The Vampire Diaries 6.09 “I, Alone”

After last week’s dizzying series of reversals, reunions and introductions, we’re back in more familiar VD territory of moving the players around on the board, sometimes repetitively, to setup mystery payoffs. The most impassioned story (despite all the Elena/Damon drama starting up again even though they aren’t dating, and stop stalking her already!) is the love affair bump that occurs between Alaric and Josette (I want to type those two names in tandem for a very long time, show, so don’t squander Alaric’s return and don’t let Mr. Neck-Snappy Enzo anywhere near Josette, I’m serious) because he steals from her the device she tells him has been making her feel safe for the 20 years or so since her brother tried to kill her and everyone else in their family, the Ascendant.

Yep, the show has a seasonal McGuffin that’s right up there with the cursed pocket watches, vervain necklaces, the Sun and the Moon Stone, the White Oak Stake and Son of Stakey and on and on, and this one looks kind of Hellraiser-y and has all these nifty gears and modules whenever someone keeps breaking it, as they do over and over, only most of those were alternative time travel ones, and Josette had the only real one. So does it seem like Alaric, the man whose life Dr. Josette has not only saved, but the man whom she was able to heal all the way back to human from being a cursed vampire, would do that to his hot smart badass new witch girlfriend?

No, it does not. Instead, it sounds like something someone who has been compelled by a sneaky Vampire might do, somebody who doesn’t care about betraying his best friend if it gets him what he wants, someone named Damon Salvatore. Alaric resists learning that news, because it means, as Josette succinctly puts it, he’s not really his friend. Everyone seems to agree that friends do not compel friends, in the vampire morality of Mystic Falls that is one line the crossing of which means a punch in the face.

Which Damon takes, because he deserves it. Elena accuses him of doing it to keep stalking her, but he swears he really cares about Bonnie and just wants her back as much as everyone else. So Liv sends them back to Parallel 1994, but unfortunately Bonnie is driving herself back from Seattle (where Kai left her) to Virginia, and she’s only halfway there, and the bums have too much mooning to do at Elena’s old house to meet her halfway, and anyway the spell wears off because Kai is already out and free (with the 1994 ascendant? And Bonnie’s stolen magic and blood? Not sure how that all works. Or maybe Josette’s knife-infused stolen magic? Who’s protecting Mr. Cuddles? Or something else, he’s Kai, he’s going to be uber-powerful till they find his weakness, that’s how this works) and trying to kill her.

Which Tyler (yay!) refuses to let happen (and he and Liv have major chemistry, not something I’ve often said about Tyler and anyone), but I spend most of the episode wondering why nobody just kills this raving psycho, stone-cold. Wouldn’t that solve everything, keeping Josette, Liv and Luke (off with his “sugar daddy” apparently, so progressive, the snarky kids these days) safe and not to mention everyone else he’s tried or planned or is currently in the process of killing?

Oh, yeah, Tyler can’t do it because he’ll be a werewolf again. Matt doesn’t know he should do it yet. Damon and Elena don’t know where he is yet. Is there any way we could convince Enzo he’s a lying liar who lies? Because Enzo hates those (for some reason having fixated on Stefan as the worst of all), and kills Sarah (turns out she’s actually Monique, and met Sarah in college, where Stefan has been funding her perfectly normal life since Damon killed her mom; which also doesn’t make sense, and does it matter now that she’s dead – oh, Enzo already made her drink his blood, right? He’s been doing that to everyone lately. God, I hate Enzo) just like he killed Ivy, to upset Stefan. Since Matt and Jeremy also know Sarah, however, he may have bitten off more than he knew.

I know we’re going somewhere with all of this, but it’s beyond cruel that all Bonnie got was a phone call from Elena (because she had Kai’s pager, and the 1994 jokes just keep on coming) and is still stuck in Parallel 1994 even though Damon freely admits she’s sacrificed everything for everyone over and over.

Fix things for Bonnie, show! Preferably in a way that also kills Enzo. I am giddy with excitement that Matt has made that his mission for next week!