Okay, so I’m in the weeds again keeping up with my shows. It’s been a challenging fall. This episode is part 2 of Damon stalking Elena into loving him again, except he finally gives up when he sees the good she’s doing studying medicine and dating someone normal and that even his brief return has already made her self-destructive. How big of him, but we’re supposed to find it a romantic sacrifice. All that really happens of import is that Tripp is killed (in a rather ironic way, considering) because: Enzo. At least Caroline’s mom is safe, and Bonnie sends her magic back to reality from Fake 1994, triggering a lot of adorable Mr. Cuddles references but also a real search to bring her back I hope.
No, it’s the Mazzy Star episode we have to talk about. Because we’ve had good episodes this season so far, but this is the first great one! Gemini coven! Long lost siblings! Invisible Dad! A cold open involving children shivering under a bed while a stalker covered in blood tracks them through the house with a big knife. This is why we watch the show, the CW. We’re messed up, don’t forget it.
So, while Caroline and Elena try to stage a very unlikely “Friendsgiving” in their dorm, Bonnie finds herself in Fake Portland, kidnapped and drugged by Kai. Meanwhile, Damon/Alaric/Stefan have taken a road trip to real Portland, in search of basically the same thing as Kai and Bonnie. The Ascendant. Or Jo’s magic. Or a way to get Bonnie back. Or a way to keep Kai there. It’s all amounts to getting in the house, which Damon and Stefan can’t, because it still has a living owner.
It’s even worse, because the Gemini clan have hidden their house under a charm. As they can do to themselves, as we learn when we meet “Daddy Kai.” As young Josette (yep, Josette, and she’s a brunette on a vampire show, too) does to tiny Liv and Luke to keep them away from Kai, who apparently takes it really badly that he can only siphon magic, not create any like everybody else he knows.
Or something like that, who cares about Kai? The actor Velvet Goldmines himself through every scene, but you only get to chew scenery like that if you’re Elizabeth Banks or on Glee or something, so tone it down a second, Drama 101!
Or maybe if you’re his little sister Olivia (yes, as Elena fairly demands to know, all the remaining Geminis ended up at our tiny liberal arts college because of … Grams! Oh, hell yeah! It’s like somebody actually planned this), who ruins the Friendsgiving by basically raining on the parade with tsunami force from the moment she arrives. She’s having a very unhappy birthday.
Luke explains the more convoluted lore of Gemini coven leadership, which I won’t bore you with because he and Liv and Jo (I’m just going to keep calling her Josette) have luckily found themselves in with the Mystic Falls gang, who never met a supernatural rule they didn’t break, bend, twist or transform due to all being the most special of all snowflakes, all the time!
Also, Elena wises up and kindly lets Liam go, because she doesn’t love him and also he’s in way over his head with vampires and witches and he doesn’t even know about the werewolves. The funniest scene is when Caroline sends him on a very roundabout search for a corkscrew and then immediately is like “which brother stabbed what witch now?” back to business. The sweetest one is when she overhears Elena on the phone with the boys and magicks her way over to confirm “Bonnie’s alive?”
It’s everything you want when you watch this show, unless you want Stefan, Damon, Elena or Caroline to have uncomplicated love lives.