Vampire Diaries 2.6
Oct. 22nd, 2010 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreOh, show, when you are good, you are good. Like, this episode had a LOT of things I’ve been wanting for a while? And the thing from the last episode where I almost forget how much I hate Damon when he interacts with certain characters, or at least can enjoy the scenes where he interacts with them? Held true. And then he went and reminded me that, like, half the conflicts and drama in the series boil down to “Damon re/acts emotionally/impulsively, people who aren’t Damon get hurt.” (I swear, I’d mind Damon a lot less if he was self-destructive instead of just destructive, and other people weren’t impacted far more by his actions than Damon himself.)
But everything not-Damon in the episode! Seriously! And even a few bits that involved him.
Bonnie! And not just Bonnie, but the show actually directly referencing the way she’s been pushed to the side the last few episodes, and has been largely cut off from things for a while before that. And Bonnie and Elena mending fences and Elenashipping pushing for Caroline and Bonnie to mend fences and then Bonnie and Caroline mending fences (and OMG was Caroline actually bouncing at sneaking around with Bonnie?) and Bonnie/Caroline/Elena having adventures and rescuing Stefan. Because, seriously, the early/mid chunk of season 1 when I was in love with the show despite it being kinda corny? A lot of it was for their friendship. If the show was literally about nothing but the three of them and their superpowers in a town steeped in supernatural history, you have no idea how happy I would be.
People’s reaction to Bonnie/Damon scenes always kind of amuses me because I’ve never seen their interactions as hate/hate so much as “she justifiably hates his guts and he agrees that she should but kinda likes her anyway when she isn’t trying to kill him.” In an interview I read, Somerhalder basically said that Bonnie’s never going to like him because five generations of her family have hated his guts with good reason, and I suspect that shows up in their interactions. Though I admit that I raised my brows a bit at his holding the door open for her and how, uhm, fast he reacted when Mason grabbed her wrist. Also, seriously, I hope the keep up their habit of using “for Elena” to make the other do what they want.
But really, if they want to sell Damon as redeemable, then the way to do it isn’t through any sort of “redeemed by unrequited love” for Elena, but through his trying to make amends to people like Bonnie and Caroline, who he’s seriously caused damage to for his own ends. Because it’s pretty clear that he’s…basically just behaving around Stefan and Elena when he can remember too? I mean, he knows how to make them happy, and he hasn’t really given any indication of changing so much as…doing what he has to do to stay in the house and make them talk to him sometimes. Like, he isn’t feeding from blood bags because he’s had an epiphany about recklessly killing, but because he can’t stay in one place for long the way he prefers to do it, and it’s the method that keeps Stefan from kicking him out, and behaving means that Stefan will let him stay and Elena might eventually be his friend again. It’s like a puppy rolling over to get petted, or a kid not getting into fights at school because he’s been promised ice cream if he’s good, and he knows that, ultimately, Stefan and Elena will forgive him almost anything. There’s no indication that he won’t completely revert if he moves on next week, and any real redemption will have to take place through his making amends to people who genuinely hate him because of the things he’s done to them and the people they love.
And the Caroline/Liz scenes! I think they interacted more here than the entire rest of the series so far combined? And basically every second of it caused wibbling. I’m sad that we won’t get to see that run it’s natural course, though I’m hopeful that Liz had somehow hid some vervain, in addition to what she ingested. Also, I couldn’t help but notice (and have no idea if it was deliberate or not) that while Liz said she’d keep Caroline’s secret and Caroline said she knew she would, neither one said a single word about Liz keeping the Salvatores a secret. And I kind of really hope that it was deliberate, and a distinction that Caroline noticed. I mean, I think she’d leave Damon to rot in a heartbeat, and rightly so (that has nothing to do with my feelings for Damon, and everything to do with what he did to her) but she cares about Stefan and, more importantly (to her, I think), she knows Elena would be devastated by to lose Stefan, and might be endangered too.
