The Vampire Diaries “The Murder of One” 

Bang up job babysitting Alaric, people.

So, this was a bloody awful (take that anyway you want) episode.

Rebekah gets hold of Damon and bearclaws (not the danish) and ginsus him for a while in retaliation for last week’s mindmeld shenanigans while an unaware and unwilling Bonnie is in the next room de-Musketeering the Mikalesons at Klaus’s behest. And, to make his point that he’s still a bastard, he’s got Kol watching Jeremy.

The Salvatores plus Alaric start woodshopping the Wickery Bridge sign and come up with a lucky dozen stakes with which to vanquish Klaus and co. That’d all be nifty except for the whole hijacked Bonnie scenario and another nugget we learn later. I’ll get to that.

Damon turns Elena away at Alaric’s door so Stefan can do a big reveal in the woods later for Matt, Elena, and Caroline that they’re newly weaponized and they can all commence role-playing various scenarios (yes, really).

Elena tells Caroline that Alaric killed her dad and after a momentary freakout she drinks from the well of Elena’s goodwill and goes to see Alaric and they have a very sweet, honest talk about how she’s also killed an innocent. He tells her how sorry he is for what he did, and she tells him very honestly that she’ll just have to hope he can be saved (too). I was trying to think when we’ve ever had these two alone together. I don’t believe we have. They did an exquisite job with a very simple, quiet scene.

Finn and Sage have a short reunion after Klaus brings him back to Mystic Falls because he needs his blood for the spell. They aren’t long for the loving when Stefan vervains them at the Grill to get them outside and Elena and Matt get the jump on Finn with a White Oak stake in a crossbow. Sage wails and wails as he burns, and then she shows up at home to kill Stefan, but she and her henchvamp drop dead before they get the chance. Thus sets up the newest wrinkle and season four’s hook–if you kill an Original, his whole line goes with him.

Bonnie gets to spill the detail that she’s unlinked the Mikaelson siblings when she calls Elena post-Finn to tell her where Damon is, and then she collapses in a sobbing heap. Sidebar: I wonder if Bonnie intentionally diverted the meaning of “if one goes, they all go” while working her spell, as a big old “up yours” to Klaus and his crew without really thinking that all the way through.

Realizing this new detail is potentially very, very bad news to him personally. Stefan carts the remaining stakes to Klaus’s in exchange for Damon, and Klaus being the sick twist that he is, tries to compel Damon into ripping off his hands (seriously, people, there’s a limit). They work out a sort of fib that there are actually a couple more stakes in play than Stefan has on him, but that gets kiboshed when Damon goes to fetch the last one and apparently Antilaric pilfered it after Alaric hid it in a book case because whomever’s turn it was to babysit Alaric (Caroline?) flaked out.

On the triangle front, mid-delirium Damon hallucinates that Elena saves him from Rebekah. In the real world, at the end of the episode, Stefan finally, finally, FINALLY drops his hate on when Klaus taunts him that being the object of all his rage was a gift. He essentially comes clean with Elena about all he’s lost when she stops him short and tells him he didn’t lose her–she still loves him.

He tells her he loves her, too, and he always will, but she’s also in love with Damon. When she can’t object, except to admit that she doesn’t know what she feels, he goes no further, all chivalrous 19th century Stefan-styles.

So our mystery is who sired Rose. I think Elijah, but they all seem to think it’s likely Klaus. So the first step is that they need to find Katherine, who *should* tell the truth because she’s all self-preserving and everything. If it is Klaus, that’s only a problem for Tyler, which makes it a problem for Caroline, and if Caroline ain’t happy…

Klaus and Rebekah break up when he disses Finn and she defends the Salvatores because they at least give two sh-ts about each other when Klaus could really give a damn.

So, I’m down with Stefan putting Elena in her place about having to choose him or Damon.

I’m not down with somebody already taking their eye of Alaric so that he can be the one wrinkle in a pretty big plan.

When Klaus delivered the line about hunting down everyone Stefan loved, I may have pulled an eye muscle, because wasn’t that supposedly his threat for all of this season? It seemed very hollow to hear it again.

So over the gore. And Rebekah needs to be medicated. Are we really going for a third girl who’s loved both brothers? Because when she was introduced, we were asked to believe she actually did love Stefan way back in the 20s, which is still fairly recent in her memory, right? World’s your oyster honey. Go get it on elsewhere.

And now we’re off for three weeks. New episodes resume on April 19th and then it’s four episodes in a row until the finale on May 10th.