Episode 2.15
Writers: Jake Coburn & Ben Sokolowski
Director: Glen Winter

THE ONE WHERE: As Oliver confronts Slade in his own home we flash back to the storming of the Amazo…

THE VERDICT: I recently moaned that the island scenes have felt fiftful and inconclusive this season. “The Promise” addresses that particular exasperation. It’s an episode unafraid of flashback mode, confident enough to devote chunks of its runtime to Arrow ’s secret history, unpacking the events that led to Slade’s bloodfeud with Oliver. But it also unfolds a parallel narrative in the present as Slade invades Oliver’s home and infiltrates his family, the ultimate unwelcome house guest. The two storylines play in tandem, one illuminating the other. It’s a lean, focused, action-loaded 40 minutes that wouldn’t have been half as effective if we’d had to share it with Laurel’s assorted crises.

“We need to talk about tomorrow,” says Sara, and that’s just what this episode does – from a perspective five years in the past. There’s something quietly fateful in the scene where Slade picks up the Deathstroke mask while Oliver opts for the hood: a sense of characters choosing their paths, aligning their destinies. Slade’s vow to bring Oliver to complete despair will no doubt resonate for the rest of this season. I couldn’t help thinking that Oliver’s little training montage was begging to be dubbed with the Rocky theme, mind…

Back in the present there’s an entertaining dynamic as Slade wallows in Moira’s hospitality, trading loaded comments with a clearly disdainful Oliver (I smiled at the moment Oliver tried to stab him with a spare screwdriver as soon as his mother’s back was turned – there was a hint of Craig’s Bond about that). Manu Bennett brings something formidable, equal parts charm and menace, to Slade Wilson, and he’s genuinely chilling in the scene where he kills the captain of the Amazo.

Two random observations: Slade and Sara’s paraglider assault on the Amazo is very cool indeed. And as Roy’s just discovered there’s clearly a contractual obligation in the Arrow club to pose around shirtless. You’ll catch your death, man!

TRIVIA: We’re told that Oliver’s middle name is Jonas, which fits with DC lore.

DID YOU SPOT?: “The Promise” salutes two greats of the comic book industry. Touring the Queen mansion, Thea points out paintings by Curtis Swan – a nod to Curt Swan, famed Superman artist (and the man whose name inspired Christopher Reeve’s character in Smallville , Dr Swann) – and Joseph Kubert, a tribute to fellow DC artist Joe Kubert, best known for his work on Hawkman and Sgt Rock .

DID YOU SPOT 2: Slade mentions Billy Wintergreen, Deathstroke’s butler in the comic books. We met him as part of Fyers’ mercenary unit in season one episode “Damaged”, where he was wearing the Deathstroke mask.

BEST LINE:
Sara (recognising Slade’s voice): “What’s the biggest gun you’ve got down there?”

Arrow is broadcast in the UK on Sky 1 HD

The post Arrow 2.15 “The Promise” REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

Episode 2.08
Writers: Greg Berlanti & Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns
Director: Michael Schultz

THE ONE WHERE: Central City forensics assistant Barry Allen arrives in Starling, investigating a baffling robbery from Queen Consolidated. Moira, meanwhile, turns to the power of Ra’s al Ghul to deal with Malcolm’s presence in her life.

THE VERDICT: Mission creep. That’s what they call it: the slow mutation of original objectives in a military campaign. When Arrow began it was clearly a disciple of Christopher Nolan’s grounded, no frills worldview, where the flamboyant and fantastical world of superheroes was reduced to the grittily explicable. And just as Smallville ’s infamous “No tights, no flights” policy corroded to the point where the Justice Society of America could prance through a storyline in all their caped glory, so this midseason finale of Arrow moves to align Starling City just a little closer to its comic book roots.

From its inhumanly strong antagonist to its tales of mysterious domestic tornadoes with the power to fling people 20 blocks from home, this is an episode that’s out to test the boundaries of the show – the “things that defy explanation”, inhabiting a reality that feels far removed from the show’s comfort zone of stubbly vigilantes stalking rooftops. As Dig says, “My god – what next? Aliens?” Don’t bet against it…

Of course the main sell of “The Scientist” is the introduction of another card from DC’s Top Trumps set of superheroic icons. This is very much an introduction for Barry Allen and not the Flash, though. Glee ’s Grant Gustin makes for a surprisingly dorky take on Barry, reimagined as a loser in the tradition of Peter Parker – an effective counterpoint to Stephen Amell’s impassive alpha male. It’s an affable, winning turn for all that it strays from the comic books – no wonder he and Felicity want to jump each other’s geek-bones, given they share the exact same performance style – and there’s a wittily teasing nod to the four-colour origin of the Flash as he pokes around a labful of chemical jars while a storm rages outside.

Shame there’s no actual scarlet speedster action – are they saving that for the spin-off show? Or would it be a reality-leap too far for the series at this point?

TRIVIA: The superhero that ignited the Silver Age of comics, the Barry Allen version of the Flash debuted in the pages of Showcase 4 in 1956. He was a sleeker, more SF-flavoured spin on the Golden Age Flash, first seen in Flash Comics 1 in 1940. Allen died in the multiverse-quaking Crisis On Infinite Earths in 1985 but has recently reclaimed his place in DC continuity.

TRIVIA 2: Barry’s maudlin info-dump regarding the fate of his mother actually ties in with recent additions to DC canon. 2010’s Flash: Rebirth – written by Geoff Johns, co-writer of this very episode – revealed that Nora Allen died at the hands of time-travelling supervillain Professor Zoom, a man clearly compelled to perform dastardly acts of evil to stop people sniggering at his name.

HMM: If Slade really is dead in flashback then that’s… unexpected. And a bit of a loss to the show. Say it ain’t so!

DID YOU SPOT?: The centrifuge is the product of Kord Enterprises, owned by Ted Kord, alias the second Blue Beetle in the comic books. There was a shout-out to Ted in season one’s “The Undertaking”.

DID YOU SPOT? 2 : Barry mentions that his boss is named Singh, a nod to comic book character David Singh, introduced to the DCU in 2010’s The Flash: Secret Files And Origins .

BEST LINES:
Felicity: “Did you do something to your hair?”
Moira: “Yes, I shampooed it without eight women and a guard watching.”

