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Vampire Diaries: 2x02 - Brave New World (spoilers through 2x21)
It's been a while since I've done these! Too caught up in the new episodes (& in school) to have time.
2x02 - Brave New World
In retrospect, I'm really glad that I held off on the rewatch/reviews, because it means that I'll know, going into the sun/moon curse episodes, that it was all a ruse. No railing about how the curse doesn't make sense and why I don't see why Klaus would care so much.
Previously: Stefan has to know Elena, Stefan's a vampire, Tyler hears a weird noise that makes him crash, Caroline is in danger, Damon offers to save her with vampire blood, Mason returns, Elena cares about Damon but loves Stefan, Damon snaps Jeremy's neck but Jeremy comes back to life, Elena looks like Katherine, and Katherine finishes the process of vamping Caroline.
We open on Caroline waking up. It's likely the same day/night, since we know from previous experience with vampire-making that it doesn't take that long for vampire blood to take effect. She goes out to the hall and asks the night nurse where everyone is, especially her mom. The nurse mentions that Liz and Matt left earlier to go to dinner, and then Elena stopped by after that. Caroline has a flash of memory - Elena called herself Katherine - but doesn't yet remember her own death.
Caroline tells the nurse that she's hungry, and the nurse tells her breakfast comes at seven. But Caroline is hungry now, and it's an entirely new kind of hunger. As she heads toward her room, she catches a scent that calls to her. Caroline spies a blood-bag in use in another patient's room and she's drawn to it. The nurse interrupts her before she can reach it, and sends her back off to her room to go to bed.
What the nurse doesn't see is that Caroline has already snagged a blood-bag. Caroline herself might not have been aware of it before she pulls it out in her hospital room after the nurse leaves again. Caroline takes a sip and reacts immediately - coughing and throwing away the bag.
This episode does such a good job of showing how instinctual all the elements of vampirism are to the newly-made vampire, and how powerfully hard they are to resist.
After that first reaction, Caroline, again, is drawn to the blood. She picks the bag up again and drinks, ripping the top off so that she can drink it more quickly.
After the credits, we cut to the annual Mystic Falls Carnival. It appears to be the next day. Bonnie is still stuck on how 'freakish' it is that Elena and Katherine look so much alike. Elena doesn't want to think about it, scribbing on her clipboard (as she's taken over Caroline's duties for the Carnival). Bonnie wants to think about the practical consequences of Katherine looking like Elena (she could be pretending to be you), while Elena wants to forget it all and pretend life is normal.
Given that Katherine is probably convincing Jenna to go off vervain as we speak... man, I wish that Elena had listened to Bonnie instead of choosing to bury her head in the sand. Ah, well, Katherine would have found a way of getting to Jenna (and Matt) regardless, most likely.
"Have you talked to Damon since he killed Jeremy? Or tried to kill Jeremy?"
Ah, yeah. Um. I think that giving Bonnie this line of dialogue was a mistake on the part of the writers. This is the woman who threatened to kill Damon the next time he stepped over the line. But she didn't go after him for what happened to Jeremy? She mostly looks puzzled, too, rather than angry.
Elena doesn't want to talk about Damon.
"I'm human and I want to do human stuff, otherwise I'll go crazy."
Bonnie agrees to focus on the Carnival, and she takes a moment to wonder how Caroline manages to handle these things all the time.
Inside the school, Stefan is giving Jeremy some vervain and telling him about how it will protect him from compulsion (the sticker on the locker next to Jeremy's says, "Chicks Rule!") Stefan also tells Jeremy that vervain works as a poison against vampires. Also, wooden stakes work.
"You're pretty confident in yourself, telling me all the different ways I could kill you."
"Jeremy, if I thought you wanted to kill me, we'd be having a much different conversation, okay?"
"Yeah, Damon is the one that deserves it."
"I want you to forget about Damon, all right? He's a hundred-times stronger than you and, right now, he's not stable. Gotta try to move forward."
"I was killed by a vampire and brought back by a magic ring. How do you move forward from that?"
There's a moment of assessment before Stefan tells Jeremy to forget about Damon - Stefan calculating the likely consequences of Jeremy's act, perhaps. He knows that Jeremy doesn't have a chance against Damon in a fight. And he doesn't trust Damon not to kill people who cross him - this is also a major part of why Caroline and Stefan don't tell him about Caroline telling Tyler the truth about herself; they assume that he will kill Tyler. Damon is frequently hot-headed and impulsive, but he does listen to reason - he neither kills Caroline, nor Tyler.
Stefan welcomes the distraction of Elena's arrival, cuddling at her. She's concentrating on Jeremy, though, who snarks on how 'epic' the goldfish toss will be. Elena is distressed and moves away from Stefan as Jeremy slams his locker shut and walks off. Elena had been hoping that the carnival would distract Jeremy from his death experience of last night.
"We're going to be boring high school students who live in a world where the 'v-word' is not uttered."
"Got it."
"And then we're going to go on the Ferris Wheel, go to the very top, and then you're going to kiss me and my heart will flutter like a normal high school girl. Do you see a running theme here?"
Ah. I can't complain about this characterization, because when things get really scary, Elena does retreat into her 'normal girl' fantasy life several times over the course of the series. I just think it's really unhealthy and wish that Stefan wouldn't encourage her in it. Actually, he does a lot better here than he does later - he actually does still question her desire to hide in denial at this point.
"What do we do about Damon?"
"Ah, no 'd-word', okay? That has been deleted from the list of topics we can discuss."
"Unfortunately, Katherine showing up has him in a little bit of an odd place, a little off-kilter. Kinda dangerous. Who knows what he's up to?"
Elena looks very uncomfortable at this point. She knows that it's not about Katherine. It's about her. But she doesn't want it to be about her, and she definitely doesn't want Stefan to think it's about her because she doesn't want to get between the brothers.
This conversation does make me think that Elena was not entirely forthcoming about everything that happened in her room prior to the neck-snapping. Hmm. I'll see if that gets contradicted later.
Anyway, Damon is having a conversation with Carol Lockwood at her house. Damon lets Carol know that Sheriff Liz Forbes put him in charge of the vampire-hunt. Carol lets Damon know that she's going to be interim mayor until the next election (what with Richard being dead), and that she wants Damon to take charge of the Council. I'm sad that this never really went anywhere. The curse and the originals stuff took over the season, and we never got to see Damon acting as the head of the Council. And now that Liz knows the truth, things are going to be different next season anyway.
Tyler and Mason come into the house, sweaty from running together. Carol gets up to shut the door into the entryway so that she and Damon can concentrate on Council stuff. Damon asks after the guys, and Carol says that she doesn't see any reason to involve Mason in Council business - he wasn't interested before (and now that she's in control, she probably doesn't want him to try to take it away from her - she trusts Damon and knows that he's capable). Damon uses his vampire hearing to listen in on Tyler and Mason's conversation.
Mason is feeling Tyler out on his aggression issues - exercise doesn't help make it go away.
"I get angry - typically over nothing. I'm an angry guy. I just... go off."
"You black out?"
"Yeah. It's like I go blind with rage."
"Is there a pattern? Like... once a month, only at night?"
"All I know is I lose myself. For that time, I become something else. I hate it."
I see why people were speculating that Damon might be a werepire (heh, werepire). There are definitely valid Tyler/Damon comparisons to be made. But I'm not sure we have any evidence that Damon had that pattern of behavior while he was still alive. And his anger always seems based in current events, rather than moon-based. I think that Damon is impulsive, reckless, and not used to needing to control himself (since if he acted out too much in any other town, he could just leave), rather than it being a genetic werewolf legacy.
Plus, Damon likely killed people while in the army, so if he were a werewolf, he'd probably have already been activated when Katherine met him. So, I'm going to guess 'not a werepire'.
