The Vampire Diaries 6.14 “Stay”

In The Vampire Diaries 6.14, “Stay,” Stefan and Caroline finally kiss, and it’s a weirdly mixed metaphor, as they do it before a setting sun, which looks magical but is sort of all the wrong imagery for vampires, and it overlaps discordantly with the end of Sherriff Forbes’ life.

Liz tries to spend one last day at work, and solve her cold cases before just abandoning them to her replacement. Specifically, she wants to figure out why Elena’s parents drove off that bridge, nearly killing Elena at the start of the series.

Isn’t it all too mysterious?

Not to Damon, who shows up to say he’s responsible for half of the cases in her file. But not that one, which really was just an accident. That she befriended one of the town’s serial killers doesn’t say much about her police tenure, but then her daughter’s a vampire too and her husband let himself die rather than become one. Her former best friend was drowned by one. And really the whole town has been compromised for a very long time. In a way she was probably misdirecting and minimizing the damage as best she could.

The other loss this episode is Jeremy leaving town, and I think he does it just to spare Elena more awkwardness in trying to bond with him. She buys that he’s finally going to art school way too easily, going so far as to procure an unlikely diploma for him from the high school he never attends. They light up for a first and final time, which does have the virtue of making Elena laugh for a minute, and lets him share that he never resented her after their parent’s death, in fact that he felt closest to her when both were mourning.

Only, psyche, he’s not going to school at all. Alaric is instead sending him off on some dangerous vamp hunting missions. This is something I don’t know why they can’t just tell Elena, but she needs to have her fantasy of saving her brother as much as he needs to go enact his hunter instincts somewhere other than Mystic Falls. I guess, but doesn’t it also mean he stops trying to save Bonnie, whom he tried so hard to save just last week? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s played like an inevitable story beat, so maybe it’s going somewhere.

It’s really Ian Somerhalder’s episode, as he does his best to ease Liz’s final moments, and is a pretty standup guy for a serial killer. But it means Caroline, distracting herself with Stefan, misses her mother’s passing, and can only conjure up a final memory of being taught how to ride her bike without training wheels. Meaning Caroline’s life can go anywhere now with this final anchor gone, but, like what, evil vampire ice queen or something?

The episode is sentimental and meandering, with an unhealthy dose of Enzo being mean to Matt and Sarah for no reason, so not one of the seasonal standouts.