Vampire Diaries – “Blood Brothers” – review

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Mm, shirtless Damon.  I liked this one.  The end.

Just kidding!  So what happened in Mystic Falls this week?  Well, Stefan was back to brooding again, which I know will make his fans happy.  Vampires should be brooding or bad, not happy go lucky.  Welcome back to your life as it should be, little brother.  He decided he was going to refuse all blood, even animal, and just sit in the confines of his human-blood-detox cell and let himself die.  Um, dude.  Didn’t the tomb teach you ANYTHING?  He wasn’t actually going to die by not feeding…he’d have to go out into the sun or let someone stake him to be truly gone.  I wish that had even been brought up in a discussion.

This was another flashback episode, and spliced in I thought really neatly.  Stefan is weak from lack of blood and starts hallucinamembering what happened when the vampires were put in the tomb.  So we finally got all the gaps of the brothers’ story filled in.  They had tried to save Katherine from the vampire holding coach and each been shot by one of the Council vampire hunters (we found out later it was their dad).  Then they wake up in the transitioning phase.  Emily had taken their bodies, put the lapis lazuli rings on them, and explained that they would still die if they did not feed on blood to complete the transition.  They decided to let themselves die…until Stefan went to see their father to say goodbye, ended up fighting him and spilling blood, and couldn’t resist its ruby allure.  (So I guess I was wrong last week when I surmised he’d never had human blood.  And how ookie is it that he used his own father’s blood to turn with?)  Then he convinced Damon to turn, as well.

I really loved the twist (from the books) on their how we got to be vampires story.  I think it’s very interesting that Stefan was the one who turned Damon—that Damon had been ready to die because Katherine was gone, and that Stefan had wanted his brother to live after he accidentally turned himself.  In those days they had still been close.  The intervening 145 years that made Stefan avoid his brother by the time the series began had everything to do with Damon keeping his promise to make it an eternity of misery for Stefan.  Which was a HILARIOUS thing for him to vow.  And the big reveal at the end, where Damon finally tells Stefan why he vowed that was poignant and striking:  “Not because I hated you for turning me, but because she turned you.  It was supposed to be me. ONLY me….”  Also interesting, that their father shot them and ended their human lives—in the books they duel and kill each other.  I guess Stefan convincing Damon to live created that causality of guilt between them in this version of the story.

Speaking of causality of guilt, Elena had a knock-out moment when she took Stefan to task about all his guilt…basically that everything we do has consequences and we have to live with them, but that we can’t measure everything in our lives by one action.  She reminded him that if he hadn’t lived he wouldn’t have been able to save her life, and tells him (and us) that the reason her parents had been in the car that night was that she’d had too much to drink at a party and made them come pick her up.  Pwned.  She wins.

Also Damon wins for telling Stefan, “You’re not allowed to feel my guilt.”  Truth.

The first subplot this week spun around Pearl and Anna.  Anna and Jeremy had drawn close again last episode and get busy this time.  I shouldn’t say it like that, it was actually kind of sweet.  Then Pearl meets with Jon, and he plays her like a fiddle—first telling her John Gilbert senior had written of his undying love for her, then laughing at her for believing it and telling her John Gilbert had hated her till he died, which prompted her to lose any loyalty to John Gilbert and tell his descendent she gave the device to Damon.  After that Pearl decides they need to leave.  Anna goes to say goodbye to Jeremy and returns to find her mother and Harper staked.  Jon is seen putting his stake gun back into his car.  Damn.  I was kind of starting to like Pearl.  She seemed pretty level-headed, and Anna is a very sympathetic character so I really hate seeing her lose her mother, permanently this time. 

Speaking of Uncle Jon, Elena had an awesome moment with him when he asked her “what would your mother think about you dating a vampire?” and she said, “Which mother?”  GAME SET MATCH, bitch.  And speaking of Elena’s real mother, Isobel, Alaric had a friend track down the address associated with the number Elena had called, and he and Damon take a road trip to the next town to see it.  They stake the vampire there after he admits to knowing Jon Gilbert but no Isobel.  Kind of a wasted trip, except that it cuts off another lead.  Alaric finally realizes he needs, and wants, to let Isobel go, to just move on with his life and stop “looking for answers I don’t really want to find.”  And so, of course, it is after he comes to this decision that we see, in the epilogue scene, Isobel approach him in a bar.  “Hello, Rick.” 

Hello, Trouble, more like.

One Comment

1. 

   Dawn

   May 10, 2010 at 4:12 pm

   I had a major problem with the flashbacks, and Stefan changing on his father’s blood. Giuseppe injested vervaine! I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t have stopped, seeing how Katherine was not yet intombed, and until all the vampires were captured, there would still be a risk of compulsion. Just a few mouthfuls of tainted blood was enough to capture Katherine, so if should have devastated Stefan. I don’t buy that vervain has no effect on the newly turned, as that vervain laced blood would still be in a vampiric system, one that cannot handle the toxin.

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