‘The Vampire Diaries’ Top 5 Moments from ‘The Cell’

This season of The Vampire Diaries has been a mess…but a good mess. It’s nowhere near perfect, but if you sit back and just let the episodes play out without putting too much thought into every little detail, it totally works (mostly). There’s a lot of humor, even when the overall episode is still pretty dark, and that’s fun to watch…at least I think it is. At this point, all I ask is that the show entertains me and it’s been doing that (mostly).

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about “The Cell.” It wasn’t my favorite episode of the season because it was a little too slow moving. It took forever in a day to get out the full story of the Augustine Society between Damon’s flashbacks and Wes’ conversation with Aaron. To be honest, I’m still not really sure why it’s important and I don’t really care. From what I understand, they want to control vampires (by pulling out their eyes – so gross) and once upon a time, Elena’s dad was a member.

But this week it was important because they kidnapped Damon for the second time in history. As the flashback showed us, one of his relatives turned him in the first time (rude), but he didn’t totally hate it because he had a friend named Enzo (aka hot guy with a nice accent). If they said what they wanted him for in the present, I missed it because eventually they kidnapped Elena too and her aura sucked all the fun out of the room (can we pause to talk about how she once again made it about her? Damon is trying to tell his story and she’s interrupting to talk about her dad. Ugh, Elena).

So even though it took up the majority of the episode, including the title, I wasn’t overly invested in anything that was happening in the vampire dungeons although it was cool to see Trevor St. John (One Life to Live) as the guy torturing Damon back in the day. It’s too bad we didn’t get to keep him for more than one episode (Add him to the list of Damon’s kills). Anyway, let’s talk about my five favorite moments of the episode:

5. Aaron is a Whitmore

Okay, this wasn’t really that interesting and I can practically feel you guys side-eyeing me right now. But this will come into play later. Aaron tells Elena he’s a Whitmore, which makes a lot of sense as to why Dr. Wes is so invested in him. But after Dr. Wes knocks out Elena, Aaron gets tired of listening about halfway through the story and knocks him out. That’s the first useful thing he’s done and I wanted to applaud him from my couch.

4. Damon goes back to being Damon

Aaron thinks Elena is behind all the vampire murders, including his parents, and holds a gun on her. But Damon confesses that it was actually him. See it turns out that back when he was in the cell the first time, he made a vow to Enzo that he was going to kill almost every member of the Whitmore family. But each generation, he’d leave one behind so that person can carry on the name and make new Whitmore families for him to kill. Elena was horrified and judge-y faced as he explained himself and then Damon confessed to killing Aaron’s parents…a few months ago…when they were together.

Sorry, I’m still laughing at this because it was awesome. Damon kills people. He doesn’t do it in the psycho rippah way his brother does, but he still does it and being with Elena has not made him stop…he’s just hiding it better or not sharing that side of himself or whatever. I approve. The thing about Damon that makes him so great is that he is who he is and he’s not sorry. Elena needs to live with the choice she made. Of course she’s a little busy now being strapped to a vampire experiment table…next to Enzo…surprise, he didn’t die! No one is shocked by this, right?

3. Katherine’s Dear Diary Moment

How awesome was Katherine when she was writing in her diary? It only took about one minute before she resorted to, ‘blah, blah, blah’ and then started complaining that her hand hurt. It was hilarious and it turned out that Stefan was keeping a close eye on her after the suicide attempt. But Katherine was just as concerned about him since she overheard some of his PTSD terror. Stefan didn’t want to talk about it, but Katherine had already invited Caroline over to help…terrorize Stefan by putting him back in his box.

Needless to say the therapy that Caroline found in a textbook didn’t work. Stefan was still freaking out and Katherine was questioning whether or not Caroline and Stefan had ever hooked up. But then Katherine correctly pointed out that Stefan is the hero of the story and it can’t be himself that he needs to save.

2. Katherine and Stefan in the safe

So Katherine’s solution was to get into the safe with Stefan. He pointed out it was dangerous and she reminded him that she was dying anyway so it didn’t matter if he ate her. Stefan started freaking out and getting upset and Katherine continued to talk his hear off (while tapping her nails impatiently against his chest – loved that part). She suggested that what he was really upset about was Damon and Elena and that he wanted to run away and never come back, but he kept finding excuses not to. She believes his trauma is because he’d rather experience the physical pain than the emotional pain.

To further prove her point, Katherine exposed her neck to Stefan. He got his vampire face on, but her words were getting through to him. They kept getting closer and closer and it seemed like they were (finally!) going to kiss and that was when Caroline felt the need to open the box because she thought it was too quiet (terrible timing, Caroline). Stefan got out of the box (and helped Katherine out) and hugged Caroline, but his eyes were on Katherine…

1. STEFAN AND KATHERINE IN FRONT OF THE FIREPLACE

Sorry for the yelling, but not really. You might have caught on to the pattern of this review by now and realized that Stefan and Katherine were my favorite part of the episode so seeing them kiss was like icing on the cake. It’s been building since they were reunited (like two episodes ago, but whatevs). And Katherine admitted that she didn’t really know what she was doing, but Stefan seemed okay with it. I’m definitely okay with it. Vampire Katherine was too selfish for Stefan, but being human again has humbled her. She’s still the same badass bitch, but she’s not quite as self-serving and watching these two lost people come together has been so great.

Assuming none of us are new to TV, we should all probably just admit that this isn’t going to last because Elena will somehow ruin it (we can’t have nice things). But this episode was a win for Team Stefan and Katherine and I’m going to bask in it.

Some lingering questions:

-How did Enzo survive? Did someone from the society survive too or can Augustine vampires withstand fire? Probably a combination – he’s still a prisoner so someone was keeping him one.

-Was Damon’s plan only to kill people named Whitmore or did he go after all the Augustine families? Is he the reason the Gilbert car went off that bridge?

-Is it wrong to hope Elena suffers at least a little before the Salvatore brothers rescue her? She’s been pretty insufferable this season.

Feel free to hit the comments and share your thoughts and theories with us!