I'm still all feelings and no brain when it comes to this episode, so I should probably have held off on writing this until after the Perspective Fairy came to bop me on the head, but I do stupid things sometimes. Also, it is Saturday and the other thing I have to do today is cleaning my house so the people coming over tomorrow for Oscar Party fun-times do not report me to the authorities for gross laundry negligence. I can never go back to that jail, guys. It will break me.
Anyway. There is this show that I watch and it kind of loves me, but only shows it by being mean, and will only hug me after I stumble out of the woods all brainwashed. Our love. *single tear*
So I think this episode is perfect. I really do. Even the sire-bondy parts. I don't know if I am just too loosey goosey with my fictional principles, but I have made my peace with it, no matter how it turns out. Obviously, I wish it were more clearly defined--for example, if they could directly explain it
like so, that would be nice. But I have decided to be okay with it as long as it continues to be wielded as this big, horrible non-romantic thing that, whenever invoked, even for good(ish) reason, blows up in everybody's face. Because I'm pretty sure that's what this no-humanity, agency-crippled Elena thing is going to do. Just like compelling Jeremy (sob) to forget Vicki did so long ago. It makes for a rocky story paved with the ghosts of good intentions, and fine. You got me. I am okay with that, and it's not going to prevent me from enjoying the show any longer. Also, while this show does make it's own story THANK GOD, it makes its own story around key points from the book series, and the vampire bond between Damon and Elena was a big point in the source material, only in a way that involved Vampire!Amnesia and Elena trying to kill Stefan for some reason. Okay, yes, there is a deep dark part of me called Morticia that would really like to see the latter, yes, but only in my crack dreams. Not for realsies. Okay, kind of. NO NOT FOR REALSIES, shut up.
What I am saying is that it could have been a lot worse.
OH LOOK I FOUND A LIST OF THINGS ABOUT THIS EPISODE THAT I LOVED.
--Here are the parts where I cried. When Matt came in and saw Jeremy's body. When Elena collapsed to the floor and said that she couldn't calm down. When Elena's stupid sneakers burned all up in the fire. When I was on tumblr later and saw a gif of Elena's stupid sneakers burning up in the fire. There's this thing that I've found with losing someone, where it gets harder and harder to remember them as them, and so the objects that defined them in life come to represent them in a way that they can no longer represent themselves, and you can think of a happy time spent with them and not cry but then be totally humbled when you find one of their favorite books on your shelf and it hits you that they used to use this thing and now they can't. This script was so fucking smart about that, and I loved how Elena goes right for screaming about how she doesn't want these drawings or this stupid Xbox, because she knows, guys. She's lived with these people-objects for her parents, for Jenna, for Alaric, for so long, and she's done. She can't go through that again. Elena Gilbert is not going to go through that again, she is going to burn it all up. It's reckless, and she makes the decision in the middle of losing it, but it's also kind of ... empowering in a way. Kind of proud of her for it, honestly.
--Speaking of that whole breakdown speech. THAT WHOLE BREAKDOWN SPEECH. So many brilliant bits and pieces, especially "Does that make me a bad person? I don't know anymore" after she admits that she's not willing to sacrifice the people to bring back every single supernatural creature who is still loitering in the in-between, even if it means seeing Jeremy and Alaric again. The thing that is wonderful about this is that I think her decision not to in a traditional ethical sense makes her a "good" person for not wanting to risk wreaking havoc for her own comfort. But Elena frames it as "Does that make me a bad person?" She really doesn't know. Her entire good/bad dichotomy has been upended, and who knows when she's going to have time to sift through the ashes and piece it back together.
--I also can't get over the "What are we supposed to do with the body, Caroline? There's no room in the Gilbert family plot. John and Jenna took the last spots." UGHHHHHHHH. I can't even tell you what this does to me that eighteen-year-old Elena Gilbert has to know things like how many spots are left in her family plot. There's something killing in the fact that they used one of those spots for Jenna (who was ... not really a Gilbert, right?) and what must look like extreme naivete to Elena now for not thinking that they ever might have to use one for teenage Jeremy. UGHHHHHHHH.
--I love both of the Salvatores in this episode, not because they were great, but because they were exactly the opposite--both were exposed to as flawed emotional doofuses. I spend far too much time on tumblr reading (and okay, reacting) to shipper arguments, which is silly, because deep down I believe that your feelings about "who is better for Elena" really come down to your own philosophies about love and the kind of relationship that you, yourself, want (or want fiction to give you). Obviously, both of these relationships are highly problematic (and my main problem with S/E comes when they don't present that as equally problematic to D/E) but I do think that they work extremely well as symbols of two very different mindsets, which is why the fighting is so stupid. NO ONE IS WRONG. Especially now, when if I were asked to find a cartoon to best represent the brothers' relationship race, it would be:
Although then I suppose you fight about who is the turtle taking a siesta. #foreveratwar
But I loved this episode because it wasn't about who was ~better for Elena, because honestly, neither one of them was all that great. The focus was entirely on how they reacted to Elena's grief, and personally, I think both of them dropped the ball, big time. Both in understandable and very human ways, yes, but overall, I think all we saw was the failure of two emotional doofuses to comfort to the woman they love, and they did it in ways that were very true to their character.
