Episode 5×5, “Monster’s Ball.” For a refreshing change of pace, the characters might actually attend a party of some kind this week. I hope they have outfits for the occasion.
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Cold Open
- Oh, this show. Even in laboratory settings, all hot guys must be shirtless. I freaking love it. The now-must-be-considered-puritanical-by-comparison Buffy had no idea what kind of foundation it was laying.
- “all in all, appears to be a perfect candidate”- Maxwell Sheffield, looking at shirtless Jesse with a smile. Did he deliver that line reading kind of…kind of gay? I’m not trying to be funny here, that was supposed to be ominous but instead it just came out as a very weird line read.
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Everything up until the first commercial break.
- And since the two leads have both burned all of their diaries (well, Damon’s a lead too, but I think even keeping a diary ironically would make him break out in hives) Elena has a new one so the title of the show can remain relevant. I wonder if she’ll learn her lesson from Jeremy discovering her diary back in Season One and make the least little bit of effort to write in code. Considering how much she and Caroline talk about vampires actually out loud though, I kind of doubt it.
- His name is “Wes Maxfield”? Chortle. Okay, I think Maxwell Sheffield was the boss in The Nanny, who the writers purposely gave the most English-y name they could because he was meant to be a English aristo stereotype Fran could break him out of. Wes Maxfield…FFS. I’m not going to remember his real name. From now on his name is Dr. Jesse-killer until I can actually remember his real name, okay? (He doesn’t even act English. His defining personality traits are evil science, dickishness, a nasal voice, and being attractive to Elena Gilbert for some reason).
- Too funny. My friend just called so I had to pause the screen while Dr. Jesse-killer was walking away from Elena and toward us (so perspective was, he was much larger but much more out of focus) and the entire paused frame was Dr. Jesse-killer’s crotch taking up 2/3rd’s of the screen and Elena’s observing impish smile taking up the remaining corner. She called him “Hot-tee” in “True Lies,” and I would like for the show to make it explicitly clear she doesn’t like him before I stop laughing at how gross her crush is.
- Caroline and Tyler are passionate enough to have sex on the floor but had the time to make a makeshift mattress? And keep her bra on? (I get the latter, since this is the CW, but the former is weird).
- So Tyler’s absence was due to more werewolf activism? That’s exactly what I didn’t want. How in the F– are there so many werewolf packs in existence? They were so rare that the Salvatores didn’t even know they existed before Season Two, and they were supposed to be next to impossible for Klaus to find before…say Season Four. But a werewolf who was not raised pack, has very little PR skills, a high school education, and (so far) has gotten every one of the werewolf friends he’s made and “saved” murdered, can somehow find new packs with no trouble. I’m hating this.
- Aw, Meghan’s childhood friend is likable. Which means he’s sure to die just as soon as he’s done revealing to Elena a few new clues. He also looks like what Dr. Jesse-killer would look like if Dr. Jesse-killer was hot, which is kind of a weird similarity.
- “Why do you think I need help?” “For one thing, you’re still here. Why do you suck so bad at trying to kill yourself?”—Silas and Damon. Heh. How ineffectual a villain do you need to be to not even be able to off your own self, anyway?
- Oh shoot. See, I followed that plan and all, but since I predict half the season is going to assume I have perfect recall of every last detail that was just said (last year did this too, by telling us the Silas story in a boring aside about five episodes before anyone knew it would be important and then it was too late to go back on Hulu, because I’m not upper class enough for Hulu Premium) I’m going to need to watch this like five more times, aren’t I?
- (I mean, or it could be like the Mikael plan in early Season Three, where it’s built up and built up and built up until it finally comes and is foiled and dissolved in like two seconds and then never spoken of again…which was probably the worst case of narrative blue balls in this show’s history. We’ll see about this plan).
- Okay, so I went back to relisten and I’m just going to summarize every mundane detail for my own future reference because trying to recall the Silas/Shane backstories last year was a continual exercise in “I think it maybe was this….?” torture. So summary of the long term plan in the “Final Thoughts” section for anyone who cares.
