S08.E10: Nostalgia's a Bitch

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Quote

Sybil enacts revenge on Damon by putting him in a catatonic state. Caroline and Bonnie enter Damon's mind and run into familiar faces from the past, only to discover Stefan is the key to Damon's fate. It's a race against time for the bell as both Sybil and her sister Seline jockey for its control.

Promo:

 

Edited January 28, 2017 by ElectricBoogaloo

[MrSmith]

I think I'm going to rely on reading the recaps on Previously.tv because I just can't bring myself to subject myself to watching an hour of television that feels like three hours of television instead.

[TigerLynx]

There were some things I liked about this episode, and some I really hated.

At least, the Mystic Falls gang is consistent.  If there is a way to make a bad situation worse, they will manage to do it.

Can just one person stay angry at Damon and continue to hate him?

No, you waste of space Sybil, Bonnie has not continually put herself and her happiness before Caroline.  Bonnie for years was the person sacrificing herself for other people.

So much for Caroline ditching Stefan.

I did like the acknowledgement that Damon cared about Liz.

I'm fine with Damon forgiving Stefan for turning him, and telling him he will always love him.  However, Damon also should have told Stefan that Damon was responsible for the chooses he made, and the things he did after he became a vampire, not Stefan.

So glad, the idiot sirens are gone.

[GraceAnne]

What exactly is so great about about Mystic falls and Salvatore penis? Because to me nothing but bad shit happenen around both.  

I can usually take or leave Damon but when the show presents situations like this with him and Caroline it never sits well with me.  Also, umm gang maybe Damon deserves to suffer in his subconscious for a couple of Years?!?!? I really wanted Matt to tell Caroline to take a fyling leap when she ask him to do it for her. 

And in the spirit of finding something good in a pile of dog poo.... Kat Graham continues to rock and may be the only person I can still stand at this point. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Scene:

[TigerLynx]

I don't mind Bonnie acknowledging Damon was not responsible for his actions when he was under Sybil's mind control.  It's the revision or non-acknowledgment of things Damon did do, and was responsible for, that bothers me.  I liked Damon's friendship with Liz, and his respect for her precisely because it was one of the few positive things about him.

If ever there was a time for snarky evil Stefan to tell Damon some real home truths, this was it, and the writers ruined it.  Once again, Damon and Stefan's issues go nowhere.  Same old same old.

[PinkRibbons]

An amendment to better reflect a nuanced situation:

Damon: "I forgive you Stefan. Because what you did was the act of a terrified 17 years old kid that I failed to protect from evil. Because the mix of brand new vampire heightened emotion and taste of irresistible blood led you to make a rash decision. Because if it wasn't for me you never would have died on that road trying to save Katherine, the woman that raped you and fed you her blood without your consent. Because unlike me, you never had a chance to process the concept of being a vampire, and I had it all tangled up with the idea of being immortally with the woman I love. Because even though the loss of Katherine wasn't enough to make you feel like you wanted to die the way I did, I made you feel like the only decent thing to do was die before turning, and you were willing to go along with me even that far. You killed father by accident and you drank his blood because not only were you in transition but you are genetically predisposed to abuse blood. And I forgive you for being scared of being left alone for an eternity you never wanted, even for love. If I had only thrown that woman out of our house when she started compelling you, none of this would have happened."

I've said it since the start, I'll say it to the end: Damon was a SHIT older brother. He should have protected Stefan, not Katherine. Stefan's leading him to turn was a sick, sad act of love and fear, not active malice. THAT is what Damon should have realized and accepted.

[steelyis]

I've been disengaged from the show for a few episodes, but I will admit Damon reciting his letter to Bonnie was touching. Of course KG killed it, even IS brought his A game. If the final episodes can bring the same emotion Bonnie and Damon's scene did maybe the show can end on a decent note.

[GaT]

Well, at least it wasn't a clip show, & the sirens are (hopefully) finally gone. Now we just have to deal with Cade for the last 4 episodes. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I want to give them points for finding a way to bring back some of the dead characters so we could see them one more time before the show ends, but the writers couldn't think of a more logical way to bring us to that point? Seriously, half the garbage in this episode made no sense.

Let me see if I have this all straight:

1. Damon chains Sybil up in the Salvatore dungeon (which has been woefully unused lately). Sybil tells him she is going to flip his humanity switch back on and overwhelm him with guilt for all the things he has done. Somehow this results in Damon walking upstairs and arranging himself neatly in a chair before going catatonic with guilt.

