You Can’t Go Home Again: The Vampire Diaries Gets Stabby at Homecoming

"cup my face less and my peen more"

Nothing makes me feel quiet as lame slash awesome slash a weirdo in the best possible was as sitting and watching the Vampire Diaries by myself. (Sorry my pet cats if you are reading this, but you don’t count – although good on your for figuring out how to use a computer. When I get home I shall reward you with Greenies.) Typically, I am wearing little to no pants, eating something that is dripping and cackling madly to my empty apartment. (I try to watch when my roommate isn’t home, because someday I may want to run for office and she thinks it is hilarious to record my more inane antics, unbeknownst to me. So basically I live in my apartment like it is the Truman Show which is ultimately a very weird experience for everyone. BUT I DIGRESS.)

To order to keep the weird at bay, I also tend to take Very Serious And Important Editorial Notes in some manner of notebook. Typically they are pretty good, pretty unfunny, pretty clear reminders of plot points I want to hit when I write up the show. Other times I’ve been drinking and the notes devolve into scrawl like, “OH SNAP NO HE DIDN’T HA HA HA!” and while entertaining, these notes are far, far from helpful.

When I looked at my notes today, it was like being on another planet – I’d written just one line instead of my usual four to five page treatise. I think said line should be the tag for maybe the entire series:

“Too much has happened here today.”

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The episode was intense enough THAT I HAD TO PAY SO MUCH ATTENTION. I mean, the show has always been a bit…involved. I’m a T.V. watcher who can happily jump into a show in the middle of a third season and figure shit out, but I think if anyone tried that with TVD they might….go insane? As it stands now, I consider myself to be very good at explaining what’s happening on a T.V. show – for those Need To Know types – but if anyone had sauntered into and asked me what happened this week, I’d probably just tear up and be like “It’s like trying to explain my life, I could do it, but the journey is long and deeply personal – and maybe crazy without context?”

But because I love you guys, I’ll try.

The thing to understand is that it’s Homecoming and everyone wants Klaus dead – even the people who DON’T want him dead – Stefan, due to his compulsion, Tyler, due to being sired by Kalus – want him dead. Let’s go over why, exactly.

Elena: Klaus’s juice box, compelled her once and future penis to be infinitely more awesome, but less human and tender = Klaus must die.

Stefan: Compulsion, maybe secret love for Elena = Klaus must die.

Rebecca: Killed her mom, lied to her for thousands of years, staked her in the 1920s = Klaus must die.

Damon: Always up for thinking anyone should die, wants Elena to be HIS juicebox (sexually speaking), compelled his brother, nicer lips = Klaus must die.

Michael: He’s Klau’s fake cuckholded dad, his son carried a werewolf gene and killed dude’s wife plus general never really liking him that much = Klaus must die.

Bonnie: Is a witch = Klaus must die.

Caroline: Does whatever her friends do plus boyfriend made hybrid by Klaus plus boyfriend is more into Klaus than her = Klaus must die.

Katherine: Secretly loves Elena, Stefan, and Damon and wants revenge for years of nearly being killed by Klaus = Klaus must die.

Tyler: Sired by Klaus, under his thrall = Klaus must die.

Neckless J and Alaric: Not in this episode = Klaus must die.

So we’ve established that Klaus must be stopped, right? I mean, that’s been the first half of this season and most of last season as well. It was basically everyone taking turns being all “Klaus Is The Worst”! Ostensibly the whole season has been leading up to this halfway mark….a failed attempt to kill Klaus.

Where did they go wrong? Maybe by having each and every character in the show essentially help? I mean, even Elena addresses this at one point as she and Damon are making grenades – FLIRTATIOUS grenades, but of course.  She’s all “Hey Damon – catch! Ha ha, I’m just playing – there are so many people plotting something is bound to go wrong.”

