I can now definitively say that more happens in “The Vampire Diaries” in seven minutes than in every other show currently on television. Why? Because I had computer glitchiness (stoopid Slingbox) and missed the first seven minutes of the show. That being said, I’ll come back to fill in when the show airs on the West Coast. But if I am totally misreading what happened, feel free to let me know, because I will absolutely believe it. I do know one thing for sure, though — someone we know probably isn’t going to be on the spin-off!
Well, the opening already changes everything. After crazy sex with Rebekah (I’m assuming), Stefan tries to sneak out of her bedroom — and opens the door to Klaus. Busted!
Rebekah is incensed, not that Stefan was trying to sneak out without buying (or killing) her breakfast, but that Klaus is violating her privacy by being there in the first place. But Klaus really couldn’t care less about her privacy, seeing that their brother Kol tried to kill her and (more importantly) stole his daggers. Yes, that would be slightly more important.
Klaus demands that Rebekah hand over the last dagger, which she won’t. Klaus orders Stefan to talk sense into Rebekah, which he won’t. Klaus is not doing so well, is he? Stefan tells Klaus he’s unavailable because he has to babysit Damon, giving him just enough blood to avoid turning into a raisin, but not enough to get strong enough to escape his cage. Klaus doesn’t sigh with exasperation, though he could. He reminds Stefan that if he helps him dagger Kol (I hate to say this, but I keep thinking of Kohl’s), Damon will be uncompelled, Jeremy will be free to go to his junior prom, and they’ll be one step closer to a human Elena. Sounds better than breaking your brother’s neck and bleeding him out every few hours!
Bonnie is working on prepping the Decade Dance by inflating 99 luft balloons for the big event, but Elena is of no help. She’s busy babysitting Jeremy and Matt. A lot of babysitting this episode, there is. She tells Bonnie about her clever plan to kill Kol. Elena goes to wash her hands — and it burns, it burns! There’s something in the water. Someone all Erin Brockovich (okay, that’s not exactly topical, but it’s not often you get to make jokes about tap water).
The something in the water isn’t chromium-6 but vervain, courtesy of Bonnie’s dad. Bonnie’s all, like, stop it, Dad! You’re totally embarrassing me! He politely reminds her that an inordinately high number of people have died during her senior year alone. What a buzzkill. But before Bonnie can roll her eyes about her totally uncool dad, Kol pops out of nowhere and tries to kill her. “No one can get to the cure if you’re too dead to find it!” he snarls. Bonnie shuts him down, pops some balloons, and brings the guy to his Original knees. Bonnie isn’t just tough these days. She’s superhero tough.
Stefan visits poor, sad Damon. He drops off water and a tiny vial of blood. Worse, he brings along his new babysitter: Klaus! Damon is, of course, thrilled. Klaus, eager to chat up his new charge, mentions that Stefan is sleeping with Rebekah. This will come up later. Wait for it.
Elena gets Stefan on the phone to tell him Kol just tried to kill Bonnie. While she and Stefan aren’t getting along so fabulously right now, she (once again) needs his help, as he’s now Rebekah’s BFF. She tells him she wants Jeremy to kill Original Silas-hater Kol — then, to short circuit the inevitable payback plan of Kol’s surviving family members, she needs Stefan to dagger Rebekah.
“Yeah, I can’t do that,” Stefan says, as a standard issue vampire can’t really dagger an Original. Rules, shmules!
Guess what? Matt (who has to be getting tired of being the sole mortal around who has flexible job hours) can. Oh, and Bonnie has a plan on how to remove Klaus from the equation, albeit briefly. Elena has thought of EVERYTHING. I would hire this girl to run a company or coordinate my next move, no problem.
“Okay, fine,” Stefan says, ridiculously quickly. He likes Rebekah more than he wants to admit at this point, so I just can’t believe he’s willing to dagger her so quickly. Besides, there’s that crazy sex issue. No way is he walking away from crazy sex! He deserves a rebound after Elena, doesn’t he?
With Stefan on board, Elena just needs to lure Kol to her house, so she gives him a call and invites him over to discuss a “truce.” Which is code for “killing you.” He’ll come right over! And just like that, the doorbell dings while Elena and Jeremy write one another messages on the chalk board usually reserved for “buy more milk” and “don’t forget the fabric softener.”