2. Caroline and Bonnie go into Damon's mind and it's all fire and brimstone. Damon cries one perfect manly tear. Sybil says she will fix Damon if they give her the stupid fucking bell. In an uncharacteristic and unexpected show of trust or good will, she tries to start fixing Damon before she has the bell in her possession. You know, because she's nice like that.

3. Sybil says Bonnie and Caroline were unsuccessful in their earlier attempt because they tried to go into the "front door" of Damon's mind but she can bring them in through the back door of his subconscious. First of all, Bonnie/Caroline didn't attempt to fix anything the first time. They just jumped into his head to see what was going on and then immediately jumped back out. Secondly, what the fuck does all that front door/back door crap about Damon's mind even mean?

4. According to Sybil: "Consciously Damon believes he is in hell. For some reason, that's where Damon things he belongs." To change his mind, Sybil says Caroline and Bonnie must go into Damon's mind and ask him how to change his mind and then "Once we figure out what's holding him back, I should be able to repair the damage." I'm sorry, is she suddenly a neurosurgeon? And fixing his brain is going to be like patching up a hole in a wall?

5. After a quick trip to the Salvatore boarding house in ye olden tymes of Damon's mind, Sybil first asks, "What was that all about?" implying that she saw what Caroline and Bonnie saw, but follows that up with "What did Damon say?" Look, either she saw what they saw so she knows that Damon wasn't there OR she didn't see any of if, in which case she shouldn't be asking what that was all about. She then tells them that if they can't find Damon in his mind palace, then there's nothing she can do. Oh, okay, so she has tricked other vampires into thinking they're in hell and the instruction manual for getting him uncatatonic says to send another vampire into his brain and find him inside?

6. Bonnie somehow deduces that they just have to "follow the clues" and they will lead them to Damon. So what clue were they supposed to follow when they saw Henry at the boarding house?

7. Stefan decides he wants the bell because "Cade needs more souls and [Sybil] is better at making deals than [Seline]." What kind of deal did he plan to have Sybil make for him with Cade? It couldn't have been for the 2000 souls in Mystic Falls that Seline suggested because at the time, Stefan didn't know that the bell would do anything besides kill Sybil. Was he seriously going to go to Cade and say, "Hey, boss, I know I signed up to bring you souls for a year, but I brought my crack negotiating team aka your ex-employee who worked for you for thousands of years because she was unable to find a loophole for herself and I'm going to have her make a deal with you for me"?

8. I'm just going to quote Seline's explanation word for word because it is a bunch of ridiculous nonsense: "The world Cade created is really a massive psychic imprint of the moment of his death. He was burned at the stake which means his domain is pretty much a ball of fire. The tuning fork disrupts that energy and when it gets amplified by the striker and bell, it rips a hole open - straight to Cade. When the door between this world and Cade's gets cracked open, the hellfire it unleashes doesn't just wipe out any siren in its proximity. It wipes out everything for miles." Seriously? Why couldn't she just say, "If you ring the bell, everyone for miles goes up in flames"? And how many miles? Five? Fifty? How did Seline know all of this? Did Cade tell her, "Oh, by the way, there's this bell that will kill you and your sister and everyone in a 20 mile radius, but it's been taken apart so if you see any spare bell parts lying around, let me know"?

9. Stefan's master plan consisted of somehow knowing ahead of time that the bell would kill everyone AND require Matt or his father to ring it and then compelling Matt to follow his heart thusly: "If you don't want to ring that bell, you have to forgive Damon for killing your sister. And if you can't, then you have to ring that bell twelve times."

10. Matt's dad said that the reason they're in his whole mess is because he abandoned his family. Whaaa? So if he had stayed in Mystic Falls, the Salvatores never would have come back? Or the sirens wouldn't have come?

11. Matt wants to die a hero so he thinks he should force his father to kill him to keep him from ringing the stupid bell? If Matt wants to die so he won't ring the bell, then he could kill himself. There was nothing in Stefan's compulsion to prevent him from doing that. And somehow Matt manages to make all of this Damon's fault. Okay then. I guess at least Matt got to work out some of his anger against his dad for abandoning him while he was beating the crap out of him.

