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This week in Mystic Falls (and related locations) no one is telling anyone else the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Hell, they're not even admitting the truth to themselves.
Silas has compelled damn near everyone into reporting to him if they find the girl who looks just like Elena Gilbert, i.e., Katherine. Matt and Jeremy have been charged with hiding Katherine, but our poor Kiki has a sinus infection. When she coughs, it's green. Oh, the snot-man-ity! Matt tries to get her some non-prescription relief, but even the stooge at the Gas -N- Go has been compelled to do Silas's bidding, so our gang takes shelter in the forest.Silas, i.e. Stylus, looks just like Stefan, so he's hiding in plain sight and compelling Elena to hate Damon to death. Damon hasn't told Elena about Silas (or about how Stefan is missing or that the Germ got expelled). Jeremy hasn't told anyone that Bonnie is dead. Bonnie can't tell anyone except Jeremy that she watched Stylus kill her father in front of a compelled town. Matt doesn't even realize that gypsies (yes, gypsies, I mean, the show tries to go P.C. by calling them "Travelers" not realizing that "Travelers" are pretty well limited to people from the British Isles) have taken over his body, in an attempt to re-bury Stylus. Meanwhile, though Matt is kinda dead, he learns Bonnie is really most sincerely dead, but he forgets as soon as his Gilbert ring wakes him back up. Also, it appears Stefan has escaped from the safe and is off snacking on available townsfolk. How long until he rips them up and puts them back together, and then throws out the cell phones of unsuspecting teenaged girls?
It's all a big exciting mess and I'll be back with my full recap of it, 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 far more forthcoming.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!This week in Mystic Falls (and related locations) no one is telling anyone else the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Hell, they're not even admitting the truth to themselves. "True Lies" is a fun episode to watch, but when you stop and think about it, not a lot happens. It's sort of like one of those episodes of Lost where everyone just goes back and forth across the island, in order to get themselves into position. When you're watching, it's fun; when you're recapping it, it starts to fall apart. I hate that. I want to give you something fun to read, but the very act of recapping this fills me with about as much whimsy as the prospect of a root canal. That's fine. I'm getting paid for this. I'm just trying to find a way to not share the root canal-ness of it all with you.
It's the little things, that get me, you know? While covering last week's premiere, I noted that Elena said Whitmore College is a few hours away from Mystic Falls. Well, I didn't just note it -- I complained about it. Because I know -- and surely the writers know -- that the characters are going to be flitting between Whitmore and Mystic Falls, just as Bonnie and Shane did last season. And it's never going to feel like it only takes them a few hours to do so. Scratch that. It's only going to feel like it's a few hours away when the plot necessitates. Oh doc, I think I need more Novocain. Just a little, please, so I don't leave my readers feeling as numb as I'd like to be. Thanks.
After the recap montage, we open on Bonnie, who is recapping a little bit more. She and Jeremy are sitting before the fire in Mossy Manse. Bonnie blahs about watching Silas-as-Stefan (i.e. Stylus) compelling the townsfolk into obedience, and then slitting her Interim Dad's throat. Now she whines that Jeremy can't even give her a hug, because she's dead, just like her dad, except she won't get to see him on the other side, because he wasn't supernatural. she tells the Germ that Silas has compelled the town to find Elena Gilbert's doppelgänger, Katherine Pierce. "Whatever he wants with Katherine, we can't let him have it." The Exposition Fairy says, "I didn't notice my name in the credits, but I must have blinked, since I'm so prominently featured." Oh yeah… you're going to be a big star, EF. Now rinse and spit.
Roadside. Day. Katherine stumbles out of the woods coughing her lungs out. She flags down a passing car. The woman is nice enough to stop, but when she says Kiki looks just like Elena, Katherine growls, "Actually, I'm much prettier." Heh. The Good Samaritan addresses Katherine by name, douses her with pepper spray (or similar) and gets out her phone to call Stylus. Katherine is no longer a vampire, but she's not the sort of human who is above fighting dirty. She knocks the woman down, grabs her cell phone and then knocks her out. Somewhere in there, she throws the cell phone onto the road. She and Stefan really are a love match. You know how vampires in this universe supposedly feel everything more deeply than humans? Well, that's a damned lie, because punching hurts humans way more, even when the human is the puncher. As Katherine gasps at the pain in her fist, Matt comes out of the woods pointing a rifle and says, "Hurts, doesn't it?" When Katherine grumbles, Matt adds, "Not as much as this will."
