TVD; or, the reaction post in which I probably disagree on some point with everyone on the internet.
Yay Vampire Diaries is back! I survived somehow!
And I actually got to watch "The New Deal" live, because now I am a person with cable, because it came free with the internet upgrade. These commercials, guys, what are these? They just keep happening like every few seconds. I don't want to see promos for The Devil Inside that often. We already have HAVE Stefan.
I have some mixed feelings on this episode, though. It did not exactly blow me away.
First off, WHERE THE FUCK IS MY QUEEN CAROLINE. This is an abomination not to be tolerated.
Things I liked:
ELENA BEING EVERYTHING AMAZING. She's making her own deals, she's teaming up with Alaric in her concern over Jeremy, she's slapping Stefan for being a dick, she's dealing with scrubbing blood off her front porch, she cares for everyone who is getting almost killed around her and she just keeps moving the fuck forward. LOVE.
Awkward Alaric cooks family dinner! Awkward family tells Jeremy "We don't want you seeing that boy anymore, he's bad news." The minute I saw Jeremy and Tyler in the woods together, I just knew a million slashers were firing up their Word documents.
Bonnie gets some stuff to do, like plotting with Stefan. Ooh, I like. I wish we could have seen a bit more of them working together and how Bonnie isn't taking shit from anyone.
Elena actually talking about how she's having a slow paranoid breakdown with all that's going on. Her balancing her developing strength with her coping with the daily fear is interesting, and something I hope we see more developed as a character arc.
JEREMY KICKING ASS AND TAKING NAMES OR AT LEAST HEADS EVEN IF HE DOES FAIL AT SHOOTING TYLER.
Damon and Stefan maturely discussing their differences. By which I mean Damon staking Stefan, Stefan complaining that he was saving Damon's ass AGAIN, Damon being sort of touched and acting like he wished Stefan would just fuck off already. Awww, brothers. I'm pretty sure you're about 155 years younger than you think you are.
Elena trading Jeremy's safety for Rebekah's by having her own dealings with Klaus, then just dropping that Rebekah's going to not be happy with Klaus when she wakes up. Klaus then being a moron and thinking that he'll just let Rebekah sleep off her anger. Dude, she's going to wake up where she left off and be pissed about you AND about you being too much of a coward to face her being alive. You've been alive and known Rebekah for a thousand years and you think THAT'S the best way to deal with any woman, let alone her? Good luck, buddy.
This sarcastic motherfucker:
Things I was not so fond of:
A DISTINCT LACK OF CAROLINE OR KATHERINE. AHEM.
Stefan doing little more than sitting around a basement going "Hey I'm a dick, I feel like making sure my revenge on Klaus... revunges." Then Damon wanting in on his plan and not telling Elena about it. SALVATORE PLANS, THEY ALWAYS WORK OUT AND OF COURSE THEY WORK BEST WITHOUT ANY OUTSIDE INPUT. I see this going well, yeah.
All Originals drama, all the time. I'm really kind of over the Originals. Klaus was the big bad of last season, and I really feel like broadening the plotlines to make sure that him and the Originals always have a place is taking up a lot of time that isn't being spent instead on deepening the characterization of the core characters. That storyline will have energy for a little while, but it's not building as much depth and foundation as previous stories have, and sooner or later you need that foundation.
Klaus... moving to Mystic Falls? IDGI.
Unclear motivations for Stefan's revenge. Okay, he's pissed at Klaus about the whole free will thing, but he did choose to take the blood to cure Damon and he knew he was saying a pretty final goodbye to the last year of his life in the process. And it seemed like in "Homecoming" Katherine was distinctly planning something that Stefan was going to do (more than "get mad" obvs) and I'd like to have seen a hint of that?
Things I was very not cool with/would like to re-write myself:
COMPELLING JEREMY. OH MY GOD DID WE LEARN NOTHING ABOUT THIS BEFORE. HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING IN GENERAL ABOUT TAKING AWAY FREE WILL. ELENA WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. I think for Jer's protection Elena could have absolutely sat down with him and said "hey I want a better life for you where you might have a chance of surviving highschool and maybe even have a chance of getting into college, plus you are a gift-wrapped hostage while you live around me" and reasoned with him, instead of forcing him. In addition, he's finally becoming an interesting person in his own right! He can shoot a crossover and he hacked the head off a werepire on his own front porch! ...why is he getting sent away?
Not only that, but family is SUCH an important theme on this show. If it wasn't, Elena's internal guilt and need to compensate for it over having been responsible for her parents picking her up the night they died, and her doppelganger self causing everyone else to die, would not make her such a nuanced and interesting person. If family weren't so important, Damon and Stefan would not always be doing crazy things to save/mutilate each other. Jenna's death wouldn't have hurt. The Originals wouldn't even be a storyline. And so killing off all of Elena's family until she's all alone with her sorta-stepdad and adoptive brother, and then sending her brother away as well? I feel like the core of the show is being eviscerated a bit.
