The Originals
Charles Michael Davis | Photo courtesy of The CW
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“The Originals” Ep. 5.02: “One Wrong Turn on Bourbon”

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Last week we left off with Hayley abducted, a literal blood rain, and Klaus on his way back to the fold after having been scolded into action by Caroline. On the heels of that massive piece-moving episode, we’re blessedly able to take a breath this week as all the action is confined to New Orleans, and Rebekah, Elijah and Kol are all relegated to the bench. On Twitter, the writer of episode two, Carina Adly MacKenzie, admitted that the episode was chock full of daddy issues and luckily we waste no time getting there! 

Warning: spoilers ahead! Don’t say we didn’t warn you…

“One Wrong Turn on Bourbon” opens with Hope listening to music in bed while remembering a time when she was younger (hi to Summer Fontana as young Hope in a quick flashback!) and she astral projected to try to see Klaus, only to stumble on him just completely murdering two people. She’s obviously distraught and Klaus seems to be some combination of ashamed and terrified. Later we find out this was the last time father and daughter have seen each other or even spoken. I also neglected to mention little Hope has a composition notebook entitled “Hope’s Grimoire” which is patently adorable.

The biggest plot point of this episode is obviously Klaus returning to New Orleans, after seven years of absence, to help find Hayley, who’s gone missing. He reunites with Freya, who credits “sunblock, the love of a good woman, and literal witchcraft” with her continued youthful glow. Before they can catch up Hope realizes that her dad is back in town (because flowers start dying again) and she runs to go see him. Unfortunately, he knows they can’t be near each other, so as soon as he hears her running to him he speeds away.

The Originals
Nadine Lexington as Greta | Photo courtesy of The CW

Over at Rousseau’s we’re still mourning Poppy the bartender who, it turns out, was a vampire! There’s a lady in a red top who is also a vampire and she is aggressively unhappy about Poppy’s death and the fact that Henry is a hybrid. She’s very combative with Marcel and Josh and it put me off of her character so much I didn’t even learn her name.

Vincent is chilling on a park bench, blessedly sans hat, when Keelin brings him a preemptive apology coffee which, it turns out, is mostly whiskey. Vincent is feeling very confused about the state of New Orleans and looking for answers so Keelin suggests he speak to “The Oracle of Jackson Square,” a very pretty lady named Ivy (Shiva Kalaiselvan) who gives tarot readings, mostly to tourists.

There was a very cute boy in episode one who I didn’t mention. His name is Roman (Jedidiah Goodacre) and he attends the Salvatore Academy for Supernatural Youngsters with Hope and Henry. Hope is very clearly into him and very obviously assumes he’s out of her league. But she’s almost definitely wrong, because he shows up at the Mikaelson compound to check in on her and also assuage the guilt he feels over Henry’s fate. It turns out Roman and his friends bullied Henry quite a lot and now they believe he’s killed himself. Roman seems remorseful enough for Hope, but I’m keeping my eye on him. Boys that cute on TV shows have to earn the trust. 

When Klaus fled from his daughter, he evidently went to go harass Hayley’s new boyfriend, walking Irish brogue Declan. It’s kind of normal because he might know where Hayley is, but it also feels like a weirdly unearned pissing contest because Klaus has never much cared one way or the other about Hayley, outside of her being Hope’s mother. The whole scene felt very strange aside from the fact that it had my favorite line of the night delivered by Declan: in answer to Klaus’s questioning where Hayley is, Declan answers that she’s “Probably roaming around her giant house thinking up inspired new ways to be emotionally unavailable.” LOL.

Unfortunately we’re right back to the pissing contest where neither man has all the information. Declan believes Klaus is the reason Hayley is heartbroken (it’s definitely Elijah, duh) and Klaus believes Hayley is trying to replace him in Hope’s life with Declan (decidely untrue, which he’d know if he weren’t totally MIA all the time). Klaus attempts to win the argument by eating Declan but Hope intervenes at the last minute.

After Declan is compelled away from his own restaurant, Hope tries to explain that she’s scared that her mother is missing, but she’s glad Klaus is back, to which he says that if she doesn’t leave him alone he’ll have Freya bind her to the compound. He leaves her all alone in a kitchen WITH A SNAKE SLITHERING AMONG THE PRODUCE!

