The Vampire Diaries: Hello Brother Recap

Synopsis: Turns out the Big Bad this season is a Siren. Damon and Enzo are still under its thrall, but one of the duo cares more than others. Ric and Caroline get a new nanny for the twinspawn.

Turns out that Damon and Enzo still have some personality even though they’re mind-control slaves to whatever took them hostage last season.

We pick up on a repeat of the very first scene of the series – a couple driving down a dark, foggy road suddenly hits a pedestrian standing in the middle of the street! Lo and behold, they hit a vampire, and now they face its wrath!

That opening scene was a great throwback to the pilot episode – except this time, there’s a psychopathic Damon and Enzo pair beneath the car’s bumper. They’ve been doing the Evil Thing’s bidding by bringing it the bodies of ‘evil’ people to eat. It lives in a creepy slaughterhouse pond so there’s plenty of Dexter meat hook imagery to go around.

Enzo’s trying to fight the monster, but Damon’s given up and flipped his humanity switch so it can’t hurt the ones he cares about.

Meanwhile, Bonnie, Stefan, and Caroline are trying to hunt their friends down. Enzo’s been leaving sneaky clues at murder scenes that end up pointing Bonnie toward a high school reading list (*cough* The Odyssey) and toward the duo.

Once Damon and Enzo are discovered, it becomes apparent that they can’t be rescued… yet. Bonnie ends up piecing some more of Enzo’s murder puzzle game night extravaganza together and figures out that the Creature they’ve been feeding is a Siren. Yeah. Lure sailors into the depths of the oceans with its singing kind of Siren.

In other news, Alaric is exploring the Siren’s cave in the Armory with his new crack team of ghost enthusiast twenty-somethings. They figure out that the Siren’s lair has a secret passage that can only be detected if they shut out all other senses except touch. Creepy.

One anticlimactic journey to the center of the Earth later, they discover that the Siren has been hiding all sorts of golden treasure goodies and one creepy skeleton.

In more domestic news, Caroline and Ric have hired a new nanny. She’s young and cute and perfectly perky, so Caroline’s a little bit jealous, even though she’s shacking up with Stefan.

Of course, after the nanny’s throat gets sliced in a failed kidnapping attempt, Caroline’s happy to move out of the house and let Ric step in, which makes absolutely zero sense. Ric’s just as busy as Caroline, and his being in the house is not going to prevent motivated persons from kidnapping the twinspawn. The only reason I can think of why this plot makes sense is because the writers want Ric to get with the nanny and push Caroline further toward Stefan. It feels cheap and unrealistic, but whatever.