This week on The Vampire Diaries: Vampires eat people.

Nothing worse than a make-out session interrupted by blood barfing.

The title is not a summary of the episode, but rather a quote from Damon, Undead Captain of the Obvious. Though I guess somebody needed to say it, as Stefan spent a good twenty-seven minutes of the show trying to prevent Vamp Elena from feeding on a living human. The result of her drinking a deer and later drinking from Damon (clearly the way the show is trying to appease the Dalena shippers) was the show's salute to Kristeva's theory of the abject in the form of two spectacularly disgusting projectile blood barfs. I think somebody's angling for an Emmy . . .

This episode was, thankfully, a semi-return to what makes the show great: Oh no they didn't moments, and Mystic Falls civic events. This week, we had a memorial service for Pastor Whoever and the council members he blew up. We meet his daughter April, a prime piece of jail bait, but more importantly, a bald-headed vamp assassin, Connor, who shoots Tyler not once but twice. Luckily no one dies harder than Tyler the Hybrid, but the hunter's goal, if not his motivation, is clear--rid the town of what he calls "pollution," but what means "all the good looking characters on the show." There was an interesting moment where Jeremy remarked on a pretty rad sleeve tattoo on Connor's arm that no one else can see. Does this mean he has some affiliation with the "other side"? With Grams's return last week speaking of Bonnie's transgressions against said side that is other, perhaps that's will the the arc of this season.

Other than that, we have Elena stumbling around and looking peaked until she feeds from Matt at the memorial service (party foul!). What prompted her bloodlust was Connor's straight-up stabbing of young April, allowing her blood to pool in the church in the hopes of flushing out the vamps. So I guess she's more vamp bait than jail bait. At least this week. The episode concludes with Stefan the party planner organizing an impromptu memorial service so Elena can get in touch with her grief. He was luckily able to get his hands on about eight Japanese lanterns on very short notice, and the gang then engaged in a fairly hilarious roll call of ALL the major characters who have died since the show began. Actually, considering this is Mystic Falls, Japanese lanterns used for mourning purposes are probably available at vending machines.

Damon refuses to participate, it being rather lame and all, and instead has a heart-to-heart with dead Alaric . . . who shows up to listen! Yay!