We cut to the quarry. Stefan and Elena are lying on a blanket to the water, so clearly this is one of Stefan's drowning fantasies. He admits as much and his conversation with Dream Elena isn't worth transcribing. She starts coughing up water, and we cut to a shot of Stefan, still in that safe underwater and manufacturing bubbles out of thin air... less. We cut to...
Whitmore College. The students are memorializing Dead Roomie Megan out on the quad. Inside, Elena arrives at her dorm, where Caroline is packing up Megan's stuff. She pisses about college kids being so dramatic. They're crying over someone who was on campus for a day. Elena says, "Caroline, she's dead. You can stop competing with her." Caroline apologizes and admits she's in a mood. Get in line, sister. When Elena asks about Tyler, Caroline confesses that he's deferring enrollment and deferring from returning her calls, "...so I'm deferring from having sex with him ever again." Elena exposits even more about Megan consuming vervain, getting offed by a vampire and the fact that there was a picture of Megan and Elena's bio uncle/adoptive dad, Grayson Gilbert, on Megan's cell phone. I hope the Exposition Fairy got more than scale for this episode.
The point of this scene is that Elena got a copy of Megan's death certificate. It's way too soon for that, but whatever. The point of this is that the doctor who falsified Megan's cause of death is one Dr. Wesley Maxfield, who, conveniently enough, is an Applied Bio professor at Whitmore. Elena has switched herself and Caroline into his course. I realize she has vampire speed and the power of compulsion now, but isn't this a little too much? The morning after Megan's death, Elena has gotten the death certificate and switched herself and Caroline into this class? Ugh. Caroline's not happy about it, either. She wants to spend freshman year getting drunk and making bad decisions about boys. "I was supposed to be a drama major." Elena -- who left her dorm door open in the first place -- is a little too loud when she reminds Caroline they don't want to be exposed as vampires. Instead of shutting the door, she simply lowers her voice and continues. They need to infiltrate whatever secret society is at work at Whitmore (covering up vampire attacks and the like) just like Damon infiltrated the Founders Council, back home. It's not horrible as plans go, but I suspect our gruesome twosome will somehow botch it.
We cut to the quarry. Damon wants Liz to have it dredged so they can find Stefan. Liz can't devote that many resources when they're not even sure Stefan is there. Damon feels guilty that while he was playing house with Elena all summer, when his brother might have been repeatedly drowning. Liz says she'll put some deputies on the case. Since she has nothing else useful to add, she walks out of view and Damon's phone rings. It's Jeremy who reports that Matt found Katherine. Damon: "Huh. How shockingly useful." We cut to Matt's truck, where Katherine is bitter, but compliant enough as Matt binds her hands. Jeremy tells Damon that he and Matt think Stylus has compelled himself some accomplices. Damon: "How exactly did the Gilbert-Donovan Brain Trust put that together?" Oh, I don't know, Damon. Since you accidentally (but correctly) guessed that Stylus ditched Stefan in the quarry, you might not want to call attention to that.
He tells Jeremy to keep Katherine out of sight. If Stylus wants her this bad, she must be even more valuable to them. This makes no sense. Last week (i.e. last night, in his world) Damon was ready to turn over Katherine in exchange for Stefan. Now he's keeping her out of sight? When the phone call ends, Jeremy and Katherine snark at each other, but it's just more exposition and I'm trying not to leave you numb, so let's rinse and spit again. Oh wait, I was too slow. Matt exposits about how he and Jeremy got Kiki some clothes, which is good I guess, but it just brings up more questions. These two strapping young men wisely fear her enough to tie her up, but they let her get changed? What's more, they let her get changed and she didn't take the opportunity to run. Granted, I think I know more about Elena, than Katherine, but I think I know Katherine well enough to say she'd gladly streak through the woods, if it meant a clean getaway. At any rate, Katherine understands why the guys are keeping her. "I get it. I'm the leverage. I'm that thing that everyone wants. I'm the freaking moonstone." Her distress is delicious, I must admit. I also have to admit I never consciously think that Katherine is played by the same actress who plays Elena. Well done, Dobrev.