Arrow is broadcast in the UK on Sky 1 HD

The post Arrow 2.08 “The Scientist” REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

Episode 2.12
Writers: Shelley Eriksen, Jonathan Lloyd Walker
Director: Amanda Tapping

THE ONE WHERE Gardiner’s body is found and Kiera is blamed for his death. She goes on the run from the cops and Carlos goes renegade to join her (who needs a police pension anyway?). Meanwhile, Travis has a plan to nab his own super-suit, the Freelancers want the time-travel device and Emily comes clean with Alec… before being shot and killed.

VERDICT Well, I’m not sure about you, but I have a lot of issues with “Second Last” – although, funnily enough, I still enjoyed it (hence the three stars). Its biggest success is the epic gunfight at the end, which goes on for ages and features all sorts of feats of derring-do, including Carlos kicking a Freelancer’s arse like he’s channelling Bruce Lee and Kiera leaping off a building and jumping from roof to roof like a cat. Additionally, there’s the lovely scene in which Alec lets Jason know that he realises he’s his father. Their father/son bonding simply consists of Jason offering his son crackers. Not many family reunions go this way!

Sadly, however, other things just don’t work, which is a crying shame in what should have been a solid episode. Kiera takes the news that she’s wanted by the police and FBI so in her stride that the tension from the situation is leached away. Carlos decides to follow her, but you don’t really get the sense that it’s a huge, life-changing decision for him (which it is!) – he just seems to go along with Kiera because the plot tells him to. Kellog is used mainly for cheap laughs (see below for my rant about that). The fight scene may be huge but it’s also rather confusing at times, with too many fast cuts and a few camera set-ups that leave you feeling rather confused about who’s doing what. And there are occasional logic holes that make you grit your teeth. For instance, Alec zaps Travis and leaves him semi-conscious on the floor of the lab while he makes a hasty escape. Why the hell didn’t he hit him with something? Knock him out for good? Tie him up and wait for Kiera? Oh, and there’s also the fact that he agrees to run away with Emily to Thailand without a second thought for Kiera, who was literally just sitting in his lab talking about the time machine and going home to her kid. Some friend he is!

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The biggest problem, however, is with Emily’s death. It’s not that it isn’t affecting; hell, we’ve come to like her, and Erik Knudsen gives good weep. It’s just that it’s such a bloody cliché! How many times in popular culture have we seen a woman – usually a spy or traitor of some sort – wronging her man while also falling in love with him, then nobly sacrificing herself to save him at the end of the story? It’s been happening since the golden age of Hollywood (Greta Garbo in Mata Hari , for example). No matter how well it’s handled here, it just seems very predictable. And if there’s one thing that Continuum isn’t most of the time, it’s predictable. What a pity.

Still, my griping aside, this is still an enjoyable watch and – as ever – the show appears to be building up to something fantastic. What will Alec say to Escher? How will Kiera prove her innocence? What will Travis do now that he’s got an invincible suit? Exciting!

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BUMPS AND BRUISES Now to my other complaint about this episode. Please don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of Continuum ‘s sublime fight scenes in all their bone-cracking glory. However, there are two moments of violence here that really troubled me. The first was when Travis picked up Kellog and slammed him down onto a table, not once but twice. He did it with such immense force that Kellog would have been left with a broken back in real life; let’s not forget that Travis has super-strength, and the sound effects alone hinted that Kellog hit those tables hard . So how was he able to walk away from that? Similarly, in a later scene Kiera also punches the unfortunate chap right in the face – a punch so hard that he would’ve been left with either a broken nose or missing teeth. Yet all we see is a tiny nosebleed.

Both scenes are played for laughs, which is fair enough, but still… when a show is set in the “real” world, sometimes it pays not to show violence in that “real” world which would have left the recipients with horrible injuries. You can just about get away with things like that in the adrenaline rush of a fight scene, but it’s tough to pull off violence for violence’s sake, with no repercussions, in moments that don’t really need it.

Also, everybody really needs to stop picking on Kellog. Just sayin’.

AW, POOR CHAP Nicholas Lea’s name was in this week’s opening credits. “Ooh, maybe Gardiner isn’t dead after all!” I thought (as many others did, too, I’m sure). And then he appeared… as a fly-ridden corpse. Still, at least he took home a paycheque, eh?

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TURN ON THE AIR-CON There’s a fan sitting on a shelf in Dillon’s office that is, quite honestly, the weediest fan we’ve ever seen in our lives. Is it just there as a decoration? It wouldn’t blow a fly off course, would it?

ESCHER OUTED Last week’s episode ended with Escher sitting in front of a wall of TV screens, rather reminiscent of the Architect in The Matrix films. This week he’s coming out with po-faced lines such as: “I am not doubting your sincerity, but you carry destruction in your wake. You’re the time bomb.” It’s only a short journey from here to the Architect’s pompous double-talk, isn’t it? Let’s hope next week he’s not going on about “the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed, and the anomaly revealed as both beginning and end…”

DID YOU SPOT? This episode of Continuum was directed by Amanda Tapping, who also starred in the TV movie Stargate Continuum in 2008.

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COOL TECH There’s an interesting future-sequence opening this week’s episode which sees a crime recreated in a plaza by transmitters – only the murderer is hidden with interference. What’s all that about, eh? Later, Travis uses his super-suit powers to send Sonya flying (she isn’t amused). Oh, and the time-travel slice device is looking very pretty!

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SEEMS FAMILIAR The gunfight on the roof seems very reminiscent of this classic Hollywood scene…

BEST LINES
Alec: “Pick a date. An hour. With this interface, it looks like I can trigger the device to create that moment in time.”
Kiera [stunned]: “You’re saying I could go home?”

Jayne Nelson

Continuum season two is currently airing in the UK on Syfy, Thursdays at 10pm

• Read our Continuum season two reviews
• Check out the new SFX TV Reviews Index

The post Continuum 2.12 “Second Last” REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

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Episode 2.15
Writers: Daniel T Thomsen, David H Goodman
Director: Gwyneth Horder-Payton

THE ONE WHERE In the past: Young Snow White faces a test when her mother is dying – should she use dark magic to save her, or not? Naturally, being Snow, she refuses, and her mother dies. In Manhattan: Hook catches up with Rumplestiltskin and stabs him. In Storybrooke: Snow tracks down Rumple’s knife but Cora and Regina steal it from her… killing her old friend Johanna in the process, just to prove how evil they are (in case you’d forgotten).

