The Vampire Diaries ‘We’ll Always Have Bourbon Street’ review: Sire bonding

How do you solve a problem like Elena? Well if you’re anyone in The Vampire Diaries, you make sure not to tell her anything at all and decide to “fix” her behind her back. By design, the History Lesson episodes of this show are not my favorite; they’re always just conveniently brought in, at least it seems that way to me. But hey, it brought back Lexi and was shot quite beautifully. In this episode, Damon finds out that Elena is sired to him so he and Stefan travel to New Orleans to see if some other vamp that was sired to him can provide answers on how to break the bond. Let’s just talk about the sire bond.

I’m in a love-hate relationship with the sire bond itself, actually. I love it because it completely fills in all these plot holes I thought the show was just okay with having. Exhibit A, Elena can drink from blood bags now; that one was getting increasingly glaring. It can also be a storyline that brings a lot of darkness to the show, and that’s okay. But at the same time, the sire bond storyline has just been used to handicap the Damon and Elena love story — maybe even to give it one more “epic” hurdle. On one hand, Elena had feelings for Damon before being sired and their being together should be okay. But on the other, it’s just not okay for Elena to stay sired to him, so he must make the ultimate sacrifice. To me, this part of the sire bond, it just feels like a cheap way to have the triangle reset once Elena is “cured” or even once Damon “sets her free.”[*] I could do without that. It’s not that I think that a perhaps-unconsenting Elena is kind of icky, it’s the fact that the show doesn’t seem to think it’s all that icky, do you get what I mean? If the show treated this storyline with its actual ickiness and decided to dive in to the depth of this dark abyss, then I would be okay with it. Thus far, it seems intent on proving to us that this is just a romantic blockade… when it really is not. (But it also is, I get that, and I know it’s contradictory. Whatever, I talked about how annoying the Delena but with conditions thing is on this show and how people must hate that it’s always that way instead of just letting it be last week.) Elena loves murders! Let it be a thing, show. We’re not buying that anyone on this show is innocent or good in any capacity.

[*] And also, what is with vampire siring? Is it everyone that has human feelings? Wouldn’t that mean that Damon is sired to Katherine and that’s why he was so obsessed? Perhaps when Katherine finally rejected him, he was too “set free”? And if not, then how is it that Damon has sired two different vampires in his much shorter lifetime? Ugh, I don’t know.

However, the sire bond is also the way all of these storylines are meshing together quite nicely. Every time we move forward with Elena, we find out a little bit more about what Creepy Professor is up to. And his storyline also goes together with Tyler and the hybrids storyline. I think this may be the best way that The Vampire Diaries has actually woven all of its plots into one cohesive story. In this episode, we find out that “expression” is some sort of dark not-magic. And then we find out that Creepy Professor is making Bonnie tap into that side of her. Unfortunately, I was hoping that Bonnie would want to become evil on her own, seeing as how her entire life is the worst thanks to everyone she knows, but I guess that’s not happening. She rather smoke not-drugs during girls’ night in.[**] Aw shucks. Meanwhile, Tyler is feeling the heat from another hybrid who wants to become alpha. Although I was like “Gurl just please sit down,” I sort of feel like if she would have been vindicated then they wouldn’t have been sacrificed up to Creepy Professor by Hayley. It was definitely not a win-win situation. But regardless, I think this season has given so much power to the supporting players, that it finally feels like a show where the large cast is somewhat warranted (as opposed to last season where we were like, “Kill these people already!”). That’s always a good thing.

[**] Also, I know how annoying Caroline and Stefan’s intercutting scenes are, but can we not be mad at Caroline for not like the guy who did this to her? Thank you.

I guess the only thing that’s missing is the bromance between Jeremy and Matt. What do you guys think they were doing all alone? Sipping tea while watching Legally Blonde? Sleepover with Klaus? So many questions!