After the Christmas hiatus, have to say not a very exciting ep to get into but at least it was directed by Ian, which explains his foray into the hospital bed for part of the episode. Not from over exhaustion but possibly giving him a chance to act and direct, not that he needs to. All things considered, he did a great job as usual and succeeded in highlighting the two sides to the brothers and their characters. In making Stefan (Paul Wesley) as a cruel and horrific Ripper as possible, whilst showing Damon (Ian Somerhalder) has his own humanity in check and his conscience, helped in part by Elena's necklace. which is his saving grace in many ways. He gets to demonstrate he's not so dark and opposing Stefan's bleak and dark inner self which is always present in him and when it comes to the surface manifests itself in the most violent and bloodthirsty way. So much for him showing Damon in the beginning at group therapy (ha) that he can use the meditation method and spill no blood whatsoever when he savagely attacks his Vics. Damon not being convinced when he says there won't be any severed heads this time.
SO as they set out and continue the Salvatore road trip, taking a break to ponder which Vic should be next, it's apparent Stefan will pick the most innocent of them all and then choose to manipulate and compel into making them worthy for the kill and sacrifice to Cade. Obviously this is exactly what Cade wanted from him as seen in the previous episode. This time we get a doctor and of course Elena's lookalike. They just can't help themselves mentioning her over and over and yes we know Alexandro Chando as Tara, is a bit of a Nina Dobrev lookalike. He chose his Vic well as she was a doctor, having taken an oath to save lives, but she too has parents killed in a car crash by a drunk driver. Again connotations of Elena and her parents' accident over the bridge but not by a drunk driver.
Damon is rushed to hospital cos Stefan vervains him and turns him into a patient who is also a donor and sets about convincing Tara to take his organs and basically just end his misery, considering the number of people on the donor list. She refuses cos she has to make the best of everything and can't choose, but he compels her into believing that Damon was the drunk who killed her parents and to stop him doing it again she must take his life. Of course he's already dead, moot point. Damon tries to talk her out of it, but Stefan always gets in the way. He convinces her to end his suffering so he doesn't do the same thing again. As she tells Damon she's not thinking of the past, but his future. So she kills him. As Stefan checks Damon's belongings, he finds Elena's necklace and is convinced that's why Damon was a bit soft and all conscience provoking.
Confronting Damon in the car he tells him he needs to get rid of it and can't depend on it cos he can't do what they're meant to be doing. Of course Damon tells him he's wrong and throws it out the car window, as we know he's going to go back and find it obviously. Yeah Stefan you should've destroyed it yourself not made him take it from you! Next day he goes back and finds an inmate (Devin McGee) on work duty and talks to him about redemption, or rather the inmate's redemption is picking up litter one piece at a time. As Stefan spots a nurse he'd like to get peckish with, Chinese takeaway!! Sorry I shouldn't have said it but he did choose her first to feed on!! Damon finds the necklace and retrieves his piece of missing conscience as Stefan loses his rage and gorges on everyone at the hospital. When Damon arrives he sees the carnage and the severed heads too! Ripper spree!!
Oh and Miss Tara Doco got killed at Damon's hands cos Stefan mentions how she looks like Elena and so he wouldn't be able to keep his bargain.
Elsewhere Caroline (Candice King) is called to a story at a school and she finds none other than Sybil (Nathalie Kelley) (oh why didn't you just cark it!) and she's now mind controlling her students, teaching them history and making them like it. She's after the Mystic Falls bell and uses the students and needing Caroline find it. They'll all burn themselves if she doesn't help. Matt meets with Dorian (Demetrius Bridges) who Alaric left in charge at the Armoury, if he wants to help out and told him about the sirens. He also has Matt's (Zach Roerig) dad, Peter (Joel Gretsch) working with him. As he tells of the Maxwell family history and how the Maxwell's made the bell for the town. However Dorian tells Matt how the founders took it over and the town and it's now missing. It's been located at the bottom of Wickery Bridge, where Elena's parents had the accident and Peter admits he threw it there. That everything he says isn't an excuse but is a reason. He wishes he didn't make those mistakes in the past.
Caroline tells Matt about the students and they manage to get to them before Sybil finds there's nothing at Caroline's mother's garage. Selina having taken the box. Of course Sybil would lose it and go ahead and make the students kill each other. Matt is angry cos they had a legacy in the town and all this time he could've been someone like the other children and not felt like an outsider in his own town. However there wasn't much to be proud of since the Maxwell's did become a laughing stock. Dorian says the bell goes together with the tuning fork and is meant to be the tuning fork magnified several times over for maximum impact on the sirens.
As the title suggest it's not just about the town history but also about Matt and his family too. Sybil was just so irritating and maybe as she should've been a real teacher, her students would die of boredom, but she threatens Caroline with harming the twins cos they might not have been completely free of the mind control. Though she probably couldn't decide if it was the children she was talking about or the students. Caroline still believing she can take Stefan back after all the killing yet again. So being a vampire and losing his humanity means he can just get away with murder over and over, which any human would've been given the death penalty for over and over. I say that cos everytime they need a decent-ish story it's bring back the Ripper again! Hence his reference to the "we have history" in the title.
As I said before, it doesn't appear that Damon has completely lost his humanity, as we know the necklace helps, but Stefan convincing Tara to kill his brother didn't send warning signs to her. What family member would want their loved one to die in any universe? She was weak though and just gave in. Even weaker than her namesake, Tara in Gone with The Wind, survived through all the hardships, war and adversity, but this one gave in without much of a fight. Compulsion aside. I like the ambiguity of Damon, he's doing this cos they made the deal, but Stefan is just relishing it. Even if Damon convinced him it'd be easier to do this and switch of his humanity in the process, he needs to bring it back in some ways cos Cade is getting far too many Vics from him! And more importantly is heading the way Cade said he would, that he wouldn't be able to stop being the Ripper.
The title is a reference to the Pilot episode when Stefan and Elena meet: "We have history together."
Stefan: "And English and French." So it was only fitting Stefan should make the Elena lookalike reference to Damon about Tara. Seems as the Ripper the history he had with Elena meant nothing to him and he even wanted to take it away from his brother. As Caroline also mentions that she's writing the diary for her and not Stefan, who'll be away for a while.
Oh and also have to mention Stefan's words in his journal from the Pilot: "for over a century I have lived in secret. Hiding in the shadows, alone in the world, until now. I am a vampire and this is my story." He wasn't alone, he had Damon. He was alone as the Ripper and his actions weren't so much in secret. Just as now the Ripper resurfaces all menacing.
Michael Malarkey's Scars was used in this episode as a soundtrack in the scene with Damon when he searches for the necklace! A very appropriate song for this episode! Considering Enzo's away in Paris with Bonnie! It was a very retro Paris-esque sounding song, as a slow-burn Tango and also alluding to Stefan in "going too far and have we lost our minds..."
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