The way you felt about this episode is kinda how I've been feeling about Justified lately. The nitpicky part of my brain just won't shut the hell up during that show. (something something Drew Thompson… but, I digress.)

I guess the whole "sire bond" thing just made me question if I was still watching a legitimately good show or not. The sire bond was THE WORST. It's bad enough that it robbed the main character of her agency (Elena's agency was a key ingredient that set TVD apart from dreck like Twilight), but it didn't even make…

This show started as a guilty pleasure for me, but then I think around the season 1 finale it became a guiltless, no-reservations pleasure. …At least until that bad rut of episodes this season inbetween Alaric's memorial episode and Jeremy's death episode… that's when the guilt started creeping back into the equation.…

This episode was TVD operating at MAXIMUM FUN levels. It's so nice to have this version of the show back; it had been too long. I give it an A- only because the opening scene was clunky and contrived.

I wish I could grade this interview an "A."

Yes, thanks to AVC, Todd VanDerWerff, and Mike White. I love these walkthroughs, and I love(d) Enlightened.

An F! Should I start watching this show now?

I was also brought to tears by that scene, and I can't figure out exactly why. They're talking about farts. But it's incredibly moving. Transcendent television.

I'm growing a little tired of Phillip, but whoever decided to name this episode "Operation Thunder Dome" deserves a raise.

@avclub-a9f5102dde8ca6e2ef0b18e777e918ed:disqus @avclub-eaaf6236c28c668e40fdf9b17394b7ec:disqus Ohh, right. I had wiped him from my memory.

That bothered me almost as much as Phillip calling Julia "the girl." Phil's losin' points.

Who is PeteBro? Did I miscount the bros

If one of the three fans on the Bikal tribe actually *did* have an immunity idol, this would have been a great, tense episode. As it stands, it was kinda predictable and ho-hum.

Thanks for this; it makes some sense to me now.

I liked this episode, and I'm pleased with the current trajectory of the show (the sire bond is broken; the cure isn't the *main* focus anymore; Nihilist Elena is awesome; Silas is sufficiently sinister), but I have one major gripe:

So do you and @avclub-011d0b4fe6835bb3d37ef4e0ea713de6:disqus think Shane is secretly still alive? Or do you mean Silas?

He does regularly play basketball against guys who are twice his height.

@avclub-09242a5045cda8c7f60b238ba86876a7:disqus yet they brought Rachel from Big Brother on. I'm not sure Amazing Race has much of a rep left at this point.

Two questions:

shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart shit fart…