TVD - American Gothic
Elijah's turned Kat into this symbol of everything before it all went pear-shaped and he fell out with Klaus and obsession ate up the affection between them. Elijah is not like Rebekah or Klaus, who anchor their issues in the events around their turning. He doesn't dislike being a vampire, and he doesn't blame his crimes on vampirism. I think from Elijah's POV, not much changed for him? He was under seige - nothing new - abused by his father - nothing new - close to and too responsible for his siblings - nothing new. For him, the turning point was the doppelganger, and I think he sees Saving Katarina now as his chance to set it all right.
He knows it will not work, because they have played this game before. He used an ancient elixer of life to try to convince Klaus to spare Katarina, and it was the precipitating cause of centuries of estrangement. But this time he is sure he can make Klaus listen, he can set Katarina free (to come to him) and then...something. I don't know what, I don't think he does either.
Which is the kicker with the Salvatore brothers, right? Because we know that Stefan riding off into the sunset is just as much a part of the pattern. One brother leaves, the other drifts his own way, and then there's a doppelganger crisis and they fall right back into it, because surely this time there'll be at least one player on the board who isn't a backstabbing bastard. And it's never true, and around and around we go.
(It's my disease. I just keep wanting to believe you. By the way, this isn't just Katherine. This is the way he flipped allegiances on a dime at the end of S2, because Klaus said he would take Elijah to their family and Elijah believed him. This is the way a global power player can consciously let himself get played by his mother and nearly die for it. This is the way he can go to Elena, to Katherine, and have her make him feel safe, only to find out she was lying to him.)
So who would he be if he gave up on his Katarina? If he really let go and accepted that he cannot fix her, cannot fix Niklaus, cannot fix himself? (Who would Elena and Stefan be, if they gave up on each other?) Rebekah's not the one that wants a do-over.
But in order for him to be able to write all that onto her, he has to not really know her. I doubt I'm going to have anything to add to the fantastic examination of the doppelganger madonna/whore dichotomy going around, but I'll give it a shot. Elijah wants Katherine to be his madonna - not necessarily metaphorically or actually virginial, he doesn't take any more issue with her vamp-ness than he does with his own, but a mother figure whose dealings with him are without self-interest. Daniel Gilles is one of those actors who can say everything without words:
find the whole set here.
Look at that. He closes his eyes and leans into her touch and you remember that he ran to her just a few short months ago, after his own mother decided he was a contagion that had to be purged from the earth. And he just dropped all that onto Katherine and wants her to challenge that for him without wanting anything in return. It is unfair and dehumanizing - it is the curse of the doppelganger - and it is something he does for reasons which are deeply sympathetic.
He's also terrible to the one person who is good to and for him, and that's his sister. He spends the whole episode wringing his hands about ~honesty and ~honor and blah di blah blah; Rebekah comes clean about what she wants to do with her own life and he starts in with the guilt trip. I think and hope he's on the path to not taking her for granted anymore, though, particularly when he finds out about Kol.
I'm not sure Katherine wasn't trying to play him when she goes for broke at the end there, and entrusts him with her freedom. I do think she was being honest about having a lot of affection for him, but she also knows that she can't fall any lower in his esteem than she has. So if she plants the seed of doubt in his mind that she's not entirely awful, then she might be able to let him convince himself to take up her part one more time, and if he can't be convinced, there's nothing she could do to change his mind.
On some level, I think Elena both admired and resented Katherine for Katherine's seeming strength and independence. But now Elena herself thinks she has what Katherine has, though she has yet to build up the experience, skill, and self-awareness that Katherine's had so much more time to develop. But Elena doesn't want to take time, she wants it all to stop caring now. So she resents and sneers at Katherine for her own fear of vulnerability. Losing her status as "special snowflake of human frailty" (LOL) didn't make her place in the world as secure as she wants it to be.
That last scene was kind of great in that it exemplefies the problems with the Salvatores' attitude toward Elena as well as Elena's reaction to that to prove! her! independence! Because in lashing out the way she does, snapping the neck of one of Katherine's victims (OH, I SEE), she's becoming a worse version of herself that should be reigned in, the same as them. In blaming them for her kills, she's putting responsibility/credit for her behavior onto the Salvatores. "I do this because you MAKE ME do it" is exactly the opposite of something you'd say if you're asserting your independence. I also didn't think of Coach Tanner the way apparently everyone else on tumblr did, I thought of the beginning of S2 when Damon snapped Jeremy's neck to prove how much he dgaf.
Klaus does what the fuck Klaus wants to do. If he really wanted Tyler dead, Tyler would be dead, and if he were to change his mind about that no promise to Caroline would stop him. Maybe he's not hunting Tyler because he hopes that will make Caroline like him; maybe it's just that on some level he thinks of Tyler as family now, and he'll bust Tyler's balls forever but never want the kid dead. I suspect it's both. (Klaus' only real quarrell with family is when they are actual threats to his survival, a la Mikael and Finn. I doubt Klaus actually feels threatened by Tyler, and in any event Tyler won't make a move on him as long as that would kill Caroline too. But he won't actually give either of them the power, or even the satisfaction, of suffering Tyler to stick around, but it's about the realpolitik reality of preserving his status as prince among vampires.
Oddly, Katherine makes the same mistake Caroline does about Klaus. Klaus is notorious for not honoring his bargains. Katherine has made a deal with him before - getting the moonstone, a werewolf, and a vampire ready for his sacrifice - and he repaid her by promising centuries of torture. But this time around, she sells Elijah and herself on the idea that if she just hands the cure over to Klaus everything will be fine. She is, at least, wise enough to know she shouldn't actually be in the room with Klaus and the cure at the same time, or he'd gleefully take his revenge for her defiance all those centuries ago by choosing her as his new fountain of hybrids.
I think the show did a good job deflating Klaus vis a vis Caroline? She had a chance to explain why she hates him, and use him as training wheels for her developing social politics skills. Likewise, crucially, the show reminds us why she has a very good reason for not just killing him when she has the chance - he dies, they all die too. And then the end of the episode shows that it MAKES SENSE that they'd want to keep around the one character who Silas was worried enough about to bother incapacitating him. It's not implying that he's around because she ~secretly loves him.
WHICH. Silas. HOW MUCH did I love Caroline!Silas (and what it said about Klaus, that the shape Silas takes reflects Klaus' own projection of Caroline - she doesn't even need to actually be herself for him to experience how he feels about his idealized picture of her). It's not just Sixth Sense-type hallucinations. He can reach into your brain and stay there. He can paralyze you with your own fear of death. He will not - may not even be able to - show his own face. You can't fight the devil if you don't know what he looks like. You can only look like each other, and so you'll only fight yourselves.
Anyway, Happy Easter if you celebrate! Enjoy the half-priced candy eggs, if you don't!
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