Elena attempts to ignore Damon, while Damon urges Elena to see him. When Tripp fails to elicit information from Enzo, he drives him across the border, but everyone comes to his rescue. Here is a recap of the Vampire Diaries episode “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get.”
Recap:
Upon learning Damon’s back, Elena refuses to see him, so she’s taking an extra shift at the hospital. Alaric requests that she check into why Jo cannot be compelled. Damon shows up at Elena’s dorm, begging her to open the door. When she finally does, she escapes out the window. Watching Jo leave her tea unattended, Elena takes a swig. No vervain. Jo returns and tells Elena to follow her. Jo shows her an empty hospital bed where that girl from the corn maze should be if she hadn’t made a miraculous recovery on the scene. Jo knows what Elena and Alaric are, and Elena knows the only person powerful to block compulsion is a witch. Bingo.
Enzo reminds Matt that he has leverage: Tripp won’t be too pleased to hear that Matt colludes with vampires. Tripp gives Enzo a day to cough up names or they’re going sightseeing in Mystic Falls. Matt comes clean to his friends. Stefan and Caroline find where Tripp’s keeping his vamps, but Enzo is gone. While Matt searches through Tripp’s computer, Sarah joins. She picks open a locked drawer, where Ivy’s phone is. She’s dead, so Matt calls Caroline to warn her since she was Ivy’s last call.
Rummaging through Elena’s dorm, Damon draws himself into one of her photos. Jeremy interrupts to ask about Bonnie, who Damon says wasn’t with him because she found peace. Jeremy’s been paying her phone bill just so he can call to hear her voice. To thank her for her sacrifice, Damon gives Bonnie’s phone a call. He might also miss her a little. Tripp appears and vervain darts Damon.
Alaric finds Jo outside his office, but he doesn’t have time to talk. He has to save his BFF before he dies again. While his friends create roadblocks on the streets leading into Mystic Falls, Damon wakes in the back of Tripp’s van with Enzo. At one roadblock, Elena admits to Caroline that she wants her memories back. Elsewhere, Alaric gives Stefan a speech about having also given up on Damon. Tripp stops at their roadblock, then shoots Alaric with vervain and drives the van across the line with Alaric still hanging on. The vamps start dying, so Stefan rushes over to save them, only to start dying as well. He succeeds in bringing Damon and Enzo back across, and Jo shows up to save Alaric. She seals his wound and does CPR. It looks like he’s a goner, but he jolt awake and knows something’s wrong. He’s human.
Matt tells Sarah that the guys who were living in the Salvatore mansion are vamps. If she wants family, she won’t find it; she’ll only find death and pain. When he can’t cancel Bonnie’s phone without her PIN, Jeremy breaks glass and bangs tables. Alaric apologizes for her memories dying with his vamp-ness, but Elena accepts it as her mistake. She’s glad at least one of them got what they wanted since Alaric hated being a vamp. Having a drink with Stefan, Damon decides he’s tired of hearing how hard it was for Elena. It was also hard for him, so he wants her to now be as miserable as he is. Stefan finds Caroline outside the bar and wants to be friends again. She doesn’t. As Elena unpacks her Damon boxes, Damon knocks. She opens. Tune in next week.
Comments:
– “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” was an emotionally charged episode of The Vampire Diaries that hinged on the characters talking about their feelings instead of having some elaborate drama to solve this week. While saving Damon and Enzo did give them something to do, it still brought about the chance for emotional speeches. That being said, this episode was wildly captivating. It managed to keep the tensions brewing among the characters without feeling drawn out or done just for drama’s sake.
– It’s interesting to think about how Damon and Elena have essentially been given a reset. Their relationship has been such a crucial part of the series that the writers have essentially decided to do it all over again. Although there is still the possibility that her memories will come flooding back with one gaze into Damon’s eyes, it seems too easy for this show for that to be the case.
– You would expect that this episode would have followed up with Bonnie and Kai, but it left us unsatisfied. That being said, Bonnie did play an emotional part in both Jeremy’s and Damon’s stories. One of the amazing aspects about The Vampire Diaries is how much and how realistically the character relationships have evolved since the beginning of the series, especially Bonnie and Damon.
– Stefan almost redeemed himself for abandoning his friend when he risked his own life in this episode to save his brother and the man he turned in to be killed. There was finally a heroic moment for him this season, but it’s still hard not to see it from Caroline’s point of view. One heroic act doesn’t make up for everything.
– Thus far, Sarah has been a peculiar addition to the season, partially because she was doomed to die from the beginning and yet she’s still here, and partially because there is so little about her story that I am interested in and care about.
– I don’t know what kind of bugs the sound department thinks live right outside of Mystic Falls, but their background noise in the roadblock scene between Stefan and Alaric was incredibly distracting. Alaric admitting his own failure to keep believing that there was hope for Damon and his own happiness was such a wonderful moment that was lessened by the overpowering buzz.
– Alaric turning back into a human was an unexpected and welcomed move on the writer’s part, especially in such a random episode. Usually big life changes come in episodes immediately before a hiatus, so it just makes me wonder what other big surprises lie in wait for us. With this one, we will hopefully get to see Alaric being the Alaric we enjoyed in seasons one through three instead of the (albeit justifiably) depressed guy he’s been this season. And now that he’s human, there’s more hope for him and Jo.
– The quotables of the night go to Jo, who’s a character I have thoroughly enjoyed being added to the series. Learning that she’s a witch comes with more questions than it does answers, mostly, does she have any connection to Liv and Luke? It would seem strange to utilize more than one witch this season without having some sort of overlap.
– “I followed you like a crazy stalker. Not one of my finer moments.” – Jo (to Alaric)
– “While I’m sealing this wound, I want you to think about why you tried to compel one of the smartest women on campus to forget about her date with you. A date where I singlehandedly saved dozens of lives without smearing my makeup.” – Jo (to Alaric)
– “I can’t imagine ever loving him, but I also can’t ignore the parts I don’t like just to avoid the truth. How can I make any decisions if I only know half the story?” – Elena
