In The Originals 2.03 “Every Mother’s Son,” Elijah and Klaus have 99 problems, and all of them are named Esther. Or sometimes Finn or Koll. Or maybe Mikael and Davina. But not Marcel, surprisingly, and not Camille either, anymore.
Family, basically, is a bitch. Tell us something we don’t know, Viking Vampires. In the first episode, Esther (in the body of a waif, and with lots of exposition about her expertise in possession and body-hopping) invites herself to dinner at Klaus’ place, in order to threaten and cajole. She doesn’t seem to know that his baby survives so thanks for that. She pushes all his momma’s boy buttons, even though Finn is right there (in the body of Vincent) to remind him how annoying that is. She’s cruel, but she has style, and the actress only flubs one line as she powers through her incongruous threats. Funny that they used that take anyway.
While Esther threatens, Marcel seduces, setting up his small vampire clique and especially his new protégée Gia as victims Elijah will want to take responsibility for. The annoying thing is that Kol and Finn have come back as witches as well, and this definitely upsets the fragile balance of power. The other annoying thing is that there are a lot of flashbacks to Viking Häxa Esther and her Impossibly Blonde Children, which is a grand sort of mythology that is about as convincing as, well, Reign I suppose. It seems to be all about getting a new witch ally in Lenore, but sadly she’s just Esther’s latest pawn, though why the body switch when Hayley can clearly witness it I don’t know.
The next episode, “Live and Let Die,” is all about Daddy, and here we at least get a present-day Sebastian Roche in black training togs working out in the woods. The better to kill all his vampire children with, if Davina ever lets him off the hook. And of course she relies far too much on her cursed charm bracelet to control him. As he says, magic will only get you halfway there. You also need the fighting skills she lacks, and his method of teaching is very boot camp indeed.
Don’t know where that’s going, but it does invite Kol over with a healing salve (and in search of the White McGuffin Stake) and ultimately lead to Klaus fighting his father in a truly creepy sequence. We got the back story of why Mikael hates his bastard son already, but the one nice wrinkle is that Klaus killed him once and is ready to do it again, by being smart.
Or, as Camille says, “Oh, great, Papa Tunde’s cursed bone knife of evil is still around!” She has really wised up since losing her brother and uncle to the witches, and she’s using her full human wits and sincerity to survive. Klaus as much as swears he’d kill anyone who hurts her, and she in turn reveals that she finds him redeemable if only he’d get over all his insecurities and very bad paranoid habits. She even gets him to dance and a reason to fight for, not against, for once. If only he could see it her way. As she tells her therapist, the poor thing is addicted to bad boys.
Too bad, but it’s all Camille’s best moment yet. Maybe not so much Davina’s, as she doesn’t know her boyfriend is Kol. But then Camille doesn’t know her therapist is Finn. We don’t know if Oliver is alive or dead by the end of the episode, or how Elijah will escape his mother’s withering clutches.
But we do know one thing: Josh finally has a boyfriend. And he’s a werewolf (who negotiates with everyone to save his brother from early exploitation by Finn). So, that’s probably going to go well, but even if they kill each other it won’t be because they’re gay. We’ve seen how badly a witch/vampire love affair can go, so let’s try this and just hope for better for poor lovelorn Josh.