TVD 4x8
SO DISCLAIMER. This episode had a lot of disturbing content, and this is a show that is not notoriously self-aware with the implications it casts around sometimes. We all have different sets and amounts of things we can and can’t tolerate in watching/discussing. If you don’t or can’t set that aside, I get it. I do. No hard feelings. I’m not proscribing my way of watching the show, but it works for me. I want to talk about the stuff I liked, because there was a lot of it. This is pretty long, so I broke it up into (i) the girls, (ii) the Salvatores, (iii) the wolves.
(i) These girls. THESE GIRLS.
I JUST LOVE THESE GIRLS SO MUCH. Kelsey already said it for me, but omg, these girls break my heart. They know things are spiraling out of control, though they don’t know how much, and so they cling to each other so hard, they try to shut the world out, and they just can’t.
Yes, even - especially - the fight. Caroline was unable to bring herself to face and discuss her real reason for hating Damon, and she’s trying to keep something from Elena which she hates doing, so she comes off as tactless as possible. And Elena kind of showed her ass about it, but I think it made sense? Elena was so happy and so excited that she was starting to feel like things were working for her. She can drink from a blood bag (OMG HER LITTLE FACE, AWWWW) and so is really excited for things to become as they were with her friends. This thing with Damon, it’s new and it’s exciting and it feels like something that’s finally hers, not something that she fell into and felt stuck sometimes. They’re tired and high and they’ve been holding back for so long and things are coming out all wrong, and it’s hurtful and unfair because their lives are hurtful and unfair. But I believed it, as a realistically layered part of the relationship, and somehow all those slumber-party scenes made possible only by Bonnie’s insistence that they shut the boy talk out indefinitely drove home everything these kids have been through together in a whole new way. And that’s why they could be so awful in one moment, and then so fierce and brave and protective of each other in the next.
Can I say a thing generally: I’ve always appreciated the way this show is pretty matter-of-fact about teen sex and drinking. Most wealthy, socially comfortable teens will partake in one or the other, and it’s not always ideal but it’s hardly the end of the world. But I was still a little surprised (pleasantly!) that the girls were frigging stoned. Women and drugs, even- ahem - tea is such a taboo thing. Because even as we give some “permission” for socially-sanctioned drinking and sex, we still have this anxiety about women feeling safe enough to want to let go a little bit. You’re supposed to always be on your guard, always be the paragon of virtue and social mores. To partake of the tea is to abdicate, even for a short amount of time, the pretense that you are not a sensual being capable of immediate physical pleasure. It evokes the same contempt and revulsion as “slut.” I guess it’s not a huge surprise that my favorite women tend to have said “fuck that,” implicitly or on-screen. Though the show hasn’t unrealistically avoided drug use, it’s mostly been Jeremy, Matt, and Tyler since Vicki’s death. Here, it’s presented as part of the girls grasping at their childhood and even innocence, and reaffirming their trust in each other - it doesn’t solve any problems, but it gives them a little space to breathe and doesn’t cause any problems either.
(ii) of Salvatores and sire bonds
I was….not quite worried, but I had assumed for a while there that Damon’s development would take a backseat now that he’s the favored Salvatore dick. Which, it’s Elena’s story and so it makes sense for her romantic lead to fall back a little bit. But this episode reminded me of all the reasons I latched onto the character so quickly.
But to read that, we do have to deal with Damon's position in relation to Elena. Caroline’s in her face reaction isn’t helpful; Stefan’s impusive response to the theory is downright awful. He tells Caroline to keep the whole thing from Elena - the person who’s allegedly sired - and then goes off to tell Damon about it. Wow. On the one hand, his plan was kind of impressively devious and, though not foolproof, was at least a smarter test than “ask her if she feels sired!” But, because of how Stefan’s acted in the last six months, his intervention is extremely suspect.
Everybody - not just Damon and Stefan, but everyone - has this idea that they need to know right now what to Do About Elena. There must be one single explanation for all of her actions/experiences, and that must be ~fixed. Nobody goes around saying that “it’s POSSIBLE her body rejects the blood bag” or “there’s a CHANCE she’s sired to Damon.” A much more reasonable explanation for the blood bag experiment is this: Elena, perfectly understandably, carried over some human “ew blood” squick when she became a vampire. Blood that wasn’t as appealing as possible was going to be way too goddamn gross for her to choke down. Now that she’s adjusted a little bit, and acquired a taste for blood, she can expand her palate a little. But by then Damon had appointed himself Vampire Tutor, and he had already decided she needed a complete pass, because she has to be his special shining beacon of whatever. He struggles to separate himself when he’s bonded like this to someone. He needed Elena to be okay, and he didn’t want to play trial and error so he gave a pat little explanation that couldn’t be proven or disproven to put the whole thing behind them ASAP.