Anyway, Damon is getting something to focus on that doesn't involve Elena, so that's good. Of course, it's all going to lead back to Elena anyway, so there's that. I like that Damon is this involved in the werewolf-half of the season plot so early, considering that he's the one who gets bitten later on.
In her hospital bed, Caroline experiments with sunlight - yep, all of a sudden, it's hurting her. They did such a good job with her whole baby!vamp storyline. Matt comes in with food, but Caroline isn't interested in it. He leans in to kiss her, but he's in the sunlight, so she doesn't complete the gesture. Matt's obviously a little hurt, but moves on to mention that the nurse told him that Caroline is being released tomorrow morning. This freaks Caroline out, what with her new 'daylight' problem. He thinks that she's freaking out over the carnival (and calls her a "neurotic control freak" - are those the same words that she uses later when talking to Stefan?) and attempts to reassure her that Elena and Bonnie have it covered.
"I'm not neurotic."
"Yeah, you are, but it's cute, so..."
She tells him that it's not about the carnival - it's that the hospital is depressing her. He thinks that the darkness might have something to do with it and when he goes for the curtain, she really freaks out, jumping out of the bed and pressing herself against the wall. Matt is utterly flabbergasted. From Matt's perspective, Caroline is acting really, really weird right now.
Caroline snaps at him to close the curtains and he does. He offers to come back later and then heads out, Caroline looking very frustrated after he's gone.
At the boarding house, Damon pours himself a glass of blood out of a bag and offers Stefan some, which Stefan declines. The whole 'blood addiction' blood plotline really did just fizzle out and go nowhere after being so awesome at the end of S1. I regret that a bit. It does feel like all possible Stefan-storylines got trimmed out of S2, except for his support-position for Elena. He rarely takes actions and most of the actions that he takes have no impact on anything. And, at the beginning of the season, they kept acting like they were going to give him an overarching plotline of some kind (Katherine; human blood; mentoring Caroline) but they all seemed to fade away.
"Not hungry. Just ate."
"Aren't you worried that one day, all the forest animals are going to band together and fight back? I mean, surely they talk."
"I'm just happy that's a blood-bag and not a sorority girl supplying your dinner."
"I like this. You walking on eggshells around me because you think I'm going to explode. It's very suspenseful."
Damon is such an astute judge of character, for the most part (which gets into why I get frustrated when the other characters ignore him in favor of characters who have horrible track records when it comes to who is trustworthy).
"Is Elena worried, too? I bet I'm your every conversation."
"Have you heard from Katherine?"
"I think the Lockwoods have a family secret. Because the Gilbert device affected them but vervain didn't. So, they're not vampires, but they're something else."
"Is this your new obsession?"
"Oh, you'd rather some unknown supernatural element running rampant in our town, fine, I'll drop it."
Stefan deflects from the subject of Elena by bringing up Katherine, and then Damon deflects from that subject by bringing up the Lockwoods. "Our town" Damon calls it. Claims it. Only a couple of days ago, he fought to defend it. Damon has gone past the point of walking away from Mystic Falls. It's home again.
Stefan wants to go back to the subject of Katherine: "We haven't seen the last of Katherine. You know that, right? We have no idea what she's up to."
"Sure we do. She came back to profess her eternal, undying love for you. So, I'm going to let you deal with her. Because I have more important things to do. Like... explode."
Hey, Stefan. One of you is sounding obsessed with Katherine. And it's not Damon. While Damon is always going to have memories of how much he cared for Katherine (see: his solemnness at the thought that Klaus had killed her), she's not 'it' for him anymore.
And the show has consistently poked at the Stefan/Katherine stuff on occasion - most recently, when Damon taunts Katherine with the idea that she'll have to compete with Elena forever if Elena gets turned into a vampire. Makes me wonder if maybe that's going to be a plotline for S3 and Stefan will finally deal with his Katherine-issues.
At the hospital, that night, Caroline is putting her jewelry back on. When she puts on the necklace Elena gave her, it hurts against her skin and she tears it off, looking in the mirror at the burn that it left. The nurse enters the room and picks the necklace off the floor. She admires the necklace (great gift, Elena!) and places it on the table, then leaves the room.
Caroline sucks a little more from a blood bag that she's stolen and then she stares at herself in the mirror as the first signs of her vamp-face show up - redness and slightly bulging veins around the eyes. She grabs at her mouth and it seems to hurt as her fangs show up. The nurse comes in, hearing Caroline's alarmed noises, asking what's wrong - Caroline grabs her, vampire-fast, holds her against the wall by the throat. Without realizing what she's doing, Caroline compels the nurse not to tell anyone.
Again, we see how natural the vampire instincts come to Caroline.
Once she has the nurse subdued, her hunger comes out, and she feeds.
That night is the carnival and many people are walking the grounds. Bonnie and Elena are doing their best to keep everything running smoothly. Elena identifies a carnival worker - Carter - and asks him over. He and Bonnie do a little flirting. She goes off to show him the broken karaoke speakers while Elena smiles her encouragement.
At the Lockwood house, Mason starts searching for hidden compartments. Tyler comes in while Mason is searching through Richard Lockwood's desk. At first Mason tries to claim that he's just killing time, but then he asks after any 'family artifacts'. He claims that he's looking for something that belonged to his mom and that he'd like it back. Tyler suggests that Mason ask Carol, but he's obviously more than a little suspicious of what Mason's doing. Ah, if only he'd held onto that healthy suspicion for longer.
Damon approaches Jeremy at the carnival.
"Jeremy, so good to see you alive."
"Aren't you a little old for a high school carnival?"
"About a hundred and fifty years too old."
"Ah, you're pretty funny, cracking jokes when I could blow the lid off this whole thing by telling someone what you really are."
Damon clasps Jeremy by the neck and walks him over into a darker part of the carnival.
"Now, please tell me that's not a threat."
"Maybe it is," Jeremy says, holding up his hand with the 'no supernatural death' ring on it. Damon puts Jeremy in a headlock, yanking off his ring.
"This is what we're not going to do. We're not going to walk around like we're invincible when it's this easy for me to end you. If you want to tell people what I really am, go ahead and try. I'll shove this ring so far up your ass... you'll really have something to choke on."
He throws the ring back at Jeremy and then saunters off, his point having been very clearly made. It's actually a really important thing for Jeremy to remember - having the ring does not actually make him invincible. It just makes it so that supernatural things can't kill him while the ring is still on. Always, always, remain aware of your vulnerabilities.
Back at the hospital, Caroline leaves a voicemail with her mom, letting Liz know that Caroline's being allowed out tonight instead of tomorrow morning. She apologizes to the nurse for the bite, and then they go over the story that she gave for the nurse to give out regarding her bite ("my husband likes to get kinky" - Caroline kinda reminds me of Kaylee from Firefly in that both are unabashedly sexual and allowed to be so by the narrative and not get punished for it). Caroline thinks that compulsion is the most amazing thing ever, and she heads off to make sure that the carnival is going smoothly.
At the carnival, the wrestling club has an arm-wrestle table set-up. Tyler is up against some dude whose name I don't know. Damon is watching from afar. Stefan joins him. Tyler beats the random dude and then Mason comes up to face off against him. Stefan thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. Mason beats Tyler, so Damon volunteers Stefan to face-off against Mason. After a moment, Mason beats Stefan. It looks like Stefan is testingly putting some vampire strength into it and then letting Mason beat him before Stefan's own strength looks suspicious. When Stefan tells Damon that he didn't just let Mason win, both of them are intrigued by Mason's unnatural strength.
They've determined that the Lockwoods aren't vampires but are other than human. Heh, I like the way they play this scene - Stefan suggests that they could be "ninja turtles. Ooo, zombies. Werewolves?" and it all flows together and, contrary to Damon's words, Stefan does have some comic timing.
