Posted by Crissy Calhoun | March 3, 2011, 19:59 (EST) | 60 Comments
Category: TV Series

To hold us over during the March hiatus, The House Guest gave us all kinds of goodness — doppelganger hijinks, new magic tricks, proclamations of love, a few final farewells and a hearty welcome home to one of my favorite troublemakers, and fire. Lots and lots of fire.

No Reason to Lie: One minute you’re making out with your girlfriend, the next she’s an evil vampire — or at least you think she is. Katherine’s right: she’s getting really good at being Elena. More than just wearing Elena’s outfits, Katherine proves she’s capable of being useful; she’s willing to use herself as bait in a scheme she came up with to help the gang deal with the seemingly all-powerful Jonas. She’s (relatively) pleasant with Damon — with the exception of a few choice and stinging words about how her favorite Salvatore brother will always be Stefan, something Elena’s been known to remind Damon of from time to time (albeit with very different motivation). Just as Elena’s shown a capacity for deception and manipulation, in The House Guest Katherine shows how powerful an ally she can be — if only they trusted her. For all their bluster, Stefan and Damon do end up trusting Katherine to save Elena when they agree with her plan to take out Jonas. And for once she’s true to her word. Can they trust her to keep Elena safe when it comes to Klaus? Or will Katherine try to use her as leverage for a pardon, like Rose and Trevor had planned?

Know Thy Allies: Katherine and Salvatore brothers aren’t the only uncomfortable allies in this episode. Stefan, the perennial negotiator, arranges a peace talk with the Martins, looking to form a new alliance against Klaus. Though he agrees to it, Jonas has no intention of honoring the alliance, and that choice costs him his son’s life and his own. Keeping true to his alliance with Elijah (and, really, can you blame him?), Jonas’s plan is to bring Elijah back and have him take out their “enemies,” the obstacles in their path — but instead, in a horrifying moment, watches his son die and is unable to save him. Deciding to privilege his daughter’s life and freedom over the welfare of Elena, Bonnie, Matt, or any of the no-name patrons of the Grill, Jonas again chooses the “kill or be killed” way of thinking, refusing to head Bonnie’s pleas to work together. Katherine and company take a similar “it’s us or them” stance when it comes to killing Papa Witch: she says to Bonnie he had to die, and Stefan seems to agree. It’s only Bonnie who expresses some reluctance at taking a life (and even she’s initially more distraught at her powerlessness).

Just as Jonas was unwilling to trust Stefan despite his promise to be a reliable ally, Damon ain’t buying what Katherine’s selling. Calling her a liar and not believing her trusted to cooperative and helpful act, he keeps his information about the burial ground from her and is wary of her motivation for helping with the Jonas situation. He goes so far as to stake her in the gut for her willingness to let him die. At the end of the episode, in a classic Damon-Katherine moment (I love it when they tussle), their roles are beautifully reversed: Damon kicks an awesomely and unapologetically minxy Katherine out of bed. Compare that moment to their encounter in The Return when he was desperate for her love and attention. Damon Salvatore, I am so proud of you. Katherine Pierce, never change.

Team Human: The thing that Caroline’s most afraid of — the thing that made her willing to be Katherine’s minion earlier this season — is Matt being hurt. Her shrieking in anguish as Jonas stabs Matt in the neck with the broken bottle is definitely not a scene I’ll be re-watching any time soon, but it proves how capable Caroline is of doing what has to be done. She overcomes the huge temptation Matt’s gushing neck wound is to her to feed him her blood and saves his life. What Caroline could not have anticipated is his reaction to the news that vampires do indeed exist. Heartbreaking. I love when the show ties in moments from earlier episodes, and here they reached all the way back to the very first episode, when Vicki wakes up in the hospital to say one word to Matt — vampire. It’s painful to watch as Caroline tries to bring Matt back to the place they were only hours earlier, together and in love, while Matt freaks out, thinking his girlfriend may have attacked, or even killed, his sister.

In the earlier conversation between Caroline and Jenna — a clever pairing that allowed them to say to the other what they want to explain to Matt and Alaric respectively — Jenna says that when you love someone, you owe them the truth. To protect someone by concealing the truth is not the right call to make. But that’s precisely what Elena, Alaric, Caroline, and company have been doing, believing they were “doing the right thing” by keeping Jenna and Matt (as well as many others last season) in the dark. But their ignorance of Mystic Falls’ supernatural secrets has seen them get hurt physically and their relationships destroyed by secrets and lies.

