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Vampire Diaries: 2x03 - Bad Moon Rising (spoilers through 2x21)
The title makes me want to hum.
I noticed in the last episode review that 2x02 had some interesting thematic connections to 2x20 - the Elena/Stefan relationship arc was somewhat bookmarked in those two episodes; in the first, we have Elena expressing what she wants out of her relationship with Stefan and in 2x20, we have the acknowledgment from both parties that they knew Elena had no interest in transitioning out of a human-lifespan-based relationship with Stefan and into vampire-lifespan-based one. Which... fair enough.
It's an interesting contrast, though, against Lexi and her beloved - I'm going to call him 'Bell' for making Bella's choice (from Twilight). I know that when 162 Candles aired, many people assumed that Lexi's Bell was long-dead and Lexi was a 'merry widow' (I know this because when I got into the show, I went back and read the reviews for earlier episodes) and this informed their view of her character. I did not notice them changing their view of Lexi's character when we got the reveal that she had turned Bell, because (in his words), "If you wanna be with someone forever, you have to live forever". But I've been thinking of that a lot since Elena's talk with Stefan about how she does not want to turn for their romance (and her saying to Isobel in season one that she's never considered the reasons why a person might want to become a vampire). So, yes, I find all those interesting things to ponder.
This episode is called "Bad Moon Rising". 2x21 is called "The Sun Also Rises", which sounds like a reply. A bad moon may rise, but the sun also rises. 2x03 is the episode that introduces the 'sun and moon curse' and 2x21 is the episode that breaks the actual curse. So, another thematic bookmark (2x01 is likely to be matched with the finale, 2x22 - we start and end the season with Damon's emotional journey - I know that
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arabian has speculated that S3 will be one that focuses on Stefan. There are a lot of potential plotlines that they could give him - Katherine, human blood, his brother, whatever it is that Klaus wanted with him, etc. Hopefully, they actually will).Previously: Stefan's gotta know Elena; also, he's a vampire; Katherine broke his heart; Elena looks like Katherine; Tyler punches people under full moons; Damon wants to investigate the Lockwoods; Elena says she loves Stefan, always gonna be Stefan; Damon kills Jeremy; Stefan excuses Damon by blaming it on Katherine; Elena hates Damon; Jeremy comes back to life; and Caroline is a vampire.
We open with Damon welcoming Alaric to the Salvatore boarding house and offering him a drink. Stefan and Elena are seated on the couch, not quite touching. Alaric settles down into the couch across from them, while Damon hovers by Stefan and Elena's couch. They're hoping that Alaric can help give them info on the weirdness of the Lockwood family. Damon sits down on the chair next to Stefan's side of the couch and clarifies that he thinks that Isobel might have some research into the Lockwoods. Alaric knows that Isobel was big into folklore and legend, but he'd thought it was all fiction at the time.
Alaric mentions werewolves (lycanthropes) and Damon is dubious. He's never run into one, after all (I guess Damon isn't a big fan of Florida). Sounds too much like a monster movie to him. Damon and Stefan share all the strange Lockwood info with Alaric. Anyway, they want access to Isobel's old files, so a road trip to Duke is proposed. Road trip!
"If this wolf-man thing is true, I've seen enough movies to know it's not good." More foreshadowing for Damon's tangles with the wolves. "It means Mason Lockwood is a real life Lon Chaney and that little Tyler punk ... Lon Chaney Junior; which means Bela Lugosi, meaning me, is totally screwed."
The Wolf Man is a 1941 movie starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi. Bela Lugosi was well-known for playing Count Dracula (hence the vampire connection). In The Wolf Man, the Lon Chaney Jr. character does kill the Bela Lugosi character.
There are other movies with both Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi in them, but they're kinda on crack, so let's not get into it. I'll just mark down that Damon getting bitten by Tyler was foreshadowed in 2x03.
While the whole previous scene at the Salvatore's was happening, it gets inter-cut with Tyler following Mason into the woods and spying on his weird behavior and discovering the place where Lockwood werewolves lock themselves up.
