Stefan and Damon are still on their massacring spree,
well Stefan is. Damon’s along kind of reluctantly for the ride, when Sybil
calls
She still wants this sire-killing bell. The bell has
three parts: The bell, the tuning fork of ancient devilness we’ve seen before
(currently held by Dorian) and an iron ball that Matt used to have which Damon
stole at Sybil’s insistence. He’s been carrying it around for a while. Which is
why she calls him and asks him to bring it back because no-one escapes Mystic
Falls! You will be back! You’ll all be back!
Damon can’t tell her no because of the tinkering in his
head though it’s not as strong as it was. Stefan is happy to go along just to
get rid of annoying external influences on his brother which is totally killing
his murder buzz
So, to Mystic Falls, where we’re having a Mystic Falls
beauty pageant
Seriously, this town – how do they get anything done? It’s
a non-stop array of parties and parades and pageants. It’s a tiny town in the
middle of nowhere, you’d think people would get bored of the endless formal
gatherings. No-one in this town wears jeans but they’ve all got 8 tuxes or 11
parties dresses.
Just about the whole gang can turn up to this teenaged
beauty pageant – Caroline because she’s organising it (of course she is) and
everyone else because absolutely no-one in this town bats an eye at all these
adults gate crashing a celebration for teenaged beauty queens despite they’re
not being related to any of them. Because creepiness like this is the least of
Mystic Fall’s problems
Actually, aside, given how many of these events have
ended in massacres, why does the town keep having these? In fact, after all the
many many massacres and an event that forced them to evacuate the entire town
for months, why is this town even still here?! At this point surely some
authority somewhere has decided the best thing to do would be to carpet bomb
the whole place and then salt the earth?
Anyway, Damon and Stefan join Sybil and Damon tells her
no. She tries to get into his head only to be painfully ejected – Damon isn’t
playing her game any more. She’s more than a little shocked by this but Stefan
points out her mistake: bringing Damon back to Mystic Falls during the Pageant –
the Pageant Elena won and was the first time Damon fell in love with her – was pretty
much peak Elena. Sybil only buried Elena in his mind but, as every watcher of
this show knows, Elena never, ever, ever goes away. Like herpes.
There begins a mini war as Stefan and Sybil try to flush
the Elena from Damon, Sybil resorting to trying to get Damon to suppress the
memories as they will invoke his humanity and cause The Guilts because of all
the nasty things he’s done that everyone will forgive him for in 2 weeks. This
is evidences by Caroline working with Damon reminding him how pure and special
and wonderful the love between Damon and Elena is. Hey, remember when Damon bit
Caroline, treated her like a toy, compelled her and I even think raped her
under compulsion? All bygones! In this case Caroline is invested in Damon’s 8th
time round the redemption train because she needs to believe Stefan will become
back to her on his 6th time round.
This battle for Damon’s hearty/mind/soul ends when Sybil
gives her ultimatum and Damon hits her round the head with the big iron ball.
Oopsie. After some more shenanigans, Sybil ends up chained in a dungeon for Damon
to do some torturing – which ends in a tense stalemate as they fight in Damon’s
guilt ridden subconscious
But there’s another battle for good/evil/humanity/conveniently
forgetting all the bodies. Caroline wants Stefan to find a way out of Cade’s
deal and come back and marry her. She’s ready to stand with him and support him
– all of which Stefan decides makes her evil and hellbound. I can kind of see
the guilt of supporting evil passively but honestly this is like the third time
this season Vampire Diaries has had
an evil person say “you’re evil and going to hell because of shit I’m
doing/making you do!” which is broken and more so when this show has such a
terrible history for moral lessons, light speed redemption trains and gross
forgiveness.
It seems Cade is right, Stefan is so loving his new
ripperness and leaving bodies piling up all around him that he has no wish to
go back to Caroline. He’s having fun. And his whole motive here was to try and
get his brother on board with the fun – which hasn’t work. So Stefan ditches
Damon (with a stake) and, when Caroline finally confronts him (over the body of
a beauty pageant winner he’s just vampired) with an excellent line about the
difference between “happiness” and “fun” (Caroline is definitely one of the
better characters on this show) she gives him back his ring. And stakes him.
Which leaves her free to mentor the new tearful vampire
Meanwhile along the plot points, Dorian and Matt are
gathering bell bits despite Sybil apparently sirening pretty much the entire
police force. For some reason they’ve also decided to trust Selene because ye
gods why?! Apparently, according to Selene, the bell can only be rung by someone
of Matt’s bloodline
Yes, it’s taken 8 seasons but there is now a purpose to Matt.
And we have Bonnie and Enzo, back from Paris and a little
aside from the action because they have their own conflict. Firstly, Enzo keeps
pushing Bonnie out of the firing line, afraid for her. And for good reason –
Bonnie is human, she has no witchy-woo and she isn’t a vampire: basically
unless she has Matt’s bizarre plot armour, any conflict has a good chance of
her neck being snapped or her blood drunk or other untoward things happening to
her. He’s worried, desperately afraid of living alone without her now they’re
so in love (honest)
Which, of course, brings up another point – Bonnie is
human so after a few decades he is going to have to be without her. And Enzo
has given her a nice present: a vial of his blood as a symbol of his eternal
devotion. Oh and a convenient way for her to turn herself into a vampire if she
needs to.
Bonnie is a little conflicted on this – which is
something because, as she said, a year ago she would outright have rejected it.
Having seen the struggles of Elena, Caroline, Damon and Stefan she wanted no
part of being a vampire (their struggles – not the huge pile of bodies they
regularly leave in their wake. This is Vampire
Diaries after all). But now she loves Enzo and sees the good in vampires
(and not the huge pile of bodies he’s left in his wake as well).
But, still, her life is tied to Elena’s and Elena will
wake up when she dies and who knows what will happen if she turns into a
vampire. For the sake of the precious Elena Herpes, Bonnie must remain human.
She does suggest Enzo taking the cure so they can die together
I don’t know why fiction thinks dying together is so
wonderful. And no-one ever considers that this also would open up the chance
for, say, Enzo to die in a car accident 3 years from now? Nope, removing
immortality guarantees you a nice old age of romantic arthritis and… honestly I’ve
never known an Octogenarian proclaim how amazing being elderly is.
