TVD - A View to Kill
They may be dysfunctional, bickering lunatics, but they stick together. You can be mad at someone, can expect a baseline of terrible behavior in your relationship with them, and can still consider them the touchstone of your world.
Bonnie
I loved Bonnie even more than usual in this episode! Bonnie can mess with Originals with her mind alone - but she can't control it. Whether it's any better or worse to be in thrall to her own power, or to be dependent on capricious spirits to make her ethical decisions for her, is yet to be seen.
The episode did the rare truly neutral portrayal of a conflict between a teen and her parents, and I love that Bonnie's getting to act like a realistic teenager, rather than having to suck it up and make the good decisions for everyone. Bonnie's dad tries to make decisions as a father in the way he can now as a mayor. (Which he might actually be good at. I've been waiting for someone to think to put vervain in the water supply since I started watching the show. No, really.) He's right in that stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day way: he is hostile to all magic, he just happens to have taken an interest at the time she was hooked into Shane and his truly bad stuff. And he feels guilty for not having been involved enough before, when there was still a chance to help arm her to make good decisions, and so he bluntly starts trying to control her. Only you can't do that effectively with a teenager who isn't a superhero, let alone one who is. Then Abby the VAMPIRE rolls in, after having abandoned Bonnie how many times, and starts telling Bonnie how she's dirty and needs to be cleansed.
The episode also does a wonderful job drawing out Bonnie's motivations past "she wants to Save Elena!" Her parents simply want her to stop being magic AT THEM. The threat to her independence, the squashing of her potential, that's enough to make it awful. But from a couple of weeks into discovering her "psychic" powers, she also started identifying AS a witch. Since then it's become so important to her to BE a watch that any crackdown on magic is a rejection of Bonnie herself. On top of that, Bonnie knows just how vulnerable she is in Mystic Falls even with her power. She experiences a threat to her power as a threat to her life, because it is.
All of which gives her a ton of incentive to choose her friends over her family. Her friends frequently leave her vulnerable, but she has some sense of autonomy with them, because they not just allow but need her to flex her witch muscles. She knows Shane is manipulating her, but he's not overtly threatening her security and identity.
Bonnie isn't used to being challenged on her judgment, and so she reacts with the worst possible words - "it isn't dark magic, it's expression, and I need it!" - and half-convinces herself that they're true. And her parents react to that in the worst possible way (ethically and in terms of getting results), by knocking her out. But being mad at your family, being frustrated with them, that doesn't mean you hate them. I think Bonnie is being absolutely sincere when she says she wants to use the cure to save Abby.
Kol
Kol, in the end, wasn't just avoiding killing Jeremy because of the hunter's curse. It was also that he really didn't want to do any permanent damage to the kid; he doesn't want to make or do anything permanent. Even his threat to rip off Jeremy's arms came with an offer to "heal him right up" with some vampire blood. I don't know if their blood can re-grow a whole arm, but I don't see why not, if it can repair internal organs that are injured beyond functioning.
And generally, Kol is a sensualist, a playboy who likes things exactly the way they are. He likes Earth, he likes having music whenever he wants. He's taken to the mindset of immortality better than his siblings; he loves instant gratification and doesn't think much of improving things for the future. That comes, at least in part, from feeling secure in the universe and the things more powerful than him in it. He has faith, he knows fear. He behaves for his older brothers, accepting readily that there doesn't have to be a reason for why Klaus does what he does. He holds witches in high esteem, and doesn't question them when they say to fear Silas. Kol assumed they had a mutual interest in saving the world. He was wrong. They didn't care. Killing the messenger certainly got that message across.
I didn't think they were actually going to kill him off! He was so much fun! I wonder if his death won't bring Rebekah and Klaus back together - these upstarts have declared all-out war on the Mikaelsons. Finn's death was one thing, because he had just made the mistake of trying to get his siblings killed. Kol, though, was a part of no such betrayal.
Elena & Jeremy
The episode set up a lot of parallels between the ex-bro little brothers. Kol shows up at Elena's, Jeremy shows up at Bonnie's. They're fighting with fear, with duelling loyalties and difficulty committing. And they're very aware that the world they live in couldn't care less what they think or do. Klaus mentions Jeremy being "saddled" with a conscience, as if he didn't already have one of his own (he did!) and couldn't keep it in his head now that he's become a hunter. I'm really interested to see where Jeremy goes from here. Now it's Jeremy, not Elena, whose body is useful to others and considered public property.
Here's a fun fact about vampire Elena: ONE OF HER PLANS HAS WORKED, and how. What is she planning on curing, executive funtioning? Elena dodges again as to whether or not she wants the cure - "what does it matter what I want, if it puts everyone else in danger?" Because she doesn't want it. She's adaptable, she always survives. She's embraced the whole amoral vampire thing; she doesn't have to prioritize looking like a good girl anymore. Whether or not it was a good thing to do - she's a person who deserves the cure, but all of the vampires in Kol's line are disposable is irrelevant to her.
Damon & Klaus
I liked the way the episode took out a lot of the rationalizations for being a bad guy. Klaus and especially Damon justify a lot of their behavior by saying that they're the only ones who get shit done. And usually they are, in fairness, but this plan worked out fine even with the two of them locked in a basement. Even Stefan didn't end up contributing anything except keeping Rebekah out.
That's their internal rationalization. The external excuse others tend to make for them is that there are Worse Bads out there, and so you might as well roll with it. But putting Klaus and Damon in the cellar together to rationalize at each other shows why that's crap too. Klaus points out that it's absolutely ridiculous for them to forgive Damon as much as he does; Damon points out back that Klaus just wishes he knew how to get away with stuff like he does.
I don't know whether or not Klaus was telling the truth about whether he would have destroyed the cure. I don't even think Klaus knew what he was going to do with it. He just knew it was a thing of some power, and if anyone was going to have it it was going to be him.
Ummmm, what else. Stefan's sentimental view of the eighties is kind of adorable; Rebekah's inability to stay detached and skeptical for more than a couple of days is heartwrenching. And Stefan clearly had his reasons for not daggering her - he's not going to follow ELENA's plan, SO THERE - but he also really likes Rebekah, and feels guilty about having used her against her brother. This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/287447.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.