THE VAMPIRE DIARIES returns to the CW tonight with a whole new episode called, “Handle with Care.” On tonight’s episode, in exchange for a spot in the dorm room, she offers to show Caroline (Candice Accola) how to get answers from Dr. Maxfield (guest star Rick Cosnett). Did you watch last week’s season premiere? We did and we recapped it right here for you.
On last week’s episode on campus, Elena is touched by a sad and secretive student named Aaron. Elena and Damon attended the Whitmore Historical Ball dressed as Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. At the Ball, Elena shared a dance with Dr. Maxfield, who had a disturbing message for her. Caroline’s evening at the Ball took her from happiness to heartbreak. Meanwhile, Nadia revealsed her surprising history to Katherine, and Damon tried to make a deal with Silas. Silas’ demanded that Damon commit an unthinkable act led to a violent confrontation. Kat Graham and Zach Roerig also starred. Kellie Cyrus directed the episode written by Sonny Postiglione
On tonight’s show Silas (Paul Wesley) happily announces his new goal to Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Elena (Nina Dobrev), but they are skeptical when he promises to accomplish one important task in return for their help. Tessa (guest star Janina Gavankar) confidently tells Stefan (Paul Wesley) about her next move, then realizes that Silas has managed to outsmart her. A desperate Katherine (Nina Dobrev) discovers a new and unexpected consequence of becoming human again, and realizes she needs a new place to stay. In exchange for a spot in the dorm room, she offers to show Caroline (Candice Accola) how to get answers from Dr. Maxfield (guest star Rick Cosnett). Bonnie (Kat Graham) is touched by Jeremy’s (Steven R. McQueen) strength and determination to stand by her. Finally, Damon is stunned when he figures out the secret to Tessa’s plan.
The Vampire Diaries Season 5 episode 6 “Handle with Care” airs at 8PM tonight on the CW and we will be live blogging it will all the up-to-the-minutes. So come back to this spot and spend the evening with us enjoying the show! Make sure to refresh often to get the most current update!
Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page for Updates
Katherine is ordering a gigantic breakfast to celebrate living through the Silas drink-fest. The waitress tells her she likes her hair and K notices a huge long grey streak!
Elena and Damon cuddle on the sofa in front of a fire. She says she likes their life when it’s peaceful and he says because it’s their life someone will be there to disturb it in 10 seconds. And sure enough, Silas walks in the door and witches open the drapes. He says he’s enjoying being a witch and walking in the sun. He tells them he’s excited about his impending death.
Stefan wakes up at Tessa’s. She asked if he’s confused because of the amnesia or the tequila. He says both. She tells him they bonded over shared misery. Tessa tells him she saw a text on his phone last night saying Silas took the cure which means he’s mortal and she can kill him. She tells him to get dressed so she can go kill her ex-honey.
Elena reminds Silas about bringing Bonnie back from the other side. She says she wants to know how she can trust him to bring Bonnie back when he’s so evil and Silas offers a pinky swear. He says he’ll send Bonnie back before he shuts down the other side. He says he just needs to find the anchor to destroy the supernatural limbo.
Too bad Tessa doesn’t want him to have the anchor. Stefan agrees to help.
Silas tells them it’s in New Jersey and is being shipped. Silas stops and says “hello hunter” and Damon and Elena tell him to back off of killing Silas because they need him to bring back Bonnie. He tells them he’s feeling ganged up on and holds up his fingers which are now spurting fire. He tells them he loves being a witch again.
Tessa tells him that Silas read her mind and knows where the anchor is. Tessa tells him the Travelers don’t want Silas to bring down the other side – she says it’s important but doesn’t want to explain it. She says the Travelers have the anchor and have been moving it around for 2,000 years. She says even if he doesn’t find it, he won’t be able to destroy it but she doesn’t want to explain it.
Silas tells the boys to get a move on and tells Elena to stay put. She wants to come but Silas says he can’t stand to look at her imposter face because she looks like his one true love. He tells Damon if he’d ever been in love with someone who had that same face he’d understand. Guess Silas doesn’t know D’s history with doppelganger K!
Elena wants to go and fusses but Silas magically stabs her with a wooden spike and says the next one goes in her heart. He tells the guys to come on because he only has until sundown to get the anchor before Tessa tries to kill him.
Tessa tells Stefan she’s considered every possibility. She tries to walk out the door but then finds she can’t go out – she says Silas put a spell on the cabin so she can’t leave until sundown. Stefan asks how she knows that Silas worked the spell and Tessa says she’s the one who taught it to him…
Katherine used hair dye to cover her grey streak when Caroline realizes it’s not Elena she’s chatting with – it’s Katherine. She says she just needed a place to crash because Damon kicked her out and Stefan doesn’t remember her. She says in exchange for a place to stay and Elena’s meal card, she’ll help her deal with her Dr. Maxfield issue.
