Previously, on The Vampire Diaries
VDVO: Vampires, werewolves, hybrids, blood from the vein, Hunter's neck goes “snap”, Jeremy gets invisible ink.
Elena is sleeping uneasily in her room. She awakens and heads to the kitchen for a cuppa and is startled by a momentary vision of Connor. As she grabs her tea Connor appears again and sets in on the torment. She tries to convince herself that he's a ghost and calls for Jeremy but he puts her in a sleeper hold. Elena breaks free, grabs a knife and plunges it into Connor's neck.
Except it's Jeremy's neck.
Last episode she got him shot and this episode stabbed. Next episode she'll probably set him on fire. Title card!
Several hours later an agitated Elena waits for Jeremy to revive and wonder to Damon what she can possibly say. Damon suggests “Thanks for not ditching the family ring after it drove Ric crazy.” It was actually Mama Witch Esther whispering sour nothings to Ric each time he was on The Other Side that drove him crazy but I'm not sure if Damon knows this.
He realizes he isn't helping and thinks Elena should have called Stefan. Elena reminds him she doesn't trust Stefan this lifetime which makes Stefan's arrival right then super awkward. Stefan wonders why Elena didn't call him and she reminds him that she doesn't trust him this lifetime and goes upstairs to wash all of the blood off her hands. Good luck with that.
Stefan has never heard the phrase “personal space” in his near-two centuries so he goes up after her. He offers to help but she turns it down. Stefan snots, “But you'll take it from Damon?” Elena reads him for trying to make it about Damon and presents the litany of why she doesn't trust him.
At Tyler's place, Tyler rejoins Hayley and a few redshirt hybrids, who have kept up the drunken vigil for last week's redshirt hybrid that Tyler says wrecked him the night before. Where is Tyler's mother while there's a house full of drunken werewolves? Hayley tries to feed Tyler a drink and the way she wipes the booze off his mouth with her thumb and then sucks on it like Caroll Baker in Baby Doll kind of puts the lie to her whole “we're just friends” routine with Caroline from last week.
Klaus wanders in and is only vaguely interesting as he bitches about last week's redshirt and Connor's death. Caroline comes in to save the scene, turning over Tyler's stuff as part of their obviously-staged breakup. Klaus leads the redshirt hybrids out on a super-secret mission. With them gone, Caroline confirms that the obviously-staged breakup was staged.
Elena's showering and suddenly there's more gore in the tub than when Marion Crane bit it in Psycho.
"Mother! Oh God Mother! Blood! Blood!"
She's hallucinating, as we'll learn in the next scene.
The next scene. Damon finishes cleaning up Jeremy's latest murder scene when Stefan wanders in, wondering where Jeremy is. Damon informs him that he's at school, helping Bonnie set up an exhibit on the occult. Something I'm sure happens on a regular basis in high schools in rural Virginia.
Klaus calls Stefan and bitches about dead Connor again some more. But he's not as mad as he might be, since he figures he can just track down one of the four remaining Hunters. No, he's more worried about Elena. By killing Connor she triggered “the Hunter's Curse”. Apparently if you kill a Hunter the Hunter will take you down with him, inflicting hallucinations so awful that you'll want to kill yourself. Klaus offers to take Elena off Stefan's hands, keep her safe and away from pointed sticks but Stefan isn't having it.
Elena's finishing getting dressed when Connor appears again in his bloody wifebeater and does his best to talk her to death. She seeks out Damon but sees Connor in his place, who reminds her that he's rotting in an unmarked grave because of her. She flees and when she steps outside Klaus whisks her away.
At Mystic Falls High School, Jeremy inspects his Hunter's Mark. Matt wanders up and can't see it. They discuss Jeremy's status as a “Potential” until Professor Creepy Shane and April wander in with exhibits for the thoroughly probable occult lecture in a public high school in rural Virginia. Shane's first name is “Atticus” but I'll save my To Kill a Mockingbird material for another time. He invites them all to the lecture and as he walks off April thinks he looks familiar.
