My Review of The Vampire Diaries 6.10- Christmas Through Your Eyes

Caroline finds out some shocking news, Matt obsesses, Liv shows her true colors, Kai continues to be a psychopath, and Elena makes a decision…

Poor Caroline.  Her mother has a glioblastoma that has potentially metastized to her spine.  In case you are wondering, that is really bad.  Glioblastomas are highly aggressive tumors that have a relatively low survival rate.  I am not sure about tumors, but when cancer metastizes, there is not a whole lot that can be done.  I think the only thing that might save her mom is to turn her into a vampire and I don’t really see that happening.

I have to say that as much as I want to hate Liv for helping Kai, I find it hard to fault her.  While I definitely think Jo did the right thing to protect Liv and Luke, I get why Liv decided to help Kai.  Was it the wrong thing to do?  Absolutely, but she was protecting herself and Luke from one of them dying.  The issue is that in doing so, she was potentially empowering Kai, who is insane and would not do any good with the power he might get.  Balancing the amount of harm he could do versus her potential loss would make an objective person choose to have her do the merge.  Basically, the whole situation was a no-win scenario.  Doesn’t make me like her, but it does make her choice understandable.

I was glad when Jeremy told Matt that he needed to stop what he was doing before he destroyed himself.  While Jeremy is all for protecting people, what Matt wanted was revenge and when it is a human versus a vampire, that revenge is rarely going to work out, as Matt found out.  Granted, he couldn’t have predicted that Kai would absorb the magic from the anti-magic spell the Travelers cast, so his plan was not that bad, but it was still dangerous.  As I said last week, he let Tripp and Enzo get into his head and now he is paying the piper.

Now that Kai has absorbed the magic from the anti-magic shield, he has got to be powerful.  I honestly don’t know if Jo stands a chance when they go to merge.  I actually don’t think she stood a chance before he absorbed the magic.  Since Kai can absorb magic, I don’t see how she could have beat him, which sucks because I like her.  Hopefully the gang will figure out something to do about Kai.

You had to feel for Bonnie.  She was stuck in Kai’s hell during Christmas.  It was nice to see that she was doing her best to keep traditions up.  It was also fun seeing the flashbacks to the early days of the show when Bonnie, Elena, and Caroline were basically carefree and didn’t have the weight of the world on their shoulders.

Elena (apparently) finally decides to be with Damon and she is kidnapped by Kai.  Talk about bad timing.  I wonder why he kidnapped her because it’s not like Damon has anything that Kai needs anymore.  Maybe he just wants to hurt Damon by taking her.

See you when we return in January!

My Review of The Originals 2.09- The Map of Moments

There’s revenge galore, a family reunited, passion consummated, wishes granted, and motivations revealed…

Well, Rebekah got the one thing that she’s wanted for a long time.  Only problem?  Her wish was granted as revenge by her brother Kol.  Rebekah has always wanted to live a normal human life.  Well, now she has the chance to do so except for the fact that she is trapped in a witch’s body in a house that cannot be escaped from.  Yeah, talk about being careful what you wish for.  That, my friends, is what you call a double edged sword.  She betrayed Kol’s plot to make a dagger that could hurt Klaus 100 years ago, so Kol betrayed her by trapping her in the house.  Lovely family here…

It was interesting to finally see how Kol views his place in the Mikaelson family.  Finn is a mama’s boy who hates everything that he and his siblings are; his father is out to kill them all; Elijah, Klaus, and Rebekah are a singular unit; and his mother is a twisted witch.  Given all that, it is not hard to see why he came out all twisted.  He has been mostly cut out of his own family and Klaus has systematically done what he can to keep his siblings under his thumb.  Kol seems to have honestly loved being a witch and his mother took that way from him.  So he is on his own in the world.  To make it even worse, Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah have taken Marcel into their circle while excluding him.  Yeah, there is definitely some bitterness there.