Damon doesn’t have magic super-sire properties. Because the one word that I kept thinking over and over again during this episode was Katherine. He loved her before he changed, was using her as an escape from his human pain even before his death. And when she died, he did not even want to live. Stefan dragged him out of that slump, just so Damon could sulk around until 1912 - fifty years! - refusing to enjoy anything about his vampire existence because he was spoken for. Then Sage and Stefan together managed to convince him to live a little, and he has, but still, the night of the comet rolls around and Damon is ready and waiting and as desperately in love with Katherine as he ever was. The only reason he didn’t end up like Charlotte was that he just needed his little brother.
And Damon, after all, identifies with the women whose lives he destroys. NOT EXCUSING JUST SAYING. He’s drawn to other women as desperate to lose themselves in the ideal of love as he is (because they are the closest experience he can have to loving himself), and they mold themselves against him, and he becomes as important to them as Katherine was to him. The sire-bond is barely a metaphor for a kind of psychological co-dependence that is very real.
So why is Elena not sired now? Because Caroline and Stefan are worried that she is. Because Damon is worried enough about her autonomy that he doesn’t want her to be sired. Siring is about exclusivity. When the vampire who makes you seems like the only other immortal being around, of course you mope for a while. When you do have some other points of interpersonal connection, things are different.
Let’s handle Lexi for a second, shall we? She is a LIIIIIIIIIAR. That line about how Damon has “never” been restrained is not true and she knows it. Damon was completely in hand when he handed Stefan off to her care all those years ago. Damon buys it because he hates himself, but if he thought about it for a second he would know she was messing with him. But instead, Lexi manages to isolate Stefan from his brother so that he can become more dependent on her. (Was it aerintine who pointed out at the beginning of S3 that Damon thought he was protecting Stefan from Lexi when he killed her? I want to credit the idea, now that it’s been all but verified by the show.) Everything is just Damon’s goddamn fault! Lexi blames Damon for Stefan; Caroline and Stefan blame Damon for Elena. And Damon accepts it, lashes out and acts even worse, because it’s better than trying to prove it’s not his fault and being wrong, or having nobody listen, or just not knowing why it’s his fault.
Maybe we were supposed to be surprised at how easily he jumped on board with the idea of the sire bond, but I really wasn’t. When it really is about the happiness and freedom of the people he cares about, Damon has no pride at all. I really don’t think it’s that he’s a good person who’s doing the right thing even though he doesn’t want to, I think it’s that he just can’t lie to himself that he’s sure about something, and he can’t lean on something if he’s not sure about it. That’s why he likes the edge, because he’s always braced for the fall anyway. I’m sure he didn’t much mind killing 12 people for Charlotte’s freedom, because vampire, but that’s still a big effort, and a vampire tangling with a witch is always a risky endeavor. And he barely knew her! He just hated the idea of someone being chained to him. Fake love just reminds him of how he’s sure he will never get real love. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
(iii) and werewolves (and witches)
It looks like my fellow Tyler fans are a'rushing to tumblr for a victory lap over Tyler’s accession to alpha status. I, while being extremely excited for this storyline, am not so sure this is A Good Thing for Tyler.
I would love Tyler to point out that the alpha wolf thing is actually bullshit. That said, it is a pretty useful metaphor. Life in the anarchic state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short - and it is no freedom, to be sired to Klaus. This is the Declaration of Independence. Fuck the Old World colonizer who was born into the right family, they pick their own leader. The other wolves accept Tyler’s leadership and effectively vote him into office. And why not? He’s the first one who broke the sire bond, they’re on his turf, he’s managed to keep the peace within the pack and in relation to the vampires and witches.
All well and good. But things are so desperate right now, because of Klaus (and because of Shane, and even because of the vampires), that it really is a question of hanging together or hanging separately. In effect, they’re choosing to be sired to him. Klaus liberates them from the curse of the sun and moon, and so they obey him, until Tyler liberates them from the sire bond and they creepily kneel before him. And when someone tries to come along to liberate them from him, Tyler forces her to submit. Actually, it looks like the "alpha" designation has some particular staircase brilliance, because it's rooted in studies of captive animals, not wolves as they would choose to live. Whether or not it's intentional (and, I cannot emphasize this enough, I do not care), it works as an illustration of the way the werewolves are being manipulated to turn against each other, not form a supportive family unit as the wolves we met in S2 tended to do.
