![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflySo, my goal is to try to have all these done before the new episodes start up on the 27th. We'll see how that goes.
1x08 - 162 Candles
Open at the Salvatore boarding house. Stefan fell asleep reading a book. Despite trying to look at the text upside down, I cannot make out what he was reading, sadly. He wakes when the book falls off his knee. I wonder if this happens a lot - Stefan can't sleep, so he reads himself to sleep. It's a common thing in my family, except we actually prepare for it by reading in bed in the first place.
He puts the book back on the side table - and I still can't see what it was - and gets up and stretches. We hear the echoing laughter of a woman. Vampire friends seem to really enjoy the 'hee! hee! I'm stalking you! I'm a big, bad vampire! Hee!" game. More echoes of how much of the predator they are. She stalks and pounces. It's like watching kittens at play.
Because, of course, this is not an enemy but Lexi, Stefan's friend.
He hugs her warmly and Lexi wishes Stefan a happy birthday. We cut to them the next morning and it looks like Stefan has been catching her up on the news in Mystic Falls - being shot by Logan, so far. Lexi tells him that he should come with her to see Bon Jovi - they joined him for a crazy weekend years ago (unbeknownst to him, Katherine was stalking him at the time).
"What is keeping you here?"
"I told you - her name is Elena."
"Well, let's hope she's better than the last girl you got all... sprung over." Lexi teases, picking up the photo of Katherine that is still on Stefan's desk and waving it at him. Still on his desk! Just saying! And when Stefan takes it from her, he puts it right back on his desk.
We learn that Lexi never met Katherine (says she would have kicked her ass) and then she asks after Damon.
Lexi has another reason for arriving at night - no daywalker ring. See, Rose isn't the only older vampire without one. We just happen to mostly meet vampires who hung out with Katherine - and thus Emily - and got the benefit of getting one. I'm guessing that it's actually not so easy for vampires to make friends with witches. Katherine seems to have a knack of saving their lives and I think that Stefan and Bonnie may qualify as actual friends, but it's not so common in the vampire world to hang out with witches and you probably can't threaten a witch into making one for you.
Sheriff Forbes questions Jeremy, Matt, Stefan, and Elena - their stories are all pretty much the same. Vicki left town, Stefan was just trying to help her with her drug problem, she was acting erratic before she disappeared but not aggressive or violent. The last note on the interrogations is Jeremy parroting the words that Elena gave to Damon to give to him: "I'll miss her but I think it's for the best."
Stefan waits for Elena outside the police station - probably not thrilled when she confirms the break-up, despite still feeling for him.
"Around you, people get hurt and people die, and it's just too much."
Which is actually similar to what she says to Damon in the last episode - 'people die around you, how could it not matter?' There are times, later in her relationship with Stefan, where she seems to almost forget he's a vampire (willfully?) and seems to believe that Damon is the only vampire of her acquaintance, but she's definitely not at that point right now.
She tells him again to stay away from her and then walks away.
Over at the Salvatore place, Lexi is sleeping. She turns over and Damon is lying next to her.
"Hi, Lexi. What an unexpected surprise."
"Unexpected surprise? I think the wrong brother went back to high school."
Ha. Lexi is snarky and I enjoy her. They zing at each other back and forth for a bit - we get confirmation that Lexi is just in town for Stefan's birthday.
"Why are you so mean to me?"
"Uh... have you met you? You're not a nice person."
"Because I'm a vampire."
"But you're only the bad parts."
Damon faux-flirts one time too many and Lexi grabs him by the throat, warning him not to mess up her day with Stefan. He apologizes, which is always something of a surprise from Damon. We get confirmation that greater age = greater strength.
I am, though, interested in Lexi talking about Damon being the 'bad parts' of being a vampire. We know that Lexi knew Rose, who is fearful but loyal, and that Lexi calls Stefan 'one of the good ones', of course. Lexi herself does not drink animal blood, so that's not a marker of being a good vampire to her.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arabian had the thought that living with your emotion switch turned off, turning your remorse and guilt off, is what makes a vampire only 'the bad parts'. I think that's an interesting idea.
Back with Bonnie and Grams, Bonnie is packing to leave. Her dad isn't too happy when she spends too much time over there. She was planning to give the crystal back to Caroline but her grandmother impresses the importance of keeping it and wearing it on her.
Elena and Jenna are moping on the couch - Jenna got a 'brush off email' from someone pretending to be Logan, because the vampire hunters are pretending that he's not dead. But both of them are distracted by the unusual sight of Jeremy being devoted to his homework.
At Sheriff Forbes' office, Damon has come with a delivery. It's the vervain. He's continuing to cover for Zach's absence (at some point, I think everyone just gets used to Damon and stops expecting Zach to come back), and starts edging his way into the vampire hunting circle by asking how the hunt is going. Forbes surprises Damon by thinking outside the box - what if vampires can come out during the day now? They're going to start looking at anyone who has come to town since the deaths started, which will point directly at Damon (and Stefan) if he's not careful. There is a net closing in, but Damon is aware of it, which informs his actions in this episode. Lexi, after all, isn't on Damon's short list.
