I’m so hype to see what happens next - probably something boring for the next 19 episodes, culminating in all the plot being shoved into the last few. No, I’m being mean. Well, a little mean. It is what happened last season, after all. Let’s get started!

Omg, we open with the last scene of last season, but for a second I thought John was just… alive again, and I was going to have to rend my garments and gnash my teeth. Whew, no, this is Katharine-as-Elena killing him in the kitchen. I like this part, let’s watch.

Gets rid of his ring… stabs him… Elena comes in… She puts a kitchen towel over his bleeding guts as she calls 911. She gets the address out, and we can see Katharine lurking over her shoulder, but just as John says, “behind you,” Katharine is gone. Elena goes through the house, thinking she sees her, but ultimately, Katharine gets away because Elena has to deal with Jeremy’s overdose and John being stabbed.

We get our opening sting, and then the paramedics are taking John out - he’s still alive, unfortunately - and letting Stefan in. Jeremy has told Elena the whole story, and she’s called Stefan in to see if Jeremy’s a vamp. He’s not. He’s disappointed, and Elena chides him for it, and grow up, Elena. Unlike some vamps, the blood won’t stay with him forever. Stefan tells him that if he dies in the next day or so? - it’s unclear, but he says, “every day, Anna’s blood is leaving your system”, and if he dies with it still in, he’ll turn. He slaps Jeremy: “do you understand what I’m saying?!” and Jeremy says he does, but.…

I mean, Stefan’s so emphatic. Like, he goes out of his way to make the point to Jeremy, which just feels to me like he’s trying to get Jeremy to off himself and turn?! It’s like one of those stories about, say, a boss and an employee: the boss “can’t” tell the employee to do something, but wink-wink, that’s what the employee should feel free to do. Like, “you only have a day or two left, Jeremy, get to dyin’!” And I can’t imagine that’s what the writers intended, so it’s very strange to watch.

Jeremy’s not even high: Anna’s blood “cured” his overdose. A cop appears in the door to take Elena to the hospital. Stefan offers to stay with Jeremy, who says he doesn’t need a babysitter, but Jesus, Jer. You tried to kill yourself to be a 16-year-old vampire. You’re not well.

Bonnie shows at the hospital, and Matt tells her what’s up with Caroline. Damon comes in to talk to Sheriff, whom he calls Liz, even if I can’t remember her damn name. He asks what he can do for her, and she tells him that Caroline will be fine, but then tells him about the mayor. She doesn’t believe he was a vampire, and we know he’s not, but that leaves the question of what he was - and what Tyler still is.

Bonnie’s filling Elena in on Caroline, but she says that nobody knows if she’s going to make it?! Hang on, I’m rewinding…. Huh. Okay. Well, when Liz tells Damon about Caro, she says: “They’re doing everything they can.” But she’s like… sort of smiling? She doesn’t look that worried to me, and in the last episode she needed surgery, but beyond the inherent risk it didn’t sound like anything that terrible.

Oh, I bet Caro’s actress asked for a raise or something, so they put her in stasis. Shitty.

Well, anyway, Caroline’s dying until contract negotiations are over. Elena asks Bonn to do a spell or something, but Damon, happening by, says she doesn’t know how? Huh? Oh, because “it took Emily years to learn a spell like that”. Bonnie says she can take down a vampire. Damon - perhaps thinking he’s kissed Elena in the past few hours? - says he can give Caroline blood, heal her that way. Elena immediately says no. Bonnie says to do it. Damon proposes a truce between him and Bonnie if he does, but Bonn kiboshes that. He’ll do it anyway, for Elena, so she need give him nothing in exchange. They all agree she’s right, and she leaves.

Damon says they need to talk about what happened tonight, and Elena’s all, yeah, how did you know about the tomb vampire who tried to kill John? What? When, after he left? They’re both very confused, and then Damon says they kissed, and she thinks he’s pranking her or something. She starts away, but Jenna shows up, and Elena asks where she’s been. “At the fire department, I had to fill out a report, I told you.” Damon’s hovering as Elena says she didn’t, Jenna insists she did, they go back and forth, and then -

Damon realizes what’s happened. Katharine’s back.

Meanwhile, at Elena’s house, Stefan’s watching Jeremy when Katharine comes home. She fools him for a second, but he knows better, and vamps out to fight her. And the vamp fight ends just as Elena and Damon come home. Elena looks at a couple busted lamps, Stefan out of breath (???), and asks what happened. “Katharine,” says Damon, and it’s commercial time.

Y’all, I am THRILLED this is going so well.

