February 12, 2010

They're out now, and it's all Damon's fault!

I didn't mention anything last week about The Vampire Diaries mostly because the episode from the 4th was kinda boring. It was a whole lot of backstory and while I know that stuff is important to understanding the mythology of the characters and why our whole season is revolving around the desperate need to find and free Katherine, I mostly find the flashback stuff uninteresting. It might be partly because the Salvatore hair was so awful. Oh yeah, and the ep had not a single glimpse of Caroline or Matt and so obviously I was displeased.

Anyway, in contrast to the previous episode, last night's was FAN-tastic!

Ben and Anna have kidnapped Bonnie and Elena and are holding them hostage in their motel room. They're using Elena as leverage to get Stefan to turn over the grimoire and holding Bonnie as the tool to put the grimoire to use. Actually, I guess it's really Anna that's doing all this and Ben that's just guarding the girls, looking pretty and being kind of an annoying ass as the newly vamped are wont to do. Fortunately, Grams has some good mojo so she works a locater spell and sends Stefan off to rescue our damsels. But, like a moron, he doesn't just kill Ben when he bursts in. Rather, he leaves him cowering in a corner whimpering at the sun with instructions to leave town at sunset lest he be staked like a little bitch.

It's as if Stefan has never even met a vampire before because he actually thinks that threat is going to work. It doesn't.

Stefan, the girls and Gramma stop fighting crazy with stubborn and decide to give them what they want. So Elena goes off to win Damon's trust back and convince him that they'll let him into the...crypt? What the hell is that thing they're in again? A dungeon? A stone fortress? Whatever, I'm calling it a crypt because that's where you keep (un)dead people right? Anyway, they'll let him take Katherine out and then they'll torch the rest of the vamps and make everyone happy. Damon's a big talker, all "I hope Elena dies" and shit, but she's totally his BFF so it's not terribly hard for her to convince him to trust her. She even takes off her necklace and offers him a chance to compel her to tell him the truth, but he's all "I want you to like me for me" and puts the necklace back on her without ever working his mojo. It was a nice scene actually.

Off to the crypt they go, meeting up with the rest of the hell-raiser gang (I totally laughed when Stefan smirkily greeted them with "brother. Witches." upon arrival). Bonnie and Grams are down below lighting torches and sprinkling water to and fro while Stefan is topside, stock-piling gasoline and matches for when he'll burn the other vamps to cinders. "Why doesn't he bring all that down to the crypt door with them now?" you're asking yourself. "Contrivance" I answer.

The witches crack the door and Damon - fearing that if he goes in alone they'll slam the door behind him and skip away in victory - takes Elena in with him to look for Katherine.

Meanwhile, Jeremy had decided he liked Anna after all - plus he was getting "your a friendless loser" pressure from that yet-to-be-revealed-as-but-I-can-see-it-coming-from-a-mile-off werewolf Tyler - and asked her to meet him at a kegger in the woods by the old cemetery. What is with the kids in this town? Who parties in creepy-ass places like a cemetery? Just as Jeremy is making his very cute move on Anna, she sadly tells him that she and her mom are leaving town and they kiss. It was all cute and I was believing that Anna really kinda liked him and then Anna is overcome with vampy feelings and he sees her eyes go weird and just as he's asking what's wrong stupid Ben clocks him from behind and knocks his super cute butt clean out.

Then the three of them - Anna, stupid Ben and unconscious Jeremy - drop in on Stefan while he's fixing to take the incendiaries down under. Anna lets him know that she's gettin' mommy up out that tomb and his choice is to stop her, or stop Ben from eating Jeremy. Quite obviously Stefan has to save Jeremy because nothing kills a relationship like letting your girlfriend's little brother become monster kibble. So Ben talks some "you're old and weak from a lack of human blood so there's no way you can take me" smack and then Stefan knocks him out and toasts him with a little flame thrower action. I deeply love the cold, vamp-killing Stefan.

Stefan's Ben-roasting gives Anna time to slip into the crypt's foyer where Grams gives the go-ahead to let her in to get her mom. Bonnie's all "the fuck, Gram?" and Grams tells her that they may have opened the door but they did NOT remove the spell. All they've done is let a couple extra dastardly vamps into a room that is the vampy equivalent of a roach motel - the bloodsuckers can enter, but they can't leave.