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VERDICT “The Queen Is Dead” could quite easily be re-named “The Crying Game”, given that so many tears are shed during this episode’s runtime that they could have filled an ocean. We’ve mentioned before how wonderful Bailee Madison is as young Snow: she continues the trend here, summoning up buckets of blub as she watches her beloved mother die. Madison really is astonishingly believable as the little version of Ginnifer Goodwin – even the way both actresses cry is virtually identical – and every episode that features a young Snow flashback has become a pleasure, even when it’s as sad as this one. Madison’s so good that she even manages to deliver the ridiculous line, “Where do I find this fairy?” with just the same steely resolve as Goodwin would have done. Bravo!

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Rena Sofer doesn’t have much to do as Snow’s mother except hand out wise, queenly advice, but she’s effortlessly charismatic and it’s easy to feel a little upset when she carks it. (She also wears possibly the prettiest dress in the history of the show; it’s sad she had to wear it as a corpse, but oh well.) Emotions also run high when her maid Johanna is so casually murdered by Cora; it’s a real shock, particularly in what is ostensibly a kid’s show. It’s a bit of a pity we weren’t introduced to her earlier in the series, though, so the shock would have been greater. Imagine if it had been one of the regulars being thrown out of a window like that? Granny, maybe? There would have been riots on the streets!

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In Manhattan, Henry and Neal are doing a sweet job of bonding while Emma frets about things, and Rumple shows that he’s going to be anything but a sweet, loving grandad when he viciously snaps at Henry and blames him for getting him stabbed. Ouch! Perhaps the only letdown in this storyline is the fact that Hook is so easily knocked out by Emma – one day, bad guys will learn that you have to kill your victim immediately, rather than stand there speechifying over them first. Still, he had the foresight to poison his hook, so Rumple may still be done for.

A MAN OF MANY TALENTS We’ve got a lot to learn about Neal, it seems: apparently he knows how to sail a pirate ship! Also, how on Earth will they know where Hook moored the Jolly Roger? It’s invisible and Rumple doesn’t have magic to find it. Can Neal help them with that, too?

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WAS IT JUST US, OR…? Did anyone else know it wasn’t really the Blue Fairy giving young Snow the candle? The Blue Fairy isn’t a “dark magic” kind of gal, is she? Although a misfiring dark spell would explain her bizarre outfit…

ISN’T THAT…? Queen Eva is played by Rena Sofer, who was Nathan Petrelli’s wife in Heroes . And Johanna is played by Lesley Nicol – Mrs Patmore from Downton Abbey .

GONE TO THE DARK SIDE, SHE HAS Having two birthdays ruined thanks to Cora’s murdering ways seems to have flicked a switch deep inside Snow White. She’s now vowed to kill Cora after realising that her “good” ways have just brought trouble, time and again (forgiving Regina so many times does get a bit silly after a while). Will this new Snow go through with her plan and become a murderer, though?

THIS WEEK’S OPENING CREDITS IMAGE The library. Not the most exciting of openings, we must admit.

BEST LINES

Emma: “You like the New York pizza?”
Henry [who is annoyed with her]: “Yes. It’s delicious, cheesy and doesn’t lie.”

Or…

Snow: “I’m going to kill Cora.”

Meg Wilde

• New episodes of Once Upon A Time air in the UK on Channel 5, Sundays, 8pm
• Read our other Once Upon A Time reviews

The post Once Upon A Time 2.15 “The Queen Is Dead” REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

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Episode 6.05
Writer: Angela Robinson
Director: Michael Ruscio

THE ONE WHERE Sookie’s dad possesses Lafayette and tries to drown her; the vamp camp adds to its collection and sends Pam to a shrink; Billith learns of Warlow’s presence and captures him so they can flashback together; some dull stuff with werewolves happens.

VERDICT Finally we get to see the Governor’s vamp camp in action, and it’s been worth the wait. All the scenes inside the camp are highlights of the episode, especially Pam’s couch session which is packed full of great lines (“Your insignificance to me cannot be underestimated”) delivered with scenery-chewing relish by Kristin Bauer van Straten. Oddly, while we can’t condone the camp’s methods, there is also a ghoulish interest as a viewer in finding out more about what makes vampires tick, both physically and mentally.

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Eric meanwhile, tries to play it cool by proving to his captors that he’s the most kick-ass vampirey vampire of all, and strolling through the tests. His best moment is left until the end, though. He’s arrogantly goading the Governor through a one-way mirror, when Burrell reveals to him that he’s incarcerated his own daughter in the camp. The change in Eric’s demeanour is subtle (great acting by Alexander Skarsgard) but shocking (it’s rare to see him realise he’s made such a fatal error of judgement). Then, just as he’s off-balance, Sarah and the shrink deliver the killer punch – Eric and Pam must fight each other to the death. The reveal is a great cliffhanger. Shame it isn’t actually the cliffhanger.

That honour is given to the Sookie plotline. Poor girl, her whole world has been turned upside-down by Warlow’s revelation that he only killed her parents because they were trying to kill her. There’s something of the feel of scriptwriting legerdemain here, and this particular rabbit looks like it’s only been stuffed in the hat a few episodes back. (For one thing, it seems unlikely Sookie’s dad would be quite so naive about vampires and faeries considering who his dad is; it’s not quite a plot hole, just something that can be explained by yet more retconning exposition at a later date).

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Though this myth-busting new information may feel a little contrived, you can forgive the episode because it leads to another great Lafayette seance scene, and Lafayette seance scenes are always a riot (“Now listen up, dead folk”). Then he’s possessed by Sookie’s dad who wants to do what he failed to do all those years ago – drown Sookie (we know some Eric fans who were cheering him on). So yeah, we do get a decent cliffhanger… it just feels like the two could have been swapped for more impact. There’s something a little too whimsical about a possessed Lafayette trying to drown Sookie as her skirt balloons around her to make it as jaw-dropping as the Pam vs Eric moment.

Warlow is extracted from the Sookie plot by Bill, who compels Warlow to follow him back to his secret lab (Bill being Lilith’s new form and Lilith being Warlow’s maker; it’s a great piece of “What the fu…? Oh yeah, right, that makes sense…” plotting). Here Bill extracts faerie blood from Warlow, using joint flashbacks as an anaesthetic (or so it seems). There’s a lot in this episode about father/child and/or maker/sire relationships and here we go again, as we get the Warlow origin story. The 3500BC scenes are all a bit disappointing and silly-looking to be honest, unless a little bit more nekkidness is all it takes to impress you. They make the wigtastic Vampire Diaries flashbacks looks Oscar worthy. There’s an attempt to stylise them but they just look cheap, and the story they have to tell – boy meets god, god bites boy, boy kills god – is barely any deeper or emotional on screen than that nine-word summary.

