The Vampire Diaries “Because the Night” Recap

By Mandy Treccia

It’s no secret that The Vampire Diaries hasn’t been as good this season as it normally is. There have been too many inconsistencies, too many plots that just flat out don’t make sense and there have been more questions than answers. But “Because the Night” has given hope that the episode might be a turning point and that there is still a chance for this season to turn around with its final six episodes.

The episode started with three distinct storylines. Damon (Ian Somerhalder) had taken Elena (Nina Dobrev) to New York City for fun and games, but was secretly planning on searching for the cure. In Mystic Falls, Stefan (Paul Wesley) recruited Klaus (Joseph Morgan) and Caroline (Candice Accola) to hunt for Silas and Bonnie (Kat Graham) was with Silas, who has taken on Professor Shane’s (David Alpay) form now that he is dead.

Nothing that involves Bonnie ever interests me and this was no exception. The entire Silas storyline has been nonsensical from the beginning and having a character like Shane, who has no connection or purpose, at the center of it was just a waste of everyone’s time. Bonnie was still under his spell, which was why she was perfectly fine with the fact that Shane was dead. But we finally got an answer to one of the season’s plaguing questions. Silas needed three sacrifices. The town council was the first, Klaus’s hybrids were the second and we learned that the third needed to be 12 witches. So Bonnie basically set up her “sisters” to be murdered.

Elena was already getting bored in New York (as was the audience), but luckily, Rebekah (Claire Holt) showed up to make things more interesting. She was mad at Damon for continuing the cure hunt without her, but he insisted that wasn’t why he was there. Rebekah didn’t buy it and neither did Elena. The two ladies conferred behind Damon’s back and Elena admitted that she was playing him like he was playing her. Rebekah wanted to join forces to find the cure, but Elena wasn’t interested since Rebekah was too emotionally invested.

Arielle Kebbel as Lexi and Ian Somerhalder. Photo: Bob Mahoney/The CW — © 2013 The CW Network, LLC.

Then Damon started telling a story about Lexi (Arielle Kebbel) and how in the 70s, Stefan sent her to NYC to help Damon turn his humanity back on. Over six months, Lexi stayed with Damon and it seemed like the two fell in love. As I was watching, I was getting mad because this completely contradicted everything we saw onscreen in Season 1. Lexi hated Damon. There was no way they were secretly in love or even secretly liked each other. But then the twist happened: Damon had just been playing Lexi. His humanity never came back on and he left her stranded on a sunny rooftop for an entire day.

Damon explained to Elena that when Lexi came to Mystic Falls, all the guilt of what he’d done rushed back to him and his humanity switch was flipped. So he killed Lexi because he didn’t want to deal with the guilt. He told Elena that he would do anything to make sure that she didn’t go through that, even if it meant breaking her neck. As he said the words, Rebekah showed up, broke his neck and pointed out that Elena did need her. Then the two headed off together in Damon’s car to track down Katherine and the cure. It was probably one of the coolest scenes ever. After watching Elena and Rebekah be enemies, it’s fun to watch them on the same side, especially when Elena doesn’t have any emotions. Bring on the road trip!

Back in Mystic Falls, Caroline and Klaus were not on the best terms since she was still mad about him driving Tyler out of town. But for once, Klaus wasn’t interested in playing nice with her. This was a refreshing change too. Klaus is supposed to be the bad guy and I love the chemistry between the two as much as the next person, but watching him try to get Caroline to admit she cares about him gets old after a while and Caroline hasn’t exactly been hiding it very well. Again, I thought this would just be a bit of a waste of time plot, but the show surprised me once more.

Ian Somerhalder. Photo: Bob Mahoney/The CW — © 2013 The CW Network, LLC

Stefan had tracked Bonnie and the witches into the woods, but the witches were too strong for him. Once Stefan let them know Bonnie was tricking him, they planned to kill her. Klaus was fine with that because he’d rather let Bonnie die than have the door to the other world open and deal with all the supernatural creatures he’s killed over the years. But Caroline wasn’t about to let her friend die so she killed the witches herself (since they were connected, she only had to kill one and all 12 died).

I did not see that coming, but it was a brilliant plot twist. Suddenly, Caroline isn’t so righteous when it comes to Klaus because she just murdered 12 innocent people to save her friend. In another surprise, Klaus isn’t interested in comforting her since he’s still mad at her for calling him terrible. She leaves and Shane/Silas shows up and demands to know where the cure is. Klaus isn’t about to tell him, but then he pulls out the white oak stake and warns Klaus that he’d better find it. Then he stabs him with it, just enough to cause Klaus all sorts of pain.

The last 15-20 minutes of this episode were pretty close to flawless, something this season has not been at all. For the first time, I’m excited about possibilities and curious to see what’s going to happen next. Will Katherine give up the cure? How does Elijah (Daniel Gillies) fit into all of this? Is Elena really humanity free or does she secretly still want the cure? Is it next Thursday yet?