12. Caroline thinks that the most important thing to do is get Damon to convince Stefan to turn his humanity back on. Does she think he's then going to fulfill the rest of his yearlong contract with Cade? Or that he's going to take the moral high ground and try to get out of sending souls to Cade thus bringing Cade's wrath upon everyone?

Also of note: Bonnie and Caroline said that if they let Sybil out of the Salvatore dungeon, she would just use her siren singing to whammy them. Since when did the Salvatore dungeon become immune to her powers?

I had to laugh during the scene of Liz interrogating Caroline because when Liz said, "Damon is dead!" Caroline's response of "No, you are!" sounded like something a petulant five year old would say. I don't know why Liz was so insistent that Damon was really dead just because the two records said that Damon died a long time ago. You know that becoming a vampire requires DYING, don't you, Liz?

Why was Matt so upset that Violet Fell was killed? He JUST met her less than 24 hours ago. I mean, obviously the loss of human life is always sad, but Caroline acted like Violet was his new BFF or something when he said she was dead.

On a shallow note, I really liked Sybil's earrings. I noticed them last week but I was too annoyed to remember to mention that after the episode ended. Thank goodness Sybil and Seline are finally gone.

We're only on episode ten (out of sixteen). Please tell me we aren't stuck with Cade for six more episodes.

[ByTor]

4 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Secondly, what the fuck does all that front door/back door crap about Damon's mind even mean?

I don't know why Liz was so insistent that Damon was really dead just because the two records said that Damon died a long time ago. You know that becoming a vampire requires DYING, don't you, Liz?

Sybill said the "front door" means conscious mind, "back door" means subconscious.  Not that it isn't crap, but that's how she explained it.

Liz thought Damon was dead dead & that she knows Stefan.  I assumed that meant she knows Stefan is a vampire...otherwise Damon's date of birth\death would make no sense considering a "living" Stefan is his brother.  Or maybe making assumptions is my whole problem :)

I'm just glad smirky Sybill is finally gone.

Edited January 28, 2017 by ByTor

[TigerLynx]

I refuse to try and figure out the show's supernatural mythology anymore.  It never makes sense, and it always changes.  Every time they make a rule, they also make an exception to the rule.

I have a few characters I still care about, and I want to see what happens to them.

If Cade came through because the bell rang 11 times, does that mean others might have made it through to?

Caroline and Bonnie forgiving Damon would have been so much better if there had been some acknowledgement from Damon that he was wrong.  It would have been nice to see Damon tell Caroline, "I was wrong for what I did to you.  I did like and respect your mother.  Liz was a good and brave person, and I miss her everyday."

Edited January 28, 2017 by TigerLynx

[Artsda]

So how long did it take for everyone to get over the fact Damon killed Tyler. Nobody gives a damn at all. Instead it's still poor suffering Damon.

[Aeryn13]

So, we had characters with Bonnie and Damon develop a friendship in the prison world and in Season 6, I`d say Caroline and Matt were in the most reasonably good place with Damon they could be which is barely tolerating him for Elena`s sake. Then they did the horrible Season 7 and Siren storyline of Season 8 that hammered home without any nuance how bad a person Damon was. Only to cap it all off with this one episode of insta-forgiveness from everyone?

I am okay with it only because the last 1.5 years sucked so much and if I can now pretend I didn`t have to watch it and we`re back to the status quo from before, I`ll take it. But narratively it was a super-sucky pay-off.

I don`t buy that Caroline forgives Damon. I can buy that she can appreciate that, after her, he was the one who felt Liz` death as the most personal loss. That rings true. Even though, please stop throwing around the "best friend" moniker like it`s going out of buisnes, show. People have one, not one hundred. But I could see that leading Caroline to a place where she just tolerates him. That is different from forgiveness, though.

Bonnie, I can see it. She clearly treasured their friendship, even this Season when she made the choice for Enzo, she expressed sadness over how it all went down. And it hurt her to lose the friendship so them having that moment in the end was something that made her happy. Forgiveness for her, that wasn`t so far off.

The moment with Matt in the end was contrived. They had stories before where Damon helped out and Matt worked with him in that capacity. That was tolerating each other, it never led to a bonding moment before. Okay, the "I`ve always liked the Sheriffs in this town" was cute. If you don`t really think about the mechanics of it all.

I will say that the "can`t you find a way to forgive him"  "not in the next ten minutes" exchange was hilarious.

