The Vampire Diaries recap: 'Postcards From the Edge' 

'The Vampire Diaries' recap: 'Hell Is Other People'

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How do you move forward in life after making an earth-shattering mistake? Do you drink it away? Bury yourself in work? Pretend it never happened? If you’re Damon Salvatore, you return to what you know.

At the top of “Postcards From the Edge,” we find Damon flat on his back in the middle of a wooded highway. For a moment it seems as if it could be a flashback (until you remember that Nina Dobrev won’t be showing up until the series finale… if ever), but it’s actually just old school Damon waiting for a victim.

When a guy named Cooper avoids hitting him, gets out to check on the person in the middle of the road, and asks him what he’s doing there, Damon says, “I don’t know. I thought it would make me feel better.” Cooper, give Damon a hug. He just burned up his girlfriend.

Cooper can kind of relate: He ran over his girlfriend’s cat. Instead of eating him, Damon asks Cooper for a ride. He spills his guts to him, saying how he thinks the lesson of the Phoenix Stone was that he’s always going to be damaged. Seriously, Cooper, why aren’t you hugging him yet!?

Damon then says he doesn’t think he can feel for anyone ever again, so he decides to go ahead and eat his ride anyway. Sorry, Cooper, maybe you should have hugged him.

Next stop on the Damon Salvatore spiraling-out-of-control tour: picking on the Big Bad. Julian is shooting apples off the heads of his friends, while blindfolded, at the local bar. Damon makes his entrance into the bar by chopping some guys head clean off. Julian’s mad… until he realizes that Damon

to make Julian mad. He puts two and two together (Lily was his tether once out of the Phoenix Stone, Damon must have lost, or killed, his). Damon finally admits what he did: “I burned her alive.” Julian takes a little bit of credit for this (as he should!) and says he wants to play a game with Damon.

Before we get to Damon, though, let’s talk about Elena: We’re all assuming because of the flash-forward that she’s not dead. By the way, where did Tyler go? He kind of vanished. Why didn’t he tell Damon he didn’t actually kill Elena before fleeing? Is it possible she’s

Maybe, maybe not. But for now, she’s dead to Damon — and he’s dealing with it by becoming a member of Julian’s fight club. There’s only one rule (I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not “don’t talk about fight club”). The rule is losers die. Julian says this raw, physical brutality is the best way for Damon to get over his mental anguish.

Right about this time is when Valerie is telling Stefan that his brother has a death wish. (She observed it at the bar while she was there telling Julian about the notecard she received from the huntress.) And she’s right: Damon makes quick work of his first challenger, so Julian has a better opponent for him: Sam, who has never lost a fight. This fight is tougher for him, and Damon is only able to win because a woman from the crowd throws him a stake to use to kill Sam.

That just pisses Julian off, so he says

’s going next. And that’s when Stefan comes in to save the day. He’s been doing a lot of that this episode…

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