Stefan leaves Elena a message promising to explain the picture she found of Katherine. Elena isn’t answering her phone because she’s currently crashing into someone, flipping her car, and watching the guy she hit get up and come toward her. She tries to get out of the car, but she’s upside-down and the door is jammed. Damon to the rescue! He scares off the guy she hit, then gets her out of the car. Elena’s disoriented from the crash, and all she can say before passing out is, “I look like her.”
Alaric voices over that after years of searching, he finally came face to face with a vampire, then killed him. He can sense evil in Mystic Falls. He has a flashback of a sweet moment with his wife, Isobel. (Music: “Cosmic Love,” Florence and the Machine) That would be the same Isobel whose death is a cold case.
Elena wakes up in Damon’s car hours after her crash. Despite being unconscious long enough to travel from Virginia to Georgia, she doesn’t seem to have any injuries. She worries that no one knows where she is, and she orders Damon to pull over so she can find her phone and make a call. Damon helps her as she gets out of the car. Damon, your humanity is showing!
Elena tells him that taking her to Georgia without her say-so is kidnapping. He points out that she took off her vervain necklace, so he could always compel her to be okay with this. To make matters worse, he has her phone. Stefan calls and Damon answers, but Elena doesn’t want to talk to him. Now Stefan knows that Elena’s with Damon and doesn’t have any vervain on her.
Elena begs Damon to take her back to Virginia, but Damon says they’re almost to their destination. There’s no rush to get home anyway – her problems will still be there no matter when she gets there. This trip is a chance for her to take a break. Elena gets him to promise that she’s safe with him and he won’t compel her to do anything.
In the school parking lot, Alaric searches his car for his ring. Since it’s daylight and he’s not on fire, it’s safe to say that the ring isn’t for daylight, and he’s not a vampire. Jeremy tells him he’s going to write his extra-credit paper on Mystic Falls during the Civil War. Johnathan Gilbert’s journal is giving him a lot of material.
Stefan finds Bonnie on campus and asks her to help him with a spell. Bonnie doesn’t want to share that part of her life with him, but when he tells her Elena’s with Damon, she changes her mind. Stefan asks her to use Elena’s necklace in a spell to find out where Elena and Damon are. Bonnie’s never done a locator spell before, but Stefan gets her to give it a try. She doesn’t have any luck, and when she tests her magic by trying to float a leaf, she fails there, too. She worries that something’s wrong with her.
Back in the car, Damon tells Elena that he pulled her car off the road and doesn’t think anyone will find it. The guy she hit was probably a vampire, but Damon didn’t recognize him. They arrive at a bar called Bree’s, where the owner (that would be Bree) seems happy to see Damon. She tells the other patrons that he broke her heart and ruined her chance at happiness. She’s not mad about it, though.
Elena asks how Bree and Damon met. Bree was a college freshman at the time, and Damon was pretending to be a student. When he told her he was a vampire, she revealed that she’s a witch. They had some good sex, but he didn’t stick around. Bree knows he’s come to find her because he wants something.
Jeremy goes to the local library to get some books on Mystic Falls. He has a meet-cute with a girl named Anna. Meanwhile, Bonnie does some reading of her own, looking through Sheila’s books to find out what’s wrong with her. She doesn’t want to tell her grandmother about her encounter with the Salvatores and her knowledge about vampires in town. Sheila tells her that her block is mental, and she needs to deal with whatever is scaring her into being unable to do magic.
Elena calls Jenna and lies that she fell asleep at Bonnie’s and then went to school. Inside, Damon asks Bree to help him figure out how to get into the tomb under Fell’s Church so he can rescue Katherine. Bree’s the one who told him about using the comet and crystal, but with the crystal gone, Damon needs another option. Would a new spell and crystal override Emily’s original spell? Bree says no – Damon won’t be getting into the tomb. Speaking of the tomb, Bonnie’s back at Fell’s Church, hoping that location will help her regain her magic. Still no luck, but she hears creaking sounds, then falls through an opening in the ground.
