The Vampire Diaries: Woke Up With a Monster Recap

Synopsis of (6×11): Elena spends a significant amount of time being tortured by Kai before Damon and the rest of the cavalry save her. In the meantime, Liv trains Joe to survive the merge and Caroline races to find a cure for her mother’s cancer.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Sometimes I forget how much I really like this show.

We pick up right where we left off- newly-superpowered, same sociopath Kai kidnapped Elena for kicks. Turns out that absorbing all the power from the anti-magic border around Mystic Falls was a bit too much for Kai to manage. He doesn’t have much control over his spells, so he needs a guinea pig to practice controlling his new influx of magic.

Cue Elena-torture back at the high school.

After Kai plays around for a bit, turns Elena’s blood into acid, melts her daylight ring off her hand, etc., Elena escapes in probably the coolest way possible.

Chica lights her hand on fire in the sunlight and then turns on the gas in the chemistry lab, making an ad-hoc flamethrower which she uses to incapacitate Kai long enough to call Damon for help.

Back at the Salvatore residence, Damon’s been letting Liv train Joe for her merge with Kai. Unfortunately, magic isn’t coming easily to Joe- she can barely light candles on fire, let alone destroy her evil twin brother.

Damon brings Liv to the high school to perform a cloaking spell so he can save Elena without getting caught- but at the last minute, Luke swoops in and takes Liv away. Luke is (legitimately) concerned about his twin’s safety, and they’ve been summoned to go back to the Gemini clan to merge.

Fun fact: We learn that Luke has gradually become more powerful than Liv, so if it comes to merging, we’re losing the more angsty of the two twins.

Elena’s still trapped in the school with Kai, so Damon grabs Joe to do the cloaking spell. It works, and Damon frees Elena- but three people is too much for Joe to handle, so Damon ends up facing down Kai unassisted during their escape.

Luckily, one of these exceptionally unprepared morons had the foresight to call the hunter just in case something went terribly wrong, as it always does, so Jeremy conveniently saves the day with his crossbow. Sure, Elena ends up with a giant stab wound, but she’s fine- she makes googly eyes and dinner plans with Damon in the next scene after everyone’s safe.

In other news, Sheriff Forbes is still dying of inoperable glioblastoma. And for some inscrutable reason, vampire blood will cure literally everything barring decapitation except cancer. Or so we think.

Really the only evidence we have here is Stefan saying, ‘Well, don’t you think we’d have heard if vampire blood cured cancer?’ which is totally how science works.

Anyway, Caroline and Stefan go on a road trip to visit a glioblastoma expert and Stefan long-lost relative Sarah. The doctor tells Caroline that her mother doesn’t have any hope of recovery, and Enzo crashes Stefan’s creepy stalking of Sarah’s art show with vague plans for revenge.

It’s a pretty disappointing trip, except Caroline meets a patient with her mother’s condition and decides to make him her guinea pig. After feeding the patient her blood, Caroline gets her hopes up- the patient seemed to make a miraculous recovery. She and Stefan drive home with the good news, and Caroline feeds her blood to her mother.

We then flash to the patient from earlier, who’s currently vomiting up ungodly amounts of blood before he dies.

Sure, Caroline. Everything’s gonna be okay. *ugly cries*