Sharie managed to sum up this week’s episode in three words: death, lies, and bullshit. Really, the recap could stop there, because that’s basically all any of us got out of it, but I guess we can go into more detail. Apparently Jeremy really is gone for good, but what kind of person thinks lighting their house on fire with lighter fluid and bourbon is the only good “cover story” for his death? A terrible one, that’s who. Regardless, what’s done is done – now let’s talk about how Elena got to that point.

In trying to pick up where last week left off, it seems the writers made a mistake right out the gate. Remember that final scene – the one where Bonnie had just watched Jeremy die right in front of her, as she slowly bleeds out herself? Well, this week they claim that Bonnie had taken off to find Jeremy, making her lost somewhere on the island while Jeremy (Steven McQueen) still lies dead in the cave. Also: Katherine, Silas, and the cure are nowhere in sight, not that anyone was surprised about that.

Anyway, the obvious reasoning for the “missing witch” plot diversion is that Bonnie won’t be able to use her powers to bring Jeremy back. In the meantime, Elena is focused on the idea that Jeremy’s ring might be enough to save him – going with the theory that, since the Hunter tattoo had disappeared, he was no longer a supernatural being. While Stefan (Paul Wesley) helps Elena get Jeremy‘s body back to Mystic Falls, Damon decides to stay on the island and look for Bonnie.

Back in Mystic Falls, Caroline (Candice Accola) is busy scrubbing floors in the Gilbert house when Stefan walks in with Jeremy in his arms – but Elena has no time for anything but focusing on her brother. Determined to not leave his side, she opts to hover over his body – though it’s starting to decompose already. When Caroline and Stefan start to smell him, they call in Dr. Meredith Fell (Torrey DeVitto) to come help take care of Jeremy’s body.

Later, Elena walks in as Meredith is about to inspect him, and agrees to let Dr. Fell checks Jeremy over. Meredith tries to tell Elena that he is definitely dead – that it’s not like the other times when he and Alaric have died with their rings on. Not yet ready to accept it, Elena vamps out on her. Stefan pulls Elena off of Meredith [LOL for a minute at Paul having to save his wife from Elena's vampire crutches], and Elena is soon distracted when Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig) walks in and gets upset at the sight of Jeremy’s body.

Matt then takes Elena out of the house for a bit – to the Stoner Pit at the high school, of all places. He shows Elena some graffiti Jeremy did for Vicki way back in the day – his main point being that it was okay that Elena had hope that Jeremy wasn’t gone because hope can be all you have sometimes. [Reminding us of Jeremy's early days on the show - and his "rebel" phase?  Well played, writers. As if we weren't already traumatized enough, let's add a little nostalgia into the mix.]

While all this was going on back in Mystic Falls, Bex and Damon were still on the remote island. Rebekah called Damon out on his choice of staying behind to find Bonnie when his sired signifcant other needed him back home. [Who wasn't thinking that was an odd choice? Good on Bex for acknowledging that.] Anyway, Damon said that his real reason for hunting down Bonnie was because he knew Elena would need her best friend back home when the grief hit… or maybe even because he knew Elena would want Bonnie there to try and revive Jeremy.

Their argument is interrupted when Damon uses Bex (Claire Holt) as a shield from a flying arrow. He leaves her to pull the arrow out of her own back while he chases down the shooter – Galen Vaughn, the other Hunter. [Yay! He survived!] When Damon and Rebekah threaten to torture information out of him about how he came to be on the island, Galen tells them that he was in cahoots with Katherine – who learned everything about the entire situation through Tyler’s old frienemy Hayley.

Now that the mystery of how Katherine got there is cleared up, Damon’s all about leaving Galen (Charlie Bewley) to rot on the island – but as Bex sees Galen as her ticket to finding out where Katherine took the cure, the two part ways. Damon, still trying to find Bonnie, gets a phone call from Stefan – who advises him to give up the search for Bonnie and get home because Elena’s about to lose it.

Just as Damon hangs up the phone, Bonnie (Kat Graham) appears out of the woods with an amazing story to tell about where she really disappeared to – and with who. On their way back to meet with the gang, Bonnie explains it all to Damon. Once they get to the Gilbert house, Bonnie heads inside to tell Elena, Caroline, and Matt about the new plan while Damon informs Stefan that Shane has got Bonnie brainwashed.

Well, we already all know Shane is a lying, manipulative dirtbag, so what we learn about his plan is not so much a surprise. Shane, after calming Bonnie down as she almost lost control when she learned about Jeremy’s death, tricked Bonnie into thinking she could help Jeremy and bring him back to life. Apparently, the reason Shane (David Alpay) had been orchestrating the massacres was to complete an “Expression Triangle” that would totally destroy the separation between the living and those on “The Other Side”.

Shane told Bonnie that Qetsiyah created The Other Side to prevent Silas from ever meeting up with his one true love. The Other Side is home to every supernatural being that has ever died. So, if the “Expression Triangle” is complete, every supernatural creature that has ever died will be brought back to life [yeah, sort of like a large-scale Ghost World, right?]. Anyway, Bonnie is all over that idea, having been convinced that it will all be fantastic and wonderful. [She's obviously been brainwashed to forget about what happened last time.]

The only setback is that there is still one more massacre of 12 people that needs to occur for the triangle to be complete. The gang argues, but doesn’t manage to convince Bonnie about how bad a plan that is. In the end, Matt takes Bonnie home, where she meets up with Shane so he can throw more lies at her. Meanwhile, Matt Donovan doesn’t even make it home without having to pull over for a good man-cry over losing his bro-BFF. [One of the worst scenes ever - you're soulless if you didn't just fall apart and want to hug Matty forever after watching that.]

Back at the Gilbert house, Elena finally comes to the realization that Jeremy really is dead for good. She demands that Damon (Ian Somerhalder) bring Jeremy’s body downstairs, and then sets about creating the “perfect cover story” by dousing the house in lighter fluid and bourbon – intending to burn her entire house down with Jeremy inside it.

Finally having enough, Elena has a major break-down – basically amounting to the fact that she wants to burn the house down because she wants to forget all the memories of all it’s former residents who have died. [That part is understandable. Crazy, but understandable.] Stefan, Caroline, and Damon have no idea what to do to help her, but they do their best to convince her that she may eventually regret burning the house down.

In the end, Stefan asks Damon do use the sire bond to try and take away Elena‘s pain – which Damon interprets as him meaning to make her turn off her humanity. Elena does so [in an actually pretty impressive performance on Nina Dobrev's part], but Stefan doesn’t really think that was the best way to go about helping Elena.

The two brothers take their disagreement outside, where they finally make up after their long fight over Elena. Damon tells Stefan that getting Elena to flip her humanity switch is the best option since she has no one to care about anymore – no one important enough to counteract the grief, anyway. [Side note: I don't care how much you try and convince me, I'm still not buying that Elena feels grief to any higher a degree than some of the rest of the characters.]

Anyway, this is sort of a major game changer in Mystic Falls – which was the entire point of killing off Jeremy, to turn Elena the innocent little vampire into someone who doesn’t care about hurting people. [Jeremy absolutely did not deserve to go out that way - but I guess we could all take that as a lesson about death not being justified sometimes.]

So, the brothers go back inside to find Elena still wanting to torch her house. Now, however, her decision makes more sense since she really probably couldn’t care less about her house or her brother anymore. I have a feeling there will be repercussions when Elena regains her humanity and finds out they let her set her house on fire – but I guess we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

As for the “best cover story” idea – they’re all completely insane to think that was the best way to cover up Jeremy‘s death. Any fire investigator with half a brain would be able to tell that the house was intentionally destroyed. I can’t even handle the level of stupid in that particular plan. Again, this ridiculousness is all to further the plot of making sure we all understand Elena‘s firmly on the dark side now…. [FYI: WE GET IT!]

Meanwhile, back on the remote island, Rebekah was just getting warmed up torturing Galen when he revealed the key problem with Silas: he can take any form he wishes. With that development, Bex realizes that he can literally be anyone in the world, so she has enough sense to be scared enough to take off. While running through the woods to try and get away, she stumbles upon a body.

She turns the body over to see none other than Shady Shane himself. [The sight of him lying there, broken leg and all, literally gave me chills. That was actually a pretty awesome twist.] Thinking he’s dead – and not realizing that “Shane” is supposedly back in Mystic Falls with Bonnie – Rebekah starts to walk away, only to have him grab onto her ankle and say one word: “Silas”.

Okay, I know that Tyler skipped town, Jeremy died, and Bonnie‘s fate is sort of uncertain, but this week’s episode was kind of …eh. Until the last few minutes – right around the time Katherine made an appearance – the episode fell kind of flat. Maybe this show has just made me cynical, but I don’t really believe that Jeremy’s going to stay dead or that Tyler’s gone for good. After all, we all know the Originals are taking off for New Orleans here shortly, and no one really wants to watch a show just revolving around Elena and which Salvatore she’s picking this week. [Or maybe you do, I don't know.]

