TVD 2.12, "The Descent"
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So I started this on Friday and then forgot about it and then went back to it last night in between stuff and typed a little more tonight. ...the night before the next episode. Yeah, I don't know. It's possibly a little more negative than how I actually feel about the episode, but I had some major issues with it. I'm conflicted on a lot of things. SHOW.
Also I have new people from halfamoon Female Character Friending Meme. I'm not sure how I feel about the first new post you get being this. Ummm. I generally write less, but I get in tl;dr moods at times.
1) The "putting Elena in mortal danger" plot was constructed in a way that made characters look kind of stupid. Rose slowly losing her grip on reality is a sign to the viewer that she could become dangerous, and in the right show a warning to the genre-savvy character. Rose losing her grip on reality and then physically attacking Elena is a sign that she is dangerous RIGHT NOW. The best thing to do would be to put Rose in weird basement cell, but give her lots of blankets. If Elena was trying to calm her down, she still should have called Stefan, Damon, Bonnie, or Caroline RIGHT AFTER as opposed to a few hours or an hour (after Rose's next nap at least). And hey, Damon? If Jules tells you that werewolf bites make vampires go insane, MAYBE YOU SHOULD GO HOME RIGHT NOW as opposed to hours later when the sun has gone done.
I'm not saying that that I don't appreciate Elena's awesome escape from Rose! With opening the curtains to burn vampires and piling furniture in front of the door. But the awesomeness is lessened by the fact the obviousness of the fact that she was placing herself in danger for no reason. I guess you could argue she was being sensitive by only focusing on Rose's welfare, but it comes across as either being thoughtless or placing very little value on her own life. (Which is pertinent to much of what Rose says to Elena, but in a way that just comes across as poor writing.) This could have been fixed by NOT having Rose attack Elena so early, but still having a loose grip on reality. WRITERS!!
2) Rose's death: I actually think this was well done. It made me sad! I'm a little baffled as to why Lauren Cohan's characters seem to get a bunch of characterization in the episode that they die in. It just seems like poor planning to me. The writing this episode seemed designed to make her more sympathetic, which you should be doing before the episode you kill her if you want people to feel sad about her death. (I already liked the character, due to the fact that she got the hell out of dodge when the vampire who killed her bff showed up. Self-preservation instinct! And platonic male bff! And respecting herself enough to not fall for guys who are in love with someone else, but being cool with sex! But you know. Other people.)
3) Of course, Rose's death was ultimately about Damon's pain. Here's the thing: I'm not always irritated by series killing off a character to cause another character emotional distress. I've even been known to like it in some well-done cases.
But remember that time that Julie Plec stated that Anna was created with the specific purpose of being killed and causing Jeremy and Damon pain, so they could grow as characters? Yeah. How much did the writers actually follow through with that. I guess they sort of did with Jeremy - he tried to become a vampire, then got mad at Damon for snapping his neck, then got back to his weird sort of fascination with the supernatural. He seems more grown up this season, which I guess could be due to Anna dying. But I don't see why this couldn't happen without Anna dying. Seriously. What if she'd just left town and cut off contact when he didn't come with her? Wouldn't that force some sort of change, and leave the writers with room for potential comebacks? (Has his attempted suicide hasn't even been talked about since the season premiere?) The biggest difference seems to be his distrust of Uncle John, but I don't have faith in the writers having John and Jeremy interact to demonstrate that. (Killing off Anna also seemed to make killing of Pearl kind of meaningless. I swear Pearl just died due to the writers realizing that they were juggling too many plots at once. Poor planning. And now we don't even get Katherine talking to her former friends! Uck. ...okay, old rant.)
Damon seemed affected by Anna's death that episode, but after that? Yeah no. (You could maaaaybe argue that the Jeremy-Damon bonding time was due to Anna, but I think Elena is a bigger factor there. Or hell, Vicki.) To be fair Katherine returned the same episode, but the timing was still planned by the writers. They should know it's not really going to affect Damon if something way bigger happens the same episode. (And again, how pissed am I about the lack of Anna snark/mild sympathy at Damon realizing in full how little Katherine cared. ...also I ship it. And Anna/Katherine, which totally happened that time in Chicago in 1983. And probably before that, but after 1864. It was bitchy on Anna's side and lolarious on Katherine's.)
So yeah. If the writers killed Rose for Damon's manpain (which they clearly did), then they should follow through. And maybe have him develop past the angst stage and learn a life lesson or something. I mean really.
4) Scene of Damon killing someone to express his angst and that he is dangerously unstable - well done! Would probably be more effective if we hadn't already seen him do this. Repeatedly.
5) Caroline's love triangle is the most interesting one on the show right now. There are established relationships between all three that date back more than a few episodes, and shift in ways that actually feel realistic. (I mean. For a high school vampire soap opera). The only problem is that there's so many love triangles going on right now that they end up losing all meaning.
