I'm a bit late to the party on this because I'm laptop-less right now but I had to throw my two cents in.
Matt and Jeremy and the ghost-y-ness? Not entertaining. Yeah, show, we all saw the end of season 2. We've been thinking about it all summer just like you wanted us to. Now can we get to an actual story with that?
Carol jumped onto Tyler's side super fast. I demand character-development fic of her night in the cell!
Is Caroline named for Carol? Just random wondering.
HRG IS CAROLINE'S DAD! YAY! (I'm already devoloping headcanon where HRG and "Bill" are twins and Noah is the black sheep of the family solely because he doesn't hunt vampires but hunts special people instead.) But was anyone honestly surprised at the end of the episode when she said "daddy"? Really?
Can someone tell Klaus that the reason the turing isn't working is Katherine? She's not technically alive but she's not technically dead either and she is a doppleganger and it would just be nice to throw him off the trail for a while that way. (Plus, Katherine!)
Bonnie would have noticed Caroline was missing.
Caroline frequently reminds Tyler that it's his fault Stefan's gone because Tyler bit Damon. Stefan/Caroline and Damon/Caroline shippers were made happy. :D
Alaric somehow has two teenage kids and never got the fun pre-teenage times. He deserves happiness at some point.
Okay, the big thing: the end scene in Elena's room. I thought Damon was out of line but not for the same reasons everyone else seems to think. I took it as him saying they were gonna get his brother back no matter what, but that when they did Damon wanted Elena to remember all the feelings between the two of them that happened while Stefan was gone. Which seems jerkish to me because I'm not seeing D/E happening. As always, Damon feels romantically for Elena and Elena feels platonically for Damon with a side of "he's hot" and "what if?" but that's all I see. Especially now that Stefan's gone. Elena is wholly devoted to that and if Damon is going to push his suit he should be doing it to distract her from what's causing her pain. Also, Damon seems like a bad brother in this scene. "We're going to get Stefan back, but then I'm going to steal you, the one thing keeping him sane, the one thing he wants to come back for." Nice, Damon.