Elena calls Stefan but Tessa gets it. Tessa tells her that her voice is as whiny as her doppelganger Amarra. She asks to take a message because she told her Stefan is in the shower and she says to remind her that she’s a crazy bitch.
Elena calls Damon and wants to know why he’s with Tessa. He tells her that he had to break Stefan’s neck a few times to buy Silas time to get done what he needed to. Elena says she’s going to go over to Tessa’s and Silas says she’s bad business but Elena won’t be deterred.
Dr. Maxfield is taking notes on his latest “project.” He notices enhanced cellular growth rate. He hears a noise and lays down his recorder. He turns back and it’s gone and then Caroline is there. He turns to her and with his back to her, K doses him in the neck with a drug and knocks him out!
Elena comes to the cabin to see Stefan and he tells her not to walk through the door. He thinks she was 100% in on what Damon was doing to him. She asks if sleeping with Tessa will solve anything. Stefan asks who says he’s sleeping with her and Tessa says oops and admits she may have embellished for effect. She says she just wanted to check and make sure that he was okay and will leave now – but she can’t!
[8:40:48 PM] Rachel Rowan: Silas, Damon and Jeremy head to the warehouse to check on the anchor. Silas asks how he can be cool with her running to check on her doppelganger intended. Silas tells him that the universe wants the doppelgangers together. Damon tells him he’s an idiot. They break into the warehouse but have no clue where it is in the warehouse. He says the location was all he could pull from her brain. He doesn’t know what it looks like but says since it binds a hell dimension it won’t look like an Ikea table.
Maxfield wakes while Caroline is draining his blood so she can get all the vervain out of his system so she can compel him to forget that she and Elena are vampires. Caroline does the math and they start siphoning his old blood and putting in fresh. Katherine is pretending to be Elena and holds a scalpel to his neck and asks him to tell him who all knows about them.
Maxfield says the society is having a gathering at the house today. He says that they were going to invite Elena to join the society until they began to suspect that she was a vampire herself. K says that all she needs to do is convince the society that Elena Gilbert isn’t a vampire. Maxfield says it’s impossible because no vamp can cross the threshold of the house where they meet. K and Caroline exchange knowing smirks.
At the warehouse, the guys are breaking into crate after crate. Bonnie shows up and asks Jeremy what the crate did to him. She says it’s not every day a girl gets to come back from the dead. He tells her not to jinx it and she says she’s not counting on it because it’s a long shot. Jer tells her to have faith. He makes her repeat “it’ll work.” Bonnie tells him she would die 100 times over just to have him standing there alive in front of her. Jeremy says they’ll be able to touch each other. He grins and gets back to work on the crates.
Silas tells Damon to quit dawdling and find it before the Travelers show up. He tells Damon the Travelers hate him. Damon gets a call from his brother but it’s Tessa. She tells him that she needs him to go ahead and kill Silas for her. He tells her that Silas is a control freak and insists on killing himself. She says she needs him to off Silas before he finds the anchor.
Damon isn’t interested but Tessa tells him she lured Elena there through the oldest trick in the book – jealousy. Tessa starts torturing Elena and he hears her scream. He tells her that he needs Silas to do something for him before he can kill him. Tessa tells him he has until sundown to kill Silas or she kills Elena. She says that since Elena’s face is that of her old nemesis it might be cathartic. Damon begs her not to then goes nuts crushing crates…
Katherine heads to the meeting of the Society. She knocks at the door and Diane Freeman calls her by name. She reminds her they met the night her roommate died. Diane says she didn’t know she was coming and K says she forgot to RSVP. Diane watches in wonder as K walks over the threshold. She heads to the buffet table and starts stuffing her face! She also crams nosh into her handbag. Maxfield’s son Aaron watches her and reminds her they met yesterday. She covers for her error and asks him if he’s part of the secret society.
He tells her he has no idea. K says he’s genuinely clueless or really good at keeping secrets. She coughs violently and a tooth comes out. She whispers “what is happening to me?” Aaron is shocked. K marches out of the gathering.
Tessa looks at a pizza takeout menu and marvels at all the new food options. Elena asks how Tessa came back over and she says that Bonnie opened the door and then got distracted and that was how she got through. Elena tells her that Silas was going to bring her back to life before he took his own life. She says it’s the first time Damon has ever put anyone else first. She cries. Stefan offers to cook for her and Tessa is charmed.
Jeremy reminds Damon that he promised Elena he would bring Bonnie back but Damon says he can’t sacrifice Elena to make it happen – he tells him the plan is off. Bonnie shows up and tells Jer she wouldn’t let one of her friends die so she can come back. She says maybe she’s supposed to accept that she’s really dead. Jeremy tears up and says we were so close. Bonnie tells him to go help Damon kill Silas. He heads back in the warehouse.
Damon tiptoes in and then there’s a Traveler! And then there’s another. They begin chanting and then Damon realizes they have invalidated his daylight ring through magic! His arm starts to burn and he’s in agony!
