The Vampire Diaries: Turn this Mutha Out (PHOTO RECAP)

The Vampire Diaries S03E15: “All My Children”

Look, I don’t know if it’s the cold medication talking, or maybe it’s the fact that I’m so close to death I can actually SEE eternity, but this episode of The Vampire Diaries maybe wasn’t the best? Don’t be sore at me, there’s a chance it’s OUR fault. I think after last week’s stellar outing we might have hoped and prayed a little TOO hard that none of the Originals would be killed off this week (mostly so they can be spun off into their own series because COME ON, The CW, you like money right?). Well, we got what we wanted! No Originals died this week, not even Esther. But the repercussion was that this episode wasn’t terribly high-stakes or important-seeming. Instead we were asked to be sad about a character who we’d just met being turned into a vampire, which is kind of a step up for a witch without powers, right? Also Elena was basically trapped in a hole for most of the episode, and she IS the audience surrogate, so… also a main character was shot in a cliffhanger scenario but definitely not killed because come on, show. Kidding me with that?

Tell you what, let’s just jump in and get this done so that I can eat all of the over-the-counter chemicals in the vicinity. Sound good?

We started in Elena’s bedroom, where she’d just awakened from a delightful slumber.

What do you guys think Elena even dreams about? Considering her waking life is a nonstop nightmare, do you think her dreams are the opposite? Like she dreams about sitting at a table drinking a Sprite? Or feeding a raccoon with a baby bottle?

Oh well, it was time for Elena to get on with her day, and lately that means busting out all her best psycho ex-girlfriend moves.

Fortunately Stefan wasn’t having it, he was too busy writing in that awful diary of his. (Can you even imagine what he’s been writing in it lately?)

Damon took Elena’s call, but cut her off pretty quickly. He had other things going on.

Later, after Rebekah reassembled her ballgown somehow, Damon walked her to the door like a true gentleman.

And there was Elena! Gettin’ all up in Damon’s private affairs like it was her JOB.

You could tell Elena was NOT happy about this situation. Sure she’d pretty much rejected Damon the night before so that she could more freely pursue a seemingly remorseless mass murderer, but still: She thought she was THE BOSS of Damon. But nope!

Back at Klaus’ mansion, Kol immediately called his sister a “strumpet” because Kol is hilarious like that.

Klaus was in a VERY chipper mood for some reason, just happily sketching away in his notebook. Then Kol decided that HE wanted some action, so he demanded that Klaus be his wingman or something. Gosh, how much a bummer would it be to be an immortal, thousand-year-old vampire and you wind up in a town that has exactly one bar and one restaurant and it’s the same place? Better luck next time, Kol.

Meanwhile over at Caroline’s house (for some reason), Elena was trying to get Bonnie to replicate Esther’s privacy spell.

But then Bonnie got SUPER offended when Elena implied she didn’t know magic very well:

And then they battled! Anyway, as it turned out Bonnie and Abby were dead set on helping Esther murder her children for no real reason. Just ‘cuz.

At this point a dapper gentleman showed up to pay Elena a visit:

Elena had no reason to question this request, and why should she?

Anyway, there was an amusing bit right here where Elijah described how Mystic Falls used to be a thousand years ago. Apparently Mystic Falls High was built over a Native American village (LOL) and wild horses used to roam town square. I mean, fine.

Anyway, Elijah was onto Elena BIG TIME.

He suspected that Esther was up to something, plus he could HEAR Elena’s heartbeats when she lied about not knowin’ nuttin’. And then, hilariously, he STOMPED A HOLE in the ground and stashed Elena in it!

Classic Elijah move!

But whoops! Guess who else was down there? Rebekah! It was her job to keep Elena in line and/or murder her if it came to that.

Over at Mystic Grill, Alaric was doing some morning shots with Meredith and they were still trying to figure out who Mystic Falls’ mysterious slasher was.

It was hilarious when Klaus and Kol walked up right when Meredith was going off about how vampires are DEFINITELY behind the slashings. Because, you know, vampires always stab people with large knives, that’s just classic vampire stuff right there.

In what has to be the most perfect summation yet of this show’s treatment of African-American witches, it turned out that Esther intended to channel the entire Bennett family blood line in order to carry out her spell and Bonnie & Abby were along for the ride just because? The reasoning was something like, “Well, this lady’s going to channel our powers anyway, we may as well be present.” So yeah. Nothing racially weird about this at all.

The best part was that at no point did Abby EVER seem interested in what was going on:

I felt so bad for her. She could’ve been back at her place just hanging out with some random teenage dude (remember that? What was HIS story?) and living life blissfully unaware of the shenanigans Bonnie’s always getting herself involved in.

So anyway, Elijah informed Stefan and Damon that they had to stop Esther’s spell or else he’d have Rebekah kill Elena. Specifically they had to murder one or more of the Bennetts. But then Damon had a plan to work around this dilemma: He’d dagger one of the Originals, thus neutralizing ALL of them. And he used Caroline as a decoy:

Continuing their charming interactions from “Dangerous Liaisons,” Klaus was trying to win Caroline back over again while she repeatedly stressed how NOT into him she was.

But, and maybe this is me reading into things too much, didn’t Caroline seem genuinely happy here:

Just sayin’! Anyway, back inside Meredith and Alaric got to work ensnaring Kol.