After the title card, we're at Caroline's house. It's daytime and Matt is knocking on the door. Matt's still got the cast on.
Now my eyes are wide-open, now that everything's been stolen
And I'm here to get it back from you
He calls out her name and she tests the sunlight, burning her hand, and doesn't dare go forward. Instead, she sinks down and sits on the floor, staring out at where she knows Matt is.
See I ain't wasting no more time, gotta take back whats mine
What else am I supposed to do?
Here I am, with my heart on the floor
and my love out the door - you should be knocking
Matt tries giving her a call with his cell. He leaves a message about the two of them going to a party at the swimming hole that Tyler is throwing.
but there it goes, I got nothing to show for
Except pictures I posed for, but I keep them in a box under my bed
I told you time and again
that you'd never win
I told you time and again
This whole scene is very effective - Candice does a lot with Caroline's silences. I really like that the show trusts her enough to give her silence to play and know that she'll do enough with it. Beautifully-done. And, hey, Matt doesn't insult Caroline a single time in the whole scene. Of course, they don't actually have a conversation. So. There's that.
Upstairs at her house, Elena is packing for the road trip. Stefan asks how she's feeling about doing this - going to Duke with Damon (and Alaric) and then digging through Isobel's things. Elena calls Alaric a 'good buffer' and thinks they can 'bond in our anti-Damon solidarity'. Ah, chalk up another mark against Elena's instincts when it comes to people. This is just a blatant mis-reading of Alaric and Damon's relationship (the only person that I think we've seen Elena show an intuitive understanding of is actually Damon, from what I can recall. Which is... amusing, at least a little).
Stefan's not going with them because he's sticking around to make sure that Caroline is okay with her baby!vamp self. He says that if Elena's willing to wait a couple of days, he can probably go at that time. Elena, instead, offers to blow off the road trip entirely and stay behind with Stefan if that's what he wants. But Stefan says that she should totally go, so that she can get answers about her past and Katherine and etc.
And I guess they can't take Caroline with them because of the whole sun issue.
"You hate it, though," Elena tells Stefan.
"I hate it, but I love you," Stefan replies.
"I love you, too." They kiss, but briefly.
Jenna and Alaric chat in the doorway. They haven't seen each other for a little while (hmm, not since Miss Mystic Falls, maybe?). Alaric tries to restart their on-off romance, but Jenna doesn't want half-measures. Damon interrupts the conversation by honking the horn, and Jenna calls up to ask Elena if she's ready to go. Alaric and Stefan head out of the house toward the car, while Elena pauses by the doorway to double-check on Jenna's emotional state.
Outside, Damon is mock-sad that Stefan isn't coming with on the trip. Elena gives Damon a hard glare and pulls Stefan into a much more passionate kiss than the one upstairs - it involves bodies pressing up against each other and everything. And her point has been made, with Damon successfully upset. I'm... not sure if Stefan realized that Elena was using him as a weapon in a psychological strike of revenge against Damon. Stefan closes Elena's car door and watches as the car pulls away.
Stefan is at the Grill, trying to talk Bonnie into making a daywalker ring for Caroline. Bonnie doesn't know if she can trust the vampire Caroline; Stefan says she should trust him, then. I'm... not sure why that's a winning argument, but okay.
In the car, Damon can't help but ask how Elena's doing. She's been silent in the backseat. He's bad at not poking potentially dangerous situations to see what happens - another comparison for Damon: he sometimes reminds me of Mat Cauthon from The Wheel of Time.
Damon: "You know, this whole 'pretending to hate me' thing is getting a little silly."
Alaric: "I don't think she's pretending. You did kill her brother."
Damon: "There is a huge asterisk next to that statement. He came back to life."
Note that Elena can tell when Damon is lying about seeing the ring. Goes back to my statement that her 'Damon instincts' seem to be much more acute than her general 'people instincts', which often suck. Maybe it's just that she never genuinely looks at most people with the sharp and perceptive eyes that she looks at Damon with.
And Alaric is playing his very useful 'truthteller' role to Damon that helps make him such a good friend for Damon to have - honest but sympathetic. After Damon calls the Gilbert ring 'tacky', Alaric fiddles with his own. Cute.
