Episode 2.16 – “The House Guest”

My nights have been crazy between being sick and my daughter’s birthday. (somehow she thinks she gets to celebrate ALL week, lol) Again I’m sorry this is so late, this cold has been kicking my ass for more than a week.

Here we go…

Elena is rushing around, worried about being late for school. In a rare playful moment, Stefan tries to lure her back into bed, having no problems at all being late for school. She agrees to 5 more minutes and they fall into bed. Downstairs, “Elena” walks into the room and Damon automatically attacks her, thinking that she’s Katherine. Stefan walks in and sees her, thinks that Katherine was the one he was fooling around with upstairs and goes back up and attacks her. Katherine (who was the one downstairs after all!) shows up, saying it’s getting easier to impersonate Elena. Elena demands to know what she’s doing there and Stefan admits that the moment Elijah died; Katherine was freed from the tomb. “But what is she doing here?” Elena wants to know, clearly having expected her to head for the hills. “I don’t want her here.”  Katherine insists that they need her help. She is the only one who knows where Klaus is, and what he looks like. But since no one feels like wanting her help, she’ll go down to the Grill. “Maybe Aunt Jenna is free for a bite.” She taunts.

Stefan and Elena go to school for once, speculating on why Katherine is sticking around. Stefan seems to think that they all want the same thing, Klaus dead. Elena is less convinced, and not at all happy that Katherine’s staying with them. He offers to stay at Elena’s place tonight, but she declines, they’re having a girls night with Bonnie and Caroline and jokes that maybe Katherine can join them. They share with Bonnie and Jeremy that Katherine’s out of the tomb. Jeremy goes in for a kiss once the others move off, but Bonnie’s hesitant to do so until she has a chance to talk to Elena.

Elena is busy talking to Alaric who is racked with guilt over having to lie to Jenna all the time. He tells her that he even gave John his ring to keep him from stirring up trouble between them. He wants to tell Jenna the truth because he can’t be with her and not tell her. Elena agrees it’s becoming more dangerous for her not to know but was hoping to wait til they were done dealing with Klaus, but she has no idea how to tell her. Alaric says that he wants to be with Jenna but until they are able to tell her everything, they’re done.

Matt asks Caroline if she’s heard from Tyler, and she says no, not a peep. He’s starting to clue in to the idea that Tyler’s left town. Still upset that Caroline hasn’t made a commitment to be with him, he tells her to make a decision or leave him alone.

Damon takes a flame thrower to Elijah’s corpse but it doesn’t have any effect on him. Katherine tells him he’s wasting his time trying to get the dagger back, Originals are indestructible, the only way to keep him down is to keep the dagger in his heart. (okay, I guess I forgive them for not dismembering him already). How do you have so much information on the Originals, Damon wonders? Apparently she’s been researching them for the past 500 years or so. Damon turns the flame thrower in her direction and she actually looks a little panicked, telling him to be smart, she is a useful ally and if she wasn’t being honest she’d have been long gone by now. We want the same thing, and you know I always get what I want, she says. Damon lowers the weapon and she admits that of course she knew that he’d die if he used the dagger on Elijah but she would have done anything to get out of the tomb.

Stefan and Bonnie meet with Jonas and Luka at the Grill. They tell the witches that Elijah is dead and offer to help them get his daughter back. You can trust us, I give you my word, Stefan says. Jonas doesn’t say anything one way or another.

Later, Damon is looking through the Gilbert journals, trying to ignore Katherine who keeps after him like a lost puppy. “How am I supposed to help you when you won’t tell me what’s going on?” She wonders. He asks if she knows where the witches were massacred all those years ago and she admits that she doesn’t. “Then you can’t help,” he says. In the next second, he pins her by the throat and Katherine says that she is glad that he didn’t die. She goes on to say that Emily told her all about the witches massacre, it was a big deal in witch lore. When a witch dies violently, it releases a bunch of mystical energy, marking the place of their death. They speculate as to what Elijah wanted to do on the scene. Stefan arrives and lets them know that Elijah had no weapon to kill Klaus, they believed that if a witch could channel enough power (like from the site of a hundred dead witches), they wouldn’t need one. So I guess Jonas came through with some intel after all.

Just when we think things might all start coming together for the two factions, we switch to Jonas and Luka, who are still of the mindset that their best bet for getting Greta back is to stick with Elijah, not Stefan and his crew. “Those people are our enemies; they need to be dealt with.” Jonas insists. “Are you going to kill them?” Jonas asks. “No, I’m gonna let Elijah do it.” Jonas replies. They set up a spell by where Luka astral projects himself to the Salvatore house, and starts to pull the dagger from Elijah’s body. Luckily Katherine gets wind that not everything is quite right and notices the movement on the dagger. She pounces on it and stops him from removing it just in time. The witches think that it’s Elena at first, but realize that it’s Katherine when she’s stronger than Luka is. Luka grabs a piece of wood and stabs Katherine with it but Damon is able to remove it before she dies. Luckily the flamethrower is still in the room and Damon roasts Luka.

Back in his apartment, Luka’s physical body catches fire and even though Jonas tries to save him, Luka dies. Furious, Jonas starts to pull out the bits of Elena’s things that he stole from her room several episodes back, looking like he has some serious mojo planned. Stefan arrives to stop him, but Jonas strikes him down without blinking an eye.

Damon brings Katherine some blood to help her recover from the stake, but before he hands it over, he plunges it back into her side. “That’s for not telling me the dagger would kill me,” he says. He won’t trust her until she comes clean about her real reasons for sticking around. Katherine tells him that John Gilbert and Isobel want both Damon and Stefan out of the picture. John offered her a deal, either she stay and help with Klaus or he would kill Stefan.  He was fine with Damon dying, that was part of the deal, she could only save one brother. Damon seems upset that she chose Stefan but she says at least she didn’t lie about it.

