My Review of The Vampire Diaries 7.14- Moonlight on the Bayou & The Originals 3.14- A Streetcar Named Desire

Because tonight’s episodes were a 2-parter and shared some major plot points, I am going to review both episodes at the same time, so this is going to be a little longer than my normal reviews.  The good news, you only need to click in one place.  J

The episode sees Stefan running from Reyna, Damon dealing with the impact he’s had on Stefan’s life, Caroline and Alaric moving with the babies, Enzo (re)united with his family, the sire lines being messed with, and a major character returning courtesy of Davina Claire.

Let’s start with Stefan since he spans both episodes.  He is in a major pickle at the moment.  He was marked by Reyna and goes to New Orleans to hide from her.  Klaus is pissed because Reyna will kill any vampire she comes into contact with and that is not good for his city.  I don’t think Stefan knew where Reyna came from, so I don’t think he knew she was from New Orleans.  I do have to applaud the plan he used to lure her to the Strix’s hideout in order to use her as a decoy so Hayley could rescue Elijah and Klaus.  That was smart.  If any one person can stand up to the Strix, it would be Reyna.  Klaus and Elijah may be able to hold them off for a while, but there are so many Strix, I fear they would be overcome eventually.  Reyna, on the other hand, can decimate vampires with the arsenal at her disposal.  So use Stefan’s bad luck of being marked by Reyna to save Klaus.  Nicely done.

It was funny watching him meet Freya for the first time.  She seemed to think that the “friend” portion of the prophecy was more or less defunct and then Stefan, an “old friend” shows up and she was so not happy about it.  To her credit, she managed to figure out a way to hide him from Reyna.  Am I surprised she couldn’t remove the mark?  Nope, that seems to be something that is beyond almost anyone’s abilities.  But hiding it was obviously a whole other story.  I can only assume that he scraped off the mud (or whatever it was) in order to let her track him to the Strix’s hideout.

Klaus is now truly alone.  Davina managed to use the spell to break the sire bond between him and his line.  The good news is that all of our friends on The Vampire Diaries are now safe should something happen to Klaus.  The bad news is that Klaus could now easily have anyone who has pissed off over the last 1,000 years after him without fear of a large portion of the vampires dying off if he is killed.  I wonder if the spell will prevent him from creating a new sire line if he turns anyone from here on out.  Given that the spell Davina performed was meant to undo Esther’s magic, I would suspect so, but they never said.  That seriously sucks for him.  And I got the sense that he was genuinely scared of Reyna.  Could her sword have hurt him?  Obviously it couldn’t kill him, but I would expect that a spell meant to trap his spirit would still work on him.

I found the differences in the ways he treats Caroline and Aurora interesting.  Both of them have tried to kill him at some point, but his feeling for Caroline obviously run much deeper than do his feeling for Aurora.  I’m not sure if that is just because Aurora is an out and out loon or if it has to do with something about Caroline.  When she’s been a part of the plans against Klaus, she’s generally just a decoy and not the aggressor.  And then there is the fact that Caroline obviously has feelings of some sort for him, which has always fascinated me.  He has always done horrible things to her friends, yet she keeps coming back to him when he is around.  And she makes him a better person because he was willing to risk pissing off Reyna in order to save Stefan because Caroline asked him to.

Damon is not in a good place right now.  He is racked with guilt about what happened to Bonnie this week and Stefan last week, so he has decided to take himself off the board.  If we hadn’t seen him in the coffin in the future, I would expect him to kill himself.  Instead, given the previews for next week, it appears that he will just seal himself away in order to protect the people he cares about.

I am trying to figure out how The Vampire Diaries is going to handle things at this point.  Caroline and Alaric are with his kids in Texas, Damon is ready to go into hibernation, Stefan is on the run from Reyna, Bonnie is in the hospital, Enzo is with the Armory, and Matt is in Mystic Falls.  I can only assume that the show is going to jump forward to the future and stay there relatively soon.  If so, does that mean that The Originals will do the same in order to keep both in the same time?