At Caroline's house, Bonnie has brought a ring. Caroline isn't satisfied with it. Contrasts against the vervain necklace that Elena got her that Caroline loved (but can't wear anymore). Could be related to the fact that Elena was willingly protecting Caroline, while Bonnie is doing it somewhat begrudgingly at this point.
Bonnie lets Caroline know that if Caroline hurts anyone, Bonnie is fully willing to despell the ring and let Caroline burn. Well, I'm glad that stuff didn't go anywhere and Bonnie and Caroline emotionally reconciled.
This is a good comparison to Matt later on, though - both of them have a very hard time with Caroline being a vampire. It takes Bonnie time to get used to that and to see that Caroline is still Caroline. "If you wanna be friends, you have to prove that the Caroline that I remember isn't gone."
What's interesting is that Bonnie is rather biting about Caroline's lack of intent to kill Carter being meaningless ("He's still dead") - when taking into account that Bonnie didn't intend for Caroline to become a vampire, but she was instrumental in the decision to give Caroline Damon's blood and she's the one who told Katherine about Caroline having been given Damon's blood. Again, she's probably just as mad at herself as she is at Caroline, but she wasn't showing it, so it was harder for me to feel sympathy for Bonnie when I was watching this the first time around, because it seemed like she was being unfair and judging Caroline by standards that she wasn't willing to hold herself to.
Have I mentioned how pleased I am at Bonnie's character arc? She grows up a lot in S2 and becomes someone both willing to make hard decisions and willing to accept the consequences of her actions. She's literally making life-and-death choices by season's end.
The roadtrip threesome arrive at Duke. They're greeted by Vanessa, former grad student to Isobel who now works in the same department that Isobel used to (folklore stuff). She lets them into Isobel's office/storage room, and then leaves to 'get the light'. Except that she was really getting a crossbow - which she shoots at Elena. Damon zips over to get in the way of the arrow. He collapses to the ground and Alaric tackles Vanessa against the wall.
Elena pulls the arrow out of Damon's back, and Damon expresses a desire to kill Vanessa. Elena's not in favor.
"You touch her and I swear I'll never speak to you again."
"What makes you think that has any power over me - because I took an arrow in the back for you? You are severely overestimating yourself."
"Right, I forgot I was speaking to a psychotic mind that snaps and kills people impulsively. Fine, go ahead. Do what you want."
"You're trying to manipulate me."
"If by 'manipulate', you mean 'tell the truth' then, fine - guilty."
To my eyes, Damon looks slightly charmed by Elena's inept manipulations. He'll be less charmed in "Daddy Issues" but still affected. She's still - for all her talk of hate - Elena is presuming on a relationship with him and using that relationship to get her own way. At every point where she attempts to sever her relationship with Damon, she then builds it up again. It's a push-pull - more on push right now, because of her anger over Jeremy and Damon betraying her trust in him - but the pull is still there.
No matter how much Elena wants Damon to not matter to her, she can't quite manage it. And that's what Damon is picking up on - he does still matter to Elena.
Vanessa is having a bit of a 'vampires are real' freak-out, ah, yes. And this episode is confirmation that Isobel had already discovered Katherine (and how she looks) over the course of her research while she was human. Right, of course - she'd tracked Katherine all the way back to the Petrovas. Isobel knew a lot of things.
Stefan is teaching Caroline to hunt animals. Hmm, okay, so... Stefan goes back on human blood so that he can help protect Elena. Caroline, I think, is drinking human blood by the end of season, yes? Is Stefan planning on going back on animal blood at any point? It was such a big deal prior to Stefan magically getting over his 'addiction'. There was a nod to it in 2x21 by Elena saying that being a vampire would mean that she couldn't watch Bambi again (... have we ever had any indications that Elena is currently a vegetarian?), but apart from that, the whole animal blood thing seems to have gotten dropped by the end of the season. So, yeah.
Cute scene, though. Stefan and Caroline have sparkly chemistry.
