE to call her - but Ric says she doesn’t want to be involved in this. Isobel’s a vampire, it’ll take over your whole life, Ric doesn’t get to even teach history or date anymore.

Damon has stolen (? taken, at any rate) a book from Isobel’s office. Katharine “came from Europe”, like all old vampires do, I guess, and her name was Katarina Petrova. The book is labeled “Petrova”. (But is Russia really considered Europe? like, obviously, it’s on the continent, but would Katharine herself refer to it thus? Would any of her contemporaries? Who are her contemporaries? Are we gonna get a Dracula episode?!?!?!?!?!)

It’s a bid for forgiveness from Damon. He says, sincerely, that Elena has every right to hate him, but she hated him before and they became friends. He’d hate to lose that. Elena won’t reassure him, and frankly, she’s right. He didn’t see that ring, and he killed Jeremy because he was in a snit. Elena shouldn’t forgive that easily, or maybe at all. I would give him shit about it until one of us died, frankly.

Caroline chomps Matt.

Lucky for them both, Stefan is running after Mason, who’s just come by. Stefan gets Caroline off Matt, tells Matt to stay down, and he and Caroline are going to run as fast and as far as possible. Caroline asks what’s out there, and Stefan says werewolf, just as Tyler pops up from the basement. With their attention focused on him, no one sees Mason. He knocks Caroline to the ground in wolf form, and Stefan grabs him off. They size each other up for a moment, and Mason just… runs away.

We come back from break and Caro is mojoing Matt to not remember that she vamped out on him. Stefan says he took care of Tyler, and he’ll get Matt on vervain, so he can’t be compelled and so Caro can’t chomp him. She says she should break up with Matt. Stefan says he can’t offer her advice, or he wouldn’t be with Elena. Caro asks if he thinks he should break up with Elena, and he says, according to the captions, “I know I SHOULD OF.”

SHOULD OF.

SHOULD OF.

fuck off.

Tyler finds Mason’s car with the back window all broken out and his clothes in it, just as dawn is breaking and Mason has returned for his pants. Tyler figures it out pretty fast, to his (and the writers’) credit.

Matt is talking to Amy at The Grill, so Caro stages a scene to break up with him. Aw. Poor Caro.

Ric and the gang get back to Mystic Falls, and Ric goes straight to kissing Jenna. Good for him. I’m glad he’s moving on.

Elena demands the truth from Damon: did he see the ring or not? No, he confesses, finally. No. He apologizes to Elena, sincerely. Elena says that he’s lost her friendship forever, but forever is a long time, Elena. You don’t have to forgive, you don’t have to forget, but you won’t be able to be this bitchy forever.

But Damon, as a lovely parting shot, tells her that she and Katharine have a lot more in common than anyone would think.

In our ending sting, Katharine shows up in Caroline’s bedroom, and promises that they’ll “have so much fun together.”

DRAMA! See you next week!

SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S2 E3: Bad Moon Rising

SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S2 E4: Memory Lane

SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S2 E2: Brave New World