Anyway, let’s back up a bit and talk about what happened on this episode that could have actually passed for a season finale. Last week we saw Shane (David Alpay) make off with Bonnie, Jeremy, and some random witch to keep them both in check. Klaus saved Caroline from dying at the last minute and some unknown Hunter knocked Damon unconscious.

This week, Stefan, Rebekah, and Elena have teamed up to try and find Silas’ resting place. To do that, they have to decode the pictures of Jeremy’s tattoo that Bonnie conveniently took before being led off into the wild. [Though it wasn't clear exactly how the gang got her phone, unless she just didn't have it on her when she left.]

They e-mail the pictures to Caroline and ask her to find the sword Klaus has hidden and use it to decode the tattoo. [Again, not sure how they're charging their phones or getting service out there in the wild - I sometimes have a hard time getting a signal inside my house in the middle of town... but I suppose let's just go with it.] Klaus, unable to stop her, watches as Caroline leaves to go tear apart his house in search of the sword.

For whatever reason, when Tyler and Caroline find the sword and print up the pictures, they take it all back to the Gilbert house to work on decoding it. Klaus (Joseph Morgan) ends up being a big help in decoding it because he speaks Aramaic, a dead language Qetsiyah used to code everything. [Don't even get me started on the hotness of Klaus speaking Aramaic with an English accent. Can that become his everyday language on the show? I'm all for reading English subtitles.]

They decode the map and learn that there’s only enough of the cure for one person to take it. Naturally, Klaus manages to stir up trouble from Bonnie’s prison by telling Bex that great news. [The cure revelation wasn't really much of a surprise - I'm not sure why none of them considered that possibility before.] Though Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Elena didn’t hear that conversation, Bex eventually tells Stefan what Klaus told her. She admits that she’d consider giving the cure to Stefan, but knowing that he’d just give it to Elena – in spite of everything she’s done to him this season – Bex (Claire Holt) just snaps his neck and takes off for the cure on her own.

Elena helps revive Stefan and accepts her fate when Stefan reveals what Rebekah told him. [I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking her change of heart is the sire bond at work again - remember when Damon told her last week that he didn't want her to take the cure? Now she's suddenly okay with not being cured. Naturally.] Anyway, Stefan and Elena (Nina Dobrev) decide that, since there’s only one dose, they’ll have to give it to Klaus so that Klaus can’t kill them when he’s released.

Meanwhile, Professor Shane pays off the mercenary witch with Silas’ headstone – it turns out that was the only reason he wanted it, as it’s apparently valuable to witches. Anyway, now on their own, Shane, Bonnie, and Jeremy continue on to the entrance to Silas’ tomb. Once there, Bonnie (Kat Graham) is able to open the tomb – and she doesn’t even lose control doing it! Unfortunately for Shane, he breaks his leg about this time, and so he’s out of the running for the rest of the episode.

Bonnie and Jeremy (Steven McQueen) continue on and make it all the way to Silas himself – only to discover that in order to get the cure, they have to wake Silas by feeding him blood. They also learn that the “ghosts” everyone is supposedly able to see when in the area are actually just hallucinations created by Silas – so everything Shane did for his wife was completely faked.

As for Damon, Galen Vaughn – the other Hunter that showed up at the end of last week – keeps Damon (Ian Somerhalder) captive, intending to use Damon as a bargaining tool to convince Bonnie to open Silas’ tomb for him. As Damon helpfully points out, Bonnie is going to open it regardless, so Vaughn didn’t really need to keep him captive, but Damon being tortured is always a good time so can’t say we complained too much [though I suppose some viewers would disagree with that].

Once Damon and Vaughn make it to the cave where Silas is hidden, they find the entrance already open – so Vaughn (Charlie Bewley) decides to just kill Damon right then. Fortunately for Damon, Bex shows up at that moment and distracts Vaughn – who takes her out temporarily by using some of his fancy Hunter weapons, leaving her out of the Race for the Cure. Elena and Stefan then show up, but Stefan stays behind to help Damon while Elena chases after Vaughn to get the cure for Klaus.

Klaus, between moments of helpfulness, also passed the time taunting Tyler (Michael Trevino) and promising death upon his release. When Caroline reveals that she wouldn’t take the cure even if she could take it, Klaus tells her it’s because the two of them are just alike. [Don't worry, Caroline, we all can agree we like you better as a vampire.] Caroline tries to use that to her advantage and begs Klaus to show compassion for Tyler and not kill him. Klaus agrees to show him compassion… by giving him a head start running from him.

Tyler and Caroline (Candice Accola) have to say goodbye again so that Tyler can skip town and go on the run from Klaus. When Bonnie’s spell fails – due to her being almost dead over in Silas’ burial place – Klaus escapes a bit early, tells Caroline that every nice thing he’s done lately has been to please her, and then takes off into the night, presumably to chase after Tyler.

Back in Silas’ resting place, Vaughn stabs Bonnie and tries to convince Jeremy to help him kill Silas. Vaughn informs Jeremy that the entire purpose in creating the Hunters is so that they can cure Silas and kill him. The two fight it out until “Elena” arrives and knocks Vaughn unconscious.

However, when Jeremy tries to get Elena to heal Bonnie, we learn that Elena is actually Katherine – having shown up just in time to force-feed Silas Jeremy’s blood and steal the cure herself. So, the bitch is back, and that was a nice surprise. As for the not-so-nice surprise? Silas feeds from Jeremy and then snaps his neck, killing him while Bonnie watches.

Hats off to the Vampire Barbies this week – both Caroline and Rebekah pretty much made “Into the Wild” bearable. Stefan sure knows how to pick his BFFs… and friends with benefits. Last week, we left off with Kol’s death causing Jeremy’s mark to finish growing, which means that the gang could now head off to find the cure.

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Tyler and Caroline, noticeably absent the last couple episodes, re-appear with a bang this week. Since Bonnie left Klaus – trapped with a crispy Kol in the Gilbert house [which is kind of a cold move, to be honest] – while the gang takes off for the wild Canadian islands, Tyler decides it would be a good time to pay his momma-killin’ hybrid sire a visit. Mostly Tyler has decided that he’s going to watch over Klaus and taunt him until the group returns with the cure – at which point he intends to force-feed it to Klaus so that he can kill him.

The two pass a few threats back and forth before Caroline (Candice Accola) shows up to try and get Tyler to leave. However, Caroline loses her cool and ends up in an argument with Klaus, yelling at him that she will never forgive him for killing Carol Lockwood or Aunt Jenna. Finally having enough of the attitude, Klaus lashes out at Caroline, stabbing her with a lamp post and dragging her into his box before taking a bite out of her neck.

Realizing that Caroline will die now that she’s been bitten by a hybrid, Tyler promises Klaus that he’ll be Klaus‘ “Little Bitch” again if he’ll heal Caroline. Klaus refuses as he feels that his revenge against Tyler (Michael Trevino) is worth Caroline’s death. Caroline asks Tyler to take her away so that she doesn’t have to look at Klaus anymore. Once away, Caroline accepts that she’s going to die, but Tyler comes up with a plan to return to the Gilbert house and leave Caroline alone with Klaus – likely hoping his guilt and love for Caroline will make him heal her.

Once Tyler leaves the two alone, Caroline delivers a fantastically moving speech about how, since Klaus (Joseph Morgan) is able to love, he is still saveable. [Though I'm pretty sure Hitler was in love at some point, but that doesn't make him saveable.] Still, it was a nice speech anyway, and Klaus ended up healing her of his Hybrid bite, so… well played, Caroline!

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Some major character developments also take place this week while everyone’s wandering the island. Rebekah, understandably still pissed off that Elena and Jeremy killed her brother, is full of sass and fed up with Elena. Stefan wisely opts to stay out of it, for the most part, as Elena and Rebekah exchange snide comments and insults. Elena has to re-think her position when Rebekah saves her life mid-argument, and Stefan re-thinks Rebekah’s supposed “evil” status when she points out that Elena‘s actions make her no better than Bex. [Possibly the best "you go girl!" moment of the episode.]

In addition, Stefan informs Rebekah that he is no longer intending to take the cure for Elena – if he takes it at all, it’ll be because he wants it for himself. Rebekah plans to take it because she absolutely hates being a vampire. Shane confesses that his wife Caitlin died from the Expression magic he taught Bonnie to wield. Naturally, Bonnie is shocked, and Damon is furious that Shane has ensured his survival by banking on Bonnie needing him to keep her from spiraling out of control.

Damon, for his part, finally breaks down – after some encouragement from Shane, who was pretty obvious in his attempts to get Damon to leave the island for some reason. Damon tells Elena that he absolutely does not want the cure and does not want Elena to take the cure. [It will be interesting to see how far this sire bond stretches if the cure turns out to actually exist. Now that Elena knows Damon doesn't want her to take it - wouldn't she lose interest in it?] Anyway, after this revelation, Damon storms off.

