‘The Originals’ Review: ‘Girl in New Orleans’ Delivers the Best Episode Yet

The Originals bounced back after last week’s episode left something to be desired. But all has been forgiven because “Girl in New Orleans” provided a rollercoaster ride that hit nearly every end of the emotional spectrum as the actors took the complicated material and ran with it.

Before we get into everything we loved about the episode, let’s talk about the weak spots because even fantastic episodes have them. The character/scene balance was definitely off. The episode was packed with storylines, which we appreciate because we never like to get bored watching TV, but sometimes it took too long to get back to the other stories. For example, we saw Hayley run away from the creepy clinic and then we nearly forgot she was in the episode because it took so long to get back to her.

Of course we can forgive this minor slight because as we said, the episode was fantastic and has officially taken over the ‘favorite’ episode spot that was previously held by “House of the Rising Son” (Yes, we are aware that only four episode have aired, but we’re kind of in love with this show so please excuse our excitement). What made this episode so great? Let’s get into it.

Rebekah obsesses over attic shutters – and finds Elijah

We’d have a hard time choosing which Original we loved more, Rebekah or Elijah, so needless to say, scenes the two share are more or less our favorite thing in the world (or at least the world of The Originals). Despite Klaus (hilariously) mocking her, Rebekah’s tour of New Orleans shutters led her to a mostly abandoned church where she meets Father Kieran (Todd Stashwick). She demands to see the attic, but first she wants to know why there’s blood on the walls. He tells her the story of a seminary student who one day murdered all of his friends and killed himself (more on this later). Rebekah compels him to share the way to the attic.

Once she gets upstairs, she spots Elijah’s coffin, but she’s been blocked out of the room again. It doesn’t matter; Elijah is awake! He transports them into a fake flashback so they can have a conversation and he explains that Davina took the dagger out (apparently she thought he was a pin cushion) and didn’t realize that by doing that, she negated its power (props for this, show; we totally forgot that every time Klaus pulled out a dagger, he immediately put the ash on it again before putting it back. We are huge fans of consistency).

Elijah tells Rebekah that he wants to stay in the attic for the time being because he wants to get more information out of Davina and see if he can persuade her to join Team Mikaelson. In return, Elijah asks his sister to protect Hayley and the baby (excuse us while we have a fangirl moment) and Rebekah promises to do that.

Davina and Klaus faceoff – and Klaus gets what he wants

While we think it’s safe to say the theory of Davina somehow being Klaus and Hayley’s daughter has been put to rest, we’re still invested in the powerful teenager and how she ended up in the attic and why she’s so much stronger than the other witches. This week, she reminded Marcel who was boss when she boiled his blood until he agreed to let her attend a musical festival. He asks Cami to accompany her, but the bartender declines until Klaus compels her to do it. Then, when he finds out that there’s a boy Davina likes, he arranges a meeting for the two in the church.

The teenage reunion is sweet and it’s nice to see Davina smile, but that’s not really Klaus’ plan. He suggests that Davina switch her loyalties to him and promises to give her more freedom than Marcel has. She’s unimpressed so Klaus takes Tim hostage and Davina throws a tantrum that destroys the church even more. Klaus gets a call from Rebekah that Hayley’s missing so he has to speed up his plan by throwing Tim – and his violin – over the balcony. Davina is devastated because she thinks she caused his injuries, but Klaus swoops in to heal him and compel him to forget before he lets Davina know she owes him a favor now.

Marcel arrives shortly after and Davina is holding Tim’s broken violin. The teenager is not happy to see him and returns to the attic where Elijah appears behind her and suggests that they have some things to talk about. We love that the Mikaelson brothers are working toward the same goal of getting Davina on their side and we’re not even mad that Elijah is still in the attic because at least he is awake and part of the show. If anyone can make Davina see the light, it’s Elijah.

Hayley gets to be a badass – with an assist from her baby

As we mentioned earlier, Hayley found herself in danger after agreeing to go visit a shady bayou doctor that Agnes took her to see. Naturally, the witch was setting her up after the cryptic thing that happened with the baby last week. The doctor was acting weird and Hayley picked up on it so when she saw a strange car pulled up, she got the jump on her would-be attackers and bolted out the window. They followed her into the woods, but she was not going down without a fight. She took out several of them and then Rebekah arrived to help.

