The Vampire Diaries S07E08: "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me"

The point of parties is not to have fun. The point of parties is to dredge up as many mixed emotions as the human brain will allow—excitement, suspense, affection, disappointment—so that you can safely spend the rest of your week in the day-to-day medium-okay fugue state that is regular life. It's why many of us view the word "party" with trepidation. What if it's a disaster? We got a lot riding on it! Fully half of them usually are disasters, if we're being honest. But what if something very over-the-top and cinematic happens and it'll be a life highlight? Also possible. But the main thing parties have going for them is that they usually involve people we know, and our relationships to them might change with a glance. Old friends seen in new lights, peripheral characters suddenly promoted to series regulars (in TV parlance), or frenemies we can't remember the reasons for hating. But the main thing is, it's the relationships we go to parties for. Not just daylight dancing with people who are FORCED to be there. That is my definition of a bad party, and that was the party the characters of TVD attended this week. Sometimes being a vampire is actual hell.

"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me" centered around one of the saddest parties ever featured on this show. Sure, celebrating a 100+ year anniversary is a good idea for a bash, but having to compel dozens of strangers into attending is surely the biggest sign yet that the Heretics are pathetic. They all talk a big game about how they're a "family" and therefore have each other always, but I think this was the episode that proved they have neither friends nor family. They're all just lonely sad-sacks who live in a ghost town. This episode had its moments, but it was hard to shake the feeling that almost everything going on in it was a dead-end somehow. Had WE TOO been compelled to dance around a disco ball in the middle of the day? Let's talk about it!

We started in the future, thank G. (The future is the best!) It was shortly after Damon found himself darted up like crazy in Caroline's TV studio, and he was just waking up from what I am assuming was a very restful nap. It was at this point we saw the face of the woman who'd been chasing all our fave vampires...

LILY SALVATORE! That was a weird and unexpected "twist". We will probably have to talk about this later, guys.

Back in modern times, Lily woke up next to the shirtless hunk she was now dead-set on murdering, and it was as if he was now suddenly the greatest guy, just pallin' around with her "kids" and making pancakes and looking pretty aight in a tank top. Julian had a new lease on life, which was ironic, because Lily was about to murder the sh*t out of him!

Yeah, things were suddenly very awkward in the Salvatore mansion.

Meanwhile, Caroline was dealing with the fact that she was pregnant with Alaric's babies, so she turned to her best friend, a diary, and spilled her guts. (Not literally, because that would mean she spilled fetuses onto the floor, which would be disgusting.)

But in general she had mixed feelings about this. Especially because she was in a new relationship with a great guy and now she had to break the news to him. Side note: I know TVD is treating this pregnancy as just another weird thing the characters have to deal with, but isn't the concept of a vampire becoming pregnant with human babies a TOTAL GAME CHANGER for vampires in general? So much hand-wringing has happened about the fact that once vampires turn they can't reproduce anymore and a lot of them harbor super sadness about this, so the fact that they are one magic spell away from being able to have babies is pretty major. Sure, they may not be genetically related to their offspring but that's how a lot of in-vitro pregnancies are. Remind me again what the downsides to being a vampire are? Eating all that blood? I honestly take a multi-vitamin that tastes worse, so fine.

It was Nora and Mary Lou's anniversary, so Julian threw them a party!

And hilariously enough, he'd invited all the people he'd been compelling and sticking in classrooms for the past few days. Yes, THAT'S what these people were being used for. Forced party-goers. The weirdest part was that it was a daytime dance party? Think about that for a second. Julian truly needed to be killed.

So then Caroline showed up at Stefan's place and pulled the old "we need to talk" bit. And here's how that went:

Haha she told him she was pregnant, he asked no questions, and just scrambled the hell out of there! I mean, I would have expected him to spend at least 45 minutes demanding details about how this game-changing scenario could have occurred, but instead he just muttered something about how he had a really busy schedule today and then bounced. Not a great moment for him.





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