Mama who bore me

The Vampire Diaries

Season 3 episode 12 – “The Ties that Bind”

Dear Diary,

Elijah is back and nothing else remotely important happened this episode.

Ok, maybe other stuff happened that was important and I’m just fixated on Elijah coming back, but people of the internet can you blame me? Find a picture and just look at his hair. You could write a sonnet about that, maybe I will... you want to hear about the other stuff huh? I understand.

“How do you solve a problem like a coffin? How do you let whatever’s inside it out? How do solve a problem like a coffin?”

 That is the question that has been on everyone’s minds for weeks in Mystic Falls. Well, I think its weeks, time moves weird there. Bonnie who has made it her own personal quest to rid the world of Klaus, has been tasked once again by dreamscape to find the woman who abandoned her years ago, her wayward mum.

 

Abby (Persia White), who must not have been married to Bonnie’s dad, if her surname is Bennet and Grams and Emily’s last names were also Bennet, run off in the imaginary years before the show aired, abandoning her post as Bonnie’s mother but taking the time to raise another person’s kid in the countryside, just to twist the knife in.

Is it weird we have met Bonnie’s mum before her dad, yes a little but parents never really have a good run of things in Mystic Falls, so for his own safety it’s probably best.     

 After another enlightening dream, Miss Bennett along with BFF Elena makes the trek out of the always peaceful Mystic Falls to the equally tranquil Bonnie’s mum’s house. There they are confronted by the son of an ex-boyfriend that Abby chose to raise, a lot of maternal excuses and a bunch of compelled relatives.

 

It seems that while the girls were away, the boys were going to play. The festivities at last week’s fundraising just weren’t enough for Klaus and Stefan, who are still as determined as ever to one up another. “I want my coffins” “I want you gone” “But we use to be friends” “You took everything from me and I’m not emotionally ready to take the credit for everything I did wrong afterwards” “But I’m English”

In the end Klaus, who always seems to be just that one step ahead had sent his minion (Daniel Newman) to compel Abby and Jamie (Robert Ri’chard), Bonnie’s not quite step-brother, and threatened them if Team Mystic Falls did not hand over the merchandise. You know, a typical day in the Original’s life.

In the end after a fair amount of violence and emotional anguish on everyone’s part, Klaus succeeded in getting all but the mystically sealed coffin which Damon had scurried away in time. The kicker is that with every prize you win, there might just be a surprise inside, and in Klaus’s case this prize looks mad (He ruined Elijah’s suit, what did he expect, a hug.)

 There were a lot of things I liked about this episode, but there were also many things I didn’t. I love the fact that we were getting some background and character development with Bonnie. For a main character she is usually just dragged out when an issue needs a magically solution and despite the way the character annoys me, Kat Graham does a really good job that doesn't seem to be ever built upon in way of story or character. Unfortunately, I found that I couldn’t sympathise with the character of Abby, which made it hard to care about what happened to her during the episode’s running time, and by having her be the one to give Bonnie the information and way to warn her friends, like she wouldn’t have thought of it, took moments away from Bonnie.

It wasn’t all bad though, I am definitely  intrigued  by the fact that Abby was the one to put Michael away back in the day and that Elena’s mother, knew about Elena’s evil twin-like counterpart and vampiric curse-breaking destiny.  That is a very interesting twist and leads you to wonder why Elena and Jeremy never knew about this before now. 

On the shipper front, this episode also had some nice moments. Tyler had called Caroline’s dad, who we hate because he hurt Caroline, to help him break free of his sire bond, by chaining him to the ground, shirtless and forcing him to  give into his wolfy side. Or at least that is what he told him.  In the end it all resulted in Tyler nearly ripping Mr Forbes to death, which I’m pretty sure if up there as one of the things you don’t want to do to your girlfriend’s dad. 

In other news, Damon struggling with the fact that Alaric may have someone new, possibly deadly in his life, investigated the lovely Dr Fell, to see what dark secret she could possibly be hiding (she’s considering Alaric as a legitimate romantic interest she has to have one.) After hearing that Damon, got owned and blood jacked by the good doctor, Alaric discovers that Meredith is using vampire blood to heal her human patients, which is so stupid that I don’t want to talk about it.  Moving on. Alaric decides that this makes her cool and he shows her his secret hidey hole of lethal weapons and gets Elena’s seal of approval that it is ok to move on from Jenna.

 Elena, in a surprising turn of events got to deal with family drama that wasn’t just her own. However, if she thought that meant she wouldn’t have to deal with her relationship drama, she must not know how these love triangle things work.

What I liked from Elena here, was that she own up to the fact that this is actually a love triangle. She told Stefan that she kissed Damon. Not that Damon kissed her, or that she let it happen, she owned the kiss. A fact that after what Stefan has put her through these last few episodes, he does not argue or get upset with her about. He did punch Damon though, which is called for, there’s a code, ask Barney.  

That’s it for “The Tides that Bind” it was, as I believe the technical term is, it was alright, in my opinion anyway.

 Because truthfully wasn’t the rest of the episode really just filler, making time before what was clearly the main point of episode 12-

ELIJAH’S BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Xoxo

Hanniebee