The Vampire Diaries: Foresaking Buildup

This week’s episode of The Vampire Diaries was called “History Repeating” and even though the show is only on its ninth episode, its starting to seem like some of its plotlines are repeating as well. We have now seen Stefan and Elena break up about three times, not to mention how many times Stefan and Damon have come to odds and then try to reconcile. Granted, relationships are never easy and a brother like Damon would be tough to remain nice to, but Stefan needs to get his stuff together before he brings slows the show into a repetitious bore.

The show broke at least a little new ground this week with the continued storyline of Bonnie being a witch and that mysterious necklace that Damon wants back so badly. Thanks to this necklace, Bonnie is being haunted by her ancestor, Emily, who hails all the way from the Civil War era. Think evil in a bonnet. It’s not entirely clear what Emily wants from Bonnie so Elena, Caroline, and Bonnie do what all brilliant people in movies and shows like this do – they hold a seance. Spooky things abound followed by lots of screaming and when all is said and done, Emily takes control of Bonnie’s body and heads out to do some nefarious deed involving the necklace.

On the other side of town Stefan tries to bond with Damon to get some insight into his evil schemes. And kind of out of nowhere Damon admits that the reason he came back to Mystic Falls was to raise the girl they fought over way back in the 1800s, Katherine, back from the dead. He could allegedly do this with the magic necklace (don’t ask me for the details) but the catch is that it would also bring back the 27 evil vampires that burned to death with her. It was at about this point that characters’ motives started getting lost on me but Bonnie/Emily showed up and announced that she didn’t want those people to rise from the dead so she destroyed the necklace and foiled Damon’s plan. He retaliated by biting her (not fatally) and now Bonnie is in on the vampires-living-amongst-them plot too.

Phew. Catch all that? The acting and direction around all of this stuff happening was clearly epic and should have been since this has apparently been Damon’s motive for the entire series so far, but it all happened so fast that the full emotional weight of it never registered with the audience. We (along with Stefan) should have known longer what Damon was planning to raise the tension and create a bigger emotional payoff. I mean, this was a chance for Stefan to have his one, true love back again – the girl that attracted him to Elena in the first plac! This could have easily been teased and spread over multiple episodes. Instead, it was thrown at us in the span of about ten minutes so I naturally felt nothing towards it beyond apathy.

In other news, there is a mysterious new history teacher in town who has the hots for Aunt Jenna and just as she rips up a photo from her last failed relationship, the ex himself, Logan (Chris J. Johnson) shows up at the door. Expect drama, death, and destruction to come from this next week.

And finally, last week I made a pick for who I thought/wanted to bite the dust this week. My picks were Caroline and Matt simply because they don’t have a lot to offer to the show. They survived this week thanks to a zero body count, but their relationship continues to blossom, which definitely means something has to go wrong pretty soon. Both are unaware of the crazy stuff going on around them so I fully expect one of them to be either a victim or become a monster of some kind themselves any week now. Who knows…Matt might make a good werewolf.

 Season 1, Episode 9:  History Repeating (originally aired Nov. 12, 2009)

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Thursdays at 8/7c on The CW

Photographs courtesy of The CW and Guy D’Alema