The Vampire Diaries Season 5, Episode 2: "True Lies" Recap/Review
This week, much like the premiere, was really heavy in exposition and not so much in action/plot development, which is sort of a bummer. Bur, on the other hand, it is a super fun episode to watch, and it begins to set everything up for the rest of this arc, so I'm really excited to see where this leads!
This week's MVP award should go to Nina Dobrev, because seriously, she is absolutely the hardest working and most underrated actress in TV, in my opinion. I literally never think about the fact that Elena and Katherine are played by the same actress, because she is so good at making them similar but completely different, all at the same time. PLUS, each character has had about a million different life stages to deal with, which means that she's really playing like, a dozen characters. Think about it; with Katherine alone, we have 1) human, 15th century Katerina Petrova, 2) Civil War-era vampire Katherine Pierce, 3) modern-era, super-strong vampire Katherine, and now 4) modern-era, super-weakling human Katherine. And with Elena, we have 5) human, teenage, pre-dead-parents Elena, 6) human, teenage, post-dead parents Elena, 7) newly-turned vampire Elena, 8) no-humanity vampire Elena, and now this new, happy, content, and confident vampire Elena. Even Elena haters have to admit that Nina Dobrev is pretty amazing.
Anyway, that's enough blathering about Petrova doppelgängers. Let's get into the consequences of allllll the lying people have been doing lately, yeah?
Previously, on The Vampire Diaries: Elena loved Stefan, and then she fell out of love with Stefan and realized she was in love with Damon. Bonnie died, but managed to bring Jeremy back to life before she put the veil to the Other Side back up. A Whitmore College student named Jesse has a thing for our fair Caroline. Caroline and Elena were surprised to end up with a new roommate, Megan, who may or may not know about vampires, and who is somehow connected to Elena's adopted dad, Dr. Grayson Gilbert. Also, Megan ended up being killed by a vampire at a frat party, and the school police seems to be either compelled to overlook it or are covering it up somehow.
Needless to say, she looks miserable, and Jeremy looks like he feels pretty terrible himself, though it doesn't stop her from snapping at him. "What are you going to do? You gonna hug me?" Jeremy concedes that he wants to, but Bonnie reminds him that he can't. "You can't touch me, and I can't touch you, because I'm dead. Just like my dad, except he's not supernatural, so I don't even get to see him on the Other Side. He's just dead." She starts to get a little embarrassed at herself for ranting at him, and takes a moment to regain composure before she gives Jeremy the most important scoop-- Silas compelled the townsfolk to keep a look out for Katherine by looking for anyone who looks like Elena Gilbert. She has no idea what he wants with Katherine, but figures that him getting it will be bad news bears, so she emphasizes that they can't let him have her, even despite the fact that 90%+ of our heroes would happily let Katherine die for the terrible things she's done to each of them.
Meanwhile, it's morning again, and Katherine has just stumbled out of a wooded area and into the suburbs, where she flags a car down. The woman driving stops the car and gets out. "You okay, hon? You're gonna get yourself sick out here!" Katherine thanks her for stopping, but that just gives the woman a chance to see that she looks exactly like Elena Gilbert. "Actually, I'm much prettier," Katherine snits, but that was the wrong thing to say, because this woman is totally a spy for Silas, and she has just confirmed that she isn't actually Elena.
(via youbroughtmetolifeagain)
She tells Katherine that she's supposed to be keeping an eye out for her, and sprays her in the eyes with a can of mace. Katherine yells in agony as the woman pulls out her phone and starts to text on it. Ms. Pierce may be a human weakling, but she's still a survivor, so she grabs the phone out of the woman's hand and starts punching her in the face until she passes out. Katherine massages her wrist in pain, and curses the fact that she's a weakling human. To make matters worse, Matt has approached her from behind with his shotgun, which he cocks as he aims it at her. "Hurts, doesn't it? Not as much as this will." YOU GO, MATT!
(via youbroughtmetolifeagain)
We cut to the quarry, where we know right away that we're in the middle of one of Stefan's hallucination fantasies, because 1) lensflare, and 2) he's laying on a blanket with Elena cuddled up next to him. DUDE, come on! This is just creepy and weird. Elena agrees with me. "We could be doing anything right now, Stefan. Be anywhere! Why here? Why this?" Stefan explains that simple moments, the good ones, like this, are the ones that matter, and are the only thing keeping him from falling apart. Elena smiles and kisses him, but reminds him that this can't last forever. "You're just distracting yourself." She interrupts herself by beginning to choke and spit up water, which makes Stefan panic. Of course, IRL, Stefan has just woken up in the safe again, and starts choking on water himself.
Over at Whitmore College, Elena walks into her room as Caroline (presumably) packs up Megan's stuff in a box. Elena remarks that Megan's memorial outside is accumulating a ton of flowers and cards, to which Caroline reacts like a true Mystic Falls citizen; death means nothing, especially when you're already dead to begin with, so who cares? "Ugh, college kids are so dramatic. She was on campus for like, one day. She couldn't have made that many friends." Elena kindly reminds her that since Megan is dead, Caroline can stop competing with her any time now, but Caroline is in the midst of a "my boyfriend more or less broke up with me but I'm still in denial that it's over" funk, which is why she's being so rude and petty.
Elena asks her roomie if she's talked to Tyler. You know, like, really talked, and not just playing phone tag so they don't have to talk to each other. "He's deferring from enrolling, and deferring from returning my phone calls, so I'm deferring from having sex with him ever again." Hee! *taylorswiftnevergettingbacktogether.mp3*
"So, whoever signed off on the cause of death was part of the cover-up--just like the Founder's Council back home," Elena explains, and she reveals that the coroner who did the autopsy was Dr. Wesley Maxfield, who just so happens to also teach Applied Microbiology at Whitmore, so of course Elena compelled them into the class so they can investigate him. Caroline is sooooo not a fan of this plan. "Applied-- what, what? Uh, Elena, we are supposed to be taking Intro. to Communication!"
This week's MVP award should go to Nina Dobrev, because seriously, she is absolutely the hardest working and most underrated actress in TV, in my opinion. I literally never think about the fact that Elena and Katherine are played by the same actress, because she is so good at making them similar but completely different, all at the same time. PLUS, each character has had about a million different life stages to deal with, which means that she's really playing like, a dozen characters. Think about it; with Katherine alone, we have 1) human, 15th century Katerina Petrova, 2) Civil War-era vampire Katherine Pierce, 3) modern-era, super-strong vampire Katherine, and now 4) modern-era, super-weakling human Katherine. And with Elena, we have 5) human, teenage, pre-dead-parents Elena, 6) human, teenage, post-dead parents Elena, 7) newly-turned vampire Elena, 8) no-humanity vampire Elena, and now this new, happy, content, and confident vampire Elena. Even Elena haters have to admit that Nina Dobrev is pretty amazing.
Anyway, that's enough blathering about Petrova doppelgängers. Let's get into the consequences of allllll the lying people have been doing lately, yeah?
Previously, on The Vampire Diaries: Elena loved Stefan, and then she fell out of love with Stefan and realized she was in love with Damon. Bonnie died, but managed to bring Jeremy back to life before she put the veil to the Other Side back up. A Whitmore College student named Jesse has a thing for our fair Caroline. Caroline and Elena were surprised to end up with a new roommate, Megan, who may or may not know about vampires, and who is somehow connected to Elena's adopted dad, Dr. Grayson Gilbert. Also, Megan ended up being killed by a vampire at a frat party, and the school police seems to be either compelled to overlook it or are covering it up somehow.
Matt and Rebekah had a threesome with a Czech chick named Nadia, who came all the way to Mystic Falls to 1) return the Gilbert ring that she stole, and 2) have her friend do a spell on Matt that made his eyes look like a Supernatural-style demon. Silas was freed from Bonnie's desiccation-spell when she died, and staked Stefan in the gut, locked him in a safe, and then tossed him to the bottom of the quarry. Since Stefan just so happens to be his doppelgänger, so now Silas gets to hide in plain sight by pretending to be him, and refuses to tell Damon where Stefan is until he gets Katherine in his possession. Jeremy and Damon allllmost gave her up to him, but since she is Katherine Pierce, she yanked the steering wheel from Jeremy and caused the SUV that they were in to crash into a light post, nearly killing Jeremy (AGAIN) and giving Katherine the chance to get away in nothing but a bathrobe. OH! And Silas killed Bonnie's dad, the Mayor, and compelled the whole town to be on the lookout for our fair Katerina. And that's where we pick up this week!
Bonnie, in voiceover, once again, is explaining to Jeremy what happened to her dad in the Salvatore Manse's parlor, as we flashback to last week's episode. She figured it was just a normal community gathering, no big deal, so she popped in to check on her dad when he was giving a speech. (It's not like anything bad and supernatural has ever occurred at a Mystic Falls event before, that would just be crazy!) Mayor Deadbeat Dad was interrupted by Silas, as you recall, so he could test how strong his mind-control has become.
Bonnie, in voiceover, once again, is explaining to Jeremy what happened to her dad in the Salvatore Manse's parlor, as we flashback to last week's episode. She figured it was just a normal community gathering, no big deal, so she popped in to check on her dad when he was giving a speech. (It's not like anything bad and supernatural has ever occurred at a Mystic Falls event before, that would just be crazy!) Mayor Deadbeat Dad was interrupted by Silas, as you recall, so he could test how strong his mind-control has become.
I think it's safe to say that his powers are pretty powerful, considering he was able to easily compel the entire town square to do his bidding. And by "doing his bidding," I mostly mean shutting up, staying completely still, and forgetting that he just killed the mayor in front of a crowd of at least a hundred people. As you could have probably guessed, as a result of this event, Bonnie has been smacked upside the head with a reality check; as a dead person, she has absolutely no control over what happens in the world of the living, including what happens to her loved ones.
Needless to say, she looks miserable, and Jeremy looks like he feels pretty terrible himself, though it doesn't stop her from snapping at him. "What are you going to do? You gonna hug me?" Jeremy concedes that he wants to, but Bonnie reminds him that he can't. "You can't touch me, and I can't touch you, because I'm dead. Just like my dad, except he's not supernatural, so I don't even get to see him on the Other Side. He's just dead." She starts to get a little embarrassed at herself for ranting at him, and takes a moment to regain composure before she gives Jeremy the most important scoop-- Silas compelled the townsfolk to keep a look out for Katherine by looking for anyone who looks like Elena Gilbert. She has no idea what he wants with Katherine, but figures that him getting it will be bad news bears, so she emphasizes that they can't let him have her, even despite the fact that 90%+ of our heroes would happily let Katherine die for the terrible things she's done to each of them.
Meanwhile, it's morning again, and Katherine has just stumbled out of a wooded area and into the suburbs, where she flags a car down. The woman driving stops the car and gets out. "You okay, hon? You're gonna get yourself sick out here!" Katherine thanks her for stopping, but that just gives the woman a chance to see that she looks exactly like Elena Gilbert. "Actually, I'm much prettier," Katherine snits, but that was the wrong thing to say, because this woman is totally a spy for Silas, and she has just confirmed that she isn't actually Elena.
(via youbroughtmetolifeagain)
She tells Katherine that she's supposed to be keeping an eye out for her, and sprays her in the eyes with a can of mace. Katherine yells in agony as the woman pulls out her phone and starts to text on it. Ms. Pierce may be a human weakling, but she's still a survivor, so she grabs the phone out of the woman's hand and starts punching her in the face until she passes out. Katherine massages her wrist in pain, and curses the fact that she's a weakling human. To make matters worse, Matt has approached her from behind with his shotgun, which he cocks as he aims it at her. "Hurts, doesn't it? Not as much as this will." YOU GO, MATT!
(via youbroughtmetolifeagain)
We cut to the quarry, where we know right away that we're in the middle of one of Stefan's hallucination fantasies, because 1) lensflare, and 2) he's laying on a blanket with Elena cuddled up next to him. DUDE, come on! This is just creepy and weird. Elena agrees with me. "We could be doing anything right now, Stefan. Be anywhere! Why here? Why this?" Stefan explains that simple moments, the good ones, like this, are the ones that matter, and are the only thing keeping him from falling apart. Elena smiles and kisses him, but reminds him that this can't last forever. "You're just distracting yourself." She interrupts herself by beginning to choke and spit up water, which makes Stefan panic. Of course, IRL, Stefan has just woken up in the safe again, and starts choking on water himself.