Klaus’ revenge of Esther was absolutely delicious and completely fitting.  He used Davina to block Rebekah’s being moved into Cami and then forced his mother into a position that is beyond untenable.  Since he killed her after she had unwittingly ingested Rebekah’s blood, she is in transition.  So she either becomes that which she despises above all else or she dies.  And with no Other Side, she will be gone forever.  That revenge was absolutely perfect and a wonderful thing of absolute beauty.   While you may hate Klaus for what he does, he does revenge like no one’s business.

Unfortunately, Esther managed to team up with Mikael before she died and he freed Finn.  Finn revealed to Cami tonight that he sees his siblings as irredeemable, which makes him more dangerous than Esther.  Finn will not be content with merely moving his siblings into new bodies, he will want to destroy them, particularly after what they did to Esther.  Putting him together with Mikael is going to be dangerous.  Both of them are exceedingly unbalanced and powerful.  Fortunately, Klaus does have a protector in the form of Davina because he has sired her friends.  And I suspect that she can drag Kol along with her.  Between the two of them, I suspect that they can handle Finn.  Mikael may be a different story.  And if Dalia and/or Freya come back, hands will be full.

Hayley and Elijah have consummated their passion for each other right after he told her to marry Jackson in order to help her people and bring peace to New Orleans.  Can’t say I’m surprised at either development.  Things have been building to a head between those two for a while now and Elijah is noble enough to urge Hayley to do what is best for her people even if it hurts him.  As for that scene…YOWZA!

We’ll be back with new episodes on January 19th, so I’ll see you then!

My Review of Vampire Diaries 6.09- I Alone

Damon and Elena secure help (both witting and unwitting) to get Bonnie back, a truth is revealed, Matt and Jeremy leap to conclusions, and Tyler meets the devil...

Somehow I can't bring myself to be mad at Damon for compelling Alaric to help him.  He is obviously feeling guilty about Bonnie still being stuck in the hell dimension and he desperately wants to help everyone out by bringing her back.  Compelling Alaric was not the best option, but I do think it was the only viable option.  In spite of how much he has changed, Damon is ruled by expediency and will take all sorts of shortcuts in order to do the right thing.  And that is part of the reason I love him.  I don't always like or agree with him, but he does have a moral compass (of sorts) and he does follow it.  Granted, part of the reason he did what he did was to help Elena, but that is always part of the reason he does what he does now.  Her happiness and love are two of the most important things to him and he will do what he must to ensure that she is happy.

I'm not sure telling Jeremy what they were going to do was smart on Elena's part.  He has just gotten to the point where he is able to function without Bonnie and then Elena drags him right back into the pit.  What she should have done was gone through with the plan and then present Bonnie to Jeremy once she was back.  That way she wouldn't risk Jeremy slipping back into the funk he just got out of.  Also, he wouldn't have assumed that she left Bonnie behind to save Damon instead of finding out that Live pulled them out of the dimension because of Kai's return. 

At least Matt has something constructive for Jeremy to do: kill Enzo.  Despite his protestations, Enzo couldn't be more different from Stefan.  I always get annoyed when people look at the surface similarities between an hero and a villain and then assume that they are the same.  Enzo relishes killing and will do it without a second's hesitation.  Stefan, on the other hand, will only kill if needed or, like tonight, allow a death in the name of a greater good- in this case protecting the real Sarah Salvatore from Enzo.  Enzo is a master at coming up with rationalizations for why he does what he does, but the real reason is that he is a sociopathic vampire and needs to be put down.  He babbles on about looking for the truth, but he is really just looking for an excuse to kill people.  And the fact that Matt bought into Enzo and Tripp's lies is just sad.  He should know Stefan better than that.

You have to feel for Bonnie.  She was *THIS* close to returning home, but Kai ruined it again, this time by finding Liv and attacking her and then destroying the Ascendent.  The one thing I did not get is that he didn't seem to recognize Liv at first (basing this on his "Isn't this ironic?" line) but he figured it out somehow.  That was more than a little jarring and should have been explained better. And Tyler gets home and discovers Kai in his house.  That is not good...

Until next week!