Damon complains that the witches always go for the daylight ring. He pulls the heart out of one and say she was about to do them a favor and kill Silas. The one left living says they don’t want him dead yet and Damon says too bad and knifes him.
Maxfield says Caroline’s calm is scaring him. She tells him she space because she broke up with her boyfriend and she’s heartbroken. She says she needed a moment. She compels him and asks him about the secret society – it’s called Augustine and people are recruited because they are legacies or because they are geniuses. She asks why they covered up her roommate’s death if they’re anti-vampire. He says it wasn’t just any vampire kill – it was the Augustine vampire.
She asks if his creepy society has its own vampire and wants to know who it is but then she’s interrupted by a knock at the door. It’s Diane. She compels him quickly to say that she and Elena aren’t vampires and that he’s light headed from giving blood. Diane asks why he missed the Whitmore party. He tells her he was working and the day must have gotten away from him.
She tells him he missed Elena strutting through the door. She asks what convinced him she was a vampire and he says he has no idea and must have been wrong. He looks perplexed.
Elena watches Stefan feed Tessa and tells him that Tessa is not the type of person he would like. Sahe tells Stefan she knows he must hate her. She tells Elena that’s not nice since she’s allowing her to live until sundown. Tessa goes for the phone and Stefan whispers that he’s got this, that he doesn’t hate her and that he’ll take care of it.
Damon tells her about the Travelers and wants to know why they don’t want him dead. Tessa tells her that he drank the cure and he says the Travelers aren’t immortal. He’s confused. She tells him that the anchor is 2,000 years old and is indestructible and that he needs to figure it out. Stefan attacks her, stabs her, throws Tessa against the wall and screams for Elena to run. She does and he follows – it’s just sundown and the curse on the cabin is broken.
Silas is closing in on a particular crate. Damon tells Jeremy that the anchor isn’t possible. He says that Tessa may be insane but she’s a genius. He tells Jeremy that the anchor isn’t a thing – it’s a person. OMG – is it Amarra?
Silas breaks open the crate and digs out the excelsior. He whispers – Amarra. Damon tells Jeremy she never killed Amarra. Silas pulls her out and cuts his wrist and puts it to Amarra’s lips. He’s giving her the cure! She wakes and begins to drink. She holds his wrist tight and drinks. He whispers to her that it’s him and she opens her eyes.
In case your counting, that’s three doppelgangers in this episode – Amarra/Katherine/Elena – two vampires, one human, all Nina Dobrev! Hope she’s getting overtime pay.
Silas holds Amarra and comforts her and she asks how it’s possible that he’s there after all this time. He says that Tessa had her heart and Amarra says he lied. They hug as he tells her the cure runs through his veins. She holds him and whispers that she’s sorry. She stabs him with the shard of glass and drinks deep from him. She whispers through her bloody mouth that she just can’t live another day.
Maxfield looks around his lab for his recorder. K shows up and tosses it to him. She says his tape was boring but the stuff about his subject’s blood was interesting. She asks if the subject is the Augustine vampire and he tells her to go. She tells him that she can make trouble for him on campus. He tells her that if he wasn’t such a genius he would think she was blackmailing him. He calls her Elena and she corrects him and tells him she’s a doppelganger and that she’ll let him chew on that for a while.
She says she’ll keep his secret if he’ll help her out. She tells him she thinks she’s dying and needs him to save her life. She opens her hand and holds out her tooth.
In the warehouse, Amarra reels around, hearing voices, talking crazy saying “leave me alone” over and over. Damon sees her and she asks if he’s real. He asks if she is.
At the house, Elena and Stefan come in and she tells Stefan that even without his memory he’s still himself. He says he knew Tessa was going to kill her and just went with his gut. She tells him his instinct was always to protect her. Damon asks if Stefan sleeping in his own bed means he doesn’t hate them anymore and she says something like that.
Jeremy and Damon are drowning their sorrows because they couldn’t get Bonnie back. Bonnie says that it’s okay. Damon explains that Silas is MIA and Amarra is cured and now she’s easy to kill so now the fate of the other side now rests on the fate of a living being they have to protect. Damon introduces Elena to her. He says “Elena meet crazy pants. Crazy pants meet Elena.” He’s got her trussed up like livestock in the back of his car!
Stefan is surprised to see Tessa in his bedroom and asks why she’s there. She asks if he knows what it’s like watching history repeat itself. He offers to cure her and she says she wants the pain because it reminds her not to be weak. She tells him she made a mistake by taking away his pain. She tells him that he once had a lot of pain. She loads his brain up with all of his bad memories – killing his father, forcing Damon to be a vampire, tossed in the safe drowning over and over again. She gives it all back to him.
She says the only thing keeping him sane was the hope that one of the two people he loves would come set him free. She tells him they didn’t do that – that she saved him and he needs to always remember that…