100 Reviews: 81
Now that I have completely lost my momentum as far as rewatching TVD goes I’ll see what I can say about it this time.
TVD: 1x10: The Turning Point
As far as the show’s original set up of being a standard CW style small town teen drama show mixed with your Twilight style teen paranormal romance this is a pretty good standard. The thing about the show long term is it struggled to be that and have an actual grand stakes plot running through it. I like both sides, with a slight preference for the epic plot side jus for the characters it brings into play (reasonably, as opposed to Klaus trying to fit into the old style mix), but I really wish the two efforts could coexist better. When it’s all working, that’s when I love the show. This goes in a category like ‘better than I expected when I started watching the show’ or something. And it definitely is that, but for an ep called ‘The Turning Point,’ I wish there was a bit more epic shit going down.
Of course that attitude owes a lot to the fact that I don’t find Stefan/Elena getting back together to be anything special. If their relationship mattered to me then I might have actually paid more attention to their scenes than I found myself doing this time; and this is back when I don’t dislike them as a pair, I just really don’t care.
Though I do care more about them than Damon who I admit to marginally enjoying at parts in this episode but really only bother to mention because he’s tied into the tomb plot entering the picture again (not that it ever really left if I hadn’t taken several weeks to get back to watching this show, so I guess saying that ‘telling us the tomb plot is still in the picture’ would be more accurate).
I will say that while I don’t really care about Stefan/Elena goings on too much, Elena’s big speech about why she’s okay with all this stuff, tying it back to her parents’ death is very moving, and her refusal to accept the typical teen paranormal romance trope of supernatural boyfriend leaving “for her own good” was good to see (most female protagonists protest, but Elena goes the extra mile to call it bullshit), and that in this case it actually matters and makes a difference is good to see. It’s scenes like that that kept me from being all that negative about S/E for the first couple seasons.
I do think Stefan probably should have told Elena about the Katherine look alike issue (I don’t want to say doppelganger in this case since the supernatural element of being the doppelganger” isn’t even something Stefan knew at this point) by this point. Not even exactly in the desire for honesty thing. But because lately it’s been shown that Katherine and the town’s history with vampires is not a dead and buried issue, and because of *that* Elena deserved to know more about what happened with Katherine, including the look alike aspect. Also the longer it goes on the more he ought to worry about Damon spilling the beans and wouldn’t it have been better if Stefan had told her?
I feel like I should have things to say about the Logan plot, but I kind of don’t. Although as a thought, I think Logan is proof that the switch is always a dimmer of a collection of switches possibly with an override master switch to be used in case of emergency shut down. Logan by contrast, clearly feels nothing for the people he’s killed, but I would not say his full humanity is off. He still has passions and drives; he talks about his fixation on Jenna, he has a mixture of residual loyalty and bitterness when it comes to the Council, he’s definitely not operating from an emotionless place, just where certain elements of “humanity” don’t apply. And as a fresh baby vampire with no one to guide him (I seem to remember Anna turned him, though never clear how or why, and apparently gave him some instruction as far as the goal of sticking around MF, but she didn’t really coach him) it was effectively instinctual for him to work to survive, including flipping enough switch elements to handle what he has to do to survive.
Anyway, the switch never makes a ton of sense but I keep trying to make some general rules for it.
Also, I suppose one could look at Alaric killing Logan as fitting with dark-Alaric killing people who threaten Meredith, but it doesn’t work that way for me. Because I don’t think this is really about Jenna and don’t think bad-Ric’s actions were really about Meredith. Both were about the people the different sides of Ric were attacking because the personality in control considered those people acceptable targets. And it’s really hard to argue that Logan wasn’t an acceptable target, with his remorseless killing and keeping the bodies stacked up in his lair. But anyway, I’ve spent enough time dealing with how nonsensical bad-Ric’s behavior was in my s3 reviews, I don’t need to drag it into these ones too.
That feels like about all I need to say, even if am ignoring a good chunk of the characters. I have even less to say on those subjects tonight.
