At the start, Aidan is still boning Julia. He wakes up in her bed and
he has not yet turned or eaten Julia. Yay! Julia brings up her last boyfriend,
who was “dead inside.” Ironic, because Aidan is dead…outside? Haha. The
hospital figures out that someone is stealing blood bags and decides that they
are being sold to drug addicts who need to pass blood tests. After The Vampire
Diaries, if we worked with hospital security, Damon would be our first thought. Now,
only supervisors can access the blood room, and this does not include Aidan. Aidan
looks worried at this news, because blood packets are the way he is controlling
his urges. He can only sleep with Julia if he’s just eaten, after all.
Josh rents two storage units for himself and Nora to
transform in. Sally will lock them inside. Nora wants to change in the woods,
because being locked in a metal container and filmed by Josh for “research” is,
admittedly, creepy. This is how Nora phrases it: “I will let a ghost lock me in
a storage unit so that you can videotape me while I take my clothes off and
turn into an animal.” Josh feels guilty and the two kiss.
At the hospital, Sally teases Aidan about Julia. It’s
really cute. One of the things we love about this show, and this episode
especially, is the roommate banter. Like when Josh asked Aidan to use a glass
for what looked like his last blood bag or when Aidan questioned Josh’s lame
use of the thumbs up sign. Josh is more concerned about the Julia situation,
because of what happened to Aidan’s last girlfriend. Man, thank God that last
girlfriend is dead. She was disastrous AND annoying. Aidan refuses to let Julia
meet his roommates, because he’s keeping it casual and fun. Josh gives his
blessing. Aidan says he wasn’t asking for Josh’s blessing. Josh was all, “You
know you wanted it.” Ahhh, roommates.
Sally keeps seeing a dark shadow. It’s the thing she saw
come toward her from the mirror in her dream. It’s stalking her and freaking
her out. Sally goes to the hospital’s maternity ward to look at the cute new
babies. A nurse passes and says that she can’t hang out there. Since the nurse
can see Sally, Sally thinks the nurse is dead, but the nurse can see dead
people. The nurse tells Sally to get in line. Sally turns to see a queue of
ghosts waiting outside the maternity ward. A ghost in line tells Sally that the
nurse, Zoe Gonzalez, can get ghosts reincarnated. Zoe can match a ghost with a
baby and help the baby accept the new spirit along with its own. Sally thinks
this is groovy.
We raised our eyebrows. It’s the BABY’S life. The ghosts
already had theirs, even if some of them were short. How messed up would it be
to go through life with a passenger? A whole other person? Even if the baby’s
spirit accepts the ghost, it’s still dodgy, and we've already read The Host. We’re sure the age of consent for
having another person inside of you should be above, say, two weeks. The next
morning, after both Josh and Aidan have had their girlfriends over for sex,
Sally tells them about the reincarnation option. They laugh at her and Sally’s
anger shakes the house. Aidan tells Sally to cut it out, because Julia is
upstairs.
Julia comes down to the kitchen to meet Nora and the
roommates. Then we are all OH SNAP because Julia is JOSH’S JULIA. Julia is the fiancé
that Josh abandoned after he became a werewolf. It’s the same name on the same
show, she’s a doctor, AND she talked about a bad ex. How on earth did we not
see this coming? We're really glad we didn't, because that was awesome. Julia freaks and storms out. Josh follows, trying to apologize
for leaving her. He tells Julia to trust him that it was for the best. Julia
smacks him. The two actors are great together and this is a believable scene.
We’re team Josh here, obviously, because we know the
whole story. Also, it’s crazy that she thinks Josh is dead inside if she was
once close to marrying him. Even with his leaving her abruptly, it’s pretty
obvious that Josh is a sensitive, guilt-ridden, caring dude. If Julia knew him
well enough to marry him, a part of us thinks that she should sense there is
something going on with Josh that’s out of the douchebag norm. Josh turns to go
back inside his home. Nora is in the doorway and she doesn’t look pleased. Aidan
tells Josh that he will stop seeing Julia.
Sally goes back to the maternity ward and sees Zoe
putting a ghost into a baby. Zoe sees Sally afterward and Sally tries to
convince Zoe to help her reincarnate. Zoe wants to meet Sally’s roommates so
that she can interact with people who can see ghosts, like Zoe can. After
interviewing Aidan and Josh, Zoe determines that she can’t help Sally
reincarnate because Sally might have unresolved anger issues that could
negatively affect the host baby. Sally begs Zoe to help, because she is afraid
that the dark thing pursuing her will take her out. Zoe tells Sally that
becoming an infant won’t help Sally defend herself against the dark thing.