Damon glances around and spots Carter, Bonnie's flirting partner from earlier. He grabs him by the shoulders and compels him to pick a fight with Tyler Lockwood. Another foreshadowing of Katherine's actions that will be revealed later - she did something similar with Mason, only she did know what he was and was gunning for him to get activated as a werewolf.
Stefan mildly disapproves, but lets it (and Damon) go.
Damon is walking down an empty hallway of the school, and he turns to see Caroline behind him.
"I remember," she tells him. "I remember how you manipulated me. You pushed me around. Abused me. Erased my memories. Fed on me."
"You're crazy."
"Well, the memories have been coming back... in pieces."
"You can't remember. It's impossible. I mean, unless you're... becoming a..."
"I've a message from Katherine. She said 'game on'."
When he grabs her arm, she pulls it off and pushes him away so that he lands and slides down the hallway.
"You suck," she tells him, and stalks away.
Damon's first impulse is to go tell Elena what happened. Not to take care of it (read: stake Caroline) himself. But to fill Elena in on things.
"Elena."
"What do you want, Damon?"
"I know I'm the last person you want to see right now, but I need you to come with me."
"Whatever it is, I'm not interested."
"Yeah, I need you to come with me right now, Elena."
Here, the show makes a point of illustrating that Elena, mad as she is at Damon, will still listen to him if he implies it's important. For no other reason than that he thinks it's important. They don't have him saying, "it's about Caroline" to spur her on - she goes because Damon thinks it's important. She's mad as hell and she hasn't forgiven him for Jeremy and she doesn't even want to hear anyone say his name - but if he says he needs her right now, she'll listen.
Tyler heads out to the parking lot, Stefan following him. Once there, Carter pushes past him, looking to start that fight. As Stefan watches from the bushes, Mason comes by to break up the fight. Carter doesn't back off, of course, because he's been compelled not to back off. Mason does some fancy supernatural-type leaping around. His eyes go yellow and Tyler notices. Mason knocks Carter down and then he and Tyler get out of there.
Stefan goes to check on Carter, who can't understand why he was picking that fight.
Caroline has arrived at the carnival proper and she surprises Matt with a tiny hug from behind. She tells him that she's all better and gives him a quick kiss. Matt still has his cast. I should probably keep track of when that disappears. He gives her a ring to toss and she ends up breaking some of the bottles by accident. When he hugs her and her face is near his neck, she feels the temptation to bite and she ends up backing out of the hug and taking off. Matt tries to follow her and asks if she's okay, and she tells him to leave her alone.
Damon is meeting with Elena and Stefan in a classroom re: Caroline's vampirism. Elena doesn't understand why Katherine would go after her friends - this is possibly the same sort of attitude that feeds into why she never worried that her friends might be the vampire and werewolf for the moonstone curse. Elena just doesn't think that way - of going after friends to hurt someone - and pretty much all the vampires she goes up against do. So, it really would behoove her to start keeping that in mind.
Stefan: "We need to find her."
Damon: "Yep. And kill her."
Elena: "You're not going to kill Caroline." (she briefly reaches out to Stefan for comforting touches, but it's very brief)
Damon: "She knows who we are. She's officially a liability. We've got to get rid of her."
Stefan: "Damon, absolutely not."
Damon: "Need I remind you of a tragic little story of a girl, Vicki Donovan? Yeah. Caroline, of all people, will never make it as a vampire. Her mother's a vampire hunter. Guys, come on, we all know how this story ends, so let's just flip to the last chapter and-"
Elena: "It's not an option, Damon."
Damon: "No? Your silence is deafening, Stefan. Wait, wasn't there a school carnival the night you staked Vicki? Talk about a town where history repeats itself. You know I'm right."
Stefan: "We're not going to kill her."
Damon: "It's the only way."
Damon is being absolutely practical here, while both Elena and Stefan are reacting emotionally. In this instance, Damon is wrong - Caroline can handle being a vampire. I find the blocking interesting - Stefan is constantly moving. He's pacing and running his fingers through his hair and just generally reacting very obviously. Damon's attitude here reminds me of how he's acting at the end of 2x21 - 'we all know how a werewolf bite ends, so why fight to save me? it won't work'. He's ruthlessly practical about everyone who isn't on his list of people he cares about - at this point in the season, that's Elena and Stefan (with Alaric probably sneaking in, and Liz and maybe even Carol - later in the season, it will include Caroline as well, and possibly Jeremy and Jenna). And, yes, that does imply that Damon isn't on Damon's list of people.
Caroline, crying, has run into the parking lot. Once there, she smells blood. Carter is bleeding from the fight he earlier had with Mason and Tyler. He asks her if she's okay while she fights her hunger. She apologizes to him and then gives into her desire to feed.
In the school, Matt is talking to Bonnie about how weird Caroline has been acting.
"She's been like that all day - cool one minute, and crazy and neurotic the next."
"She almost died. It's bound to mess with her head. Plus, she's Caroline."
"Yeah. I'm used to the insecurities and all - that's who she is, love it or hate it. But this seemed... I don't know... different. More. I can't explain it."
I'd forgotten about this scene, that we do see Matt struggling. And it's a reminder (to me) that Matt wasn't alone in treating Caroline the way he did - that's pretty much how everyone treated her, pre-vamping (doesn't make it better, but it does mean that Matt doesn't stand out the way that he was in my memories).
Damon finds himself a stake.
Elsewhere, Stefan and Elena are walking, looking for Caroline.
Elena: "You agree with Damon, don't you? Stefan."
Stefan punches the side of one of the carnival trailers.
Elena: "Stefan - hey!"
Stefan: "Damon's right. Not about what we should do, but about what's going to happen. Katherine all but signed Caroline's death sentence."
Elena: "Well, we can't let it end that way. She's doing this to me, isn't she?"
Stefan: "Actually, she's doing it to me."
Well, that's what she wanted you to think, Stefan, but you are actually completely wrong. But thanks for playing! This scene provides great evidence that Katherine's psychological warfare was working. Stefan really did come to be believe, at least in part, that it was all about him, right up until Elena was kidnapped. I have to applaud Katherine for a very successful smoke-screen. She played him like a fiddle.
Back at the Lockwood mansion, Tyler is demanding answers. Mason isn't interested in giving them.
At the carnival, Stefan smells blood, and he and Elena head off to investigate.
Damon has found Caroline first, of course. With Stefan on animal blood, Damon's senses are stronger. Caroline is weeping next to Carter's body. For Damon, evidence that she can't control herself (it really does seem like Damon had a lot more control right at the start than other baby!vamps - maybe because of those lessons that Katherine was giving him?). Her face is covered in blood.
"He's dead," she tells Damon, all her anger at him from earlier gone. She's felt it, now, what it is to be a vampire. What it is to be what Damon is. "I killed him. What's wrong with me?"
"Hey, it's okay. I can help you," Damon says, rubbing his hand over her shoulder and back.
"You can?"
"Yeah. I have to."
"What are you going to do?"
"The only thing I can do," he says, brushing her hair out of her face. "I'm going to kill you."
She jumps down from the truck bed. "Please don't. I don't want to die."
"Yeah, but you're already dead."
"No! I'm not. Don't say that. Just help me."
He hugs her (still holding the stake), as she asks him to help her. As he lifts up the stake, Stefan yanks him away from Caroline.
While Stefan fends Damon off, Elena tries to comfort Caroline, who freaks because she remembers Katherine killing her now. As Stefan starts to take Caroline away, Damon grabs the stake and goes for Caroline - stopping abruptly as Elena puts her body between theirs.
"Damon, she's my friend."
"Whatever happens, it's on you."