- And yup. Silas actually thinks there’s even a slight chance that Damon will kill Stefan just to get Bonnie back from the dead? I know that Silas has been ossifying in a tomb for the last four years and not watching the CW on Thursday nights, but the Salvatore brothers are the strongest love bond on this show. Seriously. Even when they hate each other most, they’d let Earth and heaven and even Elena burn down before they let the other one die. So…Silas is either playing Damon to distract him or Silas just doesn’t get Damon. Either way, not much of a cliffhanger for commercial break.
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Everything up until the second commercial break.
- Ooh, nameless reference. Considering everything else Nadia just said is information we already knew, can we assume that this new information about a mother being made to abandon her daughter refers to Isobel and Elena? So it’s Katherine‘s fault that Elena was abandoned as a baby? Katherine’s fault that Elena grew up in the most hellish city (but with parties!) on the planet? I’m curious what this netted Katherine, since they only way I can see this affecting her overall plan so far is that Stefan and Damon ran across Elena when they otherwise wouldn’t have.
- And did we know that Nadia was a vampire? I didn’t. I complained a few times at how freaking strong she was for a human but…okay, I’m really sick of every vampire in the world having daylight rings. Apparently they’re easier to get than the new iphone or something, and what’s the point of having killer sunlight be part of this show’s mythology if it never actually inhibits anyone?
- Wow, Klaus’s minions really suck if they can’t tell a 17-year-old-ish looking vampire from the human mother of a young adult woman. Or if they, just as a preventative measure, didn’t take both women, even if they did believe Katherine. Oh yeah, come to think of it, Vampire Diaries trope: no matter the century or species, every minion Klaus has ever had has been useless.
- “Did I mention you’re the hottest serial killer in here?” –Tyler to Caroline, dressed as Bonnie (as in Bonnie and Clyde, come to think of it, since there’s a Bonnie in the cast who Caroline mourned last episode how is she going to introduce herself all night?) Anyway, Tyler is being funny because Caroline actually is a murderer, get it? Eye roll.
- Damon is supposed to be Henry the Eighth? WTF? I mean, I’m not well versed and I only really know him from that one picture where he looks all portly and dignified, but still, Damon is dressed like Puck from a way under budget production from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I mean, doesn’t he?
- I remember from earlier Elena saying that Caroline picked out everyone’s costumes, and I love how this proves how incredibly passive-aggressive this consistent Stelena shipper is. Stefan is James Dean, most famous as a tragic hero whose heart is broken and life is shattered. Damon is Henry and Elena is Anne Boleyn, a married couple who got together for the wrong reasons, where the guy used the girl and when he didn’t get what he wanted he murdered her, forgot her and moved on. Not to mention the ridiculous discrepancy in costume quality. Nice work, Caroline.
- Meghan’s childhood friend is probably Dr. Jesse-killer’s son. That’s why they look similar and why everyone Meghan’s childhood friend’s knows dies. And why Meghan got vervain in her Vitamin water without being aware of it (I doubt all freshman got that courtesy). Also, Meghan’s childhood friend is so clearly not compelled right now, so he must have been slipped vervain too. Jesus Christ, Scoobie vamp gang, what with all the times you’ve thought you’ve compelled people but actually failed to, you’d think you would have developed a test question normal enough that it wouldn’t show your hand as vampires but weird enough that people wouldn’t do it without being compelled.
- Meghan’s childhood friend is named “Aaron.” Good to know…and also weird he was holding that as some closely guarded secret.
- Qetsiyah looks a lot like Bonnie in that wig. For a split second I thought ghost Bonnie had dressed up to go to the party for some reason which, why not, if I’m not mistaken she’s already had one costume change since her death.
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Everything up until the third commercial break.
- Oh, Silas didn’t mean kill-kill, he just meant kill. Yeah, Damon would snap Stefan neck over the last slice of pizza, no problem. Don’t get why Silas needed Damon to do it, or why Damon was dumb enough to help Silas get his powers back (actually, that might as well be a trope as well), but there it is. I’m sure the neck snap will do nothing to help Amnesiac Stefan get over his angst about Delena. Unless, of course, his memories are now restored.