While inside, Damon is frantically searching for Katherine with a bag of O negative at the ready but all this searching for the love of his un-life has given him leave of his manners because he's left Elena wandering around in the dark with a bunch of emaciated, zombie-lookin' vampires. She's only slightly less flipped out than I would be when up pops Anna. Turns out that Anna has decided that since it was a Gilbert who locked mommy in the crypt, it shall be a Gilbert whose blood gives her the strength to get out. So she wrist-rapes Elena into donating a bit of the drippy red to mom and Elena screams. In runs Stefan, knowing full well that once he's in he isn't coming out again, but he's got to save his girlfriend.

Bonnie has developed quite an affinity for Stefan since he's taken up saving her life as a hobby so she tells Grams that either the two of them will break that spell or Bonnie'll do it her damn self but they're not letting Stefan rot in there. Down comes the mystical lock, out runs Anna and her mom...Stefan goes back in to get Damon because Elena doesn't want her new friend to waste away in there (and the rest of us agree that Damon is far to good looking to end up like one of those zombie vamps). When Stefan locates Damon, the latter is in the midst of a meltdown because after searching high and low, to and fro, he's determined that Katherine is not in that crypt. In a fit of pique he heaves his O neg at the wall and follows Stefan out just before the lady witches slam that big rock door shut once again.

But you know what isn't keeping those vamps inside? A big rock door! They did not succeed in re-locking the mystical deadbolt and Damon left a snack sufficient to re-invigorate at least one vamp enough to open up the door and stroll on out. Can you just imagine how ravenously hungry and crazy-pissed those vampires are going to be after being locked under ground for a hundred and fifty years? Mystic Falls is in trouble!

Lest you think that the whole episode was blood-sucking fiends, we got a good bit of Matt and Caroline time. Caroline is super worried that having worn Matt down and gotten him to admit he totally likes her that way, she'll say or do something that will spook him and he'll run screaming for the hills. So she stops by the Grill with a prepared speech to let him know that if he's had second thoughts since their make-out in the street, she's giving him the option of an early withdrawal without penalty. Um...I didn't mean that to sound dirty. I was using banking terms to illustrate that she was giving him an escape clause on their romantic relationship.

Anyway, it's an insanely adorable scene and Matt, finding Caroline about as cute as he's ever found her (you can tell by the look on his face), declines and says he'll pick her up for the party in the woods later. Then at the party, they run into Elena and Damon on their way to Operation Break Hell Loose. Caroline instinctively makes a show of holding Matt's hand and Matt thinks that's a clingy, braggy show for Elena and heads off to sulk that it might be time to break up with her if she's going to be Public Display Girl.

Fear not though, our little C is at the ready with another great speech. She knows that it was a slightly psycho display with the hand holding but she really wasn't trying to prove anything about his (totally non-existent) lingering feelings for Elena, she was however trying to show Damon - after how badly he treated her for so long - that she was now with a good guy, so fuck him. She is sorry and she promises not to be weird like that any more. He continues to marvel at how C just isn't the same C she's always been before and he asks her about it - what's up with the honesty and the openness and stuff? C rocks my socks clean off when she lays speech number three on him: she really doesn't want to mess up what they've got because she really, really likes him so she just wants to make sure that she is cool as a cucumber and doesn't freak him out. He is fully won over now, he doesn't want to mess it up either and the canoodle so cutely that I was nearly apoplectic.

Anna tells Damon that Katherine wasn't in the tomb because she used her beguiling ways to get the guard to let her out before they locked it down. She's been out and about in the world all this time, knew exactly where Damon was, and didn't care at all. That Katherine is one whorey bitch, let me tell you!

Upon his return home, Jeremy tells Elena he can't remember anything but he swears he didn't drink enough to pass out like that and as she heads off to Bonnie's and he Bing searches vampires. Looks like some one's mojo brainwashing magic has worn off!

Unfortunately, not all things end with greatness (and the escaped old vampires are kind of great, story-wise). Bonnie and Elena find Grams dead in the living room and while Elena calls 911, Bonnie busts out a grimoire and tries to bring her back with some dark magic. That is NOT the answer B, trust me on this! Dead things should stay dead!

And that's that until March 25th. Boo!

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