About:
I’m conflicted, y’all. CONFLICTED. Because while I very much enjoyed this episode I also have lots of questions and feelings that are ALL OVER THE PLACE.
Let us begin.
Damon is smarter than Evil Dr. TightSweater because he’s managed to free himself with a stray bullet/large rock bomb that opens his jail cell. Meanwhile Elena is still tied to the table but it turns out she’s not in the Whitmore House Lab, oh no, she’s in the Secret Lab that her own father had under his office. Damn rushes home to see if she’s there and runs into a post-coital Katherine (hilarious) who doesn’t miss a beat telling him that she and Stefan are currently riding the hobby horse. I think she’s trying to make herself feel better considering she woke up with MAD grey streaks in her hair and clumps of it falling out. Watching her try to get out of the room without Stefan seeing her like that was some great physical comedy on Nina Dobrev’s part. Damon gives Stefan the Campbell’s Soup Condensed Version of where they were and how he’d been there before and tells him to put his Hero Hair on so they can go and save the girl.
They give themselves leverage in the form of Boring Aaron, kidnapping him and telling the Evil Professor that they want to make a switch. He’s not QUITE done with Elena yet so he turns to Enzo and gives him a lot of blood so he can go and have his reunion with Damon. Oh dear. He also injects him with a poison so that Enzo will have to return to the lab for the antidote. Sneaky pants!
He’s also filling Elena’s head with the very real possibility that Damon was basically the “curse” her father thought was upon their family for so many years. But he was after Whitmores, not Graysons, right? This made me very nervous because does this mean there’s a possibility that Damon is responsible for the car crash that killed Elena’s parents? My S1 knowledge is a bit rusty. So my head is totally spinning at this point because if this is the case then well played, writers! But also, OH SHIT.
But you guys it probably won’t even matter if Damon WAS responsible for killing everyone Elena ever loved because she is oddly chill about him killing all of those Whitmores, most recently Aaron’s aunt a few months back. We’ll come back to that later but it was one thing about this episode that sort of bothered me.
Elena is also realizing that her father was very much involved in vampire research and starts remembering going down to the basement and hearing noises behind the door. She realizes that Dead Roommate Megan was saved by her dad’s research because she was born with a congenitive heart defect that was healed by vampire blood. But still, Elena – he engaged in TORTURE. And lots of it.
When Damon and Stefan turn up to an empty classroom with Aaron in tow for the swap, who awaits them but Enzo! He has entirely too much fun regaling them with tales of times past, when Damon abandoned him to a flaming death. Turns out that he’s also the vampire that killed Megan (no one cares at this point but ok) and INSISTS that Damon stay around while Stefan and Aaron go to snoop in Wes’ office for clues to where Elena is being held. Stefan leaves his brother with a vampire with a 70-yr old grudge to save Elena. WHIPPED.
Aaron fills Stefan in on the details Damon conveniently left out about his time as a prisoner, mainly that he’s been killing Whitmores for decades since. They find the info they need and Stefan saves Elena, just in time too because Nefarious Professor SnugJumper was about ready to inject her with his serum that would basically turn her into a Vampire Ripper like poor Jesse.
Damon pleads with Enzo that they finish it all together, meaning they go back and rip Wes to shreds, but Enzo isn’t having any of it. Even when the poison starts to kill him he still won’t tell Damon where Elena is, wanting him to suffer as much as he’s suffered all the years being a lab rat for the Augustines. Redemption is attempted as Damon saves Enzo by injecting him with an antidote in the college lab. He confesses how he had to turn off his humanity in order to abandon his friend. Enzo remains unimpressed and I feel sort of bad for Damon. No matter how much good he does he always feels like the Bad Brother while Stefan (uh, the Ripper) gets to be the Hero. He carries this around with him and can never shake it, which leads him to breaking up with Elena. It was heartbreaking to watch him plead with her to STOP defending all the bad stuff that he does and that he’s not willing to watch her change for the worse by staying with him. She does seem to be giving him a rather huge pardon here. See, if only you stood up to your man, Elena, and told him that it’s NOT OK to go killing people just because they’re Whitmores you might still have him!
Then we have Katherine. And her humanity. And impending death, it would seem. She has Matt training her and she’s drinking green juice in order to try and fight off the Reaper Man but it’s her re-connection with Stefan and desire to be forgiven that’s really pushing her to stay alive. Which hurts Nadia to realize that it’s more important to Katherine that Stefan forgive her than to reconcile with her own daughter. Nadia gives the Gypsy Dagger to Matt to hold in case Katherine changes her mind about doing the traveling spell so that she can live in another body. They commiserate about having disappointing, terrible mothers and it’s a very tender moment.
Katherine is trying to hide her aging from Stefan with an array of hats, which I very much approve of. She’s trying hard to connect with him but he pretty much brushes off their night together and I FUME. He’s genuinely sorry that she’s dying but isn’t sure he can forgive her for the 100+ years of total selfish and narcissistic behavior. Ok, I get that. She also knows that he’s still in love with Elena. But you can’t keep Katherine Pierce down, oh hell no, so she packs a bag and calls Nadia, telling her that she’s ready to do the spell. Except I think she has a heart attack, falls down the stairs and dies…? No. No, no, no. NO.
Moments of Hilarity:
“Put your Hero Hair on, Stefan. Let’s go find Elena.” – Damon
“That’s my brother Stefan. But I’d watch my tone, he’s kind of in the middle of a psychotic break.” – Damon to Aaron
“Can I ask you something, Absentee Mother to Mildly Abusive Daughter?” – Katherine to Nadia
“Thing is, Stefan actually likes this body…” – Katherine informing Nadia about her current status with Stefan
Moments of Heart-wrenching:
“I don’t know if I should hate her for giving up or be by her side when she dies.” – Nadia to Matt re Katherine
“You were the most important person in my life and you ruined me. That’s just who you are. Who you’ll always be. A monster.” – Enzo to Damon
“Why are you still here?? I’m bad for you! STOP DEFENDING ME.” – Damon to Elena
“I won’t change who I am. I can’t. But I refuse to change you.” – Damon to Elena
“I’m dying, Stefan. What’s a girl gotta do to get a little redemption around here?” – Katherine
So what did you guys think? About Katherine and Stefan, Damon and Elena, Damon and Enzo? Does Enzo have potential to be Alaric-material or will he never forgive Damon? AND IS KATHERINE OK?
About the Contributor:
Amanda Reid is an East Coast girl living in California who will never stop missing a true autumn. She’s a bookseller who specializes in kid and teen lit, and she bakes a damn fine pie.
