Vampire Diaries – S04E18 – American Gothic

previously, on The Vampire Diaries…

Rebekah: Elena Consuela Gilbert, you get your pert little butt back in this car right this instant!

Elena Gilbert: Chill out, Rebekah! I have to pee!

Rebekah: Okay, two things. One, we stopped at a gas station just ten minutes ago, and you could have peed there. Two, you’re a vampire, and you don’t even pee.

Elena Gilbert: Okay, so be “pee” I meant “tear out an innocent bystander’s throat in the middle of the sidewalk in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses, thereby demonstrating exactly how many shits I do not give.”

Rebekah: And I suppose you’ve forgotten all about our plan to track down Katherine, steal the cure, preserve your immortality and get me pregnant?

Elena Gilbert: Hey, maybe we’ll find a clue to Katherine’s whereabouts here in town!

Rebekah: Oh come on, the odds of running into someone who even knows who Katherine is in this random podunk town are about a million to–

Lanie: Hi Katherine! Good to see you again! Would you care for a quick sip from my cephalic vein? Have you picked up any other supernatural trinkets you’d like me to hide in my sock drawer? Any dastardly plans I can assist you with and then immediately forget?

Rebekah: …Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me.

Stefan Salvatore: Hey Damon, is that your car on the side of the road?

Damon Salvatore: Shut up.

Stefan Salvatore: It looks almost like it ran out of gas and someone just dumped it here!

Damon Salvatore: Shut up.

Stefan Salvatore: Tell me again how Elena and Rebekah stole it from you?

Damon Salvatore: Shut up.

Stefan Salvatore: Something about you thinking you were so much smarter than them, because you knew they were playing you, but it turns out they knew that you knew that they were playing you, and were playing you by not playing you until they played you? And then broke your neck?

Damon Salvatore: Shut. Up.

Stefan Salvatore: Oh well, at least you didn’t give them all of the information you have on Katherine, who is our only lead to the cure, which is out only chance of getting Elena back to her lovable old agency-free self.

Damon Salvatore: Stefan, if you don’t shut the fuck up I swear on the grave of Giuseppe Salvatore that I will stake you with your own femur.

Stefan Salvatore: Femur? Your femur must be so sore after you had to walk home all the way from New York City because you lost a fight to a girl and she stole your car!

Klaus: You know what sucks? The fact that it’s April and New York is still getting snow! You know what else sucks? Getting a Magic Stick of Supernatural Slaughter jammed into your ribs by an undead zombie vampire necromancer college professor!

Caroline Forbes: Aw, Klaus! You look so sad and afraid and alone! I should help pull the stake out of your back, and then take off all of your clothes, and then give you a sponge bath, but that would probably get my clothes all wet, so I’d have to take them off, and then we’d both be naked and alone and togther and who knows what would happen then!

Klaus: :-)=

Caroline Forbes: Just kidding, I’m totally Silas. Get me the cure or next time I won’t tell you I’m a dude until after you’ve done stuff.

Klaus: :-(=

Caroline Forbes: And then I’ll tell Stefan you’re cheating on him.

Klaus: You bastard!

Elena Gilbert: Hi Mr. Mailman! I was wondering if I got any mail today!

Mailman Mikey: Um, not since you left her like thirty seconds ago.

Elena Gilbert: I was here thirty seconds ago? You know what that means!

Rebekah: That we should split up, giving Katherine the chance to attack and kill you while I am otherwise occupied?

Katherine Pierce: :-)=

Rebekah: Yeah, that’s a stupid plan. I’m totally going to hang out here and wait for her to show herself, then use my overwhelming physical superiority to force her to lead us to the cure.

Katherine Pierce: :-(=

Katherine Pierce: So I suppose you’re here to get revenge for the impromptu chiropractic adjustment I gave your brother?

Elena Gilbert: What? Who? Oh that dead guy I burned down along with my house and everything else I’ve ever known or loved. Yeah, no, over it.

Katherine Pierce: Wait, you switched off your humanity? Hot.

Rebekah: That’s right, she switched off her humanity … and switched on your product placement iPhone! Let’s just see what you have scheduled for today!

