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Happy Friday TVD fans! I don’t know about you, but I always like to imagine, when I see the episode titles, what exactly said episode is going to be about. It’s fun to be right sometimes, and then other times I’m COMPLETELY off (like with The New Deal, when I was certain the episode was going to be about FDR and government reform. Whoops!).
Tonight’s episode, The Ties That Bind, is, I imagine, going to be about family, since that has been such a theme for both the Salvatores, the Gilberts — with their new president/guardian — and Klaus. However, I could be off completely. Because ties can bind. As can corset stays, yikes! Rope, too, and in Tyler’s case, chains. I had these lycra pants once, and man did they ever bind, but let’s hope the show is going for a more meta sense of the word.
After Klaus’ soliloquy last week, a lot of you are hoping for a Klaus/Caroline LOVE connection, so… show!
The woods! Bonnie’s dream-walking again. In an old cemetery! Ah, and there’s a coffin. And Klaus is there! He attacks her! (Oh Shit +1) And she wakes up in a coffin! (Oh Shit +2) Worst. Dream. Ever. Somebody finally opens the lid, and it’s another brown-skinned lady! Bonnie’s been having this dream a lot. That’s a bummer. At the Requisite LJ Smith House Of Disrepair Set Far Away In The Woods, Bonnie is showing Elena the coffins. Stefan is not happy about this. But Bonnie thinks Elena can help her… because the brown-skinned lady in her dream is Bonnie’s mom after all, and not just some random brown-skinned witch.
Elena and Bonnie are sleuthing it up in Elena’s kitchen, looking through every missing brown-skinned Abby Bennett. But sleuthing can’t compete with compulsion, as Damon proves when he shows up having found her. Damon wants to go with the girls to meet dear old Abby, but Elena doesn’t think his snark would make for a good road trip. Bonnie asks what’s going on between him and Elena, and Damon is awesome Drink!
Caroline comes home to find Tyler waiting in her living room to apologize for not wearing teeth condoms when they were making out. OMG! Tyler has totally called Daddy HRG to come torture the sire bond out of him! (Oh Shit! +3) and Drink!
George: It’s torture dad!
At the Bronze, Alaric is day drinking with the possibly crazy Mrs. Stefan! Uh-oh. Damon shows up just as she leaves, and they discuss red flags and exes, and both Damon and his president are awesome. Drink!
Stefan arrives home to find Klaus waiting in his living room to apologize for not wearing teeth condoms… oh wait… (Oh Shit! +4) Klaus is listening to The Black Keys.
George: How apropos.
Stefan asks him what he wants, and Klaus asks if they can’t just be reasonable about the whole not dumping his family in the ocean thing.
Road Trip! Bonnie asks Elena about this kiss she and Damon shared, but Elena doesn’t want to talk about it. Which Bonnie, like the rest of us, knows that’s because she liked it. A lot. Meanwhile, Stefan figures out where they’re going, and so, it would seem does Klaus, who sends one of his hybrids Drink! to a nice home somewhere.
George: And he’s going to huff and he’s going to puff…
Hybrid dude knocks on the door instead, and it opens… to reveal Abby Bennett! (Oh Shit +5)
Bonnie and Elena arrive at Abby Bennett’s house and a handsome young brown-skinned boy greets them. He is surprised to meet Bonnie, since he is her mom’s replacement child. And so is Abby, when she comes home. I have to say, they are very calm about meeting each other.
In Tyler’s campout cave, Daddy HRG is setting up his ‘scared straight’ seminar for Tyler. And oh hey, we have a shirtless hybrid! Drink! It seems that if Tyler can make himself turn, and own his pain, the sire bond will be broken! (Oh Shit! +6) I mean, easy peasy!
At Bonnie’s mom’s house, the girls find out that Bonnie’s mom and Elena’s mom used to be BFFs! (Oh Shit +7) Then a vampire came looking for the doppelgänger Drink! and Abby lured him away and encrypted him. Ha. And THAT vampire was the very ineffectual Mikael, aka Sebastian Roche, vampire, vampire hunter. But encrypting him stripped Abby of her powers.
Elena decides to give Bonnie and her mom some alone time, and naturally heads to the creepy barn across the street. And Stefan there! (Oh Shit +7)
At the hospital, Damon is casing Mrs. Stefan!
George: Look at Damon, doing recon and looking out for his bropresident!
They spar verbally for a minute before Damon turns to leave and Mrs. Stefan STABS HIM IN THE NECK with a syringe! (Oh Shit +8) I’m guessing she keeps syringes full of vervain in her pocket. She should get a holster for those.
George: I think she may have done premed with Dexter Morgan.
Damon’s knocked out! And Mrs. Stefan is stealing some of his blood! (Oh Shit!!! +9)
In Tyler’s scared straight campout cave, he’s having a hard time with the transition, and Caroline wants him to take a break. Daddy HRG tells her she’s the one who needs to take a break, and then takes an axe to Tyler! (Oh Shit!!! +10) He tells Tyler to turn now, or he’ll kill him on the spot!
George: … and we kind of wish he was also giving the whole “get the hell away from my daughter” bit.
