The Vampire Diaries – Recap & Review – As I Lay Dying

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The Vampire Diaries
As I Lay Dying

Original Air Date: May 12, 2011

Meg – Staff Writer
meg@thetwocentscorp.com

Last week’s episode made me cry, gasp, and—to the extreme confusion of my neighbors (sorry!) repeatedly scream “Nooooo!” I almost wish that the season had ended then. It wasn’t that the finale was a bad episode; it was just that it was a lot more subdued than the frenzied awesomeness of “The Sun Also Rises.” So, after the “sound and the fury” of last week (hey, if they can superficially invoke Faulkner, so can I), the season finale felt like a denouement.

Regardless, “As I Lay Dying” was still a darn good episode, leaving us with one hell of a “WTF?!” moment to obsess over during the long summer months ahead.

(Un)Dead Man Walking
Preparing to shed his (im)mortal coil, Damon goes to make amends with Elena. Sadly, there’s really no Hallmark card or thematic apology fruit basket for “sorry I almost turned you into a vampire against your will. And for that time I kinda sorta killed your brother. And your uncle/father. And…”

Damon begs Elena for forgiveness, but she tells him she needs a lot more time. To his credit, Damon doesn’t say, “right, but could you speed that up, since I’m dying in like an hour?”

Damon skips over Denial, Anger, and Bargaining and goes straight to Depression (to be fair, I don’t think the Kubler-Ross methodology was designed for the undead). He slips off his protective ring and gingerly steps into the sunlight. I couldn’t tell if he was genuinely trying to end himself—because that would be so like Damon, to insist on going out with a sizzle, instead of an undignified whimper—or if he was just trying to feel something. Before his skin starts looking like my Saturday morning bacon, Damon is tackled to the ground by Stefan. I swear, it’s as if Stefan has some sort of Lassie-like sixth sense for people in peril. He throws Damon in the basement dungeon (I seriously need to get one of those), saying “you’re not dying today.”

Kicking off the Save Damon campaign, Stefan and Bonnie go to the House of 100 Witches to see if the spirits will help. For her trouble, Bonnie gets possessed by Emily, who is clearly still bitter (I guess being burned at the stake will do that to you). Bonnie and Stefan are kicked out of the house, but not before Bonnie hears witchy whispery echoes of “Klaus.”

Stefan thinks it’s a great idea for him to go and knock on the door of the clearly insane, gleefully sadistic vampire who told him – just last episode – “I have plans for you.” To his credit, however, before running blindly into certain danger, Stefan goes and tells Elena that Damon is dying and exactly what he plans to do about it. This may have been a minor scene, but I loved it. I hate when hero-types hide things from their loved ones – the rationale is always “I wanted to spare you pain.” I think that is completely unfair to the other person. Yes, Stefan has made up his mind, but I think it’s a testament to Stefan’s respect for Elena that he tells her exactly what he is planning on doing.

Stefan sends Elena to Casa Salvatore, all “hey – while I go talk to the murderous sociopath, why don’t you go alone to my house. To cheerlead for my rabid brother who is likely having antebellum hallucinations of the saucy minx who looks like you!” I find this weird, considering the last time Elena was alone with a vampire descending into madness, she was almost murdered. Repeatedly.

Stefan claims that he needs to do whatever he can to save Damon because it’s his fault that Damon’s a vampire. I think the situation is even simpler than that. It’s not about guilt—it’s about love. As responsible as Stefan may feel for Damon, I think it’s not duty that’s motivating him, it’s love. After decades of discord, Stefan finally feels he has his brother back and he doesn’t want to let that go.

The Alaric-Damon bromance that I missed so much last episode is reinvigorated, with Ric keeping watch over an increasingly mouthy Damon. Ric gives him blood and company, while Damon tries to push him away, talking about how he turned Ric’s wife into a vampire and got his girlfriend killed, so Ric doesn’t really owe him any favors.

Klaus and Stefan
Klaus wakes up naked. And yeah, it’s a nice sight – but I’ve been spoiled by all of the Somerhalder shirtlessness. Klaus prattles on about how he’s a big bad (wolf) now and how he remembers all of his kills and blah blah murderousexhilarationfishcakes. Meanwhile, Elijah is still waiting patiently for his brother to give some details on the whole “just kidding, I never buried our family at sea!” thing Klaus was going on about last episode.

I love watching Elijah during these scenes – he’s got a vulnerability and an uncertainty that he doesn’t show when he’s interacting with anyone else. He gently reminds Klaus that he could have killed him, but that he spared his life. Klaus dismisses this and tells him to hold his metaphorical horses and that he’ll tell him everything in due time. Hmmm… can we get a ballpark on that? Time is a wee bit relative when you’re, you know, immortal.

We get a nice parallel between the two sets of brothers, when Stefan goes to Klaus to ask for help. Klaus blithely tells Stefan that he needs to help his own brother first. Whereas, Stefan’s version of helping is to Nancy Drew his way through some clues, Klaus’ version of helping is stabbing his brother through the heart with the ash-tree dagger. While my gut tells me to despair, I’m ultimately comforted knowing that Elijah has already come back from this sort of death before. There is hope!

