The Vampire Diaries – Recap & Review – Isobel

photo: the cw

The Vampire Diaries
Isobel

Original Air Date: May 6, 2010

Meg – Senior Reviewer
meg@thetwocentscorp.com

Just in time for Mother’s Day, The Vampire Dairies delivers an episode in which Elena reunites with her birth mom.

Unfortunately this reunion includes more death threats and face slaps than hugs and flowers, but we’ve got to start somewhere, right?

We open where we ended off last week, with Alaric being confronted by Isobel, his allegedly dead (and now-revealed-to-be distinctly UNdead) wife. Isobel demands that he set up a meeting for her with Elena and claims that she’ll start killing off his students until he does what she wants.

Uncle Jon and Isobel
Uncle Jon is in cahoots with Isobel and was apparently besotted with her back in her pre-dead days. He goes to meet with her while rocking a sassy leather jacket – he looks almost Sark-like and I almost wish he’d bust out the old Alias accent. For someone who has a very specific plan, Iso doesn’t seem too focused on carrying it out and is instead just lounging while she watches two of her human playthings (as far as I can tell a cowboy and a French maid) get sexy. How productive.

Isobel smacks Uncle J around (it’s nice to see such a usually smarmy character get knocked down a peg or two) and yells at him for not getting Jonathan Gilbert’s invention from Damon.

Elena Meets her Mom
Elena waits to meet her mom at the Mystic Grill, of all places. Stefan is by the pool tables and keeping an eye on his gal. Elena takes advantage of his super-vamp hearing to whisper thanks and that she loves him. It’s a cute moment between these two – a welcome break from all the angst last week.

Isobel shows up and immediately tells Elena that she looks like Katherine. Elena has got to be getting sick of hearing that. Elena keeps her cool and asks who her father was. Isobel is annoyingly evasive and dismisses him as a “teenage waste of space.” Instead of getting down to business, Iso starts hounding Elena on her love life, asking if she is mimicking Katherine and pursuing both Salvatore brothers. Really, Isobel? This is the first time you’ve met your daughter in, um… EVER, and you’re on a super-secret vamp mission and this is what you choose to talk about?

She finally gets down to business and tells Elena to get the mysterious Gilbert invention from Damon or she’ll start killing people. Then she leaves. Beeyotch.

Damon Makes Threats
Alaric and Damon wait outside the restaurant. I really like the two of them together. Alaric is distraught that Isobel is cold and shows none of the compassion or humanity he fell in love with when he was alive. Alaric tells Damon that “you’re a dick and you kill people, but I still see something human in you.” Aww… Is somebody giving someone else a compliment?

Damon crashes Isobel’s pad and they throw each other around. It may or may not be a little sexy. Iso reveals that she’s in Mystic Falls doing Katherine’s dirty work. Damon tells Isobel to get out of his town and stop threatening people he cares about (like Elena!).

Bonnie Makes Magic
Bonnie has been avoiding Elena, but can sense that her friend is distressed. She shares her witch ancestor Emily’s spell book with Elena where they see incantations and sketches of Jonathan Gilbert’s inventions. In an interesting twist, Bonnie explains that none of Jonathan Gilbert’s high-tech anti-vamp gizmos actually worked! It was Emily who cast spells on the items to give them their magical properties and she let Jonathan believe that he had mad inventing skillz. Examining the book, they realize the mystery device that everyone wants is actually a weapon against vampires. I’m not quite certain why Katherine wants to kill her own kind, but that’s definitely an interesting revelation!

Family Matters
Mystic Falls is (still) preparing for the upcoming Founder’s Day celebration, including a parade of floats constructed by students (that’s one way to get around unions…). Matt refuses to speak to Tyler, still angry with him for making out with his mom a few eps ago. Can’t really say I blame him.

Practically the whole town convenes to assemble the Founder’s Day floats. Poor Jeremy has been searching for Anna since she bailed on him a few episodes ago. When Elena brushes him off, Jeremy tells her that he read her diary and he knows all of the secrets that she has kept from him about the vampires in Mystic Falls.

Isobel shows up to rain (blood) on Elena’s parade. She points out all of Elena’s friends: Witchy (Bonnie), Yappy (Caroline), Yappy’s Future Ex (Matt), and Jeremy. To show how easily she can hurt people Elena cares about, Isobel has her cowboy minion cause a float to essentially fall on Matt’s head. Isobel’s French maid minion has taken Jeremy, which leads Iso to tell Elena she’ll kill him if she doesn’t get the device.

Uncle J shows up and tries to convince Isobel to let Jeremy go. They have an icy exchange with Uncle J insisting “you can’t hurt a kid” and Isobel threatening “to kill him just to prove you wrong.” Uncle J gets the crap kicked out of him, while Isobel removes his protective anti-vampire ring and leaves him in a bleeding heap on the floor. Ah, love.

At the Salvatore mansion, our heroes come up with a decent plan and decide to have Bonnie put a spell on the device before giving it to Isobel so that the vamp weapon won’t work.

Elena hands the device over and thanks her mother for being such a “monumental disappointment.” (Burn!). Iso tells Elena that Damon is in love with her and that she’s doomed as long as she has “a Salvatore brother on each arm.”

Alaric has a final encounter with Isobel, where he removes his protective ring and secret vervain stash and demands that she kill or compel him. Iso seems to have some remorse and tells him that she will regret her “mistake” (becoming a vampire) forever and that he needs to let himself be free of her. She slips his protective ring back on his finger and leaves.

As the episode winds down, Anna appears to Jeremy and tells him her mother is dead and that she has nowhere to go. The Salvatore brothers have a hilariously awkward conversation, which basically boils down to Stefan telling Damon to keep his hands off Elena. Isobel leaves town after dropping a package at Uncle Js doorstep. She confirms that Uncle J is actually Elena’s father (erm, was he, like, 8 when she was born?). Iso tells Uncle J to implement his part of the plan and kill all the tomb vampires, but also to protect Elena by killing the Salvatore brothers as well. As we learn in the final scene, this may actually happen, because Bonnie lied to everyone and left the spell on the vampire weapon. Ooh, double cross!

Next week we have the season finale! This was a great episode – the first one where I’ve seen any depth to Uncle J’s character. Mia Kirshner could not have been more perfectly cast. What did you think about the episode? Leave some comments and let me know your two cents! What are you hoping for in the season finale?

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