Bonnie asks her mom why she left, and Abby says she just wanted a chance to be a real girl. Bonnie is unimpressed, and tells her, oh, by the way, Grandma Jasmine Guy died in, like the first season.
George: It’s a different world than where you came from…
Then Bonnie tells her about the dream.
In the scary barn, Bonnie’s mom’s replacement child tries to help Elena out with Stefan, but Stefan is just badass and compels him to leave. He comes back a second later with a shotgun! He shoots Stefan! (Oh Shit!!! +11) He was compelled by the hybrid! Drink!
At the same time, Bonnie gets up to see what was the matter, and her mom dumps some green tea in her hand and chloroforms her with it! (Oh Shit!!!! +12)
Damon shows up at Alaric’s, and Alaric is PUMPING IRON LIKE A PRESIDENT!!!! Drink! Damon is awesome Drink! with a “Fatal Attraction” reference. Alaric is bummed out to hear about Mrs. Stefan’s drugging vampires.
In the scared straight campout cave, Tyler is hulking out, but just as he really starts turning, he breaks his chains! The ones that were binding him! (Oh Shit +13)
Bonnie’s mom takes her to meet the hybrid guy! But she tells him she still doesn’t know where the coffins are! Then she begs Bonnie to tell her where they are, because if she doesn’t, her replacement child has been compelled to kill himself! (Oh shit! +14) But she secretly texts Bonnie to warn her friends.
At the creepy barn, Stefan is still out for the count — I’m guessing that buckshot was wooden? Or filled with vervain? But all of Elena’s slayer training has paid off, because she breaks free from the ties that bind her, and grabs the shotgun and knocks the replacement child out with it! Drink! (Oh Shit!!! +14) But now comes the task of getting the wood chips out of Stefan!
Damon shows up at the Requisite LJ Smith House Of Disrepair Set Far Away In The Woods, to find the basement filled with candles! And Klaus is there! (OH SHIT!!! +!5) But then the hundred dead witches Drink! give Klaus a migraine! But he continues to taunt them through it, and tells them he’s going to end the Bennett line! And then the hundred dead witches dim the candles and show him the coffins
George: Witches loooovee candles…
But Klaus and me want to know where’s the fourth coffin?!!! Damon hid it, that’s where! Klaus threatens Damon awesomely Drink! but Damon isn’t ascared! Cause he has what a Klaus wants!
At the hospital, Alaric confronts Mrs. Stefan about her doping vampires, and she explains what some of you have been questioning: the vervain didn’t work so much on Damon because he, like Stefan, has been slowly building up an immunity to vervain iocane powder. But just then, Daddy HRG is wheeled into the ER, and it looks like he’s been mauled! (Oh Shit +16)
Elena finally pulls out the splinter in Stefan’s heart, and he’s super impressed with her ballsiness. You’re not the only one who’s changed, Stefan.
George: Whoah, the symbolism just got HEAVY…
Then she tells him that she kissed Damon, when if we want to get technical about it, Damon actually kissed her, but I guess she DID kiss him back. Anyway, Stefan goes all catatonic for a minute before getting up and walking away. WHAAAATTTT???!!! You can’t go pulling that shit, Stefan!!!! You’ve been so cold to her for so long! Don’t make me slap a bitch.
At the hospital, Daddy HRG is dying! So Mrs. Stefan shoots him full of Damon’s blood! She uses stolen vampire blood to save people when she can!
Stefan sort of apologizes to Elena for kidnapping her and almost driving her off a bridge and then tells her that she’s better than Damon. And him. Aw.
Bonnie tells her mom that maybe she doesn’t need her help after all, but her mom tells her that she actually only lost her magic gradually, from being away from Bonnie, and that she’d get it back, for Bonnie.
At the hospital, Tyler stops by to visit Daddy HRG, and apologizes for mauling him in the woods and not wearing teeth condoms… Daddy HRG tells him it was a good first day, but they have to do it again, and again, and again. (Oh shit!! +17)
George: Wait a minute, Daddy HRG, I thought you were supposed to be scaring him straight…
Alaric shows Mrs. Stefan his wood-en implements, and then tells her about his ring of invincibility, WHICH MAKES ME VERY NERVOUS!!!!! (Oh Shit!!! +18) Just as they are about to kiss, Elena comes through the door, and OH THANK GOD. He apologizes to Elena for the almost kiss, but she tells him it’s all okay, and that he should move on with his love life.
Stefan comes home to Damon and they discuss Klaus and the fourth coffin, before Stefan hauls off and punches Damon! Salvator fisticuffs!!! Drink! But then Damon shows him an ash dagger, and OH PLEASE let it mean he undaggered YHH!
At Klaus’ house, he’s shining up all of the coffins, but isn’t ready to open them yet. His hybrid Drink! asks him a question, but is then punched in the heart!!! (Oh Shit +19) As he falls to the ground, the camera reveals NONE OTHER!!!!! IT’S YHH!!!!! DRINK! YES!!!! (OH SHIT !!!! +20) And YHH is AWESOME Drink!
YES! YES! YES! This episode was ALL KINDS of awesome! And the ohshitometer got up to 20! But now I’ll turn it over to you? Are you entertained?
