Posted by Crissy Calhoun | April 17, 2011, 17:08 (EST) | 114 Comments
Category: TV Series

That was one well-decorated high school gymnasium. Mystic Falls loves to go all out for its many events but the only one from our gang who truly got into the spirit was Damon, dancing up a storm in his leather pants while the rest were as grim as if they headed to their own funeral — and with good reason.

With the house in her name, the boys agreeing to follow her lead, and Bonnie armed with super witch power, Elena is in better and peppier spirits at the beginning of The Last Dance than we’ve seen her in ages (ever?), but once Klaus announces his presence (via Dana) and the abstract big-bad becomes a real viable threat, she deflates. And what she doesn’t yet know is that the things that were making her feel secure and protected are not surefire or free from complications: Klaus can get into the house as Alaric, Damon will ignore her wishes, and Bonnie will die if she kills Klaus.

Torn between his loyalty to his girlfriend and his need to save her life and his obligation to tell Elena the truth and also needing to save her life, Jeremy finds himself in an impossible situation. He’s lost his parents and Vicki and Anna and he doesn’t want to lose Bonnie or Elena. Bonnie lies to him, trying to convince him that she won’t necessarily die, but he doesn’t believe her. He finally comes clean with Stefan, unable to keep such a big secret for any longer. Just as freaked out as Jeremy, Matt manages to pull off his deception with Caroline. While the rest of the students choose counter-culture costumes, Caroline opts for Jackie and JFK for her and Matt. Though she picks up on Liz’s and Matt’s moments of awkwardness, she believes what they tell her: Matt’s shy to kiss her in front of the Sheriff; he stares at her oddly because of how pretty she looks; Liz is just overwhelmed with work stress. What will Liz decide to do with the information she has about the Salvatore brothers, the Gilberts, Tyler, and her own daughter? Matt witnesses some of the “same old drama” firsthand when Elena rushes through the dance looking for Stefan; will he see the good in what Caroline and company are trying to do? Both Matt and Liz seem to be just on the precipice of understanding that being a vampire (or a chronic liar) doesn’t necessarily make you evil.

The Biggest Baddest Vampire Around: As the MFHS students think about their costumes for the decade dance, Klaus picks out his wardrobe from Alaric’s closet, preparing for his part as the “haggard history teacher” with forced help from Katherine who serves as his inside source. In the opening scene, Klaus comes off as delightfully twisted — promising Katherine hundreds of years of torture before letting her die and getting started on it right away by having her stab herself over and over. And his derision of the human Alaric while occupying Alaric’s body and home is cruel (but very funny). Matt Davis has never been creepier or smirkier, and his dance through the crowd of high school students was a highlight.

But after Klaus meets up with the gang, he seems to become preoccupied with impressing them with his villainy, perhaps thrown off by how confident they are that they can kill him and how powerful Bonnie is. Maddox’s plan for Klaus is not a bad one: if Klaus had been less vocal about his master plan to kill Bonnie and his ability to take on another body, he could have been successful and permanently removed the threat she poses him. With a little misdirection, Bonnie would have kept trying to kill him and killed herself in the process. Why was Klaus so open about his strategy? Has it been a while since he’s had to do anything himself and he’s a little rusty? Was he underestimating Bonnie or are they now underestimating him? It’s strange for our side to get the advantage over the oldest vampire in the history of time and even stranger for that vampire not to impress a guy like Damon, who appreciates good villainy when he sees it. Even Dana thought his name was stupid. Will the real Klaus impress when he makes his appearance in Mystic Falls?

The Dark Knight: The episode begins with Elena very pointedly making Damon promise to do things her way and not keep secret plans from her, to which Damon reluctantly agrees (after hilariously refusing to “obey” her). While Stefan adheres to the new rule, telling Elena about Bonnie’s plan to die saving her, Damon makes a case for breaking it. If there’s a way to keep Elena safe, to put themselves at an advantage over those out to kill her, Damon has the will to do it — whether or not there’s collateral damage, lying to Elena or hurting her. His “whatever it takes” attitude saves the day in The Last Dance and just might, as he tells Stefan in their awesome staircase conversation, prove to be what saves Elena in the end. Like with so much else Salvatore brother–related, Damon’s and Stefan’s strategies actually work best together for Elena. Not a bad strategist himself, Stefan respects Elena’s right to know what the hell is going on, to make decisions about her own life, and he’s there for her when something awful happens. Damon, on the other hand, can not only brighten Elena’s spirits on the dance floor, he’s willing and able to be the “bad guy” — to kill when necessary, to clean up messes, to think of and enact plans that his brother may be too straight-edge to conceive or carry out. And Elena gets it. She isn’t upset by what Damon and Bonnie did: she’s grateful. Cheers to duplicity . . .