Bonnie visits Elena. Elena doesn't really want to talk about it, but she does mention that she and Stefan broke up. Elena asks Bonnie to take her mind off Stefan, and Bonnie responds with awesome feather floating fun times of witch confessions. It's a great scene for the Bonnie-Elena friendship and it's also wonderful because it gives Elena a chance to see a side of the supernatural that isn't about blood and death. She needed that in order to help move on from the dark place that "Haunted" left her, I think.
Caroline is bopping along and... Damon steps out in front of her. Caroline is not pleased with him at all and is making that known when... he compels her again. Instantly, she's happy to see him instead of totally pissed off. Damon has decided on a plan ("to solve this town's vampire problem") and a key part of that is Caroline throwing a party at the Mystic Grill so that "Stefan and his BFF" will come.
Lexi and Stefan are chatting about Elena. Lexi is of the opinion that they should have sex (Stefan and Elena) because "sex always works!" Vampire sex being particularly effective.
"This isn't about sex or compulsion or any of our other tricks. She has to want to be with me. On her own terms."
"Wow, that sounded all... mature and grown-up."
"Well, I'm not getting any older."
Lexi pulls out a blood bag, stabs a straw into it and starts sipping. She offers Stefan some (he refuses, politely) and she explains that she didn't kill anyone for it. Stefan says that it's not about that, it's just that if he started again - "You're not sure you could stop," Lexi finishes.
She says that she admires Stefan's restraint (in drinking animal blood). Which brings up the question of whether or not she'd be pleased that Stefan is working himself onto the human blood in S2.
Damon breezes in, mentions the party, and then breezes out, with an insult leveled at Lexi's blood bags ("I prefer mine at 98.6.").
Elena and Bonnie are talking about Bonnie's witch-confession.
"I don't understand. If your grandma asked you to keep all this a secret, why are you telling me?"
"You're my best friend. I can't keep secrets from you."
This, of course, makes Elena feel the weight of the lies that she's told. She's chosen the secrecy of the Salvatores over the openness of her human friends.
Lexi is in a towel, getting ready for the party. Stefan isn't sure about the whole 'party' idea - he doesn't trust that Damon suggested it. Lexi doesn't take Damon as seriously as a threat as Stefan does. "What can he do in front of all of those people in a public place?" Finally, with a smack to his ass, Lexi orders Stefan to get ready.
Outside the boarding house, Elena has just driven up. She rings the doorbell and Lexi yells back that she should come in. Slightly puzzled, Elena does. She and Lexi see each other in the hallway and both of them freeze.
Lexi's first assumption is that it must be Katherine, except that makes no sense. Elena introduces herself and you can see Lexi going 'wtf, stefan?' in her head. Elena asks after Stefan - Lexi says that he's in the shower and you can see Elena taking that in, and when Lexi asks if she wants to wait, Elena just wants to leave.
Lexi storms in on Stefan getting dressed to tell him, waving Katherine's picture around, that she just met Elena.
"You have some serious emotional damage."
"No. It's not what you think. She's not... Katherine."
"Then they're related, because they could be twins."
"I don't know."
"You don't know? You didn't find out."
"No! Maybe I don't want to know. I have... I have no desire to tie Elena to Katherine."
Lexi gives him a very dubious look.
"Yes, yes, the resemblance is what drew me in. But that's it. Katherine and Elena may look the same on the outside but on the inside they are completely different."
The question that comes to mind is... if Stefan is so completely over Katherine, why is her picture still on his desk? It's not like he could have just forgotten about it, since people wave it in his face fairly frequently. Plus, he's lying - after he saw her face, he did that research into her and found out about her probable adoption and all that jazz.
"Elena is... Elena's warm and she's... kind and she's caring and she's selfless and it's real. And, honestly, when I'm around her, I completely forget what I am."
"Oh, my god. You're in love with her."
That kinda ties into what I was talking about earlier - Elena, too, sometimes forgets that Stefan is a vampire. The question is... is that a good thing or a bad thing? Elena makes Stefan forget he's a vampire but that's... that's not real. Now, making him forget the self-loathing is a good thing, but making him forget what he is could actually be dangerous. Especially as Elena comes more and more into the world of the vampires.
Both Damon and Stefan prize the idea of relationships being 'real' (which I agree with as a goal!) - both of them also single out their relationship with Elena as mattering and being important because it's 'real'.
Over at the Mystic Grill, Caroline is all happy over the success of her party. She spots Damon at the bar and goes over to him. He asks her about the crystal and is disappointed when she hasn't gotten it yet. Then he spots Lexi and goes over to ask her about Stefan, she tells him that Stefan's meeting her there and then brushes him off.
Stefan is over at Elena's door. She mentions the whole 'Lexi in a towel' thing and Stefan realizes what she must have assumed and explains that he and Lexi are not friends with benefits (also, that she's a 350 year-old vampire). Elena mentions that Lexi kept staring at her, and Stefan doesn't explain the Katherine thing, instead excusing it by saying that he talks about Elena a lot. Stefan promises that he'll always be there for Elena, he asks if she needs a ride to the party, and he tells her that it's his birthday. Elena's decided not to go to the party, though, so Stefan leaves alone.