THE DAMON/ELENA KISS. I.e., the thing the entire internet was squeeing about. I have no objections to Damon/Elena happening; obviously right now it's the better choice if she has to have a Salvatore brother. It's just that... there were no doubts as to Damon's wants and availability when it came to Elena. He put himself out there and put himself out there some more. So right now, when she is struggling with everything in her life plus the choice she just made for Jeremy, Damon steps forward to kiss her? I'm not entirely fond of that.
I would have preferred it a lot more if maybe they'd sat on the front steps and had a little chat about who Elena is becoming, how she feels about compelling Jeremy again. If she had said something to Damon like "It's just us, now. I've let Stefan go because he's never coming back. I've let Jeremy go so I can save his life. And now it's just me and you, because I've started doing all the things you would do," and then leaned over to kiss him, as her own step forward, I feel like that would have been a better character move. Elena having the strength to move on with someone else, and believing that she has the autonomy around Damon that she can make the choice to show she loves him too, would have done a lot more for me than Oh look it's Damon being impulsive again.
Otherwise... I'm just underwhelmed at the moment. I feel like there's a lot of plot going on and one of my favorite things about this show has always been that brilliant character moments were not sacrificed for plot LIKE ON CERTAIN OTHER SHOWS. And right now, maybe it's just a lot of setup to get moving again, but I want my character moments back. I want Elena and Caroline and Bonnie to be having fun together. I want to see the Council utilized in a bit more of a complicated way, now that half the people on it have secrets and relationships they're protecting with supernaturals. I want some flashbacks to before the show, when the girls and Matt were all best friends- who were they then, and how far have they come? I want Elena to have brutally honest conversations assessing the person she's becoming with people she hasn't had those conversations yet (everyone but Damon, I think, which is hardly a healthy way to examine one's personal developments).
Tiny detail, but I'm curious about where the failures of Ric's ring and the introduction of Dr. Fell is going to come in. Kris said the actress playing Dr. Fell is contracted for the rest of the season, so we should be seeing more of her; Fells always seem to be bad news, don't they though? We'll see.
Also curious about the themes of self-control invoked earlier- Bill Forbes and his inability to be compelled, the obvious parallels of what Bill was trying to train Caroline to do with the blood treatment Lexi and Elena were carrying out on Stefan (in the exact same chair with the same basic tactics.) Mikhail, too, clearly trained himself to only drink vampire blood. So this seems to be recurring, and I'm wondering where it will end up.
Alright everyone, come disagree with me! :P
And I actually got to watch "The New Deal" live, because now I am a person with cable, because it came free with the internet upgrade. These commercials, guys, what are these? They just keep happening like every few seconds. I don't want to see promos for The Devil Inside that often. We already have HAVE Stefan.
I have some mixed feelings on this episode, though. It did not exactly blow me away.
First off, WHERE THE FUCK IS MY QUEEN CAROLINE. This is an abomination not to be tolerated.
Things I liked:
ELENA BEING EVERYTHING AMAZING. She's making her own deals, she's teaming up with Alaric in her concern over Jeremy, she's slapping Stefan for being a dick, she's dealing with scrubbing blood off her front porch, she cares for everyone who is getting almost killed around her and she just keeps moving the fuck forward. LOVE.
Awkward Alaric cooks family dinner! Awkward family tells Jeremy "We don't want you seeing that boy anymore, he's bad news." The minute I saw Jeremy and Tyler in the woods together, I just knew a million slashers were firing up their Word documents.
Bonnie gets some stuff to do, like plotting with Stefan. Ooh, I like. I wish we could have seen a bit more of them working together and how Bonnie isn't taking shit from anyone.
Elena actually talking about how she's having a slow paranoid breakdown with all that's going on. Her balancing her developing strength with her coping with the daily fear is interesting, and something I hope we see more developed as a character arc.
JEREMY KICKING ASS AND TAKING NAMES OR AT LEAST HEADS EVEN IF HE DOES FAIL AT SHOOTING TYLER.
Damon and Stefan maturely discussing their differences. By which I mean Damon staking Stefan, Stefan complaining that he was saving Damon's ass AGAIN, Damon being sort of touched and acting like he wished Stefan would just fuck off already. Awww, brothers. I'm pretty sure you're about 155 years younger than you think you are.
Elena trading Jeremy's safety for Rebekah's by having her own dealings with Klaus, then just dropping that Rebekah's going to not be happy with Klaus when she wakes up. Klaus then being a moron and thinking that he'll just let Rebekah sleep off her anger. Dude, she's going to wake up where she left off and be pissed about you AND about you being too much of a coward to face her being alive. You've been alive and known Rebekah for a thousand years and you think THAT'S the best way to deal with any woman, let alone her? Good luck, buddy.
This sarcastic motherfucker:
Things I was not so fond of:
A DISTINCT LACK OF CAROLINE OR KATHERINE. AHEM.