Feeling awfully stabby today, Klaus turns on Stefan, calling him “just shy of useless.” That may be true, but he’s still very pretty. Surely, he has some use! Klaus says that he heard about how Stefan was such a BAMF in his heyday (eh, considering it was mostly Stefan preying on mopey waifs in corsets, I’m not sure if that’s technically BAMF behavior) and how he could really use someone like that on his evil overlord payroll. He even says, that Stefan “would have made a hell of a wingman.” Hmm… this is hitting a little too close to Spike and Angelus territory for me. You want him to be evil again so that… you can have a friend? I think Dale Carnegie might have some advice for you.

Revealing that his own hybrid (Vampwolf? Werepire?) blood is the cure to the wolf bite, Klaus gamely siphons his blood into a convenient little vial. Sometimes I think this show is sponsored by the world phlebotomy association.

With a Cheshire grin, Klaus tells Stefan that all he has to do in exchange for the cure is to… sit down, take a load off, and have a nice drink of blooooood. Stefan agrees and starts disappointing his vampire AA sponsors by going off the wagon, big time. Klaus seems creepily turned on by this whole mess. Since Mystic Falls is never lacking in helpless blondes, Klaus seals the deal with Stefan by feeding him one.

Meanwhile in Mystic Falls
Dear Mystic Falls,
Please stop hosting events.
Love, Meg.

Seriously. How has nobody in this town noticed that every single time there is some sort of community event, the town’s population goes down by 3%? Sigh. But since nobody listens to me, Mystic Falls goes ahead and hosts a “Gone with the Wind” movie night.

Elena forces Jeremy to accompany her to the movie night, desperate for a break from reality. Considering that “Gone with the Wind” seems to think slavery was a delightful little jaunt, I’d say that’s probably a good choice, if they’re looking for a vacation from reality.

Caroline joins them with a picnic and tries to inspire confidence by telling them to take a page from Scarlet. Erm… Caroline, their stand-in parents just died horribly, I don’t think making curtain dresses is really going to help. The gang barely makes it through the credits sequence, however, before the arrival of Trouble (the capital “T” is for “terminally ill vampire on the loose”).

Sheriff Forbes gets pressured into SWAT raiding the Salvatore mansion. She apprehends Elena, locks Ric in the cellar, and –because the plot apparently requires her to be stupid right now—waltzes into Damon’s dungeon without shooting him with vervain. For her trouble, she gets slammed into a wall and Damon escapes.

The Sheriff follows Damon to the grill, where Jeremy is trying to help him out. Sheriff Forbes has her own version of “helping” and fires a shot at Damon—a shot that hits Jeremy square in the chest. Woah, I did not see that coming. How many times has that poor kid died?

Bonnie whisks Jeremy away to her basement o’ candles and grimoires. She begs her witchy ancestors to give her the power to save him. Bonnie is ultimately able to bring him back, but is warned by the whispering witches that “there will be consequences.”

Caroline and her mother have an overdue heart-to-heart. I love these two actresses—they play off each other so well. Caroline begs her mother not to be afraid of her. They end the scene with tears and hugging, but I’m not certain that the battle is entirely over for them.

Death Becomes Him
As he descends further into the same madness that claimed Rose, Damon starts having hallucinations of Katherine. Even in flashbacks, she’s such a tramp. Elena ruins his sexy corset-removing recollections by being a total hallucinatory buzzkill. When he later remembers an encounter with Katherine in which he first drank her blood, Damon gets confused and thinks Elena is Katherine. Leading him to take a big bite out of her neck. Homegirl should invest in some turtlenecks.

Damon overpowers Elena, as she cries that he’s hurting her. Not to twice invoke the Buffy pantheon, but I was really worried that this would take us into Spike-Buffy territory.

Elena puts Damon to bed and lies down with him, almost exactly mirroring how Damon cradled Rose before she died. Damon— looking like Tuberculosis Jones—tells Elena to get away from him. I’m about to rag on him for breaking out of his dungeon and searching through the town… just to tell her to stay away. But then I remember the poor guy’s dying, so…

Feverish, Damon talks about how he was wrong for choosing to love Katherine and that he deserves to die for everything that he’s done. Damon tells Elena that “If I had chosen differently, I wouldn’t have met you. I’m so sorry, for so many things. I know it will always be Stefan, but I love you. You should know that.” Dude, everyone knows that.

Elena forgives him and kisses him. Their moment is interrupted by Katherine, bringing the vial of Klaus’ blood. Kat tells Damon that she could have run, but that she chose to save him because she owed him. After explaining that Stefan gave himself to Klaus in exchange for the cure, Katherine leaves, telling Elena, “it’s okay to love them both. I did.”

In an awesome ending, Jeremy discovers that although he “cheated” death, he may not have come back entirely right. He wakes up in the middle of the night to find Anna and Vicky staring at him. So… he sees dead people now?

What a great ending! I can’t wait to see what exactly Jeremy’s ghosts of girlfriends past shtick means. While this episode was quieter and less “what the—holy! What?!” than last week, it was still pretty good. There wasn’t too much suspense over the characters in peril, though, since we knew they weren’t going to kill Damon and since killing Jeremy would have just been cruel, given that Elena would have been the last Gilbert standing. I would have liked Damon’s cure to have been something a bit more complicated than magical hybrid blood. Minor quibbles aside, however, I think things are set up well for next season. What did you think of the finale? What’s on your wish list for next season?