Now this is how you come back from a 4-week hiatus! I wasn’t sure what to expect from this episode, since the last one we saw contained the closing of the tomb story arc, the death of Bonnie’s grandmother, and the tragic revelation that Katherine has been on the outside and thriving all this time but chose not to reveal herself to Damon. But the storylines, the guest stars, and the acting were all top-notch.
The two main prongs to this story were Elena’s search to discover the truth about her birth mother and Stefan’s attempts to glean the truth about Isobel for Alaric…and for Elena, if it turned out they were the same woman. And it did. Jenna, in possibly the worst sense-of-fair-play timing in the history of EVER, told Alaric her suspicions after he kissed her for the first time. Girl. I mean, I do understand her wanting to be fair to him and not let him get too involved with her before she told him, but COME ON! At least wait until the sweetness of the moment has passed and conversation in general has already resumed. Better yet, the end of the outing. Then he doesn’t have to walk away from the revelation, since he was already going. But Jenna doesn’t seem to have the best instincts when it comes to men, so her timing was hardly a surprise.
She gives Elena the name and picture of the girl who was her mother, and the name and address of Isobel’s best friend, Trudi. Elena drops in to visit the woman, who confirms that Isobel had a daughter…and that she hadn’t seen her friend since. She also sends a mysterious text but afterward hurries Elena out of the house, when Elena catches on that Trudi didn’t invite her in and then served her tea with vervain in it. Too late for her to avoid seeing the creepy man walking up the street, but not so late for her to drive off safely. Trudi has “done her part” and for her cooperation gets thrown down the stairs.
Stefan asks Damon if he remembers an Isobel, then gets a photo from Alaric and asks him again. Nothing and nothing, and Damon can’t get himself deep enough in the pain-killers of booze and Tri-Delts who “will wake up with a headache and think they had a blackout at a party, business as usual” to forget his wary nature and admit something inadvertently. But Damon, ever suspicious, asks the sheriff to look into Alaric in exchange for him being her “eligible bachelor” contribution to the local fundraiser, and in the file is the name and license of his missing wife. Alaric is also being raffled off, and all the locals are there to watch the festivities. Damon taunts Alaric about having a drink with his wife, which upsets Alaric…but even more so, Elena. When she confronts him about that, he has a moment of genuine regret. Damon does seem to care for Elena in a very real way. I’m sure he won’t learn a lesson from it, but every time he actually feels regret for something–which is rare enough despite a lifestyle Stefan, at least, thinks he ought to regret every moment of–he becomes a little more human again. Which has to be a good thing.
Elena gets a warning from the same creepy man to “stop looking.” Which was really just sort of a hilarious miscalculation on vampire Isobel’s part; Elena would have assumed she was dead, same as Alaric (or at least his public story) if she’d just left well enough alone. Alaric confronts Damon with a stake, who finally admits that he turned Isobel because she begged him to, and Damon handily beats Alaric, punctures a lung with his own stake, and sits down to watch him die. Stefan comes in and takes over body duty, except…Alaric wakes up, healed. The only thing they can figure is that it has to do with the vampire ring Isobal gave him (we see that is where he obtained it in a flashback), which is an interesting twist. Is it one of Katherine’s rings, and thus protection from any vampire in Katherine’s line? Or protection from any vampire, in general?
The friend subplots have Bonnie shipped off to an aunt’s house and not in the episode at all, and Matt’s mother (Melinda Clarke, AKA Lady Heather whom Grissom SHOULD have ended up with on CSI) coming home unexpectedly. She is a mess, fragile and drunk and needy…and she hates Caroline on sight. Poor Caroline. She has to live with the stigma of being her mother’s daughter and everything that her mother taught her to be. Matt’s mother calls her fake, and her hurt is obvious. I wonder if this friction between mother and girlfriend will be a problem between Matt and his mother, or Matt and Caroline?
The epilogue shows the vampire who accidentally awoke and escaped the tomb eventually finding the house where Anna and Pearl are–so, clearly, they didn’t leave town as promised. Uh and Oh….
In all a great first episode back. It answered questions and revealed new mysteries and had several different brands of heartbreak. And Damon was even hotter than usual, so it was a win all the way around.
