“Unrequited love sucks.” It’s all about moms tonight—a bit odd, for an episode called "A Few Good Men." While Mia Kirschner’s Isobel is the emotional center of most of the plots afoot, Melinda Clarke (Julie Cooper from The O.C.) is the highlight. Two hot mamas.
Jenna’s search for Elena’s mom was surprisingly productive: Isobel—Alaric’s Isobel—went to Mystic Falls when she was sixteen to drop off her baby. Years later, she pieced together the vampire tendencies of the town. Do you think she got interested in it because that’s where she left her daughter, or is it just a wacky coincidence? Mia Kirschner was so manipulative and awful on The L Word, it’s hard for me to separate Isobel’s actions from Jenny’s.
Isobel just might be worse, though. Assuming that she sent the compulsion-drone to kill her friend, she’s awfully hard-core, and unnecessarily so. Killing off a high-school friend just because she’d served her purpose? Killing a compulsion-drone for the same reason? She’s leaving a trail of dead in her... well, it’s not a wake, is it? Whatever it is that precedes a boat when it’s moving through the water. If this cruelty is the “more” that she wanted out of the vampire life, then Isobel is definitely the meanest vampire we’ve met so far.
Meanwhile, Damon feels like his heart has been ripped out. He’d been so certain that Katherine was trapped in the tomb, waiting for her Damon-savior, and he just found out that he’d been dumped and ditched over a hundred years ago. Talk about a lack of closure.
In Elena and Damon news: when she was buttoning his shirt (yum!), she told him about her mom, and he said “Who cares?": she looked so shocked, before he continued with “She left you. She sucks.” Damon identifies Isobel’s actions with Katherine’s, but what’s more interesting is the trick of his words: Elena (and I) were surprised that Damon wouldn’t care—because even though he’s busy snacking on sorority girls, he’s still a sympathetic and empathetic guy.
Damon got his vengeance on at the man-auction. He angered Alaric by bringing up Isobel, and accidentally angered Elena, even though Damon didn’t know about the connection between Elena and Isobel. Damon generally acted like a drunk asshole, but he looked contrite (and speechless, which is a first) when Elena told him who Isobel is. Was. Whatever.
My little brother loved the Tom Cruise movie A Few Good Men when he was a kid, so I remember well Jack Nicholson’s pivotal line: “You can’t handle the truth!” And that’s our theme of the week. Alaric couldn’t handle the idea that Isobel had a child before she met him, or that she asked to be turned. Caroline couldn’t handle the truth that Kelly dished out. Elena couldn’t handle finding out Damon had bit her mother. And Damon couldn’t handle finding out that he’d bitten Elena’s mother, or—worst of all—that he’d been abandoned by Katherine.
Bites:
• Damon: “No, Buzzkill Bob!” What a dopey line. It’s great.
• Damon: “I have to go exploit some women in the name of grief, which I’m sure you understand. TTFN, said the tri-delt.” The tri-delts, or the Delta Delta Delta sorority, actually exists. Not just in SNL skits, either.
• Kelly: “So I guess blonde is the flavor of the month?”
• Alaric: “You know, he murdered his wife, or at the very least made a meal out of her.”
• Alaric: “You’re like Mulder, except hotter and a girl.”
• Damon: “Have you ever been so bent on someone, just to have your heart ripped out by them?”
Sheriff: “You forget I was married.”
• Kelly: “Matty told me you broke his heart. It’s okay, he’s found his rebound girl.” And she gestures to Caroline, who is standing right there!
• Damon: “The Real Housewives of Mystic Falls await.”
• Damon: “All I did was tell him the truth. It’s not my fault he couldn’t handle it.”
Stefan: “Like you’re handling Katherine?”
And Pieces:
• Jenna really worked some Bing magic there, didn’t she? Next time I’m looking for a birth-mother with only a first name to go on, I know where to check.
• The episode began with Damon biting the tri-delts and ended with Alaric reviving thanks to the magic ring that Isobel gave him. Or maybe I should say that it ended with the most hurtful thing of all: Isobel hanging up on her daughter.
• Melinda Clarke’s Kelly Donovan was perfect as the sassy drunk who doesn’t like Caroline but still depends on her son to take care of her. Melinda Clarke is delightful.
• The tomb vampires are having a sleep-over.
So much happened, so much information was exchanged, so many lines drawn and re-drawn. Such great performances from Ian Somerhalder and Matt Davis. Could this be our first:
Four out of four Real Housewives of Mystic Falls.
(Screencap courtesy of vampire-diaries.net. Thanks!)
Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)
I think Isobel is doing what Damon did for 145 years - turning off her humanity to cover her pain. In Damon's case, I think he turned his off so not to feel his incredible loneliness. We first see him starting to acknowledge his pain in the first episode. First, he tells Elena that he likes her - she knows how to laugh. And then we see him caressing her in the closing moments. The body count gradually decreases as he regains his humanity. Isobel, the same thing. She deeply regrets asking to be turned, so she turns off her humanity. She uses Cherie and the gay cowboy like toys, abuses Alaric and Elena, kills her best friend and comp-drone and says she doesn't care. But her humanity begins to poke through and she tries to protect Elena from the vamplife and tries to remove Alaric's pain. (Hmmm. Wonder if that will work as well as it did with Jeremy?) She is regaining her humanity. I think this will be a theme in the next season. Katherine seems to be regaining hers as well. Guess we will have to rely on werewolves to be the next season's Big Bad. Well, that's my guess, anyway.
ReplyDeleteI just knew Mia what's her name from The L-Word would turn out to be a vamp, because it would have been a bridge too far if it turned out Damon had killed Elena's bio-mom.
ReplyDeleteThe bachelor raffle was just too funny.
I still haven't seen the final episodes and now I'm really, really looking forward to them.
Time to gush some more about Vampire Diaries.
ReplyDeleteI love how they used Alarics ring. Whne he was introduced we were made to think that he's a vampire with a sunlight protecting ring. Tehn it was of course subverted and he was revelaed to be a newbie vampire hunter at which point i assumed his ring is like Elenas vervain necklace and i took it for granted. This episode uses it to great effect in the final scenes. That's how you plant a Chekhov's Gun in a show. :)
Another thing i like is even though we have cliffhanger endings to episodes not all of them end on one. Like in this ep's case, opting to give us the cliffhanger before a quiet character moment.
I found the line where Alaric compares his wife to Mulder ironic because I keep thinking how much Alaric reminds me of Mulder. I'd kind of guessed that Isobel had wanted to be turned earlier. I think deep inside Alaric knew that and just didn't want to admit it.
ReplyDelete