Caroline finds Bonnie at the party and tries to get the crystal back. Bonnie refuses, and when Caroline gets flustered and frustrated, she reaches out to grab the crystal and it zaps her.
Stefan arrives at the party - he spots Matt and apologizes for what happened with Vicki. Matt tells him not to be - Vicki has run off before, unreliable like their mom.
Caroline meets back up with Damon, who wants the necklace. Caroline has to report that Bonnie refuses to give it back. Caroline tries to tell him to forget about the "stupid necklace" and he lashes out at her (verbally), calling her 'stupid, shallow, and useless'. Ouch.
Lexi and Stefan are dancing (Stefan not enthusiastically enough for Lexi's tastes).
Damon, meanwhile, is now setting up the next stage of his vampire sting operation. He finds a couple that's gone off to find a lonely spot to make out, kills the boy, and compels the girl.
Lexi and Stefan are playing pool and Elena wanders in. She's watching them having fun and Damon also wanders back in, first looking at Lexi and Stefan and then turning to look at Elena.
"Stefan smiles... alert the media."
"You haven't given him a lot of reasons to be happy lately."
"Oh, you're right. Poor Stefan. Persecuted throughout eternity by his depraved brother. Does it get tiring, being so righteous?"
"It flares up in the presence of psychopaths."
She walks away at this point, moving up to another standing table. She has no instinctive fear reaction to his closeness, though, at least none that she allows herself to feel. Part of her has begun trusting Damon (at least not to hurt her), even as she doesn't like who he is and what he does.
"Ouch. Well, consider this psychopath's feelings hurt."
At this, she turns back to look at Damon - neither of them are paying attention to Lexi and Stefan anymore.
"What did you do to my brother?"
"I'm going to need a less vague question."
"When you did what you did to Jeremy's memory of Vicki... what else did you do to him?"
Before Damon answers, he walks closer to Elena again.
"You asked me to take away his memory of fangs and rawr and all the bad stuff. You wanted me to take away his suffering."
"But he's acting different. He seems okay with everything. And a little too okay. I mean, he's studying, he's not doing drugs, he's not drinking. Are you sure that you didn't do something else?"
"Elena... I took away his suffering."
And Elena is beginning to understand more about unintentional consequences, I think. If Jeremy's pain was causing him to act out... no more pain, no more acting out. The implication here is also that Damon relieved Jeremy's suffering over the loss of his parents, I think, because that was what originally was driving him to his bad behavior.
Caroline and Bonnie talk again - Caroline is upset and when Bonnie learns what Damon said to her, she's protective, but it doesn't feel too real for Caroline at the moment, considering that Bonnie isn't being a great friend to her, at the moment.
Outside, one of the deputies has found the girl and her boyfriend's body.
Inside, when Lexi orders some drinks, the bartender asks for ID. Instead of giving him any (I'm sure you could get fake ID somewhere, Lexi), she compels him to give her the drink anyway, and for free. Speaking of unintentional consequences of compelling, this also leads to him giving (selling?) drinks to the actual high school students, including Caroline, and being arrested at the end of the episode. That's the punishment for trying to do your job, I guess!
It's another example of how casual compelling is in the vampire culture, though. Even though it would probably be simple for Lexi to get a fake ID, compelling is so natural to her that she does that instead.
Lexi goes and meets Elena with the drinks. When Elena expresses surprise over vampires drinking, Lexi tells her that it curbs the blood-cravings. This makes my fingers itch to go investigate Damon's drinking habits and how they shift (he drinks more and more as he goes off the live blood, I believe) but I'm eight episodes in already, so I will resist.
"You know, I've never seen Stefan drunk. He always seems so..."
"Uptight."
"But not with you."
"Well, that's the benefit of knowing someone for over a hundred years, you can just... be yourself."
"Yeah, he can't be himself with me."
Lexi tells her that it'll take time. Given that she just mentioned a time frame of years...
"You seem so sure."
"The love of my life was human. He went through... what I imagine you're going through. Denial, anger, etc. But at the end of the day, love really did conquer all."
What Lexi doesn't mention is the next step in that journey - the love of her life was human. And chose to become a vampire to be with her forever. Her heartbroken sweetheart says it in "Bloodlines" - "if you want to love someone forever, you have to live forever".
Here, Lexi says, "When it's real, you can't walk away."
When Lexi gets back to Stefan, he thanks her for pleading his case with Elena.
Sheriff Forbes has reached the crime scene, and is pointed over to the girl, still shivering up against the wall. Man. The deputy could have given her a blanket or something. Forbes asks the girl if she saw what killed her boyfriend and the girl nods.
Elena makes her way over to Stefan and grabs his pool cue.
Meanwhile, Caroline pours herself into a booth with Matt. She has an empty glass. She gives herself some of Matt's curly fries and Matt asks his friend to go grab some coffee for her.
"Bad night, huh?"
"Baddest. Am I shallow?"
"Is that a trick question?"
"I don't mean to be. I wanna be deep. I wanna be, like, the abyss-deep."
"No offence, Care, but deep's not really your scene."
"That's true. I'm shallow. I'm worse than shallow. I'm a kiddie-pool."
