Dear Diary, the 1st season of Vampire Diaries was so cray!!!!

Okay, y’all, The Vampire Diaries 2nd season premieres this Thursday night! Last week we discussed the finer points of Stefan and Damon’s bare chests the books vs. the tv show, and the general consensus was that the show KO’d the books!

For season 2, I will be recapping the current episode each week, so we can ‘OMG’ and ‘Can you BELIEVE?!!’ to our hearts’ content, but first!  For those of you who are late comers to watching the show, or for the rest of us who just need a refresher, I present my recap of the 1st season!  I will try to keep it brief, but it IS the entire season, so bear with me. (I promise the individual episode recaps will not be as long!)  There will be spoilers after the break, so stop here if you’re in the middle of watching it!

SO, there’s this town in Virginia called Mystic Falls.  In this town live a bunch of ridiculously attractive people, natch, including Elena Gilbert and her brother of the eternally pouty face (BOTEP from here on out). They live with their aunt Jenna, because their parents died somewhat recently in a car accident.  They are both sad, but dealing with their grief in different ways: Elena writes in her diary, and is determined to try to move on, while her BOTEP is doing copious amounts of illegal substances.

At school, Elena meets Stefan Salvatore, the mysterious and  brooding new kid in town, who is actually *gasp* a vampire! (Only just the audience knows it.) And HE writes in his diary, too!  And Elena looks EXACTLY like his old love (like 1800′s old), Katherine! Intrigue! Stefan isn’t the only new Salvatore in town, however.  It turns out he has a problem-brother, too (see, they have soo much in common), in the form of Damon Salvatore, who, get this, ALSO LOVED KATHERINE!!!  But Damon is all kinds of evil, including the v. v. sexy kind, and he starts dating/controlling with his thrall Elena’s frienemy, Caroline, whose mother is the town sheriff. (Also, both the Salvatore brothers wear these rings that allow them to walk around in daylight.)

The Salvatores. Yes please.

Meanwhile, the BOTEP is in love with Vicki, the druggie sister of Elena’s ex-boyfriend Matt, who’s actually kind of nice for a football star. (She broke up with him after her parents died, for some reason, and he still loves her.)  But Vicki only uses the BOTEP for drugs, and is mooning over the mayor’s son, who is Matt’s BFF, but a royal douche who, as it so happens, may have a mystery of his own. (It hasn’t fully been explained to us, the audience, but let’s just say he does NOT like high-pitched whistles.)

Lots of stuff happens, including Bonnie, Elena’s and Caroline’s joint BFF finding out she’s a witch, which will come in super handy later.  Elena and Stefan’s relationship progresses, Stefan and Damon fight over being good and evil, and we find out that there’s this plant, Vervain, that is totally vampire kryptonite. (It is used many times to save people from mind control and being eaten by Damon.)

Damon charming/threatening Bonnie & Caroline at a costume party.

Then Damon decides to turn Vicki (whom he had previously bitten) into a vampire, for shits and giggles.  Somewhere in there Elena finds out Stefan and Damon are vampires, and she is NOT okay with that, so she breaks up with Stefan. But with Vicki on the loose, Elena has to work with Stefan, who’s trying to teach Vicki to be a good vampire, like him.  Of course, because it concerns Vicki, the BOTEP gets involved, and Vicki decides to eat him, and she gets staked.  Then he’s so torn up about it, Elena gets Damon to do a memory wipe on him, so we get a few episodes where his eternally pouty face is slightly less pouty.

'Look at this pout. It's eternal.'

Elena decides she loves Stefan anyway, and they have hot vampire sex at the Salvatore house, but then she sees a picture of Katherine, and realizes that they share a face, so morning-after snuggles are out of the question.  That’s when it is revealed (sometimes through flashbacks! drink!) that Katherine was the vampire who turned the Salvatore brothers, and she was super evil and played them against each other, and then was killed, along with all the other vampires in town (apart from the Salvatores) when the townspeople realized what they were.  BUT Damon reveals that the reason he’s in town is because he believes Katherine is alive, just sealed in a tomb in the woods, and he plans to get her out so they can live happily ever after.