Just like in 1x14, when Damon discovered that Katherine wasn't in the tomb, Elena's intervention works where Stefan's doesn't. For Elena, Damon promises to back off, while holding Elena responsible for the actions that Caroline will take in the future. Caroline is now officially Elena's responsibility, in Damon's eyes, and under Elena's protection.
Bonnie has come on the scene, and she sees Caroline with her face covered in blood. She horrified and touches Caroline to confirm that she's a vampire. Next, Bonnie spots Carter's dead body. Elena quickly sends Caroline off with Stefan.
Stefan cleans Caroline's face off in the bathroom and tries to reassure her. But Caroline is convinced that Bonnie hates her now.
"I'm a murderer. I'm a monster."
"Your emotions are heightened right now. It's part of the transformation. It's completely normal, I promise you."
When Caroline freaks out at her vampire face, Stefan reassures her by showing her his. He's very good with her throughout this scene. I would have liked more Stefan-Caroline vampire-mentoring scenes throughout S2, as well. But that kinda fades away after a while as she gets involved with mentoring Tyler.
"I promise you that I will not let anything happen to you," Stefan says. Ah, well. That didn't really work out. But it's hard to avoid having bad things happen to people you care about (in this town or any other). He cradles her against his chest and it's totally sweet. If that whole Tyler/Caroline thing doesn't work out, the show really should considering giving Caroline/Stefan a try.
Outside, Bonnie is pissed off and freaking out and, when Damon is... well, Damon... she is done with it all. She starts off giving him the continuous brain aneurysm.
Bonnie: "I told you what would happen if anyone else got hurt."
Damon: "I didn't do this."
Elena: "Bonnie, it wasn't his fault."
Bonnie: "Everything that happens is his fault, Elena."
This is kinda the crux of the matter - what is justice? what is vengeance? And what is lashing out? The reason that this scene feels nothing like justice - despite Damon's long list of crimes - is because this isn't one of his crimes. One of the shows that I love is due South and there's an episode where the hero, Benton Fraser... he knows that this mob boss has been framed for a particular murder. Now, he also knows that the mob boss has many things that he should be arrested on, but considers that it would be unjust to arrest him for the crime that he did not commit and he fights like hell to clear the guy's name on this crime. Because Fraser cares about justice.
Elena notices that Bonnie is sending a stream of water towards Damon and gets concerned. Now, I know that some people do think that Elena saving Damon's life here is all about Bonnie, but that makes me ask... why is that not one of her arguments re: Klaus. I never see Elena arguing that people shouldn't kill Klaus or any other random vampire villain because of the damage it would do the person who does the killing - only when it comes to Damon being attacked. And she does it three times - once with Stefan, once with Lexi's boyfriend, and then here with Bonnie. This implies to me that it's about saving Damon.
Especially when you look at her reaction: "Bonnie. Bonnie, stop it! Bonnie, stop it, you're going to kill him!" Then she leaps across fire in order to shake Bonnie out of it. And then, after she's told Bonnie, "because this isn't us. This can't be us," she takes the time to glance over to Damon twice to check on him, before hurrying Bonnie away from him.
I wonder if I should make a 'saving lives' list for Damon and Elena. They do a lot of mutual life-saving.
Inside the school, Stefan finds Elena at her locker. Elena is now fearing that Damon is right about Caroline, but Stefan is determined not to let Caroline go the way of Vicki. Elena laments her lack of a normal life. Stefan apologizes, but she tells him that it isn't his fault. "It's no one's fault. It is what it is." As he strokes her cheek, she tells him that she's fine and she'll call him tomorrow, and then she leaves.
Carol tells Mason that she thinks he'll be good for Tyler and that she'll look for that stone, then she goes upstairs (likely to bed). Tyler comes in to say good-night to them and then he goes to his father's secret hiding place under the rug, unearthing the moonstone and tucking it away in a pocket.
At the Salvatore place, Damon goes to pour himself a drink, sensing Jeremy lurking in a chair behind him. He goes to drink his alcohol, but Jeremy warns him that it has vervain in it. He admits that he was planning to stake Damon, but then tosses the piece of wood to the floor.
"You came here to kill me?"
"It's only fair. You killed me first."
"What made you wisen up?"
"My father hated vampires. My uncle, too. They were absolute. They knew exactly what they stood for. I figured maybe I should, too - I mean, stand for something. But killing you... what's that gonna do?"
"Look, I don't do the big brother thing very well, so I don't have any milk and cookies to offer you."
"Dick."
"Wait. My father hated vampires, too."
"He did?"
"For the same reason your dad did. Only it was 1864... and people knew how to whittle. Did you do this?"
"Yeah, I tried. It's a little harder than it looks."
The Damon-Jeremy scenes are always so good. This one is really fantastic. I love how... mature Jeremy is, in contrast to his Uncle John. What good will killing Damon do? Jeremy read Elena's journal, so he knows something of what Damon's done in the past, both good and bad. How does killing Damon help things now, Jeremy asks. What's the good in absolute hate?
At Caroline's house, Matt sneaks in through the window. Caroline demands to know why he's there - he wants to know "if today's basketcase period has expired".
"You've been avoiding me all day. I'm more insecure than you right now."
"What does that mean?"
"It means... you almost died and it really freaked me out. It got me thinking, you know, because I'm not really in a position where I can lose someone else right now. I realized today that even though I wanted to throttle you - I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you. And now it seems like you don't feel the same way."
Caroline kisses and hugs him, pushing back the vamp-face when it tries to come in.
Stefan wakes Elena in her bed with a kiss. It's almost dawn.
He takes her to the carnival, mentioning that he compelled the guard to take a break. It's a moment that he and Elena need to take, apparently. Knowing as I now do from 2x20, that Stefan always assumed that Elena wasn't going to turn for him, I understand more why he kept encouraging the breaks from reality.
"What Katherine did to Caroline could just be the beginning and then there's things with Tyler's family that we don't even understand and there's always the 'd-word' but- I came back to this town to start a life with you. We can't forget to live it."
He's not going to have centuries or decades with her. He doesn't expect to have them. He expects her to stay human and, eventually, to leave him. This actually echoes a lot with 2x20 - there's something they need to get to the top of, but he leaps with her here and, later, he'll want her to savor her last day of being human.
Anyway, they jump up and Elena laughs and Stefan is glad to see that, and then they kiss.
Danger! Do Not Rock Seat, the seat warns us all sternly.
Elena breaks away from the kiss - "It's not going to get any easier, is it?"
"No. It's not."
Deaths:
1. Caroline kills Carter.
Damon (season running total): 1
Caroline: 1
Vamp Bites:
1. Caroline bites her nurse.
2. Caroline bites Carter.
Caroline: 2
Compels:
1. Caroline tells the nurse not to tell about Caroline's vampirism.
2. Damon compels Carter to pick a fight with Tyler.
3. Stefan compels the guard so that he and Elena can go on the Ferris Wheel.
Caroline: 1
Damon: 1
Stefan: 1
Bechdel:
1. Caroline talks to the (female) night nurse at the hospital.
2. Bonnie tells Elena how freakish it is that Katherine looks like Elena.
3. The nurse admires the necklace that Elena gave Caroline.
4. At the carnival, Bonnie and Elena talk shop about keeping the carnival stuff supplied.
5. Caroline goes over the compulsion with her nurse.
6. Caroline mistakes Elena for Katherine and accuses Elena of killing her.
Stefan/Elena Relationship:
2nd Reunion: "The Turning Point" - (at least 17 episodes, at least five weeks + 2 days)
Timeline (S2):
Later on the night of "The Return", Caroline wakes up.
The next day is the set-up for the annual carnival. That night is the carnival and we go through the whole thing, not quite reaching the next day's dawning.
Time covered: 2 nights; 1 day, but one of the nights is the same one from "The Return".
Time covered for S2: 3 nights, 2 days.