Over at Whitmore College, Elena walks into her room as Caroline (presumably) packs up Megan's stuff in a box. Elena remarks that Megan's memorial outside is accumulating a ton of flowers and cards, to which Caroline reacts like a true Mystic Falls citizen; death means nothing, especially when you're already dead to begin with, so who cares? "Ugh, college kids are so dramatic. She was on campus for like, one day. She couldn't have made that many friends." Elena kindly reminds her that since Megan is dead, Caroline can stop competing with her any time now, but Caroline is in the midst of a "my boyfriend more or less broke up with me but I'm still in denial that it's over" funk, which is why she's being so rude and petty.
Elena asks her roomie if she's talked to Tyler. You know, like, really talked, and not just playing phone tag so they don't have to talk to each other. "He's deferring from enrolling, and deferring from returning my phone calls, so I'm deferring from having sex with him ever again." Hee! *taylorswiftnevergettingbacktogether.mp3*
Elena changes the subject to their mysterious dead roommate, and asks her how the snooping is going. She is especially curious if Caroline has found any explanation for the picture they found on Megan's phone of her and Elena's adoptive-dad, Dr. Grayson Gilbert. Caroline replies in the negatory, which reminds Elena to mention that she popped by the hospital to steal Megan's death certificate this morning. Aw, Damon taught her well! She explains that the COD was determined to be suicide, and there was nothing in the notes about the bloody fang marks on her neck, so it's pretty safe to say that a cover-up is underway.
"So, whoever signed off on the cause of death was part of the cover-up--just like the Founder's Council back home," Elena explains, and she reveals that the coroner who did the autopsy was Dr. Wesley Maxfield, who just so happens to also teach Applied Microbiology at Whitmore, so of course Elena compelled them into the class so they can investigate him. Caroline is sooooo not a fan of this plan. "Applied-- what, what? Uh, Elena, we are supposed to be taking Intro. to Communication!"
She reminds Elena about how their plan for freshman year involved getting drunk and making bad boy-related decisions, not being academic superstars, and shrills that she's supposedly a drama major. Well, you certainly are dramatic, Care-Bear, that is for sure. Elena points out that their majors won't matter if they're exposed as vampires, and assures her roomie that they will still have tons of fun-- they just need to make sure they protect themselves too. Elena figures the best course of action is doing what Damon did in Mystic Falls, i.e. infiltrating the secret Whitmore College version of Founder's Council. So, she orders Caroline to "bust out her alleged acting skills" to help her figure out this whacko mystery.
Back in Mystic Falls, we return to the quarry, but this time we are hanging out with Damon and Liz the Sheriff, and not Stefan. Liz informs him that she is aware she promised to help find Stefan, but Stephen's Quarry is enormous, so it's not like she can just drain the whole thing. Damon understands that, because that's what drew him to wanting to stash Silas here in the first place, which is why he figures Silas probably had the same idea to stash Stefan here. "Damon, I already agreed to hold off on telling anyone about the Mayor's death until you figure this all out, but I can't devote those kinds of resources to finding ONE person who may or may not be down there," Liz explains. Damon argues that it's a place to start, and then he gets into the REAL reason why he's so pushy about this--if Stefan has been down there all this time, it means he's been drowning over and over again while Damon's been boning his brother's ex-gf all summer. Liz pretends not to hear this admission that he's sleeping with her daughter's barely-legal best friend, and reluctantly agrees to get some deputies on the case.
When Liz leaves, he gets a call from Jeremy, and immediately asks if he managed to find Katherine. Jeremy tells him that he didn't, but luckily, Matt did. This scene cuts back and forth from Damon at the quarry, to Jeremy, Matt, and Katherine at Matt's truck, where the latter is tying Kat's wrists together with rope. Katherine deadpans, "Those blue eyes...they made me soft. I should've ripped your head off when I got the chance," Matt just rolls his eyes and ignores her as continues tying her up. Jeremy explains that she was "mid-cat-fight" with a woman who pepper-sprayed her, and lies that he "thinks" Silas compelled himself some spies. You know, since he can't exactly admit that Ghost Bonnie has been giving him all the scoop.
Damon is still suspicious of his sources, though. "How exactly did the Gilbert-Donovan Brain Trust pull all that together?" Bahahaha! Damon orders Jer and Matt to hide her, because if Silas wants her bad enough to have all these people looking out for her, then they need to keep hold of her for leverage. Before they hang up, Damon reminds Jeremy to stay out of sight, since he was the last person Silas saw with Katherine. Jeremy joins Matt and Kat, who complains about being roped up, and snarks, "Bullet would have been more effective, but we're trying to be nice. You crashed my car and left me to die!" Good point, Jeremy. And that's not even the first (or second, or third) time that Katherine has killed/nearly killed/indirectly put him in danger of dying.
Katherine does the whole, "Better you die than I/I was just protecting myself!" spiel, per usual, but Matt totally calls her out on it. "How many people have you killed using that excuse? Just be glad we got you some clothes." She tells him to quit pretending to be the hero, since she knows exactly what's going on. She reminds them that she's been in this situation her entire life: she's the leverage, the thing that everyone wants, and they're just waiting for a good time to hand her over to Silas. "I'm the freaking MOONSTONE!" Katherine pouts. I seriously about died laughing at that one--I'm glad that the show is finally making fun of itself for that moonstone thing. I remember seeing an interview with Ian at some con, where he complained about all of the words that are constantly overused on this show: "moonstone," "doppelganger," "heightened emotions," "sire-bond," etc.
(via arabian @ LJ)
Elena and Caroline have just showed up to their first Applied Microbio class, where they run into Jesse, who is sitting in the front row. He calls Caro "Blow-Off Girl," and asks her how the hell they managed to get into this class as freshmen. Caroline stammers out a pretty hilarious lie. "What? I love....[looks at class title on chalkboard] Applied Microbiology. It's, like, my favorite biology! You know, little things are just so...cute!" Jesse asks her if she's going to the bonfire that night; "Or are you just gonna get reeeally close and then turn around and leave again?" Elena smiles and assures him that she'll be there, which makes Jesse smile. As they leave, Elena gives him a thumbs up, which earns her a stern look from Caroline as they take their seats in the back of the room. Elena reminds her that she was the one who said she wanted to make bad boy-related decisions. "He's cute, he's interested, and most importantly, unlike Tyler, he's HERE." Oooh, burn!
Dr. Maxfield saunters into the lecture hall and takes his place at the front of the classroom as he begins his lecture. Weirdly, there is a rifle AND what looks like a glass of beer or similarly brackish water sitting on the table in front of him. WTF is THAT all about? Anyway, he introduces himself, and jokes that while his name is Wes, they should call him Dr. Maxfield, and colaims they will all understand when they graduate from med school. Then, he brings up the bonfire that night, and gives them a little history lesson about Whitmore College. "Whitmore was founded as a hospital during the Civil War. Deadiest war in American history--over 600,000 casualties. Disease was so prevalent that once a week, they had to gather all the dead, rotting bodies, put them in a pile, and light the whole thing on fire. So, tonight, when you're getting drunk and partying, stop for a second, close your eyes, and imagine the rancid smell of a hundred rotting corpses."
Caroline and Elena side-eye their new and super-creepy professor, but that doesn't stop them from giggling and whispering about how hot the guy is, as he introduces the class to microbiology. "--because that rancid smell comes from a very specific bacteria. Isn't that right, chatty girls in the back?" If you remember the many times Elena has been called on in class in the past, you already know that she's going to clam up and embarrassingly say that she has no idea. That wipes the smile off of both of their faces pretty quickly. It doesn't help that I don't think any of the recent high school grads in the show (Elena, Caroline, Bonnie, Matt, Tyler) have done homework since they were juniors. Dr. Maxfield calls them out on being freshman who should be in Bio 101 down the hall, rather than this upper-level pre-med class, and points them to the door. The girls wiggle awkwardly in their seats before they end up leaving the class.
Afterward, Elena calls Damon up to report how she and Caroline were basically mortified in front of an entire lecture hall of upperclassmen. Damon asks if she wants him to beat the hot professor up, but Elena hilariously tells him "not yet," since she still needs to get the information about Megan and what he knows about vampires, first. Damon doesn't understand why she doesn't just compel him to tell her everything, but Elena reminds him that since he seems to be part of a vampire cover-up, he probably knows about vervain, too. He then suggests violence, threats, and torture, but Elena's not very game for any of those plans. "You do realize that you are dating a reformed serial killer, right?" Bahahahahaha. Elena asks him what a hero would do, but Damon scoffs, all, "How would I know?" Though, deep inside, we all know that he wants to be the hero SO BADLY. And has been the hero, on more than one occasion.
Silas-as-Stefan approaches her out of nowhere, which causes Elena to say, "Stefan?" into the phone. Damon thinks she's referring to Stefan as a hero, per their conversation, but she happily informs him that Stefan is actually there with her. Stilas mind-whammies her into hanging up before Damon can say something like, "That's not Stefan, it's Silas, ABORT ABORT ABORT!" Ohhhh sheeit. Stilas smiles at Elena and lies that he knows she's mad that he didn't call, so he decided to come apologize in person. Elena hugs him tight, and orders him to never do that again, because she thought something awful happened to him. (Which, it totally did, but she doesn't know that.) Silas is a huge dick who gets off on toying with people, so he says, "Well, something terrible DID happen to me--you fell in love with my brother." Harsh toke, dude!
Elena winces as that dig, so Stilas adds that he can't be blamed for wanting to put some space between them for a bit. Elena gets it, and asks where he's been all this time. Stilas decides to stir some shit up even more, and assures her that it's not important, and that Damon can just fill her in later. She's stunned that he has already talked to Damon, because she literally just got off the phone with him, and he didn't mention it. Stilas twists the proverbial knife a little bit. "Oh, weird. Maybe he has his hands full with the whole, you know, Jeremy situation." Elena rages piques significantly as she asks what exactly happened to her little bro, but Stilas is all, "Oh, it's not a big deal, Jeremy just got expelled." SILAS YOU LITTLE SHIT OMG. Elena's brain short-circuits at this revelation, so Stilas lies even MORE, and says that Damon and Jeremy got into a fight, so Jeremy bolted, which is why Stilas is there--he wants Elena to help him find her brother. I am really hoping that it's just Silas' mind control that is making her not question this obviously shady story, because omg Elena, you are smarter than this!
Katherine has just awoken in the backseat of Matt's truck, as Matt stops for gas. Katherine is all stiff and crampy from being cooped up in the car, but Matt won't let her get out, because as soon as he's done filling up, they're getting back on the road. Katherine seems to be coming down with a cold or something, and complains that she's dying. To be honest, if I were in her situation, I would probably take my chances and try to become a vampire again. Can you imagine having to deal with getting the flu after 600+ years of being resistant to all known diseases? Not to mention losing your super strength/speed/wound healing/endurance that you've come to rely on for survival. Katherine can't even compel people into being friends with her anymore! Basically, being human sucks in this universe, and Katherine is hating it so hard.
Anyway, Jeremy tells Kat that she isn't getting out of the car just because she has a little headache, which pleases Katherine not a bit. "Then maybe I can get out of the car because I need to pee? Like, in a bathroom, like a lady." I love how old-fashioned our Katerina can be sometimes. It's easy to forget that she came of age in rural Bulgaria while Christopher Columbus was sailing the ocean blue. Sorry, I have a lot of feelings about my Petrova doppelgängers. Moving on, f'realsies!
Jeremy finally relents and unties Katherine with orders to hurry her cute little ass up. Katherine has one more request. "My throat is REALLY scratchy. And my head hurts, like, right here. [points to forehead] When I cough, it's green. [opens mouth and sticks out tongue] So, get me some stuff for all that." Guess they didn't have Nyquil back in the 1400s. Jeremy refuses, since he can't afford being seen, considering that everyone knows that Kat is with him, but Matt, surely sick of the bickering, eventually caves and offers to go in to buy it. She heads to the restroom, which is like a slightly-fancier Port-A-Potty, as Matt goes inside the gas station to pay for the cough medicine. Of course, while Jeremy's not looking, Kat sneaks out of the bathroom, and once she sees that both of the boys are occupied, she scampers away.
