Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A | 87 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT And The Black Guy Always Dies
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.21.2013
Whitmore College. Elena's on the phone with Damon and is surprised to learn Jesse feeds on vampires. She's glad Maxfield is still alive and begs Damon not to kill him. He reluctantly agrees. Once they hang up, Elena rushes off.
Meanwhile, back at the lab, Damon tells Maxfield, "The problem is I know people like you --- a lot better than you realize. If I let you live, you're just going to do it again. You're going to turn another vampire. You're going to do another experiment. The only way to really handle you is just to snuff you out. You're lucky I don't feel like burying a body." Wow, someone's getting lazy in his old age.
Damon takes a scalpel and slices open his own wrist. As he raises his wound to Maxfield's mouth, Jesse barges in and demands to know what Maxfield did to him. The bad doctor says, "You feed on the monsters, Jesse." Immediately, Jesse detects the smell of the blood flowing from Damon's wrist. His game face emerges. When he moves on Damon, Damon explains how older vampires are stronger. But guess what? This show's canon and mythology rules were defenestrated a couple of years ago. Ahem. That is, this time there is an exception to the older = stronger rule. Jesse pushes Damon through an interior window and into commercial.
After the break, Damon and Jesse struggle some more, but Damon can't fight off Jesse's hunger. Soon after, the baby vamp sinks his fangs into our Evil Pixie Monster's neck. Elena arrives on scene tries to stop Jesse. Damon begs for his life. Elena looks around, picks up a broken piece of wood and stakes Jesse in the heart, just as Caroline arrives. Vampire Barbie is all, "No," but I can't even with this shit. The only people who ever matter on this show are those with whom the currently speaking character shares a connection. Caroline cries. The fandom sighs, "And the black guy always dies." I'd link you to copious citations in old recaps, but our servers have started their Thanksgiving holiday a few days early. Caroline's eyes blaze as she asks Elena what she's done. Elena says, "He was going to kill Damon." Caroline doesn't say, "And that's all right with me," but she might as well. Still recovering, Damon wanders off from the scene of recrimination, to attend to Dr. Maxfield. Elena tries to apologize, but Caroline is playing hardball. "The Elena I used to know would have given Jesse a chance." Cue the dramatic music and cut to the...
Mystic Grill. I can't stop laughing at the music, which is a bit too anvilicious. I don't have time to look up the song that's playing, but the refrain is: "Meet me on the Other Side." I mean, there's on point and there's poking oneself in the eyeball, Show. Whatever. Stefan is still drinking. He's about to leave when he notices a note tucked into the server's billfold. (Um, by this I mean the leather folder thingie restaurants put your bill in.) The note, which begins, "Dear Nadia" is peeking out of the top, and it's from Katherine, who tells her daughter, "...sorry I had to kill your boyfriend, but it was the motherly thing to do. Suicide, however -- not very motherly of me. I ran from my enemies for 500 years and then one day, I stopped. Now, a new enemy wants me dead. Sure, I could run from the Travelers, but there's still one enemy I can never escape -- time."