Is the woman (missed her name) from the Armory really Enzo’s descendant and did his father really establish the Armory?  If so, why did they abandon Enzo so long ago?  There are a lot of pieces missing from that particular puzzle and they need to be answered ASAP.  I did feel sorry for Enzo when Bonnie chopped off his hand.  That had to seriously suck.

Having Hayley kill Aya was just perfect.  Aya killed Jackson and was the prime mover behind the whole sire line delinking spell, so she needed to be killed and it was rather obvious that Elijah would never do it.  No matter how much he hated what Aya had become, I don’t think he could have killed her.  My main concern is that this is probably going to throw a major monkey wrench in their relationship.  While I expect him to forgive Hayley, it may take a while.

I loved watching Elijah verbally flay Aurora and expose her for just how crazy she is.  That man knows how to insult people and make it sting, so that was very nice.  Now that Elijah has the gun with the bullets, I expect them to be destroyed, which means that Aurora will no longer be a danger to the Mikaelsons directly.  The only thing she’ll be able to do is hurt those they love.  And since she’s on her own now, I am not sure how effective she’ll be at that.

Kol’s back!  I was so happy about that.  Aside from Elijah, he’s always been my favorite Original, so that will be very cool to see.  I just wonder how Klaus will feel knowing that the magic ripped from him was used to resurrect his brother.

Until next week!

My Review of DC's Legends of Tomorrow 1.06- Star City 2046

Sara and Ray try to adapt to a new reality, Rory and Snart have a fight, romance starts to introduce itself, and we meet some new characters (as well as an old one)...

I have to say that I was very surprised when Connor Hawke revealed that he was John Diggle, Jr.  I was really not expecting that one.  It makes sense, given the fact that his father worked with the Green Arrow, but it was still a surprise.  I was even more surprised to see that the Deathstroke we saw was Slade's son.  That is what we call a serious familial grudge match.  I just want to know when Slade found the time to have a son.  Was it before or after Lian Yu?  Given everything, I am not surprised he went right after Oliver and destroyed the city.  As Slade figured out, the best way to hurt Oliver is to go after that which he cares about the most.

So we know that by 2046, Diggle and Lance are both dead and everyone else is gone.  Oliver never actually said everyone else was dead, so it is possible that they are still alive.  I can only assume that after Oliver went into hiding, the rest of the team (if they were still alive) left Star City for whatever reason.   I do find that confusing given that they protected the city last year after Oliver left, but maybe something changed this time.

Snart and Rory are really going to need to have their issues out.  Rory is not much more than a thug or goon.  He's street smart, physically strong, and he enjoys wreaking havoc.  Snart, on the other hand, is tremendously intelligent and uses that intelligence to get what he wants.  But, as I've noted before, he is also a man with a certain sense of honor.  He doesn't like harming innocents and prefers to commit crimes that don't cause mass destruction. I also suspect that he has some yearning to be seen as a hero or get recognition of some sort.  He is also bonding with certain members of the team, mainly Sara, and doesn't want to abandon them.  I think he sees himself, Sara, and Rory as some sort of weird quasi-familial unit.  He and Rory really just need to figure out how they can mesh their goals if they want to remain a team.

Sara had a really rough week.  Her hometown was in shambles, her father is dead, and her sister is gone.  The man she was (is?) in love with has been beaten and almost broken and the son of one of the men she hates most in the world is responsible for all (or most) of this pain.  To top it all off, Rip was rather hypocritically asking her not to care about what was going on and focus on the future.  While I admire his ability to see the bigger picture, he really needs to start figuring out that this team he has put together is not going to fall in with his plans.  He started off on the wrong foot and has yet to show them why they should trust him.  To his credit, he did ask the team to help Connor, Oliver, and Sara out when they were taking on Deathstroke and his forces.  Once again, this team shows that they are infinitely better together than they are when they are apart.

