Vampire Diaries -- The Agony and The Ectasy

The episode opens on Elena looking in on her brother. It sets the stage for the contrasting tales of the two sets of brothers: Stefan and Damon and Klaus and Elijah. Klaus wakes up. He's been on a two-day binge as a wolf and Elijah has been cleaning up the mess he's left behind. Elijah wants to know where their family's bodies are and Klaus says he'll take him to them.Meanwhile, Damon pays a visit to Elena asking for her forgiveness. She says it's going to take a lot of time, which Damon doesn't have, but he leaves telling her to take as much time as she needs. After he leaves, Damon goes home, pulls open the curtain to let the sunshine in, takes off his ring and stands in front of it to let the sunshine destroy him. It's at this point Stefan comes in and knocks Damon to the ground. He drags Damon down to the dungeon and locks him inside the cell, so Damon can't try to kill himself, again. He leaves Damon, promising to find some way to save his life.

Not wanting to leave Damon alone, Stefan calls up Alaric who is boozing it up, grieving over the loss of Jenna. The minute he learns that Damon is dying, he immediately comes over to keep an eye on him. I have to say I really love the Damon/Alaric friendship. Damon needs a friend, and he's got one in Ric. Damon tells Ric when he comes that he should want to kill him. It's his fault Jenna is dead, but Ric says it isn't. Then Damon reminds him that he turned his wife into a vampire and lunges through the bars to grab Ric by the throat. He begs Alaric to kill him, but he won't. 

Stefan heads over to see Bonnie. They conduct a seance to contact Emily to ask if she knows of a cure for a wolf bite. Her reply is, "Maybe it's his time to die." Stefan wants to know if she won't help because it's to help Damon. Bonnie loses contact with her, but she says she heard the witches whispering Klaus' name.

Tyler's mommy is out of the hospital and she's giving Caroline's mommy a hard time. She wants to know why Liz hasn't done something about the vampires. She even insinuates she may replace Liz if she doesn't do something about it, pronto.

Elena, Jeremy and Caroline are at a picnic for Gone With The Wind when Stefan shows up to see Elena. He tells her the truth about Damon and asks her to go tell him there's still hope for him. He also says he's going to go to Klaus to find the cure for Damon. Katherine is ticked off when Stefan arrives wanting to know why she can't leave the apartment, since Klaus is supposed to be dead. He informs her things didn't go as planned, and he's come to Klaus for a cure for Damon. Just then Klaus and Elijah arrive.

When Stefan states the reason he's there, Elijah tries to sell his case that Stefan should understand why he didn't go through with killing Klaus and betrayed them all. Speaking of which, he wants Klaus to reunite him with his siblings, NOW! The only think Klaus reunites Elijah with is a dagger to the chest. Then he puts Elijah in a coffin and stores him in the same place with all the rest of Elijah's siblings. Congratulations, Elijah, you're reunited with your siblings.

Now it's Stefan's turn. Stefan says he's come to Klaus for an antidote to save his brother from the wolf bite. He promises Klaus that he'll do anything Klaus wants if he helps him to save his brother. Klaus demonstrates what the cure is by biting Katherine in the wrist and then making her drink his blood. He announces his blood is the only cure to the wolf bite.

Elena arrives at the Salvatore's just as Liz is mounting a raid on that to get Damon. It's thanks to Liz's attempt to take Damon into custody that's he's able to escape from the dungeon. He heads into town to the showing of Gone With The Wind where the entire town is with Liz hot on his heels. Liz catches up to Damon and prepares to shoot him. She can't see Jeremy standing behind him, but Damon sense her and takes off like a shot, so the bullet intended for Damon hits Jeremy instead and kills him. Caroline tries to get him to drink her blood so she can resurrect him, but he's dead and can't do it. So Bonnie gets Alaric to take Jeremy's body so she can try to resurrect him from the dead.

