Episode 2.5 – “Plan B”

We begin with Stefan and Elena in bed together and I’m thinking… they’re being kinda risky aren’t they?  In broad daylight?  Pillow talk centers around what might happen if Katherine finds out they’re still together. 

Cut to scenes of Katherine and Mason rolling around in the sheets as well.  Katherine wants to know where the moonstone is and Mason says that he doesn’t trust anyone (i.e. her), but he’ll give her the moonstone later that night.  Is it just me or is this a little gimmicky with all the back and forth?  Saying some of the same lines to each other but in different couples?   

Jeremy shows up at the Salvatore mansion, wanting to join in on Damon’s reindeer games.  Damon tries to shut the door on him repeatedly, so Jeremy keeps dribbling out pieces of intel where the Lockwoods are concerned.  He tells Damon that Tyler’s not a werewolf yet, and that he’ll have to kill someone to activate the curse.  Also that Mason’s looking for the moonstone and that he knows where it is.  Damon relents and lets him into the house.  Why do I think Elena won’t be too thrilled at this development? 

Alaric comes over with a box of goodies and doesn’t look too happy to see Jeremy there cutting in on his bromance time.  He thinks the moonstone is the key to breaking the curse that keeps werewolves from shifting on only full moons.  Jeremy agrees to get the moonstone for them from Tyler.

At the Lockwood place, they’re prepping the house for a Masquerade ball, so the house is positively swarming with people.  Jenna confronts Stefan and lets him know that she’s heard him in Elena’s bedroom that morning, apparently she’s a light sleeper. 

Bonnie and Elena have a little bonding moment, while setting things up for the party.  Bonnie is still resistant to have anything to do with Caroline since she’s become a vampire and Elena urges her to give her another chance.  Elena realizes how far apart she’s grown from Bonnie (given Bonnie’s attitude towards vamps, that’s not exactly a shocker) and fills her in on all the happenings lately, including the fact that she and Stefan have been pretending to fight.  Bonnie asks her “I know where I stand Elena, and I know where you stand.  But where do we stand?”  “You’re my best friend.”  Elena replies.  Personally, I don’t see a whole lot of a future for this friendship unless Bonnie can take the sanctimonious stick out of her…

Mason looks pretty shocked to see Stefan out and about on the Lockwood estate, the last time he’d seen the brother’s they were knocked out with wood bullets and vervain in the old slave quarters.  Mason bumps into Bonnie in passing, and she gets a vision of Mason kissing Elena.  She mentions this to Stefan who puts two and two together and comes up with the idea that Katherine is involved with Mason. 

Damon shows up at the Lockwoods and tells Elena to get Jeremy to stop following him around like a puppy.  Elena tries to warn Jeremy off but he replies, “I don’t really care what you want Elena.  It’s because of you that I’m in this mess in the first place.  I’m sorry, you don’t get to tell me what I’m gonna do.”  Go Jeremy! 

Stefan tells Damon about Mason’s connection to Katherine and he tries to wrap his head around it.  “Werewolf thing aside, the guy’s a surfer!”  A little jealous maybe?

Jeremy slyly tries to strike up a conversation about the moonstone with Tyler, but he’s not interested.  Tyler lets him know that he gave the moonstone to Mason and could care less about any legends or lore about werewolves.  He wants nothing to do with that part of his heritage. 

Stefan and Damon corner Bonnie to try and elicit her help in getting the upper hand with Mason.  In another bold product placement move, Elena muscles in on the conversation first via text and then calling Stefan on her spiffy iPhone.  Stefan goes off to take her call leaving Bonnie and Damon to talk together.  Never a good idea.  Damon fails to grasp the idea of buttering her up or even pretending to be nice to her to get what he wants, and I have to admit, I kind of like that.  It’s not like she’d believe any attempt of his to be nice to her anyway, she already hates him.  Damon instead says, “You witch, are gonna get over yourself and help us.”  Stefan arrives in time to add, “Yeah, he meant that as a question with a please at the end?”

Bonnie does mention one interesting tidbit.  When she causes that crushing pain to vampires, she is actually causing an aneurisms in his brain but because he heals so quickly, she does it over and over again.  Ouch.  She says it would work on anyone who has the supernatural healing ability.  Which means that it’ll work on anyone period.  They’ll just die if they don’t have that healing ability.  Remind me not to piss Bonnie off anytime soon…

But apparently Bonnie’s on board with Operation Werewolf Brain Bleed, because she pops some blood vessels in his brain and this allows Damon to knock Mason out and toss him in the back of his own truck.  She accompanies them back to the Salvatore mansion and helps Damon tie Mason up and then look inside his brain.  She thinks the moonstone might be kept near an old well. 

Bonnie leaves before the real torturing begins but runs into Caroline on the way out.  After a somewhat stilted conversation, Bonnie grows a set of feelings and lets Caroline come with her to try and find the well on the Lockwood property.  I like how suddenly the Lockwood property is such a hotbed of activity.  It seems like everything important takes place there now!

