Monday, October 15, 2012

No Mr Mikaelson, I expect you to die.


The Vampire Diaries

Season 3 episode 21 "Before Sunset"

Dear Diary,

Have you recovered? Are you good?

I'm not, I'm still a mess and the emotional turmoil I experienced throughout this amazing episode probably didn’t help.

I’ll start by saying Rest in Peace Alaric. I say that because that thing that was wandering around the halls of Mystic Falls high, spending way more time in a classroom than any of his students probably  ever have was not the real Alaric. That was ubervampRic, a monstrous creature who kidnaps fantastic characters, pins them to desks with pencils and gags them with soggy vervain soaked rags and for that he must die.

Let's discuss shall we.

Rubbing Salt in the wounds

The day after the decade dance or as I like to call it the day everyone wakes up and says "why do we still have those things?"

Between body swapping hi-jinks, lines of salt, VW bugs, mass casualties, learning the Charleston and finding the time to dye your eyes to match your gown, it's a lot of effort for a dance.

We open the episode with UbervampRic just chilling like a villain waiting for the cleanup crew to arrive. A cleanup crew, which apparently consists of only two people, one that went to the dance and one who didn't, who must have gotten there really early to clean up all that salt (sorry, the whole salt thing bugs me 1) how did no-one notice a crazy lady pouring all that salt around that gym or did she promise everyone who saw enough tequila to match and 2) Why did no one just try sweeping the salt aside? The Winchesters would have done it. I'm just saying.)

Within the few seconds it takes from UbervampRic when appears chasing the two vampires through the halls of Mystic Falls High to snapping Caroline's neck and dragging her back through the damning sun, it is made very clear that the old Alaric is gone. The imagine of the once heroic Alaric dragging the lifeless body of Caroline, fighting the pain while he burns,  pulling her back into the darkness, is one of two haunting images that stayed with me for a long time after watching this episode.

I love it when a plan comes together

UbervampRic’s mission was simple kill the Mikaelson’s. All of them, Elijah (he better not touch Elijah) Kol, Rebekah, Klaus and once all the Originals are gone, every single vampire in the world will follow.

Simple right?

Nope! Turns out wiping out an entire race of monsters is not that easy.

While the Mystic Falls Band of Merry Vampires and Friends (this time including Klaus) are terrible at successfully pulling off their own plans, they are even better at screwing up the plans of others.

In quick succession they manage to rescue Elena and Caroline from vampRic, only for Klaus to kidnap Elena for his own personal blood drive, before they get her back again and manage to successfully put down Klaus (the task they have being trying to pull off since season 2) by using the plan they were going to use to silence vampRic.

Earlier in the episode, Bonnie the every friendly, broke out the remembrall and recalled the vampire dehydrating spell we had learnt about sometime mid-season.

The gist was that Bonnie would give the vampire rescue heroes some of her blood, kill a human being and while one of the vampires had a grip on vampRic she would desiccate the afterlife out of him.

The tides are soon turned however with the spell used against Klaus (who had actually spent the first half of the episode on Team Salvatore’s side till he learnt how to kill ubervampRic -Common goals be damned, he had a hybrid army to build and only so much doppelganger to do it with.)  

For me, the second most haunting scene this episode for me and the one that instantly comes to mind when I think about “Before Sunset”, is the look on Joseph Morgan’s (Klaus) face as the ancient hybrid slowly started to desiccate, being held down by his former friend and his once sire bound protégée. That expression of shock, horror, pain, grief, sadness and betrayal that cross the actor’s face is truly heartbreaking and wonderful. There is no way that Klaus is staying in that coffin right? Even though his siblings would probably find some poetic justice in that. 

Dude’s dead, let’s party!

Note to self: Head trauma, severe blood loss and paint fumes do not mix.

 After a very bad day that included: being held hostage by the parental figure she had just started mourning, threatening to kill herself in order to destroy that parental figure, nearly being drained dry to create a hybrid army for the fiend who had killed you, your Aunt and basically been a thorn in your side since day one and still after all this having to try and make a choice between the two loves currently circling around her, you can’t really blame Elena for wanted to join in the spontaneous party to celebrate Klaus’s “death.”

After all, wasn't that what they had been trying to achieve since season 2? Time to party! The whole kitchen scene with the original Mystic Falls gang toasting to a Klaus free life was very touching and extremely sweet and totally meant that something very bad was about to happen very soon.

And very bad it was. Elena, while trying to paint away the bad memories from Alaric and Jenna’s old room suddenly collapsed.

 I’m no doctor but when your unconscious and blood starts coming out of your nose that can’t be very good.

I’ll huff and I’ll puff

Other stuff that happened this episode:

- The soccer ball siege of Gilbert Hall may just be one of my favourite things ever done on this show, “Missed Me!”
-  Limiting vampRic’s time to Elena’s lifespan was very clever and a pretty good way to keep your show’s lead alive.
- Really, again with the Jeremy killing, don’t you understand what that does to me?
- Anybody else get Dark Willow chills when Bonnie was doing that spell or was it just me?
- VampRic ratted out everyone to the council, uncool man, uncool.
- I liked Tyler this episode. He was good. I approve.
-  Did you really think that there would be a resolution to the show’s major love triangle in the second last episode? Clearly you have never watched television before.

Next time, the season 3 finale! Wahoo. Will Elena be alright? Will she pass away before even  making a choice in the world’s cruelest love triangle twist ever, leaving thousands of fans heartbroken? Will Bonnie go evil? Where is Elijah?  What happened to Jeremy’s dog?!!!

These are things we need to know.

Until next episode, which just between us girls, I’m kind of excited about. 

XOXO,

Hannie bee


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