I found the whole romance storyline to be an interesting aside.  Jax is seriously attracted to Kendra, but hesitant to approach her because of her link with Carter.  And Ray wasn't even thinking of her as a potential love interest until Stein started asking him questions.  I felt for poor Stein and Jax at that point.  Stein was trying to be helpful and make sure that Jax had a clear field, but he accidentally managed to get Ray out there.  That actually ended up being good for Jax because when Ray asked her out, Kendra told him that she wasn't ready for anything like that.  That meant Jax wouldn't have to ask and wouldn't feel put down as a result.  And that little psychic link between Jax and Stein was all sorts of fun to see in action.  It was seriously affecting Stein and gave Jax the hint he needed that Stein had accidentally done something wrong.

Until next week!

My Review of Teen Wolf 5.18- Maid of Gevaudan

The identity of the Beast is revealed, Scott takes a step towards revealing the truth, and the beginning of the Argents is revealed.

Out of all the possible choices, Mason is the one person I did not want to be the Beast.  It makes sense that he's the Beast because they need to have some serious emotional stakes involved in its identity and he is the only person we haven't seen in at the same time we've seen the Beast.  It still seriously sucks though because if the Dread Doctors succeed in restoring the Beast's memories, Mason will be gone.  And the personal consequences for Scott and the pack (particularly Liam) are horrific.  And while I want to yell at Corey for disappearing with Mason, I also want to cheer him on because I want everyone to figure out a way to either split the Beast from Mason or make sure the memories are never recovered.  Sadly, I suspect that the memories will be recovered and something serious will happen to Mason.  I hope not, but I am not at all hopeful on that score.

If people didn't know what Scott was up to before, they have got to know now.  He fought the Beast in front of at least a dozen students in the library.  It seems like he was looking for a way out until he saw that there were a lot of innocents in the library.  At that point, he had to fight the Beast in order to make sure that they could survive if possible.  Thank goodness Liam, Braeden, and Malia showed up in time to keep him from being completely decimated.  That thing is really strong and Scott had no chance of taking it on his own.  But he is the Guardian of Beacon Hills now that the Hales are gone, and that is a role he takes very seriously.  He will do whatever he has to do in order to make sure that as many people are saved as possible, even if it means that he is killed in the process.

I loved Hayden's solution to making Liam's pain go away.  While she only needed to touch him in order to siphon off the pain, kissing him also distracted him.  I get where Stiles is coming from because the gang has often caused damage of some sort in order to jumpstart the healing process, but I suspect that the Beast's claws are slow to heal much like the injuries from an Alpha.  It was the original Demon Wolf and it is really, really powerful.

Parrish leaving is a bad thing.  While the Argents were right that the supernatural controls him, the thing is that he is not really there.  Can the original Parrish actually be in there somewhere?  I suspect so, but I am still a little unclear on everything.  Given what was said last week, I think that Parrish is more like a disguise worn by the Hellhound so that it can pass as human during the day.  If that is the case, then the personality we know is not real.  But I could be wrong.  Maybe the trick is to somehow integrate the personality of Parrish with the essence of the Hellhound.

I'm still not exactly clear on why the Argents think that Lydia can defeat the Beast.  As a banshee, she can sense death, so she can tell when the Beast is loose, but can she somehow do something to cause the Beast to disappear within Mason now?  Or maybe she is the key because of the link between the banshee and the Hellhound.  Maybe she can get it to come out and attack the Beast.  So many questions there.  And we only have two episodes left in the season, so these questions need to be answered.  Fast.

It was nice to see Crystal again.  We've known from the first season that the Beast of Gevaudan was defeated by an ancestor of the Argents and I could have sworn that it was revealed to be the Maid of Gevaudan who defeated it when Allison was researching the Beast int he first season at Kate's behest.  What was a major surprise was that the Beast was also one of the Argents ancestors.  I wonder if that might be why Gerard knew how to fend off the Doctors in the sewers a few weeks ago.  If he knew that they were trying to resurrect the Beast, maybe he was also looking at how to protect himself from them.

Until next week!

My Review of The Fosters 3.15- Minor Offenses

Callie continues to work with Justina which raises concerns among Stef, Lena, and Rita; Nick asks Jesus for tips about dating Mariana; Jesus confronts Gabe; and Stef and Lena deal with the aftermath of the surgery.

