The Vampire Diaries - 2.02 - Brave New World - Review

Here's a fan review of the latest episode of The Vampire Diaries. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Game on. With “Brave New World”, The Vampire Diaries achieves the near impossible task of maintaining the high quality of its season premiere. The episode is a tense and action-packed follow-up that continues to accelerate the narrative forward, for what is shaping up to be an exceptionally strong sophomore season.

Picking up almost immediately after the season premiere’s chilling ending, “A Brave New World” begins with Caroline awakening in the hospital after her frightening encounter with Katherine. As Caroline struggles with her newfound strength and temptations as a newborn vampire, Damon and Stefan attempt to uncover the Lockwood family secret. These two storylines eventually converge at the annual Mystic Falls Carnival where Elena is hoping to escape all the supernatural-drama surrounding her life.

After the intense craziness that was the last episode, it was nice for the series to shift gears a little and focus on one of the more neglected characters of last season. Caroline has always been an incredibly likable and endearing character, thanks to the charismatic Candice Accola and her strong chemistry with Matt (an equally likable and endearing character), but she’s always had little to do. This season seems determined to fix that problem by pulling the character into the supernatural world that’s at the heart of most of the series’ storylines.

Caroline’s transformation was riveting to watch – these scenes ranging from being rather comedic (the scenes where Caroline attempts to hypnotize the nurse) to genuinely horrific (pretty much all the scenes set at the carnival) over the course of the episode.

In both narrative and style, this episode reminded me a lot of “Haunted” (S1 E07). Thanks to the carnival setting of the later scenes, there was definitely an eerie parallel to the vampiric transformation of Vikki Donovan (a fact that’s even mentioned by Damon in the episode). The scene between Matt and Bonnie where Matt voiced his concerns over Caroline’s recent strange behavior was also incredibly reminiscent of a scene from “Haunted” where Matt runs into Elena after she has just witnessed Stefan kill Vikki. In both scenes, Matt is voicing his concerns regarding the sudden strange behaviour of someone he loves dearly, to a friend who clearly knows a lot more about what is going on then he does.

One of the most likely reasons the episode’s writer Brian Young seems to be trying to evoke parallels between “Haunted” and “Brave New World” is so the audience can subconsciously connect Caroline to Vikki (both were characters that had little self-control as humans and are now suddenly forced to attempt to restrain themselves against even stronger urges). By connecting Caroline’s plight with Vikki’s, we (the audience) are more likely to conclude that Caroline is in real danger because Vikki’s plight ended in her death, thus making the episode much more suspenseful because we are well aware of how things could end.

There were so many amazing scenes to comment on but there were definitely two scenes that I found particularly noteworthy. The hallway confrontation between Damon and Caroline was certainly a long time coming and I for one was incredibly happy to finally see Caroline confront Damon over the way he abused her in the early episodes of the series. Props to Accola because Caroline was a serious bad-ass in this scene and even her corny exit-line (“You suck”) worked – the line coming across as a nice touch to remind us that even though Caroline might be physically different, deep down she’s still the sweet and kind-of-daft girl we’ve grown to love. And some major props should also go out to Ian Somerhalder, because the expression on Damon’s face when Caroline mentions Katherine was perfect.

The other scene that really deserves a mention was Bonnie’s attack on Damon. The scene was tense and Elena’s attempt to save Damon brings forth a number of questions regarding why – after everything that happened last episode between them – she was still inclined to save him. Does Elena still see some humanity left in him after all? Regardless of the answer, Dobrev handled the entire scene superbly. Her deliver of Elena’s tearful justification to Bonnie on why she saved Damon (“This isn’t us. This can’t be us.”) was flawless.

Despite “Brave New World” being incredibly strong overall, there were some problems with the episode, particularly with the pacing of the Lockwood storyline. One of the strongest elements of this series has always been its fast pace, so it’s really unfortunate for the series to suddenly stumble on this. Simply put, the storyline is starting to drag – the series first alluded to Tyler’s family secret in its tenth episode. Fourteen episodes and many many months later, most of the audience is already well aware of the fact that Tyler is a werewolf. So why is it taking Elena, Stefan, and Damon this long to figure it out? Considering that the next episode is titled “Bad Moon Rising”, there is hope that this meandering plot might be properly addressed sooner rather than later.

It seems that even in the few missteps the episode did take, there was still a lot to enjoy. Even a pathetically banal scene at the end of the episode with Stefan and Elena sharing a kiss on top a Ferris wheel has some merit behind it. Despite the corniness surrounding the moment, the scene successfully accomplished a satisfying and appropriate ending to Elena’s episodic arc. Elena arriving to the conclusion that her life was only going to get even more complicated at that very moment, was refreshing. With that simple line – It’s not going to get any easier, is it? – Elena seems to be acknowledging that she and those she loves will never have simple, danger-free lives so it’s pointless to pretend otherwise. I really commend the show for never losing itself in these lighter, romantic scenes. There is a much larger picture here then just who-loves-who and the show constantly reminds us of that.

One of the biggest problems in the first season were how removed many of the supporting characters (particularly Matt, Jenna, Caroline, and Tyler) felt from the main storylines. It seems that with this episode, the series seems to be really committed to fixing this, giving Caroline and Tyler (two peripheral characters last season) much more pivotal roles in the last two episodes. If the series continues to maintain this high level of excellence and continues to focus on fixing some of the problems that plagued last season, then The Vampire Diaries’ sophomore effort could quite easily surpass its excellent first season. Here’s hoping.