The Originals 1x11 + TVD 100!
The Originals
This episode was truly a family affair, the rest of the world represented only by its highest-ranking survivors, Celeste and Sophie for the witches and Kieran for the humans. (Hayley and Marcel, and by extension Davina, are established as Mikaelsons by their importance in this episode. MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS.) Probably it’s the make-or-break episode for the new series: if you’re emotionally invested, it packed a huge punch, but if you’re not, this is the episode that would tip you off to that.
What. Did. I. SAY about Elijah and his endless transference of his Esther issues??! (I admit I am not entirely comfortable with my level of clarity vis-à-vis Elijah.) Only I admit even I would not have thought to hope or even think that it would happen in such an explicit, plot-consequential way. Without coercion or even prompting, he offers up his mother’s bones, her magic, her essence, and his dead beloved Madonna Celeste whips it out from under him.
Speaking of, OH MY GOD, CELESTE. Bad-ass witch, first-class power player, snapped right out of her fridge - clearly she was made to be my favorite. I did feel for Sophie, getting played like a chump by her friend, but eh. I’m not yet ready to speculate on her game, but I do want to point out that Celeste/Sabine is a great example of trope subversion done right. Elijah’s memories of her are that she smiled at him and rolled her eyes at his brother, and oh, she was helplessly brutalized by the bad brother Klaus. And on second watch of this episode, it seems that she still has feelings for him, but not strong enough that she’ll compromise her identity or spill her secrets. She doesn’t want him fawning over her, she wants him bustling over Hayley and the puppy.
I am a bit surprised that Hayley came clean to Elijah about having spied and given up “Celeste’s” remains? She probably could’ve let Elijah go on in ignorance, or assume that Davina or any other interloper in the house had sold him out. Elijah chooses the dead over the living because the dead cannot disappoint, the dead can, must, take on whatever shape he wishes to project. Hayley is a werewolf, and a person who’s starting to think of herself as a mother.
As much as I watched the whole thing in a rush of emotion, the Originals were surprisingly cool-headed. Look at this family when they have a project. Klaus is the cynic at the center, speaking for the affairs of the monarchy. Rebekah, being comfortable with running hot emotionally, keeps her head after the loss of Davina enough to spot the missing power, the devil they’ll face tomorrow. And in life rather than undeath, Elijah would have been the brains of the operation, deftly dispensing with one logical puzzle after another.
I flinched so hard when Sophie slit Davina’s throat, I missed Rebekah and Hayley doing the same. An as much as I know this ‘verse is totally bleak enough that that we could watch Davina go to the slaughter on faith and just die, I was still…hoping a lot and expecting a little that it would work, and then it didn’t. I’m still hoping against hope that it won’t stick, but at the same time, that’s a hell of an establishing moment to prove we’re playing for keeps.
And oh, OH, Marcel. The show always acknowledges the self-interest that occurs when care is expressed, but that line of chosen family from Klaus to Marcel to Davina, survivor to survivor to survivor, they are completely, heartbreakingly sincere.
TVD: 500 Years of Solitude
I was really into the last Petrova-Salvatore mindfuck pileup. Of all of them, Damon probably has the LEAST reason to be pissed at Katherine - I mean, it’d be dishonest to pretend she didn’t mess with his head when the power imbalance was most heavily in her favor, but all things told, eh - so his torment of her came across as the sadistic nastiness it was. Anyone but Damon and it would’ve been barely scraping the surface of justice. The memory he kept forcing her back to was pretty much the only thing that wasn’t her fault in her 500 years of sociopathy - anything but that could’ve led to a real crisis of conscience rather than the blow of powerlessness and trauma. (His morphing into Elijah specifically was amusingly apt: one lovesick dupe with a grudge pretending to be another, more formidable specimen of same.)
Which doesn’t even touch the Stockholmy creep factor of Stefan’s interactions with Katherine. She’s finally in a position where he believes she can’t hurt him - that will never actually be the case, ofc, but you can get why he would feel that way here - and so he soothes her and pets her and unconditionally tells her what he would want to hear. And that’s just as unfair as Damon tormenting her with her family’s deaths: her treatment of Stefan is one of her very few sins which can’t be partially or tangentially justified by Klaus or Elijah or any of it.
Because that is how doppelgangers work. Damon wants to suck everyone into his whole vortex of chaos, so he tortures her with the it’s all your fault. Stefan wants to compartmentalize and find blamelessness and purity, so he tells her it’s not your fault. None of them are acting fairly, and the result doesn’t balance out, it leaves us feeling less comfortable. If you think this is about fairness or fault, you haven’t been paying attention.