Nora and Julia see each other in the hospital. Julia
decides to clear the air and get everything on the table. Julia tells Nora that
she knows the real Josh (and that he’s an a-hole) and that soon Nora will know
this too. Nora meets Josh in the storage unit, where he is mounting a camera.
Nora tells Josh that she doesn’t want to be locked up and confesses that she
remembers killing the vampire. Josh asserts that his plan is for Nora’s
protection. Nora says, “If you wanted to protect me, you would have run away
before you did this to me. Like you did for Julia. For me, you had no problem
cursing me.” She walks away and Josh is too stunned to even yell, “It SO wasn’t
like that.” Burn. Poor Josh. Poor Nora.
Aidan is at home, sick and pale from not eating. Sally
warns him to take care of the situation so that she won’t have to come home to
a mountain of dead bodies one day. Aidan says that he is hesitant to drink from
a willing donor, because when he drinks a live person, he has a hard time
controlling himself. He is afraid that if he goes back to live people, he will
lose control and become the monster he was in the past. Aidan sees Julia at the
hospital and he tells her that it’s over. He says that their fling is not worth
a friendship. Bros before hos, lady. It’s the code. He’s firm and cruel
enough to be sure that he’s rid of her. He says, “It was just sex.” Julia is
crushed, because they actually bonded and she thought it meant more to Aidan. This is the second time this woman has been dumped for her own protection. We kind of think that Julia is owed the truth. Couldn't it at least have been a discussion between Aidan and Josh?
Sally goes up to a baby and tries to get the baby to let
her enter. Why would Sally pick a male baby when she has the pick of the ward?
She stops attempting to enter when she sees the dark thing manifest in the
ward. Sally doesn’t want the thing to follow her into the baby. Sally tells the
thing to stay away from the child. The dark thing goes through Sally and Sally
finds herself outside the maternity ward. Sally sees Zoe and tells her what
happened. Zoe agrees to try to help Sally with the dark thing.
Nora sees Julia leave work and stalks Julia to her house,
filled with anger. For a second, we think Nora is going to try to kill Julia. A
car nearly hits Nora and she snaps out of her bloodthirsty stupor. Nora meets
Josh at the storage unit, ready to go along with his plan. Sally locks Josh and
Nora into the units where they change. One of them bangs up against the unit’s
wall, denting it. They may have to pay for that…or at least explain it. Ha. Meanwhile,
Aidan visits an older lady and pays $300 to drink her blood. There is a muscle-y
man with a wooden stake to serve as protection for the woman, in case the
vampire is too rough or loses control. Aidan drinks too much and the man has to
pull Aidan away. Aidan looks positively intoxicated from the experience of
drinking live. It’s spine chilling.
We feel worst for Aidan, at this point. Josh is a
werewolf once a month. Aidan is ALWAYS facing his temptations and it’s hard to
resist something when you were immersed in it before. It’s like a girl who went
to third base with her first boyfriend. When she gets her second boyfriend, she
will get to third base a hell of a lot quicker if she doesn’t have
self-control, simply because she has done it before. That’s how temptation and
giving into temptation is. It’s almost more honorable when someone ceases an
activity they have already and fully been engaged in. Breaking a pattern is a
lot harder than never indulging at all. We know that the show is going to take Aidan to a dark place this season. That's apparent. We hope this arc brings more to that theme than we are seeing in The Vampire Diaries this season. We want to see something new, not an older, darker version of The Stefan Chronicles.
We love the actors on this show, particularly Aidan and
Sally’s portrayers. Aidan comes across as mature, and this is very realistic.
Sally could be an annoying whiner just watching others live their lives, but
she’s sympathetic. She pulls off "worried" and "regretful" well with every facial expression. Julie was well-cast. We’re surprised that we enjoyed the vacation
from vampire politics, because that’s an aspect of the show that we find
fascinating. This episode didn’t need it though. The Julia twist was great.
There were lots of “oh snaps” in this episode, and we chuckled a few times as
well as felt genuine sorrow for the characters’ plights. This one was
emotionally rich and dark, and the pacing was expert.
Episode grade: A
No comments:
Post a Comment