Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: B- | 53 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT The Power of Exposition
By Tippi Blevins | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.30.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So much talking! It's like every episode is a pilot episode. Everything is backstory and flashbacks and explanation, with thin threads of action trying to tie it loosely together. This week, the Mikaelson siblings attempt to find out why the witches wanted Hayley dead. They call in Sophie Deveraux, who explains that she wasn't even into the witchy stuff until eight months ago. That's when she found out her sister and other witches were going to perform some kind of spell to strengthen the bond with their ancestors. This required the sacrifice of four teenaged girls in a ritual called the Harvest. Sophie's niece was chosen as a sacrifice, as was Davina. All the girls were cool with it, because they thought that the spell would just make them sleep a little while, and that they'd be awakened during another ritual called the Reaping. Sounded legit, right? Dumb kids.
Sophie figured out that the witches were planning to actually kill the girls, so she told her boyfriend about it. Who was her boyfriend? Why, Marcel, of course! He and his henchvamps interrupted the ritual too late to save anyone but Davina, who magically received all the power from the girls who died before her. In the present day, Davina exposits this to Elijah, while Marcel exposits his part to Klaus. Marcel decided to protect Davina because he hates when people abuse kids, but then he realized how powerful Davina was and decided to keep her for himself. Now the witches need to kill Davina to complete the rest of the ritual, or they'll all lose their power forever. Unbeknownst to Davina and Sophie, the deaths were supposed to be temporary, but will become permanent if the ritual isn't completed. To save her niece, Sophie will have to kill Davina.
Elijah strikes a deal to give Davina his mother's spell books, in exchange for helping him end the war between the vampires and the witches. He then returns home to a very happy Rebekah, an indifferent Klaus and a positively ecstatic Hayley. This being Hayley, though, she can't let on just how happy she is and slaps him upside the head. Or maybe she's just pissed because in all that exposition, nobody managed to find out for sure who tried to kill her that night... or who saved her. Oh, and somewhere in all that talking, we find out that the witches made Cami's brother lose his mind and go on a killing spree. Marcel is pretty pissed about that. Stay tuned for the full weecap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Elijah still looks a bit gray when we pick up where last week's episode left off. "You're the one they call honorable," Davina notes. "Yes, that's what they call me," he says, eyeballing her neck with apparent hunger. He focuses on the matter at hand, which is his desire to end the feud between the vampires and witches. He wants Davina to help him. "Why should I trust you?" she asks. "Well, for one thing," he begins, "in spite of a ravenous hunger I have not tried to take your blood." "He doesn't feed on children", he says. Davina pricks her finger with a hatpin, and then waves the pin under his nose like a sommelier offering an oenophile the first sniff of a cork. Elijah hesitates, but takes hold of her hand and touches the pin to his lips. He gasps. Just that tiny bit of blood restores his healthy pallor. It's... kind of inappropriately hot.
Klaus snatches Sophie Deveraux from Rousseau's and zips her back to the plantation. He accuses her of letting Hayley come to harm. She swears she had nothing to do with the attack. She reminds him that they're linked. "If she dies, I die!" She explains that Sabine's vision of Hayley's baby got some of the more extreme witches all het up. This is the first that Klaus is hearing of the vision, so Sophie says that Sabine feared the baby would bring death to the witches. "I grow fonder of this child by the second," Klaus says with snark. Heh. Rebekah joins them for a sit-down in the parlor, and tells them that Elijah is trying to work something out with Davina. Sophie imagines Davina isn't too pleased with the witches. Sophie herself wasn't much for the witches, either, until recently.
Flashback to eight months ago as Sophie explains about her strict, witchy parents, and how she fled her upbringing. She did a lot of partying and traveling. Then she came back to the Quarter to become a chef. One night, her sister Jane-Anne came into Rousseau's to tell her something: "The Elders called a vote; they're moving ahead with the Harvest." Sophie was horrified.
"What the bloody hell is the Harvest?" Rebekah asks. Sophie explains it's a ritual performed every 300 years. "We appease our ancestors, they keep our ancestral power flowing." Nobody's heard of it before now because people treated it like a myth.
Back to the land of flashbacks, as Sophie interrupts the beginning of the ritual, which has one of the elder witches pricking the palms of teenaged witches and reciting things about sacrifice. "What are you doing?" Sophie asks. "Saving the community you renounced," elder witch says. Sophie is especially disturbed that a girl named Monique is taking part in the ritual. Sophie stomps off to have words with Monique's mom. One of the girls taking part is Davina, who looks a bit concerned at Sophie's ranting.