Vampire Diaries – “Bloodlines” – review

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The Vampire Diaries came back from the break with a vengeance.  It focused heavily on the Gilbert family (more heavily than usual), as the only plot points involved Elena, the brothers, Jeremy, and Bonnie.   We left off on a cliffhanger, wherein Elena had rolled her SUV after hitting a man…a man who proceeded to stand up, shake off the hit, and walk toward her car. 

The episode opened right where we left off, revealing the mystery man to be a vampire (duh) by his lightning speed in running away as Damon approaches the accident.  He helps Elena out of the wreck, only to have her mutter “I look like her” before passing out.  So…who was it that she ran into?  I mean, how many effing vampires can there be running around Mystic Falls?  Is it someone else who knows about Katherine and wants to open her tomb, or someone who has it out for Damon or Stefan, or just a stranger?

Damon doesn’t try to find out; he’s a man on a mission.  Elena wakes up to find herself in the front seat of his car, hours from Virginia—all the way to Georgia, in fact.  Damon takes her to a bar to see his old friend Bree (Gina Torres), who is a witch, and who had her heart broken by Damon while she was in college.  Damon is there to call on old friendship’s sake and see if she can tell him another way to open Katherine’s tomb now that Emily’s crystal has been destroyed.  No.  When Elena goes outside to take a call from Stefan (read:  hang up on him), Damon follows, and Bree makes a cryptic phone call she doesn’t want Damon to hear….

So Gina Torres was hilarious as Bree.  First, is she really that tall and/or is Ian Somerhalder really that short?  Because she had like 4 or 5 inches on him.  AMAZON.  But my boy Sexy D was mad pimp enough not to care.  Damon = totally secure in his masculinity.  Their “hello, stranger” kiss scene was marvelous. 

It was fun to see Elena relax a little and have some fun.  She doesn’t do that much.  Damon was charming and mysterious, and maybe even a little chivalrous, teasing her into having that fun and then especially when he immediately goes after her when he realizes she’s gone.  Turns out he made enemies of both Bree and another vampire when he killed Lexie…because Lexie’s human boyfriend is now a vampire.  Elena is desperate to know whether Lexie had turned him—no doubt because of Lexie’s pep talk about a human lifetime being enough if you really love them—but that is left unclear.  Elena manages to save Damon from the boyfriend’s anger, and though Bree tells Damon there might be another way to open the tomb, if he can find Emily’s spellbook, that information is not enough to save her from Damon’s wrath.  I was sad Gina’s spot on the show was one-time only—she’d be fun to see more of—but it was in character with Damon to kill her…and do it so brutally.  He didn’t let Elena see what he did, which was interesting.  I like that the show is keeping him so ambiguous.  I mean, he’s not totally evil, but he does do pretty horrible things on a regular basis…but yet, he’s loyal to his brother and he seems to have taken Elena under his wings, as well, and not just because it will make his brother upset.

Bonnie’s plotline with her powers disappearing because of her fear and having to go back to the scene of her fear was bad enough before she fell into the antechamber of Katherine’s crypt.  Creepy, creepy, creepy, creepy, creepy!  And probably foreshadowing, because she talked about being able to “hear” them inside the tomb…sooner or later Damon (or that other vampire, if that’s his mission in the area) is getting through that stone.  And then…holy hell.  Mystic Falls better watch out.

I really liked Jeremy’s new homeschooled friend Anna.  She was fun and weird, kind of reminded me of a pair of homeschooled kids I knew whose parents didn’t do it for religious reasons but because they thought their kids were too gifted for public schools.  She seems more like this type…way too open and flirtatious with Jeremy to be crazy restrictive religious.  I also liked how she researched all the periodic “animal attacks” in Mystic Falls (and seriously?  No investigative journalist had caught that pattern sooner?).  And her ancestor also kept a vampire diary, so that may come back into play later as another Founding Family connection.

There were three big reveals at the end, and I really can’t decide which is the most shocking.  That Stefan pulled Elena from the wrecked car but couldn’t save her parents (and how great was that “oh, yeah, I totally stalked you for months before meeting you to be sure you aren’t like Katherine”—SO romantic)?  Or that Elena is adopted, and is really out of the Pierce line (Katherine’s family) not the Gilberts, and that for some reason her parents wanted to cover it up at all costs?  Or that Damon killed Alaric’s wife (Mia Kershner, who we barely got to see at all), and that Alaric recognizes him?  Hm…conundrum!  I say they’re all pretty big, and I can’t WAIT to see what comes out next week and/or happens as a fall-out from those secrets being told.