"You're not a kiddie-pool."
This whole scene just makes me feel for Caroline so much. It gets to Matt, too, and when she wants to go home, he offers to take her, even picking her up so that she won't keep slipping and almost falling. When he gets outside, there are a bunch of cop cars, and Caroline's mom. This would be how Liz Forbes found out about the bartender giving drinks to minors.
Inside, Lexi brings some shots over as a bribe for Damon.
"What are you really doing in Mystic Falls?"
"Have you tried the brittle? It wins awards."
"Cut the crap."
"Okay. I have a diabolical master plan."
"What is it?"
"Well, if I told you, it wouldn't be very diabolical, would it?"
As they speak, Forbes has led the girl into the bar and she, of course, points the finger at Lexi for the killing. Forbes injects her with vervain and lead her out of the bar. Outside, half-way to the car, Lexi recovers, vamping out and throwing the deputies off. Liz starts shooting (probably with wooden bullets) while Lexi advances on her (if Lexi had turned and tried to run now, would she have gotten away? Depends, I suppose, on if her superspeed is still depressed).
Elena and Stefan have found another way out of the Grill and turn around the corner of the building to take the scene in. They get there just as Damon steps in between Lexi and Liz, staking Lexi. After Lexi's dead, Damon goes over to Liz and asks her if she's okay. She thanks him (for saving her life) and tells him to put Lexi's body in the car.
The bartender Lexi compelled is led off, protesting his innocence in checking IDs. And Damon now has Liz Forbes' gratitude and trust.
Matt and Caroline continue bonding as he settles her into his bed. And when he starts to leave, she asks him to stay. He takes off his shoes and they snuggle up to each other in the bed, both otherwise fully-dressed.
Stefan is currently feeling like he should kill Damon. Elena doesn't agree.
"No. You can't do that."
"Why are you trying to save him? Elena, he's never going to change, don't you see that! He's never going to change."
"I'm not trying to save him. I'm trying to save you. You have no idea what this will do to you. Please, Stefan."
"Everywhere that I go, pain and death follow. Damon follows me. No more."
"Stefan, please, please. Just talk to me. Let me be here for you. Talk to me."
"No. You were right to stay away from me."
And he walks away.
That's the same sort of argument that Elena uses in "Bad Moon Rising", when she saves Damon from Bonnie - that hurting Damon is going to damage who Bonnie is (and that's her argument to Lexi's boyfriend for not killing Damon in "Bloodlines", too, if I recall correctly). Has she ever argued for any other potentially dangerous person's life using that argument? Does she keep using it re: Damon in part because it keeps working?
Of course, part of that relates to the fact that it's generally Damon who does the dirty work of killing people when that's necessary and Elena has other arguments that work better on Damon, especially later on.
Stefan, of course, doesn't kill Damon. He punches him a lot, throws him around, and stabs him not in the heart with a stake, all to make his point that Damon crossed a line, but he doesn't kill him. He also tries to claim that they're 'done' which... well, that doesn't end up lasting too long. He did make his point that Damon killing Lexi really pissed him off, though.
We end on Bonnie's first vision of Emily, which is the focus of the next episode.
Deaths:
1. Damon kills the boy member of the couple making out below the stairs.
2. Damon stakes Lexi.
Damon's current kill count: 11
Stefan's current kill count: 1
Vamp Bites:
1. Damon bites the boy who was making out near the Grill.
Damon's current bite count: 16
Katherine's current bite count: 1
Compelled:
1. Damon compels Caroline to forget that she's pissed at him and to throw a party at the Grill. And to get his crystal back from Bonnie.
2. Damon compels the girl member of the make-out couple to believe that it was Lexi she saw biting her boyfriend.
3. Lexi compels the bartender to give her free drinks without needing ID.
Stefan's current compelling count: 2
Damon's current compelling count: 11
Katherine's current compelling count: 1
Lexi's total compelling count: 1
Bechdel:
1. Bonnie talks about being a witch and she and Elena have a cute friendship moment.
Stefan/Elena Relationship:
Together: "Night of the Comet" - "Family Ties" (3 episodes; exact time frame uncertain)
1st Breakup: "Family Ties" - "You're Undead to Me" (2 episodes; 4 days)
1st Reunion: "You're Undead to Me" - "Lost Girls" (2 episodes; 2 days)
2nd Breakup: "Lost Girls" - (2 episodes; exact time frame uncertain)
Timeline:
When we open, it's the night before Stefan's birthday (probably after midnight and thus technically already his birthday - actually, considering Lexi's "I get you for your birthday" attitude, she probably arrived just around midnight on purpose).
The next day (Stefan's birthday) is the day that everyone is being questioned about Vicki, so it can't have been too long after "Haunted". Plus, this is the first that they've noticed of Jeremy acting differently. So... it could be just the next day after "Haunted" and thus the day after Halloween? But I can't be certain. I don't think anyone explicitly says that it's the next day.
Time covered: 2 nights/1 day
Total time; pilot-FNB: 6 days/7 nights
Total time; FT-Haunted: 9 days/9 nights
Total time; 162C- : 2 nights/1 day
Shirtless shots:
1. Stefan puts on a shirt, post-shower.
Bonnie's Visions:
She dreams of Emily, her ancestor.
