Vampire Diaries – S03E18 – Murder of One

Elena Gilbert: Hi Damon! I brought muffins! And my sneaking shoes! So where’s Alaric?

Damon Salvatore: Laying on the floor, naked and sweating. Guy stuff. So long now bye bye!

Alaric Saltzman: Is she gone? Because I have a powerful need for some nice, thick wood! Powersaw!

The Lady of the Manor: You don’t just HACK Garamond in HALF like that, RICK. UGH.

Stefan Salvatore: Guy guy guys! Length isn’t everything! Don’t forget the girth!

Alaric Saltzman: Well, that was invigorating, but I think I’m going to go turn myself in for murdering all those people.

Damon Salvatore: Do what because you something huh?

Stefan Salvatore: Please. I murdered more people than you when I got coffee this morning. If their name isn’t in the opening credits it doesn’t count.

Elena Gilbert: Hi Caroline! Just thought you might want to know that your history teacher murdered your abusive father! But it’s cool, Bonnie’s on the case!

Matt Donovan: Hi girls! I heard you needed someone expendable! What’s up?

Damon Salvatore: We’re going to ram a hard, white shaft into Klaus until it kills him!

Stefan Salvatore: That wasn’t a metaphor. We spent the morning whittling Dead Parent Bridge into Dead Original Stakes, and now we want to commit vampire genocide. Who’s in?

Klaus: Hi Finn! Could I convince you to join me in Mystic Falls for some hot unbinding ritual action?

Finn: Unbinding? I thought you were all into the leather and chains.

Rebekah: That comes later. Facesmash!

Finn: Rebekah? You’re on his side? WTF?

Rebekah: Um … you are trying to kill me, remember?

Stefan Salvatore: Okay! Let’s plot a murder!

Damon Salvatore: Matt, use the power of your magic pixie stick to distract Rebekah. Caroline, wear a low-cut shirt and distract Klaus. I’ll take out Barbie Klaus …

Stefan Salvatore: And I’ll take out Klaus … Klaus.

Elena Gilbert: Oh! Oh! What do I do?

Stefan Salvatore: Try not to ruin this plan within the first thirty seconds?

Damon Salvatore: And don’t get kidnapped?

Caroline Forbes: And maybe don’t have a sudden pity attack?

Matt Donovan: Have my babies?

Everyone: …

Matt Donovan: Sorry. I’ll be over here.

Finn: I’ll never help you, Klaus! We are all an abomination, and must be destroyed!

Klaus: Yeah yeah yeah … but what if I offered you a wooden facsimile of a love interest?

Sage: Hi Finn! Let’s rape someone!

Finn: Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to receive your URK!

Sage: Surprise sex is the best sex!

Alaric Saltzman: Seriously? You’re have one of the only twelve weapons in the world that can kill an Original, and you’re hiding it in the fire wood? Did you learn nothing from the moon stone and the soap dish?

Damon Salvatore: Please, like anyone’s going to break in and-

Rebekah: Super Barbie Klaus smashing Alaric over the head and stealing Damon powers activate!

Elena Gilbert: Hi guys! I’ve been calling Bonnie every five minutes all day and she never answer me or calls me back or sends me a text message and that’s weird because if she’s not catering to my every whim and fancy why does she even exist am I right?

Caroline Forbes: Hold on, Finn and Sage are explaining the plot over there …

Finn and Sage: <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Caroline Forbes: Okay, this plot is a lot less complicated than I thought.

Elena Gilbert (on the phone): Stefan Stefan Stefan! I’m at the Grill and I have super important news!

Stefan Salvatore (on the phone): And that would be …?

Elena Gilbert (on the phone): They’re having two-for-one appetizers tonight! And girls drink free! So you could take me out and get me drunk for cheap! Also Finn is here with Sage and she’s talking him into not dying. Oh! And jalapeno poppers are back!

Rebekah: Hi Damon! I have a game for us to play! I’m going to close your hands in bear traps, hang you from the ceiling, strip you naked, and do nasty things to your body all night long!

Damon Salvatore: Gotta admit, that’s a bit kinky, even for me.

Klaus: Oh! Can I help? Can I help? I’m really good at the torture! 0:-)

Bonnie Bennet: Hi guys! I’ve been looking over this magic centerfuge thing, and I just don’t think I’m strong enough to pull it off!

