The Vampire Diaries: A Bird in a Gilded Cage Recap

Synopsis:  Stefan convinces Caroline to cut loose while Damon, Elena, Bonnie, and Kai go to the 1903 prison world to retrieve Damon’s mother and trap Kai for good.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This episode was a helluva lot tamer than I expected from the promos and the crew’s Twitter accounts.

Sigh.

We were off to such a promising start last week with Caroline’s homemade hostage situation / “Saw” inspired surgical standoff. Oh well.

Anyway, this week, Stefan spends his time as a newly-minted ripper by trying to convince Caroline to let loose and kill people for funsies. According to Stefan, it’s not truly a downward spiral unless a few heads roll.

Caroline, even in her humanity-lacking state, still cleans up after her messes. AKA she’s not a moron. After the standoff at the bar, we find her the next morning doing some basic cleanup and carpentry before preparing for her musical audition – which Stefan finds completely unacceptable.

After a tearful rendition of The Last Five Year’s “Still Hurting,” (sidenote: everyone should listen to that soundtrack because it’s fabulous) Caroline turns around to find Stefan has decapitated the director.

He’s decided that if Caroline forced him to turn off his humanity and do things he’ll regret, he’ll make sure that she breaks her routine and does things she’ll regret once she turns her humanity back on. Honestly, it’s just more of Stefan being a colossal jerk, which is nothing new. Which also means that it’s incredibly boring. After incapacitating Ric and Enzo, ripping the throat of an errant lacrosse player, and tempting Caroline a bit more, Stefan finally gets Caroline to come around. So much for having some guilt-free fun on this show. Ruthless, controlled Caroline was fun while she lasted.

Anyway, while Caroline and Stefan have vampy sex on every flat surface in the dorms, Damon tries to get his mother back from the prison world to trigger Stefan’s humanity. He recruits Kai and Bonnie to go back to the prison world. Elena tags along, because there’s no way she’s missing meeting the woman who gave birth to the two great loves of her life. #awkward

After Bonners and Kai do the spell, Damon and Elena meet Momma Salvatore. For being trapped in a prison world alone for over a century, chica seems fairly normal. Granted, she does keep a jar full of animal blood on her kitchen table and feeds herself with an eyedropper once a week, so normal is a relative term.

Momma Salvatore agrees to come back with Damon and Elena, but she wants to bring her ‘traveling companions’ as well.

Say what?

Turns out Momma Salvatore wasn’t alone all those years. She’s got about four other stone vampires chilling at what looks like a card table in a cave. You know, #casual. Momma Salvatore wants to bring all her friends back with her, which is a total no-go.

Damon and Elena trick Momma S into thinking they’ll come back for her friends and then zap back to modern day. Bonnie, in the meantime, has stabbed Kai and trapped him in the prison world. He runs into Momma S’s friends at the end of the episode, so he’ll be back soon. Hopefully to resolve that romantic tension between him and Bonners.

At the end of the episode, Elena and Damon promise each other forever, right before Bonnie kills the mood by offering Damon the cure to vampirism that she found back in her prison world.