“While You Were Sleeping” was an interesting twist on the mind-walks we sometimes get with werewolf bites. Although not as successful as those episodes usually are (I’m thinking specifically of Rose from back in the day), “WYWS” did a good job of catching us up on Elena’s emotional struggles with what Katherine did to her. Twice over.
Katherine taking over Elena’s life—undetected, to boot!—is bad enough. Elena’s hallucination/recollection combo flashbacks gave her glimpses of what Katherine did while forcing Elena to experience the ultimate in bad dreams: an utter inability to communicate the truth to those around her. Clearly, remnants of Katherine’s consciousness are still lingering, or Elena is pulling her own memories of lost weeks out of her own brain. Regardless, Elena is struggling with the idea that her friends and lovers had no idea she was being imitated.
The werewolf venom virus, now conveniently named the “Ripper virus” by Stefan, just adds insult to injury. (It’s like rubbing werewolf venom instead of salt in a wound.) Elena can’t be near Damon, because they might kill one another. She must be contained, like Damon, because she can’t regulate her appetite. And she seems to have a weird fixation on Aaron Whitmore.
Why? Part of me wants to say: so this episode has tension and structure. But perhaps Elena is subconsciously aware of Damon’s continued obfuscation where Aaron is concerned. And maybe Elena does have a deeper connection with Aaron than I ever realized.
She has always been other-directed. We see that even in this episode, when Elena almost fed on Luke but stopped at the last minute. Part of that was her desire to get out of her mystical cage, but I think part was also just her inherent lack of inner-ripper-ness. Unlike Damon, Elena does not kill easily, although she did get a little intense when she impaled Liv.
That may have been a mistake, though, since Luke isn’t just a sweet guy suffering a Señor Frog-induced breakup. He’s also Liv’s brother, and they’re plotting something that has to do with Bonnie, our anchor to the other side. Does that mean Luke is a witch, too? I wonder what they’re up to.
I also wonder what’s up with the Travelers, who seem to be constantly scheming in a way that dovetails with the travails of Team Mystic Falls. As Enzo pointed, these Travelers are a mysterious and tight-lipped lot. They want Stefan’s blood—or the blood of the last remaining doppelganger—and somehow that means killing the newest doppelganger, an EMT in Atlanta. Stefan seems to be okay with Caroline’s plan to help the travelers kill the doppelganger, but I suspect he’ll change his mind about that. Right?
Bites and Pieces:
• Enzo: “Damon mentioned you get a little judgy. Then again, he also said you have a thing for accents.”
• Matt: “Too much sexting with Elena?”
Damon: “How ‘bout you never say that again?”
• Stefan: “Well, if I lose my memory, then I won’t remember I had anything to worry about in the first place. Win-win.”
• Caroline and Stefan looked so cold in the trainyard. At one point, I could even see Enzo’s breath. Did they film this episode around the time Atlanta got hit by that freak snowstorm? Brrr!
Two and a half out of four antidotes, because this episode got us caught up on some of the fallout from Katherine’s body-hijacking, but it was a little dull.
Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)
The whole using vampires to turn against each other doesn't seem to go along with the other research Augustine was doing of studying regenerative power, especially since Dr. Maxwell then needed more vampires for his research. The whole thing seems kind of like a contrivance to create a new challenge for our characters.
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