Episode 5×3, “Original Sin.” Well the Biblical original sin (depending on your interpretation) was trusting Satan/ trusting a woman/ trusting any temptation/ going against God’s wishes. So there could be some analogue to that in this here episode. Or, if it’s a Stefan-themed episode (and it probably is), his original sin is (depending on your point of view) trusting Katherine/ killing his father/ corrupting his brother/ turning into the Ripper. So um, anyway, happy episode!
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Cold Open
- If I ever own a bar I’m just going to name it “Bar” too. It’s a very post-statement statement.
- Oh, I thought the guy in the box was a cop. Mea culpa. I mean, I just assumed. So, someone who wasn’t a cop found a body-sized safe in the water, removed it all on his own, figured out the combination and opened it up only to end up dead inside it himself? Because that totally sounds like a fable.
- Qetsiyah came back for Stefan. Um…back in Season Two my friends and I were making jokes about his magic penis, but this is getting ridiculous.
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Everything up until the first commercial break.
- Katherine is doing her best to be as immensely annoying here as Rebekah was in “The Rager.” It’s not going to work…not until Katherine gets Elena to force her hand down an operating garbage disposal, anyways, but Katherine is giving it the old college try.
- Nina Dobrev is Amara. I think we all, somehow, as the seconds ticked by, saw that coming.
- And since Season Two’s “Katerina” revealed that Petrova doppelgangers are a genetic descendency, and Silas revealed last episode that Damon was his Great-great nephew (and therefore genetic), is this proof positive that the first two doppelgangers procreated? Aannnddd Stefan and Elena just hit incest territory.
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Everything up until the second commercial break.
- She forgot to mention Tatia. What about Tatia? (I’ll never forget, dammnit!)
- I would have liked to see Amara’s personality at least once, just to get some more of Nina’s range. Maybe Silas will give us a flashback.
- My only complaint about the Qetsiyah actress is that (probably more than any other centuries old character) she just doesn’t seem a minute older than her age. Other than that, I’m just loving her delivery.
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Everything up until the third commercial break.
- How strong is Nadia? It’s one thing when vampires do it, of course, but humans don’t exactly have the physical strength to just snap a person’s neck like that.
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Everything up until the fourth commercial break.
- I love that Damon loves Stefan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Damon would have choked Qetsiyah for beer money alone, but I believe that scene was largely about the suggestion that he abandon his brother to cruelty for selfish gains. Damon loves Stefan. They’re the best side of the love triangle.
- Silas sees what Qetsiyah can’t: doppelgangers are, in fact, different people from each other. Good on him.
- Katherine’s blood is the Cure. This is a surprise? (It also is necessary to complete the transition from werewolf to hybrid, but that’s no longer an issue on Thursday nights).
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Everything up until the fifth commercial break.
- So is this one of those “Matt’s choosing not to tell her” or is it “Matt is unable to tell her because the man mystically cohabiting his body is prohibiting him from it” deals? For all that Zach Roerig’s delivery is over the top, he doesn’t have the most expressive features.
- “I’m sorry, I have no idea who you people are”–amnesiac Stefan to Elena and Damon. It would be great if he didn’t even remember that vampires exist. I’d love to watch an innocent jerk’s face as he learned about his 160-year history of magic and serial killing with occasional bouts of miserable peace.
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Everything before the end.
- [Whoops, I seem to have missed a break somewhere. That or there were less Acts this time. Anyway, apologies.]
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Some Final Thoughts
- So there’s no Ripper Stefan after all. On the upside, I’m glad there’s not going to be a retread. But on the downside, I thought that it would be really fun to have an out-of-control brutal Ripper next to a calmly-collected evil doppelganger Silas just for us to have our kicks. And then he could just…snap out of it on his own to spare us the maudlin. Oh well. Instead I’ll be proud that Stefan resisted and all that.
