The Vampire Diaires: Visiting Vampires Just Wanna Have Fun

I am beginning to see very clearly now that my relationship with The Vampire Diaries is going to be a rocky one. I started out confused (but intrigued) and then last week I was thoroughly entertained from start to finish but this week’s entry, “162 Candles” left me largely with a feeling of BLAH. It wasn’t a particularly bad episode with poor writing or direction; it just lacked energy and felt like it was spinning its wheels for most of the running time.

With the epic death of Vicki last week, the cast is now a little smaller and most of this episode centered on developing their relationships in the aftermath of that event. A nicely edited interrogation scene with Sheriff Forbes (Marguerite MacIntyre) and everyone involved in her death got things off to a nice start as we then learned that Stefan and Elena are still pretty depressed about their breakup, Jeremy is suddenly laying off the pills and booze to focus on school thanks to vampire mind control, and Damon is continuing his friendly act with the vampire-hunting sheriff by providing her with a bushel of lilacs. I wasn’t familiar with the legend that vampires don’t like lilacs, but upon some quick investigation it was proven correct! I guess one man’s lilac is another man’s garlic.

The main crux of the episode though was on the arrival of Stefan’s 350-year-old friend, Lexi, played by guest star Arielle Kebbel. Lexi is a fun-loving girl who enjoys drinking donated blood out of IV bags like a morbid flavor of Capri Sun and purposely shows up on Stefan’s 162^nd birthday to show him a good time. I liked the character of Lexi quite a bit and I think most viewers of the show probably did too. She was tension free, which is a refreshing change from the rest of the cast and said some really sweet things to keep the romance alive between Elena and Stefan . . . as if you really thought it was over after only eight episodes.

This episode also continued the slowly emerging subplot about Bonnie, the witch. At one point she decided to cheer Elena up by cutting open a pillow and making the feathers float in midair. She then came out of the witch’s closet to Elena and exposed her secret. Elena didn’t seem to find any of this strange. I find that strange.

The first forty-five minutes or so of this episode were pretty slow but it did manage to end with a little bit of a bang when Damon got bored and decided to prey on a poor, innocent pair of teens making out in a dark, scary alley. The boy got Damon’s fangs and a quick death while his terrified girlfriend cowered in the fetal position until the cops arrived. She then lead the police into the party where she IDs someone other than Damon as the attacker. Naturally panic ensues and just like last week before the episode is over someone winds up dead with a stake in their chest. This event puts Damon and Stefan (hint: it wasn’t one of them) even more at odds and it looks like this will only escalate as Damon’s mysterious evil plan unravels.

All in all this wasn’t a great episode of The Vampire Diaries but there is still much promise in upcoming storylines. And since it seems like someone is going to be killed in every episode I’d like to make a weekly pick as to who should get some fangs in their neck or a stake in the heart next week. This week’s winners (it’s a tie) are the train wreck drunken Caroline (Candice Accola) and the dull brother of Vicki, Matt (Zach Roerig). Neither of these characters add much to the show and the fact that they seem to be coupling up makes it even more imperative that one (or both) of them exits Mystic Falls sooner rather than later. I’ll be crossing my fingers until Thursday.

Season 1: Episode 8: 162 Candles (originally aired November 5, 2009)

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Thursdays at 8/7c on The CW

Photographs courtesy of The CW and Guy D’Alema