Shirtless shots:
1. Tyler Lockwood comes in from running with Mason; Tyler is shirtless.
Tyler: 1
Bonnie's Visions:
1. She touches Caroline to confirm vampirism.
In retrospect, I'm really glad that I held off on the rewatch/reviews, because it means that I'll know, going into the sun/moon curse episodes, that it was all a ruse. No railing about how the curse doesn't make sense and why I don't see why Klaus would care so much.
Previously: Stefan has to know Elena, Stefan's a vampire, Tyler hears a weird noise that makes him crash, Caroline is in danger, Damon offers to save her with vampire blood, Mason returns, Elena cares about Damon but loves Stefan, Damon snaps Jeremy's neck but Jeremy comes back to life, Elena looks like Katherine, and Katherine finishes the process of vamping Caroline.
We open on Caroline waking up. It's likely the same day/night, since we know from previous experience with vampire-making that it doesn't take that long for vampire blood to take effect. She goes out to the hall and asks the night nurse where everyone is, especially her mom. The nurse mentions that Liz and Matt left earlier to go to dinner, and then Elena stopped by after that. Caroline has a flash of memory - Elena called herself Katherine - but doesn't yet remember her own death.
Caroline tells the nurse that she's hungry, and the nurse tells her breakfast comes at seven. But Caroline is hungry now, and it's an entirely new kind of hunger. As she heads toward her room, she catches a scent that calls to her. Caroline spies a blood-bag in use in another patient's room and she's drawn to it. The nurse interrupts her before she can reach it, and sends her back off to her room to go to bed.
What the nurse doesn't see is that Caroline has already snagged a blood-bag. Caroline herself might not have been aware of it before she pulls it out in her hospital room after the nurse leaves again. Caroline takes a sip and reacts immediately - coughing and throwing away the bag.
This episode does such a good job of showing how instinctual all the elements of vampirism are to the newly-made vampire, and how powerfully hard they are to resist.
After that first reaction, Caroline, again, is drawn to the blood. She picks the bag up again and drinks, ripping the top off so that she can drink it more quickly.
After the credits, we cut to the annual Mystic Falls Carnival. It appears to be the next day. Bonnie is still stuck on how 'freakish' it is that Elena and Katherine look so much alike. Elena doesn't want to think about it, scribbing on her clipboard (as she's taken over Caroline's duties for the Carnival). Bonnie wants to think about the practical consequences of Katherine looking like Elena (she could be pretending to be you), while Elena wants to forget it all and pretend life is normal.
Given that Katherine is probably convincing Jenna to go off vervain as we speak... man, I wish that Elena had listened to Bonnie instead of choosing to bury her head in the sand. Ah, well, Katherine would have found a way of getting to Jenna (and Matt) regardless, most likely.
"Have you talked to Damon since he killed Jeremy? Or tried to kill Jeremy?"
Ah, yeah. Um. I think that giving Bonnie this line of dialogue was a mistake on the part of the writers. This is the woman who threatened to kill Damon the next time he stepped over the line. But she didn't go after him for what happened to Jeremy? She mostly looks puzzled, too, rather than angry.
Elena doesn't want to talk about Damon.
"I'm human and I want to do human stuff, otherwise I'll go crazy."
Bonnie agrees to focus on the Carnival, and she takes a moment to wonder how Caroline manages to handle these things all the time.
Inside the school, Stefan is giving Jeremy some vervain and telling him about how it will protect him from compulsion (the sticker on the locker next to Jeremy's says, "Chicks Rule!") Stefan also tells Jeremy that vervain works as a poison against vampires. Also, wooden stakes work.
"You're pretty confident in yourself, telling me all the different ways I could kill you."
"Jeremy, if I thought you wanted to kill me, we'd be having a much different conversation, okay?"
"Yeah, Damon is the one that deserves it."
"I want you to forget about Damon, all right? He's a hundred-times stronger than you and, right now, he's not stable. Gotta try to move forward."
"I was killed by a vampire and brought back by a magic ring. How do you move forward from that?"
There's a moment of assessment before Stefan tells Jeremy to forget about Damon - Stefan calculating the likely consequences of Jeremy's act, perhaps. He knows that Jeremy doesn't have a chance against Damon in a fight. And he doesn't trust Damon not to kill people who cross him - this is also a major part of why Caroline and Stefan don't tell him about Caroline telling Tyler the truth about herself; they assume that he will kill Tyler. Damon is frequently hot-headed and impulsive, but he does listen to reason - he neither kills Caroline, nor Tyler.
Stefan welcomes the distraction of Elena's arrival, cuddling at her. She's concentrating on Jeremy, though, who snarks on how 'epic' the goldfish toss will be. Elena is distressed and moves away from Stefan as Jeremy slams his locker shut and walks off. Elena had been hoping that the carnival would distract Jeremy from his death experience of last night.
"We're going to be boring high school students who live in a world where the 'v-word' is not uttered."
"Got it."
"And then we're going to go on the Ferris Wheel, go to the very top, and then you're going to kiss me and my heart will flutter like a normal high school girl. Do you see a running theme here?"
Ah. I can't complain about this characterization, because when things get really scary, Elena does retreat into her 'normal girl' fantasy life several times over the course of the series. I just think it's really unhealthy and wish that Stefan wouldn't encourage her in it. Actually, he does a lot better here than he does later - he actually does still question her desire to hide in denial at this point.
"What do we do about Damon?"
"Ah, no 'd-word', okay? That has been deleted from the list of topics we can discuss."
"Unfortunately, Katherine showing up has him in a little bit of an odd place, a little off-kilter. Kinda dangerous. Who knows what he's up to?"
Elena looks very uncomfortable at this point. She knows that it's not about Katherine. It's about her. But she doesn't want it to be about her, and she definitely doesn't want Stefan to think it's about her because she doesn't want to get between the brothers.
This conversation does make me think that Elena was not entirely forthcoming about everything that happened in her room prior to the neck-snapping. Hmm. I'll see if that gets contradicted later.
Anyway, Damon is having a conversation with Carol Lockwood at her house. Damon lets Carol know that Sheriff Liz Forbes put him in charge of the vampire-hunt. Carol lets Damon know that she's going to be interim mayor until the next election (what with Richard being dead), and that she wants Damon to take charge of the Council. I'm sad that this never really went anywhere. The curse and the originals stuff took over the season, and we never got to see Damon acting as the head of the Council. And now that Liz knows the truth, things are going to be different next season anyway.
Tyler and Mason come into the house, sweaty from running together. Carol gets up to shut the door into the entryway so that she and Damon can concentrate on Council stuff. Damon asks after the guys, and Carol says that she doesn't see any reason to involve Mason in Council business - he wasn't interested before (and now that she's in control, she probably doesn't want him to try to take it away from her - she trusts Damon and knows that he's capable). Damon uses his vampire hearing to listen in on Tyler and Mason's conversation.
Mason is feeling Tyler out on his aggression issues - exercise doesn't help make it go away.
"I get angry - typically over nothing. I'm an angry guy. I just... go off."
"You black out?"
"Yeah. It's like I go blind with rage."
"Is there a pattern? Like... once a month, only at night?"
"All I know is I lose myself. For that time, I become something else. I hate it."
I see why people were speculating that Damon might be a werepire (heh, werepire). There are definitely valid Tyler/Damon comparisons to be made. But I'm not sure we have any evidence that Damon had that pattern of behavior while he was still alive. And his anger always seems based in current events, rather than moon-based. I think that Damon is impulsive, reckless, and not used to needing to control himself (since if he acted out too much in any other town, he could just leave), rather than it being a genetic werewolf legacy.
Plus, Damon likely killed people while in the army, so if he were a werewolf, he'd probably have already been activated when Katherine met him. So, I'm going to guess 'not a werepire'.