Katherine Pierce’ iCal:

12:30pm – Compell entire town
12:45pm – Eat comely yet airheaded girl. Take video. Upload to YouTube.
1:30pm – Stash cure in vervain-filled fish tank
2:00pm – Hot sex with Elijah
2:02pm – Jesus, already?
2:10pm – Trick the Salvatores into trusting me
2:15pm – Curse my sudden yet inevitable betrayal
3:00pm – Zumba
4:00pm – Delete evil plan from iPhone Very Important

Caroline Forbes: Okay Klaus, I got your 47 million text messages, email, and carrier pigeons. WTF do you want?

Klaus: I want you to leave me the hell alone!

Caroline Forbes: Okay, I don’t know if this is a new way of flirting, but it sucks and I have a prom to plan, so–

Klaus: Please love me and care for me and wash me and maybe pull the Magic Stick of Supernatural Slaughter out of my ass back?

Caroline Forbes: And I’m going to help you because …?

Klaus: Because if I die so do you, Elena, Stefan, Damon, and one third of the world’s remaining vampire population?

Caroline Forbes: Good point. Lemme get some pliars.

Damon Salvatore: Hey Stefan, pull over! I have to pee!

Stefan Salvatore: Okay, two things. One, we stopped at a gas station just ten minutes ago, and you could have peed there. Two, you’re a vampire, and you don’t even pee.

Damon Salvatore: Okay, by “pee” I mean “totally don’t even feed on any of the town’s hot gils, because even though Elena broke my neck I’ve still got a boner for her the size of a telephone pole.”

Stefan Salvatore: Well then shouldn’t we hurry up and find her?

Damon Salvatore: Hey, maybe we’ll find a clue to Katherine’s whereabouts here in town!

Stefan Salvatore: Oh come on, the odds of running into someone who even knows who Katherine is in this random podunk town are about a million to–

Damon Salvatore: Look, a Porche mini van! Only someone as twisted and evil as Evilena would drive something so tacky!

Stefan Salvatore: Egads! You’re right!

Elena Gilbert: Okay, I’m ready to go pretend to be Katherine and learn all of the dark, intricate secrets of her vile, wicked plan!

Katherine Pierce: It’ll never work, you know.

Elena Gilbert: Oh yeah? And why not?

Katherine Pierce: Well for one, you’re wearing underwear. That’s a dead giveaway.

Rebekah: Also your voice needs to be throatier and more man-like. Almost as if your voicebox has been damaged by five hundred years of deep throat–

Katherine Pierce: Deep throated singing! I try to hit a baritone when I sing, and it’s hell on my vocal cords.

Rebekah: So Katherine, I have to admit that I’m kind of jealous! You have this innate ability to control men’s minds!

Katherine Pierce: Um, so do you.

Rebekah: Well yeah, but I have to use compulsion! You can just use your vagina!

Stefan Salvatore: Hi guys!

Damon Salvatore: Fancy meeting you here!

Katherine Pierce: Speaking of vaginas …

Elijah: Hi Katherine! Let’s–

Millions of Girls Across the Nation: Squee!

Elijah: –Have lots of tawdry sex before I have a chance to realize who you are!

Elena Gilbert: Tee hee hee okay!

Elijah: Just kidding! You’re totaly wearing underwear, and my Katerina would never sully herself with such garments!

Katherine Pierce: So now that Elena’s dead, do you guys want to go see a movie or something?

Stefan Salvatore: Wait, what are you talking about?

Katherine Pierce: Oh nothing, it’s just that the “friend” Elena went to meet is Elijah, and by “meet” I mean “offend by trying to fool,” and by “friend” I mean “friend”.

Damon Salvatore: Ew!

Stefan Salvatore: Gross!

Rebekah: Oh come on now!

Katherine Pierce: Oh please, like every single person at this table hasn’t spent the night between my legs.

Damon Salvatore: Good point.

Stefan Salvatore: That’s fair.

Rebekah: …I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Katherine Pierce: Come on Rebekah, this is a safe space. You can share.

Caroline Forbes: So I can’t see any shards of the Slaughter Stick, but digging around inside your body with a pair of pliars is so much fin that I’m willing to keep looking!

Klaus: I am ever so glad I asked you to do this.

Stefan Salvatore (on the phone): Hi Elijah! Damon and I teamed up with Rebekah and captured Katherine, and now we’d like to make a deal!

