Vampire Diaries is not the Morality Police |
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| Written by April Yorke |
| Friday, 22 October 2010 16:10 |
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Everyone Lives Happily Ever After “Plan B” tries to win me over right away by 1) naming itself after one of the all time best episodes of Veronica Mars and 2) giving me another intercut intro like the one that kicked off “Bad Moon Rising.” It’s not as effective, but it’s still pretty good. Elena’s doing her best Bridget, staring Stefan awake while the rest of us wonder if this sleepover is really a good idea. Stefan teasingly points out that the difference between “gazing adoringly” and “staring creepily” is pretty thin, and the making out commences. Over at some charming old B&B that no doubt makes Katherine feel nostalgic, she and shirtless Mason are also in the midst of a morning make out and chat about the moonstone, which Mason has hidden and which Katherine claims means “everyone lives happily ever after” once she gets her hands on it. If I were Mason, that would be my cue to run. Katherine is, of course, wearing a black push-up bra while Elena is in a comparatively demure pink camisole, but don’t think we don’t notice the way Katherine’s bound up in that sheet soap opera-style, show. Elena cuts the making out off because she has to grab a shower (Stefan: Great, let’s go) before swinging by the Lockwoods to help decorate for next week’s masquerade ball which will no doubt have Katherine and Elena confusion and people revealing their real feelings to the wrong person in the general masquerade madness. What? I’ve watched TV before. What a coincidence, faux-marvels Stefan. He has to go help set up, too. The audience is reminded that our lovebirds will have to keep their distance for appearances’ sake, then Elena grabs a pin and much-more-reasonably-than-last-time pricks her finger tip for Stefan’s daily blood dose. Stefan looks both greedy and guilty as he reaches for her finger. Instead of looking pained or disgusted, Elena looks pleased. Mason and Katherine just keep getting it on because they are sexy adults. I think Stefan could have had the same result if he had taken the shirt off. An Inconvenient Vision Down the Lockwoods, Matt and Tyler are moving a table, Bonnie and Elena are setting up candelabras, and Stefan’s setting up the bar. In a private moment, Bonnie calls Elena out on prioritizing her vampire friends over her witchy ones, and Elena apologizes. Even though Bonnie is right, she still needs to get over herself a little bit (spoiler alert: she does later). For her part, Elena points out that Bonnie’s total racism toward Caroline is also not cool. Bonnie’s not sure she can deal. Lady Mayor is happy that Matt, who’s still hurting over Caroline and who Tyler actually advises to accept Caroline as she is for their relationship to work, and Tyler are best friends again. Me, too! Inside, Jenna tells Stefan that she heard the morning rendezvous, which is gross and uncomfortable, and then she saunters off, all, “Your secret’s safe with me!” Over at the bar, Mason is shocked to find Stefan, who’s all, “Hey, buddy!” Stefan assures Mason that Sheriff is alive but unavailable to do his dirty work anymore, and Mason skadaddles, spooked. Just as he does so, he bumps into Bonnie, who gets one of her little visions as a result. She tells Stefan she saw Elena with Mason, romantically if you catch my drift, and Stefan has about a half second where he wonders why Elena would cheat with a werewolf before he figures out the real culprit: Katherine. And if Katherine’s involved with Mason, she must be using him, which means she must have a plan for which to use him. Bad news, babies. Back at the Salvatore Mansion, Jeremy shows up to inform Damon that only Mason, not Tyler, is a werewolf. Damon is so annoyed by someone else’s quest for purpose getting in the way of his own that he nearly slams the door in Jer’s face but stops when he realizes that he could benefit from Jer’s knowledge. Jer tells him about the moonstone and how Tyler is keeping it from Mason because Mason wants it. That’s enough of a reason for Damon to want it, so he enlists Jer’s help. Alaric shows up with The Only Box from his wife’s years of research, is surprised to find Jer in the mix, but still turns up some more Aztec folklore (which delights budding history buff Jeremy, which in turn delights me) about how the moonstone can break the curse, allowing the wolf to transform at will instead of being bound to the moon cycles. Damon references some witchy stuff about the witch who spells the stone can take its power away (like their rings), though I don’t know where he got that from, and decides that while he’s not sure that all this is on the up-and-up, it’s best to be cautious. Mark that as a first for ol’ Damon. He’s learning. Stefan and Damon pace around the Lockwood breezeway and wonder what’s up with the Mason-Katherine connection, and can I just say that everything between Stefan and Damon is really well done this week? I pretty much always think it is, but there is really nice work between Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder in