Okay. Still enjoying this season quite a lot, surprisingly!
Cons:
So, our siren is named Sybil and she's a hot young lady. I'm a little tiny bit sick of the villains on this show all being either hot Elena look-alikes, or hot mysterious sexy dudes. I mean I know that's this show's whole... thing, but Sybil is much less intimidating now that she's got a face and a voice and all that. I liked her being an unseen force living in a pool of blood and human remains. Much less predictable.
Alaric's subplot with the Armory continues, and I'm really enjoying it for the most part, but I do have one little question: how is he running this thing like an academic research center, complete with interns, and then also not telling people that it's full of supernatural energy? His intern Georgie doesn't seem to know that things like vampires even exist, which seems super odd. How did Ric get the money to set this place up, anyway?
The main plot involves Stefan, Caroline, and Bonnie taking another stab at rescuing their friends. We see that Damon and Enzo are still killing bad guys by luring them to Sybil, but Sybil is unhappy with Enzo's lack of full cooperation. She tries to force her way into his head, but is unable to get a lock on anything other than a single name: Sarah Nelson. When a couple of other people named Sarah Nelson end up dead, Stefan realizes that for whatever reason, Enzo and Damon seem to be targeting his hidden relative, the woman originally known as Sarah Salvatore. Enzo and Damon find her, but Sarah stabs Damon with vervaine, and Enzo tries to help her escape.
Bonnie and Stefan show up at Sarah's place, and we've got a nice awkward reunion going on. Bonnie refuses to let Enzo just leave and go back to Sybil, so she knocks him out and essentially kidnaps him, while Stefan tries to help Sarah escape. But... Damon wakes up, and comes in and is about to kill Sarah! Stefan talks to him, convincing him not to do it. He tells Damon that Sarah is their relative. That she's a chance for Damon to even the score a little bit. To Stefan's relief, Damon walks away. However, Sarah leaves her place only to run straight in to Sybil, who stabs and kills her. Sybil is surprised at Damon's ability to resist her, so she forces her way into his head and sees that he uses the memory of meeting Elena to keep himself from belonging totally to the siren. Sybil fixes that by replacing Elena with herself in his memories, thereby erasing his last link to humanity. Stefan watches in despair as Sybil and Damon leave.
Enzo wakes up in the back of Bonnie's car and begs to be taken back to Sybil. He explains that she controls him, and that he can't walk away. He also explains that he needs to stay away from Bonnie, because he's got to hide her from Sybil so that the siren won't know how important she is. Bonnie and Enzo share a passionate kiss, and then Enzo walks away. With Damon's help, Sybil manages to shock Enzo enough to force her way into his mind, where she sees Bonnie. Uh oh.
Stefan, devastated over Sarah's death and crushed that Damon seems to belong fully to the siren now, throws himself into his home improvement project. Caroline has moved in to the house, and Stefan has been working on creating a bedroom for the twins to stay in when they come to visit. Stefan proposes to Caroline, who says yes!
Poor Sarah Salvatore. I guess she never really had a chance to survive, did she? Stefan's self loathing has been turned up even more, which can't be a good thing. I love the focus on his emotional journey here. He's desperate to get his brother back, and you can really see his whirlwind emotions as he goes from hope to devastation in just a few moments.
The really interesting thing about the siren is the way that both Damon and Enzo are controlled by her, but not totally owned by her. Enzo is bad at hiding it, and Sybil knows that she doesn't fully own him yet. But Damon had her tricked. He's acting like he's totally committed, but all the while, he's using his memories of Elena to ground him, and he's pretending that his humanity is flipped off to protect his friends. Choosing to let Sarah go was totally contrary to his plans, but Stefan asked, and I honestly don't think Damon was capable of saying no to him in that moment. He couldn't let go of that last bit of hope. Now, it seems that Damon is totally gone - without his tie to Elena, how is he expected to claw his way out? Hopefully his bond to Stefan will be enough to do the trick eventually.
Enzo and Bonnie's relationship has been a surprisingly strong aspect of this show for the past year or so. I remember thinking that the romance was totally out of the blue when it first happened, but it feels right. Somehow, it's not too cheesy to hear Enzo declare his undying love, and say how he'll always fight for Bonnie, how he'd sail the seas to get back to her. Maybe it's because I'm a fan of The Odyssey myself, but somehow the whole thing comes across as very sincere and moving.
I really felt for Bonnie in this episode. There was a great scene where Bonnie talks about how kidnapping Enzo was the only thing she felt she could do. She needs her boyfriend back. Caroline has a job, and Stefan, and the kids, and Bonnie feels so alone. I loved this moment of friendship between them, as Caroline promises to always be there for Bonnie. She says that Bonnie's happiness is a part of her own happiness, which I thought was all kinds of sweet. I'd love to focus more on their friendship moving forward.
I've never thought of Caroline and Stefan as one of my favorite couples on this show, but there is something undeniably refreshing about a more toned-down romance. There's not as much in the way of drama and over-the-top craziness with these two, and yet they do seem genuinely happy. I was surprised by how touched I was with the proposal scene. I think it was because we'd just seen Caroline comforting a broken Bonnie, and we'd just seen Stefan totally defeated by the loss of Sarah and, in his mind, the loss of Damon. But here we get this moment of hope. It's so sweet that Stefan is building a bedroom for the girls. And it's so sweet that he wants to make this commitment to Caroline, even in the midst of so much pain.
In subplot news, Alaric and his intern Georgie find a strange symbol in an old journal that they found in the Armory's catacombs. Georgie freaks out and shows Ric that she has the same symbol tattooed on her torso. She says she saw it when she was in Hell after she killed her best friend in a drunk driving accident. The symbol then shows up again on some kind of weapon. It looks like whatever this thing is, it was transferred over with Sybil to the Armory. Some kind of Greek symbol to go with the sirens? Or something from Hell itself, like Georgie believes?
Okay. While I'm made slightly uncomfortable by the flirting between Georgie and Ric, and by the plethora of hot nanny jokes about Ric and Caroline's admittedly attractive nanny, I actually do like Georgie quite a bit, and wouldn't necessarily be opposed to a romance. (Although, dude, date someone your own age, maybe? After Caroline, I was really hoping for something lower on the creepiness factor). Georgie is a lot of fun, a little hipster-like, and her revelation about her past and her experience in Hell really added a whole new layer to her aloof, constantly teasing attitude. I'm intrigued by the Hell symbol, and by its possible connection to Sybil. This show has sometimes sucked in the mythos department, but I think the smaller cast of characters and tighter focus is really going to help with some of those problems.
I guess that's all! I'm digging the Damon and Stefan angst, obviously. I'm a fan of Enzo and Bonnie, and even Stefan and Caroline made me go 'awww' this week. Couple that with some potentially interesting mythological stuff, and I'm pretty happy. This season is only sixteen episodes, so my favorite stupid teen vampire soap opera will be off the air before we know it. I'm a little sad!
8.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment
I'd really appreciate hearing what you think!