Any episode that starts with a shirtless Elijah Mikaelson is going to be good. There's just no other way around it.

The Originals Season 2 Episode 5 started with a shirtless Elijah and seeing part of his vamp face (for only the second time ever) in the first five minutes. Amazing!

Lester has Elijah trapped in some magical dream wherein she can insert visions into his brain. Or conjure up old memories. Not sure how exactly that's working. Once again, let the record reflect that I hate this woman. She's a vile and terrible person and I'd like to see her die before Mikael.

Yep. Given the choice of which Mikaelson parent to kill I'm going with Lester. She's irredeemable. There at least seems to be a part of Mikael's rage which comes from a place of, hmmm, self-loathing? Yeah. We'll go with that and discuss it later.

Esther? Nope. She's just an egomaniacal witch with the ability to curse her children to a life of vampirism and then blame her children for their vampirism and all the bloodshed that comes along with it. 

In order to persuade Elijah to join her, Lester forces him to relive the moments from his past which he'd placed behind the "Red Door," crediting herself with his impeccable manners, nobility, and penchant for feeding without making a mess. How did she manage that?

Not by whacking him on the hand during dinner for forgetting his manners, but by revealing that he was the one who killed Tatia, which cannot possibly have happened given everything we've learned since the Originals first appeared way back during the Sun and the Moon curse. 

Which brings me to Complaint #1: Don't Rewrite History (at least not SO much).

After, what, four seasons now of watching Klaus and Elijah (and by extension Damon and Stefan) spend their lives falling in love with the same girl only to have that girl ruin their brotherhood, it was revealed that the love triangle between Klaus, Elijah, and Tatia never even happened. 

Tatia chose Elijah. Plain and simple. She picked Elijah after what seemed to be the briefest of dalliances with Klaus. If we take out their original love triangle, we've erased much of the allure of the Petrova doppelganger.

I'm hoping that this is Lester's plan. That she's planting these memories in his mind while he's under her spell as a way of ensuring he'll choose her once she brings him out of his trance, but the fact that his entire story tonight was a dream within a dream within a dream sort of makes me think that yeah, he really did kill her.

If he did, it doesn't change my Elijah love, but it does put another nail in Lester's coffin. Instead of telling her son that a bear killed his betrothed, she is the root of any rivalry between Elijah and Klaus through altering Elijah's memory and she made herself a target of their hatred by taking responsibility for Tatia's death. 

It doesn't make any sense! Yet here I sit, trying to make sense of it. I'm not sure why she would do that and I've watched this episode twice now. I don't like how wrong it feels to have the history rewritten in such a manner but part of me says this new story is sticking around. 

And yeah, I'm also pretty hacked off  to learn that the smoking hot Haylijah scene there at the end was all in his head thanks to a little witchy woo woo by his mother...and the writers. 

Okay, not hacked off​-hacked off, just peeved. We were thrown a bone, I guess, but seriously, writers?! Way to rip OUR Haylijah-shipping hearts out why don't you!? 

It was just...she's there! And she's saving him! And they're kissing! And now he's feeding from her and OMG PLEASE JUST WHOOSH HER AWAY TO A BED SOMEWHERE. Oh, hahaha. Inception. J/k j/k GOTCHA! If you could see my face right now you would know that it is basically the face of Mikayla Maroney.

Anyway. 

Elsewhere in the episode when Lester wasn't giving me a rage headache, Mikael was making a serious case for why he's the parent who needs to be kept around. 

After removing Papa Tunde's blade, Mikael kidnapped Cami to use her as leverage against Klaus, but then he got hungry and fed from her and that made Klaus really, really angry. Nobody puts puncture wounds on Cami! 

Seriously, she may have turned to Marcel while Klaus was standing up to his father, but Klaus and Cami is coming. 

Cami was able to force Mikael into admitting that for much of Klaus' early life, he was the favored son. That's why Mikael was harder on him than on the others. He saw the eyes of a warrior when he looked at Klaus. Then Klaus became weak and Mikael felt him a failure of a son.

Little did Mikael know that the precious wife whom he loved dearly even, it seems, after learning of her infidelity, was the one making Klaus weak the entire time. Sebastian Roche gets serious props for tonight's performance, you guys. I've never sort of maybe had an inkling of sympathetic feelings for Mikael ever but tonight I did. Just a wee smidgen of sympathy, but it was definitely there.

After hearing just that little piece, and knowing that the theme of this series is family above all, I sort of wonder if there's not an agreement that can be reached with Mikael. He's a terrible, horrible man, no doubt, but there was something in the way he spoke to Cami, and later to the entire group, that made me wonder if what he's been missing all this time is his family. 

He walks around with this idea that the only person he needs is himself and leaning on others is for the weak, but he's been defeated because of groups of people who've worked together. Every time he's been defeated, it's been by a group of people. 

He's definitely scared because there's a part of him that realizes there's safety and power in numbers, and he knows that with two witches, three vampires, and a mortal who isn't afraid of anything against him, he's in a precarious position.

His fear makes him vulnerable and vulnerability in characters is interesting. That's part of why I hate Lester and Finncent so much. Where are their weaknesses?

Davina and Koleb also deserve some serious, serious love after tonight, especially given their teen witch sort-of foreplay in the cabin. Not THAT kind of love, but hey he's powerful. She's powerful. He's hot. She's hot. I want Koleb to stick around forever. And ever. And ever.

If things don't work out with Davina, maybe we can keep getting some of that verbal sparring between Klaus and Kol as a consolation prize. 

What did you think of tonight's episode of The Originals? Will Elijah take his mother up on her offer? How will the group defeat Mikael? Let's talk in the comments, and be on the look out for a new The Originals Round Table coming soon!

Remember, any time you need your vampire fix you can watch The Originals online right here at TV Fanatic!

Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.