The Vampire Diaries S07E18: "One Way or Another"





The hardest part of being a witch—aside from having to learn Latin or whatever—is the fact that you get killed SO OFTEN. You get killed by everyone all the time. But also you can die from doing magic too hard. You can die from not doing magic hard enough. And sometimes your boyfriend will just straight up give you pills made of poison. Yes, you may have the power to scramble a vampire brain or light several dozen candles at once, but in my opinion being a witch is not worth it. That's why Bonnie's decision to just sort of step back from magic and hang out in a mental hospital eating candy seemed like a very good and relatable decision. Unfortunately, this is The Vampire Diaries, and nothing gold can stay. By that I mean nothing witchy can stay alive. Back to the bone yard for you, Bonnie! (Which could be a sexual innuendo but in this case I mean she is dying again).

Yes, Bonnie is dying again, because why not? This show is so far past recycling plots that it's now recycling recycled plots. Get outta that recycling bin, show! And wash your hands, you smell weird. But on the other hand, because Bonnie is probably the most sympathetic person on the show at the moment, it makes sense that the writers need to constantly put her in peril in order to make our pulses pound. It worked! I am worried about Bonnie. Other than that, "One Way or Another" wasn't super tense for me. I think we can all agree that Stefan is not going to be killed off, so it's always a bit of a snooze when one of the brothers is "in danger." That being said, it was fun to see how this body-swapping thing would play out. So I liked this episode overall. Let's talk about it!



Like most episodes of The Vampire Diaries, this one began with an undead alcoholic hobo vomiting blood into a shopping bag. The most upsetting thing about this was that hey, bag was full of treats!

Damon was concerned about the body that Stefan had been riding around in. Not only was the hairdo deeply disgusting, the body seemed to be dying! By Damon's estimate they had about 48 hours to transplant Stefan's soul back into his regular hot bod or else Stefan would die the true death, or whatever it's called on this show. So he compelled a couple of friendly EMTs to lend a helping hand.

Meanwhile Damon had to find Stefan's body, which was currently mass murdering a frat house. This provided the perfect opportunity to hang out with Alaric again and go on missions just like in the good old days!

I loved when Alaric seemed immediately over it and then advised Damon that Stefan was probably just going to die anyway, so why bother. Uh, has Alaric even SEEN this show? Stefan is not going to be dying, especially not before the season finale, and especially not if Paul Wesley hasn't announced he's leaving the show via Instagram yet. So Damon told Alaric off and then told him to get in the car PRONTO.

Over in Memphis, the vampire currently inside Stefan's body was busily sucking off frat guys.

But when Damon arrived to tell him to knock it off already, he couldn't enter the house and they had to continue their convo over the phone. Yep, this show is so devoted to cell phone conversations that two characters had a long talk over the phone while only standing about 30 feet apart. But enough about cell phones, let's talk about this guy:

He's cute! That's about all I have to say about him. He got turned into a vampire but we didn't get any follow-up about it. Anyway, here was the thing: Fake Stefan was willing to hand over Stefan's body if Damon could eliminate Rayna from the picture. Damon was INTO this idea. Unfortunately, at the moment Rayna was looking real bad in the back of an Uber and the driver did not seem very smart about avoiding vampire car jackings.

Next thing we knew, Enzo had kidnapped Rayna!

Damon was not thrilled about this, since HE needed Rayna for himself. Lucky gal! Meanwhile Enzo guilt-shamed Damon for having ditched Bonnie three years ago, which oh yeah! Bonnie! How you doing, girl?

Bonnie was still in a psych ward and apparently had been there for a while. I cannot overstate how jealous I was. First of all, that is A LOT of relaxation time. Second of all, sometimes you can bust into the nurses' candy stash with your psych ward bestie.

Roozles! She is eating Roozles! What are Roozles?! I want them. I wouldn't even bother separating out the blues, or setting out the weirdly deformed ones. Gimme them Roozles!

So here's this girl. She was another patient there, and I guess they became friends because Bonnie had been switching out the girl's meds for sugar pills, which made her feel better. She was in the psych ward because she was a member of the Armory family, and they'd thrown her in the psych ward for no reason. I don't know. But then Bonnie revealed that she was only in the psych ward because she was undercover and in hiding from the Armory, and she was able to remain undetected because she'd been taking pills made of Rayna's blood, which took away her magic and therefore her ability to be found via locator spell. (Uh, is that how it works? Feels like people in the past have done locator spells on regular humans right?) Anyway, it's all very complicated, let's talk about it later.





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