Actual episode post about "Our Town". WHICH STILL IS FLAWLESS.
I woke up out of a dead sleep sometime last night and went OMG PAUL WESLEY LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE STEFAN SALVATORE and freaked myself out for a minute before remembering... that's an idiotic thought to have even at 2am, and I went back to sleep.
I think somewhere along the way this recap turned into a giant Caroline and Elena meta. OOPS.
Also this ep gets all the awards for Nina Dobrev's face. OH WAIT HER FACE JUST DID GET AN AWARD.
First off: I'm grateful this episode was kind of plot-lite. Which I guess means by default All Originals Drama All The Time--lite, sorry to everyone who loves the Originals, I just like my Mystic Falls bbs more. But I feel like everything has been stretched kind of thin in recent episodes (even before the episodes) which is just what happens when you have an ensemble cast and 42 minutes of episode to work with, it's simply logistics. However, the rest and pause for everyone to sit down and reflect on where they are, and what's more, have a turning point of sorts, was absolutely a delight.
I loved how Caroline and Elena's journeys were paralleled in this episode. It was time, certainly, for Caroline to take a step forward and accept that she is not a seventeen-year-old girl with her life ahead of her. She does not get to become another year older, and another year after that; it was never her choice and she's been working as hard as she can to pretend that nothing has changed- she's still in high school, she still has boyfriends, she still plans the best parties, she's still Liz's daughter. And now she's reached a point where she can't run from it anymore: she was murdered, and she died alone, and now she has a new existence and identity that she has not yet accepted or fully dealt with.
But she's not alone. Elena, who has spent the last two and a half seasons being strong and moving forward, has been telling everyone she's fine, even when she doesn't believe that. She covers up her wounds. She tries to keep being that high school girl who goes to parties and has fun, and it works, even as more and more responsibility falls on her shoulders- and more guilt when the girl she was, and is in some ways still trying to be, can't bear that weight. She takes the blame for all the doppelganger-related deaths. She tries to parent Jeremy, and when she can't protect him, she finds herself helpless not to make a choice that is utterly repellent to her- to compel him away. She doesn't know who she is becoming, and clings to the tiny pieces that are left of who she used to be.
So for Caroline, instead of a birthday, they have a funeral. Before the vampires, before the death, before Vicki turned and Bonnie was a witch and Caroline became a vampire and Elena found out who she was, there were three girls who were best friends, and
Elena's best guy friend who became her boyfriend eventually. Just the four of them, who had shared their entire lives at the beginning, returning to say goodbye to those lives and drink a toast to what has been. Farewells are important; they give permission for the living to move forward. I like how rthstewart does a farewell ceremony in her Narnia fic- something along the lines of have a fire, a drink, and saying "Do not let our grief keep you from your journey home." That happened here, and they let old Caroline go, to have her place, of who she was- Miss Mystic Falls, third-grade hopscotch champion. They let old Caroline go home, so that this new Caroline could live.
For anyone who's ever read any of my fic, you know how much I like circles, and endings that end with beginnings.
Of course, the next thing that happens after Caroline releases her old life is she is practically killed- by the boyfriend who was part of her life spent not wholly accepting who she is now, the one who left her with the present of a girl's charm bracelet that morning. But Klaus shows up, and doesn't tell her the beauty of human life, which was the only thing she had been living with, but the beauty of vampire life. He tells her she could die, having completed her human life in a human world that no longer has room for her, or she could embrace her new, permanent life. She accepts it, and drinks his blood, beginning a new chapter in her life. It's a death and rebirth, and the one that she didn't get when she became a vampire. Klaus leaves her with a bracelet, too- a sophisticated woman's diamond bracelet, the symbol of a world far bigger than the town of Mystic Falls, and of a man who knows how to show it to her.
(For the record, I'm not madly shipping Klaus/Caroline yet. BUT IT COULD HAPPEN.)
The surprise with this episode is that Elena has a similar journey to Caroline's to make. She has been holding onto her past and beating the shit out of the punching bag of The Girl Who Dates The Good Guy. She can't hold on anymore, and she can't let go, either. She's stuck in a kind of unaccepting limbo, like Caroline.
And then Stefan grabs her and drives her to (she believes) her death at the place where Old Elena died a year ago. He forces his blood on her, creating a possible future life for her, one that she doesn't want, one that she could easily accept but that she knows would be death to her. She rejects it, and when Stefan doesn't drive her off the bridge, she rejects him and is left alone on Old Wickery Bridge. While he said goodbye to his life with her when he went away with Klaus, she has had to say goodbye to him, and her idea of him and what he was to her life, by degrees.
