tvd 3x07
I caved way early this week, I could not even wait.
So I loved this episode. It’s all about recognizing the past for what it is and dealing with it, and I love the way it was played up in every storyline as well as the framing device. Anna calls out the bizarreness of the honor granted to the “Founding Families”: history is not the same as heredity. Knowledge doesn’t actually get passed down genetically, and simply showing X character every week doesn’t really count as moving their storylines forward. We didn’t need Rebekah or Tyler or Katherine this week, because their issues are either outside of our time frame or still ongoing. Giving these characters the chance to unload some of their baggage before we get a big Originals arc is nice; the pace the show moves at means there’s usually a lot left unresolved.
I was stoked to see Uncle Mason generally, but then the fact that he was EXPLICITLY there to do something I had thought I was maybe reading into the metaphor with my optimistic, overactive imagination made me a lot more confident in where the whole thing is going generally. As much as I usually hate the r-word (POST-CATHOLICISM ISSUES, ASK ME HOW), I can’t help myself, I love Mason's story here. He’s there to help break the cycle for Tyler, because Tyler’s the one who’s got a chance. And that does make Mason’s fucked-up life worth something outside of itself.
On top of his own closure, Mason was the perfect choice for Damon’s ghost for a lot of Damon-based reasons. The excruciating torture-and-killing of Mason was one of the first markers of Damon’s S2 spiral - he was drunk and in shock when he killed Jeremy, and Rose and her death affected him the way they did because he was so very needy (even by his standards, PFFT) when she showed up. He went after Mason, involving the whole gang in the process, and explicitly identified with the guy before ripping his heart out. Mason agrees with that assessment - Mason’s own trust issues were an important part of his actions when he showed up, and so he’s the perfect one to drag them out of Damon.
AND GAH, HIS NON-APOLOGY APOLOGIES. They’re so perfect for him. It’s not, exactly, a question of being incapable of remorse, because he has apologized for stuff several times. But an apology…centers on one thing? It’s external and event-specific. And what Damon needs to do more than anything is stop externalizing. In a way, what he says is a lot more difficult, because “I do a lot of things I don’t have to do” is an admission of a pattern, of a flaw in him, rather than one thing he did. There’s no fixing the trail of bodies he’s left in his time, but if he acknowledges this, it means he’s accountable for stopping.
CONTINUE BEING PERFECT, ALARIC. You think you have dead vampire issues, Jeremy? COME AT ME, BRO. But he doesn’t get haunted, because Isobel and Jenna are at peace, and he’s at peace with them. His issue from the past is Damon, who is still around and can, maybe, change. It’s so nice when the narrative is on board with your ship, right?
So…I actually teared up a little for Anna and Pearl at the end there. And oh, God, that was her whole thing, that she doesn’t want to be alone. Ultimately, Jeremy’s whole thing this season has been as a prop in Anna’s story, rather than the other way around, which is a neat inversion of the fridging.
And AAAAH, SHEILA, MY LADY. So awesome to see her again! Appropriate that she finds closure here, getting rid of Frederick’s thugs, when she died with the spell that let all the tomb vampires out. I love how fucking regal she is. And this is so important for Bonnie, because she’s not just getting closure on what she did for Jeremy, but also on her whole path to magic in the first place. Grams died because Bonnie insisted on doing the spell to let out Stefan and Damon, and that has played into all of her conflict thus far.
I also love that I was (and remain) really unsure of whether Lexi was to be trusted. Her advice to Elena - You have to shut yourself off from your emotions - and her willingness to force Stefan into shit (physically and psychologically) was very much a mirror of his whole Klaus storyline. I wouldn’t have thought to put Lexi on the list of that same relationship he’s replaying over and over, but maybe she does belong. That this relationship did make him happy and wasn’t entirely bad but apparently wasn’t entirely good either at least allows for ambiguous-Stefan to still be on the table, I think.
I’m surprisingly meh on the Stefan storyline, which is odd given how into it I’ve been thus far this season. I liked having Lexi back, but I don’t get what she…did, exactly? Because that’s a step beyond compulsion - compulsion doesn’t seem to be able to add to people’s perspective on reality. I feel like it could be, or at least the door is still open to, Stefan imagined it because his addiction is entirely psychological, rather than being a chemical kind of thing. He flips out and goes as far as he can as a coping mechanism. I don’t want to feel anything! She knows him well, she knows exactly what he wants to hear.
I loved, too, that Elena and Bonnie were both forced to look at the way they prioritize the people they love over everyone else. Elena was really conflicted there over - was she really going to put Saving Stefan over THE BALANCE OF NATURE? It’d have been one thing if he was still roaming free, where at least she could justify that she was protecting future victims; here, he’s incapacitated, it would really be about her relationship with him. And there was a time when she’d have preferred to wait. But now she has other things to do.
The way Stefan is Elena’s ghost - the way this was paralleled with the unhealthiness of Jeremy/Anna, and that SHE RECOGNIZED IT - that does more to sell me on that story than any amount of schmoop. I think that goes a long way toward confirming that the dysfunction there is intentional and acknowledged. I love you/I’m sorry, Stefan, I don’t believe you. The spell is broken.
