The Vampire Diaries - S6E6 - The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get

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The more you ignore me, the closer I get. Quite an apt title for this week’s episode. Damon is eager to see Elena, even knowing that she’s been compelled, but Elena isn’t ready to see him. Damon is convinced that if they can just look at one another, the compulsion will be reversed because their love is just that strong. Elena, on the other hand, is happy without her memories, she’s been able to start fresh and move on. To be fair, all she can remember are all the awful things he’s done, including killing her brother. I’m not surprised that she spends the day avoiding him.

 

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Elena keeps herself busy by taking a shift at the clinic and doing some recon work on Jo, whom she learned from Alaric can’t be compelled.   Jo doesn’t waste any time telling Elena that she knows what’s up. Liam told her about the woman from the corn maze, she knows her and Alaric’s secret, and she’s virtually unfazed by it all. By the end of the day Elena is ready to see Damon and she asks him to meet at her dorm room.

Meanwhile, Matt doesn’t trust Enzo will keep quiet about the rest of the vampire population and decides to let Stefan & Caroline know of his whereabouts. They head out to the woods to find Tripp’s vampire prison shack, and after narrowly avoiding being seen by Tripp’s henchmen, they find that Enzo has been taken somewhere else. Back in Mystic Falls, Matt finds Ivy’s phone in Tripp’s office and notices Caroline is on her recent call list which means it’s safe to assume that Tripp will go looking for her next.

 

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After being ditched by Elena, Damon decides to pay Ric a visit. There’s not too much brotherly love in the air however as Damon lets Ric know just how pissed off he is about Elena’s memory loss and then, in proper Damon fashion, takes off with his bottle of bourbon. He spends the rest of the day moping around Elena’s dorm room until Tripp shows up. He likely was after Caroline but ends up capturing Damon instead.

Once Elena alerts the gang to Damon’s abduction they head out in groups – Elena & Caroline and Stefan & Ric – to block the borders of Mystic Falls. Perhaps shaken by the idea that Damon could die (again) Elena decides that should he make it through this, she would like to have her memories restored.

 

 

Tripp arrives, with Enzo & Damon in the back of his van, to the border where Stefan & Ric are stationed. Ric attempts to bait Tripp into helping him with his “car troubles” but Tripp won’t bite. He tranquilizes Ric, holds him through the driver side window and starts to speed through the border. His van crashes into the parked SUV, spins onto its top and sends Ric flying off to the side. Stefan, who barely escaped his own demise by fleeing from the SUV in the nick of time, valiantly crosses the border to free Enzo & Damon from the van. Tripp manages to run away without being noticed.

Jo, who had been following Ric, runs to his aid and prevents him from dying. Though this means that he will no longer be a vampire, something he undoubtedly wished for, it also means that he’ll be incapable of things like reversing compulsion. Elena assures Ric that she’s just happy he made it out alive. That she’s prepared to see Damon with the all the knowledge she has and doesn’t have and trust how she feels about him. We finally see the ill-fated lovers reunite, but we’ll have to wait until next week to see whether the feelings are reignited for Elena.

The Good

• I knew as soon as Jeremy told Damon that Bonnie’s cell phone was being paid for we were going to get a phone call scene from him, but I couldn’t have guessed how sweet it would be! I think the writers made it very explicit that Damon is grateful to Bonnie for reuniting him with Elena, meaning that a romance resulting in the portmanteau “Bamon” is unlikely to happen. While I’m disappointed we didn’t get a little more heat between the dynamic-duo back in the retro realm (their chemistry and quick-witted banter is always on-point), I’m looking forward to the inevitably entertaining friendship that they are building up.
• I’m pleased with how Caroline dealt with Stefan. He is quickly becoming my least favorite character and that’s saying something considering my long-standing dislike for Tyler Lockwood. Caroline has given Stefan plenty of opportunities to apologize and fix the problems between them and he has literally walked away from her attempts every time. Caroline deserves better, hopefully this was the wake-up call that Stefan needed.

 

 

The Bad

• Why would Damon & Stefan lie about Bonnie? When has keeping a secret ever worked out for the Mystic Falls gang? Never, that’s when! It makes complete sense that Bonnie would have sacrificed herself to send Damon home; Bonnie has always been compassionate and selfless when she wants to help her friends. Even if her and Damon had a rocky relationship, she did this for Elena & Stefan and I think the gang would understand that. Instead, Jeremy is eventually going to figure out the PIN to Bonnie’s cell, listen to the voicemail from Damon and shit will hit the fan. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to tell the gang where he and Bonnie had been and rally the troops to work towards helping her return? That’s just the kind of mission that these guys live for! Here’s hoping Damon doesn’t give up on getting his 90’s BFF back home.
• Speaking of Bonnie, this episode seriously suffered without her. I hope we get extra Bennett witch appearances next week to make up for it.

 

 

The Awesome

• Jo confronting Elena head-on at the clinic was excellent! It was fairly obvious that she would either know about vampires or have some sort of connection to the supernatural, so I’m happy to see this mystery solved and out of the way. I dig the way she was so reasonable about the whole situation: the fact that Elena saved the woman from the corn maze instead of feeding from her was enough to convince Jo that there was no cause for immediate concern. Her character is quickly becoming one of my favorite new faces on TVD. She’s intelligent, quick-witted and I love her no-nonsense attitude! By process of elimination – well, mostly just by ruling out vervain – we learn that Jo is unable to be compelled because she is a witch. It was very interesting how reserved she was with this information when Elena questioned her about it. It leads me to believe that she has a rather unsavory relationship to her witchy-ness. I have a strong suspicion that Jo is linked to Kai and the Gemini Coven. She may be the sister that Kai spared!
• The cold open, though a tiny bit gruesome, was pretty exciting. I wasn’t a huge fan of Ivy’s character but I thought the actress did a great job portraying complete confusion and absolute horror at what was happening. It was eerie seeing a man’s throat slashed out of thin air, a man shot in the head without a visible gun, and Ivy’s neck snapping seemingly all on its own, all the while hearing some jolly country music in the background.

Thoughts on Compulsion

How come Elena’s memories weren’t restored when Alaric became human? Remember a few seasons ago when original vampire Kol compelled Damon to kill Jeremy? When Kol dies, the compulsion is broken. Wouldn’t it logically follow that the same would happen in this situation? Even though Alaric isn’t dead, the magic that kept him “alive” as a vampire is no longer in effect and it would stand to reason that the rest of the magic he wielded would disappear as well.

Also, couldn’t Elena just take a quick hop over the Mystic Falls border and get her memories back or does that only work with humans? Ok, ok, I realize that asking Elena to do this also puts her life in jeopardy but couldn’t she bring along a human friend to push her back over if things get too real? Just saying!