The Vampire Diaries S07E03: "Age of Innocence"

We all solve problems differently. If you're smart you might use critical thinking skills to get that raccoon family to stop leaving broken pottery on your trampoline. Like, maybe spray the trampoline with a homemade raccoon repellant made of vinegar and Britney perfume. Or if you're more of a brute force kind of person, you could just wait until the raccoons are on the trampoline and then push the whole thing into the pool. Take that broken pottery into the murky depths of my Doughboy, rascals! But the main idea here is that people are different and even when our problems are the same, we all solve them differently. That's sort of the gist of The Vampire Diaries, which in my opinion is about two brothers with different ways of thinking. Sometimes those ways of thinking come into conflict!

"Age of Innocence" was this week's episode of The Vampire Diaries, and in a few ways it felt like a return to form for this show. The main way, of course, was how Stefan and Damon dealt with the Lily/Heretics situation in different ways. Where Stefan went the more sympathetic route—teaching Lily to drive, earning her trust—Damon straight-up kidnapped her friend and thus escalated their tensions toward a mutually assured destruction. But on this show it's never clear which solution will work better... Stefan seemed to be on the right track at first, but if the past is any indication, a scorched earth policy is sometimes best, because, as Blade once said, "Some motherf*ckers always trying to ice skate uphill." But let's talk about this episode! There were flashback wigs!





We began in none other than NEW YORK CITY. And with Tyler driving a fancy new car, or maybe he's just an Uber driver. Either way, hey Tyler! I did kinda miss him. Not as much as I miss Jeremy, but at least he's off having a good time in Chicago:





Anywayyyyy, yeah Stefan called up Tyler for some reason, because he was on the run from the vampire hunter lady and needed to go off the grid.

But the only thing I could think about was which kind of phone he would be using three years from now? I would really love it if this show started having future product placements for things that aren't even invented yet. What's the 2018 version of AT&T Mi-Fi? Exciting stuff.

Then he hung up on Tyler and grabbed his journal out of his trunk and then SET HIS CAR ON FIRE. Now THAT was a shocking death I didn't expect to see. That weird car has been iconic since Season 1. Clearly Stefan meant BUSINESS.

Back in modern times, Bonnie was writing in her journal, but—and I promise this ended up being funnier than I think was intended—her writing was suddenly interrupted when she started having flashes of evil screaming blood demons and then fell on the floor.

This was officially the most exciting diary-writing scene in the history of the show! But yeah, I guess she was still 'cursed' or whatever by the pink moonstone, so that was going to be a problem.

Here was an excellent scene. Alaric and Damon are roommates now, which means tons of casual bro towel time. (Which, and I don't mean to sound like a creep, please forgive me, but is Damon looking extremely fine this season? I think the vampires are allowed to have tans now, which is great news.) Anyway, as you know, every episode starts with 2 characters sort of recapping to each other what has happened and what needs to happen, so I am in favor of this episode's decision to spice up that mandatory convo with a towel scene. As far as I am concerned, this season is BACK ON TRACK.





I loved when Damon and Bonnie asked Alaric if he'd definitely destroyed the pink moonstone and he awkwardly lied right to their faces! (Remember when vampires used to be good at detecting liars?) Anyway, that was old news, the new news was that Damon had discovered the whereabouts of the sixth Heretic. So you know what that means...

They were heading to Myrtle Beach! But don't get your hopes up, this show was not about to become Eastbound & Down all of the sudden. We were really just going to be visiting a single hotel room in Myrtle Beach. The characters would not be walking around in soggy swimwear holding beer coozies, sorry to report.

Meanwhile Caroline was still being held captive for some reason, and the lady Heretics were NOT being very chill about it.

Ugh, just not a great time for Caroline at all. Somebody was going to need a relaxing trip to Dave and Buster's after this.

So then Lily decided to spend her day being a total weirdo and trying to learn how to parallel park by herself in the alley behind Mystic Grill. So she knocked the bumper off a Beemer and Stefan ran outside to yell at her. But this just led to a series of flashbacks about the time Stefan was a floppy-haired teen and met Valerie back in the day (Caroline was also getting told this same story by Valerie herself, who seemed super eager to brag to Caroline about the time she boned Stefan.) Anyway, here you go:

The flashbacks were everything you thought they might be: A pre-vampire Valerie and a pre-vampire Stefan immediately fell in love with the kind of heat that could boil lava. Meanwhile, a dapper piece of trash came over and shaded everybody. It was crazy when Stefan assumed this dude was Valerie's dad even though they looked the same age. But it turned out this dude was Lily's then-boyfriend and she was STILL all a-tingle about him.

So yeah, expect to see him show up and become a villain soon, I guess.





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