So I loved this episode. It’s all about recognizing the past for what it is and dealing with it, and I love the way it was played up in every storyline as well as the framing device. Anna calls out the bizarreness of the honor granted to the “Founding Families”: history is not the same as heredity. Knowledge doesn’t actually get passed down genetically, and simply showing X character every week doesn’t really count as moving their storylines forward. We didn’t need Rebekah or Tyler or Katherine this week, because their issues are either outside of our time frame or still ongoing. Giving these characters the chance to unload some of their baggage before we get a big Originals arc is nice; the pace the show moves at means there’s usually a lot left unresolved.
I was stoked to see Uncle Mason generally, but then the fact that he was EXPLICITLY there to do something I had thought I was maybe reading into the metaphor with my optimistic, overactive imagination made me a lot more confident in where the whole thing is going generally. As much as I usually hate the r-word (POST-CATHOLICISM ISSUES, ASK ME HOW), I can’t help myself, I love Mason's story here. He’s there to help break the cycle for Tyler, because Tyler’s the one who’s got a chance. And that does make Mason’s fucked-up life worth something outside of itself.
On top of his own closure, Mason was the perfect choice for Damon’s ghost for a lot of Damon-based reasons. The excruciating torture-and-killing of Mason was one of the first markers of Damon’s S2 spiral - he was drunk and in shock when he killed Jeremy, and Rose and her death affected him the way they did because he was so very needy (even by his standards, PFFT) when she showed up. He went after Mason, involving the whole gang in the process, and explicitly identified with the guy before ripping his heart out. Mason agrees with that assessment - Mason’s own trust issues were an important part of his actions when he showed up, and so he’s the perfect one to drag them out of Damon.
AND GAH, HIS NON-APOLOGY APOLOGIES. They’re so perfect for him. It’s not, exactly, a question of being incapable of remorse, because he has apologized for stuff several times. But an apology…centers on one thing? It’s external and event-specific. And what Damon needs to do more than anything is stop externalizing. In a way, what he says is a lot more difficult, because “I do a lot of things I don’t have to do” is an admission of a pattern, of a flaw in him, rather than one thing he did. There’s no fixing the trail of bodies he’s left in his time, but if he acknowledges this, it means he’s accountable for stopping.
CONTINUE BEING PERFECT, ALARIC. You think you have dead vampire issues, Jeremy? COME AT ME, BRO. But he doesn’t get haunted, because Isobel and Jenna are at peace, and he’s at peace with them. His issue from the past is Damon, who is still around and can, maybe, change. It’s so nice when the narrative is on board with your ship, right?
So…I actually teared up a little for Anna and Pearl at the end there. And oh, God, that was her whole thing, that she doesn’t want to be alone. Ultimately, Jeremy’s whole thing this season has been as a prop in Anna’s story, rather than the other way around, which is a neat inversion of the fridging.
And AAAAH, SHEILA, MY LADY. So awesome to see her again! Appropriate that she finds closure here, getting rid of Frederick’s thugs, when she died with the spell that let all the tomb vampires out. I love how fucking regal she is. And this is so important for Bonnie, because she’s not just getting closure on what she did for Jeremy, but also on her whole path to magic in the first place. Grams died because Bonnie insisted on doing the spell to let out Stefan and Damon, and that has played into all of her conflict thus far.
I also love that I was (and remain) really unsure of whether Lexi was to be trusted. Her advice to Elena - You have to shut yourself off from your emotions - and her willingness to force Stefan into shit (physically and psychologically) was very much a mirror of his whole Klaus storyline. I wouldn’t have thought to put Lexi on the list of that same relationship he’s replaying over and over, but maybe she does belong. That this relationship did make him happy and wasn’t entirely bad but apparently wasn’t entirely good either at least allows for ambiguous-Stefan to still be on the table, I think.
I’m surprisingly meh on the Stefan storyline, which is odd given how into it I’ve been thus far this season. I liked having Lexi back, but I don’t get what she…did, exactly? Because that’s a step beyond compulsion - compulsion doesn’t seem to be able to add to people’s perspective on reality. I feel like it could be, or at least the door is still open to, Stefan imagined it because his addiction is entirely psychological, rather than being a chemical kind of thing. He flips out and goes as far as he can as a coping mechanism. I don’t want to feel anything! She knows him well, she knows exactly what he wants to hear.
I loved, too, that Elena and Bonnie were both forced to look at the way they prioritize the people they love over everyone else. Elena was really conflicted there over - was she really going to put Saving Stefan over THE BALANCE OF NATURE? It’d have been one thing if he was still roaming free, where at least she could justify that she was protecting future victims; here, he’s incapacitated, it would really be about her relationship with him. And there was a time when she’d have preferred to wait. But now she has other things to do.
The way Stefan is Elena’s ghost - the way this was paralleled with the unhealthiness of Jeremy/Anna, and that SHE RECOGNIZED IT - that does more to sell me on that story than any amount of schmoop. I think that goes a long way toward confirming that the dysfunction there is intentional and acknowledged. I love you/I’m sorry, Stefan, I don’t believe you. The spell is broken.