The Vampire Diaries: We Have History Together (8x08)

On the one hand, I'm happy about all the Salvatore snark. On the other hand, this show really needs to die. Thank God this is the last season.

Cons:

There are two main plots going on here. Both have compelling elements, but both fail in major respects.

First of all, Sybil is apparently unharmed from Damon ripping her heart out in the last episode, and she has compelled her way in to a history teaching job at Mystic Falls High School. Caroline is apparently a reporter (did we know that? This show does not do enough to keep track of its characters' vocations) and she is going undercover as a student to get the alumni angle on how things are going at the high school. Turns out, this was all Sybil's plan to get Caroline to help her find a magic bell which can control the Sirens in some way. Caroline enlists Matt and his father's help in figuring out what happened to this bell. They must act quickly, because Sybil has compelled her students to set each other on fire. In the end, Matt and Peter find the kids and save them from their fate. Sybil and Caroline fail to find the bell, which they believe to be in one of the boxes from Liz Forbes' old place.

So. Caroline has recently lost Stefan and her children, and she's going around playing reporter? Cool, I guess? And Sybil is around to still be annoying and rather bland as a villain. We have her trying to poke holes in Caroline and Stefan's relationship by remarking that Stefan is a dangerous guy to have around the twins, when eventually Stefan comes back to her. I get that we're supposed to feel some emotional weight to this, but I've never cared much for Caroline and Stefan's relationship to begin with, and it doesn't help that Sybil actually has a pretty good point.

Oh, and we have yet another McGuffin to deal with. A magical bell? Why is it that this show has such a problem with magical artifacts? Enough, already!

Also, the stuff with the Armory gets less and less defined all the time. We see Matt meeting the research assistant dude, and we learn that he knows all about the supernatural stuff now, which is good, I guess... but this whole thing is veiled in too much mystery and magical intrigue. It gets us further and further from the meaty character stuff we could be exploring.

The other plot shows Stefan and Damon collecting damaged souls for Cade. I'll talk about the good stuff in a minute, but it super annoys me that this is the devil's plan. Let a couple of vampires force decent people into doing bad things, just so more souls can be sent to hell? Are you telling me there aren't enough actually bad people around, that we need to focus on these flimsy candidates?

Also, we get the big supposedly intense ending here, what with Stefan going full Ripper. Was this supposed to be a surprise? I thought Stefan's deal with Cade specifically required him to be a Ripper, anyway! We have this dramatic shot of Damon finding out that Stefan had gone totally dark and killed a bunch of people, and I'm just sitting here like... duh?

Pros:

Oddly enough, the most compelling thing about the Caroline and Sybil plot was actually the development we got between Matt and his father. I wasn't really a fan of bringing Matt back into the show this season, because it felt like there wasn't nearly enough for him to do. But the stuff going on with Peter is surprisingly really working for me! We learn that Peter feels jilted by the other "founding families" of Mystic Falls, because his family was less well-to-do but still instrumental in bringing the town together. This is why he threw the magic bell in the river, because it was a symbol of everything he hated. He also talks about how leaving his family behind was the biggest mistake of his life. There's this great line where he says that he's not making excuses - he's just adding details in explaining the full truth to Matt. Matt and Peter both have something in common - they feel cheated by their lot in life. One of Matt's most interesting character traits is that he's an ultimately sensible and good person having to cope with all of his loved ones being various degrees of evil. The affinity between father and son is really working to add some depth and complexity to Matt's character, here in the eleventh hour!

In the other plot thread, I'll admit I quite enjoyed seeing Stefan and Damon snarking at each other for an hour. Damon is being the reasonable one, here, while Stefan keeps trying to draw Damon further and further into the darkness. It's a nice little role reversal, and I appreciate that they're not shoving it too far down our throats. Stefan finds a doctor who looks a little like Elena, and has lost her parents in a car accident, just like Elena. Stefan vervaines Damon, then compels this woman into believing that Damon is the drunk driver responsible for her parents' death. She makes the evil choice, letting Damon "die" so that his organs can go to someone more deserving. Stefan then cajoles Damon into getting rid of the necklace he's been carrying around to remind him of Elena, and Damon does so, also feeding on and murdering the evil doctor, according to Cade's wishes.

I liked this whole pseudo-Elena plot thread, where we see Damon being pushed into symbolically killing Elena in order to push him further into evil. I think it works much better than what we got in the first half of the season, which was Sybil just tampering with Damon's memories so Elena wouldn't be a factor in the short-term. Stefan playing psychological mind games is more interesting to me than Stefan just killing people indiscriminately. That's what I love about Stefan sans-humanity. He's not just indiscriminately evil. He's specifically cruel, and does everything in his power to twist the knife a little deeper with the people he once cared about.

Comedy shout-out to this exchange between Stefan and Damon:

Stefan: "I'm disappointed."
Damon: "That's your resting state, Stefan, so what?"

In the coming weeks, I hope we get a lot more interaction between the brothers, as I truly think they are the remaining heart of the show. Speaking of heart of the show, I also hope that Bonnie returns soon. She and Enzo spent this week's episode offscreen on vacation, and I actually really missed them!

7/10