Klaus: Because as you can see on this AT&T Smartphone, my brother Kol, who will have no speaking lines this episode and thus be entitled to no royalties in syndication, is in Denver, stalking the boy who cheated on you with the ghost of a dead vampire! Twice! So what do you say now?

Neville the Devilcorgipire: Don’t hurt that nice doggy!

Bonnie Bennet: Forget Jeremy! Tell me more about that phone! And where I can buy it!

Alaric Saltzman: Hi Caroline! How are you?

Caroline Forbes: Great, except for the fact that my father was murdered in cold blood and left to die on the hospital floor!

Alaric Saltzman: …This is going to be a long day, isn’t it?

Caroline Forbes: Not really. I’m a ray of fucking sunshine, and you are forgiven. Besides, who on this show hasn’t murdered a few dozen extras? At least daddy got to torture me before he was killed off!

Elena Gilbert: Hi Stefan! Damon’s in danger! We should go help him!

Stefan Salvatore: Yeah, that’s sweet, kid. But I have a raging hard on for vengeance and lingering jealousy over the fact that he almost got into your panties, so he’s on his own.

Elena Gilbert: Hi Damon! Stefan’s a jerk so I came to rescue you myself! But first you should drink my blood so you’re nice and strong! Remember, I won’t make that face you like unless you bite me hard!

Damon Salvatore: Really, Rebekah? You’re going to implant a vision in my head and the best you can come up with is “Elena saves the day?” At least try to make it plausible, like “Elena tries to save the day, trips, falls, and gets kidnapped, then fifteen people die while Stefan and I risk our lives to save her, and then I take her home and lie in bed with her but she’s wearing all her clothes and she falls asleep really fast so the best I can do is steal her panties and take a really long shower.”

Rebekah: …You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you?

The Producers: Hey Delena? You know that promo image you got all excited about this week? Well…

Bonnie Bennet: Hi Klaus! I have moral objections to this entire plan!

Klaus: That’s too bad! Because I have no moral objections whatsoever to murdering your mother, your friends, your history teacher, your cat, and an entire bus full of cancer-stricken orphans in order to get you to do what I want! So where should I put my bodily fluids?

Bonnie Bennet: …In that cup over there.

Sage: What do you mean you’ve never had tequila? God, it’s like you’ve been in a coffin for the last nine hundred years!

Troy: Hi guys! I just dropped by so everyone would know Sage is my sire! This is going to be important in fifteen minutes or so!

Matt Donovan: Hi guys! These drinks are on the house!

Finn: That’s funny, this drink you speak so highly of tastes like battery acid!

Stefan Salvatore: 0:-)

Bonnie Bennet: “Since the Originals are cool as hell, undo Esther’s lame ass spell!”

Stefan Salvatore: Hi Finn! Stakeattempt!

Sage: Hi Stefan! Asskick!

Elena Gilbert: Hi Finn! Crossbow!

Matt Donovan: Hi guys! Appetizers!

Everyone: …

Matt Donovan: Sorry, I’m still in waiter mode. I mean Super Matt Donnovan jamming my white, hard, wrist-thick shaft into Finn’s gut, lighting him on fire, and being awesome powers activate!

Elena Gilbert: Peace out, bitches!

Stefan Salvatore: That is an excellent idea, actually.

The Lady of the Manor: Aw, man. I was hoping for a Finn redemption arc. Or at least a Finn’s Hair redemption arc.

Bonnie Bennet: Okay, you’re all unlinked and free to murder each other however you want. TTFN!

Damon Salvatore: Little help here?

Bonnie Bennet: Oh gee look at the time got to be going have fun you guys see you later!

Rebekah: See you in physics class!

Elena Gilbert: Hi Caroline! How’s Alaric?

Caroline Forbes: Great! I made him put on his ring and then took out my anger at his daddy killing! I snapped his neck, stabbed him in the guy, lit him on fire, hung him from the rafters, beat him to death with a baseball bat, threw him off the roof, then backed over him with my car! I feel a lot better, and the ring just kept bringing him back, again and again and again! And then he said something about having to hide his big white shaft, so I assume he went to find Damon!

Elena Gilbert: Wait a second, that sounds dangerous for some reason …

Stefan Salvatore: No time for that, we have to get murdered by Sage!

Sage: No time for that, I have to die due to Bloodline Magic! Dies.

Troy: My arc was short but critical! Dies.

