1.20 - 'Blood Brothers' (The Vampire Diaries)

[arabian]

No, I did not skip 1.19 - "Miss Mystic Falls." That was actually the only episode that I did a write-up for originally during season 01. So you can click on the link provided if you haven't read it or want a refresher. Anyhoo, moving on to the next one (and, fair warning, this one be long)...

Comments

[anonymous]

I haven't commented to your s1 posts yet because I can't really remember the episodes' contents, at least not in detail as I haven't watched it in years now and don't have time right now for a rewatch. Therefore I don't know how I felt about Elena's reaction to Damon in this episode (though I'm quite sure I wasn't happy either). But I remember my reaction to another very similar scene: 3x14/15 Elena's reaction to Damon after their dance (especially her 'maybe that's the problem' and 'get over it'). I think it quite reminiscent of what we see here: In both situations they've shared intimate/emotional dances and Elena afterwards totally disregards Damon's feelings and tries to distance herself from him (emotionally) by being cold and distanced toward him (at least that's how I remember it to have been; please correct me if my memory fools me here). The reason for her totally uncharacteristical behaviour surely has been that she felt something towards him during the dance that she wasn't ready to accept or was too afraid to acknowledge. So she pushed him away and kept her distance because she was afraid of what she felt. Now we all know now that Elena only fell for Damon in 3x01, but during their dance in 1x19 she truly felt ‘how sexy he was’ for the first time as she herself admits in 6x02. Before 1x19 he was just her boyfriend’s brother who turned into something like her friend. She never really saw him as a potential love interest, as a man (‘I never let myself notice until then. Obviously I knew that he was attractive, but I didn’t want to see him that way.’ 6x02). But at the Miss Mystic Falls pageant he became her hero, her savior and suddenly she saw him with different eyes and that frightened the shit out of her. And I guess that is the reason for her uncharacteristical behavior in this episode and therefore very much in character for Elena though we as viewers couldn’t yet understand why she behaved like that back in 1x20, but in hindsight it totally makes sense (remember her comment to Caroline in early s3 C: Just admit it Elena you’re attracted to him in all of his bad brother glory. E: I can’t Caroline. If I just thought about it for just a second what would that say about me?). Elena was afraid of falling in love with the “bad guy” and she also didn’t want to become like Katherine falling for both brothers. So denial and pushing Damon away was her way of reacting.

[arabian]

I see what you're saying, but that doesn't make sense because she was nice to him in all the other scenes of this episode. It was just this one that was messed up.

And in 3.14, there was a lot more going on under the surface. Great dance or not in 1.19, because of Stefan's situation, it did make sense that she was fully wrapped up in that and had put whatever happened with Damon in a box not to be opened. In 3.14.... so much more going on, she had basically been falling in love with him all season and had fallen out of love with Stefan, but didn't realize it, couldn't face it. And Stefan was finally acting more like himself so she was caught there and having Damon's feelings suddenly verbalized upset the dance they'd been doing.

There was just nothing in how they acted in this episode that showed an Elena falling for Damon yet. As she told Ric in 6.02, the dance was the first time she thought of Damon as sexy, she allowed herself to see it... but finding someone hot is a far cry from being afraid to fall in love.