(via arabian)
The clerk who is ringing Matt up notices Katherine running as he glances out the window, and asks Matt, "Is that Elena Gilbert? Or Katherine Pierce?" OH SHIT! The clerk reaches for the phone, but Matt grabs it from him and throws it on the floor as he yells for Jeremy to grab Katherine and run. The clerk retaliates by pulling out a shotgun and aiming it at him. Luckily for him, Matt learned a lot when he was helping with Jeremy's hunter training, and is actually a decent fighter. He manages to snatch the gun from the guy and knocks him out by beating him in the head with the butt of it. Jeremy runs after Katherine, but she's super slow now, so it takes no time at all for him to catch up and grab her. He shakes her by the shoulders as he yells, "Stop. Running," and drags her back to the truck.
Damon apparently left for Whitmore as soon as he realized that Elena was with Silas, and walks right into her dorm room without knocking in order to look for her. Caroline was expecting Elena, and isn't pleased when she sees Damon instead. "Damon! Towel! Knock!" Damon: "Caroline. No one cares. No. Hey, where's Elena?" Caroline has no idea, but figures she's doing Nancy Drew duty at the bonfire. Damon confesses that Silas is here, and pretending to be Stefan, as he throws her some clothes and orders her to get dressed. Caroline accepts this news about as you would expect. "I thought that Stefan dropped his body into the quarry..." Damon's like, "You and me both, girl," and throws more clothes at her in an attempt to get her moving. Caroline starts to put the pieces together, and she makes her own confession that Elena has been having weird feelings that something was up with Stefan all summer. This is news to Damon, but since he hid all this stuff from Elena, he swallows that bitter pill down and reiterates that they NEED to find Elena like, PRONTO.
Stilas and Elena are wandering around campus as Stilas tries to call Jeremy on her phone. He informs her that Jeremy's still not answering, and tells her than he'll keep hold of her phone in case he calls back, which, again, doesn't seem to really throw up any red flags for Elena at all. She does ask why he is so worried about Jeremy, so Stilas lies that he's just cleaning up Damon's messes, per usual. Elena can't believe Damon thought she wasn't going to find out about this stuff, but Stilas points out that she shouldn't be surprised. "I just figured we were at a place where he wouldn't have to lie to me. [beat] I probably shouldn't be talking about this with you," Elena explains, but Stilas assures her that it's fine, and tells her he knows exactly what she's thinking. Yup, not creepy at all. Stilas gets a text from an anonymous person, which reads, "Katherine Pierce. Route 9." Stilas informs Elena that Jeremy was seen on Route 9, and asks if she knows where he could possibly be going. Elena is confused, but does recall that there's an old campsite that they used to camp out when they were kids. Then, she realizes how hinky this whole situation is, and is like, "Wait, who texted you?"
Damon is walking around campus too, looking for Elena, where Silas catches up with him. "Hello, brother. But I suppose 'distant nephew' is probably more accurate." So Silas didn't have children? That is interesting, so the Salvatore Bros are descended from Silas' brother or sister? SO MANY QUESTIONS. Damon grabs Silas by the neck and demands to know where Elena is, but Silas mind-whammies him into letting him go. Though, to Damon's credit, he does fight it pretty hard. "There you go. Look, I get why you like her. I mean, I have a soft spot for brunettes, too. What I don't get is why SHE likes YOU." Damon hilariously deadpans, "That's 'cause you haven't had sex with me." BAHAHAHA.
Also, does that mean that Silas' true love is a Petrova? Like, maybe Tatia wasn't actually the original Petrova, but a doppelgänger herself? I kind of hope not, tbh. And if that is the case, did Esther know that Tatia was a doppelgänger when she turned her kids into vampires? That would have made it super convenient for spells, since it would always have a loophole. ANYAY, Damon is understandably skeptical that Silas came all this way just to talk to Elena, and Silas agrees that wouldn't really make much sense, but yet again, he plays the whole, "But if I told you my plan, it would ruin the fun!" game. He wishes Damon a good night at the bonfire and leaves him to deal with mess Silas just made for him.
Caroline and Damon are discussing their current predicament as they show up to the bonfire. Caro is pretty confused as to why Silas would want to hurt Elena, but Damon explains that it's actually that Silas wants to hurt DAMON, since Damon has been preventing Silas from doing whatever he needs to do with Katherine. (My guess is that her blood is the cure, or could be used to make a cure!) Caroline helpfully reminds her BFF's BF that this all could have been avoided had he just told Elena what was up, but I mean, he only kept it from her for like, a day. I can understand why he would want to see if he could resolve it himself first before including anyone else.
As Damon sasses her back, he accidentally runs into some dude, who is all, "Watch where you're going, douche!" Damon is SO not in the mood for games, and throttles the guy, but Care-Bear thankfully steps in and compels the kid to forget about it and go away. She admonishes Damon and tells him he needs to chill the fuck out, but he's got a pretty legit reason to be so wound-up--since Silas can mind-whammy anything and everything, regardless of whether they're on vervain, that means EVERYONE he's interacted with in some way could possibly be working as a spy for him, and thus they cannot trust anyone.
Meanwhile, Elena is at a different location at the bonfire, and tries to pour herself a beer from the keg, though the tap is giving her some trouble. Jesse swoops in to help her, and fills the cup for her. When he hands it back to her, she drains it in one, which seems to impress him. She blames it on "boyfriend drama," and Jesse sympathizes with her. "Wow, boyfriend drama, kicked out of class...today's not your day!" She asks what the deal is with the professor, whom Jesse refers to as "Dr. Dickfield," and he tells her he'll fill her in on everything she needs to know if she helps him grab more firewood.
He leads her to a little shed as he explains that he's had Dr. Maxfield for a handful of classes. "He's a jerk, but he's brilliant, so I'll give him a pass." Elena declares him both brilliant and creepy, which makes Jesse chuckle. Supposedly, according to Jesse, there's a rumor that he's a member of a mysterious secret society on campus that meets several times a week at Whitmore House. That would explain why Elena and Caroline couldn't get in to the party without an invite. This entire time, Jesse has been fiddling around with a tree branch that would make a pretty good stake, and I spent the entire scene thinking he was onto her somehow and was planning on stabbing her with it. Am I just paranoid, or is this guy shady as hell? Damon seems to think the latter, too, because he zoops in and punches Jesse in the head, which knocks him right out. Elena is like, "Damon! What the hell," while Caroline pouts, "Seriously? That's Jesse. I kind of liked him!" Oh Caro, you have barely even showed him the slightest of interest, come on now.
At the campsite, Katherine is shivering next the fire and stares down the shotguns that are laying across from her. Jeremy and Matt return from wherever they were, and baby Gilbert warns Kat not to even think about it when he sees that she's eyeing them. Katherine scoffs at the idea of her using a gun, because she's never needed to learn. "I was much more deadly." Jeremy rudely points out that past tense in that statement, and Matt, who must be pretty sick of their bickering, decides to go get more firewood in order to escape them for a bit.
Katherine is miserable, basically. "I survived childbirth, the death of my entire family, and 500 years of running from an immortal hybrid. You can understand why I'm a little upset that I'm on the verge of being defeated by a sinus infection!" She coughs and shivers and tries to warm herself by the fire. Jeremy, who is a pretty sympathetic person due to the huge amount of tragedy in his short life, kindly walks over to drape a blanket over her shoulders with narry a word. Katherine, cold and dead on the inside as she is, isn't unmoved by this nice gesture, either.
Matt is carrying around a lantern as he looks for firewood when Silas appears behind him. Silas stares him down, and compels him. "Not a word out of you. You can't talk, and you can't scream." Matt looks confused for a minute, and then laughs. "Yeah, actually, I can." He yells at Jeremy to run, and we cut briefly to them to see that they do before we return to Matt and Silas, the latter of whom is super pissed that he can't control him. He demands to know why he can't get into Matt's head, and literally grabs it in an attempt to read his thoughts. Matt's face is like, SCREAMING, "Can everyone just stop playing around inside my skull? Pleeease?" Pobrecito! We get a tiny flashback to the alley last week, where Nadia and Gregor did some crazy magic on our Pudding Pop. "Now I see why. Somebody's already in there. Why are you watching me, Traveler? Odpowiedz mi! [Answer me!]" He mutters something that I can't understand, and then angrily snaps Matt's neck. Thankfully, he's wearing his Gilbert ring, so no real cause for concern or anger. Not yet, anyway. Also, since when does Silas speak Czech? Pretty sure that wasn't even a language when he was put in his tomb.
After a few seconds, Matt wakes up with a gasp and looks around. He sees Jeremy and Katherine running through the woods, and calls out for them, but they fly right past him like he wasn't even there. Bonnie appears out of nowhere and speaks to him with a sad look on her face. "Freaky, isn't it? The feeling...the void...the emptiness." Matt, who hasn't seen Bonnie since graduation, asks her what the fuck is going on. She informs him that he's on the Other Side, which is basically the real world, only no one can see or hear you and you're all alone, unless your BFF has died and come back to life, that is, like Jeremy. Although, it's better to be a witch on the Other Side than it is to be a vampire or werewolf or hybrid, because witches can visit each other and anyone else over there, but everyone else is all alone, unless they're visited by a witch. Or at least, that's how I understand it.
Bonnie explains that basically, when you die wearing the Gilbert ring, it brings your spirit to the Other Side temporarily. Then, in order to come back, you have to reconnect your spirit with your body. Matt points out that his body is nowhere near where they are, but Bonnie has an explanation for that, too. "That's because each time you die, you wake up farther and farther away from it...and you wander around the Other Side until you find it." That explains why Alaric was taking so long to come back near the end of his life, and why he wasn't completely healed when he came back the last couple of times he died, either. Matt, who is starting to get suspicious, asks Bonnie how he can see/talk to her if he's on the Other Side. Bonnie is awkwardly like, "Yeah, so about that..."
Elena and Damon have made it back to Elena and Caroline's dorm room, where Damon begins his apology for not immediately telling her about what's been going on in Mystic Falls since she's been gone. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for him, Elena's more interested in sexy times, and pushes him down on a chair. She straddles and starts to kiss him, which his downstairs brain is totally into, but his upstairs brain knows that this is definitely Dangerville. He pulls away and tries to get her to stop rending his garments for a minute so they can talk. "As much as I would like to do this right now..." Elena ignores him, and smiles as she picks up one of Megan's bottle of protein water and pours the bottle down his throat. Damon's mouth burns immediately, and as he coughs the water up, it spills out onto his bare chest and scalds him there as well. This is a little kinky, even for them, so he correctly assumes that Silas has gotten into her head.
(via arabian)
As he asks her what he compelled her to do, she picks up a field hockey stick (wait, which one of them plays field hockey?) and breaks it in half. "Get you alone, weaken you, and then kill you," she responds, as she holds her new makeshift stake menacingly near his chest. She pours more vervain water down his gullet, but he wisely spits the water back at her, which scalds HER bare chest. As you recall, pain and certain strong emotions can bring you out of Silas' compulsion, like when Rebekah fully slapped Caroline in the face, so the burns brings Elena out of Silas' mind control as well. She automatically starts apologizing, and asks him WTF is happening to her, so he admits that it was Silas. "Before you ask, no, he's not in the quarry. It's a common misconception. You talked to him today." Elena can't believe this, because she has no idea how powerful he's become, and reminds Damon that she walked with him in a crowd of people, hugged him, and talked to him about Damon. She then realizes that if he's been able to act like Stefan this whole time, then Stefan isn't just gone, he's MISSING, and demands that he tell her what happened.