Caroline’s hand was forced with Matt: she had no choice but to explain how she brought him back from the brink of death and why her face went all monster-show as she saved him. Alaric’s in a different position — at least for the time being. (Hello, Isobel.) In the previous episode, Alaric made a huge sacrifice in giving up his ring to protect Jenna from Uncle John telling her the truth. Here he proves ever the gentlemen by explaining to Elena that it’s her choice to tell Jenna, not his. His respect for Elena’s relationship with her aunt makes it impossible to be with the woman he loves. If only Jenna knew what we know. And if only he had chosen his words a little more carefully on the porch. Because Isobel very much alive at the Gilbert front door makes Alaric look precisely like the picture Uncle John has painted of him: a total liar. Personally I cannot wait for the Isobel­–Jenna showdown, the evil vampire absentee mother versus the clueless human surrogate mother. And will Elena finally decide Jenna needs to be let in on what’s going on?

With only six episodes left in the season when the show returns on April 7, The House Guest very much felt like the setup for the big finish — Bonnie knows how to kill Klaus, Damon knows where the burial ground is, Katherine’s a whiz at imitating Elena (a skill that just might come in handy), Isobel’s back, and Matt’s world as he knows it has just exploded. To quote Vee, “The rest of the season? It is SO on.”

Compelling Moment: Caroline and Matt’s kiss — the most gleeful, romantic thing that’s ever happened on The Vampire Diaries. And even in that happiest moment you just know everything’s about to go up in flames. Perfection.

The Rules: The body of an Original cannot be destroyed (according to Katherine and Damon’s incineration attempt). If a witch is killed violently, mystical power is left in the place of his or her death. The Witches Martin demonstrate a new kind of spell: a “psychic witch attack,” as Damon calls it. With Jonas grounding him, Luka is able to locate Elijah and, though he’s invisible, manipulate physical objects and be physically harmed. In addition to being able to suck a witch’s power from her, Jonas is able to return those powers as well as perform some sort of psychic transmission of information useful for the season finale.

Foggy Moments:

• Loved the opening scenes’ Katherine-Elena confusion (and how Katherine’s trickery foreshadowed the deadly prank they pulled on Jonas at the end), but it seems a little unlikely that Damon wouldn’t have immediately told Stefan, and Elena, that Katherine’s free from the tomb.
• Not only is Elijah’s body indestructible, so are his clothes! (Missed opportunity for shirtlessness = tragic.)
• There’s no Mystic Pizza in Mystic Falls? (Missed opportunity for cheesy ’80s reference = less tragic.)
• How in the heck did the settlers of Mystic Falls manage to round up a hundred witches and kill them all at once?

Other thoughts & questions as we wait for Know Thy Enemy (EP217):

• “John’s going to end up dead on the kitchen floor if he’s not careful.” Elena of last season would never say that. This season’s don’t-eff-with-me Elena? Totally. Love it.
• What will become of the Grill? Matt mentioned that business is slow, and now there’s some serious fire damage to deal with. If, on top of everything else, Matt loses the Grill . . . ?
• Jonas wears a wedding ring — where is Mrs. Martin? Is she alive? Is she also a witch?
• Was Katherine telling the truth about her deal with John Gilbert? That she had to pick between Stefan and Damon and agree to help with Klaus in order to get her freedom? Or did she make up that story to needle Damon?
• Did anyone else find it slightly unsettling that Jeremy was totally fine with Luka’s death?
• When a witch violently dies, mystical power inhabits the place of his death. Meaning Elena and Jer’s bathroom? Mystical hot spot!
• Jenna says that whatever secret Alaric is keeping from her, she can handle it. Is she ready for the truth? Or when she hears what’s really happening in Mystic Falls, will she head straight for Senor Tequila?
• How helpful will Katherine be with the Klaus situation? Will she share the information she knows or will she guard her secrets as closely as Damon and Stefan guard theirs?

How flipping excited are you for Know Thy Enemy?! As always sound off below, and thank you for being patient with me — it took an inexcusably long time to post on this episode. Until April, my friends!

Crissy Calhoun is the author of Love You to Death: The Unofficial Companion to The Vampire Diaries and is writing a follow-up book that covers season 2 (due out in September 2011). When not obsessively re-watching CW shows, she works as managing editor at ECW Press in Toronto. She blogs on TVD, Gossip Girl, and other random things at crissycalhoun.com and tweets @crissycalhoun.

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