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As for the Race for the Cure, it turns out that the cure is supposedly hidden on an island off Nova Scotia, which was considered a “remote location” back in the day. Unfortunately, once we got to the island, we were left with a whole lot of Professor Shane backstory – in the form of flashbacks, of course – to trudge through. Since he’s certainly no one’s favorite character on The Vampire Diaries, the flashback scenes weren’t as enjoyable as we normally find them to be [like, for instance, when we get to see some Elijah action or 1920's Stefan, both always a good time].

[I have realized that I pretty much stop paying attention whenever Shane speaks, so I had to go back and re-watch his flashbacks a few times to get what he was talking about.] Anyway, we learn through the flashbacks that Shane (David Alpay) was on the island a year previously after hearing rumors about people being able to see and talk with their dead loved ones. Using his blood, Shane managed to conjure up his dead wife Caitlin (Camille Guaty). Through her, he learned that Silas and the cure were buried under the magic well on the island. [My guess is that she turns out to be just as shady as her husband.]

Caitlin told him all the steps he would need to complete in order for Silas to be raised – at which point Silas would then also raise anyone who died helping release him. As we’ve figured out, this involved several massacres, and though Shane was reluctant to cause so much death, Caitlin convinced him by telling him that all he had to do was find people to do the killing for him. Pastor Young and Hayley were both convinced to help by Shane promising that they’d see their dead loved ones again.

Between character developments and flashbacks, another witch Massak (John Gabriel Rodriguez) shows up and kidnaps Jeremy – who was alone in the tent trying to get some sleep. When morning comes and they realize they’ve lost Jeremy, the gang splits up into two factions: Bonnie, Shane, and Damon stay at camp while Stefan, Elena, and Rebekah take off to search the island to try and find Jeremy the old-fashioned way.

At camp, Bonnie tries to find Jeremy by using a locator spell. Damon takes matters into his own hands as he ties Shane up and tries to torture the cure’s location out of him. He also tries to assure Shane that he doesn’t care about Bonnie [hopefully this is supposed to be a way to show Damon becoming self-destructive again, because I know the writers don't expect us to believe that after all the times he's helped try and keep Bonnie alive]. Regardless, just as Damon is about to kill Shane, Elena shows up and stops him. [Elena is the worst decision-maker on the planet, by the way.]

There is also a mysterious, hatchet-throwing character that is out to protect Jeremy [some sort of Hunter solidarity, I'm sure], and by the end of the episode we learn that it’s probably Galen Vaughn (Charlie Bewley), another Hunter. He makes his magical appearance when he finds Damon and snaps his neck. [Don't even ask me why this Hunter didn't just kill Damon right off - hopefully they'll have some logical reason for it next week].

While everyone has their backs turned, it’s no surprise that Shady Shane takes advantage by making off with Bonnie, Silas’ headstone, and eventually also meets up with the witch who stole Jeremy. Once the rest of the gang finds out about Shane’s unsurprising betrayal, Elena – in a show of trust after Rebekah’s brutal honesty finally penetrates her brain – willingly hands the White Oak Stake over to Bex. So, Bex has the White Oak Stake, some unknown hunter has Damon, and Shady Shane has everyone else. The events have led to an uneasy alliance between Rebekah, Elena, and Stefan, and we’ll have to wait and see how this all plays out….

Damon, as he was still under Kol’s compulsion to kill Jeremy on sight, was kept on lock-down in the Salvatore dungeons. When Klaus suggests daggering Kol, Stefan is tasked with stealing Bex’s dagger, leaving Klaus on Damon-babysitting duty. Unfortunately for Klaus, Elena calls Stefan and informs him that they’re going to kill Kol, not dagger him – and so they decide to use the dagger on Rebekah instead.

Regardless, while Stefan‘s off on his mission, Klaus and Damon compare notes on who’s the better villain. Klaus (Joseph Morgan) also spends some time picking Damon’s brain, trying to figure out how Damon managed to keep Elena from hating him despite all the bad he’s done. [Obviously, this was Klaus' not-so-subtle attempt at trying to see how to make Caroline not hate him.]

Damon had some worldly bad-guy wisdom to share, which basically amounted to him telling Klaus that people forgive you for doing bad things as long as they’re bad things with purpose. ['Cause, you know, there was some purpose in Damon turning Vicki when he was bored, ripping out Bonnie's throat when he didn't get his way, and killing Jeremy when Elena shot him down.]

While Damon and Klaus get chatty, Bonnie (Kat Graham) is spending time at the school helping set up for the 80′s Decade Dance. When Elena tries to wash her hands and nearly has her hands burned off from the water, she contacts Bonnie to figure out what’s going on. Bonnie calls her father [you know - Mayor Hopkins] and learns that he has used his mayoral power to put vervain in the town’s water supply. [Let's just ignore the fact that Mystic Falls had zero vervain the day before but suddenly has enough to spike the entire water supply. Also, let's pretend the vampires in town are going to find a clean supply so they can still shower on a regular basis.]

Rudy also tells Bonnie that he has set a town curfew and cancelled all town events [which includes the night's scheduled Decade Dance] until further notice. When Bonnie argues with him, he demands that she come home for a “family meeting”. Bonnie tries to leave the school and has a run-in with Kol, who is out to kill her to prevent her from helping with the Race for the Cure.

Bonnie uses some magic to put him down long enough to run home. Of course, Bonnie’s parents also pick this week to decide to try for Parents of the Year. When she gets home, Rudy confiscates Bonnie‘s cell phone and car keys. When her mom shows up and tries to down her with magic herbs, Bonnie informs them that she’s no longer helping the spirits. [Sorry Abby and Rudy, but you don't get the right to try stepping in and taking over only when Bonnie starts making decisions you don't approve of.]

Anyway, Jeremy shows up in the middle of the Bennett throwdown and tells her that Kol‘s hanging out with Elena at the Gilberts’. Bonnie plans to leave with him, but when Jeremy’s ruthless Hunter side takes over and tries to stake Abby (Persia White), Bonnie sends him back without her, promising to catch up once she puts her parents in their place.

For his part, Stefan took Rebekah (Claire Holt) to the cancelled 80′s Decade Dance to distract her. Watching Stefan come alive re-living the 80′s for Rebekah’s benefit was one of the highlights of the episode for sure. He told Rebekah about the good times he had with his former-BFF Lexi, which led to Stefan admitting that both Lexi and Elena made him feel like a better person.

During the reminiscing, Bex and Stefan (Paul Wesley) bond. The two discover that they have a lot in common, particularly with their efforts to pretend they don’t care about love or anything else when it’s clear they both care about that more than anything. Though Rebekah eventually revealed that she had the dagger on her, and even offered to give it up to Stefan, he and Matt ultimately let her live as Stefan realized that he wanted the cure for her as much as he wanted it for Elena.

Meanwhile, Kol and Elena had a chat at her place, as she tried to distract him and keep him there until Bonnie and Jeremy could get back. Kol revealed that he was basically BFFs with several witch groups over the years – and also slid in some information about the Original Family’s time in New Orleans [no doubt setting up the storyline for the Originial Spin-off pilot].  Anyway, Kol’s reasoning came down to the fact that all the witches knew about Silas, and also knew that if he were to ever be resurrected, he would destroy the world.

Though Kol was actually trying to do something decent [even if it was for his own reasons], Elena-logic still demands that he be killed so they can get the cure anyway. When she’s unable to distract Kol any longer, Kol leaves and informs her that he’ll think about the possible truce. Jeremy (Steven McQueen) shows up, and the two talk about their plot to destroy Kol. However, as sneaky Kol didn’t go very far, he overhears their conversation and decides that he’s not going to agree to a truce with Elena.

At this point, since Kol’s already invited in, there’s no hiding from him. Kol chased Elena (Nina Dobrev) and Jeremy around their house – which created a very fun fight scene that ended up destroying the majority of the doors in the Gilbert house. Kol eventually stakes Elena to the wall before dragging Jeremy downstairs and tying him down to the kitchen counter so that he can cut off both his arms. However, just when things are about to get interesting, Elena zips downstairs and stabs Kol with a butcher knife. As the town water supply is now full of vervain, Jeremy sprays Kol with it to distract him.

Elena grabs the White Oak Stake from Kol’s pocket and tosses it to Jeremy – who then stakes Kol for good. [So, basically, Elena-logic meant that she and Jeremy together slaughtered thousands of vampires all over the world - who then died without a clue as to why they were dying. I'd like to know what happened to that plotline that insisted Elena would absolutely fall apart at the thought of killing anyone. How is Elena still an innocent here, exactly??]