The Brothers Salvatore have called in Bonnie in hopes of having her break the Hunter's Curse. She can't do the necessary magic but volunteers to consult with Shane. Stefan heads out in search of Elena.
Who is currently being held in a locked room at the Haus of Klaus. He explains it's to keep her from killing herself. She insists she never would and Klaus says he never thought he would either. After he killed the five Original Hunters he was tormented by hallucinations for 52 years, four months and nine days. Then they just stopped. This really muddles the mythology, as we'll find out later. Elena asks if Stefan knew about the Curse; Klaus tells her all Stefan knew was that Connor had to be kept alive.
Stefan calls upon Tyler to lure away the redshirt hybrids and Tyler fills him in on the Hybrid Underground Railroad he and Hayley are running. One of Elena's guards has broken his sire bond already.
That same redshirt is dropping off a bag of toiletries and whatnot for Elena. She yells at him to go away and Connor re-appears and starts in with the torment again, including laying the blame for her parents' death at her feet. She's covering her ears and going la la la I can't hear you, so Connor disappears and is replaced by Katherine, who asks, “Did you miss me?” Oh girl hells yes!
At the thoroughly probable occult lecture in a public high school in rural Virginia Shane points out a shapeless lump of rock and says it's the world's first tombstone. Of course a priceless artifact like that would just be sitting in some random high school cafeteria.
As he tells about the recipient of that stone, April remembers that she's seen Shane before when her dad taught a theology workshop at Whitmore College a year ago.
Shane says that the stone marked the grave of a man-witch named Silas who, with a lady witch called Ketzya, concocted an immortality spell. But instead of making Ketzya immortal, Silas wanted to use it on some other chick so Ketzya killed her and buried the immortal yet powerless Silas alive. Expect either Shane to turn out to be Silas or for Silas to show up as the season five Big Bad. Bonnie congratulates him after the lecture and comments that Ketzya sounds like a badass. Shane says she was nothing compared to Silas. OK, so Bonnie is Ketzya reincarnated. Got it.
Back at Briarcliff the Haus of Klaus, Katherine continues to torment Elena, going on about how the girl Stefan fell in love with is dead and how he could never love a monster like Elena. “I was you before you even existed, and when Stefan knew the real me, he hated me. Now he's gonna hate you too.”
Damon hangs out in a classroom, waiting for Bonnie and Shane to arrive. Damon shows him Jeremy's sketch of Connor's tattoo. He recognizes it immediately and fills them in on the Hunters's Curse. If the Hunter is killed by that which he hunts, that person will wander the Earth in torment until a new Hunter is awakened and the legacy is passed on. They're called Potentials, just like in Sunnydale. Shane exits to grab his Hunter research and Damon calls Jeremy, spilling to Bonnie that he's a Potential.
Tyler and Stefan meet with Redshirt who frets that Klaus will return. No need to worry, as the team has dispatched Caroline to distract him. She finds him at the Grill, re-opened following the explosion which in the show's chronology happened yesterday. She asks for Elena back, he refuses for Elena's own good, he won't bore her with the details and blah blah blah the scene is mostly there so we can catch Caorline catching a glimpse of Klaus's gooey center. While this is going on Redshirt agrees to give Stefan access to Elena following assurances that Tyler and Hayley have his back. That should work out swell.
Inside the locked ward Katherine torments Elena some more, including mentions of Grams' death and Abby's turning because of her. Outside Redshirt sends the other guards off on a chase of the wild goose variety. Stefan unlocks the ward but Elena sees him as Connor. She grabs a metal bed slat and impales Stefan on it, making her escape. He has more shirts wrecked that way. He should just stop wearing them.
Bonnie's reading Damon for leaving her out of the Hunter loop when an out-of-breath Jeremy arrives. Bonnie informs him that to cure Elena he has to kill a vampire. “Great, give me a stake and I'll kill Damon right now!” Hee! Bonnie gives Jeremy the research so he can make an informed decision about taking on the Hunter legacy while Damon fields a call from Stefan, informing him of Elena's escape.