Elena tries to stall Kol, hemming and hawing about inviting him in, but he says she has nothing to fear. “I can’t kill your brother, or I’ll have the Hunter’s Curse,” he points out. So, Kol is invited in. I am pretty sure this is going to be a bad, bad thing, but for whom remains to be seen.
Stefan, meanwhile, is trying to get Rebekah to drop her defenses, but for whatever reason he doesn’t use the crazy sex option. No, he wants her to admit she’s a big softy. “You think I would sleep with you just to get the dagger?” he purrs. Yes, Stefan, Rebekah isn’t stupid. But she does want to go to the high school dance, whether or not anyone else does. Stefan offers to take her, as this will give us an excuse to listen to ’80s music (and subtly plug “The Carrie Diaries”), set a retro romantic mood, and give Matt a clean shot at taking her down. Ah, youth.
Damon, who is still stuck in his cell, gets a visit from Klaus. Klaus’ dual purpose seems to be picking Damon’s brain for helpful hints on how to make Caroline love him plus making Damon feel lousy about himself. Not that Damon can’t play that game, too. “I think this has something to do with a certain blonde vampire. I think she’s never gonna forgive you,” Damon sneers, those fabulous eyebrows wiggling wildly. He adds that he may be bad, but he’s bad for a reason, whereas Klaus is bad just for the hell of it (or, in Damon’s parlance, “to be a dick.”) “Be bad, but be bad with purpose. Otherwise, you’re just not worth forgiving.”
Kol and Elena hang out uncomfortably, Jeremy having been sent away for his own protection/in order to get Bonnie. Elena tries to mix drinks and be charming, but Kol doesn’t seem to buy it. Kol is not an idiot, and I’m also fairly sure Elena is a terrible bartender. That doesn’t mean Kol’s against some small talk of the vampire kind or drinking badly mixed cocktails, however. “You’ve killed haven’t you? Or are you one of those Mary Sue vampires?” he asks Elena, who admits she’s killed exactly once. I think this makes her a Mary Sue vampire. Good to know.
He again reminds her that, if Silas is unearthed, he’l unleash hell on earth. Having made his (very good) point, Kol thanks Elena for the drinks (those Originals, so polite!) and tells her he’ll take her request for a truce under advisement before hitting the road.
Of course, these wonderfully complex plans always hit snags, and Jeremy can’t get a hold of Bonnie. When he goes to her house, he discovers that she didn’t just stick her phone in the jeans that got thrown in the wash or anything normal like that. No, her dad is having a witchcraft intervention — and he’s even invited Bonnie’s vampire mom to join in. They drug Bonnie, intent on holding her down until some witches can come over and show her that she has a drug, I mean, magic problem, but Bonnie is stronger than they expect and just waltzes out of the house, ostensibly to Elena’s rescue. This must be exactly like having a teenager who’s doing crystal meth, except she’s showering regularly and has all her teeth.
At school, Stefan and Rebekah walk into a gym filled with balloons, mood lighting, an ’80s theme and no people. Time to bust out the oldies! “Hope you like The Cure!” Stefan jokes. Get it? Get it? Anyway, since Rebekah was in a coffin for the Me Decade, she doesn’t know much about it (because she hasn’t been watching “The Carrie Diaries”!). So, it’s up to Stefan to tell her about “The Princess Bride” and John Hughes movies (Rebekah rightly determines it was a time of sentimental drivel) and give her a koala to wear. I was unaware this was a thing in the ’80s, so, learn something new every day.
Jeremy, who left Bonnie’s to get a head start (not realizing her parents were going to go all crazy pants and drug her) gets home just as Kol knocks on the door. That truce suggestion? Request denied! That sneaky Kol! Since he’s already been invited in, he just needs to waltz in, kill Elena, and rip off Jeremy’s arm. Easy peasy!
While Kol is stomping around, he has time to chat with Klaus, who is shocked to learn about this plan. There’s a plan and HE wasn’t consulted? Klaus is incensed! Not that it makes any difference, because Kol thinks he’s part of it, and he intends to rip up Elena just to make sure he can’t make any hybrids, ever.
