The Vampire Diaries: A Bird in a Gilded Cage review

We examine the dichotomies of good blondes and evil brunettes and how it relates to TVD. Or we review the episode. Your choice.

This Vampire Diaries review contains spoilers.

When I was a little kid I was reared on the CBS soap opera The Bold and The Beautiful. For reasons I have never fully understood, I believed that the two arch enemies on the show (and rivals for the affection of Ridge Forrester), Brooke and Taylor, had intentions that could be identified by the color of their hair. Sure, Brooke may have been married to Ridge’s dad, but she had blonde hair, and thus, had to be the “good one.”

Taylor on the other hand, sweetness incarnate and at one pointed presumed dead after a plane crash, had to be evil because she was a brunette. In my teens years I realized the flaw in this argument and have wished Brooke and her wicked ways ills countless times over. But part of me still makes that blond-good brunette-evil association, to my eternal chagrin.

The Vampire Diaries took advantage of this ridiculous stereotype this week in a major way, and it was scrumptious. The evil blondes Caroline and Stefan were like something out of an episode of Oxygen’s Snapped: Couples! It was exactly like true crime plus a few supernatural elements. All their sexy bloody partying (that sounds like there were tampons involved, there were not, I am pleased to report) was heightened by the do-gooding antics of the brunettes.

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Remember when Damon was the worst? Now he whiles away his hours almost but not quite having kitchen-sex with Elena and trying to save/reactivate his brother’s humanity via addressing all of his mommy issues. Long-time watchers of the show would be in no way surprised to see that Damon is basically 90% soft underbelly, but as the shows chugs along watching his secondary relationships deepen and develop continues to be exceptionally rewarding. Clearly I’m talking about Bonnie and Damon who deserve, at the very least, their own late-night, scotch-drunk podcast.

As amped I was to watch Stefan lead humanity-free Caroline down a road of devious excess, an entire episode dedicated to their debauchery would have been akin to eating your entire birthday cake in one sitting. When Stefan and Damon’s mother Lily was introduced I wondered what reason they’d find to up the urgency in terms of retrieving her from the prison world.

While I think the issue of Stefan’s humanity being in the off position (something they have successfully dealt with before sans mama’s help) was a bit of a reach, I’m willing to look past this in order to see how the emotional crisis between the mother and her children plays out. Lily may have the face of an angel, but we know she’s a vaguely demented former-ripper. Things are about to get strange. I don’t think she’ll be letting go of her vampire-dolls in the prison world very easily, and I highly doubt we’re going to abandon Kai there either, whatever Bonnie might have hoped.

Rating:

4 out of 5