Whitmore College. Class. Caroline and Elena run into Jesse in the Applied Biology class. He teases Caroline about being a blow-off girl, and then wonders how two freshmen are in an upper level course. Don't fret, Jesse. There are only two reasons they're there. The first is compulsion. If you don't understand about that yet, I'm sure you'll experience it before season's end. The second reason is that they need to have the typical scene where the professor immediately identifies them as freshmen, calls them out for whispering, embarrasses them, then makes a scene and throws them out of his class. Buffy did it better, with her "I didn't mean to suck" scene, yes? And through it all, the girls learned nothing about Dr. Maxfield (Rick Cosnett) that matters one whit to their investigation of the Whitmore secret society. They didn't have to transfer to find out he's cute. They could have just stopped by his office. Sheesh.
Elena calls Damon and tells him about how Maxfield mortified them. Damon offers to beat him up and then scolds her for failing to use compulsion, violence or torture (which is violence, right) against the probably not-good doctor. When Elena laughs, Damon says, "You do realize you're dating a reformed serial killer, right?" When Elena asks him how a hero would handle things, Damon says he has no idea, but you can tell he's all chuffed by even hearing the word "hero." Then Elena says, "Stefan" because she sees Stylus walking toward her, but Damon thinks she's asking what Stefan would do. I'm surprised Caroline hasn't made Damon and Elena matching WWSD bracelets. Elena clarifies that Stefan is right in front of her. Stylus compels her to hang up before Damon can warn her that she's facing off with Stylus or that Silas even looks just like Stefan. Commercial.
When Stylus apologizes for not calling all summer, Elena gives him a big hug and confesses she thought something terrible happened to him. He says it did. "You fell in love with my brother." Paul Wesley seems to be having a great time in this role, and his joy makes it far easier to watch than I thought it was going to be. He makes sure Elena knows Damon already saw him, and that Jeremy got expelled. Elena is furious and wants to know where Jeremy is. Stylus was hoping she could tell him.
We cut to a gas station. Jeremy gasses up the truck while Matt goes into the store to get Katherine some medicine. "Hurry. My throat is really scratchy, and my head hurts, like right here. And when I cough, it's green." Thanks for sharing, Kiki. They let Katherine go to the ladies room. When she exits, she tries to bolt. The clerk is one of Silas's compelled new friends. He wonders aloud if he's just seen Elena or Katherine and starts to make a call. Matt grabs the phone out of his hands and throws it to the floor, but it's only the shop's landline. Matt's no monster. He shouts a warning to Jeremy, who takes off after Katherine. The clerk grabs a shotgun (or possibly a rifle -- it's a long gun, anyhow) from under the counter. Matt grabs the business end of it and shoves the butt end into the clerk's head, and then hits him again for good measure. Jeremy catches Katherine and we cut to...
Whitmore College. Damon enters Elena and Caroline's room without knocking. Caroline's only wearing a towel, so she hollers at him. Damon is unimpressed. He wants to know where Elena is. Caroline figures she went to the bonfire (Jesse told them about it, back in class) to get more intel on Dr. Maxfield. Damon tells Caroline that Silas is there, pretending to be Stefan. Caroline tells him that all summer, Elena has had this bad feeling that something was wrong with Stefan. Damon tells Caroline to get dressed and meet him outside, so they can search for Elena.
Outside, Stylus tells Elena that Jeremy still isn't answering his phone. He says he's going to hold onto her phone, in case Jeremy tries to call. Because Elena is under his thrall, she doesn't think about Stefan's track record with her cell phone. Stylus makes sure to sow more seeds of discord between Elena and Damon. He then gets a text on his own phone, I presume, that informs him Jeremy was spotted on Route 9. Stylus asks Elena if she knows where Jeremy might be headed. She mentions a campsite they used to visit when they were kids, which seems weird since they have that gorgeous lake house. The music intensifies as Damon wanders through the crowd. He turns when he hears Stylus say, "Hello, brother... but I suppose distant nephew is probably more accurate." Oh, I was hoping Silas had a kid and established his own bloodline, before he became the original Original." Elena's gone now, so Damon throttles Stylus and asks where she is. Stylus says he'll eventually find her and then plays upon Damon's relationship insecurities. "...what I don't get is why she likes you." Damon smiles. "That's because you haven't had sex with me." Stylus picks around in Damon's brain a little more, but Damon ignores his digs and says he knows Stylus didn't come all this way just to talk to Elena. Stylus says, "No, but if I told you what I did, it would ruin the fun. Enjoy the bonfire, Damon." Commercial.