Open at the Salvatore boarding house. Stefan fell asleep reading a book. Despite trying to look at the text upside down, I cannot make out what he was reading, sadly. He wakes when the book falls off his knee. I wonder if this happens a lot - Stefan can't sleep, so he reads himself to sleep. It's a common thing in my family, except we actually prepare for it by reading in bed in the first place.
He puts the book back on the side table - and I still can't see what it was - and gets up and stretches. We hear the echoing laughter of a woman. Vampire friends seem to really enjoy the 'hee! hee! I'm stalking you! I'm a big, bad vampire! Hee!" game. More echoes of how much of the predator they are. She stalks and pounces. It's like watching kittens at play.
Because, of course, this is not an enemy but Lexi, Stefan's friend.
He hugs her warmly and Lexi wishes Stefan a happy birthday. We cut to them the next morning and it looks like Stefan has been catching her up on the news in Mystic Falls - being shot by Logan, so far. Lexi tells him that he should come with her to see Bon Jovi - they joined him for a crazy weekend years ago (unbeknownst to him, Katherine was stalking him at the time).
"What is keeping you here?"
"I told you - her name is Elena."
"Well, let's hope she's better than the last girl you got all... sprung over." Lexi teases, picking up the photo of Katherine that is still on Stefan's desk and waving it at him. Still on his desk! Just saying! And when Stefan takes it from her, he puts it right back on his desk.
We learn that Lexi never met Katherine (says she would have kicked her ass) and then she asks after Damon.
Lexi has another reason for arriving at night - no daywalker ring. See, Rose isn't the only older vampire without one. We just happen to mostly meet vampires who hung out with Katherine - and thus Emily - and got the benefit of getting one. I'm guessing that it's actually not so easy for vampires to make friends with witches. Katherine seems to have a knack of saving their lives and I think that Stefan and Bonnie may qualify as actual friends, but it's not so common in the vampire world to hang out with witches and you probably can't threaten a witch into making one for you.
Sheriff Forbes questions Jeremy, Matt, Stefan, and Elena - their stories are all pretty much the same. Vicki left town, Stefan was just trying to help her with her drug problem, she was acting erratic before she disappeared but not aggressive or violent. The last note on the interrogations is Jeremy parroting the words that Elena gave to Damon to give to him: "I'll miss her but I think it's for the best."
Stefan waits for Elena outside the police station - probably not thrilled when she confirms the break-up, despite still feeling for him.
"Around you, people get hurt and people die, and it's just too much."
Which is actually similar to what she says to Damon in the last episode - 'people die around you, how could it not matter?' There are times, later in her relationship with Stefan, where she seems to almost forget he's a vampire (willfully?) and seems to believe that Damon is the only vampire of her acquaintance, but she's definitely not at that point right now.
She tells him again to stay away from her and then walks away.
Over at the Salvatore place, Lexi is sleeping. She turns over and Damon is lying next to her.
"Hi, Lexi. What an unexpected surprise."
"Unexpected surprise? I think the wrong brother went back to high school."
Ha. Lexi is snarky and I enjoy her. They zing at each other back and forth for a bit - we get confirmation that Lexi is just in town for Stefan's birthday.
"Why are you so mean to me?"
"Uh... have you met you? You're not a nice person."
"Because I'm a vampire."
"But you're only the bad parts."
Damon faux-flirts one time too many and Lexi grabs him by the throat, warning him not to mess up her day with Stefan. He apologizes, which is always something of a surprise from Damon. We get confirmation that greater age = greater strength.
I am, though, interested in Lexi talking about Damon being the 'bad parts' of being a vampire. We know that Lexi knew Rose, who is fearful but loyal, and that Lexi calls Stefan 'one of the good ones', of course. Lexi herself does not drink animal blood, so that's not a marker of being a good vampire to her.
arabian had the thought that living with your emotion switch turned off, turning your remorse and guilt off, is what makes a vampire only 'the bad parts'. I think that's an interesting idea.Back with Bonnie and Grams, Bonnie is packing to leave. Her dad isn't too happy when she spends too much time over there. She was planning to give the crystal back to Caroline but her grandmother impresses the importance of keeping it and wearing it on her.
Elena and Jenna are moping on the couch - Jenna got a 'brush off email' from someone pretending to be Logan, because the vampire hunters are pretending that he's not dead. But both of them are distracted by the unusual sight of Jeremy being devoted to his homework.
At Sheriff Forbes' office, Damon has come with a delivery. It's the vervain. He's continuing to cover for Zach's absence (at some point, I think everyone just gets used to Damon and stops expecting Zach to come back), and starts edging his way into the vampire hunting circle by asking how the hunt is going. Forbes surprises Damon by thinking outside the box - what if vampires can come out during the day now? They're going to start looking at anyone who has come to town since the deaths started, which will point directly at Damon (and Stefan) if he's not careful. There is a net closing in, but Damon is aware of it, which informs his actions in this episode. Lexi, after all, isn't on Damon's short list.
