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Vampire Diaries: Christmas through Your Eyes

“What could possibly not make sense about magical twins merging into each other?”

That, Damon, is an excellent question. Here’s another one: why merge at all? I must assume that the choice is merge or die, since no one seems to really be asking that question.

I mentioned last week that Kai wasn’t doing much for me as a villain, or as a problem that needs to be solved. After all, Team Mystic is only invested in the whole coven thing since Alaric is dating Jo and something something Tyler. Plus, sorta Bonnie. Yeah, I’m not even going to try to complete those sentences.

But I think this episode acknowledged that this plot is a bit of a non-starter. The scheming scenes created tension through exposition that was fancily edited—the big reveal was that Damon, Alaric, and Elena were plotting much too late to be able to do anything effective. Cue drama between Liv, Luke, Kai, and Jo. Scheming Damon, plotting Luke. Alaric with a gun (!). Then, everything just fizzled to an end. Kai removed the anti-magic spell from Mystic Falls, it got windy, and folks went home.

That’s a lot of lead-up to the eventual return to Mystic Falls—which is, admittedly, welcome. Enzo isn’t dead (“a Christmas miracle”). Damon and Alaric sort of made up. Damon and Stefan got to go home, and Damon got his car back. Elena came over, but Kai tracked her down and made her invisible (just like his dad tends to do; aww...).

Maybe Caroline can take her mom home. As soon as I saw Liz Forbes out of her sheriff uniform, I worried something was up, and I was right. She has cancer. She’s dying. And Caroline, who has lost an awful lot of people lately and has struggled with those losses all season, is now faced with another loss. The non-supernatural illness is just tragic, especially as Caroline’s relationship with her mom has been so sweet. I really hope there’s a mystical cure, but I suspect there isn’t. And that makes me sad.

Bites and Pieces:

• Enzo: “If we’ve learned anything from today, it’s that we should kill our enemies with haste.”

• My favorite part of this episode was the fight between Alaric and Damon.

• Meanwhile, poor Bonnie burned a Christmas tree in effigy. I’m getting sick, so this may be the fever talking, but did anyone else expect the tree to suddenly transform into the real Mystic Falls tree, through the Nordic magic of tree-burning?

One out of four for the continuing Kai plot, but three out of four for the Caroline/Mom sadness.

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

7 comments:

  1. I was hoping Bonnie and Jeremy would make some kind of mystical Christmas-tree-based connection, but no. Bonnie needs to come back to reality! And I wish Matt had killed Enzo quicker. All he does is remind me that I miss Klaus and should really get around to watching The Originals at some point.

    Meanwhile Caroline and her mum are actually in a plot from Buffy. You'd think they'd just vamp Sheriff Forbes, but I suspect they won't go that way.

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  2. Yeah, I was thinking Buffy, too. Don't die, Sheriff Forbes! We love you! and I was thinking, you're the only parental figure left. Except, thankfully, Alaric is back now. And there's Jo.

    I was hoping the burning Christmas Tree would do something for Bonnie, too, other than make her even more depressed. Christmas alone in a time warp, not fun.

    Get well soon, Josie!

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  3. When Stefan said vampire blood won't cure cancer I yelled BS at the TV screen. It was sad and sweet and manipulative as I felt it's a way to make Caroline suffer some more and push her closer to Stefan. And I really don't want to lose Liz from the show, but I doubt she'd ever want to be a vampire. Pretty much only watching this show out of out of fondness for Alaric, Bonnie, and Caroline at this point, though it might be interesting to see if Elena grow up some more and see if she really becomes a doctor like her dad.

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  4. Addendum to my earlier comment! While watching this one, I realized that the witch twins physically resemble The Bobbsey Twins in the old series of books. I wonder if that was deliberate?

    The Bobbsey Twins were two sets of boy-girl twins. The older twins had dark hair, and the younger twins were blond. I think they solved mysteries like Nancy Drew and the Hardy boys, but I don't remember. (One of my jobs was working with rare childrens' books.)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbsey_Twins

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  5. Rare children's books?!?!?!? LOL. I used to borrow The Bobbsey Twins books from my school library all the time. Sorry for going off topic but my birthday is tomorrow and I was already feeling quite old ;)

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  6. Anonymous, don't feel old. I'm fairly certain you weren't reading the 1904 first editions when you were a kid. Unless you're a time traveler or an immortal, which would be really cool. :)

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  7. So with this whole twin business, at first I was thinking that it made sense that there were two sets of twins in the family because twins are genetic. Then I realized that their father was probably a twin with their whole disturbing way of choosing a leader. However twins are only genetic on the mother's side so if the goal is to have more twins, would that make Jo/Liv better candidates? If a man ends up being chosen, do you think they seek out a wife with twins in her family for him? Or is there magic involved to make twins more likely? None of this actually matters. I probably only thought of it because twins run in my family.

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