I was sick last week, Snowflakes, but luckily, it was just a quick cold, nothing serious. Trouble is, I have a lemon of a body, so I was horizontal for almost a full week. Good thing I can do recaps from my bed! Let’s get started.

We pick up where we left off: Elena watching (presumably) a vampire crawling at her, stuck in the upside-down car. That vamp runs away once he sees her face, and then Damon shows up to get her out of the car. She babbles about Catherine and then faints, so of course Damon moves her some more, and carries her from the accident.

Alaric is… writing a journal? thinking out loud with his mouth closed? it’s unclear, but his voiceover is about killing Logan and how he knew there was “evil” in Mystic Falls. He looks at a framed pic and has a flashback to… Amanda Grayson from the NuTrek shows?!?! Who also was in Dracula: The Series?!

The backstory is that vamps killed her, almost certainly, but we transition back to the present after point-three seconds and two lines of dialogue about sleeping in, so, you know. Just Vampire Diaries things!

Elena wakes up in Damon’s 70s Chevelle, and also in the state of Georgia. You know, Elena, who just got in a rollover accident and has a head injury that made her unconscious for several hours? She should definitely be on a road trip, good call, Damon!

Anyway, she makes him stop the car and refuses to talk to Stefan when he calls. Oh, and she took off her vervain necklace, so Damon points out he could mojo her, but he refrains. Stefan, after Damon hangs up, throws some shit around the room and will almost surely go do something stupid instead of waiting to talk to Elena, because this is television, and no one ever waits. (I am told that people do that irl, too – like, they have a feeling and immediately think they must act on it – but I refuse to believe real people are that dumb. Probably to my detriment, but that’s ok, I can live with it.)

Damon’s taking her to “a little place right outside of Atlanta”, and I’m guessing it’s Catherine’s estate or plantation or whatever, but let’s drag it out for half the episode, I guess. Elena agrees to stop arguing if Damon agrees not to mojo her. Which he does. Epic restraint, Damon, I’d put her back to sleep immediately.

Jeremy comes upon Alaric digging through his own car, but Alaric has some story? about losing his ring at the gym? and digging around in the car for it. And then he finds it? and mentions it’s a family heirloom. What is this for? This show has the worst, clunkiest foreshadowing I’ve ever seen, my god. And I bet the ring won’t even matter, or if it does, it’ll be in five episodes after we’ve forgotten the stupid thing even exists.

Jeremy then tells Alaric that he’s going to write about his own family during the Civil War, and we’re on to Bonnie and Stefan. He asks Bonn for a spell to find Elena, to make sure she’s okay. Bonnie demurs at first, but then does the “spell”, which is just her holding Elena’s necklace. Nothing happens; Bonnie thinks she’s broken.

Damon doesn’t know who the vamp in the road was, but he does confirm it was a vamp. Elena seems surprised he doesn’t know who it is, but he says they’re not all hanging at the vampire bar and grill together, they can’t possibly all know each other. He brings Elena to Bree’s Bar, where they meet his old friend, GINA MOTHERFUCKING TORRES.

She kisses him with full tongue, and introduces him to the bar as: “the man who broke my heart, crushed my soul, destroyed my life, and ruined any and all chance of happiness.” As she pours them all shots.

They met in college, and she’s a witch. Like, obviously, she’s Gina Torres. Honestly, I’m shocked it’s not a plantation.

Jeremy meets a cute girl in the library: Anna.

Bonn goes to Grams for help, and Grams says it’s a mental block. Bonnie has to deal with her fear – presumably about vampires – before her power will come back.

Damon wants Gina to get him into the raveyard tomb, but it’s a no-go. She can’t override Emily’s spell, and she definitely can’t do anything if Damon doesn’t have the jewel, so.

Bonnie goes to the church ruins and falls into a hole in the ground.

Elena finally talks to Stefan, just long enough to be like, “you lied! I don’t wanna talk!”

Bree calls someone to tell them Damon’s in town.

Bonnie has some scrapes and bruises, and freaks out because there’s a carved pentacle on the wall of the basement or whatever she fell into.