- So the flashbacks. Qetsiyah and Silas are absolutely the worst people of all time, aren’t they? Just, just the worst. They’re both so terrible that, in the words of all mothers, I don’t care who started it, one of you just end it already.
- I have to say, after all of the terrible wigs of flashbacks past, it was very refreshing to see Paul Wesley’s ‘do for this particular flashback.
- Silas says that the sight of Katherine’s face makes him want to vomit. Is that merely because she’s not Amara but looks just like her? Or has he somehow surveilled the area long enough to get a sense of Katherine’s personality and not been pleased by it? Or partly because she drank his Cure?
- Silas doesn’t seem to trust Nadia one bit extra after she killed her friend. So basically all it was was the universe giving the finger, once again, to Matt Donovan.
- I think Qetsiyah’s conversation with Damon regarding all of the doppelgangers and how they’re all just destined to get back together…it’s good that it happened for the sake of what’s already happened in the past four seasons and helping to ease some of the contrivance of all those meetings and crushes and whatnot. And it opens future possibilities too, and helps establish Qetsiyah’s character as meddler who’s a bit off and I get all that. But I hope that it doesn’t go any further at this point in time. I’m neutral, narratively speaking, with the love triangle (by which I mean it neither excites me nor bores me at this point) and that means I’m the most excited of any person I’ve spoken with online. People are bored with it. So writers, I’m not suggesting you should abandon the love triangle, I get that it’s the cornerstone of the show and all that. I’m just saying that, since Elena has finally made a choice and everyone actually trusts her choice this time, maybe let it stand for more than, oh, two full episodes before you start galvanizing the triangle drama again. At least let twelve episodes go by, for cripes sake. As an added bonus, unlike last year, Damon might actually have an emotional conflict this year that consists of something besides wondering if the girl who says she loves him actually loves him or just thinks that she does. Just two cents worth advice from a non-professional writer.
- Are we going to learn any more about the witch that made the Hunters? How did she know it needed to be done? Why did she do it so elaborately? and so on. I’ve always wanted some clarification on her.
- And Esther Mikaelson was one lucky witch, huh? I mean, she can’t be the first person who worried for her children’s lives and wished she could make them immortal, but she ostensibly was maybe one of the first with the ability and means to do it. And who did she have, living right next door? Why, a doppelganger of the first truly immortal woman of all time. I suppose this explains the vampire upgrade…if your baseline blood is already supernaturally unique, and then you have all that extra magic stuff, you’d have even more power (does that make sense?). I guess that’s why everyone’s faster and stronger than Silas is.
- I remember in Season Two someone asked Nina Dobrev in an interview why Katherine loved Stefan and she said that the writers wouldn’t tell her, but that Katherine really truly did. So now we have our answer. It’s cool to know that this was all, to a degree, planned out years ago.
- Okay, so did Silas and Amara have children or not? “Katerina” made such a point of Katherine secretly having a child out of wedlock before ever meeting Klaus, and it getting secreted away, and because that happened before she was turned the line could live on and that was the only reason that little Elena Gilbert could ever exist at all. I thought that made it pretty well canon that the doppelganger line was a genetic one. And Silas did call Damon his great-whatever nephew, which also indicates a blood ancestry. Technically speaking, Amara and Silas could both have had children with people besides each other (since she was killed on their wedding night), but then how many ladies has Silas been with and was he just the sleaziest ever? I don’t know, this newest iteration of what makes a doppelganger (a way to balance out nature: something immortal is created so a mortal replication must also exist to balance it out) is much smarter anyway, thematically speaking, but the show is starting to get mythology clutter overload. Shouldn’t Amara no longer need doppelgangers if she became mortal again? and why are there only sometimes doppelgangers, when balancing nature means that there should always be a killable doppelganger hanging around for that homeostasis? This episode answered questions we’ve had since the pilot but opened up a lot more. And are Elena and Stefan related? Because I’m going to need that answered soon.
Conclusion: . I give “Original Sin” nine doppelgangers out of ten.