Unfortunately, the next group had arrows and Rebekah and Hayley both ended up on the ground (we’re assuming Sophie is somewhere bleeding from her chest too even though she wasn’t in the episode). Rebekah wakes up, surrounded by mauled bodies, and then goes back to the clinic. Klaus arrives and Rebekah is almost impressed that he put his family first and the two go to find Hayley, who comes back with no memory and not a scratch on her. Rebekah points out that it was the baby, Klaus’ blood, that healed her (how cute was Klaus’ proud look?).

Rebekah tells them about Elijah having a plan and again, our shipper feelings go into overdrive at the adorable smile Hayley gets at the mere mention of Elijah’s name. We cannot wait to see these two reunited. Hayley is tired and wants to go home and Klaus picks up the exhausted girl (fine, we admit it, we liked this too. We don’t particularly want to see a triangle with two brothers again, and we’re 100 percent Team Elijah/Hayley, but this was sweet and we’re not sorry we enjoyed it and maybe had a little flutter).

Klaus asks Cami to write his vampire diaries – and Cami finally gets to shine

We already mentioned that Klaus was compelling Cami during the episode, but it wasn’t just to do his bidding. In the opening scene, he invited her over to Casa Mikaelson and said he wanted someone to write his memoirs (we’re still laughing at this. It was a nice nod to TVD and it’s hilarious that Klaus can’t write his own story). Anyway, Klaus started explaining his vampire secrets (and not with heavy exposition!) and Cami was confused, but once he compelled away her fear, she understood that he was manipulating her and she had no choice in the matter.

Later at the church, we got some much needed insight into Cami’s past. It turns out that the seminary student who killed all those people was her brother, her twin brother. Cami has been torturing herself trying to figure out how she missed the signs; she’s so sure there weren’t any because she would have known. Klaus is touched by her story, but he sends her away from the church so he can deal with Davina.

After he helps Hayley and Rebekah, Klaus goes to visit Cami again. We know we can’t do justice to how good this scene was with a brief recap, but we’ll try our best. Cami was starting to wonder if a demon, specifically a vampire, had forced her brother to do what he did. She’d come to New Orleans to find answers and she assumed she was onto something, but Klaus didn’t want her going down that path. He knew all too well how an obsession can destroy a person and he wanted to help her.

Cami begged him not to; begged him not to make her forget (Leah Pipes, you guys…this girl can act and then some). Klaus did it anyway, but despite everything, we don’t believe he was doing this to be mean or because he wanted her to focus on his plans; it was an act of mercy, trying to ease some of her pain and keep her off the path that he went down. It was haunting and achingly beautiful.

Was it morally questionable? Yes. We don’t approve of anyone getting their free will taken away, especially as they’re begging the person not to do it. But the scene was still one of our favorites because this is a show about vampires and they’re not really nice people and we still love them anyway. Somewhere down the road, we want to see Klaus and Cami explored as a pairing, but only once he stops compelling her. Either she’ll become a vampire and remember everything or Klaus might undo the compulsion, giving her all her memories back like he did to Stefan on TVD.

The bottom line was that the scene pulled us in, gave Pipes and Joseph Morgan a chance to show us just how talented they are, and how much chemistry they can generate without even trying to be romantic. When Klaus got choked up telling her to dream of a world where people want to be good, we wanted to cry too because isn’t that the kind of thing we all wish for? There have definitely been days where we wouldn’t mind a good looking vampire with a British accent giving us happy dreams.

We could probably keep discussing the episode, and that scene in particular, for pages and pages, but we’re going to stop here. Next week, we’re going to learn more about the witches and where the bad blood came from between this particular group of witches and Marcel’s vampires. We suspect there’s a lot more to Marcel and Sophie’s relationship than meets the eye and we’re still dying to know where Davina came from and how she ended up with Marcel.

Hit the comments below to share your thoughts and feelings on the episode. As always, feel free to disagree with us or with each other, but please keep it polite.