This is a dangerous road for Tyler, for obvious reasons. That’s not to say “he says he’s the alpha so he’s JUST LIKE KLAUS OBVS” because I do think motive matters a lot. Tyler really is the least unsuitable person for a job that’s an unfortunate necessity. It’s not like his father, picking on a child for sadistic fun, or Klaus, going around creating subjugation where there was none. But power tends to corrupt, and power that’s taken by force has to be continuously defended by force.
It’s tough to separate his rise with the wolves out from his status within the core group of vampires, as well. After the end of last season and the beginning of this season, Tyler has put a lot on the line for the crew. He risked Klaus’s wrath to try to rescue Elena in Before Sunset, he agreed to be possessed by Klaus in the season finale, and then he literally took a bullet for everyone at the memorial service. He’s just started to feel confident in his place with the people he’s thought of as his friends, and he’s put more than enough into it to expect that it won’t be thrown back in his face. But the murder of Chris reminded him that his status in the Gilbertadore crowd is marginal at best, and to be marginalized is to be expendable.
This? Is that completely predictable protagonist privilege fallout you always hope to see from a story. Hayley’s playing Tyler in exactly the same way as Shane is playing Bonnie. Bonnie and Tyler consciously think they want to be in control; underneath that, they know that their place within their core group is Not Safe if they are not as indispensible as possible. So they look outside the group for support, which feels so bizarre and Wrong to them that they don’t have any instincts about the people they do turn to for help. Tyler’s situation is different because he has other people around. That means he does have the perspective check (as when what’s her name pointed out that the newest member of their pack didn’t have to keep turning right that minute to get unsired eventually); it also means he has to put a lot of worry into keeping them safe/in line. Bonnie has no one, and is answerable to no one. But they’re both about to get thrown under the same bus.
But of course, they’re all just being used. If 12 human sacrifices could power up expression, imagine what our Bennett witch could do with the power of 12 free hybrids. (And is it that different, that the Salvatores and Klaus intend to sacrifice however many vampires in order to get at the cure? That Damon, even unknowingly, was committing the exploitation that had been inflicted on him decades ago?) It looks more and more like ladygawain’s theory that Shane is Silas is the truth. That may have been his real business with Connor as well. Maybe he figured 12 vampire sacrifices would be enough to spark up Bonnie’s magic, and that’s why he sent Connor to Mystic Falls. AND OH MY GOD, is that why the Council died? Were those the twelve sacrifices that Bonnie is pulling from now? Not that I do watch for the plot, but if I did I would not be disappointed right now.
(i) These girls. THESE GIRLS.
I JUST LOVE THESE GIRLS SO MUCH. Kelsey already said it for me, but omg, these girls break my heart. They know things are spiraling out of control, though they don’t know how much, and so they cling to each other so hard, they try to shut the world out, and they just can’t.
Yes, even - especially - the fight. Caroline was unable to bring herself to face and discuss her real reason for hating Damon, and she’s trying to keep something from Elena which she hates doing, so she comes off as tactless as possible. And Elena kind of showed her ass about it, but I think it made sense? Elena was so happy and so excited that she was starting to feel like things were working for her. She can drink from a blood bag (OMG HER LITTLE FACE, AWWWW) and so is really excited for things to become as they were with her friends. This thing with Damon, it’s new and it’s exciting and it feels like something that’s finally hers, not something that she fell into and felt stuck sometimes. They’re tired and high and they’ve been holding back for so long and things are coming out all wrong, and it’s hurtful and unfair because their lives are hurtful and unfair. But I believed it, as a realistically layered part of the relationship, and somehow all those slumber-party scenes made possible only by Bonnie’s insistence that they shut the boy talk out indefinitely drove home everything these kids have been through together in a whole new way. And that’s why they could be so awful in one moment, and then so fierce and brave and protective of each other in the next.
Can I say a thing generally: I’ve always appreciated the way this show is pretty matter-of-fact about teen sex and drinking. Most wealthy, socially comfortable teens will partake in one or the other, and it’s not always ideal but it’s hardly the end of the world. But I was still a little surprised (pleasantly!) that the girls were frigging stoned. Women and drugs, even- ahem - tea is such a taboo thing. Because even as we give some “permission” for socially-sanctioned drinking and sex, we still have this anxiety about women feeling safe enough to want to let go a little bit. You’re supposed to always be on your guard, always be the paragon of virtue and social mores. To partake of the tea is to abdicate, even for a short amount of time, the pretense that you are not a sensual being capable of immediate physical pleasure. It evokes the same contempt and revulsion as “slut.” I guess it’s not a huge surprise that my favorite women tend to have said “fuck that,” implicitly or on-screen. Though the show hasn’t unrealistically avoided drug use, it’s mostly been Jeremy, Matt, and Tyler since Vicki’s death. Here, it’s presented as part of the girls grasping at their childhood and even innocence, and reaffirming their trust in each other - it doesn’t solve any problems, but it gives them a little space to breathe and doesn’t cause any problems either.