"I haven't been in the sun for days." Vague but somewhat useful. This is taking place at least a few days after 2x02. Anyway, Caroline wants to go be with Matt at the swimming hole party.
Vampire mythology time!
"When someone becomes a vampire, all of their natural behaviors get sort of... amplified."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, as a human... I cared deeply for people, how they felt. If they were hurting, I felt their pain and I felt guilty if I was the one who caused it and as a vampire, all of that got magnified."
Oh, Stefan. You think so well of yourself sometimes. It kinda blows my mind. Seriously, that little speech is so very 'ego, party of one!'. Also, if this is something that the writers wanted us to actually believe, then they needed to show us flashbacks that actually represented this point of view. Which they could easily have done and yet have not (they could have, for example, made human!Stefan a budding abolitionist). I mean, don't get me wrong, the human Stefan doesn't seem like an asshole or anything. But he seems like a pretty normal human person, not the incarnated god of empathy. They've told us these things about Stefan but haven't shown them.
Back at Duke, Vanessa gives Elena a box of Katherine-related stuff to go through and Elena tells Vanessa about vervain. Damon banters with Elena through the medium of Vanessa's questions and seems satisfied with the result.
At the swimming hole, Matt and Tyler talk about girls and then Mason shows up. He reminds Tyler to have everyone out of there by nightfall and then drives away again - Stefan, who has just arrived with Caroline, notes Mason's departure. Caroline and Stefan have some cute banter about Stefan's 'serious vampire look'. They're so cute when they're teasing each other.
Girl named Amy flirts with Matt pretty blatantly. Caroline comes up and sizes up the situation, compelling Amy away from Matt. He doesn't appreciate Caroline avoiding his calls and then just popping up to play the jealous girlfriend when she wants.
"Caroline, no one deserves to have their mind messed with for shallow reasons."
Ah, Stefan. Ah. Um. Need I remind you of your compelling a guard in the last episode so that you could kiss Elena at the top of the Ferris Wheel? How about how you compelled the administration to let you go to Mystic Falls high school and better arrange time to spend with Elena? Why is it okay for you to compel random people in your desire to spend time with your girlfriend but it's not okay for Caroline to do the same when it comes to Matt?
Stefan kinda talks a big game when it comes to moral standards, but he doesn't follow through. Same thing kinda happens at the end of this season - while Elena is there to give him points for it, he's all about 'respecting her choice', but the second she's gone, he calls Damon for help, because he knows that Damon will do what it takes to actually save Elena's life and keep her safe. It's undermining what he claimed that he was doing, but in a way that makes it so that no blame falls on him.
Stefan's image consistently matters more to him than reality. He doesn't care if it is good so much as that it looks good.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Stefan is lecturing Caroline. Their interaction remains cute.
At Duke, Damon is looking over Elena's shoulder as she searches through things. Damon teases Elena about knowing more than she does and she calls him on his manipulation. Ignoring the banter, Alaric draws their attention to the book that's going to tell them about the Big Lie of the sun and moon curse. It's Native American, which all reviewers pointed out made no sense considering that one of the key elements of the curse is from Bulgaria, but none of that matters because it's all a dirty lie invented by Klaus. Everything about this legend is, as we find out later, incorrect, including the time frame - Klaus says later on that he's been waiting 'a thousand years' to break the curse, but the fake Aztec one is traced back to six hundred years ago - maybe that's when Klaus planted this version of the myth.
We also find out here that vampires are werewolves' "prey of choice".
"Legend has it that the werewolf bite is fatal to vampires." - and this has been a Damon-Elena subplot all along. It starts here, where they (and Alaric) and the ones who hear this. It continues when they're the two people who have to face what the werewolf bite does to Rose. And it will, I suspect, pay off in tonight's episode.
It's night-time and only now do things appear to be wrapping up at the swimming hole. Stefan tells Caroline to go talk to Matt and then he answers his phone, where Elena wants to give him a progress report.
Matt: "I thought we were past all this insecurity stuff, Caroline. I told you how I felt about you - what more do you need?"