Okay. Damon, Stefan, and Elena have a summit about it. They have to figure out what Katharine wants, because it’s clearly not Elena dead, or she’d be dead. Katharine’s been invited into the house, which is a problem. And she fooled Damon once already. Stefan gets derailed by the kissing news, but Elena points out they don’t have time for that nonsense. She didn’t cheat, she wouldn’t, fuckin’ put it away and deal with the problem at hand.

They need to talk to John. Why would Katharine want to kill him? Damon thinks she’s just bloodthirsty, but no, that’s rarely true. Damon thinks they won’t ferret anything out until Katharine wants them to know, and he proposes simply not playing Katharine’s games. I like that tactic, it drives people insane. But it’s not very good television, so I’m sure we’ll be going after Katharine.

Bonn goes to visit Caroline. Matt mentions that Damon stopped by late last night, and Caroline looks in almost perfect health when Bonnie goes in to see her. Caro says she’s healing really fast! Bonnie tears up a little. Come on, Bonn. Damon’s a good guy underneath it all.

I think it might be a… wake? for the Mayor? It’s a big fancy house, lotta people in black, and Mrs. Mayor is all het up about Sheriff Liz finding who killed the Mayor. Damon is tagging along with Liz, who tells Mrs. Mayor - whose name is Carol - that she has to be straight with Sheriff. Was Mayor Richard a vampire?

Carol is outraged. Liz’s deputy screwed up. Liz is outraged. Richard helped John Gilbert set up the stupid plan in the first place! Damon is trying to placate them both, and eventually succeeds - probably because they’re in public - by reminding them that the whole town is grieving and on edge, and they have to stick together to defeat the vampires. LOL.

Oooh, Mayor Richard had a prodigal son? Prodigal brother: Uncle Mason. Who looks all of 25. Tyler welcomes him into the house.

Stefan and Elena go see John. Stefan wisely takes off John’s pulse monitor, because he freaks out when he opens his eyes to Elena. Who assures him immediately it’s Elena, not Katharine, and they need to ask him some questions so they can find her. Elena returns his ring, but he has nothing to say. Stefan says Katharine will try again, doesn’t he want to live? Still nothing. What about for your daughter?

“My daughter,” he says, “would have driven a stake through your heart long ago,” then says Stefan should kill him or go, but he’s disgusted seeing him with his daughter. Elena stalks out, saying his hatred will kill him.

Stefan lingers. Then he bites his wrist and forces the wound into John’s mouth. He’s got roughly 24 hours until Stefan’s blood leaves his system. Elena doesn’t want him here. He has 24 hours to get the fuck out of town or Stefan will kill him and turn him into a vampire and enjoy watching John eat himself alive with self-hatred.

Holy shit, could I someday like Stefan? Wonders never cease, I suppose! This is absolutely brutal revenge, deeply twisted. I love it.

Yup, Uncle Mason is Richard’s younger brother. Damon’s asking Liz if he’s on the Council and stuff, but no, he’s not a believer, he couldn’t care less. Huh. Wonder what they’re planning for this guy.

Katharine shows up for the wake. Tyler tells her to “come on in”, even if she didn’t quite seem to recognize him when he called her Elena and thanked her for coming. Good job, Tyler. I have to assume you’re some sort of vampire-killer, though. Werewolf is my current guess? but like, with some sort of magic or something that prevents turning. Though the eyes did seem kind of lizardy….

Elena asks Stefan how he left it with John as they leave the hospital. Stefan says he asked him to leave; Elena counters he threatened. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, and Elena’s glad Stefan did. She doesn’t want John in her life or Jeremy’s.

(side story, which has nothing to do with anything, but the other day I was reading Reddit and someone typed out “tomato, tomato” instead of “to-may-to, to-mah-to” and I’m all - did he think it’s just… tomato tomato? they both sound the same? has he been saying it that way for years, and no one’s ever looked at him strangely? was it a personal joke that got out of hand? how on earth do you think “tomato, tomato” is the saying? or does he just write it like that and expect the rest of us to have zero questions about it?

(my husband tells me neurotypicals don’t have questions like this, and I cannot imagine that, I’m sorry. please be curious about everything, my loves. life is much more fun that way.)

Elena asks Stefan where he’s headed. He wants to go after Damon for kissing “her”. She tells him Damon isn’t the problem, Katharine is! Elena is right, Stefan, you’re being an idiot and kind of a jerk about this. Let it fucking go.

