This episode created, at least for me, this cloud of impending doom over Mystic Falls, with Jon Gilbert as the catalyst. He is wrapped up with Isobel, he knows the full Gilbert history, he wants something his great-great-great-etc. uncle Jonathan invented, and he’s willing to tolerate the Salvatore vampires being around in order to get it. This sounds like trouble to me! He also seems poised to bring both Damon and Jeremy into it, agreeing to work with Damon in order to get his artifact back, and seeming to consider telling Jeremy the whole truth after Jeremy admits to reading one of Jonathan’s journals and hinting that he might believe. Surely Jon plans to do so at some point, anyway, given that it is Jeremy’s heritage from his father, so why not now when there are vampires back in Mystic Falls to make that heritage pertinent?
Damon had another stand-out episode. Except for his hair…NOT digging Ian’s new cut. Oh well, it’ll grow. But in terms of being awesome, this week was Damon’s time. He discovered Stefan’s deceit about drinking blood very easily, and realized the threat it posed to their cover. So he told Elena, knowing she would help him get his brother under control. He perfectly covered his motives with Jon, saying he’d only been amenable to the blackmailed assistance because he thought they could help him find Katherine, which Jon bought hook, line, and sinker. And he manipulated Anna and Pearl into giving him exactly what he wanted: the artifact from Jonathan Gilbert, senior, which Pearl gave him as an apology for what her coven did to Stefan. I love that Damon is smart enough to know that whatever Jon Gilbert wants to have would make life worse for himself—his line to Anna, about “he wants something, and whatever it is, I do not want him to have it” said everything.
It was perhaps a bit too convenient an end to the tomb story to have Pearl “send away” all the rogue vampires as the other half of her apology, but it also makes sense since she and Anna want to stay in Mystic Falls, and they understand the value of secrecy and community in a way the others wouldn’t. So why not just turn them loose on the rest of the world? Makes good sense, but…it was a bit of a convenient plot point. Unless they come back later.
I guess I was wrong on Anna giving Jeremy hell as a woman scorned. They made up when he confronted her about the plan to use Gilbert blood to open the tomb, which meant they had both been using each other and either they had both really developed warmer feelings or neither had. But they both did, so now they’re friends again, possibly on the road to being more again, and totally sweet together. So, by the way, I can’t decide if it’s genetic, given the Gilbert legacy and Katherine’s relatives, or just something in the way Jeremy and Elena were raised, that they both so easily accept the existence of vampires. Intriguing question.
Anyway, back to what made this such a great Damon episode—he also stepped up when his brother failed. He became Elena’s escort at the Miss Mystic Falls pageant like he’d been the one all along. (Speaking of the pageant—those girls were dressed way too chicly for a small-town, old-money, insular-society kind of event. My hometown did something similar, and those dresses were poofy and without any sort of cleavage or leg, and no way is Mystic Falls less isolated and old-fashioned than where I grew up. Just sayin’.) There were some intense looks between Elena and Damon during that dance…I hope the show isn’t going to try and make a triangle out of the three of them the way the books did. Yawn. After the pageant was over he was right onto his brother and, while not in time to stop Stefan from attacking a girl, was there in time to stop him from killing her and to cover up Stefan’s involvement with the sheriff. And then he came up with the enforced detox padded-cell (well, steel-reinforced cell, anyway) for his brother. Even if Elena had to help him implement it, Damon was the one who came up with the plan. AND he resigned himself to waiting out Stefan’s withdrawals with her? Damn. What happened to Damon the World’s Biggest Asshole?
I thought the addiction theme was heavy-handed. Stefan not acting “like himself,” lying and stealing and doing anything for a fix, insisting everything was fine, etc. But it’s an interesting take on the vampires’ relationship to blood. Damon implied that Stefan had never drunk human blood, which was why he didn’t know how to deal with it now…while Damon the new vampire was learning to control his bloodlust, Stefan the new vampire wasn’t even letting himself feel it. Interesting.
One of my favorite angles for this episode was the notion of consequences. Bonnie came back and wouldn’t talk to Elena, and finally admitted that she blames Damon and Stefan for her grandmother’s death and that, rather than making Elena choose, she is choosing. This (losing Bonnie) is really the first real consequence to Elena, other than a sense of guilt, for her relationships with Stefan and Damon. Stefan’s addiction is both the consequence of a sum of actions—his lifelong adherence to feeding on animals, his kidnapping, Elena’s love for him and need to save him—and the genitor of other consequences, specifically his nearly killing a human girl, surely the most horrific of actions for him.
Should be interesting to see what shakes down from the Jon Gilbert situation, Stefan’s rehab, Bonnie’s new ability to control vampire minds for at least a little bit, and the new alliance between Damon and Pearl….