showing us the shift between them from enemies who just happen to be related to real brothers. Like the little smack on the arm that Stefan gives Damon for getting Jeremy involved. Perfection. Anyway, they realize that they still know nothing, so they enlist Jeremy for further assistance. Jer asks Tyler about the moonstone, covering that his curiosity got the better of him and he did a little research and wants to double check what he found, but Tyler tells him the stone is with Mason now. Overhearing this, Stefan and Damon are back at square one, so they enlist Bonnie for further assistance. Damon wants Bonnie to use her magic witchy powers to get all manner of information out of Mason’s head, but she says that she can’t control the visions. After grousing about how inconvenient that is, he moves on to asking her about her headache mojo. Turns out that she’s giving the vamps an aneurysm and, because they can heal superfast, she’s doing it over and over again. She explains that she can do this to anyone with supernatural healing abilities, and I agree to the over and over part but not the aneurysm part. Pretty sure she could give an aneurysm to a human or a bear if she wanted to. With this intel, Damon concocts a scheme while Stefan fills in an impatient Elena over the phone. Bonnie hedges, so Damon points out that Mason is a threat to Elena, making this not the time to start playing morality police. Stefan saunters back over only long enough to follow up Damon’s requests with a pretty please with cherries on top. Bonnie agrees. In the meantime, Elena would like Jeremy not to be involved, and Jeremy would like Elena to know that she is not the boss of him. Wolfsbane is to Werewolf as Vervain is to Vampire Bonnie uses her witchy powers to give poor Mason an aneurysm, and Damon comes along and knocks him out. Everyone tosses him into his truck and takes off for the Salvatore Mansion. In front of the eternal fireplace, Damon and Jeremy put down a torture tarp while Mason sits unconscious in a chair. Bonnie puts her hands on Mason’s head and see that he hid the moonstone down a well. I am completely confused about how she can do this when she just said that she can’t control the visions. Anyway, Stefan and Elena take off for the well on the old Lockwood Plantation where Bonnie and Caroline used to play at children because they were completely unsupervised and often left alone in the woods. Bonnie’s going to follow suit when Caroline offers to tag along. Bonnie rebuffs her, remembers her conversation with Elena, and accepts Caroline’s help instead. When Mason comes to and sees he is that he is lashed to a chair on a torture trap, he immediately looks at Damon and goes, “What?” Not like “What are you doing?” but more like “Just tell me what you want,” and that makes me sort of love Taylor Kinney in a way I didn’t before the episode (though that fab purple v-neck last episode helped a lot. Such a great colour on him). Much like Damon thought that stabbing someone was a perfectly legit response to an offer of friendship, he thinks that a few opening volleys of ramming a hot poker through Mason’s chest should loosen him up for a chat. Mason quickly gives up the moonstone’s location, but that’s not the intel Damon’s looking for. He wants to know what Katherine wants with the moonstone, and Mason’s a bit tighter lipped about that. Down at the well, Stefan breaks the lock and hops in while Elena . . . stands guard, I guess. Too bad that the well doubles as a vervain herbal bath. Stefan starts screaming for Elena, who can’t even see Stefan, much less what he’s shrieking about. Her cries cause Caroline to come running at vamp speed, and they’re already in the process of grabbing the massive chain lying next to the well (I would complain about this, but Mason must have had some way of getting in and out) and lowering Elena down when Bonnie shows up to lend a hand. In the well, Elena hooks the chain around zombified Stefan’s floating body and has Caroline haul him up in a cool from below shot. In the meantime, Elena sets to searching for the box containing the moonstone. Because we need an added element of danger, the well is suddenly revealed to be filled with snakes as well, so Elena has to deal with them jumping on her and generally wig and find the box. She does accomplishes all three handily ‘cause Elena’s like that. Topside, she’s like, “Good news, Stefan! Moonstone!” while Stefan’s all, “ . . . “ because he’s an unconscious zombie. Despite the fact that she has also just had a refreshing vervain bath and would surely be covered in it, Elena blithely slices her palm open with a rock and revives Stefan with her blood. After a moment, Stefan’s eyes pop open, horror movie-style, and I laugh because that was either a bad acting choice or a bad directorial choice. Back on the Torture Tarp, Jeremy’s discovered a leather . . . I don’t know what they are called. Those things that a letter or a scroll would have been wrapped up in to keep it safe. Anyway, a leather one of those, and it contains wolfsbane. It’s either good or bad for werewolves, and Damon decides to test this out by gently stroking Mason’s face with it in the same way that Stefan