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Elsewhere, Sarah Palin… sorry, Newlin… sorry, she’s not Steve Newlin’s ex-wife, she is her own woman, provides some great entertainment. “When a woman comes to you in black lingerie, you unwrap her!” she rages at Burrell, but blimey, show some sensitivity woman; he’s just learnt his daughter has become the thing he loathes the most. Sarah decides that the lingerie shouldn’t go to waste and sets out to find a surefire shag – Jason. She finds justification in the Lord: “I truly believe God wants me to fuck you.” He’s reluctant at first but, hey, she “always seemed like a nice lady, behind the crazy and the hate,” he reasons, and so he dives between her legs.

More lip trembling moments are provided by Andy and Holly. Andy’s discovery of his slaughtered daughters is actually quite a numb, cold, functional scene, but then a discovery like that might well be. But later, when Holly begs him not to face Bill, because Bill will kill him, and he collapses in a chair, a tear rolling down his face, sobbing, “I can’t do nothing,” it’s one of the show’s increasingly rare genuinely human moments.

TITLE TATTLE You might think it’s quite risque putting the F-word into an episode title, but True Blood is far from the first US drama to do it (though unsurprisingly, it seems a trend restricted to cable channels for the moment). Nurse Jackie had “Fuck The Lemurs” and “Happy Fucking Birthday” (both 2011) while Dexter had “Surprise, Motherfucker!” in 2012 and Californication had “Everybody’s A Fucking Critic” earlier this year. As far as we know, True Blood is the first telefantasy show to get away with it.

TAKING THE REGISTER This is the first episode of season six to feature the entire credited main cast.

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE The language spoken in the Ben’s flashbacks is Arabic, which wasn’t actually in use in 3,500BC.

NAME GAME And talking of anachronisms, neither of the names Ben nor Warlow sounds particularly 3,500BC-ish. Are we ever going to know his real name and why he’s chosen Ben and Warlow as noms de plume ?

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IT’S WOSSISNAME Gideon Emery, who plays Justin, can also be currently seen as Big Bad Deucalion in Teen Wolf.

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IT’S WOSSISNAME 2 Pruitt Taylor Vince, who plays vampire shrink Finn, is probably best known for his recurring role as the laconic JJ LaRoche in The Mentalist .

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NIGHT FELL And it fell with a crash in 3500BC apparently. In one shot, Ben (or Warlow or whatever he was called back then) walks off from the village carrying a couple of urns in broad daylight. In the next, he’s at the river, filling the urns, with the village clearly visible about mile off, and it’s the middle of night !

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CUTTING ROOM FLOOR? Talking of things happening suddenly, anyone else slightly surprised by the cut from Corbett taking over Lafayette’s body to Corbett bundling a bound-up Sookie into the back of the car? How did he overpower her so easily? It looks like something may have been cut. Either that, or originally there was another scene between these two shots.

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DESPERATE REMEDIES Andy revives his daughter using vampire blood. Do we know what effect vampire blood has on faeries? Could there be consequences?

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SOMETHING TO PROVE? After Jason shags Sarah, be notes, “That was pretty damned heterosexual.” But who is he trying to impress? Sarah, because her ex is a gay vampire? Or himself, after his homosexual dream about Ben?

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LEVEL UP It’s pretty clear from the experiments shown that vampires labelled Level 3 are undergoing physical tests. Though, like Pam, we have to wonder whether studying super-speed shagging is, “All in the name of science” or just pervy?

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SECOND HAND GRILL The name of the grill where Alcide tells his dad to take a hike has such an unusual name, we knew we’d seen it somewhere before – in the 2006 Will Ferrell film Talladega Nights : The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby. But hang on. That’s exactly the same place. Shot from the same angle , with two of the same cars parked outside. It’s just been graded (ie, colour corrected) a bit differently. Is this stock footage? Or an in-joke? Or both?

BEST LINE
Ben: “You are my intended. I wandered this Earth in millennia of misery and solitude waiting for you. Dreaming only of you…”
Sookie: “Fuck you.”
Ben: “It’s our destiny to be together.”
Sookie: “Fuck destiny.”

Dave Golder

• Read our previous True Blood reviews

• True Blood season six will air in the UK later in the year on FOX

The post True Blood 6.05 “F**k The Pain Away” REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

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Episode 6.04
Writer: Alexander Woo
Director: Anthony Hemingway

THE ONE WHERE Sookie and Jason (independently) leap to the conclusion that Ben is Warlow; Andy’s faerie offspring enter their troublesome teens; Eric sires Governor Burrell’s daughter; lots of men strip off to varying degrees.

VERDICT Faeries – or halfling faeries – are front and centre this episode, and you know what? They not only don’t ruin the episode, they’re a good deal of the reason the episode is all kinds of fun. Who’d have thought that of faerie-centric episode of True Blood a year ago?

There’s Bill’s frankly creepy means of securing their blood, and Doctor Takahashi’s subsequent experiments on it; there’s the latest growth spurt for Andy’s girls which leaves them party-seeking teen, joy-riding, alcohol-abusing teen rebels; there’s Jessica’s bonding session with them in the convenience store; and her subsequent horror as her self-restraint goes AWOL and she (possibly) slaughters the lot of them and, of course, there’s Sookie preparing to faerie nuke Ben at the episode’s end with that classic last line: “Get the f**k off me or die Warlow.” Well, it’s classic in context…

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The hedonistic fairies are immense fun, even if they are just a teen cliché squared (or cubed, or tesseracted…? Never mind). Shame Andy never had that talk about them not getting in cars with strangers; they don’t come much stranger than Bill at the moment. The real tragedy, though, is Jessica’s descent. Early in the episode she warns Bill, “I trust Bill, but I also know there is a fight going on inside you between Bill and Lilith and I just want to make sure she doesn’t win tonight. Those girls are also the same age I was when you turned me. If anything were to happen to them I’d never forgive myself”. Then she bonds with them in the most adorable way, pretending that being nameless is cool (“The truth is I’m a vampire. Please don’t freak out because I am really old and I can totally control myself and I have tons of faerie friends. Just think of me as a regular girl looking for a party”) before going off the rails at the smell of their blood (“I was so worried it was going to be you, but it was me! Just tell me that they’re not dead!”). How is the poor lass going to come back from this? Presumably she’ll be struck off Andy’s Christmas card list.

