The Originals "Red Door" Review: First Kill
The Originals S02E05: "Red Door"
Blood serves many purposes on The Originals—food, healing, spell-binding, wall decor—but by far the best use for blood is to wear it as clothing. In real life, wearing nothing but blood is not necessarily fashionable and in some cases would constitute a faux pas, but in the world of The Originals, wearing blood is the height of couture. Both Elijah and Klaus modeled outfits made of blood this week, and the results were stunning. Sticky and disgusting, yes, but for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on, the Mikaelson men still somehow pull it off. Also the limbs of villagers, they pull those off, too. And that's one of the many reasons why "Red Door" was another excellent installment of The Originals.
"Red Door" was one of those episodes where if you really examine how things began and how things ended, not a huge amount of stuff happened. Elijah started the hour chained up and ended it chained up. Mikael started the hour on the prowl for Klaus and ended it on the prowl for Klaus. Yet somehow the episode was dense and full of enthralling moments and it felt important. Few shows can pull off that trick as well as The Originals can.
The headline event of "Red Door" would have to be the appearance of The Vampire Diaries' Nina Dobrev, in the flashbacks, as Tatia, the village doppelganger whom both Klaus and Elijah had fallen for. (Ugh, doppelgangers and their cosmic need to date pairs of brothers.) As a longtime fan of the mothership show (especially this season, which is so good), it was nothing less than a thrill to see Dobrev in this context, and better yet, wearing the mother of all flashback wigs. She seriously looked like if the bassist from Poison got his hair braided while on vacation in Puerto Vallarta. The wig was insane.
But anyway, through these flashbacks we learned that Tatia, one of Elijah's original loves, was also one of his original kills. Shortly after he'd been turned into a vampire he found himself uncontrollably munching on Tatia's neck. Though he'd long believed that Esther had been the one to murder Tatia and use her doppelganger blood to enact the infamous Sun and Moon curse (TVD Season 2, look it up), that was apparently a false memory. In fact, the entire point of Elijah's present incarceration was so that Esther could make him remember all the terrible things he'd done as a vampire, thus leading him to accept that he should body-jump into a mortal being and permanently leave his vampire days behind.
However, even more brutal than making him remember the bad times was when Esther led him to fantasize about the good times he'd experience post-vampirism. Which left us with the episode's heartbreaking final moment, the dream sequence in which Hayley rescued him and he drank from her neck—this show's version of a spicy sex scene.
Of course, torment wasn't strictly an Elijah thing, as Klaus also had a rough go of it in "Red Door." Almost immediately upon Mikael's escape from the back of Klaus's car, he kidnapped Cami, forcing Klaus to go after them. Though Mikael managed to compel an entire campground of masked "hillbillies" straight out of the last scene of Kill List to slow Klaus down, it was nothing that a little mass murder couldn't solve. But when Klaus finally confronted Mikael, their stake-and-dagger fight found Klaus on the business end of the White Oak stake!
Fortunately, Davina and Kaleb arrived just in time to deactivate the stake, because, oh yeah, Davina finally discovered that Kaleb was Kol and he agreed to help her stop Mikael because Esther needed Klaus alive. Or something? The shifting alliances on The Originals can be hard to map, but I mean that as a compliment. Kol remains kind of a jerk, but in "Red Door" he was a useful jerk. (And Daniel Sharman remains so excellent, to the extent that it's starting to make me nervous about what will happen when Kol finally body-jumps again. Surely this show needs a male witch as a regular right?)
While Elijah's flashback and Klaus's showdown with Mikael were certainly highlights, for my money the best moment of "Red Door" was also one of the best moments of the series so far: everyone coming together to save Klaus's life. That meant Davina, Marcel, and Hayley busting in and joining Cami and Klaus against Mikael. Did anybody else clap at their television when Hayley started swinging around a chunk of concrete on a chain? Boy, did I. Mikael's final hissing taunt involved his theory that true strength doesn't come from friendships, but come on, Mikael, get real. Haven't you ever watched TV or seen a movie? Teamwork wins every time. And it's kind of hard to back up your argument that individual strength trumps all when you're flitting away in retreat. At this point he's not only up against a fierce tableau of our favorite characters, but even Esther—the more powerful villain—is not a fan of what he's up to. Mikael remains a terrific adversary, but he's going to have to become a better schemer if he wants to defeat an entire French Quarter full of them.
Ultimately, "Red Door" was not so much concerned with moving the story forward as it was with getting our characters educated—Elijah learned he'd done bad things, Davina learned her boyfriend was older than she thought, and we learned that Nina Dobrev apparently doesn't sleep. But like all the best episodes of The Originals, it elevated even the simplest conversations and plot points to riveting, larger-than-life scenarios. This show knows that we don't just want a villain to run away; that villain needs to be chased away by a badass lady with a chunk of concrete on a chain. It also knows that we don't just need to see monsters struggling with their humanity; we need to see those monsters wearing nothing but blood. That's just got storytelling, you know? You know.
QUESTIONS:
... Have you ever worn blood to an important social event?
... Do you think Kol and Kaleb will become two different people?
... Why are doppelgangers so addicted to brotherly love triangles?
... What would YOUR ideal flashback wig look like?