Also, it cracked me up when she said she snuck some of the blood bags Damon steals? Though I suspect that’s more that he steals extra and pretends not to notice.
And then Katherine. Katherine officially has A Type, and that type is tall, dark, conventionally handsome, emotionally needy, and dumb as a brick. Stefan is the only apparent exception, and I’m not sure how that happened. Let’s see how much Tyler continues that trend.
Meanwhile, I am so, so happy that it was Mason and not Jenna who died, though I wonder how they’ll explain things to her. Hopefully Elena and Alaric will come clean, because one trope I hate is when someone (and it’s almost always someone’s sister or aunt or mother) is surrounded by dangerous people/events/things and they keep that person in the dark “for their protection.” Because, hey, it may let Jenna/Joyce/Ellie/Sam’s-sister-whose-name-I-can’t-remember/etc. sleep better at night, but it actually puts them in no danger because they don’t know that they’re likely to be targeted to hurt Elena and Alaric and Jeremy and the Salvatores by extension/Buffy/Chuck/Sam and Stephen/etc., and their ignorance makes them the perfect target. Also, I kind of seriously loved how Elena was basically “I do not have time for your five minutes of guilt there are more important things going on” to Damon over it. (No, it wasn’t directly his fault because he isn’t responsible for Katherine’s actions any more than she’s responsible for his, but even he isn’t dumb enough to not realize that she’d strike back not only at Mason’s death, but also at the taunting, and she’d made it pretty clear how she’d strike out if they made her mad.)
I could have seriously done without the torture in general (Other horror elements of the episode? Bring them on! But the torture? Not for me.) but I kind of wonder how much Bonnie and Jeremy knew Damon was going to do? I mean, they obviously both knew that it wouldn’t be pretty, but I suspect both expected “roughing up” not fullblown torture. Despite what they’ve been through, both are still pretty inexperienced, and they both still basically decent peopleaside from Jeremy’s bout of trading drugs for sex and deciding it was True Love and I don’t think people expect that kind of thing until they actually see it. (That said, Jeremy, I doubt you realized how far Damon would go with the wolfsbane you provided, but you chose to stay after he told you to beat it and after it got nasty. Buck up.)
Not sure what I think of the ending. I don’t for one second think the show will end any way but Elena/Stefan (barring character death) or even not be Elena/Stefan for long, but I can’t tell where they’re going with this. I doubt there will actually be even a brief Damon/Elena hookup (If anything, I think they’re-thankfully-letting the triangle aspect rest for a bit) but it wouldn’t surprise me if the purpose of this breakup was for Stefan to work through his remaining Katherine issues. Regardless, I prefer Elena and Stefan solid and functional while surrounded by chaos and drama to being angsty and dramatic.
But everything not-Damon in the episode! Seriously! And even a few bits that involved him.
Bonnie! And not just Bonnie, but the show actually directly referencing the way she’s been pushed to the side the last few episodes, and has been largely cut off from things for a while before that. And Bonnie and Elena mending fences and Elena
People’s reaction to Bonnie/Damon scenes always kind of amuses me because I’ve never seen their interactions as hate/hate so much as “she justifiably hates his guts and he agrees that she should but kinda likes her anyway when she isn’t trying to kill him.” In an interview I read, Somerhalder basically said that Bonnie’s never going to like him because five generations of her family have hated his guts with good reason, and I suspect that shows up in their interactions. Though I admit that I raised my brows a bit at his holding the door open for her and how, uhm, fast he reacted when Mason grabbed her wrist. Also, seriously, I hope the keep up their habit of using “for Elena” to make the other do what they want.