I do understand what Matt's getting at - he's told Caroline that he loves her, but she assumes that Amy is a threat. From Matt's PoV, Amy is so completely not a threat to Caroline that he doesn't understand why Caroline was treating her that way. I think that the sentence might scan better if he'd finished and said, "what more do you need to trust me?"
Caroline apologizes and Matt says that he doesn't want any drama and she promises there won't be any.
When Elena lets Stefan know that a werewolf bite is rumored to kill vampires, he immediately starts looking around for Caroline. He tries calling her, but she'd left her phone behind in the bed of an old truck (Matt's?), so he goes hunting.
Mason is trying to lock himself up for safety when he hears Tyler and Amy coming too close for comfort. Poor Amy is under Caroline's compulsion to seek out single guys, as we can see when she double-checks Tyler's relationship status.
Mason booked it out of the hidey-hole and is trying to chain himself to some big trees instead. He ends up locked himself in his truck.
Mason is a really tragic story, when you think about it. He never wanted any part of any of the supernatural stuff, so he ran away, but then Katherine found him and turned him into her tool. He believed that she loved him and that she would help him break the curse for his sake as well as hers, never knowing that he was totally just the werewolf that she was originally going to hand over to Klaus (along with Caroline as the vampire, I wouldn't be surprised) once she got the moonstone.
Over at Duke, Elena finds a picture of Katherine and it prompts her to ask Vanessa about doppelgängers.
"Doppelgängers usually torment the people they look like, trying to undo their lives. It's not exactly uplifting."
Of course, Elena tracks that to what Katherine is doing to her life, but Katherine must feel the same way - Elena is undoing what she did with the Salvatore boys, Elena drew attention to the Petrova line and put Katherine in danger of Klaus again.
Damon and Elena taunt/attempt to manipulate each other again. Elena gets the better of Damon this time, with a zinger about how friends are ~helpful and not manipulative. Damon appears to believe that this is a genuine attempt on Elena's part to school him on appropriate behavior rather than, well... a manipulation, which is what it is.
Amy breaks off the kissing with Tyler to ask herself what she's doing - she doesn't even like Tyler; she likes Matt. Tyler is... taken off-guard and kinda hurt as she leaves.
Stefan uses his keen vampire senses to locate Mason - who breaks out of the back of the truck but then doesn't attack Stefan, running off instead.
As the roadtrip threesome leave, Vanessa flirts with Alaric, who warns her away from all the supernatural world-type stuff. "It takes over." Alaric is ready to move on from Isobel.
Damon opens the car door for Elena, but then blocks her from getting in.
"You're not going to be able to hate me forever," Damon tells her. I suspect that part of Elena knows that, much as she fights it. It shouldn't be something she can get over, she tells herself. Damon shouldn't still matter.
He hands her the books on the Petrova family and tells her that it was Katherine's original name.
"You've every right to hate me. I understand. But you hated me before and we became friends. It would suck if that was gone forever. So, is it? Have I lost you forever?"
Elena has no answer for him here, but this continues to be the question that haunts Damon throughout the season. Even after he and Elena are friends again, another threat to take the reality of their friendship away appears in the form of the sacrifice and Elena willingly walking toward her own death. Here 'hating Damon forever' is what Damon worries about, but when Elena's very possible death enters the picture, that takes precedence for him - let her hate him if it means that she'll live. But this then collapses back to his original thought at the end of 2x21, where he begs her to wake as human and not vampire, because he can't stand the thought of her hating him forever.
Matt and Caroline are making out in the woods. Caroline gets kinda aggressive and Matt accidentally cuts himself on a tree branch or something. Caroline licks the blood off his wrist and it's getting to her and she bites down, first on his wrist and then on his neck. Stefan arrives in time to yank her off Matt before she drains him.
He convinces Caroline to run with him, to draw Mason away from Matt. Tyler walks in and finds them all, but when he asks what they're doing, Mason jumps Caroline and then Stefan pushes Mason off Caroline. Tyler yells at Mason and Mason stops and then runs off.
