The Vampire Diaries: The Day I Tried to Live Review

In theory, the prison world that was holding Kai captive (until it wasn’t), is a brilliant and terrifying concept. To exist in the same world as your own but in a different time? With no access to those you love? Grim indeed. Unfortunately, when you make that prison world the year 1994, you immediately drain it of just the wrong amount of menace. Kai underlines this story problem every time he drops a reference (however hilarious) that is woefully out of date. 

For me, that strange incongruity was the only thing about last night’s episode of the Vampire Diaries that fell flat. Bonnie’s birthday coinciding with her own plans of suicide, as well as Jeremy deciding whether or not he should move on, and both Caroline and strangely, Kai, coping with a strange new wave of awful emotions — these were meaty and wonderful things to witness! If only they weren’t every so often zapped of their emotional oomph with the odd joke about movies like The Bodyguard.

My grumblings aside, the episode was stellar. I mean, let’s be real, any chance Kat Graham gets to really sink her teeth into a scene is going to provide a scene well-worth watching and last night’s episode was no exception. The threat of her imminent demise felt real, and I found myself mourning the idea of her loss much more than next week’s farewell to Steven R. McQueen. 

I am intensely curious about how things are going to play out for the Gemini Coven now that Kai’s personality has been made slightly less sociopathic by the addition of Luke’s personality traits. That is, if Liv can manage not to get her murder-on. Liv was all over the place this week. She felt like more of a sketch than anything fully realized. As easy as it is to understand why she’d want to avenge her twin, you’d think she might feel conflicted about it given that part of Luke is still alive inside of Kai. I hope that’s something we get to see play out in episodes to come, and now that Tyler has been summarily self-dismissed from her life, the space has been made for this to happen. At least, that’s what I’m assuming is up with Tyler’s massive hissy-fit. Anything else is inexcusable. You can’t go from saying you’d die for a girl to dumping her when she does something you disagree with and have me understand your epic emotional journey of apparently ten minutes.

In closing, let us discuss how something needs to be done about Enzo and his storyline. Matt is being wasted, wasted, I say, on this dreary storyline. Yes, I’m curious to see how Sarah Salvatore will eventually fit into the bigger picture, but so far Enzo’s “plan” to seduce her to vampirism just seems sort of skeevy rather than a real malevolent threat. Admittedly, with a character like Kai strutting around, every other bad guy does tend to seem less interesting and bad by comparison. 

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