TV Review: THE VAMPIRE DIARIES – Season 3 – “Our Town”

By SEAN ELLIOTT / Contributing Writer

Posted: January 17th, 2012 / 09:52 AM

Stars: Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, Ian Somerhalder
Writer: Rebecca Sonnenshine, Based on the book by L.J. Smith
Director: Wendy Stanzler
Network: The CW, airs Thursday nights
Original Telecast: January 12, 2012

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES is still one of my favorite guilty pleasures on television. The series is such a soap opera with supernatural elements that you can’t tear yourself away for fear of missing something important (or something tiny that will turn out to be important).

“Our Town” continues the power play between Klaus (Joseph Morgan) and Stefan (Paul Wesley); each one seeing how they can out maneuver and out manipulate everyone around them. It’s worth noting that in previous seasons when Stefan went up against Klaus it was a fairly one-sided fight, but removing a goodly sized chunk of Stefan’s humanity has somewhat leveled the playing field.

Stefan of before was only concerned with protecting Elena (Nina Dobrev) and by proxy anyone that Elena cares about. That Stefan had the weakness of emotion as his Achilles’ heel and it was pretty easy to not only get to him, but to use his emotions against him and put him out of the game for a bit. This new ‘whole’ version of Stefan post Klaus control, is the same guy, but without the softer side of Sears in the mix. Stefan is completely consumed with revenge, and he doesn’t even mind placing Elena in danger to damage Klaus.

I like this new dynamic. It makes for a much more interesting show to watch. Before everyone in Mystic Falls was so outmatched by the raw power of Klaus that they couldn’t find ways around him or to beat him; survival almost always seemed like the only thing they could manage. Now that one of the characters has crossed over to be more like Klaus you really have no idea what will happen next. All bets are off as to what Stefan will do to keep striking at Klaus and taking bits of his life, hybrids, and goals away.

Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) takes off officially in this episode, and I wonder if that was a writing choice or if the actor wanted to pursue other things? In any case it leaves one less weakness for Elena and company, but it also created some drama between Elena and Bonnie (Katerina Graham) over the subject of Jeremy’s free will. Kinda moot now though.

Tyler (Michael Trevino) drops another notch into the personality crapper when he tries to fight against Klaus’ control over him, and finds out that he has no will of his own, biting Caroline (Candice Accola) and leaving her open for Klaus to sweep in (pretending to be a good guy) and save the day. Boo. Tyler has just dropped to less than zero on the reliability chart. If Klaus asks or tells him to do something he does it; whether he is aware he is doing it or not. Unless Klaus is killed off somehow, Tyler might have to die so everyone else can be a little bit safer.

Elena spends a lot of time being pissy about her kiss with Damon (Ian Somerhalder), but I know like me, most of the audience wants her to become just a bit more involved with him…now that Stefan is not the nice vamp next door. That’s it for this week see you next week same vamp time same vamp channel.

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