One thing you cannot escape on this show is your past. Which sucks for most of the cast, since they’re vampires, and they have so much of it, most of it full of murder and mistakes.
Stefan is trying to, pretending to be a human working as a mechanic, in a town far away from Mystic Falls, with a girl who doesn’t know he’s undead. Too bad for her, because Enzo and Caroline come looking for him, and don’t like what they find. There’s also a weird sequence where she tries to cook him a perfectly fine looking breakfast, and it goes all weird because of course Stefan Salvatore isn’t going to eat just any lame-o scrambled eggs, and he invites her back to dinner that night (cooked by him) and her death.
That’s really thanks to Enzo, but Stefan should have just gotten her the hell out of dodge the instant Enzo appeared. Caroline tries to compel her upstairs to an early bed, but that’s never enough where Enzo is involved. What’s he mad about? Stefan isn’t looking for Damon anymore. The Damon that Enzo spent most of last season trying to kill for his own vengeful reasons. Guess what, Enzo, Stefan has even more reasons than you to be glad he’s dead! And more valid than yours by far. I hate that guy.
Elena is also trying to forget, since she can’t get the witches to keep giving her delusions of Damon. So she asks Alaric the Reluctant Vampire (every vampire story needs a Louis de Pointe du Lac of its own after all) to compel her to forget. Being Alaric, however, he proves the worth of his resurrection immediately; rather than simply compel her with vampire power, he comes up with a kind of behavior modification hypnosis, where he asks her to recall her best memories of Damon (the ones that made her love him in the first place) so he can systematically remove them from her mind, thus undoing the reason for her mourning in a systematic, lasting way. It makes for a nice character exploration along the way, and of course will really foul things up for Damon when he does actually come back. Matt Davis, as Damon’s true best friend (unlike the pretender Enzo) also manages to imbue a sense of regret at screwing up Damon’s happiness in order to help his ersatz daughter.
Also, Damon and Bonnie are in a freaky Groundhog Day version of Mystic Falls, possibly prepared for them by Grams, only they may not be its only inhabitants, despite appearances. Maybe the clue is in the show’s title, which is a non-single Pearl Jam song with indecipherable lyrics (yep, this season it’s gonna be all song titles, which is kind of cool that the CW may be paying some hit record fees?).