Caroline finally has a heart-to-heart talk to her mother telling her that although she's a vampire, she's also still the daughter Liz loves. She hugs her mother, and Liz finally breaks down and hugs her back.

Damon's sickness has been having him to have fevered dreams and hallucinations featuring his past with Katherine and Elena. In one dream Elena urges Damon to make a different choice, that Katherine is just using him, but he still does the same thing as he did in the past. 

Elena finally catches up with him at the Gone With The Wind showing while he's having a memory of when Katherine got him to drink her blood. He's so call up in the illusion, that he begins to bite Elena in the neck until she manages to bring him back to his self and gets him back home.

Meanwhile Klaus' price to save Damon is for Stefan to mass-drink several pints of human blood. In 1910, Stefan was a vamp known as the ripper. Blood to Stefan is like booze to an alcoholic. One drink and he can't control himself. Klaus wants Stefan to become the ripper again. Stefan will only drink so much, before he demands Damon be given the antidote. However, when Klaus allows Katherine to go deliver, Stefan is filled with abject terror that she'll just run-off and won't give the antidote to Damon.

Bonnie manages to resurrect Jeremy, but her ancestors are not happy. They feel she's abusing her power and warn that there will be consequences for what she's done. Jeremy tells Bonnie he feels different. Then he sees his two dead girlfriends, Vicky and Anna.

Damon urges Elena to leave him before he hurts her, but she says she's going to stay until the end. In both of Damon's visions of his past with Katherine, he had Stefan on his mind. He tells Elena he's been angry at Stefan blaming him for getting involved with Katherine and now he knows he made the choice and it's his own fault. He asks her to tell Stefan he's sorry. He says he's made a lot of wrong choices in his life and he deserves to die for everything he's done. He also says he wishes Elena had known him in 1864, because she would have liked him then. She says she likes him now, just as he is. Damon finally tells Elena he loves her, but says he knows for her it'll always be Stefan. She kisses him and he thanks her.

Enter Katherine, who has come with the antidote. She tells Elena and Damon that Stefan has given up everything to save Damon, even Elena. Then she tells Elena it's all right to love them both, because she did. Then Katherine disappears as suddenly as she came.

Klaus still isn't telling Stefan what his plans for him are, when Stefan receives a text message from Elena telling him Damon is ok. That seems to free him from the last bounds holding him back from embracing his new life. He willingly joins Klaus in feeding on a woman Klaus brought for their enjoyment.

This episode had a lot of character and relationship development, as well as parallels and ironies:

The Parallels: Stefan has willingly accepted Elena's decision to sacrifice herself and die, since Klaus was determined to use her for a sacrifice, but he couldn't and wouldn't accept Damon doing the same when he was facing imminent death. While Stefan didn't really do anything to stop Elena's upcoming demise, in fact, he just let her walk off with Klaus, he was determined to find a way to save his brother's life, to the point he gave up everything to save Damon. 

In one of Damon's fevered memories of his relationship with Katherine, he told her while he was gone she could keep busy with Stefan. And now Stefan is gone, so one has to wonder if Elena will keep busy with Damon?

The Ironies: Damon snapped Jeremy's neck, killing him. And Jeremy ended up dying again because of Damon, when Damon dodged the bullet that Liz meant for him and that killed Jeremy, instead.

Damon has accepted that for Katherine and Elena, it'll always be Stefan for them, who comes first with them. But the truly ironic thing is for Stefan it'll always be Damon who comes first with him. He had a choice of living his life with Elena or giving all that up to save Damon, and he didn't even have to think about it for a second. He gave it all up to save Damon. The question remains is it the same for Damon?

In both of his fevered fantasies of Katherine, Damon was bringing Stefan into the equation. He suggested Katherine spend time with Stefan while he was gone, and he made Katherine promise not to tell Stefan he had drunk her blood. And as he laid dying, some of his last thoughts were of Stefan, wanting to make sure Elena told Stefan he was sorry he was angry at him and blamed him for getting involved with Katherine.