The signs pointing to failure were all there: Michael appeared and reminded us of the eight million rules THAT CANNOT BE BUNGLED in order to kill one of the original vamps “I’ve got this dagger from the ash tree, but Elena will have to stab me, because another vampire can’t or they will die, and I’ve also got this stake from the white ash tree that can really kill an original instead of just normal kill-kill us and I’m not going to tell you where it is because another vampire can use it, and also I am going to hold onto it, and now that I have pretended to be dead, Elena take this dagger and make Rebecca temporarily dead.” YEAH. It’s a lot of rules. I felt like every time one of them had a breakthrough in terms of getting to the business of killing Klaus, it was like Newman from Seinfeld in Jurassic Park popped up and went “Uh-uh-uh-you didn’t say the magic word!”

In addition to having too many cooks in the kitchen, I think a lot of the bungling came from having Stefan technically compelled to be totally honest to Klaus – hence the “killing” of Michael – he wasn’t ACTUALLY dead, but Stefan had seen him die…so no lying. Man, I am getting tired just thinking about this episode!

Then Elena stabbed Rebecca. Yeah, yeah, you can’t talk a good game defending her actions what with trust and too many untrustworthy cooks in the plotting kitchen but at the end of the day, she didn’t like the woman, and she didn’t like that the woman had a past with Stefan and so she stabbed her. IN THE BACK. AFTER GAINING HER TRUST.

I rolled my eyes – ROLLED MY EYES – when the writers desperately tried to get Elena back into character by being like “I stabbed her, I’m the worst.” She didn’t mean that for a second! Somebody’s been hanging out with Damon too much. Now take off your stylish threads and bang the pain away, you crazy kids! THERE. I SAID IT.

The other component ruining their scheme was the fact that it was Klaus, after all. He doesn’t trust anyone! And he hates school dances, so he floods the gym (CAROLINE WAS DISPLEASED) and makes Tyler host homecoming instead and fills it with apparently hybrid extras. Oh to have that to put on my resume. JULIE PLEC. I WILL BE YOUR PRIVATE DANCER IF I CAN BE A HYBRID EXTRA. THERE IS NO WAY MY 28 YEAR OLD CHUBBY ASS WILL LOOK OUT OF PLACE! I AM IDEAL!

So yeah, Tyler and the other hybrids have to protect Klaus! WHY WAS KLAUS’S HYBRID ARMY THAT HE WAS VOCALLY OUT AND ASSEMBLING NOT ANTICIPATED? And then Tyler – his douchiness having been heightened by his vampire gene (that is not a joke, that is me genuinely conveying a writer’s choice) TRANQS HIS GIRLFRIEND TO HAVE MATT TAKE HER TO SAFETY.

The plan fails spectacularly for all these reasons…and Katherine. Getting her doppelgang’ on, she thwarts everything once she learns that all of her favorite people – Damon, Stefan, and Elena – will be killed by the hybrids if Klaus dies, she hedges her bets that Stefan will crack and protect Klaus at the last minute – and he does.

So everything is shitty. And I’m sad in all my parts.

Klaus and his lips wander off to brood about his stolen family – Stefan, freed from the compulsion after making a deal with Klaus, has stolen their bodies for revenge reasons and at Katherine’s behest.

Stefan and Katherine are being all Stefan-y and Katherine-y.

Michael looks down on them from Vampire heaven, raining ash and hellfire upon their doors.

Damon and Elena almost makeout but then settle for face-cupping and accepting that they never die because they are the stars of the show so probably everything will be okay.

Bonnie somewhere continues to perfect her Elena impression.

Neckless J is off somewhere starting a psychic hotline slash pot delivery service.

Caroline is listening to All By Myself on repeat having dumped Tyler The Douchey Hybrid.

Matt shakes his head somberly, looks out at the lake on the Lockwood estate and tosses the corsage he purchased for a girl who never arrived into its inky depths, ignoring his warped reflection and trying hard not to think about his mortality, but thinking about it anyway and whispering quietly to a passing butterfly, “Am I truly the last?”