The Originals doesn’t really have a
single relatable main character, or a single storyline that I’m invested in the
outcome of, or a central relationship or conceit. Or anything you’d expect a TV
show to have. But it’s still really fun, in a “gorgeous people making dumb
decisions” way. Why is this a TV show, exactly?
Spoilers…
Here’s the thing about The
Originals: The titular three “Original Vampires” are basically
gods. For all intents and purposes. They’re immortal and almost unkillable.
Nobody can stand up against them. They have unmatched powers of mind control,
and are ridiculously strong. They’re like Superman, minus flying, heat vision
and a few other powers. The whole point of
these guys is they’re not just regular vampires — they’re super-vampires, who
make regular vampires look puny by comparison.
And thus, their main weaknesses are either going to be some
random widget (a super-witch, a white ash stake) — or they’re going to be
emotional. And since we can’t just trot out an endless series of ultimate
weapons, we’re inevitably going to see more of their emotional vulnerability.
Thus it is that Klaus’ main achilles heel is that he needs
to be loved, or maybe admired. He can make people fear him very easily, but he
can’t win anyone’s love or devotion because he’s too selfish and pig-headed. He
has a propensity for making long, vainglorious speeches. But you can try to
kill him and he’ll forgive you in moments, if he thinks you might wind up
loving or respecting him afterwards.
Last night’s midseason finale focuses pretty heavily on this
problem with Klaus — he’s defeated Marcel and won Marcel’s allegiance, but he
doesn’t have Marcel’s friendship.
And for once, Klaus overcompensates, giving away the store.
First he orders the vampires to go and kill all the werewolves in the bayou
(which pisses off Hayley, the mother of his child, and then endangers his own
distant relatives.) Then after he screws up everything by refusing to play
politics with the “Human Faction” and this leads to a massacre and a
counter-massacre, he finally admits to Marcel that he sucks at all of this, and
he wants Marcel to rule at his side, as equals.
Meanwhile, the sitcom storyline of Klaus using Cami to write
his autobiography/be his therapist goes on, as Cami keeps sassing him and then
forgetting the whole thing afterwards, due to Klaus’ compulsion. Here, too,
Klaus is arrogant and screws up — he keeps compelling Cami to forget about
vampirism, but never quite does a good enough job of it. (He could compell her
not just to forget, but to ignore any clues she finds or has left herself, but
he doesn’t give it that much thought.) And thus Cami keeps digging — until at
last Klaus orders her to leave town. At which point, Davina steps in.
Davina, the super-witch, has formed a kind of alliance with
Hayley the pregnant werewolf and Josh the baby vamp, all of whom kinda hate
Klaus. Davina finds out that there’s no reason for her to stay hidden because
the last of the elder witches, Agnes, is dead, and thus they can’t do the
harvest festival spell thingy and sacrifice Davina to restore all their powers.
So Davina goes to Cami for help, and when she finds that Cami has been
compelled to forget everything, she undoes all of Klaus’ compulsion with her magic.
As for the other two Original vampires, they have similar
emotional weaknesses. Rebekah, like Klaus, really wants to be loved and is
eternally heartbroken and insecure, giving her love and trust over and over no
matter how many times she’s hurt. And Elijah wears his heart on his fancy
sleeve, wanting to redeem Klaus and also protect the people he cares about,
including Hayley (and by extension the other werewolves.) Thus Elijah and
Rebekah spend a lot of the episode protecting the werewolves on the bayou from
the hunt ordered by Klaus at the start of the episode.
All in all, it’s a pretty fun episode — but I’m not
entirely sure where the show is going. I think
maybe the central relationship here is Klaus and Marcel, and their
unconventional friendship. Certainly the show seems at its most lively and sparky
when Klaus and Marcel are on screen together, two alpha males who share a long
history and tons of daddy issues. (In this episode, the best moment is probably
when Klaus opens up to Marcel about his own horrible father, something he also
shares with Cami psychically.)
So maybe the mission statement of The Originals actually is
to be an off-kilter bromance between Klaus and Marcel, in which they have to
fight for their love in spite of all the people who try to come between them? I
have to say, that’s a TV show I would watch the heck out of.
