Welcome back, everyone. I hope your summer was better than TVD's Season 4 premiere. I kid… except, I guess I don't kid. I don't know. I am so glad my show is back. The acting was strong. The dialogue was fine. There was a smattering of cheese, which I do enjoy, but the plot left me scratching my head. Am I alone here?

After a new intro, we watch Stefan and Damon break the news to Elena. While Matt survived the car crash, she did not. She's transitioning into a vampire and if she doesn't feed in 24 hours, she will die for real. Elena is heartbroken. Stefan offers hope: Bonnie is looking for a way to rehumanize her. Damon, the eternal pragmatist -- except for when he's not -- tries to cluestick his brother and their girlfriend about the fact that no one in the history of vampirism has ever rehumanized a vampire, but to no avail.

Remember back when Alaric turned into Vamparic and wanted to destroy the entire Vampire Race? Yeah, well I almost didn't. My TiVo died over the summer and I haven't yet bought the season 3 DVDs. Anyhow, remember when Vamparic summoned the Founders Council and filled them in on Carol and Liz's collusion with the local vampires and other beasties? The Council members are scared, pissed and usurping Carol and Liz. The new self-proclaimed Council leader doesn't appear to be from a founding family and he's both a pastor and a rancher. Oh wait, the voices in my head tell me I'll need a new paragraph for this tangent.

I've known a lot of pastors, and have spent a lot of time working on church committees (except lately, because my church and I are totally on a break, but that's for another day). Also, one side of my family includes third generation dairy farmers. I've spent a lot of time on the farm. Pastoring is more than a full time job. Farming and/or ranching -- the same deal. There's no way this guy is both and if he is both, he should at least have enough dosh to paint his house. Oh, maybe he's really crappy at both jobs. He certainly seems like a crappy human being, but most of us are crappy when we're scared. I really don't know what to make of Pastor Young and the end of the episode sheds more heat than light on his character. (Sorry.)

The revamped (sorry, again) Council captures Stefan, Rebekah and Elena. They're trying to use them to bait Damon and the Originals out to the ranch, so they can commit a little vampire genocide. Elena almost dies from failure to feed, but she doesn't because Rebekah (!) helps Stefan wound (and probably kill) one of their captors. Elena laps up his spilled blood with her fingers, and is then magically transported out of her barn jail and into a fight with Damon about how he shouldn't kill Matt, because it's not Matt's fault she's a vampire... which it isn't.

The episode ends with Elena and Stefan sitting on the Mossy Manse rooftop, coming to terms with her vampirism and waiting for the sun to rise. Don't worry. She has a lapis lazuli daylight ring of her very own. The CW should merchandise the heck out of that. Bonnie enchanted it for her, just in case her rehumanizing spell failed, which it totally did like we knew it would. It just didn't fail the way in which I expected it too. Instead, it failed because the Ghost of Grams appeared and told Bonnie that there would be terrible consequences to using such dark arts. This leaves Bonnie plenty of time to dip into those very same dark arts to take Klaus's spirit out of Tyler's body and put it back in his own. Her punishment from the aggrieved spirits seems to be watching them give Ghost of Grams a henna tattoo, and it looks like Ghost of Grams is allergic to henna.

The episode ends with Pastor Young gathering his Council together at the ranch, disconnecting the gas stove and blowing the whole place to Kingdom Come. Um show, I didn't like him either, but so why did we even have him in the first place? I've seen people wondering if Damon compelled the pastor to do this, but that guy was surely taking his vervain, so it would be sloppy if that's the case. Instead he was just another offensive stereotype, that complicated things just enough, so that there'd be some action.

I'll be back with the whole story, in the full recap. In the meantime, please grade the episode at the top of the page and then come on over to the forum, where we don't even have a gas stove.

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