To be fair, I'm not sure that Stefan-Elena-Damon actually counts as a love triangle, since Elena has never actually seemed at all torn between them, and Stefan is fine with Elena and Damon being close as long as Damon doesn't hurt her. He actually liked that Damon managed to care about someone. ( ...my shipping of OT3 is pretty much entirely due to the fact that both Elena and Damon love Stefan. But that's the main reason the two of them bonded last season, so I feel justified. Even if the writers say a threesome with two brothers is gross, while writing them as having dated the same girl at the same time and having them stand super close together and whisper in each other's ears and smear blood on the other's lips. YOU KNOW. )
But yes, poor Caroline. "Everyone really needs to stop kissing me" was my favourite line of the episode.
(Also, I was hoping for more Caroline-Bonnie and Jeremy-Tyler bonding time this season. SHOW WHY MUST YOU PUSH LOVE TRIANGLES AHEAD OF THE MORE COMPLEX FRIENDSHIPS?! ...I mean I kind of started shipping Caroline/Tyler and Bonnie/Jeremy anyways, but I'm ridiculously easy for this show. And given that Bonnie's friendships were shown to be tremendously important to her last season, it's pretty sloppy writing that we haven't seen much of her perspective on the Caroline issue. I guess they're doing okay since Masquerade? IDK. I suppose we've seen Bonnie and Elena talk about the whole vampire-werewolf doppelganger curse thing, but really.)
6) Jules - I kind of wish that the writers hadn't decided to make her so cool with killing random people. It seems like it just serves as a way to justify Damon antagonizing her for no reason. (Hi, telling someone that you killed their friend. Obviously they're going to be pissed. And he initially stabbed Mason for no reason too, even if he turned out to be siding with Katherine. Adding on the Mason threatening Caroline [or was it Elena?], and they're just making him a jerk that we won't judge Damon for killing.) I mean, couldn't she just not particularly like vampires and be pissed that one killed her friend? I get that killing the people at the campsite was an accident and killing the police officer was necessary to cover it up, but she seemed pretty blasé about the whole thing - which makes her bad news.
That said! I like her as an antagonist. I'm just dubious about setting her up as some sort of terrible person who deserves to die while Damon is treated so much more sympathetically. (I get characters being attached - especially Stefan - but the series itself started being pretty soft on him towards the end of last season.)
She's pretty fierce though. Female werewolves are pretty rare. When Mason was talking about how Lockwood men have issues, I thought that it meant all werewolves were male - unfortunate connotations given the whole violent temper/domestic violence thing. (The Underworld prequel about the origins of werewolves? No females. The writer or director actually said something about people finding dirty, hairy women off-putting. ...yeah.) My interest in werewolves goes beyond the "raging uncontrollable beast" that many movies/series fail to go beyond. I like that Jules seems to have some sort of pack, people that she communicates with. She's not some unthinking beast.
So I started this on Friday and then forgot about it and then went back to it last night in between stuff and typed a little more tonight. ...the night before the next episode. Yeah, I don't know. It's possibly a little more negative than how I actually feel about the episode, but I had some major issues with it. I'm conflicted on a lot of things. SHOW.
Also I have new people from halfamoon Female Character Friending Meme. I'm not sure how I feel about the first new post you get being this. Ummm. I generally write less, but I get in tl;dr moods at times.
1) The "putting Elena in mortal danger" plot was constructed in a way that made characters look kind of stupid. Rose slowly losing her grip on reality is a sign to the viewer that she could become dangerous, and in the right show a warning to the genre-savvy character. Rose losing her grip on reality and then physically attacking Elena is a sign that she is dangerous RIGHT NOW. The best thing to do would be to put Rose in weird basement cell, but give her lots of blankets. If Elena was trying to calm her down, she still should have called Stefan, Damon, Bonnie, or Caroline RIGHT AFTER as opposed to a few hours or an hour (after Rose's next nap at least). And hey, Damon? If Jules tells you that werewolf bites make vampires go insane, MAYBE YOU SHOULD GO HOME RIGHT NOW as opposed to hours later when the sun has gone done.
I'm not saying that that I don't appreciate Elena's awesome escape from Rose! With opening the curtains to burn vampires and piling furniture in front of the door. But the awesomeness is lessened by the fact the obviousness of the fact that she was placing herself in danger for no reason. I guess you could argue she was being sensitive by only focusing on Rose's welfare, but it comes across as either being thoughtless or placing very little value on her own life. (Which is pertinent to much of what Rose says to Elena, but in a way that just comes across as poor writing.) This could have been fixed by NOT having Rose attack Elena so early, but still having a loose grip on reality. WRITERS!!
2) Rose's death: I actually think this was well done. It made me sad! I'm a little baffled as to why Lauren Cohan's characters seem to get a bunch of characterization in the episode that they die in. It just seems like poor planning to me. The writing this episode seemed designed to make her more sympathetic, which you should be doing before the episode you kill her if you want people to feel sad about her death. (I already liked the character, due to the fact that she got the hell out of dodge when the vampire who killed her bff showed up. Self-preservation instinct! And platonic male bff! And respecting herself enough to not fall for guys who are in love with someone else, but being cool with sex! But you know. Other people.)
3) Of course, Rose's death was ultimately about Damon's pain. Here's the thing: I'm not always irritated by series killing off a character to cause another character emotional distress. I've even been known to like it in some well-done cases.
