Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: B- | 9 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Have You Heard Of Switches?
By Cindy McLennan | Season 4 | Episode 1 | Aired on 10.11.2012
Elena has lost so many people. All she ever wants to do is make sure her loved ones are safe. She wants that so, she's ready to die for it, and now she can't die for it. Again, I'm not against vamping Elena, but I'd like a chance to properly mourn her humanity, and this doesn't give me what I need. This episode's "suspense" lies mostly in the question of will-or-won't-she-feed, so there's little true suspense -- little tension. It was clear to me she was going to become a vamp, so all of that was for nothing. Don't get me wrong. Had the show gone the other way and let Bonnie rehumanize Elena, I would have been furious at being jerked around by nothing at all. Given the setup, the only workable choice was to let Elena become a vampire. It's just that I never thought Bonnie's spell was going to work. When Grams showed up, I didn't think, "Ooh, will she stop it?" but rather, "Oh so that's how they'll stop it." I didn't think the Reverend and the reformed Council was going to kill any of our leads, certainly not Elena, Stefan or Damon. I didn't think Matt was in any real danger from Damon. I just sort of ended up not caring what comes next. Okay, that's the extent of my ranting for now, but probably just for now.
Lockwood Ruins. Bonnie is looking at Klaus's desiccated corpse, when Klaus (in Tyler's body, henceforth known as KiT) comes up behind her. "Beautiful, isn't it?" Bonnie reminds him that their deal was that he'd leave Tyler's body and jump into someone else's ASAP. Klaus struck that deal when he thought his own body would be nothing but ash. Since most of it still remains, he wants to be returned to his own body, particularly since Vamparic outed Caroline and Tyler to the Council. Bonnie hasn't time or magical energy for this right now. She's got to work out a way to rehumanize Elena. KiT is all like, Elena-schmelena, and so we know this is a real episode of The Vampire Diaries he throttles Bonnie, so she reminds him that if she returns Elena to a fully human state, she'll still be suitable as starter dough for Klaus's army of hybrids. When KiT releases Bonnie, she goes to leave, so KiT Stealth-Salvatores all up in her grill and reminds her that the same rules apply: no one can know. I don't really know why we even care about that because it doesn't matter later on.
Sidebar: Michael Trevino does a fine job playing KiT. I see (appropriate) differences in his mannerisms and even his diction, but I have to wonder if that's how it would really work. I mean, while a given voice itself comes with the equipment, accent is a learned thing. If Klaus's essence is running the KiT show, where is his accent? I realize it's probably a better meta-choice not to make Michael Trevino try to ape Joseph Morgan, but the accent issue takes me out of the moment during every single scene. I repeat: I don't blame Trevino. I just think this is a risk of all A-in-B's Body plots, particularly when the two characters and actors have such starkly different accents, in the first place.