But really, if they want to sell Damon as redeemable, then the way to do it isn’t through any sort of “redeemed by unrequited love” for Elena, but through his trying to make amends to people like Bonnie and Caroline, who he’s seriously caused damage to for his own ends. Because it’s pretty clear that he’s…basically just behaving around Stefan and Elena when he can remember too? I mean, he knows how to make them happy, and he hasn’t really given any indication of changing so much as…doing what he has to do to stay in the house and make them talk to him sometimes. Like, he isn’t feeding from blood bags because he’s had an epiphany about recklessly killing, but because he can’t stay in one place for long the way he prefers to do it, and it’s the method that keeps Stefan from kicking him out, and behaving means that Stefan will let him stay and Elena might eventually be his friend again. It’s like a puppy rolling over to get petted, or a kid not getting into fights at school because he’s been promised ice cream if he’s good, and he knows that, ultimately, Stefan and Elena will forgive him almost anything. There’s no indication that he won’t completely revert if he moves on next week, and any real redemption will have to take place through his making amends to people who genuinely hate him because of the things he’s done to them and the people they love.
And the Caroline/Liz scenes! I think they interacted more here than the entire rest of the series so far combined? And basically every second of it caused wibbling. I’m sad that we won’t get to see that run it’s natural course, though I’m hopeful that Liz had somehow hid some vervain, in addition to what she ingested. Also, I couldn’t help but notice (and have no idea if it was deliberate or not) that while Liz said she’d keep Caroline’s secret and Caroline said she knew she would, neither one said a single word about Liz keeping the Salvatores a secret. And I kind of really hope that it was deliberate, and a distinction that Caroline noticed. I mean, I think she’d leave Damon to rot in a heartbeat, and rightly so (that has nothing to do with my feelings for Damon, and everything to do with what he did to her) but she cares about Stefan and, more importantly (to her, I think), she knows Elena would be devastated by to lose Stefan, and might be endangered too.
Also, it cracked me up when she said she snuck some of the blood bags Damon steals? Though I suspect that’s more that he steals extra and pretends not to notice.
And then Katherine. Katherine officially has A Type, and that type is tall, dark, conventionally handsome, emotionally needy, and dumb as a brick. Stefan is the only apparent exception, and I’m not sure how that happened. Let’s see how much Tyler continues that trend.
Meanwhile, I am so, so happy that it was Mason and not Jenna who died, though I wonder how they’ll explain things to her. Hopefully Elena and Alaric will come clean, because one trope I hate is when someone (and it’s almost always someone’s sister or aunt or mother) is surrounded by dangerous people/events/things and they keep that person in the dark “for their protection.” Because, hey, it may let Jenna/Joyce/Ellie/Sam’s-sister-whose-name-I-can’t-remember/etc. sleep better at night, but it actually puts them in no danger because they don’t know that they’re likely to be targeted to hurt Elena and Alaric and Jeremy and the Salvatores by extension/Buffy/Chuck/Sam and Stephen/etc., and their ignorance makes them the perfect target. Also, I kind of seriously loved how Elena was basically “I do not have time for your five minutes of guilt there are more important things going on” to Damon over it. (No, it wasn’t directly his fault because he isn’t responsible for Katherine’s actions any more than she’s responsible for his, but even he isn’t dumb enough to not realize that she’d strike back not only at Mason’s death, but also at the taunting, and she’d made it pretty clear how she’d strike out if they made her mad.)
I could have seriously done without the torture in general (Other horror elements of the episode? Bring them on! But the torture? Not for me.) but I kind of wonder how much Bonnie and Jeremy knew Damon was going to do? I mean, they obviously both knew that it wouldn’t be pretty, but I suspect both expected “roughing up” not fullblown torture. Despite what they’ve been through, both are still pretty inexperienced, and they both still basically decent people
Not sure what I think of the ending. I don’t for one second think the show will end any way but Elena/Stefan (barring character death) or even not be Elena/Stefan for long, but I can’t tell where they’re going with this. I doubt there will actually be even a brief Damon/Elena hookup (If anything, I think they’re-thankfully-letting the triangle aspect rest for a bit) but it wouldn’t surprise me if the purpose of this breakup was for Stefan to work through his remaining Katherine issues. Regardless, I prefer Elena and Stefan solid and functional while surrounded by chaos and drama to being angsty and dramatic.