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Vampire Diaries: I Could Never Love Like That

“The good brother is actually bad, and I was hoping to leave you in the care of the bad brother, who is now less bad than the good brother.”

As Enzo implies, everything is topsy-turvy in Mystic Falls. Good brothers are bad. Bad brothers are less bad. Mommy issues abound, and Caroline seems to have regained her sense of whimsy. Especially given the recent casting news about one of our leads, it seems that things are heating up.

It’s tempting to say that the theme of this episode is past and future: looking back and looking ahead (although that might be the theme of this entire series). Enzo recalled his journey to America and his death-cure at the hands of Lily Salvatore. Damon learned that his mother really has moved on. Stefan saw his mother, and believed her Damon-generated lies, which were lovely enough to turn his switch back on. Even without humanity, Caroline is still focused on her mother’s death.

Of those stories, Damon’s resonates most with me. He keeps holding out hope that his mother loves him. She keeps revealing that she doesn’t, and hasn’t for a very long time. I don’t have much sympathy for her; being shut away by her husband is tragic, but she let her anger at her husband affect her feelings for her children. That’s pathetic.

But not everyone was focused on the past. Jo (who, bizarrely, was never informed that her evil twin was banished) and Elena bonded over the idea of a Jolaric baby, which is a charming possibility. But Elena started to foresee her own future: an unending youth, but also a lack of motherhood and the changes it might bring.

Will Elena take the cure? Will Damon let her? Will Lily encourage it, or ruin everything? Elena never wanted to be a vampire; she wanted a life, not an unlife. I’m very curious to see where we go with this story.

I’m less curious about the evil vampire-witch cabal, perhaps because they lack any personality beyond the threat of their powers. I guess Lily will be this season’s big bad? That is so, so Freudian.

Then again, maybe Matt will wind up playing a part in what will inevitably be a season-ending showdown. He and Tyler are pursuing their law-enforcement officer dreams, and Matt’s anti-vampire position becomes less ambiguous with each passing week. He doesn’t trust his (vampire) friends: how much longer before he starts to think of them as enemies?

And, nowhere near the middle of it all: Enzo. Now that he’s over his ill-conceived attack on Stefan, he has become slightly more interesting. And he seems to know something about Lily and her vampitch family. (Vampitch - a vampire-witch, or [col.], the scratchy scab created by a vampire bite.) Once he’s folded back into the main conflicts, his story might have more resonance.

Bites and Pieces:

• Damon is not very good at hiding things. First the Moonstone in a soap dish, now the cure for vampirism in a sock drawer. What next, the Holy Grail under his bed?

• I loved the awkward conversation between Damon, Elena, and Lily Salvatore.

• Some of the pacing here was a bit odd, as new victims kept entering the clinic, but Stefan and Caroline were in the bar for the entire episode.

• Caroline’s singing was pretty. And a bit embarrassing.

Three out of four human Pez dispensers.

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

3 comments:

  1. They are dropping hint anvils that it's Elena's turn for The Cure this time. I bet that means Elena won't get The Cure. And I am still unhappy with Caroline as a killer. It feels so wrong. She is so going to hate herself.

    Lovely review, Josie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Killing off Katherine never made sense to me, but I guess it does if Nina Dobrev's departure had been in the works for awhile.

    I'm finding Matt and Tylers positions really interesting. It's gotta be hard being friends with people that love you but are also very likely to kill you.

    Great review, Josie.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Why were Matt and Tyler stopping by a cafe in or near campus, which I believe was originally said to be a few hours from Mystic Falls, after academy training?

    ReplyDelete

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