Her face looks furious, and Damon looks pretty scared of her. "Can we talk about this when you don't have that murder-y look in your eyes?" Elena admits that he's right, and bellows, "Every time I look at you, all I wanna do is KILL you." Damon deduces that Silas' made Elena pissed at Damon on purpose so he could use that anger as a trigger for his mind-control, and urges her to try to resist it. Elena doesn't think she can, and because she's Elena Gilbert, Warrior Princess, she grabs a fireplace poker, sits herself down in a chair, and STABS HERSELF THROUGH THE LEG with the poker so she can't move. "Tell me what's going on," she demands. HOLY SHIT, anyone who says that Elena is weak is an idiot, because that is a pretty fucking intense thing to do to protect your loved ones. Remember when she stabbed herself in the gut to call Elijah's bluff WHEN SHE WAS HUMAN? Or when she purposely set herself on fire to call the Salvatore Bros' bluff when they were torturing the humanity back into her? Girlfriend is not afraid to use her body when she needs to.
Caroline returns to the shed where Damon KO'd Jesse, and admits that the only thing close to ice that she could find was a packaged popsicle. As she holds it up to Jesse's temple, she also apologizes for her "aggro friend's" behavior, and adds that he has anger issues. "And a serious right hook," Jessie exclaims. "But hey, it got us alone together, so that's a win." Caroline ankle-dips a bit, and when he lifts a hand to brush her hair from her face, she confesses that she has a boyfriend. Jesse does a decent job of covering up his disappointment, and asks where he is. Caroline explains that he's not here, because he deferred a semester. "You don't have to say anything. I know how these things go--people go to school and they drift apart." Jesse argues that that isn't ALWAYS the case, which seems to perk Caro up a little bit, especially when he adds that though relationships change, sometimes what you had still means something.
(via arabian)
That's when he gets to the buzzkill part of the speech, where he obviously speaks from personal experience. "And, sometimes when you're thinking all those things, your girlfriend is moving on, and sleeping with somebody back home, and has no intention of getting back with you." Caroline apologizes for what happened, and dredging up those memories, but Jesse shrugs it off. "It was a while ago. And honestly, until the worst actually happened, I wouldn't listen to anybody telling me otherwise. I could always find an excuse. So, I get it." Caroline smiles and continues to ice his cheek, and you can almost see the little hearts floating around her head. I still don't trust that guy though, I just get a really hinky feeling from him.
Katherine and Jeremy finally manage to make it to Matt's truck, and he tosses the keys to her with orders to get into the truck and drive. Kat doesn't understand why he's not coming too, but he reminds her that he can't just leave Matt. She makes her disapproval of his plan well known. "Wait, how do you think I survived 500 years? It wasn't because I was a vampire--it's because I never looked back. Don't be dumb! Survive." Jeremy snits, "That's why people treat you like an object, and not like a person," which is way harsh, but there is some truth there. Katherine might have more people willing to help her now that she's weak and vulnerable, if she wasn't always fucking people over to save herself. Although, she is right when she says that her actions are the reason she's still alive today.
Bonnie is wandering around the woods with Matt to help him find his body. She tries to play it off like her death hasn't been affecting her, but she's not fooling anyone. "It actually hasn't been so bad. I have Jeremy, and I see Grams sometimes. Last night with my dad was the first really hard time...I'll be okay. I just have to get past these next few days." Matt, who is probably the most empathetic person on this show, assures her that she doesn't have to pretend like this doesn't completely suck. It's not cool that she died, or that her dad died, so she should be allowed to be sad and/or angry about it. Bonnie doesn't get the point of feeling bad about her death, though, because there's nothing she can do about it now. That doesn't stop her from starting to cry, though. Matt tells her again how sorry he is that this happened, and gives her a Pudding Pop hug as she sobs into his shoulder. Aw, Bonnie! Aw, Matt!
(via arabian)
Jeremy has doubled back to find Matt, and sees his body laying in the clearing. Of course, his first instinct is to check to make sure he's wearing the Gilbert ring, which he is. Silas has been watching from afar, and approaches Jeremy from behind. "Now, if my best friend died, I'd at least PRETEND to cry. Which leads me to believe he's not really dead. I take it that tacky old ring somehow protects him?" Jeremy taunts him by reminding him that he can't get inside his head to find out, considering he's a hunter, and is thus immune to his tricks. Silas taunts him for not getting understanding how Silas works; if Silas can read his mind, that at least gives him a reason to keep Jeremy alive. Since he can't, he's just going to kill him instead to make his life easier. Then, Jeremy gets SUPER AWESOME.
"You can try, but none of your abilities work on me, so right now, you're nothing. Slower than a vampire, weaker than a vampire. I, on the other hand, am a hunter." He picks up a hatchet that is lying on the ground, and adds, "Plus, I work out." He's not lying there, have you seen that kid's muscles? They are insane! Steven R. McQueen must literally work out 12 hours a day, and it shooooows, because I have never found him more attractive. I'm not even usually attracted to muscley dudes. Jer throws the hatchet at Silas, but he dodges it, so Baby Gilbert settles for just lunging at him and pushing him against a tree. Silas shoves him away, and they just start punching the shit out of each other, each blocking the other's hits until they finally reach an impasse. Silas tries to end it by headbutting him in the face, and I must ask--how did he get so good at fighting? He's only been awake for like, 4-5 months, after being entombed for 2,000 years. Did he learn from reading everyone's minds all day, or did he compel his way into some free MMA classes or something? Maybe fighting skills are just intuitive when you're a vampire/immortal? Sigh. I'm never going to get answers to all these questions, am I?
Anyway, Silas launches Matt's lantern at Jeremy, but he dodges it, and eventually Jer gets the upper hand when he grabs Silas in a headlock from behind. This is where it gets super confusing, but also still pretty awesome, and I'm guessing I'm just thinking about this too hard. Silas breaks off a branch from the tree in front of him and reminds Jeremy that though he may be slow and weak, he's still immortal. He demonstrates by fully IMPALING HIMSELF THROUGH THE CHEST with the branch, which goes straight through him AND Jeremy's shoulder too. How does Jeremy not die/get seriously injured from that wound? IT WENT RIGHT THROUGH HIM. There were no vamps around to heal him, and if hunters are immune to injury via Silas, then Jeremy wouldn't have died in the first place.
Remember how I said I make up headcannon so I don't get pissed off at huge plot-holes like this? Here's an example! I've decided that Damon realized that the three remaining humans in Mystic Falls (Jeremy, Matt, Katherine) are basically danger magnets who risk certain death just by getting out of bed daily, so he decided to give Jeremy his vampire blood in bags or vials or something for Jeremy to keep with him just in case of such emergencies as this, where they're seriously wounded and need to be healed, but there are no vampires around to help. There! All better. Moving on!
ANYWAY, Jer groans in pain and collapses on all fours once Silas has removed the branch, and he watches Silas pick up the hatchet off the ground. He's about to, I don't know, hack Jeremy's head off or something, but for once, Katherine comes to the rescue! She shoots Silas in the chest with Matt's shotgun, which amazes Jeremy. "I thought you didn't know how to use that?" Katherine: "I figured it out." YESS! Go Kat! She shoots Silas again in the chest, and he falls to the ground.
(via arabian)
Back to Elena and Caroline's dorm room. Elena is still impaled to her chair, while Damon remains tied up to his own chair. Elena ruminates about Bonnie and how awful it is that her dad died, and figures she must have tried to call her after Silas stole her phone. She asks him if she's okay, but Damon has no idea, because he's been a little distracted with other things. Elena gets pissed again. "My best friend's dad died. It's pretty damn important!" Damon's like, "Yeah, well, so is protecting your brother, FINDING mine, and figuring out what the hell Silas wants with Katherine." Elena shouts, "I JUST left. What the hell is wrong with you?" which made me laugh SO HARD, even though I hate that they're fighting. Oh Elena, you're the best.
Damon reminds her that her anger is peeking out again, and she needs to remember that that's the trigger for her Damon-murdering compulsion. Elena starts to freak out, and honestly, I'm surprised it took this long for it to happen. "My brother got expelled! You've got him playing 'white-knight' to Katherine, who's tried to kill me! Repeatedly! Stefan's been...he's been suffering, for months, while I've been rolling around with you, a self-proclaimed serial killer. Oh my god! Oh my god!" Damon's face when she says this is absolutely heartbreaking, and so is Elena's next move, which is pulling the gas line from the fireplace and filling the room with it.
Damon's starting to freak out now, and tries to talk her down. "Elena, that is the gas. Stop. You don't really wanna kill me, Elena. You have to realize this before you're gonna break Silas' compulsion." Elena shouts that she can't, because all she can think about is killing him, but Damon urges her to think about something stronger than her desire to kill him, otherwise they're both going to die. And probably at least a few of the fellow dorm mates, I'd imagine. Elena grabs a pack of matches from the mantel, but luckily for everyone, Elena is terrible at lighting matches when she's upset, as you might recall from last season. Damon, desperate to stop her, decides to switch topics. "Stefan. Stefan! Think about Stefan. Caroline told me you've been worried about him, that you had a pit in your stomach. Describe it. Tell me about it!" Elena mutters that she can't, because AWKWARD, but Damon insists that she does it, so she thinks about it for a moment.
"It's like, it's like a chill, but I can't explain it. It's like, I can feel him. He's trying to reach out to me, but I don't know where he is, and I can't understand what he's trying to say. All I know is he's scared, and he's lonely, and he's in a lot of pain." She starts to cry. "He's in a lot of pain, we have to find him!" Damon swears to her that they will, and Elena realizes that her rage is gone. She drops the matchbook onto the floor, as Caroline enters the room to find them both tied to their chairs. She looks around in confusion before she deadpans, "I think we need to set some ground rules for when boyfriends come to visit." LOL FOREVERRRRRR.
Bonnie and Matt are still wondering around the woods, trying to find Matt's body. He thinks it has been moved by someone, because, weirdly, he can feel it somehow, and feels drawn to it. Bonnie finds it, and points it out to him; it's laying in the bed of Matt's truck, where Jeremy and Katherine are surrounding him, waiting for him to wake up. He turns back to Bonnie. "So, if this happens every time I die with the Gilbert ring, the second I go back, I'm just gonna forget about all of this. I'll forget that you're dead." Bonnie gives him a look, but says nothing.
Matt decides to get serious, and while he apologizes again for the fact that she and her dad are dead, he insists that she can't keep this a secret anymore. "How are you gonna deal with his death if you can't even deal with your own?" Again, Bonnie just smiles, but doesn't respond to what he says; she simply admits that it was really good to see and talk to him again. Matt nods at her, and turns to walk toward his body. He looks at it for a moment before he lays his spectral hand on his physical one, and he instantly awakes with a gasp in his own body. Katherine kindly snarks, "Welcome to the land of the living!" Matt naturally asks what the hell happened, so Jeremy tries to explain. "Yeah, Silas killed you, tried to kill me, and then--" Katherine cuts him off. "I shot him. So, we're even. No more whining, let's go! Silas won't be down for long." Jeremy sees Bonnie lurking by the trees, and tells them he'll BRB, under the guise of retrieving his hatchet. When he meets with her, he asks her if she's okay, and she finally admits that she isn't:
(via arabian)
AW, JEREMY! Bonnie smiles at him, and it looks like she's going to try to hug him, but stops herself, and turns to walk away instead. I think she realizes that she's got some introspection to do by herself. Meanwhile, Matt and Katherine gawk in confusion at Jeremy having a conversation with himself. Or, so I'm guessing. Jeremy really needs to learn subtlety. He could at least pretend he's talking on the phone or something when he has to talk to Bonnie in public, kinda like House did that one time he was hallucinating that Amber was talking to him/following him around on House M.D. Do any of you remember that? God, that show was awesome until the end.
We return to the gas station, where that same clerk that Matt KO'd earlier is STILL working at the counter. Silas walks in, and the clerk asks him if he managed to find the girl he was looking for. "Yes, I did...and then she shot me. So, I'm a little bit angry, and I'm a little bit hungry, but luckily, you can help me out with one of those things." He grabs a Big Gulp-style cup and sets it on the counter, and mind-whammies the guy into draining an artery into it. Does Silas not have fangs? Or is he just feel he's above feeding on people directly? As the guy drains his blood for him, Nadia and Gregor walk in. I'm just going to transcribe this dialogue too, because it has quite a bit of information in it.
OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT. This is pretty intense, but I'm still not sure how I feel about the Gypsies/Travelers thing. I'll get into that in the notes, though.
In front of their dorm at Whitmore, Elena loads a suitcase into Damon's car, with Caroline's assistance. Elena assures her roomie that she'll be back, even if she's not sure when. Caroline completely understands, and only asks that she call her the second she hears from Bonnie, because she's left her a hundred messages with no reply. Elena promises she will, and the girls hug tightly. Before she leaves, Caroline assures Elena that they'll find Stefan, which does seem to comfort her a bit. They say their goodbyes, and Caroline goes back to their room.
Which gives Dr. Dickfield (Maxfield) the opportunity to approach Elena and be cryptic and vague. "I didn't think Elena Gilbert would give up so easily. Sorry about being a hard-ass earlier. It's kind of my thing. [beat] You're Grayson Gilbert's daughter, aren't you?" Elena is surprised that he knew her dad, but Wes admits that he only knew of him. He claims that Grayson was a legend around campus, and says that he's studied all of his research. "I can only hope to do the kind of work he did." Elena asks him if that means that her father forged death certificates too, which makes him chuckle. He jokes, "And here I thought you were just passionate about microbiology!" He invites her to his office hours so they can chat, but she begs off with the excuse that her plate is a little too full right now, so he just shrugs and tells her to look him up when he's less busy.
Damon walks over to his car as Dr. Maxfield walks away, and makes his twinge of jealousy well-known. "Well, I guess that's how a hero would do it. Honesty--who'd've thunk it? Are you the least bit curious about the whole 'Nancy Drew and the Creepster-Professor' thing?" Elena shrugs it off and says Caroline will take over, because she can't stay here doing her normal-college-student thing when Stefan is out there and hurting. Damon pulls a ring out of his pocket and hands it to her, which Elena identifies as Stefan's daylight ring, which Silas apparently stole before he threw him in the quarry and has been wearing as part of his cover. "Snagged it from Silas yesterday. And, for the record, I am secure enough in our relationship that you having psychic dreams about your ex-boyfriend does not bother me...but it still sucks." The two kiss, and Elena assures him that she loves HIM, and that even after they save Stefan, she's still going to love him. They kiss a little bit more, but their tender moment is interrupted by Damon's phone ringing. When he answers it, we can hear Liz on the other line telling him that they found something.
Cut to the woods in Mystic Falls, where Damon, Elena and Liz the Sheriff walk towards the safe that Stefan was locked in, just hanging out in the middle of a clearing. Liz explains that while they didn't find anything in the quarry, a deputy did find this HERE, which is a few miles away from the quarry itself. How the hell did it get there? It's not like it washed up onto shore. Ugh, I hope there's a better excuse than just, "Oh look, it's on land now!" Anyway, Liz didn't want to open it, and for good reason. "If Stefan's been in there for three months...chances are, he's hungry." Yeah, Liz, you should probably RUN FAR FAR AWAY for that very reason. She doesn't listen to me, though, and watches as Damon opens the safe door. Unfortunately, Stefan is not inside. Instead, there is a dead man's corpse, whose neck has been ripped out, vampire-style. Elena gasps and states the obvious, which is that dude totally isn't Stefan. Damon sighs. "Well, you were right. He was hungry. I bet he still is." YESSSSS RIPPER STEFAN 4.0! I AM SO PUMPED.
Next week: A very-hungry Ripper!Stefan feeds on various unsuspecting locals, and Katherine and Elena have some more psychic dreams about him.
Click HERE to read the next TVD recap!
[screencaps from this Screencapped.net album]
NOTES/SPECULATION: (Just a reminder--as always, if you're not big on spoilers, or speculation that might end up actually happening in the show, you may want to skip this part)
-Okay, so full disclosure--I am not Romani, and any knowledge I have about them is what I've learned online, so I am definitely not someone who really has the expertise or experience to comment on the culture as a whole and whether or not TVD is portraying it accurately. However, when I looked up "Travelers", it seems that the term usually refers to nomadic people in Ireland, Scotland, and England, some of whom are Rom/Romani or related to them, but many of them are not. Since Matt and Rebekah met Nadia in Prague (Czech Republic), it seems safe to say that she and Gregor are probably Czech as well, so I don't really understand why they would be called Travelers, if they're not from the British Isles. If anyone has a better understanding of this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know/correct me, I definitely do not want to be talking out my ass here, and I would much appreciate the explanation.
-That said, I am very intrigued by Nadia's agenda, and I can't wait to know more about what her deal is. I'm going to go on ahead and guess that she's going to be some kind of triple agent who is going to play every side in this battle. Exciting!
-I don't really know how I feel about this whole doppelgänger-connection thing that seems to be happening, because although we just learned that Stefan is also a doppelgänger quite recently, that doesn't change the fact that he has been a doppelgänger this entire time. So, why is this connection just manifesting itself now, both in the weird feelings that Elena has been getting, and the psychic-dreams that both Elena and Katherine appear to get next week in "Original Sin?"
-It seems like Caroline is starting to like Jesse now, but I still don't trust him. I don't know what it is, but in shows like TVD and Teen Wolf, you learn quickly that every new person is automatically shady until proven otherwise, and I just have this nagging suspicion that he's going to be trouble. I'm guessing he's involved in Dr. Dickfield's secret vampire-hating society and it's going to be a hot mess, I can feel it!
-I was really impressed by Damon this week, and his actions demonstrated yet again why I love Damon and Elena together so much. Don't get me wrong, I am an equal-opportunity shipper when it comes to this show, just like with Teen Wolf. I quite literally ship everyone with everyone, which included Stefan and Elena back in the day. It wasn't until season 4 that I really started becoming disillusioned by their relationship. This episode kind of reminded me as to why. Remember when Elena was just turned, and Stefan got mad at Elena for going to Damon for help instead of him? He let his jealousy get in the way of the fact that Elena was literally starving and rejecting all food sources, partially due to the fact that he wanted to just pretend that everything was cool when it wasn't. Here, Damon, seeing that Elena was about to kill herself in the process of killing him due to Silas' compulsion, had her think about Stefan and her feelings about him, and told her to tell him everything in order to break the compulsion and protect them both, even though you could tell he didn't want to hear any of it. He cares more about her than he does his own feelings, and is more than willing to deal with unpleasantness if it means it will help her/them as a whole. I dig it! He has grown up so much since the first season.
-One of the best things about TVD is that they (usually) cycle through plotlines so quickly that you don't have time to get sick of them. Like, wasn't it awesome that we didn't have to go like, 6-7 episodes into this season for everyone to figure out that Stefan was actually Silas? That's why I'm hoping that this whole "Bonnie pretends like she's still alive and lies to everyone so that no one knows she's dead" arc is almost over, since it's already getting boring to me. I just want everyone to find out that Bonnie's dead so they can switch gears and start working on a way to bring her back, since they don't stand a chance against anyone without a competent witch on their side. Make it happen, TVD writers!
Back in Mystic Falls, we return to the quarry, but this time we are hanging out with Damon and Liz the Sheriff, and not Stefan. Liz informs him that she is aware she promised to help find Stefan, but Stephen's Quarry is enormous, so it's not like she can just drain the whole thing. Damon understands that, because that's what drew him to wanting to stash Silas here in the first place, which is why he figures Silas probably had the same idea to stash Stefan here. "Damon, I already agreed to hold off on telling anyone about the Mayor's death until you figure this all out, but I can't devote those kinds of resources to finding ONE person who may or may not be down there," Liz explains. Damon argues that it's a place to start, and then he gets into the REAL reason why he's so pushy about this--if Stefan has been down there all this time, it means he's been drowning over and over again while Damon's been boning his brother's ex-gf all summer. Liz pretends not to hear this admission that he's sleeping with her daughter's barely-legal best friend, and reluctantly agrees to get some deputies on the case.
When Liz leaves, he gets a call from Jeremy, and immediately asks if he managed to find Katherine. Jeremy tells him that he didn't, but luckily, Matt did. This scene cuts back and forth from Damon at the quarry, to Jeremy, Matt, and Katherine at Matt's truck, where the latter is tying Kat's wrists together with rope. Katherine deadpans, "Those blue eyes...they made me soft. I should've ripped your head off when I got the chance," Matt just rolls his eyes and ignores her as continues tying her up. Jeremy explains that she was "mid-cat-fight" with a woman who pepper-sprayed her, and lies that he "thinks" Silas compelled himself some spies. You know, since he can't exactly admit that Ghost Bonnie has been giving him all the scoop.
Damon is still suspicious of his sources, though. "How exactly did the Gilbert-Donovan Brain Trust pull all that together?" Bahahaha! Damon orders Jer and Matt to hide her, because if Silas wants her bad enough to have all these people looking out for her, then they need to keep hold of her for leverage. Before they hang up, Damon reminds Jeremy to stay out of sight, since he was the last person Silas saw with Katherine. Jeremy joins Matt and Kat, who complains about being roped up, and snarks, "Bullet would have been more effective, but we're trying to be nice. You crashed my car and left me to die!" Good point, Jeremy. And that's not even the first (or second, or third) time that Katherine has killed/nearly killed/indirectly put him in danger of dying.
Katherine does the whole, "Better you die than I/I was just protecting myself!" spiel, per usual, but Matt totally calls her out on it. "How many people have you killed using that excuse? Just be glad we got you some clothes." She tells him to quit pretending to be the hero, since she knows exactly what's going on. She reminds them that she's been in this situation her entire life: she's the leverage, the thing that everyone wants, and they're just waiting for a good time to hand her over to Silas. "I'm the freaking MOONSTONE!" Katherine pouts. I seriously about died laughing at that one--I'm glad that the show is finally making fun of itself for that moonstone thing. I remember seeing an interview with Ian at some con, where he complained about all of the words that are constantly overused on this show: "moonstone," "doppelganger," "heightened emotions," "sire-bond," etc.
Elena and Caroline have just showed up to their first Applied Microbio class, where they run into Jesse, who is sitting in the front row. He calls Caro "Blow-Off Girl," and asks her how the hell they managed to get into this class as freshmen. Caroline stammers out a pretty hilarious lie. "What? I love....[looks at class title on chalkboard] Applied Microbiology. It's, like, my favorite biology! You know, little things are just so...cute!" Jesse asks her if she's going to the bonfire that night; "Or are you just gonna get reeeally close and then turn around and leave again?" Elena smiles and assures him that she'll be there, which makes Jesse smile. As they leave, Elena gives him a thumbs up, which earns her a stern look from Caroline as they take their seats in the back of the room. Elena reminds her that she was the one who said she wanted to make bad boy-related decisions. "He's cute, he's interested, and most importantly, unlike Tyler, he's HERE." Oooh, burn!
Dr. Maxfield saunters into the lecture hall and takes his place at the front of the classroom as he begins his lecture. Weirdly, there is a rifle AND what looks like a glass of beer or similarly brackish water sitting on the table in front of him. WTF is THAT all about? Anyway, he introduces himself, and jokes that while his name is Wes, they should call him Dr. Maxfield, and colaims they will all understand when they graduate from med school. Then, he brings up the bonfire that night, and gives them a little history lesson about Whitmore College. "Whitmore was founded as a hospital during the Civil War. Deadiest war in American history--over 600,000 casualties. Disease was so prevalent that once a week, they had to gather all the dead, rotting bodies, put them in a pile, and light the whole thing on fire. So, tonight, when you're getting drunk and partying, stop for a second, close your eyes, and imagine the rancid smell of a hundred rotting corpses."
Caroline and Elena side-eye their new and super-creepy professor, but that doesn't stop them from giggling and whispering about how hot the guy is, as he introduces the class to microbiology. "--because that rancid smell comes from a very specific bacteria. Isn't that right, chatty girls in the back?" If you remember the many times Elena has been called on in class in the past, you already know that she's going to clam up and embarrassingly say that she has no idea. That wipes the smile off of both of their faces pretty quickly. It doesn't help that I don't think any of the recent high school grads in the show (Elena, Caroline, Bonnie, Matt, Tyler) have done homework since they were juniors. Dr. Maxfield calls them out on being freshman who should be in Bio 101 down the hall, rather than this upper-level pre-med class, and points them to the door. The girls wiggle awkwardly in their seats before they end up leaving the class.
