1.20 - 'Blood Brothers' (The Vampire Diaries)

[arabian]

No, I did not skip 1.19 - "Miss Mystic Falls." That was actually the only episode that I did a write-up for originally during season 01. So you can click on the link provided if you haven't read it or want a refresher. Anyhoo, moving on to the next one (and, fair warning, this one be long)...

Comments

[ghidorah15]

Yeah, I don't know why they did that to Elena, had her act so out of character. *shakes head* And I wish Uncle John had died when Katherine stabbed him - or even before that. Useless dickhead.

[arabian]

No, not useless... remember if John had died then, he wouldn't have been around in season 02 to sacrifice himself for Elena. (Plus, I love David Anders so much, I can't mind that he stayed around longer, LOL!)

Sigh, I really wish that scene had been written, directed differently. Ugh. So not Elena and really hurts this episode for me. It's like Elena joking about being dead in 6.11... it's one scene, but it's SO COMPLETELY out of character that it dings the episode bad for me. (Of course, that one had other issues too, but still...)

[anonymous]

I haven't commented to your s1 posts yet because I can't really remember the episodes' contents, at least not in detail as I haven't watched it in years now and don't have time right now for a rewatch. Therefore I don't know how I felt about Elena's reaction to Damon in this episode (though I'm quite sure I wasn't happy either). But I remember my reaction to another very similar scene: 3x14/15 Elena's reaction to Damon after their dance (especially her 'maybe that's the problem' and 'get over it'). I think it quite reminiscent of what we see here: In both situations they've shared intimate/emotional dances and Elena afterwards totally disregards Damon's feelings and tries to distance herself from him (emotionally) by being cold and distanced toward him (at least that's how I remember it to have been; please correct me if my memory fools me here). The reason for her totally uncharacteristical behaviour surely has been that she felt something towards him during the dance that she wasn't ready to accept or was too afraid to acknowledge.

[arabian]

I see what you're saying, but that doesn't make sense because she was nice to him in all the other scenes of this episode. It was just this one that was messed up.

And in 3.14, there was a lot more going on under the surface. Great dance or not in 1.19, because of Stefan's situation, it did make sense that she was fully wrapped up in that and had put whatever happened with Damon in a box not to be opened. In 3.14.... so much more going on, she had basically been falling in love with him all season and had fallen out of love with Stefan, but didn't realize it, couldn't face it. And Stefan was finally acting more like himself so she was caught there and having Damon's feelings suddenly verbalized upset the dance they'd been doing.

There was just nothing in how they acted in this episode that showed an Elena falling for Damon yet. As she told Ric in 6.02, the dance was the first time she thought of Damon as sexy, she allowed herself to see it... but finding someone hot is a far cry from being afraid to fall in love.

[tj2013]

Elena confronts Damon, forces her to tell him the story, you can literally see the pain in his face and - nothing from her? Not even a glance? That was weird.

Damon taking Elenas's feet in his lap is one of my favorite D/E scenes EVAR.

But as you said - the rest of the episode was great. Awesome dialogues.

[arabian]

Yeah, everything BUT that scene was amaze-balls, but when I think of that episode, the first thing I think of is how much Elena annoyed me in that scene. Alas!

[ext_4121835]

I chalk the out of character Elena bits up to heavy handed-ness from Kevin Williamson and just let my anger boil over to him.

What bothers me more is Damon leaving Elena alone with Stefan a scene that shouldn't exist. They start season 3 off by insinuating that Damon has seen ripper Stefan, aka better Stefan, before but if that were true he never would have left Elena alone. As unlike Stefan, Damon is not a moron and would never trust ripper Stefan to not hurt his Elena.

[arabian]

Stefan was no longer in ripper stage, though, that's why Damon left him with her. He'd been locked up long enough that he wasn't like that. Otherwise Damon wouldn't have left her. That was the point that Elena made. He hadn't been drinking animal blood, let alone human blood. He was fine.

[ext_4121835]

ON your comments on Damon's hair, I quite like his hair. Stefan's hair on the other hand ugh just ugh no self especting human would date or get within 1,000 feet of someone with hair like that.

[arabian]

Except A LOT of guys wear their hair like that. It's quite the popular hairstyle. (Still don't like Damon's god-awful inky-dyed hair with the floppy part.)