I so want to slap some sense into Callie.  I get that she really wants to help foster kids, but doing an ad for a bill without knowing what is going on, calling Rita a scared hypocrite, and completely blowing off Stef and Lena are just bad things.  I honestly thought that after last week, she would have realized that something is up with Justina, but she refuses to see it.  All she's doing is looking at what Justina wants her to see.  I am also finding it very annoying that Callie is just quoting Justina to Rita and accusing Rita of wanting to merely perpetuate the system.  She, of all people, should know that Rita is a wonderful person who only has the best interest of her girls at heart.  As for Justina's comparison of a charter school to privatized foster care, there are some major flaws.  Callie knows that there are issues with the private homes, just witness what happened to with Jack.  Also, comparing a school; which parents choose for their own child; to a business where incentives are given based on the number of children based (not how well they are cared for) is comparing apples and oranges.  At a private school, the teachers and administrators are answerable to the parents directly.  In a privatized foster system, that sort of safeguard doesn't exist.  Is the current foster system working as intended?  No, it's not.  But, generally speaking, privatizing things has not worked out terribly well in most situations. particularly for social services, where the companies are incentivized to cut costs and not to serve people.  I just really hope that Callie wakes up and sees what is going on soon.

I also wanted to smack Monte hard.  While having suggestions for the student council president was not a wholly bad thing, going with her to help her with her project was way over the line.  And I know Monte said the thing about letting Jesus in, but unless my memory is very bad, Lena didn't ask for Monte's help in that case, Monte just did it.  Should Lena have accepted it?  That is a whole other question.  But Monte's habit of casually crossing lines to do what she wants speaks of very poor judgment.  While I appreciate her taking an appreciation in the student's future, Lena was absolutely right.  Giving that level of help (not just suggestion, but help) to one student and not to others is a horrible idea and smacks of favoritism.

Might as well go for three and smack Jesus too.  Telling Nick that Mariana loved burgers and arranging a double date with him and Lexi?  Not cool dude.  And as for the stunt about egging Nick on regarding the drag racing?  Even less cool.  I can't say I blame him for going off on Gabe initially.  After all, discovering that your biological dad in on the sex offenders list would probably be enough to drive anyone up the wall.  And I called it last week.  Gabe in on the sex offender list because he was an adult and had sex with his minor girlfriend.  This is the sort of thing that really shouldn't get someone on the sex offender list.  It was consensual, although she was underage.  Seeing as the original purpose of the sex offender list was to make sure people knew if someone dangerous was around their house, having someone who made an innocent mistake like that on the list is just ridiculous.

It was really nice to see Stef and Lena talk about things tonight.  I totally get where Lena is coming from.  Having your wife lose both of her breasts has got to be hard on you as well and she wants to make sure that Stef isn't hurt.  Add to that the fact that she feels guilty about being whole while Stef isn't doesn't make the whole thing any easier.  At least they talked about it before it got too bad.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Stef testify for Ty at his sentencing hearing.  While it was not the best possible outcome, it was much better than what it could have been.  I'm not sure if he did the things he did in the past to help AJ, but if he didn't that makes him different from Callie, who only did things to protect her brother from an abusive situation.

Brandon better be careful.  His co-workers ex seems to be a not good guy based on the way he was talking to her.  Watching Brandon with her son was just really cute and funny.

Until next week!

My Review of The Originals 3.13- Heart Shaped Box

Aurora continues her games with Klaus and Elijah, the Strix continue to search for a way to break the sire bonds to the Originals, Hayley takes Cami in hand, and Davina reunites (briefly) with Kol.

The more I see Aya, the less I like her.  Even though Marcel is “the leader” of the Strix, she continues to control everything and only seems to let him lead when she wants to let him lead.  And to top it off, she is trying to team with Aurora to get rid of the Originals.  I know she’s pissed at Elijah for abandoning the Strix when Mikael came calling and for what happened to Tristan, but there seems to be something else going on.  Add to that the fact that, according to Kol, she doesn’t keep her promises and you have someone who is totally unscrupulous and is just a bad person overall.