Caroline compels Matt to think that a random animal gave him his neck wound. Stefan 'took care' of things with Tyler - which might mean compulsion? He's kinda vague about it, though. Can you compel a potential werewolf?
Anyway, Stefan thinks that it would be good to get Matt on vervain. I'm kinda sad that Elena didn't consider giving him some vervain when she was handing it out like candy last season. Ah, well. Ex-boyfriends get no protection, I guess.
"I can't believe I hurt him. He's the one person on this entire planet that I never wanted to hurt."
"It's not going to get any easier. You're just going to have to... work that much harder."
"I shouldn't be with him, should I? Not if there's any kind of danger..."
"I'm the last person to make that kind of decision for you. I mean, if I followed my own advice, I would have walked away from Elena a long time ago."
"You ever think you should?"
"I know I should've. I just can't."
This ties into the whole thing where Stefan knows that his relationship with Elena is on borrowed time anyway.
Tyler still seems to have all his memories when he talks to Mason. I don't know if that's because Stefan tried to compel him and it failed or if Stefan just meant something else by 'take care of it' when it came to Tyler.
At the Grill, Amy comes over to talk (flirt) with Matt. Caroline enters and takes the scene in, knowing that she can use it to do what she's decided she needs to do. It doesn't take much to provoke Matt into breaking up with her.
don't know if our fate's already sealed
this day's a spinning surface on a wheel
Alaric enters the Gilbert kitchen, surprising Jenna and her cleavage. He pulls her into a kiss.
I'm ill at the thought of your kiss
coffee-laced, intoxicating on her lips
Alaric tells Jenna that he should have kissed her that morning.
shut it out, I’ve got no claim on you now
Damon walks Elena to her door.
I’m not allowed to wear your freedom down
is there a chance/ a fragment of light at the end of the tunnel,
a reason to fight/ is there a chance you may change your mind
Elena asks Damon to tell her the truth - did he know that Jeremy was wearing the ring? He tells her that he didn't.
"I got lucky with the ring. I don't know what I would have done if he wasn't wearing it."
or are we ashes and wine?
I’ll tear myself away
if that what you need
there is nothing left to say
"Elena, I'm sorry."
"Thank you for being honest with me. And the answer to your question about our friendship... is yes. You have lost me forever."
is there a chance,
a fragment of light
"But you knew that already, didn't you? You used me today."
at the end of the tunnel,
a reason to fight
is there a chance
you may change your mind
or are we ashes and wine?
"You had information about Katherine that I needed."
"I thought friends didn't manipulate friends. You and Katherine have a lot more in common than just your looks."
reduced to ashes and wine
or are we ashes...
I love this scene. I love how it cuts and I love how it's both true and yet not true. It's true for how angry Elena is - she's angry enough that she wants to never forgive Damon and she wants for him to have lost her forever. But she can't sustain that level of anger and, as the anger ebbs away, she finds that she still cares about Damon. The one that's her friend, who cares, who wants to help.
We cut to a morning in Caroline's house - Katherine is there.
No deaths in this episode.
Damon (season running total): 1
Caroline: 1
1. Caroline bites Matt.
Caroline: 3
1. Caroline compels Amy to 'go find somebody single to stalk'.
2. Caroline compels Matt to forget that she's a vampire.
Caroline: 3
Damon: 1
Stefan: 1
1. Bonnie and Caroline talk during the making of the daywalker ring. Stefan is mostly in the background for the conversation; it's primarily Bonnie-Caroline.
2. Katherine wants to talk to Caroline.
2nd Reunion: "The Turning Point" - (at least 18 episodes, at least six weeks)
We start on a day - Damon, Elena, and Stefan are filling Alaric in and asking him to help them out with finding Isobel's research. Some time between 2x02 and 2x03 is skipped; unsure how much. Caroline hasn't been in the sun 'for days'.
It's a full moon that night. We also have the morning where Katherine wakes Caroline.
Time covered this episode: 2 days, 1 night - includes a time skip.
Time covered for "The Return"/"Brave New World": 3 nights, 2 days.
No shirtless shots this episode.
Tyler: 1
Visionless.