The final moment between Caroline and Stefan was also good. Elena acknowledged something quite like it in Season 3 with regards to who will bring Stefan back. And Caroline`s "quarter of a man" reminded me of Elena`s "I won`t love a ghost for the rest of my life" to Stefan.

So, the brothers` scene. Hm. There was a really nice exchange in Season 1 where Damon told Stefan ad verbatim that Damon`s choices were on Damon and not Stefan. And I don`t think this scene here took away from that. The turning was obviously something that Stefan still feels guilty over and Damon deep down hadn`t entirely let go. Now Damon has. We will see about Stefan.

I wouldn`t have minded a scene where Damon acknowledges wrongs to Stefan - though not in the Stefan, you poor victimized snowflake way - and Stefan forgiving him but in this context it couldn`t happen because Stefan still doesn`t feel so his "I forgive you" was just "whatthefuckever, snap out of it".  

Ding dong, the Sirens are gone. Hooray. And now Cade is here. Eh. 

Quote

o how long did it take for everyone to get over the fact Damon killed Tyler. Nobody gives a damn at all.

I gotta admit, this was badly handled. Bonnie pretty much told in-Damon`s-mind-Tyler to take a hike. They are treating his death like the writers always treated his life "oh, yeah, Tyler, we almost forgot". A shit ending for the character.

[TigerLynx]

1 hour ago, Artsda said:

So how long did it take for everyone to get over the fact Damon killed Tyler. Nobody gives a damn at all. Instead it's still poor suffering Damon.

Tyler is just the tip of the iceberg as far as I'm concerned.  There were so many things never dealt with, and I guess they never will be.

If they were going to go into Damon's mind, and show he thought it would have been better if he died back in 1864, why not actually show Damon being remorseful and apologizing.

Aside from having Damon memorize the note he left Bonnie, why not also have Damon tell Bonnie he was sorry he wanted to open the tomb, and he wished her grandmother was still alive.

A few acknowledgements from Damon about what he did wrong along with people forgiving him, would have been nice.

They even brushed by Matt's, "People are dead, but the only thing anyone cares about is Damon and Stefan," so why bother to have Matt say it in the first place?

[Cattitude]

I kind of get what they were going for it just wasn't executed well.  In the "back door" it was Damon's subconscious which is a place where you keep things you don't want to face. Damon knows that by becoming a vampire he killed people who otherwise would have lived. So he subconsciously felt that all the bad in his life was because he was a vampire and in his mind that lay at the feet of Stefan who forced him to be a vampire. Reality is all of this was Katherine's fault. Even though Damon wasn't compelled he was still very much under Katherine's spell. She manipulated both he and Stefan. Damon was Stefan's brother not his father and before the revised the age difference the first flashbacks had Damon very much seem naive and just a few years older than Stefan when they both fell under Katherine's spell.
But in the end in Damon's subconscious mind he still blamed Stefan and he needed to forgive Stefan for his own sanity. That part I got, but I didn't understand all this business of everyone else needing to forgive Damon for him to get better. I know the writers wanted a way for many of our old favs to get a moment and I like those moments Caroline got with Liz and Bonnie got with Grams and seeing Vickie again but when you forgive someone it isn't for that person who did you wrong's benefit it is for your own. They got it right with Stefan and Damon but wrong with Caroline, Bonnie and Matt. Forgiving Damon isn't for his benefit but their own. Holding a grudge hurts yourself far more then the person it's against. So I felt overall it was confusing and a big fail. I also never felt Bonnie was Damon's best friend, that will always be Alaric in my mind and I have hated how erased that got. I do believe to Bonnie Damon is her best friend but I don't feel Damon every felt that way about Bonnie, she is just a very good friend.

I still don't like Stefan and Caroline and sure don't buy this "love of his life" business in the previews. RME While I do agree this Stefan isn't all of Stefan it IS part of his personality and trying to say it isn't is part of why it keeps breaking through. Until Stefan and everyone else accept this part is part of Stefan he will keep failing.

I am glad those horrible sirens are gone. whoot!

[ElectricBoogaloo]

The show definitely needs to ban the titles "best friend" and "love of my life." Caroline has referred to Elena, Bonnie, and Stefan as her best friends. She has called Tyler the love of her life and next week apparently Cade is calling her the love of Stefan's life, even though he repeatedly said that Elena was the love of his life. Why can't these people just use words like boyfriend/girlfriend/friend like normal people? It's not enough to have a friend. You have to have a best friend and another best friend and the other best friend. You can't just love your boyfriend/girlfriend. They have to be the love of your life. So melodramatic, even now that they aren't in high school.

