The Vampire Diaries – Family Ties – review

An episode with more action/set-up than emotion this week, and a fair amount of back-story, finally.

It’s time for the big Founder’s Day celebration, which Elena’s mother had been very involved with planning and had even loaned the use of Gilbert family heirlooms for.  Elena invites Stefan to be her date, while Damon coerces Caroline into bringing him and Vicki guilts Tyler into asking her after he ignores her at dinner in front of his parents.  (And don’t you just love how this town has one all-purpose restaurant, where all the high school kids with jobs work and where stoners like Jeremy can rub elbows with the mayor?)  Jeremy steals the family pocketwatch, which their father had promised to him, out of the exhibit box before it goes to the party, and Aunt Jenna worries that she will run into the reason she fled from Mystic Falls as a young woman—one of the local TV reporters.  Zach asks Stefan to take care of his brother and shows Stefan the secret stash of vervain the human family members have been growing in the basement in place of pot for generations (since Damon years ago made sure no vervain grew naturally in Mystic Falls).

At the party Caroline forces Stefan to dance with her when Damon won’t, and Damon plants seeds of doubt in Elena’s mind about Stefan’s conduct in the whole Katherine affair.  Stefan won’t answer her questions, which leads to their first real fight—but she apologizes when she sees the bite marks all over Caroline that prove Damon is bad news.  When Damon bites Caroline later in punishment for letting Elena glimpse those, he discovers Stefan had spiked her drink with vervain.  When Caroline wakes up alone, she turns to Elena for comforting.  Stefan locks Damon into the vervain lab at the Salvatore house.  Aunt Jenna allows the reporter to apologize for cheating on her and eventually agrees to go to lunch with him.  Vicki leaves the party offended at Tyler’s refusal to bring her into his family’s social circle and goes to see Jeremy. 

The episode ends with a cryptic circle of Founding families:  Mayor and Mrs. Lockwood (Tyler’s parents), Sheriff Forbes (Caroline’s divorced mother), and the reporter.  The sheriff confirms that five bodies drained of blood can mean only one thing—“They’re back”—and Mrs. Lockwood frets that they need the Gilbert watch, which Elena let Jeremy keep and told Mrs. Lockwood was still packed up with her mother’s things…until the reporter promises that he can get it.

I liked the way they finally explained a few things.  First, how does someone become a vampire in this mythos—Damon explaining to Caroline, knowing that he’s just going to erase it, was funny to me.  And now we know that she’s not in danger of becoming a vampire, and why none of the victims have had to be dug up and beheaded:  it takes a blood exchange before mortal death.  And second, a little bit more about what happened in Mystic Falls during the Civil War, and with Katherine.  Damon’s history lesson with its innuendoes and obvious “parallels” between himself and Stefan “version 2.0” was delivered with intensity and danger, so good job to Ian S. on that monologue.

I liked seeing Aunt Jenna get her own plotline, and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to her now that her beau has proven himself (to us) to be smarmy.  He may not have approached her with intentions of using her to get the Gilbert heirloom they need for…whatever they’re planning to do to the vampire brothers, but the fact that he’s so willing to take that role means he’s bad news for Jenna either way.  Bonnie, however, has gotten sidelined.  She’s Elena’s best friend, but Caroline gets more face time than she does.  It’s interesting to see Bonnie’s powers awakening in different ways, but I’m ready for some story with her.

Elena and Stefan’s big fight was at once nicely played and undramatic.  I mean, on the one hand that was a realistic issue for her to take.  It’s nice that she’s not going to put up with that, and she had a great line about trust—that it’s earned, not just given, or something—but at the same time, there was no real drama to their disagreement because we know they’re not breaking up.  Not for something like that.

And what was going on with that jewel in the Gilbert family heirloom box?  Damon had put it there, presumably back when Katherine was alive or shortly after her death.  Is the implication that she was a Gilbert?  Or just that the Gilbert family was wrapped up in the whole situation because they were a prominent family in the town, just like the Lockwoods and the Forbes…and the Salvatores, back then.

So really all the few answers we got did was tantalize us a little more and open up new questions.  For those of you keeping track, the plot continues to drift wider and wider afield from what was going on in the books, to the point where I’m not sure if certain key events and revelations are going to hold true.  I like that.  Good job, production team, for making me second-guess truths I initially assumed would be unassailable.

About Elena Nola

Elena Nola reads things, watches things, and edits things. She writes her BSC Review column, Elena's World, to tell you all about it all.