The Vampire Diaries “The House Guest” 

Bad show. Bad! No biscuit!

Oh my, y’all. I didn’t start this episode knowing it was the last before the spring hiatus but the penny dropped about halfway through it when there was so! much! going! on! Just a heads up, this is going to be wordy.

No Liz or Tyler in this episode but everybody else was on board, and that didn’t mean good things for most of them. We pick up the morning after the Elijah takedown as Stefan and Elena are blissful and flirty and she’s really actually trying to get him out of the bedroom and off to school until he talks her into five more minutes of smoochies.

Downstairs, Damon is reading when Elena comes in and he immediately flashes to her and slams her into a wall. She stammers out why would he think she’s Katherine when Katherine’s in the tomb. Stefan rounds the corner demanding WTH and then speed races upstairs and slams that Elena into the wall. She begs him to stop and then the Elena from downstairs is revealed to be Katherine, appearing in the doorway to happily declare that it’s getting so easy to pull off the dupe. Elena is appropriately enraged that a) she’s there and b) Damon neglected to mention it.

Caroline and Matt are walking and talking at school and she’s eking out info on Tyler’s last chat with him when he shuts her down with an “I told you how I feel. It’s your move” ultimatum, and asks her to leave him alone if she’s not interested. Caroline drops silent and then tries to say what she needs to and can’t do it and he walks away from her.

Elsewhere in the hall, Bonnie and Jeremy are chatting and when they break to go to class, he starts to kiss her and she stops him. He looks around and says “no Elena,” and she sheepishly kisses him and promises she will talk to Elena/ask permission to date him properly. Elena is off in a classroom with Alaric and he catches her up on the Jenna situation and tells her he gave Uncle Daddy his ring back. He also throws the gauntlet down that it’s Elena’s place to tell Jenna everything, not his, but he hopes she will because as much as he loves Jenna, he can’t be with her and lie.

As Damon and Stefan research things, it’s clear the witches are the key, so Stefan and Bonnie call a summit with Luka and Jonas at the Grill and make the case that they can work together to save Jonas’s daughter (who now has a name, Greta).  Later at the Gilberts, Caroline, Bonnie, and Elena are having a girl’s night when Jenna comes in and asks if it’s an ambush. They say no, invite her to hang, and when she spills her concerns about Alaric, Caroline makes the case that he’s likely protecting her. Jenna says fair enough but that’s not his call.

They decide to head to the Grill because earlier in plot device land, Matt told Caroline that there would be a live band that night. Sidebar: I had an eyeroll moment when they entered the packed restaurant where the band was playing because I don’t want this show to ever try to CW itself with band tie-ins a la OTH. No worries–it was a brief segue that turned into a very sweet scene as Tina covered, when Caroline takes the stage to serenade Matt and he responds by kissing her on stage in front of God and everybody. Too bad it all went to hell about ten minutes later.

After the witch/vamp summit, the warlocks go home and Jonas would rather kill the vamps than work with them and Luka doesn’t agree, so Jonas says he’ll let Elijah handle it. In a supremely BAD IDEA, Jonas teleports Luka into the Salvatores under a spell. Katherine catches on that somebody is in the house, and she witnesses him trying to remove the dagger (all she can see is the dagger being removed by an invisible force). When she has more strength than Elena would in fighting Luka, Jonas realizes she’s not Elena and orders Luka to stake her. He does, she calls to Damon for help and when Damon sees the dagger lifting out of Elijah again, he twigs immediately to what’s happening and opens fire on (an unseen) Luka with a flamethrower. Back in the apartment, where Jonas is sitting across from Luka at the table, Luka bursts into flames and Jonas loses his mind when he can’t bring him back. Kara touched on this, and I agree, that witches as powerful as these two should have realized it wasn’t Elena at the house with Damon.

Prior to the Luka interruption at the Salvatores, Damon was still poring through the Gilbert journals and Katherine was all “bored now, play with me,” but Damon wasn’t interested. He had an opportunity to toast her with the flamethrower and didn’t, to which I ask, “We’re keeping Katherine around because why again?” He asks her outright if she knew the dagger would kill him and she says yes. She could only save one brother with the plan and she chose Stefan. Damon throws her around the room a little and then later re-stakes her after he saves her from Luka. She turns up in his bedroom at the end of the episode and he sends her away. Good boy!

At the Grill, Caroline and Matt have retreated to the ladies room to commence macking on each other. Elena walks in and then backs out and stops Bonnie heading in the same direction. They laugh and are happy about the new development for their friends, so Bonnie takes the opening to ask Elena about Jeremy. She’s surprised and pauses for a minute before she tells Bonnie that Jeremy’s had really sh-t luck of late and he deserves someone as amazing as she is and Bonnie beams. Go get him, honey!

About this time, Jonas comes tearing into the Grill, after felling Stefan at the door of his apartment. He’s looking for Elena, and Bonnie stops him and he goes all Carrie on the joint, starting fires and knocking people out, including Bonnie. Matt intervenes and gets her out of the way. Then Caroline intervenes to save Matt and Jonas drops her. Matt responds to her scream and before he can reach her, Jonas shanks him in the neck with a broken bottle (which makes no sense when he could have dropped him with a spell, but Plot Device). Caroline revives and races to Matt and does the only thing she can do if she wants him to live—she bites her wrist and makes him drink.

When he wakes up at her at her house, she spills everything and he goes immediately to panic and rage and accuses her of Vicki’s death while Caroline is of the mind that they can be together forever now. As Tina wrote, sad sad sad. At the Gilberts, Stefan brings Elena home to Bonnie and Jeremy in the kitchen and asks how long they’ve been home. Not long, they offer.

Elena heads upstairs and is washing her face (reflection, hee) when Jonas appears behind her and she whips around, Katherine-eyed, and bites him. Bonnie comes running and says Katherine didn’t have to kill him. She weeps over him and he revives long enough to grab her. She later tells Jeremy that her powers are restored and she knows how to kill Klaus. Finally, at the end of this ridiculously long night, Elena fishes Jenna out of her ice cream hangover diversion long enough to talk a little bit and then the doorbell rings. Jenna goes to answer it and there’s Isobel. Dun Dun DUN.

So, I liked that Alaric put it on the table that maybe everybody should know the truth and Elena repeated it later to Bonnie and Caroline—everybody they love is in greater peril if they don’t know what they’re up against. We hit on another secret possible maybe way to get rid of Klaus by harnessing the energy of the witch massacre site—we just don’t know exactly where that is yet. There was one brief scene where Damon audibly (within earshot of Katherine) said “no” while nodding yes to show Stefan a passage in one of the journals, so they’re getting warmer. With Matt, he’s essentially a vampire-in-waiting now so I’m going to guess Tyler is going to kill/vamp him because that would have maximum impact on Caroline, but I hope they don’t do that.

Back in April!