- “See a woman never forgets her first love, no matter how badly it ends.”-Silas to Damon. snort. This show’s feminist in a lot of ways but it’s also sexist in a lot of ways, but characters don’t often say such 1950’s kinds of overt sexist statements. But I just love that that this was said from male Silas (who’s been clinging to his first love for two millenia) to Damon (who’s been so obsessed with the face of his first love that after a century and a half of pining, when he finally got the message she didn’t want him his very next obsession was her doppelganger. And Silas is still saying this kind of crap.
- So the Anchor has the be the gypsy knife that Possessed!Matt is guarding, right?
- …And the neck snaps again so Silas keeps looking. I get why Damon is necessary now. He’s just going to kill Stefan every time he comes back to life no matter how many hours it takes? I gotta say this might be the creepiest sequence of the season so far.
- Love doing these reactions for scenes just like this Nadia/Katherine one. Earlier, I assumed the mother abandoning her daughter reference referred to Isobel/Elena. But it’s Katherine and her daughter, which I never saw coming. It’s something the show seeded a million years ago and never came back to. Awesomesauce.
- Ew. I just realized that Matt has not only had sex with Elena, but also Elena’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great, (etc.) grandmother. It’s like a fucked up twist on The Graduate.
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Everything up until the fourth commercial break.
- Dr. Jesse-killer can specifically recognize that Elena is Anne Boleyn from her period outfit alone (her clothes weren’t super unique among all the famous ladies of that time) but doesn’t know that she wasn’t killed by the guillotine, famously and specifically invented centuries later for the French Revolution? It’s not so much that I’m trying to be pedantic, most people don’t know history super well, I just don’t know how a non-expert would correctly know obscure and vague outfits at a glance but not comparatively famous trivia. Only logical explanation, Dr. Jesse-killer’s been eavesdropping on Elena all night to find out info and make it seem like he casually guessed it.
- And Dr. Jesse-killer is Dr. Jekyll. Of course. I bet he’s all smug, thinking he’s hiding in plain sight or something, saying he’s Jekyll but definitely not Hyde. I’ve read the book, Jekyll is just as bad as Hyde.
- Why would Elena mention that she knows he lied on the death certificate? Hell, why would Elena bring up that she’s read the death certificate?
- I don’t like Dr. Jesse-killer. The Uncle John actor was much better at filling the “human who still had ambiguous power behind him that the vamps didn’t know about so they couldn’t just kill him in case it backfired and the power got them but in the meantime the ineffectual human was so damned frustrating” role. I miss Uncle John. Dr. Jesse-killer just…This payoff better be worth it. Telling Elena to drop out (what a loss! considering she has centuries to go back to college, ones without vampire hunting cabals, and she doesn’t seem that into it anyway) is pretty weaksauce, frankly.
- And I just noticed that Michael Trevino has a pierced ear. Has that always been the case?
- So is Tyler leaving the show for good then, after all? Even if he is leaving on a vengeance quest….He’s one of the only people who have ever left without having to die to do it so, a happy exit. Godspeed, Tyler. You won’t kill Klaus, you’ll die, but please do get a kick in his nads in for me, okay?
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Everything up until the fifth commercial break.
- Wow, you’d think that Qetsiyah would have doublechecked that Silas was Silas instead of just taking his doppelganger’s word for it before permanently dessicating him. She’s Damon-levels of impulsive.
- Called it! Aaron is Dr. Jesse-killer’s son. I’ve been wrong a lot lately so it’s nice to get something right for a change.
- You gotta love how often on this show they need a witch except that, they (good guys included) also kill witches so often that it’s no wonder that they’re SOL all the time when Bonnie’s unavailable. Stop killing witches, guys, and you’ll end up having them when you need them.
- A lot of people have been murdered in front of that fireplace.
- Best last few minutes this show has had in a long time!
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Everything before the end.
- [um, dropped an act somewhere again. This is harder than it really should be, y’all.]
