Previously: Bonnie hid her magic in her transporting teddy, Enzo spills the beans about Caroline’s feelings for Stefan, Elena rejects Damon…for now.
COLD OPEN. We get to see Kai going on his murder spree with a young Jo hiding her two youngest siblings under the bed. The view of Kai’s bloody Chuck Taylors is pretty chilling.
PRESENT DAY. Elena is practicing telling Liam that she’s a vampire. Even though Caroline is clearly not Team Damon she points out that maybe Elena is in a hurry to tell Liam because now Damon is back in her life? Excellent point, Caroline. Also, when I was in college we had spaghetti for Thanksgiving dinner and even as a grown-ass woman I don’t set my table with the flourish that you do so BRAVO.
“Elena, please make sure that everyone’s turkey-shaped name-card is lined up parallel with the side plates.”
Matt, Jeremy and Enzo aren’t at FriendsGiving (BOOO) because they’re “cleaning up” all that nasty business with Tripp. Alaric, Damon and Stefan aren’t at FriendsGiving because they’re in Portland trying to track down the Gemini Coven that Jo’s family is a part of, in an attempt to get Bonnie back with her magical Teddy. Also? Stefan totally wasn’t invited to FriendsGiving. BURN. I mean, even DAMON was invited and asked to bring the green beans! Alaric and Damon make fun of Stefan for not knowing Caroline was in love with him and it’s pretty damn great. Stefan responds by dropkicking the teddy bear across the supposedly empty field and BOOM – Kai and Jo’s childhood home appear.
Liv, Jo, Tyler and Liam show up at FriendsGiving and Liv is SUPER bristly. Caroline Forbes isn’t having it, she is DETERMINED to have a nice, normal, micro-managed Thanksgiving so that she doesn’t have to think about her shattered heart. Luke shows up, everyone takes their (assigned) seats and Jo realizes that Liv and Luke are her twin siblings that were spirited away in order to save them from Kai. WHAT. Honestly, if the writers were playing the long game with Luke and Liv (who I always felt were underdeveloped and just there to be surrogate witches while Bonnie was out of commission) then WELL DONE. I didn’t see that coming!
Jo tells them all how she and Kai were twins and how their parents had another set of twins so that Kai couldn’t become leader of the coven. You can imagine how well Kai reacted to that. (Hint – he murdered four members of his family.) What has Liv in such a terrible mood is that in order to become a leader for their coven (which is the GEMINI coven, which I really should have picked up on) the twins have to absorb one another’s powers and the weaker twin DIES. DAMN. Jo tells them how she cloaked them with an invisibility spell in order to save them from Kai, and how she had to lie to him, agreeing to merge her magic with his when in fact she put her magic elsewhere and had her father banish Kai to The Other Side, Grunge Edition.
Meanwhile, back in Portland, Alaric is showing Damon and Stefan the pics he found in Jo’s house, and one of them is of Jo and Kai. The pieces are falling into place for the three of them when a VERY HANDSOME silver fox comes up to say hello. His name is Joshua and he’s the Gemini patriarch, father to Jo, Kai, Luke and Liv. The witches suddenly have the most interesting plotline in this show and I don’t even know what to do with myself! THIS NEVER HAPPENS.
Papa Joshua cloaks Damon and himself with invisibility and takes him into the house where he’s asking Damon if Kai is still alive, etc. Damon says the obvious; Just bring Kai back and I’ll kill him! But Joshua isn’t taking that risk. He starts a ritual with candles and a picture of Jo and wow this really can’t be good. Damon wants the Ascendant but it turns out that it’s with JO, who is now DYING AT FRIENDSGIVING because her dick of a father is killing her so that Kai can’t merge with her if he gets out. JESUS. I thought vampire and werewolf fathers were disappointing and terrible.
Alaric is relaying everything on the phone to Jo, which is how they find out about the Ascendant, and Stefan is relaying everything on the phone to Elena. She asks him how he knew it was the right time to tell her that he was a vampire and he’s all, Easy, I was in love with you. Aww. Thankfully she is NOT in love with Liam and after having to compel his ass twice at FriendsGiving to forget A – hearing all about covens and B – see her save Jo with her vampire blood, she finally decides that they’re done with once and for all. I aint mad about it either.
MEANWHILE Kai has gotten Bonnie to agree to one final meal together at his old house in Portland – after he drugged her and put her in the trunk of his car for a cross-country trip. He promises to give her his car if only she stays for one more meal and she agrees. He goes on and on about his horrible father at dinner, forgetting that he murdered four of his own family members. Oh, your dad was a dick? Totally ok then!
Alaric finds the knife in the tree stump, which is where Jo hid her magic the night that she agreed to “merge with Kai” and sent him to The Other Side, where Kai is currently showing Bonnie the SAME KNIFE. He’s figured out that Jo hid her magic away after seeing Bonnie do it with Miss Cuddles the Teddy and so he sucks all of the magic out of the knife. Bonnie tries to play her You Need a Bennett Witch-card and Kai’s like, Yeah I don’t think so, I think I just need your blood. OH BONNIE. So Bonnie gets stabbed AGAIN (this is bullshit) and Kai takes off in his car, heading back to the Magical Eclipse Cave.
Thoughts:
- Did anyone else notice that Flashback Jo was wearing a CHOKER? I wore a very similar one to my prom in 1993.
- Bonnie needs to get back so they can stop making her wear ACID WASH JEANS. It’s bad enough girlfriend is stuck over there with a murderous psychopath but do you have to dress her so badly??
- That last scene with Elena and Damon drinking at The Grille was so great. I loved hearing him talk about the time he shared with Bonnie. “Bickered mostly. Cooked, ate. We went through a Tetris phase but I beat it and she got mad.”
- Caroline Forbes and her box of FriendsGiving leftovers for Stefan. But she’s still hasn’t forgiven him, even when he apologizes for leaving and explains why he pushed her away the most. She was like, “Aww thanks for saying that BYEEEE.”
- Damon compelling Alaric to get the Ascendant from Jo is NOT going to end well. You don’t COMPEL your friends, even if it’s to help your OTHER friends, Damon. I thought we had progressed beyond this.
- No more Liam, huzzah!
- Was I the only one who was wondering why they couldn’t just sacrifice Tyler instead of one of the twins? I don’t even really care about the twins that much but I somehow manage to care about Tyler EVEN LESS.
- That moment when they all realize they’re talking Supernatural Shop Talk…and Liam is there, and Caroline compelling him to go get a wine opener like she doesn’t already have three at the ready.
- Papa Joshua of the Gemini Coven is Ted from Breaking Bad. Ted, you poor bastard.
- “See Stefan? Even the bear knew.” Alaric got jokes.
About the Contributor:
Amanda Reid is an East Coast girl living in California who will never stop missing a true autumn. She’s a bookseller who specializes in kid and teen lit, and she bakes a damn fine pie.