It's dark and the fire is blazing when Caroline and Damon meet up. He must have filled her in on everything during the break, because she chides him about how this situation could have been avoided had Damon just told them the truth about Stylus and Stefan in the first place. Sheesh. It's been one day. Damon gets into it with a male student. He throttles the guy, but Caroline breaks it up and compels the victim to forget what happened. Damon's on edge, because he thinks it's possible Silas has compelled everyone at Whitmore into his service.
Elena is downing a beer at the keg when she runs into Jesse. When he's taken aback at how fast she's chugging, she says, "Boyfriend drama." Since he watched her get kicked out of class, Jesse says today isn't her day. Speaking of that, Elena asks what the doctor's deal is. Jesse says, "Doctor Dickfield?" Jesse says if she helps him get some more firewood, he'll tell her everything she needs to know. In a supply shed, Jesse says Maxfield is a jerk, but he's also brilliant. "There's a rumor that he's part of this secret society on campus. [...] All I know is that a few times a week, they supposedly meet at Whitmore House." Now, we all know Dr. Gilbert attended Whitmore. Liz made a big show of mentioning that, last week. We know Dr. Gilbert was active in the Mystic Falls Founders Council. We know that Campus Security was dishonest about Megan's death, even before her corpse was cold. We know the death certificate has been falsified. Clearly, there's an anti-vampire council of sorts at Whitmore and it was probably set up by Grayson Gilbert… or at least he was a part of it while he was there. The thing is, none of this is really new information, except that Jesse spoke the words, "Secret society." I'm about ready to rinse and spit, when Damon saves me from myself by zooping in and knocking out Jesse. Caroline, who has barely given Jesse the time of day, objects and says she likes him (i.e. Jesse). We cut to the...
Campsite. When Katherine isn't posturing about her former glory as a vampire, she's moping by the fire. Matt's had enough so he goes off in search of more firewood. Katherine gives herself a pep talk about how much she survived during the 500 years she was fleeing Klaus (giving birth, losing her family, blah blee bloo). Her voice turns tearful as she says, "You can understand why I'm a little upset that I'm on the verge of being defeated by a sinus infection." Been there, done that, Kiki. I was much braver during labor than I've ever been when afflicted with a sinus infection. Of course, labor holds the promise of a beautiful baby. A sinus infection only promises pain, snot and that bad taste in your mouth. I guess, because she looks so much like Elena, Jeremy has a soft spot for Kiki. He gives her a warm look and then wraps a blanket around her shoulders. Katherine is not unmoved. We cut further into the...
Woods. Stylus confronts Matt and compels him. "Not a word out of you. You can't talk. You can't scream." Matt takes a moment, then smiles. "Yeah actually, I can." Raising his voice, he hollers, "Jeremy, run!" Stylus is confounded by the fact that he can't get in Matt's head. We're treated to flashbacks of Nadia and Gregor casting that spell over Matt that turned his eyes black. Stylus handily exposits that someone is already in Matt's head. "Why are you watching me, Traveler?" He means Rom. When Matt or the spirit within him, refuses to answer, Stylus snaps Matt's neck. Jerk.
The camera focuses on Matt's still form for a moment, then he gasps and wakes, but it's just his spirit that's awake. He rises, looks around and finally spots Jeremy and Katherine running right by him, but they don't see him. Bonnie's ghost arrives on the scene to explain that he's temporarily on the Other Side, courtesy of the Gilbert ring. There's more exposition about how each time someone dies wearing the Gilbert ring, their spirit wakes further and further from their body. They have to reconnect with their body, before they can come back to life. It's not bad as mythology goes. Matt wants to know why Bonnie can see him on the other side. Tearfully, Bonnie prepares to confess she's been dead for months and none of these tools have suspected it yet, but not just yet. Right now it's time to cut to the...