Damon eavesdrops from inside the bar as Elena finally answers a call from Stefan. She’s upset with him for lying; he must know that she’s connected to Katherine. Stefan swears that he doesn’t know how. Elena hangs up on him, then turns to find Damon right next to her. She thinks he’s happy that she and Stefan are on the outs. Inside, Bree turns on a blender to keep Damon from listening in as she makes a phone call to tell someone that he should know who’s at the bar.
Bonnie’s landed in a space right outside the tomb, which has a pentagram on the door. Stefan goes to Sheila’s house to see if Bonnie might have come over. Sheila thinks Stefan knows exactly what Bonnie’s dealing with. He must know that Sheila’s a witch, but he shook her hand knowing that she would be able to see that he’s a vampire. That means he wants Sheila to trust him. She thinks Stefan will keep Bonnie safe, but she’s not going to trust Stefan enough to let him in her house.
Anna shows Jeremy the books he wants, explaining that she spends a lot of time at the library because she’s homeschooled. He tells her he’s writing about Mystic Falls’ fear and hysteria about the Civil War. When he specifies that he also wants to research writers from that time period and the local folklore and myths they wrote about, Anna brings up vampires.
Back at Bree’s, Elena wonders if she’s descended from Katherine and, if so, whether that makes her part vampire. Damon tells her that vampires can’t procreate, though they like sex. The only way Elena could be from Katherine’s bloodline is if Katherine had a child before she became a vampire. Elena asks if Stefan wanted to use her to replace Katherine. Damon steals her pickles and they have a conversation about vampires and food. She wonders if he’s putting on an act to seem nice. Bree brings Damon a beer, and Elena asks for one, too. Clearly Bree doesn’t card minors.
At the library, Jeremy questions Anna’s apparent belief that vampires are real. He thinks they were created by writers to serve as a metaphor for people’s fear of Union soldiers. A country at war would have wanted fiction, not reality. Anna mentions that her grandfather once showed her an ancestor’s journal that contained stuff about vampires. That makes Jeremy want to talk more.
Bonnie tries to make a call from underground but can’t get a signal. Stefan finds her and uses his super-vamp-high-jump ability to bring her back aboveground. She tells him she heard the vampires trapped in the tomb. He assures her that they’ve starved and desiccated, and there’s no way for them to get access to human blood and get out. Emily ensured that when she destroyed the crystal.
Damon, Elena, Bree, and a bunch of patrons are drinking together, so Elena has definitely loosened up. Bree notices a guy entering and silently indicates that Damon is the person he’s looking for. They never mention his name, but I hate when TV shows don’t use people’s names, so I’m IDing him as Lee. Jeremy and Anna play foosball at the Grill, talking more about vampires. Most of what Jeremy knows about them comes from movies. Anna suggests that they have a movie night, but Jeremy is hesitant to get involved with someone so soon after ending things with Vicki. Anna says they can just hang out as friends.
Jenna calls Elena, upset that Elena clearly didn’t spend the night at Bonnie’s and then go to school. When she goes outside to hear the call better, Lee grabs her. Damon realizes she’s missing and goes looking for her but only finds her phone. Lee rushes him and hits him with a metal bat, then pours gas on him. Elena realizes Lee’s a vampire and there’s nothing she can do to stop him.
Damon has no idea who his attacker is. Lee tells Elena that Damon killed his girlfriend. She went to visit Stefan, and Damon killed her. Elena realizes that Lee is Lexi’s boyfriend, and that Lexi turned him so they could be together forever. Lee pulls out a book of matches, but Elena stalls for time by trying to remind him that Lexi was good and wouldn’t want him to kill Damon. (Yeah, Lexi was good, but she hated Damon, so I’m thinking she would be okay with this.) It works, and Lee lets Damon live.