Bonnie visits Elena. Elena doesn't really want to talk about it, but she does mention that she and Stefan broke up. Elena asks Bonnie to take her mind off Stefan, and Bonnie responds with awesome feather floating fun times of witch confessions. It's a great scene for the Bonnie-Elena friendship and it's also wonderful because it gives Elena a chance to see a side of the supernatural that isn't about blood and death. She needed that in order to help move on from the dark place that "Haunted" left her, I think.
Caroline is bopping along and... Damon steps out in front of her. Caroline is not pleased with him at all and is making that known when... he compels her again. Instantly, she's happy to see him instead of totally pissed off. Damon has decided on a plan ("to solve this town's vampire problem") and a key part of that is Caroline throwing a party at the Mystic Grill so that "Stefan and his BFF" will come.
Lexi and Stefan are chatting about Elena. Lexi is of the opinion that they should have sex (Stefan and Elena) because "sex always works!" Vampire sex being particularly effective.
"This isn't about sex or compulsion or any of our other tricks. She has to want to be with me. On her own terms."
"Wow, that sounded all... mature and grown-up."
"Well, I'm not getting any older."
Lexi pulls out a blood bag, stabs a straw into it and starts sipping. She offers Stefan some (he refuses, politely) and she explains that she didn't kill anyone for it. Stefan says that it's not about that, it's just that if he started again - "You're not sure you could stop," Lexi finishes.
She says that she admires Stefan's restraint (in drinking animal blood). Which brings up the question of whether or not she'd be pleased that Stefan is working himself onto the human blood in S2.
Damon breezes in, mentions the party, and then breezes out, with an insult leveled at Lexi's blood bags ("I prefer mine at 98.6.").
Elena and Bonnie are talking about Bonnie's witch-confession.
"I don't understand. If your grandma asked you to keep all this a secret, why are you telling me?"
"You're my best friend. I can't keep secrets from you."
This, of course, makes Elena feel the weight of the lies that she's told. She's chosen the secrecy of the Salvatores over the openness of her human friends.
Lexi is in a towel, getting ready for the party. Stefan isn't sure about the whole 'party' idea - he doesn't trust that Damon suggested it. Lexi doesn't take Damon as seriously as a threat as Stefan does. "What can he do in front of all of those people in a public place?" Finally, with a smack to his ass, Lexi orders Stefan to get ready.
Outside the boarding house, Elena has just driven up. She rings the doorbell and Lexi yells back that she should come in. Slightly puzzled, Elena does. She and Lexi see each other in the hallway and both of them freeze.
Lexi's first assumption is that it must be Katherine, except that makes no sense. Elena introduces herself and you can see Lexi going 'wtf, stefan?' in her head. Elena asks after Stefan - Lexi says that he's in the shower and you can see Elena taking that in, and when Lexi asks if she wants to wait, Elena just wants to leave.
Lexi storms in on Stefan getting dressed to tell him, waving Katherine's picture around, that she just met Elena.
"You have some serious emotional damage."
"No. It's not what you think. She's not... Katherine."
"Then they're related, because they could be twins."
"I don't know."
"You don't know? You didn't find out."
"No! Maybe I don't want to know. I have... I have no desire to tie Elena to Katherine."
Lexi gives him a very dubious look.
"Yes, yes, the resemblance is what drew me in. But that's it. Katherine and Elena may look the same on the outside but on the inside they are completely different."
The question that comes to mind is... if Stefan is so completely over Katherine, why is her picture still on his desk? It's not like he could have just forgotten about it, since people wave it in his face fairly frequently. Plus, he's lying - after he saw her face, he did that research into her and found out about her probable adoption and all that jazz.
"Elena is... Elena's warm and she's... kind and she's caring and she's selfless and it's real. And, honestly, when I'm around her, I completely forget what I am."
"Oh, my god. You're in love with her."
That kinda ties into what I was talking about earlier - Elena, too, sometimes forgets that Stefan is a vampire. The question is... is that a good thing or a bad thing? Elena makes Stefan forget he's a vampire but that's... that's not real. Now, making him forget the self-loathing is a good thing, but making him forget what he is could actually be dangerous. Especially as Elena comes more and more into the world of the vampires.
Both Damon and Stefan prize the idea of relationships being 'real' (which I agree with as a goal!) - both of them also single out their relationship with Elena as mattering and being important because it's 'real'.
Over at the Mystic Grill, Caroline is all happy over the success of her party. She spots Damon at the bar and goes over to him. He asks her about the crystal and is disappointed when she hasn't gotten it yet. Then he spots Lexi and goes over to ask her about Stefan, she tells him that Stefan's meeting her there and then brushes him off.
Stefan is over at Elena's door. She mentions the whole 'Lexi in a towel' thing and Stefan realizes what she must have assumed and explains that he and Lexi are not friends with benefits (also, that she's a 350 year-old vampire). Elena mentions that Lexi kept staring at her, and Stefan doesn't explain the Katherine thing, instead excusing it by saying that he talks about Elena a lot. Stefan promises that he'll always be there for Elena, he asks if she needs a ride to the party, and he tells her that it's his birthday. Elena's decided not to go to the party, though, so Stefan leaves alone.