Meanwhile, Warlow is revealed… in the teaser! Ben suddenly grows fangs and saves Jason from whatever plot-convenient illness it was that he was suffering (revelation-inducing hysteria or sommat). It’s not really a surprise if you picked up on all the clues last week, which is probably why it happens at the start of the episode rather than being a cliffhanger. But hang on! There’s something odd going on here. He doesn’t seem to be acting in the way we’ve been told Warlow would act. Why all the subterfuge? Why save Jason? Why try to seduce Sookie? And he doesn’t actually ever call himself Warlow or actually say that he was sired by Lilith. It’s all just implied. Are we reading too much into that, or will there be another twist soon?

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Whatever the case Ben is turning into a great character. In the scene following Jason and Niall’s botched plan to kill him, when tells Jason he’d better say goodbye to his grandpa now, it’s all oddly touching. And even though we know he’s the baddie (probably, unless there’s another twist coming) he’s doing a great job of turning on the feckless charm. It makes a change from the usual simmering-bestial-sexuality approach or the Jack The Lad charisma approach when it comes to bad boy vampires in seduction mode.

Although Kazinsky proves more than capable of the simmering-bestial-sexuality approach as well, in THAT gay wet dream sequence. The cheekiest example of the show having its cake and gorging on it ever. Yep, let’s have Jason in the most over-the-top slash-bait scene ever in the show… and then give it watertight contextual justification. Genius. The double entendres barely count as double , since they barely seem to have two meanings (“You haven’t done this before, have you? Just relax. Do it like you do it to yourself.”)

The episode’s not totally away with the faeries, though, and the absolute highlight is the Eric/Willa plotline. The sexual frisson from last week is ramped up even further as Eric sires the Governor’s daughter because she “deserves” it. Or rather, because he has a cunning plan; he wants Burrell to see his own child as what repulses him the most.” Willa calls him a monster, but Eric manages to justify himself; he’s doing it for the greater good of vampire kind. Though he also looks a little bit like he enjoyed the whole process, too. If Willa survives being shot by Sarah, then we suspect there could be a future for this girl in Eric’s entourage.

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The siring scenes are extraordinary as the show delivers imagery straight out of a Hammer Horror film, complete with blood seeping onto Willa’s virginal white gown and a Danny-Elfman-doing-cod-’50s-horror flavour to the music. At the same time, it’s all very True Blood . Long, lengthy dialogues, intense stares, sexual hormones raging, and a hefty dose of kinkiness. It’s also fun to see that the immediate post-siring Willa acts almost identically to the way Jessica did when she was first sired. Seems that strait-laced, strictly-brought-up virgin girls go a little wild when they’re introduced to a whole new set of heightened senses.

The subsequent scene with Willa confronting her dad starts off well, but it’s a shame it has to end with that old tried and trusted True Blood scripting trick – a whiff of blood sending the vampire crazy. It would have been much more interesting to see Burrell make a moral choice (even if that moral choice was to shoot his own daughter) without having an external trigger force the issue.

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Presumably, Willa isn’t dead and she’ll be carted off to the Camp, though it may be getting a little cramped in there. Burrell’s camp collection has a big bump this week; Pam, Nora, Ginger. Expect lots of interrogation and torture scenes coming your way soon.

Elsewhere, Tara and Pam bicker more (quelle surprise), the werewolves do something forgettable, and Sam gets over Luna’s death by snogging Nicole. TOO SOON!

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YOU’RE FIRED All those shots of Alcide’s dad standing silently in the background, nodding or frowning, are beginning to make Robert Patrick look like True Blood ’s answer to Nick Hewer .

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VOGUE! Dressed in some impossibly blue jeans and a freshly washed shirt, Terry strikes a bizarre catalogue pose.

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GROWING UP FAST So now we know that Andy’s girls aren’t aging at a steady pace, but instead they’re developing in fits and starts. Thank God we were spared some dodgy morphing, though. The lights-out, lights on reveal was much more effective.

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IT’S WOSSISNAME Here’s an unexpected return. Convenience store worker FW (played by Lorin McCraley) last appeared in the show about as far back as you can go: the first scene in the first episode of the first season, when he impersonated a vampire to scare off a young couple.

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INTERESTING… Ben spits out Grandpa Niall’s blood. He’s half-faerie so drinking Niall’s blood would be a bit like cannibalism. Not to mention they’re kinda related. But does Ben spit the blood out purely out of respect, or could he be allergic to it? (Presumably the reason he’s draining Niall’s blood is to weaken him, not for his own gratification, anyway.)

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SKIN FASHION This episode must hold some kind of record (not just on True Blood but on US TV drama in general) for gratuitous shirtlessness. Five of the lead men show off their chests over the hour; there are three scenes in a row at one point featuring three different shirtless men; and poor old Rob Kazinsky (Ben) spends so much of the episode in states of undress, you have to wonder if the producers we thinking of this as his rite of passage…

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CLICK CLICK Niall’s hair was so wild this episode, that by the time he was creeping about in bushes, smoking a pipe spying on Ben, you half expect the theme tune from The Munsters to pop up on the soundtrack.

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WHAT’S THE STORY MORNING GLORY? Comedy highlight of the episode has to be Jason checking out the status of his todger after his gay sex dream.

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AN UNQUESTIONING MIND Werewolves in the True Blood universe are born, not created by being bitten by another werewolf. However, since Nicole is still gathering facts about supernatural creatures and doesn’t know that for sure, wouldn’t she at least ask someone if the bite she received last episode might turn her into a werewolf, considering the legends? Admittedly this could have happened off-screen, but it seems like an important character beat for her, so it would have been nice to have seen this scene.

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FLASHBACKS FOR IDIOTS After praising the show last week for using knowing looks which allowed the audience join the dots, this week we get one of those horrendous flashback montages so beloved of The CW shows, which all seem to think their audiences all have ADHD. When Sookie discovers a drop of blood, we’re sure Anna Paquin’s acting and a brief shot of the blood glowing under faerie UV magic would have sufficed to let us know that she had rumbled Ben. But no, the sledgehammer flashbacks slam right in, a couple of them from barely minutes beforehand. We don’t all have goldfish memories!