Stefan takes Bonnie to Sheila’s, and both grandmother and granddaughter thank him for his help. Stefan reveals that he remembers Sheila from 1969, when she led an anti-war sit-in. Sheila points out that things could have gone badly when he came by earlier asking about Bonnie. Stefan says that the Bennetts have kept the Salvatores’ secrets for a long time, so he figured Sheila would do the same if she thought he was worthy of her trust. Sheila guesses that Bonnie knows about vampires. She warns that if the town finds out and turns on the Salvatores, Sheila will protect her family over them.
Damon goes to say goodbye to Bree, who’s suddenly nervous around him. She tells him she drinks vervain all the time, so he won’t want to hurt her. Lexi was her friend, and she called Lee so he could get revenge for her death. Bree reveals that the tomb can be opened. Emily’s spell book, her grimoire, will have details about how she spelled it shut, and if Damon can reverse the process, he can open it. Too bad Bree doesn’t know where the grimoire is. Damon repays her by ripping out her heart.
Elena and Damon head back to Virginia the next day. She asks why he brought her with him on the road trip. He says it was partly to rescue her after her crash, partly to annoy Stefan, and partly because he enjoys spending time with him. She gloats that she saved his life.
Once they’re back in Mystic Falls, Elena goes over to Vamp Villa to confront Stefan for not telling her about her resemblance to Katherine. She insists that she can handle crazy things like that, considering all the crazy stuff she already accepts. She asks who she is to him. Stefan promises that he doesn’t see Elena as another Katherine. They’re complete opposites. Elena asks when he figured that out – when they first kissed? When they slept together? “Before I met you,” he replies.
Elena thinks she met Stefan on the first day of school, but he actually met her in May. Specifically, they met the day her parents’ car went off the bridge. Stefan was back in town to visit Zach, and he heard the accident. He jumped in the water to try to save the Gilberts. Grayson was the only one who was still conscious, and he made Stefan save Elena first.
Elena remembers that no one could figure out how she got out of the car. Stefan apologetically says that he tried to save her parents, but there wasn’t enough time. He saw her resemblance to Katherine and spent months watching her to make sure that’s not who Elena really was. He’s sorry he didn’t tell her sooner. This doesn’t answer the question Elena has been struggling with since she saw the picture: Why do she and Katherine look alike? Stefan must know something else he hasn’t told her. He confirms that he does: Elena was adopted.
At the library, Anna brings Jeremy what she calls proof of the existence of vampires. As far back as 1942, there have been multiple “animal attacks” in Mystic Falls, including five this year. All the victims were drained of blood.
Back at Vamp Villa, Stefan tells Elena that her birth certificate says she was born at the local hospital, but there’s no record of Miranda being admitted there. He hasn’t been able to look into Katherine’s bloodline in case it alerted someone that he was digging for information. He doesn’t think it matters anyway. He loves Elena no matter what. So they’re back together, despite the fact that he kept a bunch of stuff from her.
Elena finally goes home, where Jenna blasts her for disappearing for two days and lying about where she was. Elena hits her back with the knowledge that Jenna’s spent her whole life keeping the secret that Elena was adopted. Okay, fair, but…you can’t just leave the state for two days and expect Jenna to be okay with it!
Damon goes to the Grill, where Alaric is drinking at the bar. The sight of Damon gives Alaric another flashback about Isobel. In this one, she’s not alone – Damon is biting her and drinking her blood. In the present, Alaric tries to stop his hand from shaking.
Keep in mind: Vampires can’t procreate.
Stefan saved Elena’s life the night her parents died.
Elena was adopted.
Damon knew Isobel.
Etc.: I’m dying to know how someone talked Gina Torres into guest-starring as Bree.
I don’t think Anna’s last name is ever mentioned on the show, but every source I’ve seen says it’s Zhu, so there must be something official that confirms that.
Elena needs to spend more time thinking ahead, because telling Jenna she was at Bonnie’s and then went to school only buys her a few hours. She’s not going to get back from Georgia before Jenna starts wondering where she is.
I feel like Bonnie’s plot in this episode is just a way to kill time. It doesn’t accomplish anything. Like they spent all their time working on the plots for Elena and Jeremy, and they ran out of time and had to throw something together for Stefan and Bonnie.
An Eternity of Misery 