Only it turns out Katherine wasn’t in the tomb, just a bunch of other vampires were, (one of whom, of course, the brother of the eternally pouty face ends up falling for, so he finds out about vampires all over again).  It’s a major blow to Damon that all this time, Katherine’s been alive, and hadn’t called.

Flashback! Drink!

Posing as a human, Damon makes friends with the town sheriff, and joins her secret society of people who all know about the existence of vampires, and starts helping them to kill the other vampires. There’s also a new history teacher, Alaric Saltzman, who, it turns out is a vampire hunter, out for revenge because a vampire killed his wife. AND, Elena’s surprised by her uncle coming to town!  And her uncle is Sark, from Alias!  And he’s part of the secret society out to destroy all vampires! Except that he’s also working for a vampire, and he knows what the Salvatore brothers are! About this time Elena is distraught to find out that she was adopted, which is a confusing set of circumstances for her that leads to a road trip with Damon, who, now that he has a purpose, can, at least behave himself sometimes. Then Damon and Alaric start working together, which is surprising, considering that Alaric is pretty sure that Damon is the vampire who killed his wife.  But of course, we find out that Alaric’s wife Isobel, isn’t dead at all! She’s undead! And she sought out Damon and convinced him to turn her!  And she’s working with Sark!  And it ALSO turns out that Sark and Isobel dated when they were teenagers, and guess who that unprotected shagging produced? If you guessed Elena, you’re right!  So now Sark is her daddy!

Daddy Sark figuring s*#t out

Of course, the COTEP (cousin of the eternally pouty face) finds Elena’s diary and reads it, and finds out about how she had his memory wiped, so now he’s really mad at her an doesn’t want to talk.  Elena’s friendship with Damon continues to grow, and the sparks between them would be enough to light a whole troop of boyscouts’ fires, but Elena still loves Stefan. So when Stefan gets kidnapped and tortured and then rescued by Damon and Alaric, Elena makes him drink her blood to restore him.  This, unfortunately for Stefan, is the first human blood he’s had in a looooong time, and it starts an addiction in him that he unsuccessfully tries to hide from Elena. (And this is good, because we finally get to see Stefan be a little bad. And also, because it provides Damon with the opportunity to show his sweet side and save the day a few times.)

One of many moments Elena & Damon share that makes you scream 'kiss, dammit!'

The season culminates with the finding of a special device, supposedly invented by Jonathan Gilbert, Elena’s great-great granddad, that will debilitate all vampires.  Sark and the secret society of townspeople  plan to use it to kill all the vamps, which just won’t do, so Elena gets Bonnie to magic-break it, so it won’t work.  Only Bonnie just pretends to magic-break it, because she thinks the vampires should die. But Elena still manages to save Stephan and Damon from being burned alive, and the townspeople still don’t know they’re vampires, although for mysterious reasons, the mayor was affected by the device, and he gets killed in the fire with the vampires.  Also, Caroline (who has started dating Matt now) is in a car accident with the mayor’s son that lands her in the hospital, clinging to life. The COTEP is devastated, because his new vampire girlfriend DID get killed in the fire, so he goes home and takes a bunch of pills.  Then we see Elena and Damon on the porch, and they talk, and then they KISS!!!!!  And it’s AWESOME!  Then Elaina goes into the kitchen, where daddy Sark is, and chops off his fingers and stabs him, leaving him bleeding on the floor, and we realize that Elena isn’t Elena at all, but that Katherine is back in town!  Just then, the real Elena comes home, not knowing what’s going on with the cousin and the pills upstairs or with daddy Sark in the kitchen, and….

To Be Continued…..

Mother of all cliffhangers!!!  Season 2 will pick up right where season 1 left off!  See you then!

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1. Vampire Diaries: Book vs. Show DEATHMATCH!