SGRoA: Vampire Diaries, S3 E3: The End of the Affair

Y’all, the humidity here today is killing me, and I know in my soul I will never be able to live in New England again. The desert has me, y’all! Run! Save yourselves! Go get started on this recap!

Katharine calls Damon for an update, and he realizes she’s tracking Stefan and Klaus, because she wants to be anywhere they aren’t. She knows that Klaus’s hybrids didn’t work, and now he’s in a snit. Damon offers that she’s looking to help Stefan; she says she hasn’t decided. Damon asks outright where they are, but before she answers definitively, we switch to them. Good thing VD always provides such a strong sense of place for us, so we won’t have to guess for several scenes! /s

They’re in… a city. That’s literally all I can tell you. Klaus starts in on some Flashback Time about “the Ripper of Monterrey” during Prohibition, so I’m guessing it’s supposed to be LA? But, like, the skyline they show was somewhere else, I’m like 90% sure. My immediate thought was Hong Kong, but I’m not strong enough in geography to be certain.

god, I love this show

Oh, it’s Stefan, killing his way through “the city”.

Sorry, y’all, if you’re only following the VD recaps, you won’t know this, but I fuckin’ HATE the regretful [always male] vampire trope. It’s boring. It’s stupid. It’s always a man because women know better - having power and strength is always preferable. And then VD layers on this weird nonsense about “turning off” their humanity. Or their emotions? I think it might actually be ableist, I’m still working on it. (Hard to get offended when you’re alexithymic, after all!)

He kills some woman in a car in the parking lot of a speakeasy, then goes in. Everyone knows him, including the singer who would be so much better if she were Alberta Haynes.

where my fellow GHOSTS fans at?

He meets some blonde vampire who won’t give her name, and we flash forward to the present, where Klaus finally tells us it was Chicago! The parking lot for the speakeasy makes so much less sense now (not that it really did when it was LA, because the 1920s, because - oh, never mind, literally no one is here for a lesson in urbanism history!).

They’re in Chicago to see Klaus’s favorite witch, to solve the hybridization problem.

Damon picks Elena up to go to Chicago to get Stefan, flirting all the while.

FINALLY, CAROLINE. Horn-rimmed glasses - her FATHER, apparently - is torturing her in an oubliette specifically made for torturing vampires. He tricks her into giving up her ring and then turns the sun on her, all the while saying it will “cure” her. Hey, man, where do you live? I just want to beat the shit out of you.

Damon produces Stefan’s diary from 1922. He says Elena needs to be prepared for what they’re going to find. Elena refuses to read it, saying she won’t invade Stefan’s “private thoughts”. But my argument would be it’s now an historical document, and it’s intended to be read, yes? Is that not why people keep diaries? So that someone will someday read them? In any case, Damon starts reading and driving, so Elena takes the stupid thing back and we’re Flashbacking again.

The blonde still won’t give her name, and I thought for a second maybe she’s the witch, not a vampire? But then we’re with Klaus and Stefan again in real time, and it’s the vocalist - Gloria - who’s the witch. She’s slowed her aging, looks all of 50. Says it’ll catch up to her one day: no one can put off time forever. Well, no one who’s not a vampire, but I’d argue it catches up with them, too.

Gloria can’t say what went wrong with the spell. She has to contact the witch who created it. “The Original Witch,” Klaus says, who’s obviously very long dead. Gloria asks for help: “Bring me Rebekah,” who apparently is “busy”, but she’s what Gloria needs, so Klaus will get her.

Stefan, meanwhile, has been eavesdropping and pouring himself a drink, when he finds a photo of him and Klaus - from 1922.

Sheriff Liz calls Caroline to make lunch plans, but has to leave a voicemail, obviously. Tyler shows up, looking for Caro.

Who is still being tortured by HER FATHER. Oh, he’s using ABA! “I’m teaching you to associate the sight of blood with the pain.” Caroline tells him he can’t change who she is, and also, MORON, YOU WOULD SALIVATE AT A CHEESEBURGER SO FUCK OFF.

Damon takes Elena to an apartment Stefan’s owned since the 20s, that hasn’t been touched since? and that has a hidden kill list? Why would you write down every victim (how would you even know their names) if you were just in your “ripper” era?

This whole flashback has been about what an asshole “ripper” Stefan was then, still on the human blood, yadda yadda. Why would that guy write down the names of his victims? Why would he learn them? WTF is wrong with Stefan, exactly?!

Damon is off to “Stefan’s old stomping grounds”, but tells Elena to stay put and come up with an actual plan. Damon will be back, once he’s found Stefan.

Ah, the blonde is Rebekah, and she finally agreed to fuck Stefan, and she is Klaus’s sister, apparently. And her coffin is in the club with the witch? and Klaus takes a dagger out of her - yes, like the one for Elijah, I guess there’s a whole set for $19.99, vampiric Ginsu knives - and tells her it’s time to wake up.

And we’re back to the 20s, where Klaus does a whole-ass interview for Rebekah’s hand, or whatever. Stefan, by the way, remembers none of this. Oh, sure, the diary said his memory had “holes”, that he was drinking so much, whatever, babe. You FORGOT several whole-ass people?! Weeks of your life? You’re an immortal predator whose body is constantly healing itself! I don’t think you CAN forget, frankly. I think this is a hideous retcon job and I shouldn’t have to stand for it.

