Home Featured TV Shows All TV Shows Movie Reviews Book Reviews Articles Frequently Asked Questions About Us

Vampire Diaries: Moonlight on the Bayou

“The Armory? Never heard of it.”

It’s another week of hijinks, gore, and angst in an episode of The Vampire Diaries that take place entirely outside of Mystic Falls. Plus, we found out what’s up with Enzo!

Let’s start there, with Enzo: after Matt kidnapped him all those months ago, Enzo wound up at a place called The Armory. (Or maybe with a group called The Armory. The distinction seems to be unclear.) They are a top-secret supernatural collection agency. “Collection agency” in the sense that they collect objects and people; they don’t repo cars. As far as I know, that is: they seem to be cloaked in mystery, shrouded in secrecy, yadda yadda yadda.

The Armory promised Enzo info about his family in exchange for his services. Result: Enzo found out he’s related to the Armorians and Enzo’s motivation for revivifying Rayna Cruz is clearer.

Sort of. The writers have always struggled to work Enzo into the plot, and that struggle seems to be leaching into his actual character. Enzo is on a perpetual quest for a family, a group, a connection to a larger narrative. That makes his eventual relationship with Bonnie seem rather tragic. As great as Bonnie is, in the flashforwards Enzo is in love with someone who cut off his hand.

Not that I’m judging. Bonnie was awesome this week, and not just for the hand-chopping. Temporarily stripped of her witchy powers, she was still a formidable opponent who made good use of the various household objects—vases, axes—littered around The Armory in her quest to save Damon from a lupine Tyler.

Her success was not surprising. Damon’s reaction was. His decision to cut himself out of Bonnie’s life was kind, although sad. I like Damon and Bonnie together, and I hope their artificial rift is quickly resolved. Perhaps once we reach the flashforward event horizon that must be coming soon, right? Soon? Maybe after the March hiatus?

After all, things are coming to a head. In the present day, Caroline is beginning to settle in with Alaric just as Klaus was telling Stefan to let Caroline go for her own good. (It’s so nice of all the men to make these choices for us frails!) In the flashforward, Caroline was headed towards the mystical no-signal zone that is Klaus’s bar in the French Quarter.

I didn’t love Klaus when he was on TVD. That’s why I don’t watch The Originals. But I did enjoy his conversations with Stefan and Caroline, his willingness to help Caroline by helping Stefan, and even his Original-sized rage at the idea of the huntress in his town. I liked it enough that I’m debating watching the Originals crossover episode that followed this one, just to see what happens with Stefan.

Although that sounds silly to say, since we know what happens to Stefan! (Do we have a font or emoji that denotes mild exasperation? Maybe a cat gif?) He doesn’t get killed by the Huntress, at least not yet, and he winds up living with Valerie, hated by Caroline, etc. etc. We really, really need to get moving on the time jump, don’t we?

Bites and Pieces:

• Caroline and Alaric drove to Dallas and began to move into a new house in the amount of time it took Bonnie to get Damon out of the Tyler cage?

• Why did Valerie have to tell Stefan where to go using a paper map? Was it a subtle acknowledgement that he’d turned off the location-tracking option on his phone?

• Oh, Nora Louise is still a thing! Irrelevant fact: John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight has a feature called “How is This Still a Thing?”

• The Armory is apparently the kind of thing that everybody has heard of but our vampires. That makes our vampires seem to like the sort of kids who never know the school gossip and wind up eating lunch alone. And that makes me sad for them.

• Props to Candice King née Accola. For the past few episodes, she’s seemed a bit worn out. I assumed it was due to the actress’s real-life pregnancy. But she was all peppy again this week, so I guess it was just really good acting.

• I should have realized this earlier, but it wasn’t until this episode that Rayna Cruz’s similarity to Holtz, a character on Angel, really became clear to me.

• In the flashforward, the bartender told Caroline that Klaus had been gone for three years. Are TVD and The Originals both going to jump forward in time together?

What do you think? Is two and a half hands out of four hands an appropriate rating?

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

3 comments:

  1. So I guess the Men of Letters are still active in The Vampire Diaries verse and Enzo is a Legacy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, Patryk, I was thinking Men of Letters, too. Couldn't the CW have made some sort of deal to allow that sort of crossover? :)

    Delightful episode. For some reason, the part I enjoyed most was Klaus offering Caroline a trunk full of his baby daughter Hope's hand me down onesies.

    The crossover was sort of a onesie, too, since it was just Klaus, but Klaus can be fun and he was definitely fun. The Bonnie and Enzo stuff, though -- they're going to be a couple? It will be interesting to see how they get past her cutting off his hand to save Damon.

    Loved your review, Josie. I'm about to watch the second half on The Originals. Should I let you know if you should watch it, at least for necessary information about Stefan?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ha! Men of Letters! I was thinking of the Collector: http://marvel.com/universe/Collector_(Taneleer_Tivan).

    ReplyDelete

We love comments! We moderate because of spam and trolls, but don't let that stop you! It’s never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.