The Lady of the Manor: oooOOOooo! I FUCKINGLOVETHIS! Also: all of Twitter is shouting right now.

Caroline Forbes: Oh my goodness! Sage was so upset at Finn dying that she died of sadness!

Elena Gilbert: Okay, Caroline? Even I know that’s stupid.

Bonnie Bennet: Hi guys! Just in case you were wondering, Klaus and Rebecca are slowly torturing Damon to death! If you need me I’ll be laying on the ground, crying myself into a catatonic state.

Stefan Salvatore: Hi guys! I’m here to trade some thick white shaft for my brother’s life!

Rebekah: Oh that god! I thought they had entirely forgotten the fact that we were in love!

Stefan Salvatore: Um, actually I was talking about these eight, count them eight, weapons made from the ruins of Dead Parent Bridge.

Klaus: Okay! But first: Hey Damon, how about you tear your own hands off trying to yank them out of those bear traps?

Damon Salvatore: No?

Klaus: Loook into my eeeyes</dracula>

Damon Salvatore: Worst. Party. Ever.

Elena Gilbert: Okay! Stefan and Damon and you were all turned by Katherine! Katherine was turned by Rose! And Rose was turned by … we don’t know! But if we can figure it out, we can figure out if we can kill Klaus without murdering anyone important!

Caroline Forbes: But … Tyler was turned by Klaus!

Elena Gilbert: Like I said, nobody important! I’m gonna go Bing vampire genealogy!

Damon Salvatore: OW. OW OW OW OW OW.

Klaus: Okay, that’s enough! Now that I know you can be compelled? How many Slaughter Stakes are left?

Damon Salvatore: Eleven. Which is three more than Stefan told you about.

Rebekah: Hey, should we compel them to bring us all of the Wiccan Wood, or compel them not to murder us, or literally any kind of useful thing?

Klaus: Nah, let’s just turn them lose and hope their well-known sense of revenge doesn’t make them do anything foolish.

Rebekah: Okay!

Rebekah: Isn’t it sad that our dear brother Finn is dead?

Klaus: Yeah, no, not really. I think I’m gonna go create some more useless hybrids.

The Lady of the Manor: Still with the useless hybrids? Jesus, get a girlfriend or something.

Stefan Salvatore: Hi Elena! So, about your little tryst with my brother …?

Elena Gilbert: Stefan, be serious! If I admit that I love one of you more than the other, half the fans will die from happy and the other half will walk to Georgia and murder the writing staff! And that’s just silly!

Stefan Salvatore: Okay, I’ve got my Slaughter Stake and I’m ready to kneel down and kiss Klaus’ Jewish Viking ass! Alaric, where’d your stake go?

Alaric Saltzman: Beats me … everthing’s kind of a blur between lunch time and when I woke up covered in blood, surrounded by hundreds of pages of “MUST KILL THE ORIGINAL VAMPIRES” in my handwriting.

Everyone: Poop.

The Lady of the Manor: I can’t even handle this show.

The Plot: Thickens.

Holy hell, you guys. This was a great episode.

No, that’s not strong enough. After a couple of so-so weeks – in a row – this show came back, tapped us on the shoulder, smashed us in the mouth with a baseball bat carved from the remains of an ancient oak tree, then sauntered away whistling a jaunty tune.

The only (slight) misstep was the Damon/Elena hallucination sequence. Twitter immediately lit up with comments of “wow that’s some awfully funny lighting” and “if this isn’t a dream I will eat my copy of the Our Townshooting script, which has been signed by Joseph Morgan himself, with a nice tartar sauce”.

It wasn’t a bad scene, but since it was so obviously an hallucination, we didn’t get to feel the same disappointment as Damon when the reveal happened. It worked fine as a narrative, but it wasn’t as cathartic as it could have been. And if they had to sacrifice anything to make a forty-give minute runtime, this was this was a good choice.

Because everything else? God. Damn.

This is the show we all know and love. This was an episode full of twists, turns, surprises, and action. Once the setup was out of the way, this episode was pretty much balls-out until the final title card.

This was the kind of setup that I love from TVD. Look at all the things that had to be in place for this episode to come together. In particular, I want to talk about Finn. For all o this to work, we needed an Original who had sired a vampire close to the Salvatores, so we could see the effects of killing him first hand, but who hadn’t sired so many vampires that one-sixth of the world’s vampire population would die.