Caroline gets looped in on the Hunter's Curse/Elena's escaped business via product-placed phone and admits to Klaus that she's there as a distraction and oh by the way Elena's escaped. Klaus gives her to the count of ten to convince him to let her live and she spills about stopping the hallucinations.
Connor and Katherine are back to torment Elena again some more as she strides to the center of Wickery Bridge. She contemplates the water below before being confronted by the cruelest hallucination yet, her mother, who seals the suicide deal.
Elena removes her daylight ring and drops it in the river.
As Elena waits for the sunrise she has a moment of clarity, worrying that Jeremy will be left alone. Mom assures her that by dying she'll become a helpful ghost instead of a monster. Damon finds her on the bridge. He tries to talk her down but Connor talks into her other ear, keeping her in place. Damon sees her ring is missing.
Redshirt is heading out of town but Klaus stops him. First Tyler and then Hayley try to take the blame for setting Elena loose. Klaus lets Redshirt go but Stefan busts in the door and stakes him. Jeremy's behind him with an ax and goes all Kendra on the redshirt, taking off his head.
Damon is still trying to talk Elena off the bridge. He tries to grab her but she zips away. When Jeremy's ax falls, Elena is released from the curse but the sun is coming up and she's starting to burn. Damon grabs her and jumps off the bridge so the water will protect her.
Later that morning Elena awakens in her bed. Damon has retrieved her ring. She remembers her experiences as if they were a dream. She thanks Damon for saving her and he replies, “You know what they say about teen suicide: 'Don't Do It'.”
"Eskimo" my ass!
Elena takes his hand and they share a moment before Damon decides to “take a very high and annoying road” and fills her in on the why behind Stefan's recent actions. And he tells her about the possibility of a cure.
Tyler and Hayley are having another drunken wake for the latest redshirt.
In death he has a name. His name was Robert Paulson Chris.
Caroline enters and starts to explain that what happened was necessary to save a friend. Tyler comes back that Chris was a friend and part of Tyler's pack. He wonders how Caroline persuaded Klaus to sacrifice a hybrid; she agreed to go on a date with Klaus. She tries to sell it as furthering the ruse of Tyler and Hayley's relationship but Tyler's is having none of it.
At the Grill Damon orders a bourbon for himself and one for dead Alaric. Matt approaches with information about the relationship between Shane and April's dad. Sheriff Liz accessed the pastor's phone records. There were daily calls from the pastor to the same number over several months and on the day of the explosion there were ten calls that morning. All to Shane's office at the college.
Speaking of which, Bonnie's hanging out with Professor Creepy. She wonders how he knows about the supernatural stuff. He replies that he's studied every supernatural creature that exists (and ass-kisses that he's on Team Bonnie because witches are the most powerful). He asks Bonnie to come to him when the new Hunter he knows they have completes his Mark because he's the only one she'll be able to trust.
On the Gilbert porch Stefan and Elena discuss her HEIGHTENED EMOTIONS again some more, specifically as they relate to Damon. Her ladyparts have been even tinglier for Damon since she turned and Stefan can't deal with it any longer. They break up.
This was a definite downshift from last week's action-filled outing. Normally I'm not a big fan of the dream/hallucination/it's all in your head business but here it was well done and mercifully short. I'm sorry Katherine was all a fever dream but hallucination Katherine is better than no Katherine.
But this Hunter's Curse thing is a mess. The curse is lifted once the Potential kills a vampire. So that means it took the five second-generation Hunters 52 years to each kill a vampire? That is some piss-poor Hunting right there. And I have to wonder how the Potentials reacted to tattoos suddenly appearing on their bodies and how they knew that meant that they had to go kill a vampire. The mythology on this show gives me a headache sometimes.
Next week: Nothing! The show's on hiatus for Thanksgiving. See you back here on the 29th!