Dorm. Damon starts to explain his lies, but Elena says that can wait. She shoves him into a chair, straddles him and starts making out with him. She strips off his shirt and Damon tries to get her to stop so they can talk. Elena grabs a bottle of Megan's "protein" water and pours it down his throat. The vervain makes Damon choke and sizzle. When he coughs up the poisonous brew, it spills down his nekkid chest and burns him. Before he can recover, Elena binds him to the chair with some shirts. Damon, why aren't you taking small doses of vervain on the regular. You people drive me crazy. He doesn't listen. Instead of freeing himself (I mean, I'm sorry, but how well can you tie someone to a chair, using only random articles of clothing), he moans that Silas must have gotten into Elena's head, then asks, "What did Stefan tell you to do." Elena says, "Get you alone, weaken you and then kill you." She snaps a hockey stick into a makeshift stake. Commercial.
After the break, Elena pours some more vervain water down Damon's throat, but this time, he spits it out and all over her. The burning snaps Elena out of Silas's thrall. Damon explains the Stefan/Silas switcheroo that is Stylus. While Elena's snapped out of it, she still has a nearly irresistible urge to kill Damon, which begins to manifest when Damon can't tell her where Stefan is. Damon says Silas's mind control has set up her anger against Damon as a trigger. When he tells her to resist it, Elena raises her stake and shouts that she can't. She throws down the stake, sits down in another chair and grabs the fireplace poker (wait, their dorm room has a fireplace) and shoves it into her own thigh, to pin herself to the chair. Yeeeouch! Once the pain has subdued her rage, Elena cries and asks Damon to please tell her what's going on. We cut to the...
Shed. Caroline gives Jesse a wrapped popsicle (I think) to apply to his bruised cheek. She apologizes for her friend's anger issues. Jesse smiles that he's happy to just finally be alone with her. What's this guy's angle? Sure, Caroline is beautiful, but he just got knocked out by her friend. It makes no sense that he's now pushing her hair back and flirting with her. Even the nicest, most smitten guy would be headed back to his dorm for a breather. I think Caroline is getting played. She doesn't, though, so she tells Jesse she has a boyfriend and explains that he deferred a semester. Before Jesse can reply, she tells him she doesn't want to hear the speech about how people go to school and grow apart. Jesse says something they don't. But sometimes, your lover moves on with someone else and has no intention of getting back together. He's clearly talking about his own experience, which I think he's faking. Caroline must be ready to make a bad decision with a boy to not see through this right? Or am I too much of a cynic? We cut to the...
Woods. Jeremy tells Katherine to get in the truck and drive. He has to go back for Matt. Katherine says the key to her lengthy survival is that she never looked back. When she tells him not to be dumb, Jeremy says, "That's why people treat you like an object and not like a person." Poor Kiki, if anything sucks as much as a sinus infection, it's the truth. We cut back to the...
Woods. Bonnie's still talking about being dead and how it hasn't been that bad, because she has Jeremy and her Grams. Her father's death was the first truly hard moment. She tries to pretend that it's okay, but Matt tells her it's not okay that she and her father died. Bonnie says it has to be okay, because there's nothing she can do about it. Matt's all choked up. He tells her he's sorry and gives her a big hug. Bonnie sobs into his shoulder. We cut to...
Another part of the woods. Jeremy finds Matt's body. As he bends down to it, Stylus appears and says, "Now, if my best friend died, I'd at least pretend to cry..." I don't know why I'm quoting this. You know what comes . Stylus sees that Jeremy is looking at the Gilbert ring and figures out it must protect Matt. Jeremy knows Stylus can't get inside his head and rubs in that fact. Stylus says that when he can read someone's mind, they're useful to him. "Now, I'm just gonna kill you." Jeremy says he can try. "But none of your abilities work on me, so right now you're nothing. Slower than a vampire. Weaker than a vampire. I, on the other hand, am a hunter." He picks up Matt's hatchet and rises. "Plus, I work out." Yeah you do, buddy. Jeremy throws the hatchet at Silas, but Silas easily dodges it. While he's off balance, Jeremy charges at him and pushes him into a tree. Commercial.