Caroline finds Bonnie at the party and tries to get the crystal back. Bonnie refuses, and when Caroline gets flustered and frustrated, she reaches out to grab the crystal and it zaps her.
Stefan arrives at the party - he spots Matt and apologizes for what happened with Vicki. Matt tells him not to be - Vicki has run off before, unreliable like their mom.
Caroline meets back up with Damon, who wants the necklace. Caroline has to report that Bonnie refuses to give it back. Caroline tries to tell him to forget about the "stupid necklace" and he lashes out at her (verbally), calling her 'stupid, shallow, and useless'. Ouch.
Lexi and Stefan are dancing (Stefan not enthusiastically enough for Lexi's tastes).
Damon, meanwhile, is now setting up the next stage of his vampire sting operation. He finds a couple that's gone off to find a lonely spot to make out, kills the boy, and compels the girl.
Lexi and Stefan are playing pool and Elena wanders in. She's watching them having fun and Damon also wanders back in, first looking at Lexi and Stefan and then turning to look at Elena.
"Stefan smiles... alert the media."
"You haven't given him a lot of reasons to be happy lately."
"Oh, you're right. Poor Stefan. Persecuted throughout eternity by his depraved brother. Does it get tiring, being so righteous?"
"It flares up in the presence of psychopaths."
She walks away at this point, moving up to another standing table. She has no instinctive fear reaction to his closeness, though, at least none that she allows herself to feel. Part of her has begun trusting Damon (at least not to hurt her), even as she doesn't like who he is and what he does.
"Ouch. Well, consider this psychopath's feelings hurt."
At this, she turns back to look at Damon - neither of them are paying attention to Lexi and Stefan anymore.
"What did you do to my brother?"
"I'm going to need a less vague question."
"When you did what you did to Jeremy's memory of Vicki... what else did you do to him?"
Before Damon answers, he walks closer to Elena again.
"You asked me to take away his memory of fangs and rawr and all the bad stuff. You wanted me to take away his suffering."
"But he's acting different. He seems okay with everything. And a little too okay. I mean, he's studying, he's not doing drugs, he's not drinking. Are you sure that you didn't do something else?"
"Elena... I took away his suffering."
And Elena is beginning to understand more about unintentional consequences, I think. If Jeremy's pain was causing him to act out... no more pain, no more acting out. The implication here is also that Damon relieved Jeremy's suffering over the loss of his parents, I think, because that was what originally was driving him to his bad behavior.
Caroline and Bonnie talk again - Caroline is upset and when Bonnie learns what Damon said to her, she's protective, but it doesn't feel too real for Caroline at the moment, considering that Bonnie isn't being a great friend to her, at the moment.
Outside, one of the deputies has found the girl and her boyfriend's body.
Inside, when Lexi orders some drinks, the bartender asks for ID. Instead of giving him any (I'm sure you could get fake ID somewhere, Lexi), she compels him to give her the drink anyway, and for free. Speaking of unintentional consequences of compelling, this also leads to him giving (selling?) drinks to the actual high school students, including Caroline, and being arrested at the end of the episode. That's the punishment for trying to do your job, I guess!
It's another example of how casual compelling is in the vampire culture, though. Even though it would probably be simple for Lexi to get a fake ID, compelling is so natural to her that she does that instead.
Lexi goes and meets Elena with the drinks. When Elena expresses surprise over vampires drinking, Lexi tells her that it curbs the blood-cravings. This makes my fingers itch to go investigate Damon's drinking habits and how they shift (he drinks more and more as he goes off the live blood, I believe) but I'm eight episodes in already, so I will resist.
"You know, I've never seen Stefan drunk. He always seems so..."
"Uptight."
"But not with you."
"Well, that's the benefit of knowing someone for over a hundred years, you can just... be yourself."
"Yeah, he can't be himself with me."
Lexi tells her that it'll take time. Given that she just mentioned a time frame of years...
"You seem so sure."
"The love of my life was human. He went through... what I imagine you're going through. Denial, anger, etc. But at the end of the day, love really did conquer all."
What Lexi doesn't mention is the next step in that journey - the love of her life was human. And chose to become a vampire to be with her forever. Her heartbroken sweetheart says it in "Bloodlines" - "if you want to love someone forever, you have to live forever".
Here, Lexi says, "When it's real, you can't walk away."
When Lexi gets back to Stefan, he thanks her for pleading his case with Elena.
Sheriff Forbes has reached the crime scene, and is pointed over to the girl, still shivering up against the wall. Man. The deputy could have given her a blanket or something. Forbes asks the girl if she saw what killed her boyfriend and the girl nods.
Elena makes her way over to Stefan and grabs his pool cue.
Meanwhile, Caroline pours herself into a booth with Matt. She has an empty glass. She gives herself some of Matt's curly fries and Matt asks his friend to go grab some coffee for her.
"Bad night, huh?"
"Baddest. Am I shallow?"
"Is that a trick question?"
"I don't mean to be. I wanna be deep. I wanna be, like, the abyss-deep."
"No offence, Care, but deep's not really your scene."