12 hours ago, Cattitude said:

I didn't understand all this business of everyone else needing to forgive Damon for him to get better.

My understanding is that he didn't need everyone else to forgive him in order to get better. That's just what Sybil, Caroline, and Bonnie THOUGHT they were supposed to do to snap him out of his comatose state. But Damon told Stefan that what he really needed was to forgive Stefan. I get what they were going for there though - he and Stefan have their ups and downs but there has always been a part of Damon that resents Stefan for insisting that he become a vampire with him. As you said, forgiveness is often the most healing for the person who does the forgiving because it allows them to let go of their grudge instead of holding onto all the negative feelings. And to quote Giles from The Other Vampire Show: "To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It's not done because people deserve it, it's done because they need it."

[miss-vanilla]

 I really enjoyed this one and for me that is two episodes in a row. It wasn't flawless, it had the usual 'just go with it' type of storytelling where people can actually run around and have separate stories and conversation in someone elses brain etc but as a narrative device it did the job.

On 1/28/2017 at 6:11 PM, Cattitude said:

I didn't understand all this business of everyone else needing to forgive Damon for him to get better.

I thought the point of that was to show that he didn't necessarily need their forgiveness but that HE needed to forgive Stefan. Damon obviously feels guilt for the things he has done as a vampire and that guilt is buried in his sub-conscious along with the resentment he holds for what Stefan did to him in 1864. Consciously Damon had let all that go but apparently his sub conscious hadn't.  Ultimately it was a view into the psyche of Damon Salvatore, of how he processed and managed his guilt and trauma  in his mind (he hid it) to allow him to function in his life and when Sybil blew it all to smithereens  it was a shock to his system resulting in this catatonic state. It's exactly true to what we have seen from Damon throughout the series and makes perfect sense to me. This man/vamp has the capacity to love so deeply , passionately and completely that there has to be a balance and the flip side to that is how deeply he feels other emotions like guilt, hate and resentment. One side cannot  exist without the other. For me it was nice to see Stefan be on the opposite side of the forgiveness fence especially where Damon is concerned. Throughout the series we have seen Stefan forgive Damon many times (but has he really?) so this was just  a nice spin on the usual dynamic fed to us and PW played Stefan's surprise and shock at being told he was forgiven well.

Anyway, the little trip inside Damon's mind gave us some great emotional and nostalgic scenes and I enjoyed seeing some old faces from the past. I also loved hearing Amberlin's cover of 'Enjoy the silence' again. Nicely done show.

Obviously for me the best part was Damon rising and taking out Stefan like a boss complete with his Damon-like smirk to Caroline. I have missed this guy so please can we keep him? On the same note his line to Matt after he hit his head on the bell "lets hope that one doesn't count" was great. Stefan's plan to wipe out Mystic falls was definitely big bad villainesque and totally showed just how low he has sunk into his ripperdom. He was back to wiping out entire towns again, lovely. Poor Violet and where the hell was Caroline? I think she will care for literally the amount of time it took for her to learn that Violet was dead.

Did not understand the point of Tyler nor the conversation he had with Bonnie.

I felt a little more invested in Matt this week. The fact that he could not overcome his deep rooted resentment towards Damon, even to save the town was good characterisation and I think it was justified however it did lampshade the fact Damon overcame his in order to break free from the mental chains he was in in order to save the town but in fairness Damon has had 160 plus years head start on that. We will see how this theme of forgiveness plays out over the coming episodes.

The Damon and Bonnie scene at the end was probably my favorite in the entire season. Just so poignant and beautifully acted By Ian and Kat and so very very earned in the narrative. A lovely payoff for all that angst and drama last season and this.

The Sirens going up flames was not expected but totally welcomed. We spent far too much time on them and there history. Talking of which, was their squabbling meant to mirror that of Damon and Stefan in Damon's mind?

15 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

As you said, forgiveness is often the most healing for the person who does the forgiving because it allows them to let go of their grudge instead of holding onto all the negative feelings. And to quote Giles from The Other Vampire Show: "To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It's not done because people deserve it, it's done because they need it."

Yes, I agree with this. Must have crossed posts since I posted similar thoughts but the above just sums it up nicely. 