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WE HAVE A PROBLEM Bill tells Dr Takahashi, “Failure is not an option.” This was a phrase made famous by the film Apollo 13 , and attributed to NASA flight director Gene Kranz, but he never said it in real life. According to Jerry C Bostick, Flight Dynamics Officer of Apollo 13, “Kranz never used that term. In preparation for the movie, the script writers, Al Reinart and Bill Broyles, came down to Clear Lake to interview me on, ‘What are the people in Mission Control really like?’ One of their questions was. ‘Weren’t there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?’ My answer was, ‘No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution.’ I immediately sensed that Bill Broyles wanted to leave and assumed that he was bored with the interview. Only months later did I learn that when they got in their car to leave, he started screaming, ‘That’s it! That’s the tag line for the whole movie – Failure Is Not An Option. Now we just have to figure out who to have say it.’ Of course, they gave it to the Kranz character, and the rest is history.”

BEST LINE
Andy: “Come on, time for bed. Anyhow, you ain’t slept since you were three.”

Dave Golder

• Read our previous True Blood reviews

• True Blood season six will air in the UK later in the year on FOX

The post True Blood 6.04 “At Last” REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

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Episode 2.09
Writer: Raul Sanchez Inglis
Director: Michael Rohl

THE ONE WHERE Julian is released from jail and instantly finds himself being courted by the various factions of Liber8. Before he can choose his future, however, he has to deal with the fact that someone tries to kill him – shooting his mum instead – and Kiera is on the warpath, determined to prevent his future as the mass-murdering Theseus from happening. Unfortunately, it seems as though she accidentally makes it a certainty…

VERDICT It’s daring of Continuum to spend an entire episode focused on one character (and a character we don’t like, to boot), but luckily the writers pull it off with aplomb – as does Richard Harmon in the role of Julian. It’s hard not to sympathise with him as he watches so many people fight over his soul, and this is despite the fact we know he was willing to blow up an entire skyscraper full of people just last season! His little bonding session with Alec helps; we can’t help but wonder if they’d ever played pool together before, or even had an adult conversation, because Julian seems to come alive at last when faced with his brother’s friendship.

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It all goes horribly wrong, of course, as Julian is kidnapped by the police and tortured, not to mention threatened with death by Kiera. There’s so much to ponder in these sequences: the fact that Inspector Dillon has been returned to his job, but with the entire department now funded by Mr Escher, means that morality appears to have fallen by the wayside. His tag-team of cop torturers is a horrible glimpse of the path Dillon may be walking down from now on, and the fact that Kiera joins them also has us worrying for her. Naturally, though, good old Carlos turns up and gives her the, “if you do this, you’re as bad as they are,” speech. Let’s hope he doesn’t have to do that again.

Without a doubt, the most important thing about this episode are its glimpses of the future. While we’ve seen some pretty horrific things so far on this show, nothing quite beats a warehouse full of mind-controlled slaves working to assemble Sadtech chips. You can almost see where Julian is coming from when he launches his campaign to destroy the place – again, Continuum doing what it’s best at, and providing both sides of the story in a compelling way. Seriously, though: just how effed-up is the future? Next we’ll be seeing Terminators and meeting our robot overlords!

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COOL TECH Kiera uses her chip to rewind a conversation between Dillon and Betty so that she can read Betty’s lips. Also, while Julian is being tortured, so sees that his vital signs are “elevated” and thus knows he’s lying – although we suspect his vital signs were probably elevated because, y’know, he was being tortured. Funny, that.

OOH, BETTY They’re really letting us stew about Betty, aren’t they? It’s been weeks since we discovered that she’s a spy and nothing has happened yet. This week she’s in a few little scenes being herself, although she seems to text someone surreptitiously at one point. If you missed the big reveal about her in “Second Opinion”, you’d be forgiven for thinking nothing was going on at all.

DID YOU SPOT…? When Carlos is trying to talk Kiera out of shooting Julian in the episode’s climax, his hand moves to his gun. You barely even notice it; the camera doesn’t linger on what he’s doing, but he’s most definitely fixing to shoot her. Carlos and Kiera may be friends but he’s still following the law to the letter.

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ISN’T THAT…? Somehow this escaped my attention before now… While watching this week’s episode it hit me how much the actress playing Alec’s mum looked like Superman ‘s Margot Kidder. Then I saw her surname: Janet Kidder. Margot was her aunt. Small world!

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IT’S ALL ABOUT THE ARTWORK There are those who claim that Barack Obama was helped into the White House by the now-iconic “Hope” poster using his portrait. Theseus has his own version of such a poster now – will it usher him into power, too?

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A SHOUT-OUT TO THE DOP! Continuum is a fine-looking show, but while you’re following the plot it’s often easy to miss moments of great photography or design. Take this week: Kiera and Carlos drive through the streets of Vancouver at night and a blue, neon-lit building colours their car. In the very next scene, we cut to Julian and the same colour blue coming from the computer in his room.

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Later, you see Carlos and Keira having a talk and the glow of the city in the background is soft-focused enough to look like fairy lights. Very pretty.

BEST LINE
Kiera [about Theseus] : “Every monster starts off as someone’s baby.”

Jayne Nelson

Continuum season two is currently airing in the UK on Syfy, Thursdays at 10pm

• Read our Continuum season two reviews
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Episode 2.11
Writers: Andrew Chambliss, Ian Goldberg
Director: David Solomon

THE ONE WHERE In the past: Belle goes on a quest to kill a fiery beast that’s been ravaging the countryside, teaming up with Mulan in the process. The beast turns out to be Prince Phillip under a curse cast by Maleficent. In Storybrooke: Rumplestiltskin finds a way to cross the town’s limits without losing his memory, so he can go and find his son. Before he can do so, Hook launches a shocking attack on Belle…

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VERDICT If there’s one thing that’s a given in any episode of Once Upon A Time , it’s that whenever Belle and Rumplestiltskin have a scene together, the screen lights up. Their relationship is one of the show’s highlights – a touching example of the “love conquers all” theme that lies at the heart of so many fairy tales, and always played so delicately by Emilie De Ravin and Robert Carlyle. Which is why this episode’s final scene is so devastating. Hook not only shoots Belle in the back as she’s saying a loving goodbye to her reformed Beast, she also falls over the town’s boundary and loses her memory for good . Of all the things Hook (and the writers, naturally) could have done to Rumplestiltskin to drive him crazy, this is the most effective – what will the Dark One do now? We wouldn’t like to be in Hook’s shoes, assuming he survived the car hitting him…

And oh yes, that car. Who could possibly be driving into Storybrooke from the outside world? Has this even happened since Emma arrived? If they’re an innocent traveller, did they happen to see the fireball Gold was about to toss at Hook? What will they think? Questions, questions!