Take Stefan. He's good at being a quiet, constant presence in times like these, and he wears all of the right facial expressions and a jacket with a fluffy cushy collar in case you need a shoulder to cry on. He will do whatever you ask, and he won't tell you what you probably need to hear, and when you finally do hear it, he'll try to keep you from doing anything crazy that you might regret later. But I thought it was interesting that he was so hesitant to touch or engage with Elena through any of this, and I think that's because he felt like it was no longer his "role" because he is just a "friend" and Damon is ... whatever Damon is to Elena now. And I'm not saying that as a dig to Stefan, I'm honestly not, because weirdly I do think a part of him is trying to respect his brother's new relationship with Elena even as he repeatedly undermines it by continuing to refer to it as just the sire bond. For what it's worth, I think (and hope) that's his denial that I think is going to come crashing down soon whether he's braced for impact or not.
But in this particular instance, I think he really effed up. Because honestly, who cares about roles any more? If Stefan got down on the floor with Elena and hugged her, tried to hold her, I don't think Damon would care, AT ALL, because it is not about who is giving Elena comfort it is about that she is getting it. If the roles were reversed and Stefan was still wearing the quasi-boyfriend hat, I think he would be a bit miffed because I do not care what anyone says. Stefan is not a wunderkind of *selflessness.* He's just highly desirous of that ideal and really good at framing his own desires as such, something that I think the show is finally making him acknowledge in very smart ways, like with the admission that he desires the cure even if he and Elena aren't together. Honestly, the only time during this whole thing that I gave him my patented Stefan side-eye was when he was rattling off to Meredith about how after 200 years it has never gotten easier to accept someone's death, with just felt ... forced considering that I don't think we got any indication that Stefan was sad about Jeremy because of Jeremy. He was sad for Elena, yes, obviously, but he always pushes the envelope.
And then there's Damon, who has never been confronted with the possibility that he might be numero uno when it comes to helping someone through their grief. He is the person in the background who gets things done. He cleans the blood off your floor. He finds your best friend. He fixes everything around the main problem so the real numero uno can focus on their job better. Because there is no way in hell that Damon thinks that his presence in times of grief could even provide the smallest of comforts. And I think he is wrong, and as much as I think he was right about Bonnie--someone needed to bring her back, and Elena did need her whole network of friends if she were to have any chance to make it through this--it didn't need to be Damon who did it. He was terrified to go back, because Damon has no fucking idea what is expected of him in this situation, not to mention any idea of how to live up to those expectations.
For the record, even if Damon had gone back with Elena and Stefan had been left on the island to do clean-up, I think that Elena shutting off her humanity would have still been the end result, although I think a solid argument could be made that perhaps Elena would have done it herself. But I think Damon jumped the gun in going there so quickly because of his own feelings of helplessness and his own insecurities--helpfully fed and encouraged by every single stupid character on the show, mind you. He took an easy way out, and it was an easy way out that probably shouldn't have been taken so lightly and will likely (and fittingly) have giant ramifications.
In conclusion, I think both brothers screwed the pooch on this one. And I like that, because I'm pretty sure that 99% of us are highly fallible in the face of that magnitude of grief.
---In happier news, the Damon/Rebekah interaction lit up my tired soul, especially Damon's "You're kind of creepy" after she outlined the torture that she had in mind for Vaughn. I read a recap that described them as bad cop/worse cop AND I NEED MORE OF THAT IN MY LIFE. Please.
--In sadder news, poor Rebekah being left alone on the island to wander around until she could provide a "da-dum!" plot moment. I know she snapped Stefan's neck and Damon had other fish to fry but ...dayum.
---This episode was really good about giving Caroline and Matt their own time to shine when it came to dealing with Jeremy's loss. I loved Caroline sneaking away to give voice mail updates to a non-responsive Tyler. She's still smarting from the break-up and needs someone to support her, but it pales to what Elena's going through so it has to be in the spare bedrooms and outside and ugh. There was something really right about that, and respectful of the fact that these supporting characters have their own lives going on in the background. We don't always get that, and I truly hope Julie Plec is going:
--I also get a star for calling that Vaughn was working with Katherine. It can go next to the one I gave myself for drinking three cups of coffee this morning. We have small goals.
--It was refreshing to have an episode without Klaus trolling all over everything. There, I said it.
Basically, pretty sure the next few episodes are going to tear my heart into tiny pieces. I am reminding myself that the 3x16-3x19 stretch last year was the one where I got so discouraged and felt like a mopey dragon who dropped his ice cream popsicle, but then I ended it feeling okay and I didn't die and I even accomplished like, maybe one thing in my life. So there.