TVSquad

(S01E03) Why does every high school show have to do the obligatory football episode? Is this something that's still big for kids? Seriously, does this hierarchy of popularity still exist? Or are the writers just too old to know any better?

Anyway, this week Stefan tries out for the football team in a desperate attempt to not be so weird and creepy, and Elena, in an effort to get back to her "normal" life, goes back to cheerleading. That works for a few days, until Damon shows up and kills the history teacher/football coach Mr. Tanner. Yay for Damon!

So, it turns out that Damon's not a misogynistic, emotionally abusive, woman hater after all -- as a few people had feared in the comments last week. He hates all humans equally and will kill with impunity, people! Mr. Tanner is dead and Caroline isn't. Damon is just using her as his little blood bank for now. Most of the episode revolves around a boring dinner party Elena throws for Stefan and Bonnie to bond. It's lumbering along when Damon and Caroline barge in and liven up the affair.

During the party, Damon reveals a bit more about Katherine. And, major surprise here, it turns out Katherine may not only have been the great love of Stefan's life, but Damon's, as well. He's keeping Stefan alive to torture him over whatever happened to Katherine, but he's still in deep mourning, as well. Nice twist, but it took a painfully slow episode to get to it.

Now, if you're wondering how the football storyline fits into all this, so am I. Stefan trying out for the team and Elena joining and quitting the cheerleading squad are pretty tacked on. Somewhere within this series is a great storyline, but they've been too slow to pull it out. We spend the first 30 minutes of the episode on filler, as far as I'm concerned.

One minor character that's quickly growing on me is Matt, the ex-boyfriend and Vicki's brother. He's coming around to seeing what a jerk Tyler is, as is Vicki. While I would like to see more of Matt's character, I'm over Vicki and Jeremy. Their little love triangle doesn't fit with the rest of the show well enough, and distracts from the main action.

The final scene between Damon and Stefan had to be the best of the episode. While Damon is busy worming his way into Elena's life and house, Stefan is wondering if Damon has any shred of humanity left in him. He concludes at the end of the episode that Damon must be stopped, convinced his brother is pure evil, but I'm not so sure. The last shot we see, of Damon standing over Elena's bed, leads me to believe there's more than enough humanity left in him, however skewed it may be.

What do you all think? Does Damon have any humanity left? Is everything he does just an act? I kind of hope not, since we've got enough mopey vampires around.