Afterward, Elena calls Damon up to report how she and Caroline were basically mortified in front of an entire lecture hall of upperclassmen. Damon asks if she wants him to beat the hot professor up, but Elena hilariously tells him "not yet," since she still needs to get the information about Megan and what he knows about vampires, first. Damon doesn't understand why she doesn't just compel him to tell her everything, but Elena reminds him that since he seems to be part of a vampire cover-up, he probably knows about vervain, too. He then suggests violence, threats, and torture, but Elena's not very game for any of those plans. "You do realize that you are dating a reformed serial killer, right?" Bahahahahaha. Elena asks him what a hero would do, but Damon scoffs, all, "How would I know?" Though, deep inside, we all know that he wants to be the hero SO BADLY. And has been the hero, on more than one occasion.
Silas-as-Stefan approaches her out of nowhere, which causes Elena to say, "Stefan?" into the phone. Damon thinks she's referring to Stefan as a hero, per their conversation, but she happily informs him that Stefan is actually there with her. Stilas mind-whammies her into hanging up before Damon can say something like, "That's not Stefan, it's Silas, ABORT ABORT ABORT!" Ohhhh sheeit. Stilas smiles at Elena and lies that he knows she's mad that he didn't call, so he decided to come apologize in person. Elena hugs him tight, and orders him to never do that again, because she thought something awful happened to him. (Which, it totally did, but she doesn't know that.) Silas is a huge dick who gets off on toying with people, so he says, "Well, something terrible DID happen to me--you fell in love with my brother." Harsh toke, dude!
Elena winces as that dig, so Stilas adds that he can't be blamed for wanting to put some space between them for a bit. Elena gets it, and asks where he's been all this time. Stilas decides to stir some shit up even more, and assures her that it's not important, and that Damon can just fill her in later. She's stunned that he has already talked to Damon, because she literally just got off the phone with him, and he didn't mention it. Stilas twists the proverbial knife a little bit. "Oh, weird. Maybe he has his hands full with the whole, you know, Jeremy situation." Elena rages piques significantly as she asks what exactly happened to her little bro, but Stilas is all, "Oh, it's not a big deal, Jeremy just got expelled." SILAS YOU LITTLE SHIT OMG. Elena's brain short-circuits at this revelation, so Stilas lies even MORE, and says that Damon and Jeremy got into a fight, so Jeremy bolted, which is why Stilas is there--he wants Elena to help him find her brother. I am really hoping that it's just Silas' mind control that is making her not question this obviously shady story, because omg Elena, you are smarter than this!
Katherine has just awoken in the backseat of Matt's truck, as Matt stops for gas. Katherine is all stiff and crampy from being cooped up in the car, but Matt won't let her get out, because as soon as he's done filling up, they're getting back on the road. Katherine seems to be coming down with a cold or something, and complains that she's dying. To be honest, if I were in her situation, I would probably take my chances and try to become a vampire again. Can you imagine having to deal with getting the flu after 600+ years of being resistant to all known diseases? Not to mention losing your super strength/speed/wound healing/endurance that you've come to rely on for survival. Katherine can't even compel people into being friends with her anymore! Basically, being human sucks in this universe, and Katherine is hating it so hard.
Anyway, Jeremy tells Kat that she isn't getting out of the car just because she has a little headache, which pleases Katherine not a bit. "Then maybe I can get out of the car because I need to pee? Like, in a bathroom, like a lady." I love how old-fashioned our Katerina can be sometimes. It's easy to forget that she came of age in rural Bulgaria while Christopher Columbus was sailing the ocean blue. Sorry, I have a lot of feelings about my Petrova doppelgängers. Moving on, f'realsies!
Jeremy finally relents and unties Katherine with orders to hurry her cute little ass up. Katherine has one more request. "My throat is REALLY scratchy. And my head hurts, like, right here. [points to forehead] When I cough, it's green. [opens mouth and sticks out tongue] So, get me some stuff for all that." Guess they didn't have Nyquil back in the 1400s. Jeremy refuses, since he can't afford being seen, considering that everyone knows that Kat is with him, but Matt, surely sick of the bickering, eventually caves and offers to go in to buy it. She heads to the restroom, which is like a slightly-fancier Port-A-Potty, as Matt goes inside the gas station to pay for the cough medicine. Of course, while Jeremy's not looking, Kat sneaks out of the bathroom, and once she sees that both of the boys are occupied, she scampers away.
The clerk who is ringing Matt up notices Katherine running as he glances out the window, and asks Matt, "Is that Elena Gilbert? Or Katherine Pierce?" OH SHIT! The clerk reaches for the phone, but Matt grabs it from him and throws it on the floor as he yells for Jeremy to grab Katherine and run. The clerk retaliates by pulling out a shotgun and aiming it at him. Luckily for him, Matt learned a lot when he was helping with Jeremy's hunter training, and is actually a decent fighter. He manages to snatch the gun from the guy and knocks him out by beating him in the head with the butt of it. Jeremy runs after Katherine, but she's super slow now, so it takes no time at all for him to catch up and grab her. He shakes her by the shoulders as he yells, "Stop. Running," and drags her back to the truck.
Damon apparently left for Whitmore as soon as he realized that Elena was with Silas, and walks right into her dorm room without knocking in order to look for her. Caroline was expecting Elena, and isn't pleased when she sees Damon instead. "Damon! Towel! Knock!" Damon: "Caroline. No one cares. No. Hey, where's Elena?" Caroline has no idea, but figures she's doing Nancy Drew duty at the bonfire. Damon confesses that Silas is here, and pretending to be Stefan, as he throws her some clothes and orders her to get dressed. Caroline accepts this news about as you would expect. "I thought that Stefan dropped his body into the quarry..." Damon's like, "You and me both, girl," and throws more clothes at her in an attempt to get her moving. Caroline starts to put the pieces together, and she makes her own confession that Elena has been having weird feelings that something was up with Stefan all summer. This is news to Damon, but since he hid all this stuff from Elena, he swallows that bitter pill down and reiterates that they NEED to find Elena like, PRONTO.
Stilas and Elena are wandering around campus as Stilas tries to call Jeremy on her phone. He informs her that Jeremy's still not answering, and tells her than he'll keep hold of her phone in case he calls back, which, again, doesn't seem to really throw up any red flags for Elena at all. She does ask why he is so worried about Jeremy, so Stilas lies that he's just cleaning up Damon's messes, per usual. Elena can't believe Damon thought she wasn't going to find out about this stuff, but Stilas points out that she shouldn't be surprised. "I just figured we were at a place where he wouldn't have to lie to me. [beat] I probably shouldn't be talking about this with you," Elena explains, but Stilas assures her that it's fine, and tells her he knows exactly what she's thinking. Yup, not creepy at all. Stilas gets a text from an anonymous person, which reads, "Katherine Pierce. Route 9." Stilas informs Elena that Jeremy was seen on Route 9, and asks if she knows where he could possibly be going. Elena is confused, but does recall that there's an old campsite that they used to camp out when they were kids. Then, she realizes how hinky this whole situation is, and is like, "Wait, who texted you?"
Damon is walking around campus too, looking for Elena, where Silas catches up with him. "Hello, brother. But I suppose 'distant nephew' is probably more accurate." So Silas didn't have children? That is interesting, so the Salvatore Bros are descended from Silas' brother or sister? SO MANY QUESTIONS. Damon grabs Silas by the neck and demands to know where Elena is, but Silas mind-whammies him into letting him go. Though, to Damon's credit, he does fight it pretty hard. "There you go. Look, I get why you like her. I mean, I have a soft spot for brunettes, too. What I don't get is why SHE likes YOU." Damon hilariously deadpans, "That's 'cause you haven't had sex with me." BAHAHAHA.
Also, does that mean that Silas' true love is a Petrova? Like, maybe Tatia wasn't actually the original Petrova, but a doppelgänger herself? I kind of hope not, tbh. And if that is the case, did Esther know that Tatia was a doppelgänger when she turned her kids into vampires? That would have made it super convenient for spells, since it would always have a loophole. ANYAY, Damon is understandably skeptical that Silas came all this way just to talk to Elena, and Silas agrees that wouldn't really make much sense, but yet again, he plays the whole, "But if I told you my plan, it would ruin the fun!" game. He wishes Damon a good night at the bonfire and leaves him to deal with mess Silas just made for him.
Caroline and Damon are discussing their current predicament as they show up to the bonfire. Caro is pretty confused as to why Silas would want to hurt Elena, but Damon explains that it's actually that Silas wants to hurt DAMON, since Damon has been preventing Silas from doing whatever he needs to do with Katherine. (My guess is that her blood is the cure, or could be used to make a cure!) Caroline helpfully reminds her BFF's BF that this all could have been avoided had he just told Elena what was up, but I mean, he only kept it from her for like, a day. I can understand why he would want to see if he could resolve it himself first before including anyone else.
As Damon sasses her back, he accidentally runs into some dude, who is all, "Watch where you're going, douche!" Damon is SO not in the mood for games, and throttles the guy, but Care-Bear thankfully steps in and compels the kid to forget about it and go away. She admonishes Damon and tells him he needs to chill the fuck out, but he's got a pretty legit reason to be so wound-up--since Silas can mind-whammy anything and everything, regardless of whether they're on vervain, that means EVERYONE he's interacted with in some way could possibly be working as a spy for him, and thus they cannot trust anyone.
Meanwhile, Elena is at a different location at the bonfire, and tries to pour herself a beer from the keg, though the tap is giving her some trouble. Jesse swoops in to help her, and fills the cup for her. When he hands it back to her, she drains it in one, which seems to impress him. She blames it on "boyfriend drama," and Jesse sympathizes with her. "Wow, boyfriend drama, kicked out of class...today's not your day!" She asks what the deal is with the professor, whom Jesse refers to as "Dr. Dickfield," and he tells her he'll fill her in on everything she needs to know if she helps him grab more firewood.
He leads her to a little shed as he explains that he's had Dr. Maxfield for a handful of classes. "He's a jerk, but he's brilliant, so I'll give him a pass." Elena declares him both brilliant and creepy, which makes Jesse chuckle. Supposedly, according to Jesse, there's a rumor that he's a member of a mysterious secret society on campus that meets several times a week at Whitmore House. That would explain why Elena and Caroline couldn't get in to the party without an invite. This entire time, Jesse has been fiddling around with a tree branch that would make a pretty good stake, and I spent the entire scene thinking he was onto her somehow and was planning on stabbing her with it. Am I just paranoid, or is this guy shady as hell? Damon seems to think the latter, too, because he zoops in and punches Jesse in the head, which knocks him right out. Elena is like, "Damon! What the hell," while Caroline pouts, "Seriously? That's Jesse. I kind of liked him!" Oh Caro, you have barely even showed him the slightest of interest, come on now.
At the campsite, Katherine is shivering next the fire and stares down the shotguns that are laying across from her. Jeremy and Matt return from wherever they were, and baby Gilbert warns Kat not to even think about it when he sees that she's eyeing them. Katherine scoffs at the idea of her using a gun, because she's never needed to learn. "I was much more deadly." Jeremy rudely points out that past tense in that statement, and Matt, who must be pretty sick of their bickering, decides to go get more firewood in order to escape them for a bit.
Katherine is miserable, basically. "I survived childbirth, the death of my entire family, and 500 years of running from an immortal hybrid. You can understand why I'm a little upset that I'm on the verge of being defeated by a sinus infection!" She coughs and shivers and tries to warm herself by the fire. Jeremy, who is a pretty sympathetic person due to the huge amount of tragedy in his short life, kindly walks over to drape a blanket over her shoulders with narry a word. Katherine, cold and dead on the inside as she is, isn't unmoved by this nice gesture, either.