Catching fire [as the stake causes the Originals to do], Kol attempts some [fairly hilarious] “stop, drop, and roll” maneuvers, but ultimately dies. [I don't think we've seen the last of him though, since the Silas plotline pretty much says that he'll have to be brought back as he died to help free Silas, in a round-about way.]

It’s at this point that Elena turns to the front door [which Kol had recently kicked in] and sees Klaus standing there, watching his brother go up in flames and unable to do a thing about it. Klaus then makes a few threats, and reveals that he was planning on killing them all as soon as he found the cure because he wanted to destroy it, hybrids be damned.

[Was anyone else legitimately surprised at Klaus’ reaction to Kol’s death? After his apathy over Finn’s staking, I figured he’d have a pretty similar reaction to Kol’s - especially as Kol seemed to aggravate him so much more than Finn. Regardless, I love it because we're watching Klaus slowly turning back into the villain we loved to hate so much at the beginning.]

At this point, Bonnie finally shows up and uses her witchy juju on Klaus – telling Jeremy to invite Klaus into the house. When he does, Bonnie tricks Klaus into going into the living room, where she uses some sort of “moon magic” to trap him in the house for a few days to give them all time to find the cure. The three of them then head off to the Salvatore boarding house, where they meet up with Stefan and Damon, waiting for Jeremy‘s mark to grow.

When Stefan confesses that he didn’t dagger Rebekah, Damon informs the group about Stefan’s bedroom action with her. Stefan retaliates by making a comment about the sire bond. Things get pretty heated between the two brothers, and the they come to blows. However, about that same time, Jeremy goes into Hulk-mode, ripping his shirt off and showing everyone his new tattoo – which is now complete, and suddenly visible to all of them. Now everything is pretty much in place for the group to go Cure-Hunting.

Though sort of lacking any decent cliffhangers the show’s known for, there were still some highlights: Bonnie‘s officially a badass witch, Kol and Klaus are badass Original vampires, Stebekah is a badass team, Jeremy‘s a semi-badass Hunter [we'll work on that one, Jer-bear], and Stefan‘s a badass knife thrower [that last one isn't really relevant overall, but it's still worth mentioning]. Now, with that said, let’s move on with the recap of “Catch Me If You Can”.

As we know, Klaus and Damon teamed up to provide some vampires for Jeremy to kill – which involved turning an entire bar of people into vampires. Jeremy feels a little betrayed by Damon and is unwilling to slaughter a bunch of recently-turned innocents. To provide some encouragement, Klaus offers Jeremy a two-minute head start before compelling every vampire in the place to hunt down Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig) and kill him.

Matt and Jeremy take off to fetch some weapons, and begin a race to the Gilbert cabin – where the vampires won’t be able to enter. Just as one of the newbie vamps is about to make a meal of Matt, Elena (Nina Dobrev) shows up and helps the two escape. They wait out the vampires in the cabin, at which point Elena takes Matt back to Mystic Falls – leaving Jeremy and Damon to take on the newly-formed vampire gang. Once back, Matt takes the time to remind her how much she’s changed – as human Elena wouldn’t have left Jeremy with Damon.

Either way, what’s done is done – and Damon takes Jeremy into the vampire nest at the bar. Of course, no plan can go smoothly with the Mystic Falls gang, so it’s no surprise when Damon and Jeremy reach the bar only to find that they’ve all been killed. Kol shows up and confesses to the slaughter, citing his desire to prevent Silas’ return as his reason. Kol (Nathaniel Buzolic) tries to talk Jeremy into joining his side and stop trying to help find the cure, but when Jeremy turns him down, Kol threatens to rip his arms off instead. [After all, an armless Hunter wouldn't be much use when it comes to staking vampires. It's pretty smart, really.]

Damon jumps in and attacks Kol to give Jeremy time to run – which he does… all the way back to Mystic Falls. Unconcerned, Kol takes the time to torture Damon for a bit, before sending him on a mission. As Kol promised Klaus (Joseph Morgan) to leave Jeremy alone [at Elena's pleading], he opts to compel Damon to kill Jeremy instead. This way, Damon would end up with the Hunter’s Curse and Kol would stay out of trouble with Klaus.

Over at the university, Bonnie (Kat Graham) is hanging out with Professor Shane when Sheriff Forbes shows up to arrest him. It turns out, with April’s story [and Rebekah to back it up - for her own reasons], they have enough evidence to drag Shady Shane in for questioning about his involvement with Pastor Young blowing up the town council. [Apparently they have an interrogation room in Mystic Falls. That makes them an almost-official police department.]

Shane refuses to confess to Liz (Marguerite MacIntyre), but later tells Bonnie that Rebekah and April aren’t making up stories. Bonnie is naturally pretty angry with him, but when she tries to ditch him, Shane (David Alpay) essentially blackmails her into sticking around by promising to bring Grams back to life. [Now he's not only shady but also slimy... just when we thought Shane could sink no lower.] Since Bonnie‘s a pretty badass witch these days with a ridiculous amount of power, his attempts at guilt-tripping her backfired when she decided to take some of her anger out on Shane by torturing him.

When her dad – you know, the mayor – comes in to try and stop her, she blocks him from coming in by lighting the floor on fire. Shane – who has apparently brainwashed Bonnie so that he’s the only one who knows how to bring her back down when she loses control, as we witnessed a few times in this episode – helps her calm down before she does any major damage. She leaves – and Shane takes the opportunity to point out to Mayor Hopkins (Rick Worthy) how “useful” he will be for Bonnie’s safety.

Mayor Hopkins sees the truth in Shane’s words and decides to get Bonnie some help. However, Bonnie doesn’t really think she needs any help – so that plan may not go so well. The good thing to have come out of the whole ordeal [besides Bonnie's new power, obviously] is that even Bonnie can now see how crazy Professor Shane really is. [We'll just have to wait and see if her father and the rest of the town actually let her do something about it.]

Meanwhile, the new dynamic duo known as Stebekah are off to a great start. [FYI: these two are going to be such fun together - as we already figured, having seen the 1920's flashback.] Last week, Stefan and Rebekah decided to team up to get to the cure before anyone else. However, Rebekah (Claire Holt) points out that, as Klaus has the Hunter and Shane has Silas’ headstone, Team Stebekah aren’t doing so hot in the race for the vampire cure. To change that, they decide to steal the headstone. [Vampire Survival Lesson #1: Go after the weaker prey first. Shane may be pretty psychotic, but he doesn't have anything on Klaus.]

Anyway, having made a decision, Team Stebekah head off to search Shane’s office. Though they don’t manage to find the headstone, they do manage to find Shane‘s stash of witch pot [but this is The CW - so we call it "witch herbs"]. After a brief discussion, Bex manages to convince Stefan to have a little fun [and also makes him admit how much fun he had being a ripper in the 20's] and smoke some “witch herbs” with her.

Once they’re good and high on some herbs, the two get a little sex-charged talking about the glory days. Rebekah informs Stefan that the real reason she refused to compel Elena’s memory from Stefan is so that he can learn that love is a weakness. Stefan sees her side to it, and agrees to try her theory out and stop caring about the people around him… including Elena. [Of course, they were looking each other in the eye, so it's possible Bex just compelled him to stop caring - but since they didn't show it, we're operating under the assumption that he did it willingly.]

Anyway, Damon – back in his natural state of attempted-murder of the Mystic Falls residents – heads back to town to take care of [Kol's] business: killing Jeremy. He finds Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) at the Mystic Grill – who’s there to check on his bro-BFF Matt – and immediately vamps out when he sees him. Jeremy realizes something’s up and takes off while Elena distracts Damon as she tries to figure out what his deal is.

Jeremy escapes through the tunnels connected to the Grill and Damon (Ian Somerhalder) figures out that he must be under compulsion. Though compelled to chase Jeremy, he also gives him fair warning and thus yells [very awkwardly, I might add] that Jeremy needs to get as far away from him as possible. Jeremy tries to fight him off but fails; Damon tells Jeremy to just shoot him in the heart. Obviously none of the three major characters will ever be killed off, so Jeremy just shoots him in the head and runs away before Damon can wake back up.

Elena sees this as an opportunity to call up Stefan – who was pretty busy straddling the ripper fun line with Rebekah, attempting to torture some information out of a stranger who broke into Professor Shane‘s office. [Just when things were getting steamy up in the office!] The stranger found the headstone before realizing he wasn’t alone – but was compelled not to tell anyone who he worked for. Instead, he chewed off his own tongue before stabbing himself in the neck.

Rebekah answers Stefan’s phone, but Stefan still hears Elena’s message: “Damon’s trying to kill Jeremy [again] so please come help!” Fortunately for Damon, Stefan gets there just in time to stop Jeremy from having to kill Damon for real. He throws some well-deserved sass Elena‘s way before carting Damon off to the Salvatore holding cell – where he tells Damon he has to stay until Kol is taken care of or the cure is found, whichever comes first. [Though, of course, we all know this won't last too long.]

