The Vampire Diaries: Requiem for a Dream (7x21)

Pretty solid installment, honestly. Let's jump in.

Cons:

Matt got integrated into the story a little better this week, as he decides to help Bonnie by not letting her kill her friends, despite what she thinks she wants in this moment. That's fine, I guess, but the whole Matt and Penny storyline is still such a weird detour in the season, and any reminder of that plot line is just distracting.

Caroline and Ric still gross me out. I have more to say about Caroline later on in the "pros" section, but honestly... yikes. When Ric says "I love you" to Caroline and she says "yeah, I know" and doesn't say it back, I felt so freakin' awkward about the whole situation. I also hate the fact that Caroline, so newly reintroduced to the main plot, is again on the run at the fringes of the plot. I want her to stick around in the center of things for once!

Pros:

So. The plot is pretty basic. Caroline, Enzo, and Damon each take their turns going into Bonnie's mind to try and reach her. Bonnie's memories are being twisted so that she will grow to hate all vampires, but Bonnie wants to resist this in order to spare her friends. She'd rather die than spend the rest of her life hunting down her loved ones. Damon gets through to her by provoking her into waking up, but when she follows him and tries to kill him, Damon is unable to break through her conditioning. Bonnie nearly kills him, but Matt shows up, shoots Bonnie with tranquilizers, and drives off with her. Bonnie wakes up, incapacitates Matt, and turns the car back around.

Meanwhile, Caroline has been marked by Bonnie, so she goes on the run with Stefan, leaving Ric and the kids behind for their safety. This is exactly what Stefan did to Caroline three years ago, so they end up rehashing their relationship and talking through their issues.

As the episode ends, Enzo reveals that he has a plan that might save Bonnie. It involves accessing a mummy from the Armory, which means going in to the Armory, which means confronting the nameless evil that Bonnie had trapped inside earlier.

Let's unpack this a bit, shall we?

I'm going to start with the end, actually. I've complained pretty hardcore about the weird nameless evil thing in the Armory, and I still maintain it was a stupid twist after all the Armory buildup. But the end of this episode actually intrigued me quite a bit. Seeing all the Armory people trapped inside, either dead or going slowly insane, was really rather chilling. I'm excited to see what will happen to our heroes when they have to enter that place.

Then there's Caroline and Stefan. I'm glad that they had a chance to talk, and I'm also glad that Caroline isn't backing down and forgiving Stefan. Just because she understands where he was coming from when he ran away doesn't mean she can forgive him for all the pain she's been through. I admire her for sticking to her guns and being honest about how she feels.

Stefan and Damon didn't have a lot of new material, but I actually loved their phone calls in this episode. It seemed to put them firmly back on the same page, and we didn't get any more of that dumb nonsense about Damon being a blight on Stefan's happiness or whatever the heck we were supposed to believe. The two of them talking about the unhealthy ways they choose to protect their loved ones was pretty great. Damon's remark that he's the one who screws things up and Stefan wears the cape was a nice little touch. It casts them in really familiar and basic roles, but even within this episode we see how complicated those roles can become.

Then there's Bonnie. Even when everything else in this season has fallen apart, there's still Bonnie at the center of it all. If somebody had told me several seasons ago that Bonnie was going to be given a story arc all of her own, with real and complex character development, I never would have believed it. And yet here we are! We get to see Bonnie and her relationships with Caroline, Enzo, and Damon. Each relationship feels real and all the more tragic when you watch Bonnie succumb to the inevitable. With Caroline, we go back to the good ol' days, before vampires were even a part of Bonnie's life. Back where things were carefree and simple. With Enzo, Bonnie tries to focus on what it's like to love a vampire, even knowing what he is. Bonnie's tearful decision to die with good memories of Enzo rather than let her memories be twisted to hate was really, really hard to watch. It was the most connected I've yet felt towards this couple.

And then there's Damon. Unlike the other two, he doesn't take the kind approach. He does the Damon-like thing, and he provokes Bonnie into a reaction to save her life. Damon is flat out cruel in his scene in Bonnie's head, but he's doing it all to save her life. He tells her that nobody wants her around, that she's just a reminder of the person they all actually miss: Elena. He says his biggest regret was saving her from being hit by a car, and that he's really grateful she's decided to die, so that he can finally be reunited with Elena. Basically, Damon gets Bonnie to wake up just out of spite, and it is awesome. That's the Damon way to get things done.

But then, he abandons the Damon way. When Bonnie tracks him down, he tells her how amazing she is, and how much he admires her. He tells her that he loves her. It's sweet. It's beautiful. He basically says that he doesn't want her to kill him, but that if she does, not to blame herself for it. It's all his fault. He takes full responsibility. I know that the "I love you" was sort of tempered by the fact that he says "I love you like Elena loved you," but whatever. It was still an "I love you," and I still freaked out. After Damon's earlier cruelty, he uses what may be his last moments on earth to try and get through to Bonnie. Not for his own sake, but for hers. That is some powerful stuff. It doesn't work, but that doesn't make it less remarkable.

A brief shout-out to Matt Donovan... I know I complained about his story not being integrated very well, but he did kind of kick ass. Bonnie asks for Matt's help with killing Damon, promising that she'll try and fight her new Huntress nature with her other friends, but that Damon needs to die. Matt says okay, and seems to be on board with the plan to kill Damon. I was getting ready to roll my eyes, but then, just when Bonnie was about to kill Damon, Matt stepped in and saved the day. That was a great fake-out, and I really appreciated it.

That's what I've got. This was a pretty darn solid installment, and it mostly comes down to Bonnie Bennett's awesome character development!

8.5/10