Matt is carrying around a lantern as he looks for firewood when Silas appears behind him. Silas stares him down, and compels him. "Not a word out of you. You can't talk, and you can't scream." Matt looks confused for a minute, and then laughs. "Yeah, actually, I can." He yells at Jeremy to run, and we cut briefly to them to see that they do before we return to Matt and Silas, the latter of whom is super pissed that he can't control him. He demands to know why he can't get into Matt's head, and literally grabs it in an attempt to read his thoughts. Matt's face is like, SCREAMING, "Can everyone just stop playing around inside my skull? Pleeease?" Pobrecito! We get a tiny flashback to the alley last week, where Nadia and Gregor did some crazy magic on our Pudding Pop. "Now I see why. Somebody's already in there. Why are you watching me, Traveler? Odpowiedz mi! [Answer me!]" He mutters something that I can't understand, and then angrily snaps Matt's neck. Thankfully, he's wearing his Gilbert ring, so no real cause for concern or anger. Not yet, anyway. Also, since when does Silas speak Czech? Pretty sure that wasn't even a language when he was put in his tomb.
After a few seconds, Matt wakes up with a gasp and looks around. He sees Jeremy and Katherine running through the woods, and calls out for them, but they fly right past him like he wasn't even there. Bonnie appears out of nowhere and speaks to him with a sad look on her face. "Freaky, isn't it? The feeling...the void...the emptiness." Matt, who hasn't seen Bonnie since graduation, asks her what the fuck is going on. She informs him that he's on the Other Side, which is basically the real world, only no one can see or hear you and you're all alone, unless your BFF has died and come back to life, that is, like Jeremy. Although, it's better to be a witch on the Other Side than it is to be a vampire or werewolf or hybrid, because witches can visit each other and anyone else over there, but everyone else is all alone, unless they're visited by a witch. Or at least, that's how I understand it.
Bonnie explains that basically, when you die wearing the Gilbert ring, it brings your spirit to the Other Side temporarily. Then, in order to come back, you have to reconnect your spirit with your body. Matt points out that his body is nowhere near where they are, but Bonnie has an explanation for that, too. "That's because each time you die, you wake up farther and farther away from it...and you wander around the Other Side until you find it." That explains why Alaric was taking so long to come back near the end of his life, and why he wasn't completely healed when he came back the last couple of times he died, either. Matt, who is starting to get suspicious, asks Bonnie how he can see/talk to her if he's on the Other Side. Bonnie is awkwardly like, "Yeah, so about that..."
Elena and Damon have made it back to Elena and Caroline's dorm room, where Damon begins his apology for not immediately telling her about what's been going on in Mystic Falls since she's been gone. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for him, Elena's more interested in sexy times, and pushes him down on a chair. She straddles and starts to kiss him, which his downstairs brain is totally into, but his upstairs brain knows that this is definitely Dangerville. He pulls away and tries to get her to stop rending his garments for a minute so they can talk. "As much as I would like to do this right now..." Elena ignores him, and smiles as she picks up one of Megan's bottle of protein water and pours the bottle down his throat. Damon's mouth burns immediately, and as he coughs the water up, it spills out onto his bare chest and scalds him there as well. This is a little kinky, even for them, so he correctly assumes that Silas has gotten into her head.
As he asks her what he compelled her to do, she picks up a field hockey stick (wait, which one of them plays field hockey?) and breaks it in half. "Get you alone, weaken you, and then kill you," she responds, as she holds her new makeshift stake menacingly near his chest. She pours more vervain water down his gullet, but he wisely spits the water back at her, which scalds HER bare chest. As you recall, pain and certain strong emotions can bring you out of Silas' compulsion, like when Rebekah fully slapped Caroline in the face, so the burns brings Elena out of Silas' mind control as well. She automatically starts apologizing, and asks him WTF is happening to her, so he admits that it was Silas. "Before you ask, no, he's not in the quarry. It's a common misconception. You talked to him today." Elena can't believe this, because she has no idea how powerful he's become, and reminds Damon that she walked with him in a crowd of people, hugged him, and talked to him about Damon. She then realizes that if he's been able to act like Stefan this whole time, then Stefan isn't just gone, he's MISSING, and demands that he tell her what happened.
Her face looks furious, and Damon looks pretty scared of her. "Can we talk about this when you don't have that murder-y look in your eyes?" Elena admits that he's right, and bellows, "Every time I look at you, all I wanna do is KILL you." Damon deduces that Silas' made Elena pissed at Damon on purpose so he could use that anger as a trigger for his mind-control, and urges her to try to resist it. Elena doesn't think she can, and because she's Elena Gilbert, Warrior Princess, she grabs a fireplace poker, sits herself down in a chair, and STABS HERSELF THROUGH THE LEG with the poker so she can't move. "Tell me what's going on," she demands. HOLY SHIT, anyone who says that Elena is weak is an idiot, because that is a pretty fucking intense thing to do to protect your loved ones. Remember when she stabbed herself in the gut to call Elijah's bluff WHEN SHE WAS HUMAN? Or when she purposely set herself on fire to call the Salvatore Bros' bluff when they were torturing the humanity back into her? Girlfriend is not afraid to use her body when she needs to.
Caroline returns to the shed where Damon KO'd Jesse, and admits that the only thing close to ice that she could find was a packaged popsicle. As she holds it up to Jesse's temple, she also apologizes for her "aggro friend's" behavior, and adds that he has anger issues. "And a serious right hook," Jessie exclaims. "But hey, it got us alone together, so that's a win." Caroline ankle-dips a bit, and when he lifts a hand to brush her hair from her face, she confesses that she has a boyfriend. Jesse does a decent job of covering up his disappointment, and asks where he is. Caroline explains that he's not here, because he deferred a semester. "You don't have to say anything. I know how these things go--people go to school and they drift apart." Jesse argues that that isn't ALWAYS the case, which seems to perk Caro up a little bit, especially when he adds that though relationships change, sometimes what you had still means something.
That's when he gets to the buzzkill part of the speech, where he obviously speaks from personal experience. "And, sometimes when you're thinking all those things, your girlfriend is moving on, and sleeping with somebody back home, and has no intention of getting back with you." Caroline apologizes for what happened, and dredging up those memories, but Jesse shrugs it off. "It was a while ago. And honestly, until the worst actually happened, I wouldn't listen to anybody telling me otherwise. I could always find an excuse. So, I get it." Caroline smiles and continues to ice his cheek, and you can almost see the little hearts floating around her head. I still don't trust that guy though, I just get a really hinky feeling from him.
Katherine and Jeremy finally manage to make it to Matt's truck, and he tosses the keys to her with orders to get into the truck and drive. Kat doesn't understand why he's not coming too, but he reminds her that he can't just leave Matt. She makes her disapproval of his plan well known. "Wait, how do you think I survived 500 years? It wasn't because I was a vampire--it's because I never looked back. Don't be dumb! Survive." Jeremy snits, "That's why people treat you like an object, and not like a person," which is way harsh, but there is some truth there. Katherine might have more people willing to help her now that she's weak and vulnerable, if she wasn't always fucking people over to save herself. Although, she is right when she says that her actions are the reason she's still alive today.
Bonnie is wandering around the woods with Matt to help him find his body. She tries to play it off like her death hasn't been affecting her, but she's not fooling anyone. "It actually hasn't been so bad. I have Jeremy, and I see Grams sometimes. Last night with my dad was the first really hard time...I'll be okay. I just have to get past these next few days." Matt, who is probably the most empathetic person on this show, assures her that she doesn't have to pretend like this doesn't completely suck. It's not cool that she died, or that her dad died, so she should be allowed to be sad and/or angry about it. Bonnie doesn't get the point of feeling bad about her death, though, because there's nothing she can do about it now. That doesn't stop her from starting to cry, though. Matt tells her again how sorry he is that this happened, and gives her a Pudding Pop hug as she sobs into his shoulder. Aw, Bonnie! Aw, Matt!
Jeremy has doubled back to find Matt, and sees his body laying in the clearing. Of course, his first instinct is to check to make sure he's wearing the Gilbert ring, which he is. Silas has been watching from afar, and approaches Jeremy from behind. "Now, if my best friend died, I'd at least PRETEND to cry. Which leads me to believe he's not really dead. I take it that tacky old ring somehow protects him?" Jeremy taunts him by reminding him that he can't get inside his head to find out, considering he's a hunter, and is thus immune to his tricks. Silas taunts him for not getting understanding how Silas works; if Silas can read his mind, that at least gives him a reason to keep Jeremy alive. Since he can't, he's just going to kill him instead to make his life easier. Then, Jeremy gets SUPER AWESOME.
"You can try, but none of your abilities work on me, so right now, you're nothing. Slower than a vampire, weaker than a vampire. I, on the other hand, am a hunter." He picks up a hatchet that is lying on the ground, and adds, "Plus, I work out." He's not lying there, have you seen that kid's muscles? They are insane! Steven R. McQueen must literally work out 12 hours a day, and it shooooows, because I have never found him more attractive. I'm not even usually attracted to muscley dudes. Jer throws the hatchet at Silas, but he dodges it, so Baby Gilbert settles for just lunging at him and pushing him against a tree. Silas shoves him away, and they just start punching the shit out of each other, each blocking the other's hits until they finally reach an impasse. Silas tries to end it by headbutting him in the face, and I must ask--how did he get so good at fighting? He's only been awake for like, 4-5 months, after being entombed for 2,000 years. Did he learn from reading everyone's minds all day, or did he compel his way into some free MMA classes or something? Maybe fighting skills are just intuitive when you're a vampire/immortal? Sigh. I'm never going to get answers to all these questions, am I?
Anyway, Silas launches Matt's lantern at Jeremy, but he dodges it, and eventually Jer gets the upper hand when he grabs Silas in a headlock from behind. This is where it gets super confusing, but also still pretty awesome, and I'm guessing I'm just thinking about this too hard. Silas breaks off a branch from the tree in front of him and reminds Jeremy that though he may be slow and weak, he's still immortal. He demonstrates by fully IMPALING HIMSELF THROUGH THE CHEST with the branch, which goes straight through him AND Jeremy's shoulder too. How does Jeremy not die/get seriously injured from that wound? IT WENT RIGHT THROUGH HIM. There were no vamps around to heal him, and if hunters are immune to injury via Silas, then Jeremy wouldn't have died in the first place.
Remember how I said I make up headcannon so I don't get pissed off at huge plot-holes like this? Here's an example! I've decided that Damon realized that the three remaining humans in Mystic Falls (Jeremy, Matt, Katherine) are basically danger magnets who risk certain death just by getting out of bed daily, so he decided to give Jeremy his vampire blood in bags or vials or something for Jeremy to keep with him just in case of such emergencies as this, where they're seriously wounded and need to be healed, but there are no vampires around to help. There! All better. Moving on!
ANYWAY, Jer groans in pain and collapses on all fours once Silas has removed the branch, and he watches Silas pick up the hatchet off the ground. He's about to, I don't know, hack Jeremy's head off or something, but for once, Katherine comes to the rescue! She shoots Silas in the chest with Matt's shotgun, which amazes Jeremy. "I thought you didn't know how to use that?" Katherine: "I figured it out." YESS! Go Kat! She shoots Silas again in the chest, and he falls to the ground.
Back to Elena and Caroline's dorm room. Elena is still impaled to her chair, while Damon remains tied up to his own chair. Elena ruminates about Bonnie and how awful it is that her dad died, and figures she must have tried to call her after Silas stole her phone. She asks him if she's okay, but Damon has no idea, because he's been a little distracted with other things. Elena gets pissed again. "My best friend's dad died. It's pretty damn important!" Damon's like, "Yeah, well, so is protecting your brother, FINDING mine, and figuring out what the hell Silas wants with Katherine." Elena shouts, "I JUST left. What the hell is wrong with you?" which made me laugh SO HARD, even though I hate that they're fighting. Oh Elena, you're the best.
Damon reminds her that her anger is peeking out again, and she needs to remember that that's the trigger for her Damon-murdering compulsion. Elena starts to freak out, and honestly, I'm surprised it took this long for it to happen. "My brother got expelled! You've got him playing 'white-knight' to Katherine, who's tried to kill me! Repeatedly! Stefan's been...he's been suffering, for months, while I've been rolling around with you, a self-proclaimed serial killer. Oh my god! Oh my god!" Damon's face when she says this is absolutely heartbreaking, and so is Elena's next move, which is pulling the gas line from the fireplace and filling the room with it.