Josh and Marcel are desperate to punish Henry in order to keep the peace between the Crescent pack out in the bayou and the vampires in the city. So naturally they get a huge group of vampires together to terrorize the wolves and knock over their beer can pyramids. On the one hand: rude! On the other hand: something has to be done about Henry because he killed Poppy and he’s a young kid who can’t control his new hybrid impulses. They’re able to reach an agreement wherein Henry will be bricked up for a few years in Marcel’s creepy head garden that we haven’t seen since maybe season two. After his sentence he’ll be in with Marcel and everything will be fine.

Hope makes it back home to find Roman rummaging around her house. He’s noticed a ton of creepy shit, including “a dead redhead wrapped in a sheet in the parlor.” Hope assures him that’s just her dad’s ex that they can’t figure out what to do with, and the rest is just the normal clutter one accumulates being alive for a thousand years. She ends up coming clean about her identity and you can literally see the moment Roman know he’s in over his head with Hope.

Marcel and Josh are able to squeeze Henry into admitting it was Hope who organized the attack on Hayley so she could lure Klaus back to New Orleans, which prompts the very best scene in the whole episode. Hope and Klaus fight about how irresponsible it was for her to engineer her mother’s kidnapping just so he’d come back to town. But here’s the thing: I think Hope knows that it was irresponsible and dangerous and not well-thought-out; there’s no way she’s not aware of that. But she just wants her dad back. She saw too much of his dark side too early in her life and she wants answers from the source, not secondhand answers from family.

On the flip side, Klaus believes he will ruin Hope whether he’s absent or present in her life, and so he’s done this strange dance where she can’t escape him yet he also offers her no solace. It’s an absolutely heartbreaking catch-22. 

In order to find peace, Hope and Klaus have to interact with each other, but with each interaction they dance closer to the edge of destroying the city and potentially the world. As expected, neither leave the interaction satisfied, but there’s not a lot of time to spare because there are, once again, SNAKES EVERYWHERE! Snakes are to this episode what dead flowers were to episode one.  

Meanwhile, Ivy and Vincent have met and she’s decided she can give him a reading, even though she says she doesn’t “believe in looking further into the future than one ought to.” Vincent seems to think the only person who could bring about the fall of New Orleans is Klaus, which is fair. But when Vincent turns over The Empress card they both know it’s not Klaus, but Hope, who has the ability to cause the destruction of the city. 

Henry is getting bricked up in the head garden and freaking out, quite rightly. Marcel is totally unconcerned by it, but it should be noted that this punishment is HELLISH. Hope manages to find them before Henry’s head is covered with bricks and she compels him to relax and if he’s ever scared he should sing to himself to relax. She also assures him they’ll be friends when his punishment is over but TBH if someone made me attack and kidnap their mom and then only I got punished for it, I don’t think I would want to be friends when my punishment was over.

That being said, I still have a great deal of sympathy for Hope, especially after her scene with Marcel where she explains a heartbreaking points system she devised for her own behavior after her entire family was forced to separate to keep her safe. Her reasoning being: “My family sacrificed everything for me. I’m supposed to be worth it.” She then adds, “I don’t think my dad loves me anymore,” which is where I ugly cried like Claire Danes. Marcel assures Hope that she’s good no matter what, and that despite Klaus’ outward appearance, he loves her more than anything.

Klaus and Freya have gone to release Hayley from the spell Hope cast over her but when they reach her location they find only a coffin torn apart in a blood-spattered room, no sign of Hayley anywhere. Klaus breaks the news to Hope and she’s visibly distraught to the point of hyperventilation, which is troubling until you realize she’s coughing up a snake, and then it’s the absolute worst thing you can imagine. Klaus makes the decision to send Hope back to Mystic Falls for her own safety around the same time Freya tells a freshly returned Keelin that she also needs to leave. Both interactions go about as well as you’d think.

The episode ends with Marcel making a nice speech about how they’re keeping the peace despite some sacrifices. It is immediately undermined by Henry hanging from the balcony outside after he’s been broken out of his bricks, and his heart is ripped out (RIP Henry). I suspect Hope and Roman are not going back to the Salvatore Academy for Supernatural Youngsters after all.

After all the place setting of the first episode, it was nice to have a quieter episode to explore the characters more closely after the time jump and to set up the plot for the whole season going forward. I am so looking forward to the Mikaelsons slowly coming back together in New Orleans to meet the threat Hope might present.

I’m even more excited for episode three next week, which seems to be Elijah-centric! Join me then for a live-tweet May 2 at 9/8c on Shuffle Online! You can follow me at So I’m Watching. 

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