Episode Report Card 286 USERS: D+ YOU GRADE IT We Suck
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.20.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Thanks to Bonnie, White Witch Liv has locked Elena in their Spring-Break empty dorm. Meanwhile, Damon is still a prisoner in the Mossy Manse Dungeon. They talk, and angst, and whatever.
Thanks to Katherine's last willful act, Elena has been infected with the Ripper Virus + Bonus. The bonus is, she's dying of werewolf venom. The Fellowship of the Falls (mostly Stefan and Caroline) flails about for the entire episode, trying to get the antidote from the Travelers. The problem is, the Travelers need Stefan to find his other current doppelgänger. What? No. I don't get it, either.
Eventually, Elena and Damon break the ties that bind and make their way to each other. He promptly tells her she should stop loving him. Just as promptly, she tells him she can't. In other news, White Witch Liv has a brother -- a gay brother -- and they have a gay agenda, which we can find posted in the gay lobby.
I'll be back with the recap, ASAP. In the meantime, please grade the episode at the top of the page, and then come on over to the forum, where we're trying not to suck.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Welcome to my recap of this loathsome vehicle, populated with loathsome characters who do loathsome things in particularly loathsome ways. You remember. It used to be The Vampire Diaries. It's my own damned fool fault I find myself in this position. See, I never watched Dexter (and won't now watch Hannibal) because I didn't (and don't) want to watch shows where I'm rooting for killers. It's just a thing I have. I think they call it a conscience, but I've been lost in the amoral universe of The Vampire Diaries for so long, that you probably shouldn't quote me.
It's not like I've never rooted for a fictional character who has committed murder (or many murders). Heck, one of my favorite shows is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but on Buffy, the core characters were heroic (although sometimes they did abominable things -- I'm looking at you, Willow). The villains who got to stick around, well, they found themselves on the (admittedly, I'm looking at you Spike, Angel, and Faith) rocky road to redemption. Sure they fell off sometimes, and hell, sometimes they leapt off, but at least they knew there was a damned road.
The Vampire Diaries is different. It's moral relativism at its yuckiest: Other people only matter if we care about them. If and when we don't, they are fair game. So here's what I have to do: get the hell over it. I need to recap this show for what it is -- a suckfest of vampires, sucking the lives out of any and all they meet, for suck's sake, and then evaluate it on that basis. You ready? Okay.
We open in a bar. Jeremy, Bonnie, Caroline, and Matt are standing around a table pounding shots and smiling, as they watch Elena Gilbert up on the bar, dancing. Elena's really getting into it. She even strips off her shirt. Calm down, boobie hounds, she's wearing a tank under it. Still, that doesn't stop Matt from hollering, "Take it off." Elena's friends all agree she's just having fun and it's about time. When Jeremy brings her a shot, Elena raises it high and toasts to friends.
Her tone does a rapid 180 as she asks if she's so easy to impersonate, or if the problem is her friends don't know her at all. "You think I would come to a college bar with my underage brother and do tequila shots?" You're underage, Elena, which to be fair, isn't your fault. It's the damned writers fault. They made the first four seasons take about two years. You should be 21 or 22 by now, honey. Anyhow, none of this is worth transcribing, except to say that Elena starts telling her friends that Katherine has taken over her body. This is, of course, a panic dream.