So she, too, needs a proper funeral and farewell to who she was, and Matt, the best friend and boyfriend who was there when Old Elena died, who purposefully stayed out of the supernatural world when all his friends joined it, helps her to release her old life. To say that it is okay that that girl is gone, to toss flowers on her resting place, to mourn her, and to move on. Matt was a particularly good measuring stick to show how far Elena has gone from the girl he once went out with. And after dying twice on this bridge, Elena can finally let herself walk on, and grow in a different direction than she would have once allowed herself. Maybe one day that will be with Damon, but that is only a part of who she is becoming and who this woman, no longer the girl with the family, is and will be.
And thus, it all comes back to the start, for a new story cycle.
BUT OTHER THINGS HAPPENED IN THIS EP TOO, DIDN'T THEY?
That was sad, with Tyler having to accept that he has no control over himself and being with the woman he loves. (Although on a sheerly personal level I'm glad she's not dating Tyler anymore. As I've said before, I've known too many Tylers to have patience with the breed, especially when they're from an influential family, something questionable in their past has been neatly covered up, irritating personality, and then they just go to college on their rich parents' dime and play beer pong for four years and magically get a job because of connections. How are there so many of these people. Is this a Southern son-of-rich-family thing?)
I think Klaus is trying to make Mystic Falls his own -possibly another reference to the title Our Town- by building a house there; he's currying favor with the mayor, and when he doesn't get it automatically with the sheriff as well, his own designs lead him to be her daughter's savior. Nicely political move, that. If Klaus can get his hybrids under control and donate money to the town, if I were mayor, I'd be choosing Team Klaus too, if only for the sake of still having a voting population by the time elections roll around. Team Salvatore is crazycakes and when it comes to collateral damage, it's DAMON who has a small list of people he cares about with regard to it. That's when you know things are dire. I can see the Council slowly turning against anybody who is Team Salvatore, and I think that might be where we're headed. Mystic Falls civil war!
SO GLAD the compelling Jeremy thing wasn't just glossed over. I want Elena to be conflicted about it, and I'm glad that Bonnie, who is so often the moral voice around here, called her out on it. I don't think this is really the end of that issue, either, which promises interesting developments, but it's also worth noting that when Bonnie came to say goodbye to Jeremy, she didn't mention him being compelled, making her now complicit in it as well. She understands the reasons, and she's grieved by the necessity, but she too is accepting it, at the cost of her own conscience.
Alaric and Meredith Fell. I feel like she's very Standard Love Interest and I'm not interested at all in their relationship. Ric, go back to hanging out with Elena! Fells die quickly, don't you know? I guess on one hand it's a relief he doesn't have to go through My Secret Vampire Hunter Life drama with another person, though, that would be boring to see angsting over again.
Okay now I am an hour late to help my friends move. Must dash. Ack.
I think somewhere along the way this recap turned into a giant Caroline and Elena meta. OOPS.
Also this ep gets all the awards for Nina Dobrev's face. OH WAIT HER FACE JUST DID GET AN AWARD.
First off: I'm grateful this episode was kind of plot-lite. Which I guess means by default All Originals Drama All The Time--lite, sorry to everyone who loves the Originals, I just like my Mystic Falls bbs more. But I feel like everything has been stretched kind of thin in recent episodes (even before the episodes) which is just what happens when you have an ensemble cast and 42 minutes of episode to work with, it's simply logistics. However, the rest and pause for everyone to sit down and reflect on where they are, and what's more, have a turning point of sorts, was absolutely a delight.
I loved how Caroline and Elena's journeys were paralleled in this episode. It was time, certainly, for Caroline to take a step forward and accept that she is not a seventeen-year-old girl with her life ahead of her. She does not get to become another year older, and another year after that; it was never her choice and she's been working as hard as she can to pretend that nothing has changed- she's still in high school, she still has boyfriends, she still plans the best parties, she's still Liz's daughter. And now she's reached a point where she can't run from it anymore: she was murdered, and she died alone, and now she has a new existence and identity that she has not yet accepted or fully dealt with.
But she's not alone. Elena, who has spent the last two and a half seasons being strong and moving forward, has been telling everyone she's fine, even when she doesn't believe that. She covers up her wounds. She tries to keep being that high school girl who goes to parties and has fun, and it works, even as more and more responsibility falls on her shoulders- and more guilt when the girl she was, and is in some ways still trying to be, can't bear that weight. She takes the blame for all the doppelganger-related deaths. She tries to parent Jeremy, and when she can't protect him, she finds herself helpless not to make a choice that is utterly repellent to her- to compel him away. She doesn't know who she is becoming, and clings to the tiny pieces that are left of who she used to be.
So for Caroline, instead of a birthday, they have a funeral. Before the vampires, before the death, before Vicki turned and Bonnie was a witch and Caroline became a vampire and Elena found out who she was, there were three girls who were best friends, and
Elena's best guy friend who became her boyfriend eventually. Just the four of them, who had shared their entire lives at the beginning, returning to say goodbye to those lives and drink a toast to what has been. Farewells are important; they give permission for the living to move forward. I like how rthstewart does a farewell ceremony in her Narnia fic- something along the lines of have a fire, a drink, and saying "Do not let our grief keep you from your journey home." That happened here, and they let old Caroline go, to have her place, of who she was- Miss Mystic Falls, third-grade hopscotch champion. They let old Caroline go home, so that this new Caroline could live.