Kill Me More: Bonnie and Elena have had their rough patches over the past vampire-centric year, but as Bonnie said in Children of the Damned, she and Elena are “bonded for life” and she’d die for her best friend. Now that she has the opportunity to do it, Bonnie doesn’t hesitate to be Elena’s protector. Like Damon, she thinks that being honest with Elena about the consequences of using her magic only complicates things —Bonnie proves she will do whatever it takes with or without Elena’s permission. It’s a interesting bind the besties are in; Bonnie points out to Elena that she’d make the same choice if their roles were reversed. But Bonnie also must know how Elena will feel to have her best friend die to save her. Elena suffers through that feeling (albeit temporarily) and feels responsible for Bonnie’s death. Even more fiercely determined not to let Bonnie die for her after going through the trauma of losing her, Elena tells Damon she will not let Bonnie die to save her, and she realizes that she’s the one who has to come up with another way to kill Klaus. Luckily that alternative is gathering dust in the basement. By pulling the dagger out of Elijah, Elena gives her side another advantage unknown to the enemy: Bonnie isn’t dead and Elijah’s no longer as good as dead with the dagger stuck in him. Elena’s bargained with Elijah in the past, and Klaus is a common foe, but how will she get him onside after having killed him and proven not to be a woman of her word?

Compelling Moment: Elena’s grief over Bonnie’s death. Nina Dobrev always manages to make the most convoluted supernatural scenario achingly real.

The Rules: In Alaric’s body, Klaus is still able to use his compulsion (on Katherine, Dana, Chad and the boys) but is otherwise limited to human capabilities. He can enter Elena’s safe house, because Alaric’s body is not subject to the threshold rule. He has no access to Alaric’s memories or knowledge. Jeremy’s ring only protects humans from supernatural death, not a supernatural entity. With the power of a hundred witches, Bonnie is able to cast a spell on herself that allows her to temporarily die.

Foggy Moments: It seems as though Bonnie actually dies and then is resurrected rather than faking death with a spell analogous to Juliet’s “thing like death” potion, an extremely convincing imitation of death that wears off after while. If that’s so, does that mean that with her borrowed power, Bonnie has the ability to put a spell on someone else and bring them back from death?

Other thoughts & questions as we wait for Klaus (EP219):

• Klaus really is old: making Katherine stab herself in the leg over and over is a punishment that feels pulled straight out of Greek mythology like Prometheus’s liver pecked out each day and growing back each night.
• Poor Alaric, no one thinks it’s unusual that he has zero knowledge of the class curriculum. But the idea that the oldest vampire ever makes a terrible history teacher is hilarious — it all kind of mushes together for Klaus.
• Kind of weird when you think about how many of the main characters have died and not stayed dead: Katherine, Damon, Stefan, Alaric, Jeremy, Bonnie, Caroline, Elijah, John . . .
• If a mock-turtleneck-wearing teacher with bourbon on his breath ever asks if you and your friends want to “earn a little extra credit,” say No, then go, and tell someone you trust.
• I think Caroline should take up Klaus’s idea of a ’20s Decade Dance with student council.
• Has Katherine lost her Petrova fire? Girlfriend’s in a pretty tightly bound situation: compelled to stay put, under the watch of super witch Maddox, bound inside Alaric’s apartment by a spell, and at long last caught by the man she’s been running from for 500 years. But she seemed to be paying pretty close attention to Klaus and Maddox’s plotting, so though she asks Klaus to kill her and get it over with, odds are Katherine’s not ready to die without a fight.
• Product placement may be a necessary evil, but sticking an ad in the middle of an emotional scene sucks the life right out of it. How can I concentrate on Bonnie and Elena’s tearful reunion when all I can think about is how handy that wifi device will be next time I’m in a creepy old witch house faking my death? Blerg!
• Have we ever seen that angle on Damon’s bedroom before? His bathroom is huge. It makes that bed look small and that is saying something. (Also did Elena eye his bed right before she left his room or am I imagining things?)
• When Elijah comes to, will it matter that he hasn’t been invited into the house since Elena took ownership?

Sound off below with your thoughts, likes/dislikes, and theories — and prepare thyself for Thursday’s extreme flashback hair!

 
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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