Last night's The Vampire Diaries entry, "Blood Brothers," was heavy on the past, heavy on the brotherly relations, and heavy on the shirtlessness. In other words, it was awesome.

Stefan is to Angel

The similarities between Stefan and Angel have been pretty obvious to anyone familiar with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They even show up in Stefan's jawline, brow, and hair style. Last night really pushed the similarity to the edge by taking Stefan's plot pretty much completely from the BVTS episode, "Amends." Now, I get that there are books that the show is based on, and blah blah all vampire stuff is kind of similar cakes, but I'm not really complaining. For one, "Amends" came midway through the third season; "Blood Brothers" appears toward the end of season one because this show moves lightening fast. For two, we finally, finally got to the source of Damon's fatwa (oh, I said it) against Stefan, and it was totally in character. I love this show.

Stefan's locked up in the Salvatore basement, uninterested in chatting with Damon or Elena or in a bottle of animal blood Damon so thoughtfully procured (sidebar: I get that they use clear bottles because the viewer can then see the red stuff, but that is so not green). He's tripping on flashbacks: after Katherine was carted away, Stefan and Damon rallied and tried to rescue her. During the rescue, they were both shot and killed. When they came to during their transition, Stefan was pretty confused, claiming he never drank vampire blood. Emily was on hand with their fancy rings to explain that Katherine compelled him to drink and forget about it. Stefan decided that drinking human blood and completing the transition is the only way, but Damon convinced him that they should just both die. Stefan then decided to at least say goodbye to their dad, who, as can be expected with James Remar in the role, was the one who shot Stefan and Damon. Furthermore, he didn't accept Stefan's claim that he and Damon are going to give up the ghost, so Papa Salvatore tried to stake his own son.  He got the stake in the ensuing mêlée. The blood was too delicious to resist, so Stefan drained his dad (just like Angel!). He's in crazed junkie mode pretty quickly after that, compelling some random girl to offer herself up to Damon to complete the transition and babbling about how powerful he feels and how he can just turn off all of his bad feelings in a snap. Damon does drain the girl after Stefan gets the party started, but he turns on Stefan shortly thereafter. Seems that while he may have been aware of Stefan's affair with Katherine, he thought he was the only one on her vampire-making shortlist. 

Stefan was pretty shaken up by this, as you can imagine, and even more so when Emily told him that he has a "pure heart," meaning that vampire life is going to be very, very hard for him. Sure enough, Stefan admits to Elena when he's preparing to salute the sun that drinking human blood tempts him for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it helps him block out his guilt over all the people he's hurt. Elena, however, thinks he's stronger than that. After a bit of back and forth and some fake giving up and walking away, Stefan decides to put his ring back on and keep on fighting.

As Damon is to Spike

Also, called it! Back in January, I said how unlikely I thought it was that Damon was alright with the eternal threesome Katherine had planned, especially given that I was sure he wanted to free Katherine to prove once and for all which brother she liked best. Well, I was right. Damon tells Stefan, both in the past and in the future, that his quest to make Stefan suffer was entirely motivated by jealousy; in fact, he deliberately concealed that Katherine was cooling her heels in the tomb (or so he thought) from Stefan because he wanted them both dead after her betrayal. Since Stefan maybe heard/maybe hallucinated Katherine whispering "I love you" to him on his deathbed, Damon's got a point. Aw, it's just like when we found out that the source of animosity between Spike and Angel was Spike walking in on Angel banging Drusilla! Damon likes to think of himself as a bad boy, but he's actually just a big softie ruled by his emotions. Just like Spike. Could there be a leather duster in Damon's future? Leather jackets are big on this show.

In other news:

• John lets Elena know that he knows about her vampire boyfriends.
• Anna enrolls in high school in part to be closer to Jeremy, and they have sex.
• Pearl agrees to meet John to discuss the device he wants back from her, claiming he's going to use his Gilbert charm to do so. It does seem like it's working, particularly when he reveals that Original Recipe Jonathan truly loved Pearl and always regretted betraying her. Pearl is touched by this, so John moves in for the kill. He laughs in her face, saying that Jonathan's only regret was not staking Pearl when he had the chance. The truth is probably somewhere between the two. Pearl is so embarrassed that she tells John that Damon has the device and later tells Anna that they are leaving town. Anna tries to fight her on this but eventually gives in and says goodbye to a sleeping Jeremy. When she returns, Pearl and Harper (Ruth to Pearl's Naomi) have both been crossbowed. Yup, without the device, John killed them.
• Alaric and Damon raid the house attached to a number that's been calling John regularly, believing that it could be Isobel's new digs. Nope, John's been stashing angry tomb refugees all over town like the adorable little moppet they find in this one. After they get that intel, they stake the poor thing. Alaric then decides that he's going to give up on looking for Isobel because she obviously doesn't want to be found. Two years is his cut off. Damon half-jokes that 200 years will be his line with Katherine. Naturally, when Alaric hits the Grill for a drink, Isobel shows up behind him.

Next time: Isobel.