‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 5, episode 18 review: Paul Wesley’s ‘Resident Evil’ has Kol, Vicki, shockers
Was Paul Wesley’s episode of “The Vampire Diaries” a smashing success? If nothing else, we definitely consider it to be a great surprise. He actually managed to move the show away from some of its shortcomings, and towards a product that was more adult and complex.
To us, the most intriguing moment of the entire hour was a nice “what if?” scene that featured a proposal between Stefan and Elena, where rather than having the two characters rip off each others’ clothes, it turned out being rather sweet and lovely. This moment made us want to almost root for this scenario to unfold, even thought it was not real and we still don’t want to pick sides in the Damon vs. Stefan battle for Elena’s heart that remains the center of this show. These moments were great, and Wesley has a knack for getting good, and real, feelings from his actors. The scene near the end where Damon told Elena he could never be her friend was also fantastic.
Now, comes the unfortunate part … we still had to deal with that Travelers storyline, which just is not that interesting or exciting no matter how you want to cut it. We don’t get the same villain vibes from Markos that we did from Klaus or Silas in his various forms, even if we do have a better understanding now of the link between Stefan and Elena.
If we ignore that (and some of the Bonnie / Jeremy stuff that didn’t go anywhere), there were some other great individual moments. It was nice to see Kol and Vicki again in little cameos as Matt was on the other side, and seeing Elena communicate with Stefan honestly and openly was refreshing. “Resident Evil” taught us that friendship is important just as much as relationships, and should not be discounted. Sometimes, we wish the show would pay attention to that lesson more. Grade: B.
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Photo: The CW