The Vampire Diaries- Season 4, Episode 11

Catch Me If You Can- We were going to double up on this show for next week, but a commenter wanted this week's post now. More proof of how much comments affect us, haha. The episode opens in the bar full of dead people. Klaus tells Jeremy to kill them before they all kill Matt, which he is going to compel them to do. Jeremy kills one as he and Matt run to the lake house, and Elena saves Matt from another. Damon also helps. The vampires can't get into the house, they are safe for now.



We were happy to see Elena defend Matt. Her turning into a vampire has not turned her into the bad ass we hoped it would. We thought that with physical power would come action and strength. However, Elena has been more of a clingy, deluded damsel than ever this season. Sired to Damon, jeez. We'd like to execute whoever came up with that plot-ruiner of a twist.

Elena takes Matt home with her because Damon agrees to stay with Jeremy and go hunting with him later. Damon asks Elena to trust him and she does. Meanwhile, Rebekah and Stefan conspire to get Professor Shane on their team. Shane seems to be controlling Bonnie's mind in some way, or maybe she is just that stupid to trust him, when Sheriff Forbes arrives and hauls him off to Bonnie's dad (illegally, but she doesn't care. It's all underground anyway).

Jeremy and Damon head back to the bar to look for the vampires, finding them already killed by Kol. Jeremy gets hotter with each passing episode, and his voice is even getting less whiny! But then Kol comes straight in to replace Jeremy as "hot guy with unhot voice." Kol wants to avoid the return of Silas, which according to rumor could trigger the end of all time. Kol doesn't kill Jeremy because he doesn't want to deal with that hunter's curse that almost drove Elena to suicide.

So he tries to pull off Jeremy's arms. Smart. Damon saves him from that fate, holding Kol off while Jeremy runs. Back to a flirting Rebekah and Stefan looking through Shane's stuff. Rebekah pronounces "herbs" oddly. Bonnie convinces her dad to let her question Shane, and he admits his part in the death of the pastor and the council. Frustratingly, the camera moves on to less interesting things, leaving us to wait for more answers.

Jeremy runs to Elena to tell her that Kol has Damon. Elena seeks out Klaus for help. Klaus makes Kol agree not to kill Jeremy. That's fine with Kol, who is compelling Damon to torture himself with a stake in the stomach. Then Kol orders Damon to kill Jeremy. This would be exciting if we believed for a moment that the show would ever let that happen, and we don't. This show had balls in season one when it killed Lexie, Anna, and Vicki. Now it can only kill Carol freaking Lockwood. Big yawn.

Back to Rebekah and Stefan again. Rebekah extols the virtues and benefits of not loving or caring, but of living in the moment and having fun, like they did back in the 20s when they were both crazy. Stefan comes around to her way of thinking...and can't we just say that we loved that? Stefan needs a stretch of time on this show where he's not consumed with Elena. He and Rebekah are hot together. Before they can kiss, a guy interrupts them by coming into Shane's office and instantly finding that headstone they were looking for.

Elena tells Damon that Jeremy is at The Grill with Matt. New scene. AGAIN. Back with Bonnie and Shane. Shane tells Bonnie that it doesn't matter if he killed people; Silas could bring them all back. Bonnie thinks he's a lunatic and gets up to leave, rather than questioning him more, like a normal person. Shane hints that something bad is happening to Bonnie's Grams. Sometimes we really just want Bonnie to get over Grams already.

Damon and Elena arrive at The Grill, and Jeremy's instincts tell him to take the tunnel out of there. Damon feels that he must kill Jeremy and deduces that he's been compelled. He warns Elena and then takes off after her brother. Even as Damon hunts Jeremy, he yells warnings to him. Rebekah and Stefan are still in Shane's office, torturing the stranger, who is so committed to keeping his secrets that he bites his own tongue off and them commits suicide. Gross and sad.

Back to Bonnie and the longest, choppiest interrogation ever. She loses it on Shane when he tells her that spirits are torturing her Grams, it's her fault, and that if she cooperates, Grams could come back to life. She uses her powers to crush Shane's hand and start a fire. Her mayor dad rushes in and sees Shane talk her down. Shane tells the mayor that Bonnie could be a powerful witch with training, but without it, she's a ticking time bomb. We love the idea of Bonnie losing control and possibly going dark.

Elena calls Stefan for help, even though she's a freaking vampire now and is fully capable of jumping into the fray herself. Damon tracks Jeremy through the tunnel, warning and mocking him all the way. Damon bites Jeremy in the arm; Jeremy tricks Damon and shoots him in the head. Nice. "Worth a shot" was a cheesy pun though. Damon is super self-sacrificial in this episode, and it's kind of freaking us out. Love it though.

Rebekah goes to Klaus's house to talk to Kol. He's sad that the family is being ripped apart by the cure and that Elijah won't even show his face because their bickering disgusts him. Elijah doesn't do drama. Ha. Rebekah tries to dagger Kol to stop the compulsion on Damon, but he gets the best of her. Klaus saves Rebekah from being daggered (but he also pisses her off) and Kol flees. Damon is still tracking Jeremy, and they are out of the tunnel and in the woods. Jeremy's arm is bleeding profusely and he has to lean up against a tree.

Elena catches up to Damon and tells him to use his love for her to fight the compulsion. After all, Stefan did it once. But Damon couldn't. He does tell Jeremy to shoot him though. Stefan intercepts, cracks his brother's neck, looks at Elena and says, "You're welcome." As much as we hate how Elena and Damon "fell in love" this season, we love what it's doing to Stefan in this episode. We like his Sassy side. It's redeeming him from that Ripper melodrama.

Stefan drains Damon of most of his blood and stashes him in the Salvatore house. Damon is too weak to move. Stefan won't let Elena see Damon. Elena chastises Stefan for hanging out with Rebekah, assuming that he's lashing out because he's hurt. "This isn't you talking," she says. He responds, awesomely, "Sure, it is. You've just never seen me like this. You don't know what I look like when I'm not in love with you." Elena's face tells us that this hurt about as much as Stefan wanted it to.

Bonnie's dad tells her that he's going to get her some help. That sounds ominous. Of course, we have to wait to find out what his next move is. Klaus visits the Gilbert house to tell Jeremy that there are plenty of people to kill and loved ones to threaten, so he and Jeremy would finish their work shortly. Elena has a MUCH better plan though. She says that if Jeremy kills Kol, that's as good as killing hundreds, if not thousands of vamps. Only one more need die. Stefan stops by Rebekah's for some meaningless, self-destructive sex.

We loved the last episode, and this one, while uninteresting in the beginning, set up some things we're at least mildly excited about. Is this show back? Still, the episode jumped around too much. Some of these scenes were 30 seconds long. Is our ADD that bad? That's part of the reason we couldn't get into the beginning of the episode.

Every time something would start grabbing us, the show would move onto another couple of people. It was like a soap opera. You know how in those you only get 1/10th of a conversation and then the soap moves to another argument and then back to the first one for another tenth? Ugh!

Episode grade: B+