The Vampire Diaries - Good episode, as usual.

"Ordinary People"

It's getting to the point where we are thinking of recommending this show to true nerds who usually don't watch things set in high school. And older people. And men. Middle-aged men even. It's getting to the point where this show is so good that we are having trouble thinking of someone who SHOULDN'T watch it. Even a quieter, exposition-heavy filler episode like this one is better than most shows' finales.

Alaric and Damon bring Elena to see the cave sketches. Alaric gets to work on figuring on the symbols (with some help from Bonnie), reminding us of how much is sucks to be the nerdiest person on a show where the people do more research than a professor’s assistant. Elena goes to Rebecca to speed things up. Rebecca is still cheerleading and showing off her flips, and we are still not impressed. One of us has a sister who can do this and much more.

You might think it was dumb of Elena to go warn Rebecca about their Michael plan and threaten her brother, but remember, Elena is still needed for Klaus’ plan. She is basically the one person who can threaten Rebecca and live. Surprisingly, Rebecca eventually gives Elena the story of the Original Family, after only a little bit of taunting and time-wasting. And so we got another backstory episode, but at least feature Elijah, who we think everyone has truly missed.

We’ve said before that this show’s backstory is ridiculously complicated, lending this show to lots of exposition by flashback. But we’ve since realized that the backstory stuff is necessary to slow the show down and get us to think about the characters. If everything on this show happened in real time, we would feel like we were on a speeding rollercoaster with no time to reflect about things like motives and tragedies. So, instead of “backstory,” we are going to call all of this stuff “the show’s mythology,” which sounds better, don’t you think?

Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, the Originals got to the new world in order to escape from one of those European plagues. Esther, the family’s mother, found out about the new world from a witch, Ayanna. The new world was inhabited by werewolves, but there was peace between them and the Original Family for a while. We meet Michael, and we find out his likes and dislikes. Likes: Being a dick to everyone, being a hypocrite. Dislikes: Fun, especially laughter. Klaus was the rebellious child, because he pantsed Elijah during a practice swordfight. Harmless. Also: Hee. But then Klaus got his youngest brother, Henrik, killed by sneaking off with Henrik to watch the neighbors turn into werewolves.

This was the end of peace between the Originals and the werewolves. The Originals asked Ayanna to make them a spell that would turn them into super-beings so that they could fight the wolves. Papa Original is Michael (raise your hand if you saw that coming weeks ago), and he didn’t want to run. Out of pride, he wanted to stay and fight the wolves. Ayanna refused to help, so it was all up to Esther, the Original Witch. We were shocked, mainly because for years this show has been teaching us that all witches are black.

Esther turned her family into the first vampires so she wouldn’t lose any more children. We liked Rebecca’s acting while she was being turned. Sadly for the first vamps, nature balanced things out, and the vampires had weaknesses. Rebecca continued her story, telling Elena that when Klaus turned it became apparent that he was a hybrid. Klaus’ mother put him under the hybrid curse in order to suppress his werewolf side. Michael realized that Esther has been doing the nasty with a neighbor. Michael was pissed off enough about this to rip Esther’s heart out in front of Klaus. But we find out later that this last sentence is a lie.

Elena goes back to Alaric to share what she knows so that the deciphering can go faster. After looking at the drawings in context, Elena realizes that Klaus killed Esther, not Michael. Elena runs back to Rebecca with photos of the symbols. Rebecca goes mad with rage and grief, nearly kills Elena, and then just crumbles.

Damon frees Stefan, because he’s Damon, and took him to a bar to get some blood and drinkies. At first, we were all like, “Noooooooo,” but then we realized this was inevitable. Michael the vampire-hunting vampire shows up in the bar. Michael threatens, and nearly kills Damon. Out of concern for his brother, Stefan agrees to lure Klaus back to Mystic Falls so that Michael can kill Klaus. Michael said that if this plan fails, he will kill Stefan. He’s the vampire-hunting vampire, so we are guessing Michael is going to try to kill every vampire in town anyway. We’re pretty sure that the gang just traded in one problem for an even bigger one. We hate this guy already. One of us is pretty excited, though.

When Elena walks into her bedroom, she finds Damon waiting for her in her bed. Above the covers and clothed, so don’t get excited. They fill each other in a little. Elena tells Damon that she isn’t mad at him for letting Stefan out, because she thinks that it won’t be Stefan’s love for her that will save the day, but his love for Damon. Elena falls asleep next to Damon in the bed. This is not the first time these two have slept next to each other. Even though we ship them almost as hard as we ship Alaric/Damon, we think these two need to cool it with the bed sharing until they are together. It’s defusing the sexual tension and it’s not smart of Elena.

Katherine had better be alive. We didn't see her with Michael. GRRR. If you liked the song at the end of the episode, it's free on amazon's mp3 store right now. We didn't especially care for it, but we know some of ya'll might.

Episode grade: B

This grade is on a "Vampire Diaries Scale." If we were comparing this show to other shows, every grade would be at least an A-. This show is Ern-proof (Ern loves to give bad grades).