Damon's starting to freak out now, and tries to talk her down. "Elena, that is the gas. Stop. You don't really wanna kill me, Elena. You have to realize this before you're gonna break Silas' compulsion." Elena shouts that she can't, because all she can think about is killing him, but Damon urges her to think about something stronger than her desire to kill him, otherwise they're both going to die. And probably at least a few of the fellow dorm mates, I'd imagine. Elena grabs a pack of matches from the mantel, but luckily for everyone, Elena is terrible at lighting matches when she's upset, as you might recall from last season. Damon, desperate to stop her, decides to switch topics. "Stefan. Stefan! Think about Stefan. Caroline told me you've been worried about him, that you had a pit in your stomach. Describe it. Tell me about it!" Elena mutters that she can't, because AWKWARD, but Damon insists that she does it, so she thinks about it for a moment.
"It's like, it's like a chill, but I can't explain it. It's like, I can feel him. He's trying to reach out to me, but I don't know where he is, and I can't understand what he's trying to say. All I know is he's scared, and he's lonely, and he's in a lot of pain." She starts to cry. "He's in a lot of pain, we have to find him!" Damon swears to her that they will, and Elena realizes that her rage is gone. She drops the matchbook onto the floor, as Caroline enters the room to find them both tied to their chairs. She looks around in confusion before she deadpans, "I think we need to set some ground rules for when boyfriends come to visit." LOL FOREVERRRRRR.
Bonnie and Matt are still wondering around the woods, trying to find Matt's body. He thinks it has been moved by someone, because, weirdly, he can feel it somehow, and feels drawn to it. Bonnie finds it, and points it out to him; it's laying in the bed of Matt's truck, where Jeremy and Katherine are surrounding him, waiting for him to wake up. He turns back to Bonnie. "So, if this happens every time I die with the Gilbert ring, the second I go back, I'm just gonna forget about all of this. I'll forget that you're dead." Bonnie gives him a look, but says nothing.
Matt decides to get serious, and while he apologizes again for the fact that she and her dad are dead, he insists that she can't keep this a secret anymore. "How are you gonna deal with his death if you can't even deal with your own?" Again, Bonnie just smiles, but doesn't respond to what he says; she simply admits that it was really good to see and talk to him again. Matt nods at her, and turns to walk toward his body. He looks at it for a moment before he lays his spectral hand on his physical one, and he instantly awakes with a gasp in his own body. Katherine kindly snarks, "Welcome to the land of the living!" Matt naturally asks what the hell happened, so Jeremy tries to explain. "Yeah, Silas killed you, tried to kill me, and then--" Katherine cuts him off. "I shot him. So, we're even. No more whining, let's go! Silas won't be down for long." Jeremy sees Bonnie lurking by the trees, and tells them he'll BRB, under the guise of retrieving his hatchet. When he meets with her, he asks her if she's okay, and she finally admits that she isn't:
BONNIE: "I'm not ready to be dead yet, Jeremy. I'm just not. Maybe I will be, one day, but it's not today. And I don't know what to do about my dad, or what to do when the sheriff calls, because she's gonna call me--"
JEREMY: "It's okay. We'll get through this. I can tell everybody that you're with family, that it was too hard for you to be here. I might not be able to touch you, or hold you, but I'm here for you, no matter what you need."
AW, JEREMY! Bonnie smiles at him, and it looks like she's going to try to hug him, but stops herself, and turns to walk away instead. I think she realizes that she's got some introspection to do by herself. Meanwhile, Matt and Katherine gawk in confusion at Jeremy having a conversation with himself. Or, so I'm guessing. Jeremy really needs to learn subtlety. He could at least pretend he's talking on the phone or something when he has to talk to Bonnie in public, kinda like House did that one time he was hallucinating that Amber was talking to him/following him around on House M.D. Do any of you remember that? God, that show was awesome until the end.
We return to the gas station, where that same clerk that Matt KO'd earlier is STILL working at the counter. Silas walks in, and the clerk asks him if he managed to find the girl he was looking for. "Yes, I did...and then she shot me. So, I'm a little bit angry, and I'm a little bit hungry, but luckily, you can help me out with one of those things." He grabs a Big Gulp-style cup and sets it on the counter, and mind-whammies the guy into draining an artery into it. Does Silas not have fangs? Or is he just feel he's above feeding on people directly? As the guy drains his blood for him, Nadia and Gregor walk in. I'm just going to transcribe this dialogue too, because it has quite a bit of information in it.
SILAS: "Oh, goody. Gypsies are here. Oh, I'm sorry, you call yourselves "Travelers," now, right? It's much more P.C."
GREGOR: [smiles] "You can call me whatever you want...when I'm gutting you."
SILAS: [chuckles] "I see. You're mad that I killed your blonde-haired, blue-eyed host, right? That's what you get for taking over somebody's body to spy on me. But congrats! You found me. So, now what? What do you want?"
GREGOR: "You, back in that tomb, sealed away for eternity."
NADIA: "That's what the Travelers have always wanted." [grabs Gregor's knife and shoves it into his neck, killing him and dropping his body to the floor] "Luckily for you, I've never really considered myself one. I know you can see inside my mind...and I have my own agenda."
SILAS: [smiles broadly] "Yes...I see that you do."
OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT. This is pretty intense, but I'm still not sure how I feel about the Gypsies/Travelers thing. I'll get into that in the notes, though.
In front of their dorm at Whitmore, Elena loads a suitcase into Damon's car, with Caroline's assistance. Elena assures her roomie that she'll be back, even if she's not sure when. Caroline completely understands, and only asks that she call her the second she hears from Bonnie, because she's left her a hundred messages with no reply. Elena promises she will, and the girls hug tightly. Before she leaves, Caroline assures Elena that they'll find Stefan, which does seem to comfort her a bit. They say their goodbyes, and Caroline goes back to their room.
Which gives Dr. Dickfield (Maxfield) the opportunity to approach Elena and be cryptic and vague. "I didn't think Elena Gilbert would give up so easily. Sorry about being a hard-ass earlier. It's kind of my thing. [beat] You're Grayson Gilbert's daughter, aren't you?" Elena is surprised that he knew her dad, but Wes admits that he only knew of him. He claims that Grayson was a legend around campus, and says that he's studied all of his research. "I can only hope to do the kind of work he did." Elena asks him if that means that her father forged death certificates too, which makes him chuckle. He jokes, "And here I thought you were just passionate about microbiology!" He invites her to his office hours so they can chat, but she begs off with the excuse that her plate is a little too full right now, so he just shrugs and tells her to look him up when he's less busy.
Damon walks over to his car as Dr. Maxfield walks away, and makes his twinge of jealousy well-known. "Well, I guess that's how a hero would do it. Honesty--who'd've thunk it? Are you the least bit curious about the whole 'Nancy Drew and the Creepster-Professor' thing?" Elena shrugs it off and says Caroline will take over, because she can't stay here doing her normal-college-student thing when Stefan is out there and hurting. Damon pulls a ring out of his pocket and hands it to her, which Elena identifies as Stefan's daylight ring, which Silas apparently stole before he threw him in the quarry and has been wearing as part of his cover. "Snagged it from Silas yesterday. And, for the record, I am secure enough in our relationship that you having psychic dreams about your ex-boyfriend does not bother me...but it still sucks." The two kiss, and Elena assures him that she loves HIM, and that even after they save Stefan, she's still going to love him. They kiss a little bit more, but their tender moment is interrupted by Damon's phone ringing. When he answers it, we can hear Liz on the other line telling him that they found something.
Cut to the woods in Mystic Falls, where Damon, Elena and Liz the Sheriff walk towards the safe that Stefan was locked in, just hanging out in the middle of a clearing. Liz explains that while they didn't find anything in the quarry, a deputy did find this HERE, which is a few miles away from the quarry itself. How the hell did it get there? It's not like it washed up onto shore. Ugh, I hope there's a better excuse than just, "Oh look, it's on land now!" Anyway, Liz didn't want to open it, and for good reason. "If Stefan's been in there for three months...chances are, he's hungry." Yeah, Liz, you should probably RUN FAR FAR AWAY for that very reason. She doesn't listen to me, though, and watches as Damon opens the safe door. Unfortunately, Stefan is not inside. Instead, there is a dead man's corpse, whose neck has been ripped out, vampire-style. Elena gasps and states the obvious, which is that dude totally isn't Stefan. Damon sighs. "Well, you were right. He was hungry. I bet he still is." YESSSSS RIPPER STEFAN 4.0! I AM SO PUMPED.
Next week: A very-hungry Ripper!Stefan feeds on various unsuspecting locals, and Katherine and Elena have some more psychic dreams about him.
Click HERE to read the next TVD recap!
[screencaps from this Screencapped.net album]
NOTES/SPECULATION: (Just a reminder--as always, if you're not big on spoilers, or speculation that might end up actually happening in the show, you may want to skip this part)
-Okay, so full disclosure--I am not Romani, and any knowledge I have about them is what I've learned online, so I am definitely not someone who really has the expertise or experience to comment on the culture as a whole and whether or not TVD is portraying it accurately. However, when I looked up "Travelers", it seems that the term usually refers to nomadic people in Ireland, Scotland, and England, some of whom are Rom/Romani or related to them, but many of them are not. Since Matt and Rebekah met Nadia in Prague (Czech Republic), it seems safe to say that she and Gregor are probably Czech as well, so I don't really understand why they would be called Travelers, if they're not from the British Isles. If anyone has a better understanding of this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know/correct me, I definitely do not want to be talking out my ass here, and I would much appreciate the explanation.
-That said, I am very intrigued by Nadia's agenda, and I can't wait to know more about what her deal is. I'm going to go on ahead and guess that she's going to be some kind of triple agent who is going to play every side in this battle. Exciting!
-I don't really know how I feel about this whole doppelgänger-connection thing that seems to be happening, because although we just learned that Stefan is also a doppelgänger quite recently, that doesn't change the fact that he has been a doppelgänger this entire time. So, why is this connection just manifesting itself now, both in the weird feelings that Elena has been getting, and the psychic-dreams that both Elena and Katherine appear to get next week in "Original Sin?"
-It seems like Caroline is starting to like Jesse now, but I still don't trust him. I don't know what it is, but in shows like TVD and Teen Wolf, you learn quickly that every new person is automatically shady until proven otherwise, and I just have this nagging suspicion that he's going to be trouble. I'm guessing he's involved in Dr. Dickfield's secret vampire-hating society and it's going to be a hot mess, I can feel it!
-I was really impressed by Damon this week, and his actions demonstrated yet again why I love Damon and Elena together so much. Don't get me wrong, I am an equal-opportunity shipper when it comes to this show, just like with Teen Wolf. I quite literally ship everyone with everyone, which included Stefan and Elena back in the day. It wasn't until season 4 that I really started becoming disillusioned by their relationship. This episode kind of reminded me as to why. Remember when Elena was just turned, and Stefan got mad at Elena for going to Damon for help instead of him? He let his jealousy get in the way of the fact that Elena was literally starving and rejecting all food sources, partially due to the fact that he wanted to just pretend that everything was cool when it wasn't. Here, Damon, seeing that Elena was about to kill herself in the process of killing him due to Silas' compulsion, had her think about Stefan and her feelings about him, and told her to tell him everything in order to break the compulsion and protect them both, even though you could tell he didn't want to hear any of it. He cares more about her than he does his own feelings, and is more than willing to deal with unpleasantness if it means it will help her/them as a whole. I dig it! He has grown up so much since the first season.
-One of the best things about TVD is that they (usually) cycle through plotlines so quickly that you don't have time to get sick of them. Like, wasn't it awesome that we didn't have to go like, 6-7 episodes into this season for everyone to figure out that Stefan was actually Silas? That's why I'm hoping that this whole "Bonnie pretends like she's still alive and lies to everyone so that no one knows she's dead" arc is almost over, since it's already getting boring to me. I just want everyone to find out that Bonnie's dead so they can switch gears and start working on a way to bring her back, since they don't stand a chance against anyone without a competent witch on their side. Make it happen, TVD writers!
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