Anyway, Damon is getting something to focus on that doesn't involve Elena, so that's good. Of course, it's all going to lead back to Elena anyway, so there's that. I like that Damon is this involved in the werewolf-half of the season plot so early, considering that he's the one who gets bitten later on.
In her hospital bed, Caroline experiments with sunlight - yep, all of a sudden, it's hurting her. They did such a good job with her whole baby!vamp storyline. Matt comes in with food, but Caroline isn't interested in it. He leans in to kiss her, but he's in the sunlight, so she doesn't complete the gesture. Matt's obviously a little hurt, but moves on to mention that the nurse told him that Caroline is being released tomorrow morning. This freaks Caroline out, what with her new 'daylight' problem. He thinks that she's freaking out over the carnival (and calls her a "neurotic control freak" - are those the same words that she uses later when talking to Stefan?) and attempts to reassure her that Elena and Bonnie have it covered.
"I'm not neurotic."
"Yeah, you are, but it's cute, so..."
She tells him that it's not about the carnival - it's that the hospital is depressing her. He thinks that the darkness might have something to do with it and when he goes for the curtain, she really freaks out, jumping out of the bed and pressing herself against the wall. Matt is utterly flabbergasted. From Matt's perspective, Caroline is acting really, really weird right now.
Caroline snaps at him to close the curtains and he does. He offers to come back later and then heads out, Caroline looking very frustrated after he's gone.
At the boarding house, Damon pours himself a glass of blood out of a bag and offers Stefan some, which Stefan declines. The whole 'blood addiction' blood plotline really did just fizzle out and go nowhere after being so awesome at the end of S1. I regret that a bit. It does feel like all possible Stefan-storylines got trimmed out of S2, except for his support-position for Elena. He rarely takes actions and most of the actions that he takes have no impact on anything. And, at the beginning of the season, they kept acting like they were going to give him an overarching plotline of some kind (Katherine; human blood; mentoring Caroline) but they all seemed to fade away.
"Not hungry. Just ate."
"Aren't you worried that one day, all the forest animals are going to band together and fight back? I mean, surely they talk."
"I'm just happy that's a blood-bag and not a sorority girl supplying your dinner."
"I like this. You walking on eggshells around me because you think I'm going to explode. It's very suspenseful."
Damon is such an astute judge of character, for the most part (which gets into why I get frustrated when the other characters ignore him in favor of characters who have horrible track records when it comes to who is trustworthy).
"Is Elena worried, too? I bet I'm your every conversation."
"Have you heard from Katherine?"
"I think the Lockwoods have a family secret. Because the Gilbert device affected them but vervain didn't. So, they're not vampires, but they're something else."
"Is this your new obsession?"
"Oh, you'd rather some unknown supernatural element running rampant in our town, fine, I'll drop it."
Stefan deflects from the subject of Elena by bringing up Katherine, and then Damon deflects from that subject by bringing up the Lockwoods. "Our town" Damon calls it. Claims it. Only a couple of days ago, he fought to defend it. Damon has gone past the point of walking away from Mystic Falls. It's home again.
Stefan wants to go back to the subject of Katherine: "We haven't seen the last of Katherine. You know that, right? We have no idea what she's up to."
"Sure we do. She came back to profess her eternal, undying love for you. So, I'm going to let you deal with her. Because I have more important things to do. Like... explode."
Hey, Stefan. One of you is sounding obsessed with Katherine. And it's not Damon. While Damon is always going to have memories of how much he cared for Katherine (see: his solemnness at the thought that Klaus had killed her), she's not 'it' for him anymore.
And the show has consistently poked at the Stefan/Katherine stuff on occasion - most recently, when Damon taunts Katherine with the idea that she'll have to compete with Elena forever if Elena gets turned into a vampire. Makes me wonder if maybe that's going to be a plotline for S3 and Stefan will finally deal with his Katherine-issues.
At the hospital, that night, Caroline is putting her jewelry back on. When she puts on the necklace Elena gave her, it hurts against her skin and she tears it off, looking in the mirror at the burn that it left. The nurse enters the room and picks the necklace off the floor. She admires the necklace (great gift, Elena!) and places it on the table, then leaves the room.
Caroline sucks a little more from a blood bag that she's stolen and then she stares at herself in the mirror as the first signs of her vamp-face show up - redness and slightly bulging veins around the eyes. She grabs at her mouth and it seems to hurt as her fangs show up. The nurse comes in, hearing Caroline's alarmed noises, asking what's wrong - Caroline grabs her, vampire-fast, holds her against the wall by the throat. Without realizing what she's doing, Caroline compels the nurse not to tell anyone.
Again, we see how natural the vampire instincts come to Caroline.
Once she has the nurse subdued, her hunger comes out, and she feeds.
That night is the carnival and many people are walking the grounds. Bonnie and Elena are doing their best to keep everything running smoothly. Elena identifies a carnival worker - Carter - and asks him over. He and Bonnie do a little flirting. She goes off to show him the broken karaoke speakers while Elena smiles her encouragement.
At the Lockwood house, Mason starts searching for hidden compartments. Tyler comes in while Mason is searching through Richard Lockwood's desk. At first Mason tries to claim that he's just killing time, but then he asks after any 'family artifacts'. He claims that he's looking for something that belonged to his mom and that he'd like it back. Tyler suggests that Mason ask Carol, but he's obviously more than a little suspicious of what Mason's doing. Ah, if only he'd held onto that healthy suspicion for longer.
Damon approaches Jeremy at the carnival.
"Jeremy, so good to see you alive."
"Aren't you a little old for a high school carnival?"
"About a hundred and fifty years too old."
"Ah, you're pretty funny, cracking jokes when I could blow the lid off this whole thing by telling someone what you really are."
Damon clasps Jeremy by the neck and walks him over into a darker part of the carnival.
"Now, please tell me that's not a threat."
"Maybe it is," Jeremy says, holding up his hand with the 'no supernatural death' ring on it. Damon puts Jeremy in a headlock, yanking off his ring.
"This is what we're not going to do. We're not going to walk around like we're invincible when it's this easy for me to end you. If you want to tell people what I really am, go ahead and try. I'll shove this ring so far up your ass... you'll really have something to choke on."
He throws the ring back at Jeremy and then saunters off, his point having been very clearly made. It's actually a really important thing for Jeremy to remember - having the ring does not actually make him invincible. It just makes it so that supernatural things can't kill him while the ring is still on. Always, always, remain aware of your vulnerabilities.
Back at the hospital, Caroline leaves a voicemail with her mom, letting Liz know that Caroline's being allowed out tonight instead of tomorrow morning. She apologizes to the nurse for the bite, and then they go over the story that she gave for the nurse to give out regarding her bite ("my husband likes to get kinky" - Caroline kinda reminds me of Kaylee from Firefly in that both are unabashedly sexual and allowed to be so by the narrative and not get punished for it). Caroline thinks that compulsion is the most amazing thing ever, and she heads off to make sure that the carnival is going smoothly.
At the carnival, the wrestling club has an arm-wrestle table set-up. Tyler is up against some dude whose name I don't know. Damon is watching from afar. Stefan joins him. Tyler beats the random dude and then Mason comes up to face off against him. Stefan thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. Mason beats Tyler, so Damon volunteers Stefan to face-off against Mason. After a moment, Mason beats Stefan. It looks like Stefan is testingly putting some vampire strength into it and then letting Mason beat him before Stefan's own strength looks suspicious. When Stefan tells Damon that he didn't just let Mason win, both of them are intrigued by Mason's unnatural strength.
They've determined that the Lockwoods aren't vampires but are other than human. Heh, I like the way they play this scene - Stefan suggests that they could be "ninja turtles. Ooo, zombies. Werewolves?" and it all flows together and, contrary to Damon's words, Stefan does have some comic timing.