Next time:
We’ll see when it is first, so no saying what
Suggestion box
TVD: 1x10: The Turning Point
As far as the show’s original set up of being a standard CW style small town teen drama show mixed with your Twilight style teen paranormal romance this is a pretty good standard. The thing about the show long term is it struggled to be that and have an actual grand stakes plot running through it. I like both sides, with a slight preference for the epic plot side jus for the characters it brings into play (reasonably, as opposed to Klaus trying to fit into the old style mix), but I really wish the two efforts could coexist better. When it’s all working, that’s when I love the show. This goes in a category like ‘better than I expected when I started watching the show’ or something. And it definitely is that, but for an ep called ‘The Turning Point,’ I wish there was a bit more epic shit going down.
Of course that attitude owes a lot to the fact that I don’t find Stefan/Elena getting back together to be anything special. If their relationship mattered to me then I might have actually paid more attention to their scenes than I found myself doing this time; and this is back when I don’t dislike them as a pair, I just really don’t care.
Though I do care more about them than Damon who I admit to marginally enjoying at parts in this episode but really only bother to mention because he’s tied into the tomb plot entering the picture again (not that it ever really left if I hadn’t taken several weeks to get back to watching this show, so I guess saying that ‘telling us the tomb plot is still in the picture’ would be more accurate).
I will say that while I don’t really care about Stefan/Elena goings on too much, Elena’s big speech about why she’s okay with all this stuff, tying it back to her parents’ death is very moving, and her refusal to accept the typical teen paranormal romance trope of supernatural boyfriend leaving “for her own good” was good to see (most female protagonists protest, but Elena goes the extra mile to call it bullshit), and that in this case it actually matters and makes a difference is good to see. It’s scenes like that that kept me from being all that negative about S/E for the first couple seasons.
I do think Stefan probably should have told Elena about the Katherine look alike issue (I don’t want to say doppelganger in this case since the supernatural element of being the doppelganger” isn’t even something Stefan knew at this point) by this point. Not even exactly in the desire for honesty thing. But because lately it’s been shown that Katherine and the town’s history with vampires is not a dead and buried issue, and because of *that* Elena deserved to know more about what happened with Katherine, including the look alike aspect. Also the longer it goes on the more he ought to worry about Damon spilling the beans and wouldn’t it have been better if Stefan had told her?
I feel like I should have things to say about the Logan plot, but I kind of don’t. Although as a thought, I think Logan is proof that the switch is always a dimmer of a collection of switches possibly with an override master switch to be used in case of emergency shut down. Logan by contrast, clearly feels nothing for the people he’s killed, but I would not say his full humanity is off. He still has passions and drives; he talks about his fixation on Jenna, he has a mixture of residual loyalty and bitterness when it comes to the Council, he’s definitely not operating from an emotionless place, just where certain elements of “humanity” don’t apply. And as a fresh baby vampire with no one to guide him (I seem to remember Anna turned him, though never clear how or why, and apparently gave him some instruction as far as the goal of sticking around MF, but she didn’t really coach him) it was effectively instinctual for him to work to survive, including flipping enough switch elements to handle what he has to do to survive.
Anyway, the switch never makes a ton of sense but I keep trying to make some general rules for it.
Also, I suppose one could look at Alaric killing Logan as fitting with dark-Alaric killing people who threaten Meredith, but it doesn’t work that way for me. Because I don’t think this is really about Jenna and don’t think bad-Ric’s actions were really about Meredith. Both were about the people the different sides of Ric were attacking because the personality in control considered those people acceptable targets. And it’s really hard to argue that Logan wasn’t an acceptable target, with his remorseless killing and keeping the bodies stacked up in his lair. But anyway, I’ve spent enough time dealing with how nonsensical bad-Ric’s behavior was in my s3 reviews, I don’t need to drag it into these ones too.
That feels like about all I need to say, even if am ignoring a good chunk of the characters. I have even less to say on those subjects tonight.
Next time:
We’ll see when it is first, so no saying what
Suggestion box