The Vampire Diaries. Groan.

By vagueonthehow from Tadcaster, York, England (Ian Somerhalder  Uploaded by MaybeMaybeMaybe) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

My Brother's Keeper
We don't love what they are doing with Jeremy because the hunter instinct is taking over him. It's too repetitive. We saw this with Alaric already. The show needs to let Jeremy keep his free will and slowly come to the conclusion that he should kill vampires. Leeard was hating Caroline and Tyler this week, and she continued hating them in the next episode. The big news of this episode was that Damon and Elena have sex right as Caroline and Stefan are figuring out that Elena is sired to Damon. Whoa.

Everything that happened this season makes sense once you know about the sire bond. But is this the best way to have Damon and Elena seal the deal for the first time? Would it be SO TERRIBLE to have perfect, compassionate, sweet little Elena sleep with Damon because she's lusty and she wants Damon? Being sired should not have been the reason they hooked up. The show should have had the balls to take Elena there as a woman making a gutsy choice. Super hot scene though. Thank God Damon didn't know, or it would have been rape-y and ruined his character for us forever.

We'll Always Have Bourbon Street
We loved the dress Elena wore to school and in the beginning of the episode. Female friendships are so great on this show. Still, this episode had way too much teen drama. What with Caroline whining about not liking her friend's boyfriend, the brothers fighting, and the endless talk about Elena's feelings, this episode certainly felt like it belonged on the CW. Caroline was being a jerk, but we can understand that because of what Damon did to her in season one. Why does this show always torture Caroline? It's extremely sad, yeah, but give her a break. We'd care if it were one of the other characters too. This one was a snore saved only by Lexi's presence.

We hate to say it, but this show might have lost what made it one of our favorite shows in the first place. It's not going anywhere. It seems to be biding time, making things up as it goes along, and protecting Elena from doing anything wrong, ever. It's not telling us a story we want to see the ending to. We trust these writers more than most, but only one episode this season has been up to the standard it set for itself in the first two seasons. It needs to let Elena legitimately go for the bad guy without giving her an easy out. If this is the only way this show can keep the love triangle alive, it needs to drop the triangle and just move on.

This show needs a shake-up. At this point, we want it to kill Elena, bring back Katherine, and have her, the Salvatore brothers, Caroline (as long as she starts being less judgmental), Rebekah, Klaus, and Matt leave Mystic Falls for another town, with an angry Jeremy, grieving for his sister, hunting them and trying to kill them. Also, cure Damon and make him a snarky human. Or how about this? Kill Stefan and Damon, have Elena get tougher, and then bring in new vampire love interests. Even Ern has to admit that Stefan is less sexy after the whole ripper thing, and what Damon did to Caroline in season one sort of ruined him too.

Stefan is too boring and "good boyfriend," and Damon has been an ass so long that we can't get onboard with that either, especially if it's not real/sired. Maybe they've both outlived their usefulness. Maybe we ship them with no one. We have many ideas and while many would anger fans, they would be a heck of a lot better than having the show write cop-outs and repeat the last three seasons. We will still watch in the hopes that this show can get its groove back. We believe it can.

My Brother's Keeper grade: C+
We'll Always Have Bourbon Street grade: C