Elijah (on the phone): You want to trade the Cure for Elena’s safety?

Stefan Salvatore (on the phone): Actually we were going to get you to pay our dinner tab, but your idea is way better.

Elena Gilbert: Dude, seriously? Katherine?

Elijah: Babe, have you looked in a mirror? Because I am hitting that like the fist of an angry god, every night.

Elena Gilbert: Oh yeah, kind of like Katherine hit my brother, shattering his spine and ending the career and life of a promising young vampire slayer.

Elijah: …I was not until this moment privy to that particular fact.

Damon Salvatore: Oh my word! I was totally going to give you the cure, but in an unforeseeable turn of events, someone has come here and stolen it!

Rebekah: So do we torture it out of her, or just kill her?

Damon Salvatore: Or we could just pull it out of this fish tank, which has no fish.

Katherine Pierce: But it does have several tons of vervain!

Damon Salvatore: …I hate you so much.

Katherine Pierce: Super Katherine face dunking Damon in the battery acid powers activate!

Rebekah: Hi Katherine! Still massively more powerful than you, so–

Katherine Pierce: Super Katherine tossing the cure this way and running like a mother fucker that way powers activate!

Damon Salvatore: Okay Rebekah, let’s talk about this like nice, rational–

Rebekah: Chug! Chug! Chug!

Damon Salvatore: …Shit.

Caroline Forbes: Okay, let’s make a deal! I’ll save your life if you spare Tyler’s!

Klaus: I have a better idea! Why don’t you save my life because I already saved yours! Twice!

Caroline Forbes: It doesn’t count as saving my life when you’re the asshole who actually put my life in danger with your poison death fangs!

Klaus: You are such a stubborn whore!

Caroline Forbes: You are such an insufferable bastard!

Klaus: We should have tons of hate sex!

Caroline Forbes: Hey, why aren’t you writing around in pain anymore?

Klaus: Oh yeah, that. Turns out the stake thing was all a compulsion cast by Silas.

Caroline Forbes: Well then I guess I’ll get back to planning the prom and–

Klaus: But speaking of vampires shoving their stakes into other vampire’s bodies …

Caroline Forbes: You are the grossest thing in the world, and I am counting the fact that Elena wanders around Castle Salvatore fully nude no matter who’s around in that statement.

Stefan Salvatore: Damon Goddamn Salvatore! How could you let Rebekah take the cure?

Damon Salvatore: Sorry asshole, I didn’t have a pony to distract the ancient, immensely powerful hell beast from doing whatever the hell she wanted. Prick.

Elena Gilbert: So did you miss the part where sweet, innocent Katerina became a heartless, remorseless engine of death and misery?

Elijah: Of course not! But just as I told you that your innocence was a gift that must be cherished and protected–

Elena Gilbert: Oh yeah! In that letter than I burned to ash along with my house and my brother! Yeah, I don’t really–

Katherine Pierce: Shut up until someone snaps your neck? Happy to help!

Rebekah: I’m alive! I’m human! I can have babies!

Damon Salvatore: I can kill you with this letter opener!

Rebekah: I can catch your deadly missile out of the air, and heal the cut on my palm withing mere moments!

Damon Salvatore: …Yes, yes you can. Which was my plan all along. Because I totally knew you were still a vampire, and that my completely faux assault would fail to harm you. Indeed.

Elijah: So Katherine, Elena’s little story of chiropractic malpractice leads me to believe that you quite possible see me as nothing more than a means of freeing yourself from my brother’s wrath.

Katherine Pierce: What? Of course not! You’re also a means of hot, commitment-free sex.

Katherine Pierce: Hi Lanie! I just stopped by to retrieve that thing I asked you to hold on to!

Lanie: You mean that funny vibrating stake thingie? Because I’ve been playing around with it and I just don’t understand how you’re going to kill a vampire with that thing …

Katherine Pierce: Um, no, I mean the other package, the one that turns immortals back into humans and Gilberts back into fun vacuums.

Lanie: Oh! I have that in my underwear drawer.

Katherine Pierce: Huh. You know, if I wore underwear, I’d have a place to … nah.

Katherine Pierce: Hi Elijah! I’ve done a lot of soul searching, and I’ve decided you’re right! I’ve been running so long that I don’t remember who I am anymore, but I want to find out!

