Fifty Shades of Grayson

The Vampire Diaries

Season 5, Episode 10 ()

Air date

December 12, 2013

Written by

Caroline Dries

Directed by

Kellie Cyrus

Episode Guide
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Fifty Shades of Grayson is the tenth episode of the fifth season of The Vampire Diaries and the ninety-ninth episode of the series.

Summary

The_Vampire_Diaries_-_Fifty_Shades_of_Grayson_Trailer — The Vampire Diaries - Fifty Shades of Grayson Trailer

Promo

DAMON’S PAST RETURNS TO HAUNT HIM — Damon realizes Elena is in danger and enlists Stefan’s help to find her. The brothers pay a visit to Aaron, and Damon shocks Stefan by revealing his first-hand knowledge of Aaron’s family. In an attempt to stop Damon, Dr. Wes unleashes his secret weapon, forcing Damon to deal with a part of his past he thought was gone forever, as well as the consequences of his decades-long plan for revenge. Meanwhile, Elena is horrified by Dr. Wes’ confessions about the dark history of Whitmore College and his own ultimate goal. Finally, a frantic Katherine turns to Template:Matt for help, until she realizes that Nadia may be the one who can solve her problem.

Plot

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Cast

Trivia

Antagonist: Wes Maxfield.
This episode is the mid-season finale for Season 5.
This is the final episode of the second chapter of Season Five, The Augustine Chapter.
Ian Somerhalder described this episode as "beautifully haunting."
This episode establishes in the series timeline its late 2011, with Katherine saying she's 538 years old, and Stefan noting that it has been 147 years of her doing bad things to him.
Elena's subject number is revealed as 83182.
Enzo is revealed to be the Augustine vampire who killed Megan.
Katherine revealed that her father, Mr. Petrov, was a Traveler. This means that Katherine's true species before being turned into a vampire was a witch. Katherine's Traveler heritage also means that Nadia was also a witch before she turned, and, though it is unconfirmed, it is possible that Katherine's later descendants Isobel and Elena could have also been witches before they were turned as well.
- Katherine also revealed that though she was technically a Traveler before she turned, she never practiced magic in her early life because her father referred to Traveler magic as "the devil's magic," which was meant to scare them away from the practice. She also claimed that once she turned into a vampire, she never thought about Traveler magic again until this point.
Jeremy, Bonnie, Caroline, and Tyler don't appear in this episode.
Damon and Elena broke up in this episode. He chose let Elena go so he wouldn't change her into someone like him.
Damon is the first boyfriend of Elena's to break up with her instead of the other way around, as Elena had broken up with both Matt and Stefan.
Hemodialysis is the correct medical term for what Dr. Wes Maxfield does to Elena at the beginning of the episode, not blood dialysis, which is what Dr. Maxfield called it.
It is revealed that Wes planned to turn Elena into a Ripper as part of Phase 2 of his vampire experiments. He had created a compound that instantly would make any vampire salivate at the smell of vampire blood. Then he was going to let her go and allow her to feed and kill fellow vampires instead of humans.
- Elena was meant to be his Patient Zero, after Jesse's death resulted in a loss of vampire test subjects.
- Aaron picked up the syringe with the Ripper compound and took it with him to keep Wes from using it. Wes ultimately got the syringe back in Total Eclipse of the Heart after Sloan brought Wes Aaron's bag following Aaron's death. The syringe would later come back into play in that episode, when Wes injected Damon with it at his newest makeshift lab.
- Wes uses Pavlov's Dog to explain to Elena how he conditioned Jesse to crave vampire blood. He then explained that the traditional method was too time-consuming, which is why he developed a compound that worked after one injection.
Wes admitted to Elena that Grayson Gilbert conducted vampire experiments in the basement of his medical clinic in downtown Mystic Falls. Elena told him that the basement always creeped Elena out as a child, as she was never allowed to go down there.
Wes was surprised that Elena (83182) was still conscious after taking 4.1 pints of her blood, while he compared her to Enzo (12144) who faded into unconsciousness after having only 2.9 pints removed in 1996. He wondered if it was evolution or luck, but that it was a mystery for another day.
The average volume of blood in the human body is 4.7 to 5 liters, with females having less blood volume than males.
We learned that Grayson Gilbert put 3000 to 4000 volts of electricity through a vampire test subject (Enzo?) in June 25-26, 1999.
While talking to Nadia about having a Traveler teach her the spirit possession spell so she could survive in another's body, Katherine appeared to have either a stroke or heart attack and fell down the stairs.
It was revealed that Megan had a picture of herself and Grayson Gilbert because she had a serious illness when she was a child and he saved her life by injecting her with vampire blood.
Elena burned Grayson's medical journal.
Katherine attempted to fight to stay alive because she believed Stefan had forgiven her, but he later told her it was going to take more then one night to forgive all the horrible things she has done to him. This conversation broke Katherine's heart.
As of this episode, Elena, Stefan, Damon and Matt are the only main characters to appear in every mid-season finale.

