The Vampire Diaries: "Bringing Out the Dead" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

The title for this week's episode of The Vampire Diaries was right on the nose and "Bringing Out the Dead" was exactly what happened. Things kicked off in the previous episode when Damon removed the dagger from Elijah, setting him free to confront Klaus. By the end of the episode, Elijah wasn't the only family member that Klaus had to worry about.

The episode picked up moments after the previous one ended, and I must say, it was good to have Daniel Gillies back as Elijah. He played the character as cool as ever; I was never completely sure whose side he would choose to join, whether he was really working with Damon, if he had sided with Klaus out of family loyalty, or if he had something else up his sleeve altogether.

The dinner party with Klaus and Elijah facing off with Stefan and Damon was nicely tense, with undercurrents running between each set of brothers. I could have done without the story of Tatia Petrova, yet another girl that two brothers were both in love with, but it is The Vampire Diaries signature move, so keeping that thread running through the doppleganger bloodline made sense.

Meanwhile Elena and Alaric had to deal with a new threat, or at least one that was new to them. We already had seen that the medical examiner had been murdered recently, but when it was further revealed that he was killed using one of Elena's family's weapons, the mystery became finding out who was doing the attacking. I laughed at Elena's reasoning that Alaric's new love interest, Dr. Fell, couldn't have had anything to do with it because she didn't want to believe that his luck with women would be "that tragic." This is Mystic Falls Elena, everyone's luck is that tragic.

The mystery became more urgent when both Caroline's father Bill (Jack Coleman) and Alaric were also stabbed. With Bill, at first it seemed as though we were gearing up for a storyline about the vampire-hater who must come to terms with being a vampire himself. However, that was where the show threw us a heartbreaking curveball. Bill was a man of convictions, and chose to accept death over transforming. Coleman's scenes with Candice Accola were touching, especially since they had been at odds when we first met him. The scenes with Elena trying to comfort Caroline were also very moving, although it would have been better if Bonnie had been there as well. It is always good when the show takes a moment away from the supernatural melodrama to focus on the friendship between Elena, Caroline and Bonnie.

I liked that in this episode that was so focused on family, time was taken to reinforce that Elena considers Alaric to be part of her family now. She told him to his face at the beginning of the episode, but it was when she was forced to kill him herself in order to make sure his magic ring would bring him back to life that we could feel how connected she was to him. Nina Dobrev was both strong and vulnerable in those scenes; the suspense as we waited for Alaric to wake up again was heightened by Elena's emotional state, not to mention Alaric's recent problems with the ring.

Also dealing with family issues, Bonnie and her mother worked on opening the locked coffin while Stefan and Damon attempted to stall Klaus with a fake truce. The episode tried to muster up some suspense when the coffin opened, but I don't think it was all that surprising who was in there.

What was more surprising was how the reappearance of Esther, the mother of the Original vampires, ended up sucking much of the tension out of the episode's conclusion. As it turned out, Elijah's plan to free the rest of his family and turn them all against Klaus was a good one. Leaving Klaus alone would have been his greatest fear, something that was only made worse for him when Elijah warned that if Klaus chased after them, he would end up turning into the person he hated the most: their father. I loved that twist, and was disappointed when Esther interrupted and forgave Klaus immediately. It was nice for Klaus for her to do that, but it was a bit of a letdown after the twists that had gotten us to that point.

On the other hand, if the clan of Originals will be working together again, things are not looking good for the rest of the residents of Mystic Falls, so we have the fallout from that to look forward to.

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