Stefan doing little more than sitting around a basement going "Hey I'm a dick, I feel like making sure my revenge on Klaus... revunges." Then Damon wanting in on his plan and not telling Elena about it. SALVATORE PLANS, THEY ALWAYS WORK OUT AND OF COURSE THEY WORK BEST WITHOUT ANY OUTSIDE INPUT. I see this going well, yeah.
All Originals drama, all the time. I'm really kind of over the Originals. Klaus was the big bad of last season, and I really feel like broadening the plotlines to make sure that him and the Originals always have a place is taking up a lot of time that isn't being spent instead on deepening the characterization of the core characters. That storyline will have energy for a little while, but it's not building as much depth and foundation as previous stories have, and sooner or later you need that foundation.
Klaus... moving to Mystic Falls? IDGI.
Unclear motivations for Stefan's revenge. Okay, he's pissed at Klaus about the whole free will thing, but he did choose to take the blood to cure Damon and he knew he was saying a pretty final goodbye to the last year of his life in the process. And it seemed like in "Homecoming" Katherine was distinctly planning something that Stefan was going to do (more than "get mad" obvs) and I'd like to have seen a hint of that?
Things I was very not cool with/would like to re-write myself:
COMPELLING JEREMY. OH MY GOD DID WE LEARN NOTHING ABOUT THIS BEFORE. HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING IN GENERAL ABOUT TAKING AWAY FREE WILL. ELENA WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. I think for Jer's protection Elena could have absolutely sat down with him and said "hey I want a better life for you where you might have a chance of surviving highschool and maybe even have a chance of getting into college, plus you are a gift-wrapped hostage while you live around me" and reasoned with him, instead of forcing him. In addition, he's finally becoming an interesting person in his own right! He can shoot a crossover and he hacked the head off a werepire on his own front porch! ...why is he getting sent away?
Not only that, but family is SUCH an important theme on this show. If it wasn't, Elena's internal guilt and need to compensate for it over having been responsible for her parents picking her up the night they died, and her doppelganger self causing everyone else to die, would not make her such a nuanced and interesting person. If family weren't so important, Damon and Stefan would not always be doing crazy things to save/mutilate each other. Jenna's death wouldn't have hurt. The Originals wouldn't even be a storyline. And so killing off all of Elena's family until she's all alone with her sorta-stepdad and adoptive brother, and then sending her brother away as well? I feel like the core of the show is being eviscerated a bit.
THE DAMON/ELENA KISS. I.e., the thing the entire internet was squeeing about. I have no objections to Damon/Elena happening; obviously right now it's the better choice if she has to have a Salvatore brother. It's just that... there were no doubts as to Damon's wants and availability when it came to Elena. He put himself out there and put himself out there some more. So right now, when she is struggling with everything in her life plus the choice she just made for Jeremy, Damon steps forward to kiss her? I'm not entirely fond of that.
I would have preferred it a lot more if maybe they'd sat on the front steps and had a little chat about who Elena is becoming, how she feels about compelling Jeremy again. If she had said something to Damon like "It's just us, now. I've let Stefan go because he's never coming back. I've let Jeremy go so I can save his life. And now it's just me and you, because I've started doing all the things you would do," and then leaned over to kiss him, as her own step forward, I feel like that would have been a better character move. Elena having the strength to move on with someone else, and believing that she has the autonomy around Damon that she can make the choice to show she loves him too, would have done a lot more for me than Oh look it's Damon being impulsive again.
Otherwise... I'm just underwhelmed at the moment. I feel like there's a lot of plot going on and one of my favorite things about this show has always been that brilliant character moments were not sacrificed for plot LIKE ON CERTAIN OTHER SHOWS. And right now, maybe it's just a lot of setup to get moving again, but I want my character moments back. I want Elena and Caroline and Bonnie to be having fun together. I want to see the Council utilized in a bit more of a complicated way, now that half the people on it have secrets and relationships they're protecting with supernaturals. I want some flashbacks to before the show, when the girls and Matt were all best friends- who were they then, and how far have they come? I want Elena to have brutally honest conversations assessing the person she's becoming with people she hasn't had those conversations yet (everyone but Damon, I think, which is hardly a healthy way to examine one's personal developments).
Tiny detail, but I'm curious about where the failures of Ric's ring and the introduction of Dr. Fell is going to come in. Kris said the actress playing Dr. Fell is contracted for the rest of the season, so we should be seeing more of her; Fells always seem to be bad news, don't they though? We'll see.
Also curious about the themes of self-control invoked earlier- Bill Forbes and his inability to be compelled, the obvious parallels of what Bill was trying to train Caroline to do with the blood treatment Lexi and Elena were carrying out on Stefan (in the exact same chair with the same basic tactics.) Mikhail, too, clearly trained himself to only drink vampire blood. So this seems to be recurring, and I'm wondering where it will end up.
Alright everyone, come disagree with me! :P