Damon’s wildly unstable where Katharine is concerned. And frankly, given the framework of the show and the things we know about its writers and characters, I’m going to say this: Damon would never have kissed Elena. Elena wouldn’t have allowed it, true, but beyond that, I think he only did it because on some level he recognized Katharine. Is this a real-life thing? Maybe! I wonder what spouses of identical twins would say if you ask if they can tell their spouse and spouse-in-law apart. I bet most of them can, actually. Does Damon know Katharine that intimately? I don’t think so, but who knows? She is his dame, after all. Stefan finally backs down. At least to Elena’s face.

Bonnie tells Damon the device affected Tyler Lockwood, and he says he knew it got Mayor Lockwood. Is he finding out why? asks Bonn, and he’s like, well, I’d love to know, but it would be moot if you hadn’t betrayed us to John Gilbert. Speaking of you being guilty, Bonnie, is Caroline okay?

She is, but that just means Bonnie won’t kill Damon. Yeah, sure, says Damon, not at all impressed with Bonnie’s threats. I wonder whose threats he would be impressed by, actually. Or that he could show outwardly. He tells her she’s getting a big head about this witch shit, so she gives him an aneurysm. Go Bonnie.

Bonn walks outside and finds Katharine, to whom she starts complaining about Damon. Katharine plays along just fine, until Bonnie touches her and knows. She hides the reaction pretty well, but Katharine can tell Bonnie knows. Or that Bonnie’s a witch. Bonnie turns on a heel and immediately calls Elena, who says she’s on her way, she’ll be there in five minutes - and then turns again and runs back into Katharine.

Katharine boasts about everyone she’s managed to peg down in Elena’s life: the brother, the aunt, the “delicious ex”, and Bonnie, “the vampire-hating Bennett Witch.” Bonnie tries to aneurysm her, too, but it doesn’t work: too old. She says Bonnie will have to do better, grabs Bonn by the throat and almost eats her.

Bonnie opens the doors wide, so everyone can see in, and Katharine can see Stefan, standing right there. “Not bad,” she says, and drops her to focus her attention on Stefan. They walk through the wake, Katharine admitting she’s looking for Damon. At least until Matt shows up.

Why on earth is this woman so hot for teenage boys? I mean, these are cleaner, much more attractive teenage boys than usual - probably because they’re all 30-year-old actors - but like, why. Why on earth would you ever want to fuck a teenager once you’ve reached the massively huge age of however many centuries she’s been alive. I want to say she’s like 400? but I feel like I also might just be making that up, so who knows. Bitch is at least over 150, and at that point, do I even want to fuck a 40-year-old? Seriously. At some point, the weight of experience must make it so difficult to understand humans at all - or, I suppose, it could make you very into them, into collecting even more experience. But I can’t imagine why you’d want a 16 or 17-year-old fumbling at you, pumping for two seconds, then coming and wondering if it was good for you. Even with eternity before me, I cannot imagine wasting my time teaching a man how to fuck me - and I can’t imagine, at my slightly-less-big age of 46, ever finding a teenager attractive. It’s just so deeply gross, even for a “villain” character.

Anyway, she’s all up in Matt’s business, saying he must be so relieved that Caroline’s alive, just gushing. Seems she makes Matt a little uncomfortable, because he hightails it back to the hospital (I think).

Stefan tells her to leave, she says something about the kiss with Damon, he says he’s “not doing this” with her. She tells him she doesn’t want to have a “couples’ fight” in public. Girl, what are you doing? Is the whole point to make the brothers kill each other or something? It just reads so oddly, to me, bringing up the couple thing. He asks what game she’s playing, and she gets coy, flirtatious. “Do you want to play with me?”

“How can I play if I don’t know the rules?”

“No rules, Stefan, remember?” She starts walking away. “No rules.”

Why does he follow her? Is this supposed to be seductive? I have no idea what’s going on, y’all.

Elena, Jeremy, and Jenna show up to the wake. Jenna and Jeremy go in to drop off a casserole, pay respects, and come right back out. Elena detours to talk to Damon. They dance around the kiss thing, and Damon understands: Elena is afraid Katharine will send him on a killing spree or something. “Off the deep end”. I mean, yeah, Damon, I think we all know this isn’t where you act your most rationally.

He heads off as Bonnie comes around the corner, stops dead, and calls Elena’s name. Elena asks her what happened, and she visibly relaxes. Poor Bonn, this PTSD is gonna last forever.