"That's true. I'm shallow. I'm worse than shallow. I'm a kiddie-pool."
"You're not a kiddie-pool."
This whole scene just makes me feel for Caroline so much. It gets to Matt, too, and when she wants to go home, he offers to take her, even picking her up so that she won't keep slipping and almost falling. When he gets outside, there are a bunch of cop cars, and Caroline's mom. This would be how Liz Forbes found out about the bartender giving drinks to minors.
Inside, Lexi brings some shots over as a bribe for Damon.
"What are you really doing in Mystic Falls?"
"Have you tried the brittle? It wins awards."
"Cut the crap."
"Okay. I have a diabolical master plan."
"What is it?"
"Well, if I told you, it wouldn't be very diabolical, would it?"
As they speak, Forbes has led the girl into the bar and she, of course, points the finger at Lexi for the killing. Forbes injects her with vervain and lead her out of the bar. Outside, half-way to the car, Lexi recovers, vamping out and throwing the deputies off. Liz starts shooting (probably with wooden bullets) while Lexi advances on her (if Lexi had turned and tried to run now, would she have gotten away? Depends, I suppose, on if her superspeed is still depressed).
Elena and Stefan have found another way out of the Grill and turn around the corner of the building to take the scene in. They get there just as Damon steps in between Lexi and Liz, staking Lexi. After Lexi's dead, Damon goes over to Liz and asks her if she's okay. She thanks him (for saving her life) and tells him to put Lexi's body in the car.
The bartender Lexi compelled is led off, protesting his innocence in checking IDs. And Damon now has Liz Forbes' gratitude and trust.
Matt and Caroline continue bonding as he settles her into his bed. And when he starts to leave, she asks him to stay. He takes off his shoes and they snuggle up to each other in the bed, both otherwise fully-dressed.
Stefan is currently feeling like he should kill Damon. Elena doesn't agree.
"No. You can't do that."
"Why are you trying to save him? Elena, he's never going to change, don't you see that! He's never going to change."
"I'm not trying to save him. I'm trying to save you. You have no idea what this will do to you. Please, Stefan."
"Everywhere that I go, pain and death follow. Damon follows me. No more."
"Stefan, please, please. Just talk to me. Let me be here for you. Talk to me."
"No. You were right to stay away from me."
And he walks away.
That's the same sort of argument that Elena uses in "Bad Moon Rising", when she saves Damon from Bonnie - that hurting Damon is going to damage who Bonnie is (and that's her argument to Lexi's boyfriend for not killing Damon in "Bloodlines", too, if I recall correctly). Has she ever argued for any other potentially dangerous person's life using that argument? Does she keep using it re: Damon in part because it keeps working?
Of course, part of that relates to the fact that it's generally Damon who does the dirty work of killing people when that's necessary and Elena has other arguments that work better on Damon, especially later on.
Stefan, of course, doesn't kill Damon. He punches him a lot, throws him around, and stabs him not in the heart with a stake, all to make his point that Damon crossed a line, but he doesn't kill him. He also tries to claim that they're 'done' which... well, that doesn't end up lasting too long. He did make his point that Damon killing Lexi really pissed him off, though.
We end on Bonnie's first vision of Emily, which is the focus of the next episode.
1. Damon kills the boy member of the couple making out below the stairs.
2. Damon stakes Lexi.
Damon's current kill count: 11
Stefan's current kill count: 1
1. Damon bites the boy who was making out near the Grill.
Damon's current bite count: 16
Katherine's current bite count: 1
1. Damon compels Caroline to forget that she's pissed at him and to throw a party at the Grill. And to get his crystal back from Bonnie.
2. Damon compels the girl member of the make-out couple to believe that it was Lexi she saw biting her boyfriend.
3. Lexi compels the bartender to give her free drinks without needing ID.
Stefan's current compelling count: 2
Damon's current compelling count: 11
Katherine's current compelling count: 1
Lexi's total compelling count: 1
1. Bonnie talks about being a witch and she and Elena have a cute friendship moment.
Together: "Night of the Comet" - "Family Ties" (3 episodes; exact time frame uncertain)
1st Breakup: "Family Ties" - "You're Undead to Me" (2 episodes; 4 days)
1st Reunion: "You're Undead to Me" - "Lost Girls" (2 episodes; 2 days)
2nd Breakup: "Lost Girls" - (2 episodes; exact time frame uncertain)
When we open, it's the night before Stefan's birthday (probably after midnight and thus technically already his birthday - actually, considering Lexi's "I get you for your birthday" attitude, she probably arrived just around midnight on purpose).
The next day (Stefan's birthday) is the day that everyone is being questioned about Vicki, so it can't have been too long after "Haunted". Plus, this is the first that they've noticed of Jeremy acting differently. So... it could be just the next day after "Haunted" and thus the day after Halloween? But I can't be certain. I don't think anyone explicitly says that it's the next day.
Time covered: 2 nights/1 day
Total time; pilot-FNB: 6 days/7 nights
Total time; FT-Haunted: 9 days/9 nights
Total time; 162C- : 2 nights/1 day
1. Stefan puts on a shirt, post-shower.
She dreams of Emily, her ancestor.