Silas and Jeremy fight. Jeremy gets Silas in a headlock, but Silas rips a branch off a tree and shoves it through his own chest and into Jeremy's. "You might be stronger than me, but you're forgetting that I am immortal." Silas pulls out the stake and Jeremy slumps to the ground. , he grabs the hatchet. He's about to throw it at the still fallen Jeremy, when he's stopped. Armed with Matt's rifle, it's none other than Katherine to the rescue. She shoots Stylus a second time and we cut to the...
Dorm. Damon must have told Elena that Bonnie's father is dead. They bicker about what should be more important to Damon -- Interim Dad's death or Jeremy's troubles or the Katherine situation. Elena says, "I just left. What the hell is wrong with you?" I don't know why, but that cracks me up. Damon tries to talk her down so she can disarm the trigger, but the fact that Damon has Jeremy trying to save Katherine has her outraged. she turns tearful as she imagines how Stefan has been suffering for months, "...while I've been rolling around with you." Damon is wincing, even before Elena calls him "A self-proclaimed serial killer." Oh honey, they both are. As Elena's rage rises, she pulls some sort of something in the fireplace. We hear a telltale hiss, and Damon reminds her she's pulling on the gas thingamajig. He tells her she doesn't really want to kill him and she has to realize it to break the compulsion. He tells her to focus on something more important than killing him or she'll kill them both. She grabs a box of matches and fails spectacularly at trying to light them, but a light bulb appears over Damon's head and he finally says the magic word. "Stefan." He tells her what Caroline told him about how Elena worried about him all summer. At first Elena resists, but Damon talks her into telling him the feelings she's getting about Stefan. She describes the chill she gets and says it's like she can feel Stefan and that he's trying to reach out to him. She knows he's scared, lonely and in a lot of pain. "We have to find him." Damon swears they will. Finally, her rage is gone. Elena drops the matches. Caroline walks in a gets a good look at the scene before her. "I think we need to set some ground rules for when boyfriends come to visit." Ha.
After the break, we're on the Other Side with Bonnie and Matt. He thinks someone moved his body and says he feels drawn to it. Bonnie spots Jeremy and Katherine at the truck, watching over him. Matt says, "So, if this happens every time I die with the Gilbert ring, the second I go back, that means I'm just going to forget about all of this. I'll forget that you're dead. Bonnie, you and Jeremy can't keep this a secret anymore. I'm sorry your dad died. I know it's hard, but how are you going to deal with his death, if you can't even deal with your own?" Bonnie fights back the tears and deflects the question. "It's really good to see you, Matt."
Matt nods at Bonnie, turns away, walks to his body, touches his shoulder and his ghost disappears as his body comes back to life. Bonnie walks away. Matt gets up and asks what happened. Jeremy starts to explain, but Katherine interrupts and says, "I shot him. So we're even. No more whining. She says, "Let's go. Silas won't be down for long." I know that's true, but I've got to ask: did they even try to cut off his head? Granted he's immortal and all, but if a gunshot can put him down temporarily, maybe a beheading can put him down even longer. Then take the head and dump it somewhere far from the body. Or, you know, if you're afraid of the head because it could compel you, take the damn body, dismember it and hide all the pieces. They don't listen. Katherine's too anxious to leave and Jeremy has spied Bonnie walking away. He says he left the hatchet behind and catches up to his dead, not exactly girlfriend. When he asks Bonnie if she's okay, she says she's not ready to be dead yet and she doesn't know what to do when the Sheriff calls to inform her of her father's death. Jeremy cuts her off and says they'll get through it. He can cover and say she's with family because it was too hard to be in Mystic Falls. "I might not be able to touch you or hold you, but I'm here for you no matter what you need." What they both need is a kiss, but they can't, so that sort of sucks. Bonnie realizes it first and just disappears. Oh wait, this is disjointed, I know, but I meant to add -- how is Jeremy feeling this well. He just got staked? There's no vampire around to heal him? Do hunters heal more quickly than regular humans? If so, why did Damon have to feed Jeremy blood after Katherine drove the car into a pole? Rinse. Spit.
