The Vampire Diaries: After many a-summer dies the swan

Tonight, my chickadees, we were promised zombie vampires, and we were given zombie vampires, in all of their shuffling, moaning, bite-y glory. I am pleased.

Elena and Bonnie wake up in a nondescript motel room, courtesy of Ben and Anna, who are the absolute worst at hanging onto prisoners. I tried to keep track of how many times mortals escaped their respective custodies throughout the episode, and it was like fifty-eleven times. Tying your victims up never hurt, guys.

At Casa Salvatore, Stefan informs Damon about Anna’s plans and churns out some serious groveling in the hopes of enlisting Damon’s aid in rescuing Elena. Damon’s already over it, having checked Stefan’s “like 600 voicemails.” Also, he hopes Elena dies.

Apparently there is a human in this town who has adopted the moniker Duke because—yes—he attends Duke University. The young people of the town, quite rightly, call him Duke the Douche and drink his beer at his annual look-at-me fiesta, which just so happens to be tonight. Caroline invites Jeremy in a weird sort of kindness spasm, then spasms again in Matt’s direction by giving him a preemptive get-out-of-relationship-free card, which he declines. To save time: every time these two appear on screen for this episode, Caroline will apologize for something and Matt will halfheartedly claim to want to be with her. Oof, who hasn’t been in that relationship where you spend so much of your time apologizing and talking about how you don’t want to ruin things that you ruin things? How the worst.

Damon visits Bonnie’s house and tries to sweet-talk her grandmother into telling him where Bonnie is, but Grandma Juju’s having none of it and stabs him with her brain. Or something. Back in the motel room, Anna monologues her mommy issues to Elena and calls Stefan, offering to trade his girlfriend’s life for the Grimoire. After she leaves, there’s a sort of half-assed escape attempt in which Bree turns a glass of water into fire and burns Ben, which is sort of cool, except she totally blows it and doesn’t even make it out the door.

In the town square, Jeremy runs into Anna and finally takes the moment to ask her out. When she learns about the party in the cemetery-adjacent woods, she agrees. Damon appears on behalf of Stefan and reluctantly agrees to help Anna if it means rescuing Katherine. With Grandma Juju’s help, Stefan learns where Ben is keeping Bonnie and Elena and rescues them with sunshine just as Ben is channeling some serious Tom Cruise-style crazy eyes.  Grandma J goes one step further and offers to help them open the tomb as long as they get Damon to cooperate. Which he does, although he insists on using Elena as a human shield to make sure nobody tries slamming the tomb door shut on him. Elena even volunteers for the job, which is pretty badass of her.

Grandma Juju’s got some serious betrayal up her sleeves though, because after she and Bonnie do some chanting and open the tomb, she reveals that they’ve only opened the door, not lifted the seal—vampires still can’t get out. Stefan fetches some gasoline and flamethrowers to torch all the tomb-vampires who aren’t his ex-girlfriend, but Anna distracts him by showing him Ben over Jeremy’s unconscious form, then makes for the tomb.

Inside the tomb THERE ARE ZOMBIE VAMPIRES. Hissing in the dark and rattling their chains, just as they should be. Damon searches the place from end to end and realizes Katherine isn’t there, while Elena trips and falls into a pit of the z-v’s. This is my favorite episode ever. Anna rushes into the midst of the doubly undead, slashes Elena’s wrist and revives her mother with Gilbert blood.

Outside, Stefan has returned Ben’s taunts with some good old-fashioned flamethrowing–just like in Indiana Jones! Well, almost–and races into the tomb despite Grandma Facelift’s warnings. Everybody gets saved, basically. There’s just an extra-brow-furring spell Grandma and Bonnie need to do to lift the seal, and our heroes and their enemies and their enemies’ moms all make it out safely.

Back at Anna’s place, Damon forces Pearl to confess where Katherine is if not the tomb—apparently his lady-love escaped with the help of a besotted guard back in 1864, skipped town, and was last seen in Chicago in the 80s.

Bonnie and Grandma Juju try to settle down for the night when Grandma Juju winces in pain. Bonnie’s concerned, but Granny J protests that she feels fine, which means she’ll be dead by episode’s end, and she is. Honestly, that’s probably the longest recurring role any actress over 50 has ever had on the CW. We’ll miss you and your mind-knives, Grandma. Especially after one of the zombie vampires makes it out of the tomb a few hours later.

For another opinion on this episode, check out Upping the Ante Before Another Hiatus by Matt DeGroot.

Season 1, Episode 14: Fool Me Once (originally aired February 11, 2010)

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Thursdays at 8/7c on The CW

Photographs courtesy of The CW and Quantrell Colbert.