Damon glances around and spots Carter, Bonnie's flirting partner from earlier. He grabs him by the shoulders and compels him to pick a fight with Tyler Lockwood. Another foreshadowing of Katherine's actions that will be revealed later - she did something similar with Mason, only she did know what he was and was gunning for him to get activated as a werewolf.
Stefan mildly disapproves, but lets it (and Damon) go.
Damon is walking down an empty hallway of the school, and he turns to see Caroline behind him.
"I remember," she tells him. "I remember how you manipulated me. You pushed me around. Abused me. Erased my memories. Fed on me."
"You're crazy."
"Well, the memories have been coming back... in pieces."
"You can't remember. It's impossible. I mean, unless you're... becoming a..."
"I've a message from Katherine. She said 'game on'."
When he grabs her arm, she pulls it off and pushes him away so that he lands and slides down the hallway.
"You suck," she tells him, and stalks away.
Damon's first impulse is to go tell Elena what happened. Not to take care of it (read: stake Caroline) himself. But to fill Elena in on things.
"Elena."
"What do you want, Damon?"
"I know I'm the last person you want to see right now, but I need you to come with me."
"Whatever it is, I'm not interested."
"Yeah, I need you to come with me right now, Elena."
Here, the show makes a point of illustrating that Elena, mad as she is at Damon, will still listen to him if he implies it's important. For no other reason than that he thinks it's important. They don't have him saying, "it's about Caroline" to spur her on - she goes because Damon thinks it's important. She's mad as hell and she hasn't forgiven him for Jeremy and she doesn't even want to hear anyone say his name - but if he says he needs her right now, she'll listen.
Tyler heads out to the parking lot, Stefan following him. Once there, Carter pushes past him, looking to start that fight. As Stefan watches from the bushes, Mason comes by to break up the fight. Carter doesn't back off, of course, because he's been compelled not to back off. Mason does some fancy supernatural-type leaping around. His eyes go yellow and Tyler notices. Mason knocks Carter down and then he and Tyler get out of there.
Stefan goes to check on Carter, who can't understand why he was picking that fight.
Caroline has arrived at the carnival proper and she surprises Matt with a tiny hug from behind. She tells him that she's all better and gives him a quick kiss. Matt still has his cast. I should probably keep track of when that disappears. He gives her a ring to toss and she ends up breaking some of the bottles by accident. When he hugs her and her face is near his neck, she feels the temptation to bite and she ends up backing out of the hug and taking off. Matt tries to follow her and asks if she's okay, and she tells him to leave her alone.
Damon is meeting with Elena and Stefan in a classroom re: Caroline's vampirism. Elena doesn't understand why Katherine would go after her friends - this is possibly the same sort of attitude that feeds into why she never worried that her friends might be the vampire and werewolf for the moonstone curse. Elena just doesn't think that way - of going after friends to hurt someone - and pretty much all the vampires she goes up against do. So, it really would behoove her to start keeping that in mind.
Stefan: "We need to find her."
Damon: "Yep. And kill her."
Elena: "You're not going to kill Caroline." (she briefly reaches out to Stefan for comforting touches, but it's very brief)
Damon: "She knows who we are. She's officially a liability. We've got to get rid of her."
Stefan: "Damon, absolutely not."
Damon: "Need I remind you of a tragic little story of a girl, Vicki Donovan? Yeah. Caroline, of all people, will never make it as a vampire. Her mother's a vampire hunter. Guys, come on, we all know how this story ends, so let's just flip to the last chapter and-"
Elena: "It's not an option, Damon."
Damon: "No? Your silence is deafening, Stefan. Wait, wasn't there a school carnival the night you staked Vicki? Talk about a town where history repeats itself. You know I'm right."
Stefan: "We're not going to kill her."
Damon: "It's the only way."
Damon is being absolutely practical here, while both Elena and Stefan are reacting emotionally. In this instance, Damon is wrong - Caroline can handle being a vampire. I find the blocking interesting - Stefan is constantly moving. He's pacing and running his fingers through his hair and just generally reacting very obviously. Damon's attitude here reminds me of how he's acting at the end of 2x21 - 'we all know how a werewolf bite ends, so why fight to save me? it won't work'. He's ruthlessly practical about everyone who isn't on his list of people he cares about - at this point in the season, that's Elena and Stefan (with Alaric probably sneaking in, and Liz and maybe even Carol - later in the season, it will include Caroline as well, and possibly Jeremy and Jenna). And, yes, that does imply that Damon isn't on Damon's list of people.
Caroline, crying, has run into the parking lot. Once there, she smells blood. Carter is bleeding from the fight he earlier had with Mason and Tyler. He asks her if she's okay while she fights her hunger. She apologizes to him and then gives into her desire to feed.
In the school, Matt is talking to Bonnie about how weird Caroline has been acting.
"She's been like that all day - cool one minute, and crazy and neurotic the next."
"She almost died. It's bound to mess with her head. Plus, she's Caroline."
"Yeah. I'm used to the insecurities and all - that's who she is, love it or hate it. But this seemed... I don't know... different. More. I can't explain it."
I'd forgotten about this scene, that we do see Matt struggling. And it's a reminder (to me) that Matt wasn't alone in treating Caroline the way he did - that's pretty much how everyone treated her, pre-vamping (doesn't make it better, but it does mean that Matt doesn't stand out the way that he was in my memories).
Damon finds himself a stake.
Elsewhere, Stefan and Elena are walking, looking for Caroline.
Elena: "You agree with Damon, don't you? Stefan."
Stefan punches the side of one of the carnival trailers.
Elena: "Stefan - hey!"
Stefan: "Damon's right. Not about what we should do, but about what's going to happen. Katherine all but signed Caroline's death sentence."
Elena: "Well, we can't let it end that way. She's doing this to me, isn't she?"
Stefan: "Actually, she's doing it to me."
Well, that's what she wanted you to think, Stefan, but you are actually completely wrong. But thanks for playing! This scene provides great evidence that Katherine's psychological warfare was working. Stefan really did come to be believe, at least in part, that it was all about him, right up until Elena was kidnapped. I have to applaud Katherine for a very successful smoke-screen. She played him like a fiddle.
Back at the Lockwood mansion, Tyler is demanding answers. Mason isn't interested in giving them.
At the carnival, Stefan smells blood, and he and Elena head off to investigate.
Damon has found Caroline first, of course. With Stefan on animal blood, Damon's senses are stronger. Caroline is weeping next to Carter's body. For Damon, evidence that she can't control herself (it really does seem like Damon had a lot more control right at the start than other baby!vamps - maybe because of those lessons that Katherine was giving him?). Her face is covered in blood.
"He's dead," she tells Damon, all her anger at him from earlier gone. She's felt it, now, what it is to be a vampire. What it is to be what Damon is. "I killed him. What's wrong with me?"
"Hey, it's okay. I can help you," Damon says, rubbing his hand over her shoulder and back.
"You can?"
"Yeah. I have to."
"What are you going to do?"
"The only thing I can do," he says, brushing her hair out of her face. "I'm going to kill you."
She jumps down from the truck bed. "Please don't. I don't want to die."
"Yeah, but you're already dead."
"No! I'm not. Don't say that. Just help me."
He hugs her (still holding the stake), as she asks him to help her. As he lifts up the stake, Stefan yanks him away from Caroline.
While Stefan fends Damon off, Elena tries to comfort Caroline, who freaks because she remembers Katherine killing her now. As Stefan starts to take Caroline away, Damon grabs the stake and goes for Caroline - stopping abruptly as Elena puts her body between theirs.
"Damon, she's my friend."
"Whatever happens, it's on you."