Upon daggering Kol, it was fairly awesome how all of the Original siblings started to fall, including Rebekah and also Finn (who’d been helping Esther set up her pentagram) who just keeled over in front of everybody.

But apparently because he’s so strong, Klaus didn’t immediately drop. He first had plenty of time to get SUPER mad at Caroline:

And then swoop in to undagger Kol:

At this point Elijah arrived and informed Klaus that Esther had indeed plotted to murder them and that Damon and Stefan were ultimately working toward stopping her. Or something. I don’t know, junk got complicated around this part. Like, for example, apparently Esther’s plan was to turn all her children back into human beings and THEN murder them? Question: Why the Step 2? Wouldn’t turning them back into human beings be enough to correct her sins against nature? I guess she was just super into murder or something. Like I said, I don’t know.

So then Damon and Stefan arrived at the scene of the spell and debated about which of them would have to do the deed against Bonnie and/or her mom. So they flipped a coin.

Meanwhile in the caves, Elena ran away from Rebekah and into a certain spelled ‘n graffiti’d cavern.

But just when Elena thought she’d found a place out of Rebekah’s reach, she forgot one thing:

GASOLINE don’t know no force fields!

This was hilarious. So yeah then Rebekah started throwing lit matches at Elena because Rebekah is AWESOME.

Elena reasoned that Rebekah should NOT kill her right then because then Rebekah would have nothing to live for, revenge-wise. Instead, she should let Elena go and exact her revenge in slow, methodical ways.

Quick! Somebody spin this idea off into a show! It can be set in the Hamptons and everything!

So then the angry brothers descended upon Esther’s circle of murder and boy did she tell them off BIG TIME! She had had it UP TO HERE watching them murder tons of folks over the past thousand years.

Speaking of murder! Sorry Abby.

Good thing she immediately swallowed the vampire blood that Damon force-fed her 1.5 seconds before snapping her neck. Apparently in turning Abby into a vampire she forfeited all her witch powers (all those witch powers!). Bonnie was NOT happy about it.

Also not happy: Esther!

And then POOF! She and Finn just vanished into thin air.

Meanwhile back at Caroline’s house (for some reason—just kidding, the reason is that Bonnie doesn’t have a house. AFTER THREE SEASONS) she waited for her mom to wake up and crave human blood. I think this whole thing was supposed to be super sad, but (A) who cares about Abby? I don’t even think ABBY cared about Abby. Also (B) Bonnie had hated her mom up until three days prior and also she’d been a powerless witch? If you ask me, Vampire Abby is probably better off.

But this was sort of amazing:

Caroline literally refused to let Elena even in the house! I guess people are finally sick of Elena’s shit! It goes without saying that everyone in Mystic Falls is in mortal danger no matter what, but Elena had really stirred it up over the past year hadn’t she? She is basically a grim reaper with flat-ironed hair.

That being said, I’m not sure I bought the idea that BONNIE had lost the most out of all of them. Elena’s probably the winner in that regard, but maybe Caroline meant percentage-wise, because Bonnie didn’t really have that much to begin with. Hopefully this incident (which, again, WHAT incident? Abby will be fine!) will kick Bonnie into gear a little bit? Maybe she’ll get a little goth like that time Grams died? Maybe she’ll get a little more fire in her eyes in general?

Anyway, back at the Salvatore home, Damon was not keeping his soap in its proper container.

As it turned out, during the whole coin flipping thing, Stefan had actually been the one chosen to murder one of the Bennetts.

Damon went ahead and did the deed anyway, seemingly as a favor to Stefan, whose human blood sobriety suggested he was back on the path to redemption. Also, as Damon pointed out, he was better at being bad.

Over at Elena’s house, SOMEONE had left her a note!

It was from Elijah! And it was definitely a going away note. Because Elijah was going away!

Meanwhile Klaus was nursing his broken heart by therapeutically burning the contents of his sketchbook.

Unlike Elijah and Kol, Rebekah made it clear she intended to stick with Klaus, making them the only two Originals left in Mystic Falls. It was actually fairly sweet! Plus she had some cell phone footage she needed him to see.

It was from the caves: According to the hieroglyphics there’s ANOTHER White Oak tree somewhere out there, meaning they’re no longer as impossible to kill as they thought.

How’s this for an Alaric-related cliffhanger! He woke up in Meredith’s apartment and immediately upon entering the kitchen he came across a HUGE STASH of medical records, crime scene photos, and murder weapons related to the stabbings just splayed out on her kitchen counter in plain view.

And then she shot Alaric! Oh my gosh, do you think he’s dead? He is probably not dead. Oh well, at least we know she’s shady. Although, I’m sure it’ll just be some thing where she’s somehow supernatural, or she thought he was a vampire, or some other wacky misunderstanding. The important thing is, Alaric is definitely not dead and this was not a very good cliffhanger.

The episode was okay! Not great! I love that the Originals are all alive and thus capable of future awesomeness. That’s pretty cool, right?

Okay bye! See you in three weeks?

QUESTIONS:

… Does Elena deserve to be in the dog house with everybody?

… Are you sad about Elijah leaving?

… Are Klaus and Caroline over for good?

… What should we do now?