(ii) of Salvatores and sire bonds
I was….not quite worried, but I had assumed for a while there that Damon’s development would take a backseat now that he’s the favored Salvatore dick. Which, it’s Elena’s story and so it makes sense for her romantic lead to fall back a little bit. But this episode reminded me of all the reasons I latched onto the character so quickly.
But to read that, we do have to deal with Damon's position in relation to Elena. Caroline’s in her face reaction isn’t helpful; Stefan’s impusive response to the theory is downright awful. He tells Caroline to keep the whole thing from Elena - the person who’s allegedly sired - and then goes off to tell Damon about it. Wow. On the one hand, his plan was kind of impressively devious and, though not foolproof, was at least a smarter test than “ask her if she feels sired!” But, because of how Stefan’s acted in the last six months, his intervention is extremely suspect.
Everybody - not just Damon and Stefan, but everyone - has this idea that they need to know right now what to Do About Elena. There must be one single explanation for all of her actions/experiences, and that must be ~fixed. Nobody goes around saying that “it’s POSSIBLE her body rejects the blood bag” or “there’s a CHANCE she’s sired to Damon.” A much more reasonable explanation for the blood bag experiment is this: Elena, perfectly understandably, carried over some human “ew blood” squick when she became a vampire. Blood that wasn’t as appealing as possible was going to be way too goddamn gross for her to choke down. Now that she’s adjusted a little bit, and acquired a taste for blood, she can expand her palate a little. But by then Damon had appointed himself Vampire Tutor, and he had already decided she needed a complete pass, because she has to be his special shining beacon of whatever. He struggles to separate himself when he’s bonded like this to someone. He needed Elena to be okay, and he didn’t want to play trial and error so he gave a pat little explanation that couldn’t be proven or disproven to put the whole thing behind them ASAP.
Damon doesn’t have magic super-sire properties. Because the one word that I kept thinking over and over again during this episode was Katherine. He loved her before he changed, was using her as an escape from his human pain even before his death. And when she died, he did not even want to live. Stefan dragged him out of that slump, just so Damon could sulk around until 1912 - fifty years! - refusing to enjoy anything about his vampire existence because he was spoken for. Then Sage and Stefan together managed to convince him to live a little, and he has, but still, the night of the comet rolls around and Damon is ready and waiting and as desperately in love with Katherine as he ever was. The only reason he didn’t end up like Charlotte was that he just needed his little brother.
And Damon, after all, identifies with the women whose lives he destroys. NOT EXCUSING JUST SAYING. He’s drawn to other women as desperate to lose themselves in the ideal of love as he is (because they are the closest experience he can have to loving himself), and they mold themselves against him, and he becomes as important to them as Katherine was to him. The sire-bond is barely a metaphor for a kind of psychological co-dependence that is very real.
So why is Elena not sired now? Because Caroline and Stefan are worried that she is. Because Damon is worried enough about her autonomy that he doesn’t want her to be sired. Siring is about exclusivity. When the vampire who makes you seems like the only other immortal being around, of course you mope for a while. When you do have some other points of interpersonal connection, things are different.
Let’s handle Lexi for a second, shall we? She is a LIIIIIIIIIAR. That line about how Damon has “never” been restrained is not true and she knows it. Damon was completely in hand when he handed Stefan off to her care all those years ago. Damon buys it because he hates himself, but if he thought about it for a second he would know she was messing with him. But instead, Lexi manages to isolate Stefan from his brother so that he can become more dependent on her. (Was it aerintine who pointed out at the beginning of S3 that Damon thought he was protecting Stefan from Lexi when he killed her? I want to credit the idea, now that it’s been all but verified by the show.) Everything is just Damon’s goddamn fault! Lexi blames Damon for Stefan; Caroline and Stefan blame Damon for Elena. And Damon accepts it, lashes out and acts even worse, because it’s better than trying to prove it’s not his fault and being wrong, or having nobody listen, or just not knowing why it’s his fault.