Stefan heads upstairs and sees Elena trying to go talk to Damon. He informs Elena that she can’t see Damon because the sire bond will make her have to free him. Elena tries to tell Stefan that he’s not acting like himself, but then Stefan drops a bomb on her, informing her that she wouldn’t know because: “You don’t know what I look like when I’m not in love with you.” [Cheers to a bolder Stefan!] With that said, Elena gets upset and leaves.

Over at Klaus’ mansion, Rebekah tries to do her part and dagger Kol to end the compulsion. However, Kol flips the tables on her when he tries to kill her with the White Oak Stake. He tells her that he’d pretty much rather see her dead than allow anyone to get their hands on the cure and wake Silas. Bex is so shocked she doesn’t even react, but Klaus shows up in time to save her from him. Kol runs off – with the stake – and Rebekah heads back to her own house.

Stefan soon meets up with her – where Rebekah wastes no time telling him that she’s hidden the headstone and doesn’t trust him enough to tell him where it’s located. Regardless, all that is quickly forgotten when the two agree to a fun, no-strings-attached night of sex. [Though it was initially kind of weird to see Stefan with someone that wasn't Elena, I'm all for it. This development is too fun!] You go, Stef! We’ll see if the two can stick to their “no emotions” plan. [My money's on Original Barbie cracking first.]

For the cliffhanger: After refusing Klaus’ offer of protection, Elena makes a plan with Jeremy that will both free Damon and grow Jeremy’s Hunter mark pretty quickly. They’re going to kill Kol. [Because Elena-logic says that killing those thousands of random, unknown vampires is acceptable if it means freeing Damon from the holding cell.] Again, it’s Mystic Falls, so this plan probably won’t go so well either, but we’ll have to wait til next week to see how it plays out.

A memorial service, hostage situation, torture, murder, and secrets uncovered… must be a new Vampire Diaries episode! This week’s opened with a sort of memorial service for Mayor Lockwood – and an introduction to the new interim mayor: Rudy Hopkins – who also happens to be Bonnie’s dad. Of course, it only makes sense that the new mayor’s first official speech as mayor of Mystic Falls would be to a bunch of high school kids because, let’s face it, everyone knows who really runs this town – and it’s not the adults.

Anyway, Tyler (Michael Trevino) doesn’t make it through the service – and Elena (Nina Dobrev) spots Rebekah crashing the party. She leaves the service to investigate and is taken down by Bex – and April, of all people, who is FINALLY in the loop about all the vampire/hybrid/witch business. Though, as Rebekah was her teacher, April doesn’t quite get which side she should be on.

Mayor Hopkins (Rick Worthy) jumps right into “dad” mode and questions Bonnie about her friends’ actions during the ceremony. However, Bonnie‘s not having it. She leaves to meet up with Shane – so she can rant about her dad finally trying to be a dad before resuming their witch therapy lessons. [Who could blame her? He's supposedly Bonnie's guardian, yet we met the runaway mom before him.]

Anyway, Shane tells her that she’s finally done with all the witch therapy stuff. Bonnie (Kat Graham) now has enough witch skills to be left on her own. He also gives her some heirloom of Silas’ old witch friend/lover Ketsia [or Qetsiyah - whatever her name is] that gives her more power… or something. The only catch? The heirloom is made of human bones. No big deal, though.

As for the April (Grace Phipps) and Rebekah team-up, we’re already aware that Bex has no problems with compelling people – friends, enemies, classmates, whoever – but she certainly takes it to a whole new level this week when she compels Caroline, Stefan, and Elena to spend the afternoon locked up in the library playing “Truth or Dare” [that really just turns out to be a way to torture Stefan] under the guise of trying to find out everything she’s missed since she was daggered.

As it turns out, Rebekah‘s (Claire Holt) missed quite a bit. She learns about Connor‘s death and about Professor Shane (David Alpay) – who knows how to find the cure without Connor – and sends Kol off to retrieve the professor from the university. While waiting on their arrival, Rebekah has some fun playing with Stefan, Caroline, and Elena. She makes Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Elena talk about their feelings – both towards each other and Damon. [The gist is that she loves Stefan but isn't in love with him because Damon makes her happy and she feels like Stefan just wants to fix her.]

Needless to say, it doesn’t go well. Of course, as Stefan said, there’s no way of knowing what Elena‘s true feelings are while she’s sired to Damon – but, honestly, who cares at this point? On to bigger problems: Kol (Nate Buzolic) arrives with Shane, so Bex summons Tyler and compels him to turn and kill Stefan, Elena, and Carline (Candice Accola). Rebekah and Kol then leave to torture information about the cure out of Professor Shane.

April somehow ends up with Bonnie in the chemistry lab and watches as Bonnie tries to do a protection spell for Shane. Instead, Bonnie accidentally ties April‘s life to Shane’s. April suffers as Kol and Rebekah torture Shane into confessing his plans for bringing Silas back to life. There was also some bit about Silas resurrecting everyone who died to help bring him back – which would presumably include the entire council and the hybrids [and possibly Mayor Lockwood, depending on how loose those terms are about "helping" bring him back - Klaus killed her in a rage after the hybrid sacrifice, after all].

Anyway, that accidental connection Bonnie made between April and Shane quickly goes bad when Kol – who made it pretty clear that he didn’t want Shane to resurrect Silas – is scared into killing Shane [and thus also April]. Unfortunately, Bonnie and Stefan both save Shane and April. April then runs off to confess everything to Sheriff Forbes and Mayor Hopkins.

Bonnie is confused about why she’s able to do the terrible magic that used to cause her pain. She finds Shane and tells him that she can’t do black magic – not because it’s bad, but because her dad is now the mayor of Mystic Falls. Shane then tells her that the “Expression” magic she’s doing isn’t black magic – it’s just magic without limits. [Why does anyone trust this guy, exactly?]

Back at the high school, Elena, Stefan, and Caroline manage to escape Tyler the Werewolf [anyone else feel that these death threats towards any of the main characters are kind of empty at this point?]. Rebekah decides to let them go – and even offers to compel Stefan to forget everything about his and Elena’s relationship. Stefan is all over that idea – and sincerely asks Rebekah to go ahead and do it – but, of course, Rebekah doesn’t. She tells him to just deal with it – and consider it payback for the way he’s treated her.

Also, while the rest of the gang are playing out Bex’s Breakfast Club fantasies, Damon and Matt (Zach Roerig) are locked away at the Gilbert cabin trying to turn Jeremy into the next vampire slayer. [As a side: would anyone else just LOVE for Matt Donovan to punch Damon in the face? I'm pretty sure Damon would be more amused than offended - and it would make me feel a lot better.]

Klaus (Joseph Morgan) gets impatient with Damon‘s lack of progress in the vampire killing department and takes matters into his own hands – starting with turning their pizza delivery girl into a vampire for Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) to stake… and ending with him turning an entire bar of people. Good ol’ Klaus. Unsurprisingly, Jeremy and Matt aren’t too happy about his methods, but Damon’s (Ian Somerhalder) pretty okay with it. [Granted, his good mood could have something to do with the fact that Elena had just confessed her love for him and was on her way to meet up with him in the woods.]

Meanwhile… what is this new duo teaming up that I have a feeling we’re all going to love? Stefan and Rebekah – but you can just call them Stebekah. Stefan summons Rebekah to the boarding house and the two reach an agreement to work together to find the cure. Rebekah confesses that she wants it for Klaus – so that he’ll be a weak mortal again.

It’s not really clear whether Klaus taking the cure would also cure everyone he’s ever sired, but I would have to assume that would make sense – it would be like his vampire side died. Though there is some love lost between Stefan and Bex, I don’t see that interfering with their nefarious schemes in the future. I am in love with this idea – because, let’s face it, none of us wants to see Stefan moping over Elena anymore. Ready for some crazy Stefan, anyone?

Bonnie and Jeremy are out at the Gilbert lake house, trying to make him less of a vampire killer and more like the old Jeremy. Elena goes out there to help Jeremy, and invites Damon to come along. He agrees – but it causes some problems as Damon clearly begins to feel guilty for lying to Stefan. As we figured at the end of last week’s episode, Damon (Ian Somerhalder) didn’t invoke the sire bond to tell Elena to move on and forget about him. Instead, the two spent the night together [though fully clothed] in Damon’s bed.

So, instead of dealing with the issue, they leave to help Jeremy with his problems. Elena (Nina Dobrev) decided to invite Professor Shane out to the lake house to “help” with Jeremy [as we all know, Elena makes terrible decisions]. He tries something like conditioning [via more magic stoner tea], which is supposed to allow Jeremy to attach normal feelings to Elena. The idea behind this is that he can condition himself to feel so happy to see Elena that he doesn’t want to kill her.