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Epic cliffhanger aside, the rest of “The Outsider” is jolly good fun, with past-Belle on a quest to kill a Yaoguai and delighting us in the process. From double-crossing the mercenaries who accompany her to figuring out the Yaoguai’s secret at the end, this is an enjoyable sub-plot that also brings Mulan into the story without being surgically attached to Aurora’s side for once. (Wouldn’t it be nice to also see Mulan’s back-story some day? Oh well.) The beast itself is also pretty cool, and it’s great that fairy tales from other cultures are seeping into the show; a Yaoguai is a Chinese demon. There’s even a little cameo from the Evil Queen at the end to explain how Belle ended up locked in her cells the week before – marvelous continuity!

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CANNOT MATH TODAY Dr Hopper’s gravestone looks a little bare without his date of birth and date of death, doesn’t it? Perhaps it was too confusing to do all the maths for that one, what with him being born in another realm in another time… And incidentally, Marco (Tony Amendola) weeping for his lost cricket friend is very moving. It’s a shame that we watch the funeral scene fully aware that Hopper is still alive: wouldn’t it have been a killer if we’d really thought he was gone at this point? Hankies all round!

OH, REALLY? Hook threatens Hopper with the words, “I’ve always wanted to dissect a cricket.” Hook, if you want to be a real bad guy, you should probably aim a bit higher than that.

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MIRROR IMAGE Belle’s book about the Yaoguai features a drawing of the kind of lair the creature likes to live in. The scene then morphs into a shot of his actual lair – and it’s absolutely identical. Either that’s one hell of a coincidence or all these beasts live in the same lair, which sounds a little crowded to us…

NICE TRIP? It seems that every week on this show a female character is chased through the forest, trips over something and lies there looking helpless. Please, writers, find another way to slow them down and increase peril, okay? It’s getting very old now.

EARTHLY PERKS There’s much discussion in this episode about whether the fairy tale characters should leave Storybrooke and go back home to the Enchanted Forest. Amid all the squabbling, Leroy brings up a very good point: Storybrooke has things like penicillin. Yet again, Once Upon A Time contrasts the reality of our world with the unreality of fairy tales – who’d have ever thought that one of the seven dwarfs would be fond of prescription antibiotics? Nice touch.

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THIN AIR You have to love the fact that Belle deduces there’s a ship moored in the marina because she spots seagulls perched on its invisible masts. But we have to wonder how the seagulls knew they’d have somewhere to land…?

THIS WEEK’S OPENING CREDITS IMAGE The fiery Yaoguai. Rawwwr!

BEST LINES
Mercenary (reacting to when Mulan’s helmet falls off): “Wait, you’re a…”
Mulan: [Punches him]: “Yeah, I know.”

Meg Wilde

New episodes of Once Upon A Time air in the UK on Channel 5, Sundays, 8pm

Read our other Once Upon A Time reviews

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THE ONE WHERE: Seven months on from the events of “A More Perfect Union”, the 2 ^nd Mass discover a spy within their ranks when they’re ambushed raiding a mine. Anne gives birth to a strangely intelligent baby and Tom shows Weaver the weapon that may win the war…

THE VERDICT: “I’d say in this past seven months plenty’s changed,” declares a recently promoted Weaver – and he’s not wrong. This season opener finds a show unafraid to plunge us into a new status quo, one where Tom’s already in situ as President and the 2 ^nd Mass exists in an state of uneasy alliance with new alien compatriots the Voln. We also have some funky new iterations of Mech to topple. It’s a smart call, cutting out a load of unnecessary expositional slack and allowing the show to return after the long season break with a jolt of novelty.

“On Thin Ice” opens well. The assault on the mine is impressively staged, a riot of pyrotechnics and gunfire. It’s clear that some money’s been lobbed at this particular setpiece: it’s positively swarming with Skitters and we also make the acquaintance of the Mega Mechs, pumped-up remodellings of the show’s familiar stompy alien bruisers (looking forward to meeting the Mega Mega Mega Mechs, which should hopefully be of Pacific Rim proportions). It’s a bravura action sequence that also cleverly reassembles the gang – everyone gets an entrance – and ensures that the episode hits the ground running. Frontloading this kind of spectacle also ensures that the adrenalin level then dips and never quite recovers – no wonder TNT bolted on another episode to make this a two-part opener.

The presence of the Volm add an interesting new wrinkle to the show’s mix. Does it dilute the pure Us against Them dynamic that powered the first two seasons? Maybe, but it gives us new narrative possibilities too. Their leader, Cochise, is a cool piece of old school creature design, brought to the screen with a prissy, almost Spock-like vibe by legendary monster performer Doug Jones.

Noah Wyle may be rocking a Crazy Man beard these days but he makes the newly Presidential Tom a decidedly more commanding figure than before, edging our family man hero closer to warrior than teacher. Wyle’s given a gift with that big, rabble-rousing speech at the end, and he plays it well.

This story’s less successful at setting up the broader arc of a mole within the 2 ^nd Mass. It all feels a bit pat, this stuff, and the sequence where Manchester meets his death while whispering “So it’s you…” feels decidedly clunky. Anne waking to find her newborn baby staring at her with a curious intelligence promises something a great deal more intriguing.

TRIVIA: The title “On Thin Ice” is a ghost echo of an early plan to stage the episode’s explosive opening on the glacier at Whistler Mountain, 50 miles north of Vancouver (the same one used in the season four finale of Smallville ). This ambitious plan was ultimately abandoned as impractical.

TRIVIA 2: It was exec producer Steven Spielberg himself who advised on whether the Volm could be brought to the screen entirely with practical FX rather than CG. In the end the prosthetic version wasn’t ready in time, meaning the showmakers had to resort to CG for a few shots.

DID YOU SPOT: The Volm leader is nicknamed Cochise after the famed Apache chief who led an uprising in 1861.

BEST LINE:
Tom: “The White House? I’m the President of twenty square blocks!”