Stefan is disgusting. He compels some guy to drink his wife’s blood? He’s laughing, it’s unbearable. Damon and Elena shouldn’t fucking bother. Let him rot.

Damon shows up to Gloria’s bar; she tells him that Klaus and Stefan will be back later. She says they’re on an errand for her - getting Rebekah, I guess? Seems like an errand for them.

Elena is not making a plan; she’s reading Stefan’s diary.

Tell you what, these men ain’t shit today. I’m not even happy with Tyler and Damon. Feels like they could be better.

Klaus and Stefan show up, so Elena hides, and Klaus asks Stefan if he can “feel” that someone had been there.

YOU’RE VAMPIRES. PLEASE SMELL HER AND HEAR HER HEARTBEAT.

Good Christ, did these people forget what they were doing? Did everyone come to work stupid? Am I letting everything irritate me because I’m furious Stefan is such a sadist douche? (Clearly, possibly, and no: I was already infuriated by literally everything else.)

Anyway, Elena is hiding in the hidden liquor room with the names. Klaus opens it, because it’ll prove he trusts Stefan (I think? I was not paying a ton of attention), because Stefan told him about writing down the names to relive the kills. Like, they traded secrets back in the day, and maybe Stefan doesn’t believe he told Klaus about the names? Because of his suddenly Swiss-cheese memory.

Anyway, that convoluted nonsense got us what the writers wanted: Stefan staring at Elena while Klaus lurks in the living room.

Damon comes back to get Elena (and get her dressed appropriately for a club? he gives her a bag of clothes, I dunno, he doesn’t seem to be changing). They’re going to the club, and he’s going to distract Klaus while she convinces Stefan to go with her, I guess.

Stefan is mad that Klaus likes his sadism, and tells them they were, like, besties.

Oh, Caroline’s dad cried when he heard she was a vampire, so it’s okay! She asks why he’s trying to fix her, and he says it’s so he doesn’t have to kill her. That would be kinder, you fucking son of a bitch.

Oh thank god, LIZ SHOWS UP! She has her gun on him. He begs her to let him do this because “we love her”, but Liz has backup: Tyler. He gets Caroline out, and Liz only has to shoot at Horn-Rimmed Glasses once!

pictured: well, not Liz, but still

UGH, back to Klaus and Stefan. In Flashback, the club gets raided by Feds with wooden bullets. Rebekah runs, but Klaus compels Stefan to forget. Stefan in the present asks why. Klaus shouldn’t have to cover his tracks unless he’s running from someone. Klaus refuses that premise entirely, but it’s okay: Damon’s here and Stefan’s seen him. He ducks out for some “air” and tells Damon that Klaus absolutely cannot see Elena, or he’ll know why he can’t make any hybrids. Damon tells him to tell her himself, and she peeps out from behind a car in a hideous dress and ballet flats that make her feet look like smashed Subway footlong buns.

I don’t know why they all don’t just skedaddle, but Damon goes back in to distract Klaus.

Stefan and Elena have to have a romantic moment outside, and she tries to tranq him, but he insists he doesn’t want to go home with her.

Klaus stabs Damon with a cocktail umbrella a few times, then tries to stake him with a chair leg, but Gloria won’t allow it. They have to take it outside.

Stefan explains the hybrids and then goes into a diatribe about how many people he’s killed and how awful he is and he’s no good for her and

And ew, Olive Garden has a new bucatini entree. It’s the worst pasta shape! The outside’s overcooked, the inside’s undercooked, and the hole accomplishes nothing. Useless pasta! (Yes, I have Peacock with ads. It’s free from my ISP, so I’m not complaining.)

Stefan does not go home with Elena and Damon.

But Caroline does go home with Liz, who feeds her a blood bag and tries to excuse her father’s actions. They were all raised to believe things, he just needs time, yadda yadda. The whole gay allegory.

Tyler curls up in bed and holds her, after scolding her (so gently) for running out on him in the middle of the night. She collapses, crying about how her father hates her.

Rebekah stabs Klaus with the knife, and flashes back to waiting for Stefan after the raid. She didn’t want to run anymore; she wanted to be with Stefan. Klaus tells her to choose, him or Stefan, and she chooses Stefan, which is how she gets stabbed and shut in a coffin in the first place. Of course she doesn’t stab to kill, so we’re stuck with them.

Klaus compels Stefan to remember, and suddenly he’s filled with goodwill and love. But that can wait, because Rebekah needs to contact the Original Witch. She reaches for the necklace she dropped in the raid - I think the one Elena is wearing right now? - and of course neither she nor Klaus can find it.

Katharine calls Damon again, and he tries to figure out where she is this time. She leaves the phone booth to the sound of a siren, and has her own Flashback Time - to the aftermath of the raid, watching Stefan pick up Rebekah’s necklace, and tell a Fed (who is one of Those Guys and always evil, so I hope we’ll see more of him?) that he’s never seen Klaus or Rebekah, here represented by the worst police sketch I’ve ever seen.

Katharine in the past melts into the background, and Katharine in the present walks by a Chicago bus.

And hopefully next week will not be so infuriating - or perhaps, I will not be so infuriated. They don’t call menopause a “coming of rage” for nothing, tell y’all whut. Until next episode!