Stefan goes off in search of the moonstone, finding the well and hopping inside only to find that the water inside is heavily laced with vervain!  Trapped down there, the flesh starting to melt off of him, (ick!) he’s trapped with no way out.  Until Caroline and Bonnie come to the rescue, yay!  Caroline lowers Elena down on a big heavy chain and then pulls an unconscious Stefan up to safety.  Elena stays behind to try and find the moonstone and just when she finds it, a bunch of snakes show up en masse just to keep things interesting.  After a lot of screaming, Caroline pulls Elena up too, and she seems none the worse for wear.  I guess the snakes were just curious, not grumpy?  Elena offers some of her blood to Stefan to heal him.

Damon is all too happy to play Master of Pain with Mason, torturing him with a red hot poker in order to find out what Katherine’s plans are for the moonstone.  Jeremy shows up and is a lot more tolerant to watching the torture than I might have thought.  Sure he makes little faces to show how squeamish he is, but he doesn’t leave, and he doesn’t say a word to Damon about stopping it.  He brings Damon a bunch of wolfsbane which burns Mason the same way that vervain burns vampires.  Mason insists that Katherine’s only there in town to be with him because she loves him.  Damon just keeps torturing him and Mason tells him that Katherine wants the moonstone to help break the curse so he doesn’t have to turn anymore.  “Now I get it, you’re just stupid.  Katherine doesn’t love you, she’s just using you, you moron.”  Damon taunts him.

Planning to kill Mason, Damon tells Jeremy to suck it up or leave.  Jeremy leaves, not wanting to watch the end.  Damon tells Mason that he’s been where Mason is right now.  “Katherine will only rip your heart out.  Let me do it for her.”  He offers before literally ripping his heart from his chest.  I kept expecting something else to happen here to intervene, but Mason dies!

Sheriff Liz is still in the Salvatore basement, apparently still not wanting to have anything to do with Caroline.  Caroline tries to explain that she drinks from blood bags, not humans, but that she doesn’t share Stefan’s animal diet.  Liz doesn’t look thrilled with that distinction.  Caroline comes in and starts telling her all about having to save Stefan from the well and Liz seems to have an epiphany, that her daughter has become a strong confident person, and doesn’t want her to take her memories away because she won’t tell.   Caroline looks happy to have earned her mother’s trust, but still compels her into forgetting all about everything that’s happened in the past few days. 

Damon texts Mason’s family with a message that he’s leaving town while Stefan preps the body in a tarp to get rid of it.  In a fit of stupidity, Damon decides to call the last number Mason dialed, figuring it to be Katherine’s number.  He then proceeds to nullify any advantage they have just gained, by telling Katherine that not only have they killed her boytoy, they have the moonstone she’s looking for.  Stefan gives a half hearted attempt at stopping Damon from spilling everything, but mostly just stands around. 

It’s the last ten minutes of the show, which means it’s time for the drama to kick up a notch.

Back at the Gilbert house, Jenna and Alaric are playing kissyface in the kitchen when Elena gets home.  The phone rings and Jenna answers it before handing it over to Elena.  It’s Katherine, and in a zippy and interesting twist, she reveals that she’s compelled Jenna into being her spy for a while now.  So just as Jenna knew that Stefan had spent the night in Elena’s room, Katherine knew about it too.  As a way of punishing Elena for not breaking up with Stefan like she commanded, she gave Jenna instructions to kill herself.  Jenna complies by stabbing herself in the abdomen with a huge knife.  They really need to put those sharp things away, how many people have to get stabbed in that kitchen before they switch to plastic cutlery?

It turns out that Jenna’s gonna be okay, she apparently managed to miss any important bits inside.  Jeremy vows that Katherine’s gonna pay though, and from that intense look on his face… I actually believe him. 

Elena pays Stefan a visit at the Salvatore mansion and amid many tears they end things for real this time.  Damon tries to apologize to Elena as well, thinking that if he hadn’t taunted Katherine she might not have lashed out like that.  (But let’s be real, she already knew Elena and Stefan were faking, it was just a matter of time)  Elena waves off his apology, saying it doesn’t matter, that Katherine has won. 

Final scene, Katherine has compelled Matt into attacking Tyler to provoke him into taking a life and activating the werewolf curse, because she desperately needs a werewolf for her plan and she’s lost the one she had. 

Previews for next week show the masquerade ball… I’m thinking wackiness will ensue as people mistake Katherine for Elena and vice versa, what do you think?

Random thoughts I had:

I did not like this episode as much as last week’s, but it did deliver some great twists and turns. 

I wasn’t expecting them to kill off Mason so quickly.

I think I’m liking Caroline more and more each episode.  How great was that scene where she had to compel her mother? 

I thought it was kinda sucky that they made Damon so stupid as to call up Katherine and gloat like that.  What the hell was he thinking?

Anyone else think that Liz’s shift into accepting Caroline was a little too easy?  Maybe she was just trying to get her not to compel her?  I guess it’s a moot point now that Caroline’s made her forget all about it.

I bet right about now Stefan’s regretting that he didn’t stake Katherine when he had the chance…

So let’s hear it, what did you guys think of Plan B?