Sunday, April 17, 2016

Vampire Diaries, Season 7, Episode 18: One Way or Another



Damon and Alaric are all trying to save Stefan’s life and capture Stefan’s body that has been possessed by an evil serial killer (which is apparently different from how the Salvatore brothers usually operate) which means compelling a couple of ambulance drivers to help keep Stefan’s injured body alive and drive him around avoiding everyone who wants to arrest/kill him while Damon and Alaric talk about their issues

Oh and hunt down Stefan’s body. But mainly issues on account of Damon having been in a self-induced coma for 4 years he’s now around again and trying to pick up where he left off while Alaric – along with everyone else – is pretty much pissed off at the guy who wanted to just check out of their lives without telling them and now wants to pretend nothing happened. Also everyone’s actually moved on with their lives and are now all happy without Damon in it, especially since Damon tends to show up at the same time as disaster (to be fair, though, I don’t think we can blame that disaster on anyone)

Alaric also has issues because he thinks, with Rayna no long murdering, Stefan may reunite with Caroline. Valerie has the same issues. I do not have these issues because I really really really really do not care who is currently shagging who, think Valerie has no personality beyond moping after Stefan, think Caroline is too good for all this and think Alaric is creepy for setting up house with one of his former students.

Damon and Alaric do manage to kidnap serial killer Stefan (that is the NEW serial killer Stefan, not the old serial killer Stefan) leaving a gajillion bodies in their wake and, as per usual, not really caring

This allows Valerie to cast the spell switching Stefan back to his usual body even though it nearly kills her because she just can’t live without Stefan. Some call this romantic. I call it shitty writing failing to produce a full character who actually has motives and wants and tastes and a life outside of being a love interest, but hey ho that’s me wanting this female people to be, y’know, people.


Along the way they try to kidnap Rayna but Enzo beat them to it (Rayna is pretty much helpless, tormented by the voices of all the vampires she should of killed but didn’t because REASONS). Enzo wants her because her blood was used to create the anti-witch pills. He wants a cure because he’s been giving them to Bonnie not knowing they’ll kill her. Unsurprisingly, Rayna doesn’t know about a cure of a mystical drug that uses her blood

Given Kat Graham is leaving this trainwreck, I think Bonnie has a high chance of dropping dead before the season ends.

Enzo cares because he and Bonnie are together now.

Oh Bonnie. Look you have excellent aesthetic tastes for your men, but just because they’re hot doesn’t mean they’re worth your time. You can do better.

So why is she taking the poison pills? She’s doing it because cutting off her magic (aha, this is why everyone’s ignored her – she’s not useful to them without her magic!) makes her untraceable to the Armoury and she really wants to know why the Armoury wants to capture/kill her. So she’s infiltrated a mental institution (I was all prepared to scream at the idea of her needing help because of Damon!) to speak to one of the inmates and fiddle with their medication (I want to insert now that messing with a mentally ill person’s drugs because you think they’re “fuzzy” is an absolutely appalling thing to do and under no circumstances should anyone ever do this. Ever. People need those meds to live no matter how much you’ve heard people demonising mental health medication. Never. Ever. Do. This).

Interviewing the woman – a relative of the Armoury family – she learns that there’s a vault in the Armoury that was sealed by a Bennet witch and can only be opened by one. Ever. When Bonnie doesn’t promise ever to open it the woman attacks her – rather spending the rest of her life inside the institution than risking that vault ever being opened

This being Vampire Diaries, you know they’re going to open that vault. Then Bonnie will die.


Damon decides to catch up with Bonnie who is even more pissed with him than Alaric.