Just like in 1x14, when Damon discovered that Katherine wasn't in the tomb, Elena's intervention works where Stefan's doesn't. For Elena, Damon promises to back off, while holding Elena responsible for the actions that Caroline will take in the future. Caroline is now officially Elena's responsibility, in Damon's eyes, and under Elena's protection.
Bonnie has come on the scene, and she sees Caroline with her face covered in blood. She horrified and touches Caroline to confirm that she's a vampire. Next, Bonnie spots Carter's dead body. Elena quickly sends Caroline off with Stefan.
Stefan cleans Caroline's face off in the bathroom and tries to reassure her. But Caroline is convinced that Bonnie hates her now.
"I'm a murderer. I'm a monster."
"Your emotions are heightened right now. It's part of the transformation. It's completely normal, I promise you."
When Caroline freaks out at her vampire face, Stefan reassures her by showing her his. He's very good with her throughout this scene. I would have liked more Stefan-Caroline vampire-mentoring scenes throughout S2, as well. But that kinda fades away after a while as she gets involved with mentoring Tyler.
"I promise you that I will not let anything happen to you," Stefan says. Ah, well. That didn't really work out. But it's hard to avoid having bad things happen to people you care about (in this town or any other). He cradles her against his chest and it's totally sweet. If that whole Tyler/Caroline thing doesn't work out, the show really should considering giving Caroline/Stefan a try.
Outside, Bonnie is pissed off and freaking out and, when Damon is... well, Damon... she is done with it all. She starts off giving him the continuous brain aneurysm.
Bonnie: "I told you what would happen if anyone else got hurt."
Damon: "I didn't do this."
Elena: "Bonnie, it wasn't his fault."
Bonnie: "Everything that happens is his fault, Elena."
This is kinda the crux of the matter - what is justice? what is vengeance? And what is lashing out? The reason that this scene feels nothing like justice - despite Damon's long list of crimes - is because this isn't one of his crimes. One of the shows that I love is due South and there's an episode where the hero, Benton Fraser... he knows that this mob boss has been framed for a particular murder. Now, he also knows that the mob boss has many things that he should be arrested on, but considers that it would be unjust to arrest him for the crime that he did not commit and he fights like hell to clear the guy's name on this crime. Because Fraser cares about justice.
Elena notices that Bonnie is sending a stream of water towards Damon and gets concerned. Now, I know that some people do think that Elena saving Damon's life here is all about Bonnie, but that makes me ask... why is that not one of her arguments re: Klaus. I never see Elena arguing that people shouldn't kill Klaus or any other random vampire villain because of the damage it would do the person who does the killing - only when it comes to Damon being attacked. And she does it three times - once with Stefan, once with Lexi's boyfriend, and then here with Bonnie. This implies to me that it's about saving Damon.
Especially when you look at her reaction: "Bonnie. Bonnie, stop it! Bonnie, stop it, you're going to kill him!" Then she leaps across fire in order to shake Bonnie out of it. And then, after she's told Bonnie, "because this isn't us. This can't be us," she takes the time to glance over to Damon twice to check on him, before hurrying Bonnie away from him.
I wonder if I should make a 'saving lives' list for Damon and Elena. They do a lot of mutual life-saving.
Inside the school, Stefan finds Elena at her locker. Elena is now fearing that Damon is right about Caroline, but Stefan is determined not to let Caroline go the way of Vicki. Elena laments her lack of a normal life. Stefan apologizes, but she tells him that it isn't his fault. "It's no one's fault. It is what it is." As he strokes her cheek, she tells him that she's fine and she'll call him tomorrow, and then she leaves.
Carol tells Mason that she thinks he'll be good for Tyler and that she'll look for that stone, then she goes upstairs (likely to bed). Tyler comes in to say good-night to them and then he goes to his father's secret hiding place under the rug, unearthing the moonstone and tucking it away in a pocket.
At the Salvatore place, Damon goes to pour himself a drink, sensing Jeremy lurking in a chair behind him. He goes to drink his alcohol, but Jeremy warns him that it has vervain in it. He admits that he was planning to stake Damon, but then tosses the piece of wood to the floor.
"You came here to kill me?"
"It's only fair. You killed me first."
"What made you wisen up?"
"My father hated vampires. My uncle, too. They were absolute. They knew exactly what they stood for. I figured maybe I should, too - I mean, stand for something. But killing you... what's that gonna do?"
"Look, I don't do the big brother thing very well, so I don't have any milk and cookies to offer you."
"Dick."
"Wait. My father hated vampires, too."
"He did?"
"For the same reason your dad did. Only it was 1864... and people knew how to whittle. Did you do this?"
"Yeah, I tried. It's a little harder than it looks."
The Damon-Jeremy scenes are always so good. This one is really fantastic. I love how... mature Jeremy is, in contrast to his Uncle John. What good will killing Damon do? Jeremy read Elena's journal, so he knows something of what Damon's done in the past, both good and bad. How does killing Damon help things now, Jeremy asks. What's the good in absolute hate?
At Caroline's house, Matt sneaks in through the window. Caroline demands to know why he's there - he wants to know "if today's basketcase period has expired".
"You've been avoiding me all day. I'm more insecure than you right now."
"What does that mean?"
"It means... you almost died and it really freaked me out. It got me thinking, you know, because I'm not really in a position where I can lose someone else right now. I realized today that even though I wanted to throttle you - I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you. And now it seems like you don't feel the same way."
Caroline kisses and hugs him, pushing back the vamp-face when it tries to come in.
Stefan wakes Elena in her bed with a kiss. It's almost dawn.
He takes her to the carnival, mentioning that he compelled the guard to take a break. It's a moment that he and Elena need to take, apparently. Knowing as I now do from 2x20, that Stefan always assumed that Elena wasn't going to turn for him, I understand more why he kept encouraging the breaks from reality.
"What Katherine did to Caroline could just be the beginning and then there's things with Tyler's family that we don't even understand and there's always the 'd-word' but- I came back to this town to start a life with you. We can't forget to live it."
He's not going to have centuries or decades with her. He doesn't expect to have them. He expects her to stay human and, eventually, to leave him. This actually echoes a lot with 2x20 - there's something they need to get to the top of, but he leaps with her here and, later, he'll want her to savor her last day of being human.
Anyway, they jump up and Elena laughs and Stefan is glad to see that, and then they kiss.
Danger! Do Not Rock Seat, the seat warns us all sternly.
Elena breaks away from the kiss - "It's not going to get any easier, is it?"
"No. It's not."
1. Caroline kills Carter.
Damon (season running total): 1
Caroline: 1
1. Caroline bites her nurse.
2. Caroline bites Carter.
Caroline: 2
1. Caroline tells the nurse not to tell about Caroline's vampirism.
2. Damon compels Carter to pick a fight with Tyler.
3. Stefan compels the guard so that he and Elena can go on the Ferris Wheel.
Caroline: 1
Damon: 1
Stefan: 1
1. Caroline talks to the (female) night nurse at the hospital.
2. Bonnie tells Elena how freakish it is that Katherine looks like Elena.
3. The nurse admires the necklace that Elena gave Caroline.
4. At the carnival, Bonnie and Elena talk shop about keeping the carnival stuff supplied.
5. Caroline goes over the compulsion with her nurse.
6. Caroline mistakes Elena for Katherine and accuses Elena of killing her.
2nd Reunion: "The Turning Point" - (at least 17 episodes, at least five weeks + 2 days)
Later on the night of "The Return", Caroline wakes up.
The next day is the set-up for the annual carnival. That night is the carnival and we go through the whole thing, not quite reaching the next day's dawning.
Time covered: 2 nights; 1 day, but one of the nights is the same one from "The Return".
Time covered for S2: 3 nights, 2 days.
1. Tyler Lockwood comes in from running with Mason; Tyler is shirtless.
Tyler: 1
1. She touches Caroline to confirm vampirism.