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Some Final Thoughts
- I guess the Delena theme this year is that Damon will withhold whatever information from Elena he feels she doesn’t necessarily need to know immediately, not because he thinks she can’t handle it, but because he wants to make things better before she has to handle it. Which..Damon’s trying, I guess. He never has actually dated anyone before and honestly I’ve seen this plotline enough times to even bother to get worked up about it one way or another (for now, we’ll see). But what confuses me is the rhyme or reason between when he involves her and when he doesn’t. Like in this one episode, he doesn’t tell (and forbids Jeremy from telling) Elena that there could be a way to bring her best friend back from the dead if they do this risky plan; on the other hand, Damon will invite Elena over to watch as Damon murders her doppelganger, feeds her bleeding corpse to a dessicated Silas, and brings one of history’s greatest monsters back to life. Why let her in on one of these things but not the other? Just…and it keeps happening like this.
- So what was Damon’s plan at the ball w/r/t Elena? He’s been wanting to reconnect with her, emotionally, which he couldn’t exactly do by repeatedly snapping Stefan’s neck in front of her all night. But he seemed pretty confident that she would be leaving him to do his own thing and not even check in on him anyway, so did he set some suggestion in motion? She mostly just mingled around until talking to Dr. Jesse-Killer at the last second. Wasn’t she curious where the Salvatores had gone in the meanwhile? Was Damon just clinging to the hope it would only take ten minutes or something? If she had returned to him for the reconnection he wanted, how would he have….I don’t know.
- It’s cool to meet Katherine’s daughter and all, and it was seeded years ago, but I don’t see yet how it will have actual narrative payoff. I mean, Elena’s being adopted didn’t, originally, seem like it would either and that turned out great, so this could too, but at the moment it just seems like a way to continue Katherine’s humanization (pun intended).
- The Kat’s daughter revelation also furthers my confusion about Nadia being, apparently, the luckiest summabitch in the world. Of any threesome in the world she could have she had it with Matt and Rebekah. From the ring that no one in the world save Emily Bennett and select Gilberts knew about, she figured out what it does and, more miraculously, the small town in America where its owner came from and, even more miraculously still, that its owner was part of a merry band of the clueless that resurrected Silas from a 2,000 year sleep so he could run amok in one centralized location. And then, upon her arrival, she finds her perennially nomadic bio mom stuck in one locale, suddenly a human. And, unlike Elena, can recognize her even without the help of product placed Bing! So anyway, what was Nadia’s original endgame and how has this news affected her endgame?
- And why is Katherine’s daughter a gypsy? Gypsies have magic, right? I mean, I know in real life that’s a slur and I’m not trying to be offensive, but I’m just assuming that in a parnormal show that’s the whole point of making these characters gypsies instead of…like…Huns or Siberians or something. So anyway, why can Katherine‘s daughter do magic? Witchiness is established as a genetic predisposition on this show, so…huh?
- Also, surely Silas read the maternity info in Nadia’s mind at some point. Normally I’d give an age old Big Bad the good faith of not giving enough of a damn to spill the beans but…Silas-as-Stefan seems kind of bored a lot of the time and, hell, if he’s bored enough to sow discord between Delena in “True Lies” then he’s bored enough to tick off Katherine (since, in his own words, she makes him want to vomit).
- One cool thing about gypsies/travelers being the guardians of the Anchor (over other ethnic groups, I mean) though. Gypsies have that cultural legacy of being nomadic. Now we learn, in-universe, that they have the Anchor and that part of the way they guard it is to continually move it from locale to locale. So, you know, it’s a way for fiction to appropriate reality in the nice mirror way without…well, it’s still a little offensive but at least it’s not offensive in the sense of perpetuating the stereotype of the evil, magician gypsy.
- Dr. Jesse-killer & friends is like the antagonist the show wants us to care about but keeps forgetting to give us a convincing reason as to why. They’re aware that vampires exist!..and…do experiments on them…when they chance to come across them…in order to…HOLY CRAP LOOK OVER THERE SILAS IS GOING TO TEAR DOWN THE AFTER LIFE AND PROBABLY KILL EVERYONE!! And I know that in reality a lot of people are bored with the Silas stuff and would rather learn about the Whitmore College stuff. I just mean that the show itself is making the stakes so incredibly high and grave with one plotline and so incredibly…flaccid and not remotely touching any character we’re meant to care about in the other plotline that like, when they bring in Dr. Jesse-killer with his smarmy “I know what you are so you better quit school or else” it’s pretty disconcerting.