After putting him in a sort of trance, Shane and Elena try to fix him, but it doesn’t work – as Jeremy still wants to kill Elena. Damon comes up with an idea for Jeremy to attach his feelings to someone else – that someone being Bonnie Bennett (Kat Graham). Jeremy agrees that he already does feel that way about Bonnie, so it works out – and Jeremy (Steven McQueen) is able to be around Elena again, without wanting to kill her.

Though full of the usual secrets and confessions that are always floating about any of the Mystic Falls gang’s plans, the big plot this week was, once again, centered around taking out Klaus [because that's always worked so well in the past]. Tyler and his hybrid pack set their plan in motion to temporarily dispose of Klaus long enough for all his hybrids to escape. The problem with this plan is that it means Tyler (Michael Trevino) has to sacrifice himself – he volunteers to be the body they put Klaus in and bury in concrete until the hybrids can get away.

Once Caroline (Candice Accola) finds out [and realizes she can't make him change his mind] she and Stefan make quick plans – which obviously include Caroline distracting Klaus again – to hurry and get their hands on the sword before Klaus is gone. Earlier that day, Klaus (Joseph Morgan) finally showed Stefan the sword he went halfway around the world chasing, but he didn’t let him keep it. [Though I'm not sure why they couldn't just wait until he was gone then find out where he hid it - it's sort of all the same at that point, isn't it? Jeremy still had a ways to go before his Hunter Mark was finished.]

When Stefan‘s (Paul Wesley) unable to find the sword, he and Caroline decide that they have to just stop Tyler from following through with his plan. Tyler overhears them talking and has the hybrids hold them prisoner at the Lockwood cellar. Damon, who had been chatting with Shady Shane [and Elena] about the cure and that old guy Silas [mentioned back in We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes], found out that there was another way to find the cure.

Shane (David Alpay) confessed that he knew the location of the cure – but that they still needed Jeremy‘s mark to figure out the spell to get the cure – which is supposedly buried with Silas in concrete and magic… or something. [Much of what Shane says doesn't necessarily make much sense when it comes down to it.]

Hayley spends the episode secretly texting Professor Shane, who is still out at the Gilbert lake house, telling him what’s going down with the plan. When it starts to look like Caroline may be able to stop it, Professor Shane tells Phoebe to deal with it – which she does by breaking Caroline’s neck. [I'll admit I panicked here, for just a second forgetting that she's a vampire - and thus can't die just because someone snaps her neck.]

So, Hayley then leaves her in a stall in the bathroom, where April finds her. Being a vampire, Caroline has no pulse, which makes April panic. She tries to run for help, but Caroline wakes up at that moment and tries to warn Stefan that Hayley’s shady. She then compels April (Grace Phipps) to forget before letting her go – not realizing until Matt (Zach Roerig) tells her later that April was wearing vervain, and thus was not actually compelled.

Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) takes off to find Klaus and tell him about the hybrids being unsired. Klaus, of course, goes in a rage and kills all of the hybrids [while a sweet Christmas carol plays over the scene]. He threatens Kim, demanding that she tell him where Tyler is, but Kim holds out and Klaus beheads her. Klaus then leaves to find Tyler himself.

While this was going on, Hayley finally tells Tyler about her plan – though she leaves out Shane‘s involvement in it. She basically explains to him that she was teaming up with someone to gather all the unsired hybrids for Klaus to kill – before encouraging Tyler to run away before Klaus can find and kill him as well. Instead of running, Tyler takes off for the Lockwood cellar, where all the hybrids were supposed to be gathering – only to find them all slaughtered by Klaus.

Unfortunately for Carol Lockwood, she’s actually the one that Klaus stumbles upon first. Carol (Susan Walters) begs Klaus not to kill Tyler because he’s all she has left – and then Klaus makes the connection that Carol is also all Tyler has left. So, he drowns her in the middle of town square. So, this is the Season 1 character death we’ve been getting teased about all season. [While I don't like the idea of any of the season 1 characters dying, I am relieved that it was Carol - as opposed to Tyler, like I was expecting. Still, RIP yet another Mystic Falls parental figure. Bonnie's dad is actually the smartest of the bunch.]

Back at the Gilbert lake house, Damon finally lets the guilt force him into doing what is right for Elena. He invokes his sire bond and tells her to go home and leave him to help Jeremy. Of course, I’m sure we all noticed that he didn’t manage to get the whole speech out that he gave to Charlotte – such as forgetting about him and moving on with her life – but I’m sure there’s going to be some reason for that revealed at some point. For now, however, Elena is fine with what he sasy, so she and Bonnie take off back to town.

Meanwhile, Caroline and Stefan are back at the Salvatore boarding house, discussing the concept of good vampires versus evil hybrids. Basically, they admit that they’re feeling guilty for sending Klaus off to his death because they can’t see any longer what the difference is between the bad stuff Klaus has done and the bad stuff all the rest of them have done.

They decide that the difference is probably that they all have family and friends they love and trust, but Klaus doesn’t. On that note, Caroline tells Stefan about Elena and Damon spending the entire day together – and about Damon and Elena sleeping together. Obviously, this is going to have some serious repercussions for the Savatore Brothers’ relationship, as Stefan’s trust in Damon has been broken.

Finally, Caroline and Matt were unable to find April. It turns out, she ran off to the Lockwood cellar [that place saw more action this week than it has since Tyler was wolfing out in it every month]. There, she found Rebekah’s daggered body – along with all the rest of the dead hybrid bodies. Though they didn’t show it, it’s pretty clear that she undaggered Rebekah – so we’ll be seeing her again soon.

All the other drama aside, let’s get to the important question: just as the sheriff is always a Forbes, the mayor is always a Lockwood. So, now that Carol’s dead, is Tyler Lockwood now the mayor of Mystic Falls? Just a little something to think over during the five week holiday hiatus….

It’s so hard to remember sometimes that these “high school students” [using that label very loosely here - I'll never be convinced this gang goes to any single class more than once a week] are actually super deadly supernatural creatures – every single one of them [well... except Matt Donovan]. For some reason – with the torture, dominance fights, and “Expression” – this episode was a perfect reminder of that.

“We’ll Always Have Bourbon Street” basically picks up where last week’s left off: Caroline and Stefan [who apparently spent the night at his Sober Sponsor's house - cute, cute] are talking about how to handle the sire bond situation, while Damon and Elena are still oblivious and working on making Elena miss yet another day of school. When she finally decides to go to school, Stefan (Paul Wesley) shows up and tells Damon about the sire bond. Damon (Ian Somerhalder) doesn’t believe him, but offers to go try and convince Elena to drink blood from a bloodbag to prove it.

For her part, though Elena heads off to school, it seems the only purpose of attending today was so that they could all meet and make plans for that evening. She finds Bonnie (Kat Graham) and Caroline in the hallway – and Caroline takes that opportunity to knock her hairstyle [or lack of, anyway]. Elena invites them over to party at the Salvatores’, but leaves them as soon as Damon shows up at school and drags her off to an empty classroom.

Once in the classroom, he asks Elena (Nina Dobrev) to try drinking from a bloodbag, which she does manage to keep down. So, he realizes that she’s sired, and he heads off to try and fix it. As it turns out, Elena‘s not the first girl to be sired to him – back in 1942, Damon turned Charlotte in New Orleans. He soon realized the girl was sired to him, which is why he and Stefan head out to New Orleans now. They’re going to try and find the witch who supposedly knew a spell to unsire a vampire.

Of course, this leaves the floor open to flashbacks, and as we know from Stefan’s diaries Elena read last season, by 1942 Lexi (Arielle Kebbel) already had Stefan in the Ripper Recovery Program. He was off to join the war overseas – but not before he made peace with Damon. Lexi and Stefan found Damon – who was busy keeping up with his newly turned, sired vampire Charlotte.

Damon wanted to follow Stefan overseas, but first he tried to get Charlotte unsired. He found Val, a witch who claimed to know how to break the sire bond. She told him that it required a sacrifice of 12 human souls – so Damon killed twelve people. After that, Val disappeared – and Lexi heard what Damon did and told him to stop being selfish and let Stefan go overseas alone. He listened to her, and the two separated once again.

Back in the present, they found Val’s daughter Nandi. Nandi revealed that the reason that Elena was even able to be sired was because she had real feelings for Damon before shew as turned. That’s not all she told, however. The only way to break the sire bond for vampires is for Damon to tell Elena to let him go, forget all about him, and then leave her forever.

Though Damon admitted that he’d willingly kill 12 people again if it meant unsiring Elena, Nandi‘s story changed all that. She also admitted that her mother Val practiced a type of magic known as “Expression” – so bad, darker than dark magic, that it doesn’t even get to be called magic.