Back in Romantic ’80s Land, Rebekah and Stefan make goo goo eyes at one another while Stefan tries to sort out where her dagger is. And then, Rebekah shows him the DAGGER IS IN HER FUZZY BOOT! Well, that’s convenient. He texts Matt to come over, but luckily, our exhausted mortal friend doesn’t have to do a thing except look around a corner once or twice. So, this is a relatively low-stress episode for Matt.
As Stefan (rather ingeniously) tries to get Rebekah to try “The Breakfast Club” slide (“You need to take off those shoes to make it work,” he purrs), she takes out the dagger and hands it to him. “You’re right. I do care,” she says. “I want stupid koala corsages… I want to have kids with someone who stands outside my window with a stupid boom box. I want to be human. So let Klaus put down my brother, and let’s go find the cure.”
As an aside, this is a lovely moment. Claire Holt captures Rebekah’s struggle between family loyalty and her own desires beautifully, and it makes perfect sense given everything we’ve learned about this character. She’s always yearned to be a real girl (like a Barbie Pinocchio), and the ’80s movie music just plays on our memories of every tearful Molly Ringwald moment we’ve ever seen. Well-done, “TVD,” well-done.
Anyway, no time for poignancy. This is “The Vampire Diaries,” and this plot MOVES, people! Kol has stuck a wooden staircase railing into Elena to pin her (Is there some reason that wouldn’t work to kill her if he just aimed higher? Because I would think Kol would just go ahead and off her, although yes, we don’t want him to bring down the whole series, I guess), and now he’s busy deciding how to lop of Jeremy’s arm.
Of course, the problem with pinning Elena instead of killing her is she just yanks out that big wooden railing, heads downstairs, and frees Jeremy. Then, there’s some very fast struggling with very minimal lighting (sometimes I really wish they’d have a fight at a supermarket or a hospital just so I could see what’s going on) and Kol gets doused with water and, oopsy, is killed. Unfortunately, he also becomes a big, fat fireball in the middle of the house, so I would think Elena and Jeremy should call the fire department pretty quickly. But no time for that, because Klaus is at the door, watching his brother get murdered. What excellent timing!
Elena doesn’t know what Klaus is so pissed about, really. He was going to kill Kol, too! “I was gonna make him suffer on MY TERMS,” he says, a little poutily. He then reveals that, even if he seemed to be on Elena’s side, he really wasn’t. “You really think I care for an instant about my bloody hybrids?” No, he just wanted the cure to destroy it. Mwahahahaha! Sort of.
Hey, look! Another guest! Bonnie pops in and tells Elena to invite Klaus in so she can work her magic on him, so to speak. “You have no idea what I can do now,” she says, and guess what? She somehow erects a force field that Klaus can’t get past to kill Elena and Jeremy. Or her, I’m guessing. This just makes Klaus angrier. “I will hunt all of you to your end!” he says as they shuffle out the door. Yeah, I’m thinking Klaus will hunt them all to their end until he has another TV show to go to, and then they might get a break.
Anyway, Kol is dead, and Stefan gives Rebekah the news. Though she was on Team Kill Kol, she’s still upset that a plan was in action before she’d decided to it. But Stefan reminds her that Kol was never gonna let them find the cure. “I’m not gonna let the people I care about get hurt,” he says. “You can hate me for it… But now he can’t hurt you, either. So you can be who you want. You can be human again. Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“Why would I trust you?” Rebekah asks Stefan for about the 1,350,287th time.
“I don’t know. I guess I could give you my word. But at the end of the day, you just have to take a leap,” he says, fluttering his eyelashes at her.
So, Elena, Jeremy and Bonnie are fine… wait, are they at the Salvatore house? Did someone bother to put out the fire at the Gilbert house? Just wondering. I’m sure Stefan won’t let it burn with him in it, but they still may have wanted to grab some photo albums or hard drives or something. Anyway, Damon (having walked out of his cell thanks to that silly Klaus) arrives to hug Elena, Stefan arrives to glower at Elena, and Jeremy rips off his shirt to show everyone his invisible tattoo is not only visible but completed. Oh, and Damon and Stefan get into a fight, partly because of Rebekah, partly because of Elena, and partly because they’re brothers.
Now, they just need Professor Shane to take them to Silas’ grave… and then, will all hell break loose? Kol would say “I told you so” if it does, but yeah, hard for him to do that now.
Do you think they’ll bring back Silas? Do you think Bonnie has control of her magic? Do you think the Scooby gang should trust Professor Shane?