For anyone who's ever read any of my fic, you know how much I like circles, and endings that end with beginnings.
Of course, the next thing that happens after Caroline releases her old life is she is practically killed- by the boyfriend who was part of her life spent not wholly accepting who she is now, the one who left her with the present of a girl's charm bracelet that morning. But Klaus shows up, and doesn't tell her the beauty of human life, which was the only thing she had been living with, but the beauty of vampire life. He tells her she could die, having completed her human life in a human world that no longer has room for her, or she could embrace her new, permanent life. She accepts it, and drinks his blood, beginning a new chapter in her life. It's a death and rebirth, and the one that she didn't get when she became a vampire. Klaus leaves her with a bracelet, too- a sophisticated woman's diamond bracelet, the symbol of a world far bigger than the town of Mystic Falls, and of a man who knows how to show it to her.
(For the record, I'm not madly shipping Klaus/Caroline yet. BUT IT COULD HAPPEN.)
The surprise with this episode is that Elena has a similar journey to Caroline's to make. She has been holding onto her past and beating the shit out of the punching bag of The Girl Who Dates The Good Guy. She can't hold on anymore, and she can't let go, either. She's stuck in a kind of unaccepting limbo, like Caroline.
And then Stefan grabs her and drives her to (she believes) her death at the place where Old Elena died a year ago. He forces his blood on her, creating a possible future life for her, one that she doesn't want, one that she could easily accept but that she knows would be death to her. She rejects it, and when Stefan doesn't drive her off the bridge, she rejects him and is left alone on Old Wickery Bridge. While he said goodbye to his life with her when he went away with Klaus, she has had to say goodbye to him, and her idea of him and what he was to her life, by degrees.
So she, too, needs a proper funeral and farewell to who she was, and Matt, the best friend and boyfriend who was there when Old Elena died, who purposefully stayed out of the supernatural world when all his friends joined it, helps her to release her old life. To say that it is okay that that girl is gone, to toss flowers on her resting place, to mourn her, and to move on. Matt was a particularly good measuring stick to show how far Elena has gone from the girl he once went out with. And after dying twice on this bridge, Elena can finally let herself walk on, and grow in a different direction than she would have once allowed herself. Maybe one day that will be with Damon, but that is only a part of who she is becoming and who this woman, no longer the girl with the family, is and will be.
And thus, it all comes back to the start, for a new story cycle.
BUT OTHER THINGS HAPPENED IN THIS EP TOO, DIDN'T THEY?
That was sad, with Tyler having to accept that he has no control over himself and being with the woman he loves. (Although on a sheerly personal level I'm glad she's not dating Tyler anymore. As I've said before, I've known too many Tylers to have patience with the breed, especially when they're from an influential family, something questionable in their past has been neatly covered up, irritating personality, and then they just go to college on their rich parents' dime and play beer pong for four years and magically get a job because of connections. How are there so many of these people. Is this a Southern son-of-rich-family thing?)
I think Klaus is trying to make Mystic Falls his own -possibly another reference to the title Our Town- by building a house there; he's currying favor with the mayor, and when he doesn't get it automatically with the sheriff as well, his own designs lead him to be her daughter's savior. Nicely political move, that. If Klaus can get his hybrids under control and donate money to the town, if I were mayor, I'd be choosing Team Klaus too, if only for the sake of still having a voting population by the time elections roll around. Team Salvatore is crazycakes and when it comes to collateral damage, it's DAMON who has a small list of people he cares about with regard to it. That's when you know things are dire. I can see the Council slowly turning against anybody who is Team Salvatore, and I think that might be where we're headed. Mystic Falls civil war!
SO GLAD the compelling Jeremy thing wasn't just glossed over. I want Elena to be conflicted about it, and I'm glad that Bonnie, who is so often the moral voice around here, called her out on it. I don't think this is really the end of that issue, either, which promises interesting developments, but it's also worth noting that when Bonnie came to say goodbye to Jeremy, she didn't mention him being compelled, making her now complicit in it as well. She understands the reasons, and she's grieved by the necessity, but she too is accepting it, at the cost of her own conscience.
Alaric and Meredith Fell. I feel like she's very Standard Love Interest and I'm not interested at all in their relationship. Ric, go back to hanging out with Elena! Fells die quickly, don't you know? I guess on one hand it's a relief he doesn't have to go through My Secret Vampire Hunter Life drama with another person, though, that would be boring to see angsting over again.
Okay now I am an hour late to help my friends move. Must dash. Ack.