Maybe we were supposed to be surprised at how easily he jumped on board with the idea of the sire bond, but I really wasn’t. When it really is about the happiness and freedom of the people he cares about, Damon has no pride at all. I really don’t think it’s that he’s a good person who’s doing the right thing even though he doesn’t want to, I think it’s that he just can’t lie to himself that he’s sure about something, and he can’t lean on something if he’s not sure about it. That’s why he likes the edge, because he’s always braced for the fall anyway. I’m sure he didn’t much mind killing 12 people for Charlotte’s freedom, because vampire, but that’s still a big effort, and a vampire tangling with a witch is always a risky endeavor. And he barely knew her! He just hated the idea of someone being chained to him. Fake love just reminds him of how he’s sure he will never get real love. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
(iii) and werewolves (and witches)
It looks like my fellow Tyler fans are a'rushing to tumblr for a victory lap over Tyler’s accession to alpha status. I, while being extremely excited for this storyline, am not so sure this is A Good Thing for Tyler.
I would love Tyler to point out that the alpha wolf thing is actually bullshit. That said, it is a pretty useful metaphor. Life in the anarchic state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short - and it is no freedom, to be sired to Klaus. This is the Declaration of Independence. Fuck the Old World colonizer who was born into the right family, they pick their own leader. The other wolves accept Tyler’s leadership and effectively vote him into office. And why not? He’s the first one who broke the sire bond, they’re on his turf, he’s managed to keep the peace within the pack and in relation to the vampires and witches.
All well and good. But things are so desperate right now, because of Klaus (and because of Shane, and even because of the vampires), that it really is a question of hanging together or hanging separately. In effect, they’re choosing to be sired to him. Klaus liberates them from the curse of the sun and moon, and so they obey him, until Tyler liberates them from the sire bond and they creepily kneel before him. And when someone tries to come along to liberate them from him, Tyler forces her to submit. Actually, it looks like the "alpha" designation has some particular staircase brilliance, because it's rooted in studies of captive animals, not wolves as they would choose to live. Whether or not it's intentional (and, I cannot emphasize this enough, I do not care), it works as an illustration of the way the werewolves are being manipulated to turn against each other, not form a supportive family unit as the wolves we met in S2 tended to do.
This is a dangerous road for Tyler, for obvious reasons. That’s not to say “he says he’s the alpha so he’s JUST LIKE KLAUS OBVS” because I do think motive matters a lot. Tyler really is the least unsuitable person for a job that’s an unfortunate necessity. It’s not like his father, picking on a child for sadistic fun, or Klaus, going around creating subjugation where there was none. But power tends to corrupt, and power that’s taken by force has to be continuously defended by force.
It’s tough to separate his rise with the wolves out from his status within the core group of vampires, as well. After the end of last season and the beginning of this season, Tyler has put a lot on the line for the crew. He risked Klaus’s wrath to try to rescue Elena in Before Sunset, he agreed to be possessed by Klaus in the season finale, and then he literally took a bullet for everyone at the memorial service. He’s just started to feel confident in his place with the people he’s thought of as his friends, and he’s put more than enough into it to expect that it won’t be thrown back in his face. But the murder of Chris reminded him that his status in the Gilbertadore crowd is marginal at best, and to be marginalized is to be expendable.
This? Is that completely predictable protagonist privilege fallout you always hope to see from a story. Hayley’s playing Tyler in exactly the same way as Shane is playing Bonnie. Bonnie and Tyler consciously think they want to be in control; underneath that, they know that their place within their core group is Not Safe if they are not as indispensible as possible. So they look outside the group for support, which feels so bizarre and Wrong to them that they don’t have any instincts about the people they do turn to for help. Tyler’s situation is different because he has other people around. That means he does have the perspective check (as when what’s her name pointed out that the newest member of their pack didn’t have to keep turning right that minute to get unsired eventually); it also means he has to put a lot of worry into keeping them safe/in line. Bonnie has no one, and is answerable to no one. But they’re both about to get thrown under the same bus.
But of course, they’re all just being used. If 12 human sacrifices could power up expression, imagine what our Bennett witch could do with the power of 12 free hybrids. (And is it that different, that the Salvatores and Klaus intend to sacrifice however many vampires in order to get at the cure? That Damon, even unknowingly, was committing the exploitation that had been inflicted on him decades ago?) It looks more and more like ladygawain’s theory that Shane is Silas is the truth. That may have been his real business with Connor as well. Maybe he figured 12 vampire sacrifices would be enough to spark up Bonnie’s magic, and that’s why he sent Connor to Mystic Falls. AND OH MY GOD, is that why the Council died? Were those the twelve sacrifices that Bonnie is pulling from now? Not that I do watch for the plot, but if I did I would not be disappointed right now.