Vampire Diaries Episode 18 – Under Control

This week’s episode of the Vampire Diaries begins with some hot shots of Stefan working out in his tank top, trying to ‘detox’ from his human blood binge from last week. Damon is taunting him, telling him that he has got to drink human blood if they are going to be strong and survive all the new vampires who escaped from the tomb. Elena and Jeremy’s Uncle John appears on the scene and it’s pretty apparent that he’s a sleaze ball. No one seems to like him. And of course, the first thing he says is that he is handling the money for Elena and Jeremy since they are minors. I suspect that money will be gone pretty fast….

Damon goes to the Mystic Falls Founders meeting where – surprise, surprise, Uncle John is speaking, telling everyone that he is a member of one of the ‘founding families’, the Gilberts, and the vampires are not gone, nothing has been solved. Uncle John is insisting that Jeremy attend the Founder’s Day party and Jenna is making sarcastic comments to anything John says. Jeremy asks, ‘why does she hate you’, and John tells them all that he and Jenna used to sleep together causing her to throw something at his head.

Elena and Stefan are discussing Jeremy’s school paper about vampires. The secrets that everyone are keeping from each other are starting to pile up and become unmanageable. Elena is concerned about Stefan, how is he handling the lack of human blood after partaking a few days ago? They are going at it hot and heavy in her bedroom when he isn’t able to control the blood lust, his face starts to turn and he throws himself away from her, fighting his vampire side.

Next, you hear a knock on the door and we see Elena pull Damon into the house, taking him up to her bedroom. He’s full of one-liners, saying ‘it looks just like I remembered’ and she tells him to stop messing around. Damon flops down on her bed, spying the mess in the corner where Stefan threw himself off Elena when he vamped out. She looks sad and says how worried she is about Stefan, he’s clearly struggling. How long is his recovery going to take? Damon says a few days – give or take – as he goes into her lingerie drawer and pulls out a bra. They continue bantering back and forth, he says Stefan has deprived himself for so long, it’s going to be harder to rein himself back in. And, oh yummy, yummy, when he backs her up against the furniture, he gives her that stare – something is going to happen with these two, it just has to!

The Founders Day Party is in full swing as Stefan and Damon show up. Damon harasses him about cravings and urges and he just goes after some alcohol – I guess that’s his way of coping. Elena asks Stefan if he’s drunk, and he states that he wants to dance. Just like a guy – has to be drunk to want to dance.

Alaric shows up, asking Jenna for a drink. Elena and Matt start dancing, and then Stefan cuts in. Elena accidentally bumps into a jerk on the dance floor who tells her to get off the floor if she is so clumsy. Stefan goes into full mind-meld mode, making the guy apologize to Elena. She’s quite disturbed by this. Elena and Damon are at the bar. He tells her that Jeremy has been asking a lot of questions about Vickie Donovan – why was she buried if it was a drug overdose? Damon wants to compel Jeremy, making him forget Vickie all over again. I guess the first time didn’t take?

John comes up and introduces himself to Damon. John seems to know about the tomb under the church and he knows that Damon set them free. So, John knows Damon’s a vampire and he thinks he’s immune because he ingests vervain. Damon walks away and John arrogantly looks after him when Damon suddenly comes back with vamp speed and snaps his neck, throwing him over the balcony. Problem solved….or is it?

Matt’s mom and Tyler appear to be hooking up. Gross. He dated her daughter, Vickie. Matt and Elena are going out to get some air and they see Tyler and Matt’s mom lip-locked, going at it hard. Matt rushes them, pulling Tyler off his mom and Tyler starts to beat the crap out of Matt. Stefan smells the blood on Matt’s mom’s forehead and he’s drawn to it, unable to stop himself. He makes himself leave the party while he licks the blood off his fingers.

Damon is back at the party, checking out the women, when he gets a real shock – John walks back in the room. Whoa, is he a vampire? John gets up to give a speech, and Damon spots a ring on his hand that looks just like the one that Alaric has which brings him back from the dead. Where do they get all these awesome man-rings? Rings to let vampires walk in daylight, rings to bring you back from the dead….

Stefan walks away from the party and the jerk dancer who he made apologize earlier is waiting for him. Pushing him and forcing him into a fight. Stefan’s face goes vamp and I suspect this guy is going to be his next ‘fix’. But, then Elena shows up and Stefan races off, saving the guy to be a jerk for yet another day. Jeremy is in Elena’s room, looking through her stuff and finding her diary. Bad boy! He reads the part where they took away his memory after Vickie died. This does not bode well. Matt is insisting that his Mom leave the house and she keeps promising that she’ll never do it again. Yeah, right, like he hasn’t heard that before.

John is walking out of the party next to Alaric and Damon and we find out that he knows a whole lot, much more than either Alaric or Damon. And he’s quite smug about it, throwing out references to every mysterious character we’ve met in the series so far. Stefan shows up in Elena’s room, scaring her and admitting that he needs help. He can’t stop wanting blood, he can’t stop the dark side of him. He’s afraid of what he’ll do to her, but she holds him and tells him that she loves him no matter what. Stefan winds up back home and the Vampire Diaries on the CW ends with Stefan tossing back glasses of blood, finally looking satisfied. Will his blood lust end or will he finally get it ‘under control’?