Naturally, this focus on magic also involves Bonnie. While the brothers were off handling business and exploring memory lane, the girls got high on magic tea, drank some Dom – you know, partying it up at the Salvatores. After some tense almost-fights over both Bonnie and Elena’s life choices, Caroline (Candice Accola) agreed to stop judging for the night [honestly, though she's being a bit of a bitch about it, who can blame her - wish they'd talk about what Damon did to her back in season 1], but that didn’t last long. In no time at all, she was back to Damon-bashing and Elena, finally having had enough, confessed that she’d already slept with Damon before storming off.

Where else than Mystic Falls would a girls night in turn into a farmhouse torture over werewolf dominance challenges? Tyler (Michael Trevino) was having a bit of a problem with his newly formed pack of unsired hybrids. Kim (Alyssa Diaz) – who had seemed like a good sort last week – was off on a tear this week, trying to turn all the unsired hybrids against Tyler and Hayley because she couldn’t handle watching the latest – Adrian – get unsired.

So, she and Adrian, the not-yet-unsired last hybrid, head off to the local hangout to shoot some pool and blow off some steam while Tyler and Hayley look on from afar. Hayley convinces Tyler that Kim is just trying to challenge Tyler for dominance, so Tyler takes matters into his own hands, commands Kim and Adrian to get back to the barn so they can work on unsiring the last guy.

In response, Kim and Adrian take off to the Salvatores, where they interrupt the girl-bonding party to kidnap Caroline [oh, it must be Thursday]. Bonnie tries to stop them [by making the lights flicker a bit here and there, like Season 1 Bonnie could do], but her new form of magic [revealed to be known as "Expression"] isn’t strong enough yet. Guess she needs to spend a bit more time with Shane, who can no doubt teach her to kill some people and steal their souls, before getting her full strength back.

Kim and Adrian make off with Caroline – their plan being to torture Caroline while Tyler watches – and then kill Caroline and tell Klaus. Elena convinces Kim to torture/kill her instead [guess she hasn't lost her martyrdom in her vampire transition], as Klaus wants nothing more than to keep Elena alive. Kim appears to go for it – but suddenly Tyler breaks free of the other hybrids’ hold and jams his fist into Kim’s chest cavity.

He tells the group of gathered hybrids that he’s not like Klaus, or like Kim, and won’t torture anyone. However, he makes it very clear that he’s the head hybrid – and forces Kim to submit to him. When she does, the rest of the hybrids do as well, so, crisis averted.

Soon after this dominance test, it’s finally revealed why Hayley‘s (Phoebe Tonkin) teamed up with Shady Shane, who’s so obviously the season’s bad guy [and I can kind of see why she would. Before coming into that town, she didn't really have a tie to anyone - and she still probably hates vampires, like most werewolves before they became hybrids]. Anyway, Shady Shane (David Alpay) has been holding knowledge about her biological parents over her head, promising to reveal the information once she has gotten 12 unsired hybrids for him.

So, once Hayley got the last unsired, he revealed that both her parents were dead. However, he then took the opportunity to reveal that he might be able to bring them back to life… or something. [I have a slight suspicion that she may or may not be Tyler's half sister or possibly a cousin.] Anyway, I’m sure we’ll see what Shady Shane meant by that soon enough.

Meanwhile, Damon goes back to the Salvatore Boarding House to break the news to Elena, but finds himself unable to do it – as Elena immediately starts trying to talk him out of it. Caroline had told her about the sire bond, but while trying to find Caroline, Tyler told Elena that the sire bond doesn’t change your feelings towards a person – just makes you obey their every command. Tyler reminds her that he hated Klaus, but still did everything Klaus wanted him to do.

Naturally, the episode ends with Damon not telling Elena to forget about him and move on. I’m sure we’ll see the repercussions of that decision soon enough.

As we saw last week, Stefan and Elena broke up, so it was sweet that, in this week’s opener, we see Caroline trying to help Stefan through the difficult time he’s having post break-up. As Stefan’s “sober sponsor,” Caroline (Candice Accola) is basically just trying to be a good friend and make sure that the break-up doesn’t drive him over the edge into Ripper mode. The two chat via phone, as Stefan‘s busy doing manly push-ups in the woods while Caroline is at the Lockwood mansion, decorating for the Miss Mystic Falls pageant.

Caroline gets upset when Stefan informs her that Elena has feelings for Damon, but the conversation is cut short when Elena (Nina Dobrev) shows up at the Lockwood’s to help Caroline set up for the pageant. The two hang up, with Caroline advising Stefan (Paul Wesley) to be careful, sublimate his desire to rip people to bits, and not get too crazy over the break-up. She then hangs up and immediately starts questioning Elena about her decision to break up with Stefan.

No sooner than Stefan hangs up with Caroline, Klaus (Joseph Morgan) shows up and attacks Stefan for telling “every teenage sycophant in town” about the cure. The two engage in a little wrestling competition before settling on a plan that involves Stefan finding some more vampires for Jeremy to kill so his Hunter’s mark will grow. [While we're on the subject - how did Klaus know Stefan's exact location? I mean, he was out in the middle of the woods. Klaus is totally that jealous boyfriend that downloads a cellphone tracking app to his own phone so he can follow your every move.]

Anyway, before Stefan takes off on Klaus’ mission, he decides to inform Damon of his and Elena’s recent break-up. Though Damon is likely internally screaming for joy at the news, to his credit, he does offer to go get wasted and bro out with his baby brother. Stefan understandably declines, and leaves it up to Damon to get to the bottom of the Professor Shady Shane problem, while Stefan handles the Jeremy problem.

Elsewhere, Hayley and Tyler are working on helping Kim (Alyssa Diaz), another hybrid, get unsired from Klaus. Hayley convinces Tyler to take her to the Miss Mystic pageant under the guise of maintaining their cover in front of Klaus – but Hayley‘s facial expressions made it pretty that she had some ulterior motives.Either way, the two end up leaving Kim to continue breaking her bones over and over again out on some abandoned farm while they go party it up over at the Lockwood mansion.

Stefan decides that the best way to get Jeremy killing vampires is to hit up the local hospital and pick some folks to turn so Jeremy can stake them. [Possibly not one of the most humane plans, but somehow effective - and he sort of lucks out finding a convicted murderer.] I have to admit that I did sort of like this in-charge Stefan, though also found myself feeling bad for young Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) – who really is still just a high school kid after all.

Regardless, Stefan basically forces Jeremy into killing the newly turned vampire – but that’s about all Stefan is able to force Jeremy to do because, as we can remember from Connor, Jeremy‘s hunter status means he can no longer be compelled. So, though Stefan knows Jeremy’s Hunter’s mark grew, he couldn’t compel Jeremy to tell him how much it had grown – which also means he has no idea how many more vampires Jeremy will need to kill before the mark/map will be complete.

So, congrats to Jeremy finally graduating into full Hunter status – but it turns out to also mean sacrificing his humanity. Without preamble, Jeremy stakes Stefan [though, admittedly, he might have deserved that after the trauma he'd just exposed Jeremy to] and heads off to find more vampires to kill [i.e.: his sister]. He and Elena get into a sort of fight wherein Elena throws Jeremy across the room [typical sibling fighting, you know] right after assuring him that she’d never hurt him. Of course, this move prompts him to stab her in the neck and try to stake her – before being stopped by both Matt and Stefan.

Tyler makes himself useful this episode by spending the majority of his time creeping on Klaus and Caroline – who are on the “date” Klaus made Caroline promise he could take her on. Tyler uses his super hybrid hearing to listen in on their conversations, and has to just watch as Caroline laughs at Klaus’ jokes. It’s starting to look like their pretend break-up might become the real deal before too long.

Hayley, meanwhile, occupies herself with chatting up Mrs. Lockwood and, later, none other than Shady Shane (David Alpay) himself – which does not escape Damon‘s notice – though Hayley maintains that she had never met Shady Shane before that day. Of course, as often happens around Mystic Falls, we later learn that Hayley is a bit of a liar when it comes to that point – but we’ll get to that.

Caroline and Klaus‘ date actually seems to go rather well, and though Caroline could have just been putting on a show for Klaus’ benefit, she appeared to enjoy Klaus‘ company as the two engage in some banter and flirting. However, Caroline is still Caroline, so none of this manages to distract her from her Miss Mystic duties, which include setting up and hosting the entire pageant, basically [though I don't remember last year's Miss Mystic having such a huge role in the festivities, but I guess that's just Caroline's way, too].

The pageant is certainly successful, and everything pretty much goes off without a hitch, with the exception of the fact that Stefan’s forced-staking session with Jeremy meant that he missed dancing with April, who he was supposed to escort to the pageant. [I'm still not seeing April's relevance here, in the overall scheme of things.] Still, reliable Matt Donovan stepped up to take Jeremy‘s spot so that April (Grace Phipps) wouldn’t be left alone up there – and ended up doing the dance with her instead. Crisis averted.

