The Vampire Diaries: One Way or Another Recap

Synopsis: After racing against the clock to swap Stefan and serial-killer’s souls, the shenanigans come to an anticlimactic end. As does Stefan and Valerie’s relationship. Elsewhere, Bonnie makes friends in the psych ward.

Rating:★★☆☆☆

At the end of episodes like this, I have to remind myself that this show has so much potential. It’s been alternately good and bad and unwatchable for seven seasons now and I’ve been a loyal (albeit reluctant) viewer for all of them.

But for the love of all that was early season vampy goodness, can we please stop making every week another asinine cheap-magic plot device side trip? Also, can we please stop villainizing Damon?

Seriously – the poor dude has gotten blamed for everyone’s problems when the reality is, he’s just an all-too-self-pitying patsy for all the other characters to sink their trite problems into. He hasn’t done anything this season but mope around and pine for Elena. He’s not the bad guy anymore.

It. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.

Don’t do me like this, TVD. I stuck through the freaking Travellers’ season and all you can give me is a half-hearted character arc for the entire Heretic line and some new cloak and dagger super secret supernatural society?? Come on.

I want high stakes, high emotion plots with characters I have known long enough to care about. I want a less-expansive magical world where the get-out-of-jail free card isn’t always some new witchy spell or a strange new mythology. I want hard, impossible decisions and meaningful relationships.

Give me a little heart.

Anyway, chalk this episode up to the ‘nearly unwatchable’ column. When I wasn’t taking breaks to shop on Amazon, here’s what happened:

Human Stefan got to ride along in an ambulance all day fighting for his life while Damon and Ric chased down not-Stefan’s body in a frathouse.

Ric is angry at Damon for always screwing things up and not valuing their friendship. This is a recurring theme.

Since Damon can’t get into the frathouse where not-Stefan is hiding, not-Stefan makes a deal: if Damon can kill Rayna, not-Stefan will leave Stefan’s body and leap into a transitioning vampire’s body instead. Damon isn’t able to make the trade, but once not-Stefan inexplicably changes plans and goes after human-Stefan’s body, Ric manages to tranq the killer and Valerie does the soulswap spell.

And then Valerie and Stefan break up because she realizes he’ll never love her as much as he loves Caroline, who has been MIA for the last half of the season presumably dropping the twinspawn off at daycare.

In other news, Bonnie makes friends with her roommate, one of Enzo’s relatives, in the psych ward. She learns that the Armory has been hunting her to open a vault with a new Big Bad Mysterious Thing inside. Bonnie and Enzo make out a little; Bonnie learns she’s dying from taking the Rayna blood pills; the two make out a little more; Damon tries to apologize to Bonnie.

Ric Bonnie is angry at Damon for always screwing things up and not valuing their friendship. This is a recurring theme.