The Vampire Diaries “Kill or Be Killed” 

OK, y’all. Apologies for being tardy, but there was A LOT to process this week. I’m going to review it a little bit differently, because while the scene-by-scene is awesome, it was the little OMG moments that made this episode amazing. Please forgive me if you were looking for specific breakdowns on all of the action. First I’ll give you the basic details and then the highlights and the questions.

Cast list alert—no Alaric, Jenna, Bonnie or Matt this week. Carry on.

“Kill and Kill Again” begins with a quick flashback-recap from Mason about the how and the why of him getting his wolf on. He was in Florida, a drunk friend jumped him with a misguided notion that Mason had been two-timing with his girl, Mason was a little too overzealous in defending himself, and his friend died at his hand. Add water and InstaWolf! Back in the present day, Mason concludes his tale for Tyler, who keeps his word (sort of) and shows him the Lockwood floor safe, which doesn’t contain the moonstone (shocker!). Mason accepts him at his word that he doesn’t have it. This will be the first of his big dumb dog moves of the evening.

At the Gilbert house, Elena is giving Jeremy the 411 about the Lockwood curse (because why?) and then Stefan stealths into the bedroom for some smoochies and to discuss continuing their fake spat in public at yet another town gathering (yes, really). They work out their game plan and then agree to be properly standoffish to each other.

At the town gathering, Damon, Mason, and Stefan are all still measuring who’s the bigger bitch when Mason just out and tells Liz that her dear friend Damon is a vamp. One vervain-laced lemonade later, the Salvatore boys are led out into the woods, tranqued, shot, and hauled off to the Lockwood dungeon for dispatching. Thankfully, Caroline catches on to this pretty quickly, kicks Mason’s ass (awesomely), and then eats two of her mom’s deputies. Mama Forbes, who has been slowly leadifying the Salvatores to try to get them to out other vampires, is suddenly struck dumb by the sight of her beautiful daughter vamped out and covered in blood. Damon finishes feeding on the deputies (Stefan begs off partaking) and is ready to snuff Liz, but Caroline, Elena, and Stefan beg him not to, so he backs off. They instead take her back to the Salvatore abode to vervain detox her so they can compel her to forget.

While all this is going on, Tyler has invited Jeremy and a couple of gals over for some underage margarita-ing while mom’s showboating as the mayor (we don’t see her in the episode). Jeremy—dumb nut that he is— drops enough hints about the wolf thing that Tyler attacks him (but doesn’t kill him) and demands to know what he knows, so Jeremy spills all. Then Tyler accidentally pushed one of the dates down the stairs when she tries to play hide and go seek with the moonstone, but he doesn’t kill her either. Really honey, stay home and read.

Back at the Salvatore mansion, Liz bitches that Caroline isn’t her daughter anymore and Damon tells her she is very wrong about that. Caroline confesses to Elena about covering for Katherine and anguishes about losing her mom again. Elena eases her heart by telling her she knew about Katherine and then she holds her friend while she weeps and weeps.

Stefan realizes bunny juice isn’t gonna load him for bear against Katherine so he decides to follow her once-a-day regimen with human blood to build up his strength. Elena freaks out and Damon calls her on it, so she relents, stabs her hand, and offers Stefan a sip of Type E, because they’re partners in this. He drinks from her hand and then they commence with the making up.

At the Lockwood house, Tyler confesses to Mason about the near-miss with the date (but not Jeremy) and hands off the moonstone; Mason is happy but non-committal about its purpose. He leaves the house and heads out to the woods to a parked car. He opens the passenger door and climbs in and sitting in the driver’s seat is Katherine. Yeah, roll that round for a minute—Mason is Gullible Damon 2.0. We then get the rest of the wolf-activating flashback. While Mason is reeling from murdering his friend and the lycanthropy gene is switching to the on position, Katherine rushes up and offers him a comforting embrace and a downright MWAHAHAHA smile behind his back.

Back in the present, she admonishes him about the Salvatore murder attempt and he moves in for a kiss. She stops him and asks about the moonstone. He smiles and produces it. Then she moves in on him (I totally though she would just snap his neck right there) and they start kissing. AND credits.

That’s the top-level gist of what happened. The little takeaways for me were:

• Marguerite MacIntyre— We don’t know a lot about Liz Forbes’ backstory other than that she was divorced by a now-gay husband who’s gone onto have a family with his new companion, and her teenage daughter blames her for that. No trust issues there at all, right? No wonder she is so hardened. I am SO glad that MacIntyre got to bring it. I adored Kyle XY (which was also produced by Julie Plec) and grieved its cancellation. In this episode, MacIntyre finally had scenes that were on par with the heartbreaking work she did as Nicole Trager. She was defensive, happy, fierce, violent, and heartbroken in 44 minutes. (I’d love the show to find a way to work in Chris Olivero , who played Trager daughter Lori’s boyfriend, Declan, too.)
• Candice Accola—what a revelation she is. It’s like they let her ease in as happy-but-manic Caroline during the first season, then just unloaded both barrels of character development on her, and she has stepped up HUGE.
• Nina Dobrev—girlfriend is bringing the heat with three romantic leads. Slut!

Questions:

• Did Mason really think having the Salvatores killed wouldn’t get him killed by Katherine, or has she spun such a tale of hate that he thought he was doing her a solid if he eliminated them?
• Once Liz is compelled, what happens when Mason keeps reinforming her that the Salvatores are vamps—do they have to kidnap and recompel her every week?
•  I’m assuming Katherine went after Mason with the explicit goal of setting him up to kill someone so he’d wolf out, so is he such a big bumb dog (no offense to the dogs I love) that he’s really not figured out he’s the mark in all this?
• How badly will Mason combust when he finally learns that Katherine’s been making a play for Stefan before his sheets are even cool?
• How has Jeremy made it to 16 (prior to the magical undeading ring) when he does the exact opposite of what he is told EVERY TIME with the direct result that he imperils his personal safety?
• Did Liz really not know about the Lockwood tombs?
• Would Caroline truly have been able to Bionic hear everything and hand Mason his ass while only juiced up on bunny?

So much going on. They’re off next week and back on the 21^st. Have a good weekend!