In the end, April ends up winning the pageant [presumably the pity vote, because I don't see why she would have won otherwise. She just rolled into town, so she can't be involved with anything around the school or community. Plus, her only friend is lying daggered in a box somewhere, so it certainly wasn't a popularity vote either]. But that’s not really that important within the episode’s major arc, so let’s move on.

What is relevant to the episode’s story is that Caroline and Elena get in a fight because Caroline doesn’t approve of Damon as a love interest for her best friend [or anyone, really, best friend or not - the girl's really got it out for Damon, not that we can blame her (though I'm certain people are going to try)]. In addition, Stefan and Elena disagree on Elena’s changes since becoming a vampire, and Elena tries to encourage Stefan to let the old Elena go and move on with his life, basically.

All of this, paired with Jeremy‘s newly awakened desire to stake his sister, culminates when Elena opts to move into the Salvatore Boarding House [I guess bunking with Bonnie, or even April - which would have given her a mildly entertaining storyline PLUS provided her with some form of adult supervision at home - was out of the question]. Anyway, at this news, Stefan opts to stay elsewhere, and so he heads straight to Caroline‘s while Elena and Damon get cozy in front of the fireplace.

While Matt – who moved into the Gilbert’s house to help Jeremy out, somehow – and Jeremy get used to their living arrangements, and Stefan and Caroline break out the alcohol to do shots, Damon and Elena finally get down and dirty in Damon’s bed. Of course, no Damon and Elena moment goes uninterrupted, and so their sexcapades are interspersed with scenes of Caroline and Stefan coming to the realization that Elena is sired to Damon. [Does this mean she's going to have to rip her fangs out over and over again to break her sire bond? How does that even work for vampires?]

In any event, this episode made me realize that I don’t give Caroline enough credit. I don’t know about you, but that revelation took me by surprise – though I am so glad to have an explanation for Elena’s weird newbie-vampire quirks [which means I'm mostly glad to know it wasn't just some "make Elena special because she's Elena" maneuver. Or maybe it was. I don't know.] Another revelation – though one that didn’t take me by surprise – was that Hayley is working with Professor Shane. That guy and his connections, honestly. Is there anyone/anything that he doesn’t know or manipulate? I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

Well, this week we got what we were promised in the teaser after last week’s episode – hello, Katherine! – though she was only in hallucination form [but I guess we'll just have to settle for that]. Elena, thanks to her having killed Connor last week, suffered from some pretty terrible hallucinations – which apparently is only supposed to make her want to kill herself.

Our opening scene this week was a nice little shock – which ended up setting the bar pretty high for the rest of the episode. Elena (Nina Dobrev), having some issues sleeping since Connor started haunting her, decides to make some tea. While in the kitchen, Connor pushes one too many buttons, so she grabs a knife and stabs him in the neck [I guess we're trying to keep things interesting by finding new ways to murder people around town], only to realize it was a hallucination and that she actually just stabbed Jeremy!

Fortunately, Jer (Steven R. McQueen) was still sporting his fancy, though potential psycho-killer-inducing ring of magical regeneration – so he ended up being fine. Elena, having trust issues with Stefan after dealing with the aftermath of him spending the day doing Klaus’ bidding without explaining why, calls Damon to help her instead. Damon arrives, but also called Stefan, so he stops by to check on her as well. Jeremy wisely decides to skip out on the triangle gathering and go to school [many things seem to excuse students from school for the day, but I guess death is an exception].

Klaus, having killed five or so hunters himself back in the day, knew what was going to happen to Elena – and offered his services until the hallucinations passed so that Elena wouldn’t actually go through with the suicide [and he wouldn't lose his potential blood source]. Naturally, none of the gang was too fond of that plan, but Klaus did his own thing and stole her away from them. He took her back to his mansion and locked her away in a windowless room, with some of his hybrids left to stand guard.

After Klaus vamp-napped her, what else is left to do but find someone who should be able to locate her: our local witch Bonnie Bennett. [Obviously, trying Klaus' mansion was out of the question.] Unfortunately, despite the candle-lighting debacle from last episode, she still wasn’t up to par in the magic department, so she wasn’t much use there or with figuring out how to make the hallucinations stop. However, she did offer some assistance in the form of the totally sketch new professor Shane (David Alpay) – who happened to be hanging about the Mystic Falls’ high school as a guest lecturer for an exhibit.

Damon and Bonnie (Kat Graham) went up to the school [because of course no one at the school really cares when or if their students show up when school starts, or even whether they bring random people with them] to chat with Shane and see if he had any idea how to make the hallucinations stop – since he seemed to know so much about everything else.

When they got there, Shane was giving a speech about ancient history – including some information about an old powerful dead person who lost power but was seeking out a way to get said power back – I don’t remember, but it’ll be relevant later, I’m sure. Later, after Bonnie convinces Shane to come help, he tells Bonnie and Damon how to stop the hallucinations: the next hunter has to be activated – and the only way to do that is to kill a vampire.

At this point, Klaus becomes relevant, as we obviously can’t have Jeremy sacrificing one of our regulars just to help Elena [though it would have gone differently had Jeremy had his way - still not a Damon fan, that one]. Caroline had been distracting Klaus all day – under the ruse of having broken up with Tyler over the Hayley situation – so that he wouldn’t notice Stefan stealing Elena back. Caroline manages to convince him to sacrifice one of his hybrids for the cause – under the stipulation that Caroline agree to go on a date with him – which, naturally, Tyler is not too pleased to hear.

Meanwhile, Matt, Jeremy, and April were hanging out the school, too – having helped set up the exhibit, I think, because of course everyone attends school the day that no schooling actually occurs. [Side note: regardless of how fond anyone may be of Grace Phipps, I'm still failing to see the point of April in general. Though we're getting bits and pieces of her "storyline" every episode, it all really actually only involves her father - so why exactly didn't we just keep him around instead? Who are we kidding, we can't have another adult present on this show.... Also, like each of these characters over the seasons, April not knowing about the supernatural side of town is already annoying.]

Anyway, April has a revelation about the professor: she recognizes him through her father. I’m loving seeing Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig) so often, finding a way to be even more involved in the overall story now than Elena feeding from him. He’s just there representin’ for Team Human – and connecting some important pieces of information, which he promptly reports to Damon. Turns out, Sketchy Shane was in constant contact with Pastor Young up until the gas explosion – which is intriguing, to say the least, though unsurprising. Everyone’s going to go crazy coming up with predictions from that nugget of info.

Elena, locked up at Klaus’ place, proceeded to hallucinate the day away. [Speaking of hallucinations and seeing a ton of dead people - was anyone a little too reminded of The First from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Yes/No?] With visits from Connor, Katherine, and her mom, anyone would be hard-pressed not to follow through with their wishes and commit suicide. When Stefan shows up to bail her out, she mistakes him for Connor, stabs him with a chair leg, and takes off to Wickery Bridge. [You'd think they'd just blow that up, too. Nothing good comes out of Elena's visits there.]

Once there, her mom convinces her to toss her daylight ring in the river and wait for the sun to rise and burn her to ashes. Stefan calls Damon, telling him to go find her, hoping that he’ll be able to get through to her. Damon shows up and soon realizes Elena’s plans and tries to get her to see reason. Fortunately, Jeremy activates his hunter status just in time to bring Elena back to her senses, and Damon saves her life by jumping into the river to avoid the coming sunrise. While down there, he fetches her daylight ring before returning her to the Gilbert home.

Soon enough, while at the Gilbert house, Elena and Stefan end up having an emotional [which means it's HEIGHTENED, too!] chat about where their relationship is heading. Stefan makes some very astute observations about Elena’s recent reliance and trust with Damon. In the end, Stefan tells Elena that he can’t handle her indecisiveness or feelings for Damon anymore, so the two break up. [Another side note: if I hear the words "magnified" or "heightened" ONE more time.... We get it, life as a vampire is intense. Stop shoving it down our throats.]

Elena understands where he’s coming from [as do we all, I think], and doesn’t try to change his mind. That said, it’s sort of funny that just a couple episodes ago she was basically calling Stefan “the best decision she ever made” – not complaining, because it will be nice to [hopefully] see a less brooding Stefan after the requisite post-break-up mourning, just stating a fact. Can we have the Ripper back for a bit, please?

With that, we’re at the end. It might be time for me to just accept that the episodes the majority of viewers seem to love, I don’t particularly care for – and vice versa. Sure, this episode had many great things [Katherine, Katherine, and some cute Dalaric], but it was lacking on the action and excitement these last few episodes have had. It was just a little too shipper-packed for my taste. Anyway, interesting plot advancement for Jeremy and the hunters, and now we’re set up for some mystery and suspense for several characters.

Naturally, it’s time for a break about now [though fortunately not as long a break as we're used to getting], so The Vampire Diaries won’t return until November 22nd for episode 4.07 “My Brother’s Keeper” – so we’ll see you then!