Thank goodness Aurora is such a bad shot.  She had chances to kill both Elijah and Klaus and didn’t kill either one.  In Elijah’s case, however, he mainly survived the second shot because Klaus broke his neck which stopped his heart so that Klaus could dig around in his chest and pull the bullet out.  But teaming up Miss Crazy Pants with Miss No Scruples and the Originals now have some serious competition.

To make matters worse, the Strix now have most of what they need in order to delink all vampires from the Originals.  In an interesting twist, the key to delinking a bloodline is to use the heart of an unsired vampire, which would undo that portion of the spell that Esther cast.  Since there is only one unsired vampire in the world, that made Hayley a big target.  Fortunately for Hayley, Kol was able to work through Davina and knock out the Strix witches, thereby saving Hayley temporarily.  He life was saved permanently when Marcel realized that since her heart and Jackson’s were linked, they could use Jackson’s heart in place of hers.  That does make a certain amount of sense, but now we have the trouble because the Strix can delink everyone and they have access to Aurora who has the one weapon that can kill the Originals.  Can we say “Trouble!”?

Watching Kol and Davina together was really sweet.  Was Kol right when he said that Aya never kept her promises?  From what we’ve seen of her, I would suspect that he is, or if she does it is in some twisted way.  Remember Klaus “reuniting” Elijah with his family during Season 2 of The Vampire Diaries?  Something like that.  Speaking of twisted Klaus, I had to laugh when he dropped the Chief of Police from the balcony after Elijah told him to release him and Elijah just looked at him with exasperation and said, “That’s not what I meant.”  Twisted?  Yes, but still really funny in a totally dark way.

I was so glad to see that Cami is feeling guilty about the issues she caused by stealing the toy from Klaus.  It was fun watching her and Hayley train.  Hayley needed to let off some steam and Cami needed it as well.  And what exactly was the box Cami used on the witches?  It looked sort of familiar, but we’ve seen so many dark objects that I can’t remember them all.

Until Friday!

My Review of The Vampire Diaries 7.13- This Woman's Work

I want to apologize for not getting this out Friday night, but I was having some cable issues, so I was only able to watch this and The Originals tonight.

So, without further ado......

Stefan and Valerie try to help Caroline and the babies, we learn about Reyna’s backstory, and Stefan makes a sacrifice for Damon…

Reyna, the huntress, is the daughter of one of the Brotherhood of Five.  Remember them from season 4?  In 1842, she begged her father to train her so she could kill vampires.  Interestingly, we now know that the Hunter’s Mark is not automatically passed down through a bloodline, at least not to females of a bloodline.  I don’t think we’ve seen a member of the Five who had a child, so that has been a bit of an open question.  We know she wasn’t even a potential Hunter because she couldn’t see her father’s tattoos.

Anyway, she became the mighty huntress she is now after she got seven or eight shamans to give her longer life and power, after Julian forced her to kill her own father, by sacrificing themselves.  At the same time, they created her sword and the Phoenix Stone to help her hunt and kill vampires.  I wonder if Bonnie’s magic wouldn’t affect her.  It could simply be protections of some sort, or it could be that shamanistic magic is different enough from witch magic that she simply couldn’t do anything.  After all, we do know that there are different types of magic: nature, ancestral, Expression, gypsy, and now shamanistic.  It is entirely possible that one type of magic can somehow be immune to other types.  Interesting idea there.

Stefan is having a really, really, no good, very bad day.  First off, his girlfriend’s babies (from another man!) are desiccating her by absorbing her magic and refusing to be born.  So, he got Valerie and the other Heretics to use magic in an effort to persuade the babies to come out of Caroline.  On top of that, he is dealing with the grief from his brother killing Elena and then he gets stabbed in the shoulder by Reyna, thereby marking him and ensuring that he would be hunted by her until she kills him.  Yeah, his day sucks.

