Mea Culpa

While I unreservedly love The Vampire Diaries, I'm on record as thinking the sun and moon curse that the show has been preoccupied with for the majority of it's second season was not very well thought-out.  I mean, the curse itself made a kind of sense to me; that a group of spell-casting people would be so terrified of the supernatural hell beasties running loose in their midst, that they whipped up a curse to give themselves what little relief they could.  What I wasn't able to wrap my head around was why an Original would want to break this curse.  From what we'd been told, breaking the curse would render vampires impervious to the sun, but Originals have that shit in the bag already.  And I don't see the upside of having all the other vamps roaming the streets free in broad daylight, thinning the people herds and leaving a lot less food for blood-suckers everywhere. 

So imagine my delighted surprise when the show flipped it on it's head last week and was all "fooled you, fooled you!"  The curse is a silly, if masterfully elaborate story made up to cover the fact that the real "curse" is keeping the wolfy half of a half-breed in the proverbial closet.  See, that makes more sense!  Especially since the half breed in question is Klaus.  That's right, he's not just balls-out crazy, he's also two kinds of monster. 

Those revelations were well-timed, super interesting, and great fun to watch but they were total crap as compared to getting a bunch of Elijah screen time.  Daniel Gillies is the 3rd best thing to happen to this show behind the vamping of Caroline and the existence of Matt. 

I love that Elena brought Elijah back from the semi-dead and was like "um...sorry?"  She and her friends killed him not once, but twice (I don't count the time Damon staked him with a coat rack because that was before he and Elena made their deal) yet, when she un-stabbed him, he took it like the classy gentleman he is and never even tried to kill anyone. He was all "we should talk. But first I must procure myself a change of clothes."  Bad. Ass. 

He has a swagger that doesn't come off as cocky-yet-self-loathing-y as Damon's, as ragewad-dickbag-y as former Mayor Lockwood's, or as hat-full-of-crazy as Klaus's.  He knows his shit, he has a plan, he's not going to get petty or emotional about things, and in the late afternoon, his fine ass is having a mother fucking cup of tea, bitches.  So, yeah, I believe he's telling Elena the truth and I think it's going to prove to be a pretty big mistake when Damon refuses to work with him. 

As a matter of fact, I think Damon should open himself up to the idea of personal growth and development and ask Elijah to be his mentor.  That's the kind of suave coolness and genius plan-making Damon should strive for instead of the half-baked, half-assed, thrown-together, last-minute, high-failure-rate plans he usually comes up with.  Moonstone in the soap bowl, Damon?  I mean Jesus Christ, man! 

As impressive as I find Elijah, I've thus far been underwhelmed by Klaus.  Don't get me wrong, I thought Matt Davis was pretty great when he was possessed by Klaus and I found the cocksure half-smile Joseph Morgan shot us in the final moments of the ep last week when modern-day Klaus was put back in his body and let out of his box was perfectly creeptastic, but flashback Klaus seemed less than menacing and kind of boring.  Let's hope that several hundred hears of honing his cuckoo will make Now Klaus more interesting than Then Klaus. 

On the other hand, somehow knowing that the relationship between Elijah and Klaus is a bit of a carnival-mirror reflection of the Stefan/Damon relationship, makes Stefan, Damon, Elijah and Katherine even more interesting.  There existed this thicker-than-water brotherly bond for all that time and then one day Elijah had enough and was like "he's my half brother but I whole want him dead" and he is not kidding around.  A rift like that can not be far off for the brothers Salvatore if they don't deal with their Elena issues, right?

Finally, Aunt Jenna officially knows what's what in this town with the vampires and the witches and the anti-death jewelry, etc. and she is not handling it well.  I don't dislike Jenna but I think it took the best part of two seasons for her to be remotely interesting and that's too little, too late.  She is easily removed from the greater story equation and therefore, she is an acceptable main-character casualty.  If she lives and Matt, Caroline, Tyler, Alaric, Jeremy or Bonnie die, I'm going to need a couple of weeks off work and some recovery time in a mental health facility. 

Anyway, this is my way of summing up my thoughts about last week in lieu of writing a proper recap because I just could not bring myself to slog through flashbacks again.  You all know that the flashbacks are the weakest part of this show for me and between the excessive exposition and the man wigs, I couldn't do it twice in one week.  Sorry all.