But remember that time that Julie Plec stated that Anna was created with the specific purpose of being killed and causing Jeremy and Damon pain, so they could grow as characters? Yeah. How much did the writers actually follow through with that. I guess they sort of did with Jeremy - he tried to become a vampire, then got mad at Damon for snapping his neck, then got back to his weird sort of fascination with the supernatural. He seems more grown up this season, which I guess could be due to Anna dying. But I don't see why this couldn't happen without Anna dying. Seriously. What if she'd just left town and cut off contact when he didn't come with her? Wouldn't that force some sort of change, and leave the writers with room for potential comebacks? (Has his attempted suicide hasn't even been talked about since the season premiere?) The biggest difference seems to be his distrust of Uncle John, but I don't have faith in the writers having John and Jeremy interact to demonstrate that. (Killing off Anna also seemed to make killing of Pearl kind of meaningless. I swear Pearl just died due to the writers realizing that they were juggling too many plots at once. Poor planning. And now we don't even get Katherine talking to her former friends! Uck. ...okay, old rant.)
Damon seemed affected by Anna's death that episode, but after that? Yeah no. (You could maaaaybe argue that the Jeremy-Damon bonding time was due to Anna, but I think Elena is a bigger factor there. Or hell, Vicki.) To be fair Katherine returned the same episode, but the timing was still planned by the writers. They should know it's not really going to affect Damon if something way bigger happens the same episode. (And again, how pissed am I about the lack of Anna snark/mild sympathy at Damon realizing in full how little Katherine cared. ...also I ship it. And Anna/Katherine, which totally happened that time in Chicago in 1983. And probably before that, but after 1864. It was bitchy on Anna's side and lolarious on Katherine's.)
So yeah. If the writers killed Rose for Damon's manpain (which they clearly did), then they should follow through. And maybe have him develop past the angst stage and learn a life lesson or something. I mean really.
4) Scene of Damon killing someone to express his angst and that he is dangerously unstable - well done! Would probably be more effective if we hadn't already seen him do this. Repeatedly.
5) Caroline's love triangle is the most interesting one on the show right now. There are established relationships between all three that date back more than a few episodes, and shift in ways that actually feel realistic. (I mean. For a high school vampire soap opera). The only problem is that there's so many love triangles going on right now that they end up losing all meaning.
To be fair, I'm not sure that Stefan-Elena-Damon actually counts as a love triangle, since Elena has never actually seemed at all torn between them, and Stefan is fine with Elena and Damon being close as long as Damon doesn't hurt her. He actually liked that Damon managed to care about someone. ( ...my shipping of OT3 is pretty much entirely due to the fact that both Elena and Damon love Stefan. But that's the main reason the two of them bonded last season, so I feel justified. Even if the writers say a threesome with two brothers is gross, while writing them as having dated the same girl at the same time and having them stand super close together and whisper in each other's ears and smear blood on the other's lips. YOU KNOW. )
But yes, poor Caroline. "Everyone really needs to stop kissing me" was my favourite line of the episode.
(Also, I was hoping for more Caroline-Bonnie and Jeremy-Tyler bonding time this season. SHOW WHY MUST YOU PUSH LOVE TRIANGLES AHEAD OF THE MORE COMPLEX FRIENDSHIPS?! ...I mean I kind of started shipping Caroline/Tyler and Bonnie/Jeremy anyways, but I'm ridiculously easy for this show. And given that Bonnie's friendships were shown to be tremendously important to her last season, it's pretty sloppy writing that we haven't seen much of her perspective on the Caroline issue. I guess they're doing okay since Masquerade? IDK. I suppose we've seen Bonnie and Elena talk about the whole vampire-werewolf doppelganger curse thing, but really.)
6) Jules - I kind of wish that the writers hadn't decided to make her so cool with killing random people. It seems like it just serves as a way to justify Damon antagonizing her for no reason. (Hi, telling someone that you killed their friend. Obviously they're going to be pissed. And he initially stabbed Mason for no reason too, even if he turned out to be siding with Katherine. Adding on the Mason threatening Caroline [or was it Elena?], and they're just making him a jerk that we won't judge Damon for killing.) I mean, couldn't she just not particularly like vampires and be pissed that one killed her friend? I get that killing the people at the campsite was an accident and killing the police officer was necessary to cover it up, but she seemed pretty blasé about the whole thing - which makes her bad news.
That said! I like her as an antagonist. I'm just dubious about setting her up as some sort of terrible person who deserves to die while Damon is treated so much more sympathetically. (I get characters being attached - especially Stefan - but the series itself started being pretty soft on him towards the end of last season.)
She's pretty fierce though. Female werewolves are pretty rare. When Mason was talking about how Lockwood men have issues, I thought that it meant all werewolves were male - unfortunate connotations given the whole violent temper/domestic violence thing. (The Underworld prequel about the origins of werewolves? No females. The writer or director actually said something about people finding dirty, hairy women off-putting. ...yeah.) My interest in werewolves goes beyond the "raging uncontrollable beast" that many movies/series fail to go beyond. I like that Jules seems to have some sort of pack, people that she communicates with. She's not some unthinking beast.