Stefan goes to see Grams, looking for Bonnie, and Grams says she doesn’t know where Bonn is, but Stefan does. Stefan knows what Bonnie’s afraid of, what she is, and what Grams is. Stefan also offered his hand, as a gesture of trust, because Grams will know what he is the instant she touches him, if she didn’t already. Grams tells him to go find Bonnie.

Anna asks Jeremy what his paper is on. “How hysteria about the war influenced certain writers.” She tells him to “focus that”, which is not a sentence that makes sense in English, but okay. He says, “the origins of local folklore and myths.” Oh, says Anna, you mean the vampires.

Back to the bar in Georgia! Thank god I don’t have to move every time we switch scenes, I’d be exhausted. It’s like that clip of Liam Neeson jumping over a fence.

Back in the bar, Elena and Damon are discussing lore. Vamps don’t procreate, so no, Elena is probably not related to Catherine. And Damon can eat and drink for fun, as long as he has enough blood.

Jeremy insists there are no vampires, just an allegory for Union soldiers. Anna calls him smart. She says she has to go, then mentions a journal her grandfather showed her, full of creepy stories. Jeremy perks up at the journal mention, and asks if she has to go. I’m interested, too, so obviously…

We’re in the basement with Bonnie, who seems as downtrodden as if she’d been in there for a week, not, like, ten minutes. I know soaps are about heightened emotions, but come on. Somebody ove up and just deal with your shit instead of being mopey or incandescent with rage or ebullient with joy. Sometimes, you just have to get out of the basement, Bonnie, and wailing about it just makes you unlikeable.

So she stands around with her hand on the pentacle, listening to “voices”, freaking herself out.

Stefan shows up and scares the crap out of her, but they get out of the hole. And of course it’s night! Because this show absolutely refuses to understand how time works!

Someone with an extremely square jaw shows up at Bree’s. She tilts her head at him towards Damon.

Amna suggests a vampire movie night over foosball, but Jeremy says it’s just too soon, he just got out of something, like he’s fuckin 40 and twice-divorced or some shit.

Elena steps out to take a call from Jenna asking where she is – which she also did like 5 scenes ago? – and someone grabs her. Damon finds her dropped phone and somehow follows her to a power station, where Square Jaw attacks him for killing “his girlfriend”: Lexie the Bestie. Elena tries to talk him down by talking about Lexie, like they knew each other so well? Elena says Lexie would want Square Jaw to be better than Damon by not killing him? and he listens to her? So Damon is fine, continuing the long tradition of absolutely zero consequences.

Y’all, we’re in the last 10 minutes of this episode and nothing has happened. How did we go all the way to Georgia for nothing to happen?!

Bonnie returns to Grams, who met Stefan at a protest in 1969. They reminisce for a minute and talk about being creatures in a town where “no one knows”, despite literally everyone seemingly knowing.

Damon gets threatening after Bree called Square Jaw, and she tries to save herself by telling him if he gets Emily’s grimoire, he might be able to reverse the spell on the raveyard. He takes her heart as thanks. We could have had all this happen in ONE SCENE, and not have had to think about head-injured Elena drinking in a bar for, like, 5 hours straight.

Elena and Damon have a moment in the car on the way home, and it’s cute! This show is infuriating, because I can see what it could be, and it simply insists on never being that, in always making a shitty choice. Case in point: Elena finally talks to Stefan, and it’s dumb and boring and like, are they breaking up again? or not? The big revelation this time is that Stefan saw Elena and her parents in the car accident, and he pulled Elena out of the submerging car. That was the first time he saw her, and he thought she was Catherine, but he stalked her till he was convinced she wasn’t.

Also, he found out she’s adopted.

Anna has tracked down and printed out every news article about animal attacks in Mystic Falls. She gives them to Jeremy to prove her point about vampires.

Jenna knew Elena was adopted, but didn’t tell her because her dead parents asked Jenna not to? They’re dead! WTF, Jenna?

Oh, and Alaric’s wife was killed by Damon. Told ya.

Holy cannolis, y’all. This was a slog. Let’s look forward to next week, when they might hire a couple good writers again!