Falling Skies is shown on TNT on Sundays in the US

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Episode 4.23
Writers: Julie Plec, Caroline Dries
Director: Chris Grismer

THE ONE WHERE Elena finally decides that Damon is the vampire for her, then forcibly gives the cure to Katherine; Bonnie resurrects Jeremy, then shuffles off this mortal coil; Klaus’s graduation present to Caroline is promising not to kill Tyler; and Stefan learns that he’s Silas’s shadow self…

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VERDICT Okay, who was expecting the Mayor to turn into a giant snake? But instead of being a Buffy rip-off, “Graduation” (the “Day” is silent) turned out to be an Angel rip-off instead. No, not because it appeared to have a cameo from the Groosalugg (he’s going by the name Alexander now) but because the cliffhanger was a bit too close to the cliffhanger of Angel season three for comfort (wherein Angel is waylaid by a vengeful Connor and Justine who seal him in a metal coffin and throw it off a boat to sink down to the ocean floor). Homage? Coincidence? Rip off? You argue it out. But you’d think someone would have pointed out that after a season of The Vampire Diaries with a few too many Buffyverse parallels, producing a Xerox cliffhanger may not be the wisest move. What next? Damon moves into a hotel and starts up a detective agency?

“Graduation” is a almost the quintessential Vampire Diaries season four episode; there are a number of scenes and moments where it’s about as good as The Vampire Diaries gets, but they’re set in languid plot which the writers pick at unenthusiastically like a child forking a bit of broccoli round the plate; it keeps reminding you of Buffy ; and just when you wonder where the hell the story’s going next, there’s one hell of a twist (a half-inched twist, but totally unexpected, nonetheless).

Luckily, the good outweighs the bad, and the show concentrates on what it does best – characters. And crucially, it nails the big Damon/Elena moment with a pair of wonderfully cheesy, throat-lumpening confessionals and a punch-the-air passionate kiss. Poor old (eavesdropping) Stefan looks like he’s at a funeral, but – ever the martyr – he later tells Damon, “I’m not happy about Elena, but I’m not unhappy for you either,” and even the most ardent Delena ’shippers’ hearts must go out to him.

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Amazingly, the episode even manages to convince you that Matt would go travelling with Rebekah, the vampire who nearly killed him a season finale back (should this kind of turnaround be known as Stake-holm Syndrome?). They are actually very sweet together and even though you’d have to be especially dim (or Alexander) not to work out how Rebekah would save Matt from the motion-sensitive bomb, as a contrivance to get them to kiss, it did the job.

The big Elena/Katherine cat fight delivered as well – brutal, bitchy and bloody, with a brilliantly jawdropping conclusion: Elena force-feeds the cure to her doppelganger. It’s probably just about the cruellest thing she could have done. Not that she had much choice. And not that there’s much hint of remorse in her voice when she says, “Have a nice human life, Katherine.”

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There are also some lovely little character moments spattered throughout the episode, thanks to many departed friends making the most of their brief return to life. Alaric has the most fun, whizzing around the place and quipping like some undead superhero, while his conversation with Lexi about the nature of the afterlife is oddly endearing. Even Jeremy seem less whingey than usual.

Prize for the most-cheesy-yet-at-the-same-time-heartwarming moment, though, has to go to Klaus’s graduation present for Caroline – promising not to kill Tyler. The old romantic.

Despite all that, there’s an oddly half-hearted feel to this season finale. There are a few more vengeful “ghosts” this week, but hardly the legions you’d expect, they barely pose a threat. Alaric and Rebekah easily dispose the hunters, while Klaus deals with the witches and hybrids using a mortar board. It hardly feels like end-of-the-world stuff. And whereas in Buffy the graduation became part of the plot, here it’s just The Vampire Diaries latest social engagement of the week, and the fact all the lead characters take time out to go to it, underlines how wimpy the supernatual plot is.

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And our predictions (hopes) for Silas last review were sadly way off the mark. Oh, he’s back, sure, but not as part of some big, cunning plan – just luck: Bonnie’s death freed him. That’s a hell of a loophole (considering she was going to have to die one day, and Silas is well-proficient in the waiting game). It all feels a little humdrum and anticlimactic, despite all that gubbins about Stefan being his shadow self. And what exactly does that mean? It’s all a bit vague and woolly at the moment… A great “Gosh! Wow! Really?” moment, but one that leave you going, “But hang on…” after the credits.

Either way, it just seems to reinforce the idea that Silas is the least interesting and most prevaricating Big Bad in recent TV fantasy history. Maybe Katsia (when/if she stops being so shy) might prove a more interesting foe next season.

TRIVIA This episode has the longest ever list of guest characters on The Vampire Diaries (so far) – 11.

TRIVIA Nina Dobrev actually plays three roles in this episode – Elena, Katherine, Silas.

MISSING MOTHER How come Caroline mum was missing from the graduation ceremony? Caroline was desperate for her to be there a couple of episodes back.

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RUBBING SALT INTO WOUNDS Rebekah tells Matt that one of the places she wants to take him is a church in Italy in San Vittore, near Brienno. This was where she and Alexander were supposed to get married. Instead, Rebekah buried Alex and his sword there (“The Killer”).

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GRATUITOUS SHIRTLESS SCENE Damon does the honours, 22 minutes into the episode.

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TRACHEOTOMY OF THE WEEK Now that Katherine’s human, she could always get a job on Casualty .

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ENTRANCE OF THE WEEK Klaus does it in style, announcing his return by decapitating a witch with a mortarboard, giving a whole new meaning to academically challenged.

BEST LINES
Damon: “You know what I really am? Selfish. Because I make bad choices that hurt you. Yes, I’d rather die than be human. I’d rather die right now than spend a handful of years with you, only to lose you when I’m too old and sick and miserable and you’re still you. I’d rather die right now than spend my last, final years remembering how good I had it and how happy I was. Because that is who I am, Elena, and I’m not gonna change. And there’s no apology in the world that encompasses all the reasons that I’m wrong for you.”
Elena: “Well, I’m… I’m not sorry either. I’m not sorry that I met you. I’m not sorry that knowing you has made me question everything. And that in death, you’re the one that made me feel most alive. You’ve been a terrible person. You’ve made all the wring choices, and of all the choices that I have made this will prove to be the worst one. But I’m not sorry that I am in love with you. I love you Damon.”

Dave Golder

New episodes of The Vampires Diaries season four air in the UK on ITV2

• Read more of our reviews for The Vampire Diaries season four
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