Both brothers need to let go the events of the past in order to heal and move on. Damon is there now so now we have to wait for Stefan to come to the same point when he eventually gets his humanity back. He also needs to accept the parts he played in his own misery instead of blaming Damon and maybe forgiving Damon will open his eyes and mind to accepting that he made some mistakes and terrible choices that hurt Damon too and cure this inherent sickness (writing flaw) that allows Stefan to revise events in his brain like he did again in this episode. He blamed Damon for the fact he was about kill Violet even though he stood there with the ability to choose, just like he had the ability to choose whether or not to accept Cades deal. It may have been 'Sophies choice' but Damon has had many of those choices to face too and he is living and coping the best we he can. 

[immortalfrieza]

6 hours ago, miss-vanilla said:

 Poor Violet and where the hell was Caroline? I think she will care for literally the amount of time it took for her to learn that Violet was dead.

I think if this wasn't the last season Violet would have had at least a few episodes before being killed off. The idea of a vampire who genuinely a good person and has truly NEVER killed anybody is something they should have explored on this show at some point, particularly since it would have made all the guilt and guilt tripping the vampire characters have and receive respectively over what they've done make much more sense if there was at least ONE vamp on the cast who isn't and never will be a mass murdering psychopath like the other vamps have been sooner or later. However, since it's the last season it was obvious that for all Caroline's talk last episode she was lucky just to make it this long before falling totally off the wagon and getting killed either by Stefan or to stop her.

Matt, for once, gave me my favorite line of the episode: "People are dead, but the only thing anyone cares about is Damon and Stefan," I also like Bonnie's whole (paraphrased) "you're not at fault for anything you did under Sybil's control" line. I have a love hate relationship with these kind of lines, I love whenever the writers write dialog that outlines exactly what the audience is thinking and complaining about, but the fact that they do also just means the writers are perfectly aware of their own awful writing and it's as though they are pointing at the audience and laughing at us all instead of just writing better.

Edited January 29, 2017 by immortalfrieza

[DigitalCount]

I actually just rewatched the episode where Damon and Vicki have the dance party at the mansion, because my girlfriend randomly decided she wanted to watch TVD all of a sudden, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear "Enjoy the Silence" in the Grill with Vicki. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Inside the episode:

[Richness]

Thank Cade the sirens are gone!

[livpop]

I don't know. Iv'e feel like this show starts to be bring? the episode is so "heavy" full of stuff. Basically I was more on facebook that watching the episode.... they didnt get my attention... 

[Tarasme]

Even with all the nonsense, this one had feels. Feels with tears.

I do have sympathy for Damon. For the entire run, he's really been pretty pathetic. He's been the martyr eschewing his role as martyr- in Damon's mind, he's the only one that can get things done. He's the only one that can do the dirty work. He's the only one that should suffer the consequences. He's the bad guy that will do the bad guy stuff that needs doing so that everyone else can remain alive, free, whole, clean, Etc. I'm glad that the character might get to experience the freedom and relief of accepting that he's not in, will never be in control. He didn't have control over becoming what he is. But now, he can act in a way that isn't because he's supposed to be the monster. Cool.

Caroline needed to throw that ring farther. Gah.

The sirens should have smoldered to death 5 episodes ago.

Someday, when I'm feeling nostalgic, I'm gonna reverently watch the letter scene again. Lovely.

I also liked seeing Damon choose to unequivocally apologize to Matt for Vickie. And Matt give a somewhat realistic response- more feels. 

What else happened? Oh yeah, the bell and the Donovan family bell making relevance are stupid. I'll promptly forget about them again. I will, though, be happy to watch more father-son bonding with Joel Gretsch. 

Jasmine Guy's presence in the credits spoiled me- it was so nice to see Grams. Glad she didn't torture anyone.

Not really:

Spoiler

I wish they'd have completed the run without returning to the Dobrev well. I would have much preferred these characters continue on living their lives in her shadow but with her blissfully absent.

[MrSmith]

On 1/30/2017 at 4:05 PM, doram said:

For anyone who's frustrated with this episode, this will give you a good laugh. Don't forget to do the drinking game. :D

Thanks for that. Since Previously.tv isn't doing recaps of this series anymore, apparently, (since they're SIX FORKING EPISODES BEHIND) I'm going to have to pay attention to that site for my recaps.