Vampire Diaries Episode 18 – Miss Mystic Falls
‘Miss Mystic Falls’, episode 18 of the Vampire Diaries on the CW, begins with a flashy Stefan, zooming up to the high school to pick Elena up in his classic car. Not the typical demeanor that we are used to from Stefan, he usually tries to keep such a low profile….and that’s when we see him opening the trunk of his car, littered with empty blood bags – he’s high on blood.
Bonnie is back, and it’s obvious that things are not ‘business as usual’ between her and Elena. There must be some hard feelings left over from the tomb opening that ended up killing Bonnie’s grandmother. Damon confronts Stefan about his suspiciously upbeat self. Stefan insists that he is ‘clean’ and he walks away. Later, Stefan is down in the basement, opening a big cooler full of blood bags when Damon comments from behind him, ‘well, well, he’s a liar and a thief’.
Oh no, is our Vampire Diaries hero a blood addict?
Damon calls him a ‘closet blood junkie’ but Stefan insists that he has it under control. It’s pretty amusing seeing Damon as the voice of reason and Stefan as the loose cannon – not typical for an episode of the Vampire Diaries. Talk about role reversal!
John stops by to get Damon to go vampire hunting. Damon wants to know what’s really going on, and John tells him that one of the original founders, Johnathan Gilbert, had an invention that was supposedly burned up with the vampires in the church – thought to be lost forever. But now that those vampires in the tomb are released, John thinks the invention is retrievable.
Caroline and Elena are interviewed by the Founder’s committee in preparation for the Mystic Falls beauty pageant. All the participants are taking dancing lessons with their partners, with Stefan acting light-hearted and a bit goofy. Elena notes his good mood, but with her usual obtuseness, she does not associate it with his newly acquired thirst for human blood.
Alaric appears at Elena’s door, preparing to shuttle them to the pageant. Uncle John gets the brush-off from Jenna as she turns down his ride in favor of Alaric. Anna appears at the pageant party, greeted by Damon, who looks mighty fine in his suit and tie. Damon quizzes Anna on the mysterious invention that Uncle John is hunting for, telling her that if they can get John out of town, Anna and Pearl will be able to stay in Mystic Falls.
Damon waylays Elena in the pageant dressing room, telling her about Stefan’s little forays into hospital blood banks. Damon fears that Stefan will endanger their existence in Mystic Falls. Elena feels guilty because she fed him the human blood in the first place that has caused this bloodlust. Stefan walks in on their discussion, looking all the world like an addict trying to convince everyone that he is fine. And, now that he is discovered, he really loses it, taking one of the other contestants out to the woods for a drinkfest. Oh, dear, looks like we may need a Vampire Diaries Intervention.
Jeremy and Anna have a nice long talk at the pageant, it looks like there is going to be a real connection there. Stefan is dragging Amber, the pageant contestant, out to the parking lot, mesmerizing her into coming with him. He’s conflicted about taking her but he says he’s so hungry! He tells her that he wants to kill her. He knows that if he does this, there is no going back, but it’s to much to resist and he bites her neck.
Caroline and Elena are introduced at the pageant, but as Elena comes down the stairs, she sees that Stefan is missing. Damon promptly steps into his place, escorting Elena out to the dance. Good things these guys are from the 1800′s because they don’t need any lessons for the old style of dance they are doing – Damon picks it right up. Looking into each other’s eyes, there is a serious moment there – perhaps he is reliving dances with Katherine from the past. He sure looks happy. See, this is why I love the Vampire Diaries TV show – you never know what might happen with the characters.
Caroline wins the Miss Mystic Falls pageant and she can’t believe she beat Elena. Perhaps now she’ll lose some of that chip on her shoulder. Damon, Elena and Bonnie catch Stefan wildly drinking Amber’s blood and everyone is horrified by his looks – dark vampire face, hunched over with blood drooling out of his mouth. He fights with Damon, but Bonnie puts a spell on him, breaking the blood frenzy that he is in. He runs away. Elena tries to ask Bonnie about what she did to stop Stefan but she refuses to talk with Elena, sending her away. Here’s hoping they reconcile in a future episode of the Vampire Diaries.
Damon returns home to find Pearl and Anna waiting for him. Pearl hands him the mysterious Gilbert invention that John is after. She does not know what it does but she is giving it to Damon as an ‘apology’ for what they did to Stefan in their little torture room. Elena is in Stefan’s room, saying they need to talk. He calls himself a monster, a predator. She says he can’t scare her off – she believes in him. He throws her up against the wall, apologizing, fighting for control as Elena reaches into her pocket for a knife and stabs him. He immediately collapses to the floor.
She and Damon take him down to the basement and lock him in a cell – it looks like he is going to go through de-tox, whether he likes it or not. Elena sits on the floor next to the cell door and Damon joins her which is where we end this episode of the Vampire Diaries. Where will the interesting chemistry between Damon and Elena go? Especially now that Stefan has shown us that he is not the perfect boyfriend she has seen to date. And, of course, will he even trust her again after she shoved a knife in his back and locked him in a cell? With only three episodes left for the Vampire Diaries, every episode counts as season 1 winds down…
Stay tuned for next week’s write-up of the Vampire Diaries episodes.
