The Originals
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“The Originals” Ep.5.05: “Don’t It Just Break Your Heart”

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Ok look, full disclosure: I watch too much TV. I suspect it’s what got me this gig in the first place. I’ve always been a fan of television and I believe it’s one of the most truly American art forms. Obviously other countries have robust television industries; England and Sweden immediately come to mind. But television feels American in a way that movies and music feel more global.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that I’ve seen a lot of TV shows. It’s what I do. So I’ve gotten pretty good at realizing when certain new characters or plot lines aren’t entirely on the up and up. I’m talking of course about the three new characters on this season of “The Originals” Greta, Antoinette and Roman. I’ll be honest, I didn’t suspect Antoinette of anything worse than keeping some secrets about her past until this episode but I’ve disliked Greta from the word go and Roman has been too cute for his own good since his first episode as well. So I wasn’t too surprised to learn they’re all three connected to the main villain of this final season.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This episode was chock-full of information we needed and a flashback to 1933 Germany! Flashback episodes on both “The Originals” and “The Vampire Diaries” are always my favorite episodes because the cast is inevitably saddled with terrible wigs and costumes. 1933 is a pretty good time for men’s fashions though so this time was even better than usual!

“Don’t it Just Break Your Heart” opens with Klaus infiltrating the lair of what he calls “Nightwalker Nation” aka the vampires who don’t use daylight rings and are also literal Nazis. He promptly kills every single last one of them before Greta arrives and decides that she and Klaus should have a chat. He takes her up on it, but it does not look awesome for her since he chains her up and starts draining of all her blood to get the vervain out of her system. You know, casual conversation formalities. When she finally starts talking she mentions a mutual friend named August Muller and we’re whisked back into the past!

The Originals
Joseph Morgan as Klaus | Photo credit: The CW

Turns out Klaus was kind of a douchey beatnik before that was the cool thing to be. He’s just sitting around talking about art in a faux-cabaret nightclub with poor set dressing when Elijah shows up to discuss rumors of their father Mikael in the area.

In France, Elijah and Antoinette are quite literally “making out in a dirty alley” when they notice someone watching them. They promptly murder him and then find out he’s been taking pictures of Antoinette.

Back at the Salvatore Academy, Hope is showing Freya what she can do as a Witch/Werewolf hybrid, including jumping super high all around the abandoned building in the woods from last week. Hope then makes a supremely bizarre comment about how she’ll be able to do even more once she triggers her werewolf side to which I said, “don’t you have to kill someone to trigger it? WTF Hope?!” Freya rightly asks if she knows what the change entails and Hope is very chill about having to do a murder eventually. The pain of the actual physical change seems to stop her in her tracks though. It’s good to know Hope’s got her priorities straight.

There are a lot more scenes between Greta and Klaus but since I hate both Greta and Nazi propaganda I’m going to spend very little time on those scenes. Needless to say there’s a lot of talk about “dirtying the species of vampires” and the like. It’s not great and I knew Greta was the worst since the first episode.

Similarly, the 1933 scenes are all concerned mostly with Elijah and Klaus trying to determine if Mikael is really on their trail or if something else is going on. (Spoiler Alert: something else is going on and it’s those pesky Nazi vampires.) They do manage to completely drag both Stefan and Rebekah so severely I believe Stefan felt pangs in the afterlife from Klaus simply remembering this. (For TVD watchers you’ll remember that around this same time Rebekah and Stefan had their love affair, though as we find out later in this episode Klaus has already daggered Rebekah and has been writing letters to Elijah as her.)

We’re treated to a scene between Marcel and Klaus where Klaus comes clean about why these people are after him (because he 100% killed their leader, August), what they want (to get Hope to bind the werewolf part of her), and why Klaus won’t let her do it (Esther did it to him and it was terrible.) I gotta say, I’m mostly on Marcel’s side though, Hope deserves a say in this.

Back at the Salvatore Academy, Roman has broken and entered Hope’s room and this was the first moment I was suspicious of him because he knows too much and cares too much about her lineage. He also says the exact words “you don’t know anything about me.” SUSPICIOUS! He tells Hope a sob story about how he was dessicated and she responds the way she should, by telling him he’s a cliche. I love Hope. I’ve seen some hate online and I just have to 100% disagree. She is a breath of fresh air who doesn’t get turned all inside out for an “ancient bad boy vampire with a tortured soul” and I love it. 

Josh tries to be nice to Greta (who I’m still not speaking about) and Marcel quite rightly shuts him down. Although I’m definitely still on the side of Marcel/Josh about Hope binding her werewolf side because it appears that’s all the Nightwalkers want in order to let Hayley go.

Meanwhile in France, Elijah is finally demanding answers about Antoinette’s past after their run-in with the now murdered photographer and through some more flashbacks we learn that August is trying to rid the world of the scourge of werewolves and Antoinette is his daughter. Unfortunately, Elijah doesn’t remember her because ALL HIS MEMORIES ARE GONE!

It turns out Antoinette has been keeping their past to herself because she knew if he found out about everything between her father and Klaus, Elijah would hate her. She’s not wrong since Elijah leaves her in their apartment to go sulk downstairs in the piano bar.

Hope has decided she wants to bind her werewolf side over all objections from Freya about how much it’ll hurt and how Hayley didn’t want her to have to make the choice. Hope is totally committed though and insists Freya get all the supplies she needs. But before she goes through with the ritual that might actually kill her she decides she needs to fully make out with Roman just in case. Honestly, the balls on this girl are so impressive. Bravo!

This is quite an episode for TVD watchers with the reappearance of the moonstone! Evidently it’ll be used to brand Hope on the palms of her hands, soles of her feet and the middle of her forehead. That is until Klaus interrupts them and chucks the moonstone into the woods. He and Freya fight it out until the forest starts to die around them and he has to flee the power of the Hollow.

There’s a lovely flashback between Antoinette and Elijah back in 1933 when they first met. As it happens, Elijah does a pretty good impression of Oskar Schindler and he’s compelled the ticket takers at the port to let through anyone who needs to escape. He says as much to Antoinette and presumably she did escape at some point since she’s still alive.

In New Orleans, Klaus is using the blood he stole from Hope’s binding ritual to turn way more vampires into hybrids while telling those vampires to #BlameGreta. Josh is still trying to reason with Greta in the head garden when she breaks free and beats the absolute shit out of him. Marcel later says that Josh is “lucky to still have his face” so let’s hope he heals before we see him again. His face is too cute.

At the boarding school, Roman offers to take Hope to a more powerful witch outside of Klaus’ power who can do the binding spell and he makes a phone call telling the person on the other end of the line that he’s bringing Hope with him (SUSPICIOUS).

The final scene of the episode is Klaus killing August and the rest of his followers when lo and behold Greta comes out of the house and asks for mercy for herself, her daughter (Antoinette) and her son (Roman). In the present Klaus realizes that in killing August he gave his followers the most powerful weapon they could have ever needed.

Like I said at the top, I wasn’t surprised by anything in this episode except for the Antoinette reveal. Everything else really tracks and I can’t wait to find out how nefarious Roman’s intentions are regarding Hope and then hopefully find Hayley alive at some point before the end of the season. 

We’ll be live-tweeting all-new episodes of “The Originals” on Wednesday at 9/8c. Join us at @ShuffleOnline and you can find me tweeting at @soimwatching! 

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