Elijah: Katerina, that is excellent news! I–

Katherine Pierce: And the best way to do that is naked, on my back, and covered in a fine sheen of sweat!

Elijah: Katerina, I don’t–no, you know what? That sounds like an excellent plan.

Rebekah: Hi Elijah! Nice cure you’ve got there! Now what say you help me make a baby!

Elijah: Rebekah, for shame! I am your brother, of your very own blood, and it would be a scandal unheard of for us to–

Rebekah: I just meant give me the cure so I can become human and bang that cute homeless busboy at the Grill. God.

Klaus (on the phone): Oh, you do? Great. What’s that? You gave it to Elijah? And he’s on his way here? Well then. That is almost exactly my worst nightmare. Thanks for sharing.

Caroline Forbes: Okay Klaus, I finished cleaning all of the little pieces and splashed of you out of the carpet. You know my guidence concilor told me that this compulsion to clean everything in sight, even when it involves corpses in other people’s homes, might be a sign of OCD, but I don’t buy that, do you?

Klaus: OCD? Obsessive Klaus Disorder?

Caroline Forbes: … You name doesn’t even start with a ‘C’.

Stefan Salvatore: You know what I realized? That you and I keep living the same plot over and over again! Falling for the same girl, fighting over her, realizing she’s terrible for both of us, watching our choices cause the death of hundreds of innocents …

Damon Salvatore: You’re right! And you know what we should do about it?

Stefan Salvatore: Track down Elijah, steal the cure from him, force Elena to take it, make her become boring, whiny, and afraid again, and basically repeat the last three seasons over and over again until she dies a normal human death and we find another high school girl to stalk?

Damon Salvatore: Exactly!

Elena Gilbert: Hi guys, thanks for stopping by. I just wanted to let you know that I like being a vampire, and I have no intention of becoming human again, no matter what you say or do. I am my own person, capable of making my own choices.

Damon Salvatore: Those words all sound familiar …

Stefan Salvatore: Yeah, I just don’t know that they mean when she says them in that order.

Elena Gilbert: And if you keep pushing the issue, there will be consequences. For example–

Wendy the Waitress: Hi guys! Can I get you a fresh cup of–

Elena Gilbert: Super Elena neck snapping powers activate!

Stefan Salvatore: Elena! I can’t believe you did that!

Elena Gilbert: I warned you there would be consequences. If you keep trying to force the cure on me, I swear to God I will murder everyone who even thinks about pouring you a beverage.

Damon Salvatore: Elena! No!

Elena Gilbert: That’s right. No coffee. No whiskey. Not even tap water at the grill. You’ll be forced to pour your own drinks, like poor people!

Stefan Salvatore: I can’t believe this!

Damon Salvatore: We have truly lost her!

The Plot: Thickens.

Sorry this was so late. I was traveling all weekend–celebrating the Zombie Messiah with family who take the whole thing way more seriously than I do–and my real-life workload hasn’t left me with a whole lot of time for writing.

I love that Katherine has an entire town of blood sluts lined up, ready and willing to pop a vein for her at a moment’s notice. That is so totally her. It also speaks to how powerful compulsion is–and/or how powerful Katherine is. She’s got an entire town under her spell, and it doesn’t seem to be an effort at all.

Watching Nina Dobrev play a character doing an impression of Nina Dobrev playing a character is pretty much the best thing I’ve ever seen. That alone was worth the price of admission.

Elijah was fantastic, as always, and got some great lines. “Complications speaking” was fantastic, but “if you hurt Katherine, I will descend upon Elena” was downright chilling. There’s a tendency to forget just how much of a badass Elijah really is, or how everyone, Katherien included, pissed themselves at the mere mention of his name a few seasons ago.

I know that it’s completely impossible, and Nina Dobrev would kill herself, but I would love for Katherine to be a regular on The Originals. I love the interplay between her and Elijah.

I’m glad that Elena finally called the Salvatores on their controlling bullshit. And I’m also glad that she punctuated her point by murdering someone right in front of them. She is a terrific bad guy, and I hope they keep this up. It’s also interesting to see the role reversal between her and Katherine … Katherine is on her way back toward her humanity, while Elena is actively running from it.

I <3 Evilena.

And now, back to work on Scion …