Finn sired Sage, and then got daggered almost immediately after. Sage has basically been saving herself for Finn ever since, and hasn’t sired a whole brood of vampires herself. But she did mentor Damon, and is intricately linked to the Salvatores’ lives. When Finn dies, Sage seeks revenge, and we get to see the effects of killing an original … but only handful of vampires bite it.

Finn would have been an awesome tool for the Salvatores; just drop by, give him a white stake, and let him off himself … and the rest of the originals. But Sage cock-blocked that plan, too. And they didn’t have to introduce any new elements. That’s nice, neat, economical storytelling.

And then the thing with how many stakes were left. I’m not generally big on math-heavy plots (I officially gave nary a fuck as to how many coffins Klaus was carting around, for example), but when Elena clearly, explicitly said “there are three stakes, enough to kill three of the four originals,” you know the writers threw that out there to get everyone screaming “ELIJAH’S GONNA BE ALL RIGHT!”

And then they yanked the run out from under us. One stake left, but Crazy!Alaric has it, and no one’s safe. Not even the Salvatore Brothers.

The whole this is expert plotting, and the seeds were planted weeks ago. The writing team absolutely knew where they were going and made sure all of the pieces were position correctly. This is the kind of stuff that will make a guy despair of ever being a competent writer.

And let’s be clear: Caroline Dries wrote this episode, and did an awesome job of it, but the entire team had to be on board to pull this off. This, to me, is proof that the TVD team, even if they hit a rough patch now and then, are still some of the best writers on television right now.

I actually liked Bonnie in this episode. Even though she was dealing with a monster, she wasn’t about to take any crap from Klaus. I loved her “you bother me” line, and the way she looked like she was going to smack him. And her reaction to seeing Damon tortured, and then just walking away, was fantastic. No one around her is safe. She can never relax, and probably thinks she can never safely get close to anyone.

And let’s not forget, she saved everyone’s asses in this episode.

She may not have known she was doing it, but if she hadn’t had the mojo to reverse Esther’s linking spell, there would be no more vampires, period. No Stefan, no Damon, no Elijah, no Katherine or Caroline. Bonnie is the reason every main character, aside form Elena and Alaric, is still alive right now.

That being said, I still hope she goes Dark Willow next season.

I also love all of the self-referential and self-deprecating humor in this show. Damon hiding the Slaughter Stake with the fire wood, and Alaric calling back to the Moon Stone and Soap Dish (my OTP), was awesome.

I love that Rebekah put down a plastic tarp before she laid into Damon. So thoughtful!

Oh, and SAGE IS FUCKING DEAD! Good bye and good riddance, you rapey block of wood.

Now. let’s talk bloodlines. My money is on Klaus being Rose’ sire, and by extension Katherine, The Salvatores, and Caroline. So how does that shake out?

Elena is suddenly out to protect Klaus. Caroline is on Klaus’ side, because her life and Tyler’s is on the line. Damon will be out to save his own ass. Katherine, too, which means maybe we’ll get treated to some Datherine hatesex. Pretty much everyone in Mystic Falls will suddenly be playing for Team Klaus.

Except Stefan.

Stefan is still ready to watch the world burn, as long as Klaus burns with it. Stefan would sacrifice himself to see Klaus die. Stefan would even sacrifice Damon if it meant killing the guy who raped his mind. And that means Mystic Falls and Klaus are going to be united against The (former) Ripper.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ll see Bonnie on Stefan’s side. She has no love for Klaus, and this episode just gave her one more reason to hate him. I can see Bonnie seeing eye-to-eye with Stefan: Klaus has to die for the greater good, and if a few vampires have to die with him? So be it.

That would be effing amazing.

And no matter who sired Rose, what do you think will happen when the Salvatores start whacking originals … and vampires around the world start dropping dead? Good, bad, indifferent … the Salvtore Brothers would be mass murderers. Their feud against the Originals would border on genocide.

And I don’t think the rest of the world’s vampires would sit around and take that lying down.

And so another mini-hellatus is here. Since we’ve got two vampire-free weeks on our hands, might I humbly suggest you give Sire a chance? It’s got my own unique blend of sex and sarcasm, fangs and fur, vampires and vixens. You can get the eBook from Amazon or B&N for just $2.99. There’s also the paperback and a whole lot of other options.