At Elena’s girl’s night, the girls are trying to decide between pizza and Chinese food, and it looks like an ad for Caroline’s tablet as they surf for the nearest restaurants online. They decide to go to the Grill since there’s a live band playing and Jenna goes with them since she’s wallowing over her situation with Ric. The Grill is packed and besides the girls, Alaric is coincidentally there and Jenna heads straight for the bar. She doesn’t want to talk to him unless he tells her what’s going on. “I think I can handle anything,” she insists.

Matt blows Caroline off and she decides that she wants to be with Matt and tell him what’s going on. Instead of trying to pull him aside, she goes up on stage and compels the band into accompanying her while she sings “Eternal Flame” by the Bangles just for him. The song works because Elena walks in on Caroline and Matt making out in the bathroom at the Grill just minutes later.

Bonnie chooses now to tell Elena about her and Jeremy. I know it’s weird, she admits, but he makes her happy. It looks like it weirds Elena out more than I thought it would, but after a moment she says he deserves to be with someone like her after all the pain he’s been through. Stefan calls Damon and lets him know that Jonas is on the way to the Grill and he’s pissed about Luka dying. Katherine offers to help Damon stop Jonas; she has an idea how to keep him from hurting Elena.

At the Grill, Bonnie tries to reason with Jonas, but he’s beyond listening and knocks her out. Alaric tries to hustle Jenna out of there before things get too crazy and right after they leave, Jonas sets the bar on fire. Matt tries to beat out the flames and helps Bonnie get to safety. Elena approaches Jonas, telling him how sorry she is that Luka died and offers to help get his daughter back but he doesn’t want to listen to them either, Stefan hustles her out of there. Caroline attacks Jonas but he deflects her easily using that brain thing that Bonnie can do. Matt sees her getting attacked and comes after Jonas who stabs him in the neck with a piece of broken glass! Caroline pulls out the glass but vamps out a little at the sight of all the blood. She bites her own wrist and forces Matt to drink her blood in order to save him.

Bonnie and Jeremy are at the Gilbert’s and she feels guilty over Luka’s death. Stefan and Elena arrive and Elena goes upstairs where Jonas is waiting to attack her. But surprise! It’s not Elena after all (duh) and Katherine does that thing where she bites him for a second and he falls over dead. Bonnie says they didn’t have to kill him, but Katherine insists that they did. 2nd surprise! Jonas reaches up and grabs Bonnie’s head (similar to the way he did when he took her powers) before they kill him off for good this time.

Last 7 minutes of the show:
Damon shows up at the Gilbert’s and tells Elena that it was Katherine’s idea to pose as her to kill Jonas. Even after the successful help, Elena doesn’t want Katherine around. Katherine admits that she doesn’t particularly like Elena either, but they should trust that she wants Klaus dead.

Alaric and Jenna are outside (ooh wouldn’t it be cool if she walked in and sees both Elena and Katherine at the same time – oh no that didn’t happen, bummer) and Ric tells her that there are things he can’t tell her about Isobel’s death but that he loves her.  Jenna seems touched at the proclamation of love but they part ways without really resolving things between them.

Jeremy accuses Bonnie of being in denial about losing her powers since the only witch that could restore them is now dead, but Bonnie kisses him and tells him that she got her powers back when Jonas grabbed her head and that he also told her how to kill Klaus.

Damon is in bed and Katherine shows up dressed in some serious lingerie but he hardly gives her a glance. She wonders why he won’t tell her where the witches’ massacre is. He says he has no clue, but she doesn’t believe him. “You hurt me today,” she accuses. “Tit for tat.” Is his reply. “You were mean and rough, and monstrous, I like this Damon,” she admits, moving in very, very close, their lips practically touching. “Katherine, there are six other bedrooms in this house, go find one,” he replies, resisting the temptation and shoving her off of his bed before he gets back to his reading. Katherine pouts and flounces away shaking her head.

Matt wakes up, freaking out at the healed wound on his neck. Caroline tells him that she is a vampire, he was dying and her blood healed him. She insists that it’s gonna be just fine because they love each other, but he looks fairly freaked out, backing away from her. Suddenly it clicks, his sister Vicki was going on about being attacked by a vampire and he didn’t believe her. “What did you do?” He demands, assuming she was somehow involved. She tries to stop him from leaving, but he shoves her away.

There is a knock on the door at the Gilbert house, it’s Isobel! “Hi, you must be Jenna I’m Elena’s mother.” Holy crap!

Random thoughts I had:

Katherine is all over Damon in this episode, what’s up with that? Is it just that she wants what she can’t have? And is Damon really not into her anymore or is he just playing hard to get, playing the player?

Boy it sure looked like she got stabbed in the heart… how come Katherine didn’t die right away? I guess maybe it was a little low.

I was not expecting Luka to die! What kind of a witch is Jonas that he couldn’t save him? I thought he was stronger than that, it feels like a plot device to me.

It was cute to see Caroline singing. I hear she’s gonna be acting more like a regular high school student in the upcoming episodes. I hope she doesn’t just become a ditz again, it was nice to see her character evolve.

So the boys are holding out on Katherine, keeping the location of the witches’ massacre to themselves. Interesting…

Of course Bonnie will have her powers back now, the question is, will she be even stronger? Did Jonas imbue her with some of his own power?

Hmm something tells me things are not gonna be rosy between Matt and Caroline for a while, he really freaked out!  Maybe she should compel him to forget and then tell him in a gentler way?

Ooh Isobel shows up right after Alaric told Jenna that she was dead! And now Jenna knows that she’s Elena’s mother too? Holy crap I can’t wait to see this play out!

Another 6 week hiatus, what are they doing to us!