Julie's Diary: Vampire Diaries boss blogs 'I Carry Your herz With Me' | EW.com 

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Welcome to Julie’s Diary! Every week during the season, 

 showrunner Julie Plec will add an entry to her diary. From answering burning questions to giving behind-the-scenes stories and more, this is a place for fans to hear directly from Plec about the episode they just watched. 

Welcome to this week’s edition of, to quote one of my favorite bloggers Price Peterson, Diaries About Vampires. It’s Halloween in the real world, and in spite of

having a timeline calendar that splits nine dimensions, every now and then we like to celebrate actual holidays. This season, we’ll be dropping in on Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I’ve always been envious of

and their annual very special Halloween episodes. We’ve never been able to do that with any consistency due to our rift in the space-time continuum (not to mention the fact that we usually don’t get our official air dates until well after we’re done breaking the first batch of episodes), but we always try to give some kind of costumed shout-out at Halloween-time.

This episode was written by Neil Reynolds and directed by Jeff Hunt. Neil used to be a PA (production assistant) in our writer’s office. He was not a neophyte 22-year-old; he was a grown man with a wife and a dream. He wanted to be a writer, so he and his wife made a plan: he committed to paying his dues, took an entry-level job in the office, worked his ass off, made a great impression with his commitment and his work ethic, and then when given an opportunity to write scenes to show off what he could do, he nailed it. Running a television show is a tremendous grind that takes 24/7 dedication and a soul-splitting amount of work. If you can’t cut it as the person who has to get the Starbucks order right, odds are good you won’t cut it as a showrunner. I have high hopes for Neil (and will likely be begging him for a job one day, hence the sucking-up).

Welcome back, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe! Sort of. I can’t say that spending 11 hours lying dead on a morgue table is the best way to spend the day, but it sure was nice to have her around again. Last season, I accidentally told Jodi of her pending demise as though she already knew it was happening. She didn’t. That was awkward. Jodi is the queen of Bananagrams, and has repeatedly kicked my ass in my own home. Her death had nothing to do with her Bananagrams skills, I swear.

This episode cements my love for Enzo’s new hair. Michael Malarkey has a bit of a punk-rock history and last season someone thought it would be fun to play with a faux-hawk for Enzo’s character. I wasn’t a fan. A clever blogger, likely Price Peterson, called it the Sonic the Hedgehog ‘do and I could never look at it the same again. In season 2, Tyler Lockwood showed up in a faux-hawk once his werewolf curse was triggered — because, you know, once you let your wolf out you should absolutely change your hairstyle right away — and Kevin [Williamson] nearly lost his mind. This was nothing compared to the meltdown I had had earlier in the season when Caroline Forbes, less than 12 hours after having been turned into a vampire, inexplicably started wearing thick black bad-girl eyeliner. It’s the little things that will drive you crazy in this job.

I love this flash forward, where (SPOILER ALERT!!!!!) we see that Alaric has twin 3-year-old daughters. One is named Josie, after his kinda-sorta dead wife. The other’s name will be revealed much later in the season, but when the name was pitched to me, it brought tears to my eyes.

In his diary entry to Elena, Damon’s perspective on wine was inspired by a conversation that Ian [Somerhalder] had with Caroline Dries over Damon’s hobbies. Having consumed wine with Ian, I can attest to his eye for quality.

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