Mystic Falls’s secrets are getting deeper. This week’s episode uses a convenient 1950s decade dance (I wish my high school had those) to explore the secrets of the town and its founders. Meanwhile, someone (or something) bad is out for Elena.

Oh Vampire Diaries, how we’ve missed you. The residents of Mystic Falls are back with a bite (pun totally intended) after a long holiday hiatus. When we last left our favorite teenage vampires, all hell was about to break loose, and we pick up here right where we left off in November.

There is a certain macabre sense of voyeurism throughout The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, partly because the movie lays bare the inner workings of the imagination, but largely due to the fact that this film serves as the final film from Heath Ledger.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to posit a query: Is it possible for a contemporary director, best known for edge-of-your-seat action movies with a deep black humor streak to actually do justice to the famed detective, making the legend accessible to a new generation of fans without alienating the original audience?

The Road, based on the 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy, directed by John Hillcoat, and starring Viggo Mortenson (as a postmodern Strider) and Kodi Smit-McPhee, is the anathema to the glossy Hollywood apocalypse; it is a tone poem, a character study, a mood piece that examines the human condition when all hopes of humanity is lost.

Once again, The Vampire Diaries proves itself to be more than just your typical CW teenage fare. In many way, it fills the void that Buffy has left in my little sci-fi pop heart. This arc both illuminates the past and clouds the future, taking the viewers further down the rabbit hole, deepening our ties to the characters and questioning the decisions they make.

Not only is this a vampire show, but it’s also a teenage melodrama, and honey, this ain’t no Twilight. While this episode didn’t throw down the gauntlet in the way last week’s did, the show is definitely starting to lead us down a darker, more morally ambiguous path.

After a week off, Vampire Diaries comes back with a bite. Halloween is a time for sci-fi and horror shows to bring it with all they have, and Vampire Diaries, much in the tradition of Buffy, celebrates Halloween with gusto.

What a great episode to leave us with before a two-week hiatus — a little historical exposition to tide us over until the super awesome Halloween episode. Vampire Diaries does juicy Civil War-era teenage vampire drama just as well as it handles the contemporary world they created — you are just along for the ride.

We all have to grow up sometime… that is, unless you are a Salvatore. More specifically, unless you’re Damon Salvatore. Is it just me, or has this Johnny the Homicidal Maniac meets Spike Season 4 thing with Damon already been starting to get old before “You’re Undead to Me”?