tortured Katherine with vervain in “Memory Lane.” He gets the same results (smoky!), so he decides to stuff a big handful of it down Mason’s throat. Mason promptly starts coughing up blood and bile, and, for a minute there, it looks like Damon doesn’t have the stomach to go on with the torture (nice work from Somerhalder), which is one of the many differences between Damon and Stefan. Of course, Damon does find a way, despite the fact that Jeremy claims that if Mason were going to talk, he would have done so by now. After some more torture, Mason admits to what he thinks he knows: Katherine will use the stone to break the curse, only he means it differently than the Aztecs. He thinks the stone can somehow lift the curse, and he can go back to being a human. Oh, Mason. He also starts babbling about how he and Katherine are in love, and poor Damon looks like he is going to throw up in his own mouth at the sight of his pathetic human self reflected back to him in werewolf’s clothing. Instead, he opts to kill Mason over Jeremy’s objections. Hand clamped around Jer’s throat, he reminds Jer that Mason is a werewolf who will take the first opportunity to kill Damon if freed, and that, in the land of supernatural beasties, it’s “kill or be killed.” He throws himself into his impromptu lesson with such gusto that Jer doesn’t have the heart to tell him that that was last episode’s title and this week’s title honours go to Katherine. You know who else doesn’t have a heart? Mason. Because Damon rips it out. Always Have a Plan B A revived but hoarse sounding Stefan (man, was it terrible to get those clothes off? I just realized that they would melt his skin, right?) appears to help Damon cart away Mason’s body, while Damon gathers up Mason’s personal effects and fakes a note to Lady Mayor about finding a new job opportunity in Florida and sending for his things. (When he learns of his, Tyler is devastated). Stefan’s trying to be all, “Grab his feet,” when nosy Damon wonders if they should call the last number dialed, as it must surely be Katherine, and then they have a perfectly done little brother fight over this shiny new toy. Despite Stefan’s protests, Damon calls and informs Katherine that they have the moonstone and Mason is dead. While Katherine admits that Damon has surprised her, she also drops some knowledge on him: she’s got contingency plans upon contingency plans. Whatever she’s up to, Damon’s not going to be able to stop her. “Give my love to Stefan,” she says when she rings off, and, damn, is that shit cold. Why did she ever bother with Damon? She is a cruel, cruel mistress, this Katherine. Damon looks appropriately spooked. At home, lovingly preparing dinner with Alaric and Jenna, Elena gets a phone call (first sign something is wrong: Jenna refuses to give up the name of the caller). It’s Katherine, who knows all about Stefan and Elena’s continued relationship thanks to Jenna, who’s vervain perfume she switched out and who she convinced to stop drinking her “special tea” so Katherine could compel her. No sooner has she explained that defying her has consequences than Jenna dramatically raises up her chef’s knife and plunges it into her stomach. It’s kind of funny, as is Jenna trying to act out the “ow” and “why would I do that?” that follow. At the hospital, Jenna will be fine, but Elena tearfully remarks to Jeremy that this is all her fault. In a hug, Jeremy says that this is Katherine’s fault, and she will pay. YES! Jeremy Gilbert, Vampire Hunter. I cannot wait. Over in front of the eternal fireplace, Stefan’s relieved to learn that Jenna’s going to make it, but you can tell by the way he’s hugging himself that he knows what’s coming. In fact, he tells Elena as much, but she thinks this is all the more reason to say it aloud. She’s been selfish, staying with Stefan because she loves him so much, and now Jenna’s paid the price for it. They don’t know who’s going to be next if they keep this up. Stefan’s teary-eyed and kind of murmuring “no,” but he also looks like if he opens his mouth, he’ll be sick. That’s some good acting, Paul Wesley. Elena insists that they have to listen to Katherine for real this time and kisses Stefan goodbye. When she gets to the door, a teary-eyed Damon stops her, and he seems positively overwhelmed with remorse, confessing that this is his fault because he provoked Katherine. That’s some good acting, Ian Somerhalder. With mascara running down her face, Elena notes that it was she who provoked Katherine. Up in her hotel room, Katherine’s already at work on Plan B. She needs a werewolf, so poor compelled Matt is going to have to go after Tyler until Tyler kills him. In other news:
Next time: At the masquerade ball, Stefan and Damon try to kill Katherine.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 22 October 2010 08:25 |
Man alive, every episode of The Vampire Diaries should be like “Plan B:” shifting alliances, personal sacrifice, hot guys with no shirts on. Katherine continues to get me to care by being evil rather than sitting around talking about her love for Stefan, and it looks like Damon may have reason to hope he’ll win Elena yet.
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