Stylus visits the same gas station Jeremy and Matt were at earlier. The bloodied clerk asks him if he found Katherine. Stylus says, "Yes, I did. Then she shot me, so I'm a little bit angry and I'm a little bit hungry. But luckily, you can help me out with one of those things." He takes out a jackknife and grabs a big gulp sort of cup, hands the knife to the clerk and says, "Fill 'er up." The clerk cuts open his wrist and bleeds into the cup.
When Stylus hears someone enter, he turns to find a knife-wielding Gregor, this time he's wearing his own skin and not Matt's. Nadia is right behind him. Stylus says, "Oh, goody, Gypsies are here. Oh, I'm sorry, you call yourselves Travelers now, right. It's much more P.C." Okay, no. I mean Travelers is a more polite term, but Travelers are from the British Isles. If Gregor and Nadia are from Prague, the P.C. and correct term is Romani or Rom. Gregor doesn't care what Stylus calls him. He's intent on gutting him. Oh wait, Gregor sounds American. Maybe he's a Traveler, but with a name like Gregor, I'm not buying it. Stylus is amused. He wonders why they took over Matt's body to spy on him and what they want now. Gregor says, "You. Back in that tomb, sealed away for eternity." Nadia adds, "That's what the Travelers have always wanted," but then she grabs Gregor's hand and forces him to stab himself right in the neck. When Gregor falls to the floor, Nadia says to Stylus, "Luckily for you, I've never really considered myself one. I know you can see inside my mind. And I have my own agenda." Stylus grins. "Yes, I see that you do."
Morning. Whitmore College Exterior. Elena puts her luggage in Damon's car and tells Caroline she'll be back, although she doesn't know when. Caroline tells her to call the minute she hears from Bonnie. "I've left her like a hundred messages." The girls hug and Caroline assures Elena she'll find Stefan. As Caroline walks off, Dr. Maxfield shows up and says, "I didn't think Elena Gilbert would give up so easily." She's caught off guard, so she doesn't reply. Maxfield adds, "Sorry for being a hard ass, earlier. It's kind of my thing. You're Grayson Gilbert's daughter, aren't you?" Elena says, "You knew my dad." Maxfield says he knows of him. He's studied all the brilliant, legendary doctor's research and can only hope to do the kind of work he did. Elena pulls no punches. "So, does that mean he forged death certificates, too?" Maxfield is impressed. He tells her to come by during his office hours, tomorrow and they can chat. Elena says she would, but she has other, important things on her plate, right now. Maxfield tells her to let him know when her plate clears and leaves.
Damon must have overheard the whole scene, so he says, "Well, I guess that's how a hero would do it -- honesty. Who'd have thunk?" He wonders if she's isn't curious about "Nancy Drew and the whole creepster professor thing." Elena says Caroline will take over the Whitmore investigation. Elena can't stay there knowing that Stefan is out there, somewhere. Damon hands Elena Stefan's daylight ring. He snagged it from Silas, the day before. "And, for the record, I am secure enough in our relationship that you having psychic dreams about your ex-boyfriend does not bother me." They kiss and then he adds, "But it still sucks." Elena smiles, kisses him again and says, "I love you. We're going to save Stefan, and I'm still gonna love you, okay?" Damon looks like he's not fully convinced, but he kisses her anyhow -- I guess while he still can. Damon's phone rings, which is a good thing, because it was starting to look like they were going to have sex in full view of the campus. It's Liz calling to announce they've found something. We cut to the...
Woods. Liz says they found nothing in the quarry, but they found the safe a few miles away. She figures if Stefan has been in it for months, chances are he's hungry. Yeah, Liz. You ought to get in your car and drive away, right now. Damon opens the safe. Inside, there's a dead body and it's sure not Stefan's. The man's throat has been torn open and his shirt is soaked with blood. Elena temporarily forgets she's a vampire and recoils at the remains of someone's feast. "Oh my God. That's not Stefan." Damon says, "Well, you were right. He was hungry. I bet he still is." Dun dun dun! Now rinse and spit.
I'll be back with coverage of "Original Sin." In the meantime, please grade the episode at the top of the page, and then come on over to the forum, which is way more fun than a trip to the dentist.
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