Damon’s day isn’t much better.  He is so wracked with guilt about what happened to Elena that he is willing to allow Reyna to kill him because he is already in hell.   Then his brother shows up and gets stabbed for him.  Yeah, that just sucks all around.  On the good news front, Enzo says that he and Tyler switched out Elena’s coffin for an empty coffin and that Elena is safe.  My only question about this is why on earth did Tyler go to Enzo of all people?  That really does not make a whole lot of sense to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have confirmation that Elena’s alive (not that I really thought she was dead!), but that is just a weird person to go to.  So now Elena’s in New York with some of Enzo’s friends.  I am assuming that is where we saw Damon in the flash forward when he was coming out of the coffin.  I honestly don’t remember.

At this point, I am trying to figure out where this season is going.  We’ve gotten rid of Lily and Julian and the Heretics and Stefan are on the run from Reyna, so reclaiming Mystic Falls should be relatively simple.  They just need to figure out a way to get rid of the vampires who are currently living there.  I am also wondering if this season will end with a time jump ahead to the end of the three years.  I would assume so, but am curious.

Until Friday!

My Review of DC's Legends of Tomorrow 1.05- Fail Safe

Rip and Sara are faced with a moral quandary, Stein tries to withhold the secret to Firestorm from the Soviets, and Rory makes his allegiances clear.

I was surprised how upset Snart was at Rip this week. Last week he seemed to almost admire the way Rip took the long view and was willing to temporarily sacrifice people in order to take Savage down.  This week, he was most definitely not happy with Rip at all.  It's not like a lot of time has passed, so he didn't exactly have a long time to reconsider his position, so I am not sure what changed.  I know he wasn't happy about leaving Rory behind, but he seemed to get where Savage was coming from.  And this week we also saw him butt heads with Sara for the first time ever.  I do get his disagreement about how to handle Stein if he broke, but in the long run, Sara and Rip were right.  It would be far better to sacrifice one person to save so many more.  Was it a good plan?  No, but I think that had the situation seriously deteriorated beyond their ability to stop it, it was the best of a bunch of really bad choices.  Fortunately, the choice never seriously came up until the end and by then Rip had the pieces in place to make sure that Sara wouldn't need to take the shot.

Despite what anyone may think about him, I think Rip really does care about the whole crew.  But, like I said last week, he knows that some might have to be sacrificed if there is no other alternative.  We know that he would never do anything that would purposefully sacrifice one of his people except as an absolute last resort.  Like I said, he had other options this week once Kendra and Jax went into the gulag, so he didn't need to sacrifice Stein.

As for Jax and Kendra, I do get why he benched them initially.  As he said, they are the two people Savage wants the most in the world.  He could give Jax to the Soviets and create more Firestorms and Kendra is who he needs to become stronger.  Keeping them safe on the ship was the best option at the time.  Did that change?  Sure, and he acknowledged that when he needed to.  He's a smart guy and he knows when to bow to the inevitable and do what is the best for the world.

Would Sara have killed Stein if Snart and Rip hadn't told her to stop?  Probably.  She is an assassin and will do unpleasant tasks in order to protect that which she loves the most.  I'm not saying that she would have liked it or anything, but I have little doubt that she would have done it.  I'm just glad it didn't get put to the test.  And how much fun was it to watch her take apart those Russians?

I think Ray earned some respect from Rory this week for using his mouth to make sure that Rory wasn't beaten by the torturer.  Not a lot, but some.  Up to now, unless he was in the ATOM suit, Ray hasn't shown himself to be terribly useful where Rory and Snart are concerned.  I don't think Snart is fond of him, but Rory seems to realize that there is more to Ray than a pretty face.  It's a step in the right direction.

You gotta hand it to Stein.  He managed to withstand hallucinogenic drugs and whatever else was dished out to him.  He only broke when he saw Ray and Rory being hurt.  Even then, he managed to not give up everything.  It took Dr. Vostok seeing the scarred writing on Stein's arm before she realized that he was the piece that she needed.  And how stupid was she to not listen to him when he said that she needed the splicer.  Well, maybe not stupid, because it could have been something he was making up in order to delay her, but it was not a good idea as was demonstrated when she exploded after he forced a split.  I was impressed that Jax remembered the writing thing.  Nicely done, nicely done.

Until next week!