Jeremy looks for the bathroom but finds Tyler in his dad’s study instead. They have a really sweet moment of bonding over losing their dads, over having to deal with a bunch of strangers in their houses, telling them how great their dads were. Tyler says that Jeremy’s dad was good, though; his dad was a dick. “Yeah,” says Jeremy, surprisingly. “Yeah, he was,” and just like that, they’ve decided to put the past behind them. At least for the moment. Tyler hands over the flask he found in his dad’s desk, and Jeremy takes it just as the uncle walks in. What’s his name, Cody? Cameron?

Mason, sorry, I was stuck on Cs for some reason. He takes the flask from Jeremy and sends him off, seemingly angry, but then he drinks with Tyler. I wouldn’t trust him, Ty. This guy has bad news written all over him.

Stefan and Katharine are walking the grounds, Stefan digging for information, Katharine not giving it, trying to flirt. Ultimately, he calls her a bitch and tells her to leave or he’ll rip her heart out of her chest.

She hates this. She says she came back for him, and he says he hates her, so she impales him with a decorative iron spike. “That sounds like the beginning of a love story,” she says, and runs off with her spike.

After the break, Stefan’s in the same place on the grounds - some bench in the park, not part of the yard - but Elena’s tending to his wound?

Damon comes up and says they tried to track Katharine, but they couldn’t. And then tells Elena to watch out, cuz Katharine’s trying to steal her man. She rolls her eyes and says she’ll be up at the house, finding Jenna and Jeremy.

Damon tells Stefan to take a shot at him for the kissing thing, but Stefan points out that Katharine will pit them against each other. They can’t let it happen. He also points out that Damon kissed “Elena” because he actually has feelings for her - and Stefan doesn’t want him to go backward emotionally.

John is packing up to leave when Jeremy comes in. Jeremy is pissed off about the vampires dying, and John says that Jer’s dad would have hated vamps, too. It’s how they were brought up. It’s how Jeremy should have been brought up.

Jeremy changes subject. That ring was his dad’s, right? Why is his dad dead? Get this: because it was a car accident, not a supernatural occurrence. Nothing can save them from regular deaths.

I’m sorry, has this ring not protected from bullets and stakes and all sorts of not-supernatural shit? WTF is John talking about? Is this just the writers being morons again? Is John afraid he’ll lose his other 4 fingers?

Jeremy wonders what his dad would think of him, and John says his dad would think he was still young, but with great power comes great responsibility, and Jeremy’s like, FOH with that Uncle Ben shit.

Sad music plays loudly over Tyler trashing his dad’s study. Carol comes in at the noise; Tyler says he hated his dad. Carol tries to stop him and he pushes her away. Mason comes in and holds Tyler down until he calms down, and I was so hopeful that Tyler would, like, weredragon out, or whatever’s coming, but no dice. We’re in the last ten minutes, even though there’s one more ad break? Unusual.

Moving on! Damon’s drinking, of course. Katharine’s on his sofa. She says she wanted to say “goodbye”, like she’s going to actually leave? Not even Damon believes that. He offers more than threatens to kill her, and she tries to seduce him, too, but it doesn’t seem to be working, really. And then when it does, he wants a “brief pause” to ask a question. She says she’ll tell him the truth: she never loved him. It was always Stefan.

And she walks out of his house. Hair down, and because she lost her shirt, titties out.

Damon goes straight to Elena, saying he’s there to guard her, but he’s very drunk. He calls Elena a liar, because obviously there’s an attraction between them. He says he’ll prove it and kisses her, but she does try to throw him off. She tells him he’s better than this, and while he might consider that, it won’t be now.

Jeremy comes in and asks what’s going on. Elena says it’s nothing, they’re fine. Damon tells him to wait. Doesn’t he want to be a vampire?

He snaps Jeremy’s neck.

But Jeremy’s wearing the ring. I think? I don’t know if this is the daywalking ring or the invincibility (to everything but car accidents) ring. Elena looks at whichever one it is and doesn’t stop crying, so I have no idea if he’s gonna wake up or what.

At Tyler’s, Uncle Mason sits him down to explain the curse of the Lockwood men, why they get so angry, how to control it.

Stefan says that Damon saw the ring, which is why he snapped Jeremy’s neck. So it must be the invincibility one. Stefan says Katharine got to Damon.

Elena doesn’t care. She says there’s no good left in him. She hates Damon.

Jeremy wakes up.

Caroline wakes up to Katharine asking her to give the Salvatore brothers a message. “What message?”

“Game on,” says Katharine, and smothers her with a pillow.

SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S2 E1: The Return

SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S2 E2: Brave New World

SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S01 E22: FOUNDERS’ DAY