Continuity

Grayson Gilbert was last seen in The Departed.
Nadia and Matt were last seen in Dead Man on Campus.
This episode marks the second appearance of Michael Malarkey as Enzo.
This is the first mid season finale to not feature Caroline, Bonnie and Tyler.
- This is the second mid season finale to not feature Jeremy.
This was the first episode in which we have seen a flashback of Elena as a kid.
This is first episode of either TVD or The Originals to show a main character as a child in a flashback.
This is the second flashback of Elena, showing her before the events of the Pilot. The first was in The Departed.
As of this episode, neither Jenna, Caroline, Tyler, Bonnie, Jeremy nor Matt have had a flashback of their own out of all of the main cast. However, Jenna, Bonnie and Matt all appeared in Elena's flashback in The Departed.
Katherine finally accepts that Stefan will never look at her the same way that he looks at Elena.
Stefan found out about Damon's time as prisoner of Augustine in the 1950's.
Stefan and Aaron met Enzo for the first time in this episode.
Wes mentioned the Season 1 finale - when John Gilbert and The Council burned all the tomb vampires.

Behind the Scenes

This episode had about 2.44 million viewers in USA which was 0.06 million more than the previous episode.

Cultural References

The title is a pun of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James.
The title is the name of the eighth episode in Season Five of Drop Dead Diva.
Patient Zero or Index Case is a medical term for the first carrier of a disease.

Quotes

Wes (to Stefan): "Aaron?"

Stefan: "Not exactly. I'm trying to decide how to kill him."

Wes: "Touch him and you'll never see Elena again."

Damon: "Elena!"

Stefan (to Aaron): "Do not test me."

Katherine: "I don't hear you counting."

Matt: "3, 4, 5, 6, good try."

Katherine: "Good try? That was horrible, Matt. Come on, I'm paying you to make me hot again! Whip me into shape, and I'll prolong this death thing as long as possible."

Matt: [mutters] "Yeah, that'll happen."

Katherine: "What did you say? No, seriously, I didn't hear you. Oh my god, I'm going deaf! I'm going deaf. My entire body is falling apart."

Katherine: "I can't breathe, I can't breathe! Water, give me some water."

Matt: "Deep breaths. Look, if you're so anxious not to be dead, why don't you just have a vampire turn you?"

Katherine: "Tried that. Everytime I ingest vampire blood, my body rejects it."

Wes: "Subject 83182 appears conscious."

Elena: "Where am I?"

Wes: "Why? Look familiar?"

Elena: "What is that thing? What are you doing to me?"

Wes: "83182, let's prepare blood dialysis. Count from 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4..."

Damon (to Aaron): "Pop quiz. So, your girlfriend's taken by a mad scientist. Now, do you: A, get a new girlfriend; B, call the police; or C, kill someone close to the mad scientist?"

Wes: "Damon Salvatore is locked in an impenetrable and inescapable fortified cell."

Aaron: "Or he's in front of me imagining what my kidney would taste like."

Aaron: "Why don't you finish the rest of the story, Damon?"

Stefan: "I don't recall saying that you could talk. Did I say that he could talk?"

Damon: "I don't remember anything."

Stefan: "I didn't think so."

Damon (to Aaron): "I don't like you, I don't like your family, I don't like you messing up my relationship. If you're lying, I'm gonna take my thumbs, and I'm gonna gouge out your sad little eyes out of your sad little head!"

Damon "And, I'm gonna tell you my side of the story. You asked me if I thought about you after I escaped, and answer is no. And, I sure as hell don't feel guilty about leaving you, because in order for me to save myself and leave you, I had to shut off my humanity, damn it! So, I flipped the switch, and then I felt nothing, no remorse, no regret, no pain."

Enzo: "And now what do you feel, remorse, regret, pain? Even if I forgave you, Damon, would that make you less of a horrible person?"

Damon: "We're even, Enzo."

Enzo: "You were the most important person in my life, and you ruined me. But, that's just who you are. That's who you'll always be... A monster."

Damon (to Elena): "I won't change who I am. I can't... But I refuse to change you."

Katherine: "I'm getting wrinkles."

Stefan: "Heh. Katherine Pierce's chickens come home to roost in the form of wrinkles. It's kind of brilliant."

Katherine: "What's the opposite of funny? Oh, right. Not funny."

Katherine (to Stefan): "One night... An eternity... You'd never look at me the way you look at Elena, would you?"

Katherine: "I'm a survivor. Staying alive is my specialty."