- I suppose I should be annoyed at Jeremy for lying about Bonnie’s wishes in not wanting to involve Silas and pursuing the life for a life plan and all that but hey, Bonnie risked the world to bring Jeremy back from death at the ends of Seasons Two and Four respectively. When will these kids learn they’re made and/or doomed for each other anyway?
- So, if I understand the ending correctly: 1) Damon is now so thoroughly over Katherine that he’s willing to kill her without any hesitation whatsoever 2) Katherine the human can die 3) Katherine the dead human comes instantly back to life and we’ll find out why next episode. This doesn’t bode well for Silas being able to die as a mortal, does it? And does this mean that Amara is actually alive somewhere? After all, we never saw a body, just what Qetsiyah claimed was her heart.
- And as promised earlier, here is a SUMMARY OF THE SILAS/DAMON PLOT TO SAVE BONNIE/KILL SILAS. Please feel free to skip, because it is just summary for my own future reference (man, trying to remember backstory last year really kicked my ass). So: Because Silas wants to die anyway, Damon thinks that, as part of the balance of nature and life for a life, they can use his death to bring back Bonnie. In other words, Damon wants to work with Silas. Also, Damon wants to do this without telling Elena. Damon knows that Silas’s “bad guy plan” is to become a human, die, go to wherever he passes on to and spend eternity with Amara. But since when he becomes mortal again he’ll go back to being a witch [sidebar: did we know he was a witch before? why didn’t he make his own damned immortality spell?] he’ll just go back to The Other Side, he needs help to make sure that the other side is destroyed first. But he already tried to bring down the veil to the Other Side once, and since his plan depended on crazy Shane manipulating a confused teenage girl [sidebar: that plotline fell through the cracks and now she’s dead so it doesn’t matter, but wasn’t Expression supposed to make Bonnie go all Dark Willow last year?] Silas failed. Damon thinks Silas must have a Plan B. Bonnie suggest that Silas has a brighter idea than just lifting a veil and letting all the ghosts out. Well, yeah, he let out like, five of them last year. It was pretty lame. Bonnie thinks that Silas now wants to destroy The Other Side completely. [Sidebar: …I…thought that was already his plan…?] Powerful spells need something powerful to anchor them, be they the moon, or a comet, or a doppelganger, and so if you want your spell to last you need something that will last for just as long. [Sidebar: I’d have picked Neptune; even astronomers only figured out that it existed in 1846. Silas the Old and Brilliant would never have a chance.] So this powerful anchor will hereafter be called the Anchor, because Horcrux was taken by some other franchise I can’t quite recall, and Qetsiyah wants to protect it while the good guys (I guess they’re good guys? They’re teamed up with Silas…I don’t know anything anymore) want to destroy it. These people already went camping last year! Anyway, Qetsiyah is the only person who knows where it’s hidden, but Stalker Silas knows that once any Millenia-Old Powerful Woman comes to Mystic Falls suddenly all she wants to do is go to parties and therefore Qetsiyah will be attending the Whitmore costume Ball that evening. Ghost Bonnie says Hell no, because there are always unforeseen consequences to magic on this show and finally at least one of the characters are learning the lesson (fourteen more to go!). Jeremy lies and says she’s in because he’ll risk the world to get Bonnie back. Maybe this will have relationship (or other) consequences later on. END SUMMARY.
- Whenever Stefan is temporarily “dead,” Silas has his mind reading powers back. But whenever Stefan goes back to being undead (as in, alive, which…terminology is now becoming weird) Silas goes back to impotence. Also he gets migraines. And we didn’t get to find out if those would have continued in perpetuity for however long Stefan came back to life. After all, they continued the whole four minutes or so it took Stefan to find Silas and Qetsiyah. Another question, shouldn’t Stefan’s amnesia be cured during the length of time that Silas was “dead?” These are important questions!
Conclusion: Great episode! I give “Monster’s Ball” forty-eight Stefan neck snaps out of fifty.