And then Elena! Elena’s much-vaunted ~forgiveness tends to fold into her unconscious doppelganger charisma, but this time around she really did look her double in the eyes and try to be the person she wants to be - partly because she’d underestimated Katherine (projecting her own feelings of vulnerability at the moment), and Katherine looked at Elena, remembered who she herself is, and summoned that last burst of adrenaline in order to survive.
lol@ Klaroline OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER. It’s just ew. Especially the way he held off on telling her he’d brought Tyler back, because ofc she would’ve turned right on her heel and left him. That said, I don’t agree that this is, yk, disrespect to or destruction of Caroline as a character? I think that’s an understandable trauma management thing, to try to feel a little less vulnerable to her systematically fucked-up world by siphoning off some of her horror at the big bad wolf into “oh this is my bad boy fling” and “I can afford not to have such high standards for control all of the time” and “why be afraid of Damon if I can suppress my fear of Klaus.” I mean, she’ll be best off when she can trust her instincts a little bit better on which standards she doesn’t mind losing and which ones help keep her together, but…the growth process of getting there is pretty messy for most people.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/326683.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
This episode was truly a family affair, the rest of the world represented only by its highest-ranking survivors, Celeste and Sophie for the witches and Kieran for the humans. (Hayley and Marcel, and by extension Davina, are established as Mikaelsons by their importance in this episode. MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS.) Probably it’s the make-or-break episode for the new series: if you’re emotionally invested, it packed a huge punch, but if you’re not, this is the episode that would tip you off to that.
What. Did. I. SAY about Elijah and his endless transference of his Esther issues??! (I admit I am not entirely comfortable with my level of clarity vis-à-vis Elijah.) Only I admit even I would not have thought to hope or even think that it would happen in such an explicit, plot-consequential way. Without coercion or even prompting, he offers up his mother’s bones, her magic, her essence, and his dead beloved Madonna Celeste whips it out from under him.
Speaking of, OH MY GOD, CELESTE. Bad-ass witch, first-class power player, snapped right out of her fridge - clearly she was made to be my favorite. I did feel for Sophie, getting played like a chump by her friend, but eh. I’m not yet ready to speculate on her game, but I do want to point out that Celeste/Sabine is a great example of trope subversion done right. Elijah’s memories of her are that she smiled at him and rolled her eyes at his brother, and oh, she was helplessly brutalized by the bad brother Klaus. And on second watch of this episode, it seems that she still has feelings for him, but not strong enough that she’ll compromise her identity or spill her secrets. She doesn’t want him fawning over her, she wants him bustling over Hayley and the puppy.
I am a bit surprised that Hayley came clean to Elijah about having spied and given up “Celeste’s” remains? She probably could’ve let Elijah go on in ignorance, or assume that Davina or any other interloper in the house had sold him out. Elijah chooses the dead over the living because the dead cannot disappoint, the dead can, must, take on whatever shape he wishes to project. Hayley is a werewolf, and a person who’s starting to think of herself as a mother.
As much as I watched the whole thing in a rush of emotion, the Originals were surprisingly cool-headed. Look at this family when they have a project. Klaus is the cynic at the center, speaking for the affairs of the monarchy. Rebekah, being comfortable with running hot emotionally, keeps her head after the loss of Davina enough to spot the missing power, the devil they’ll face tomorrow. And in life rather than undeath, Elijah would have been the brains of the operation, deftly dispensing with one logical puzzle after another.
I flinched so hard when Sophie slit Davina’s throat, I missed Rebekah and Hayley doing the same. An as much as I know this ‘verse is totally bleak enough that that we could watch Davina go to the slaughter on faith and just die, I was still…hoping a lot and expecting a little that it would work, and then it didn’t. I’m still hoping against hope that it won’t stick, but at the same time, that’s a hell of an establishing moment to prove we’re playing for keeps.
And oh, OH, Marcel. The show always acknowledges the self-interest that occurs when care is expressed, but that line of chosen family from Klaus to Marcel to Davina, survivor to survivor to survivor, they are completely, heartbreakingly sincere.
TVD: 500 Years of Solitude
I was really into the last Petrova-Salvatore mindfuck pileup. Of all of them, Damon probably has the LEAST reason to be pissed at Katherine - I mean, it’d be dishonest to pretend she didn’t mess with his head when the power imbalance was most heavily in her favor, but all things told, eh - so his torment of her came across as the sadistic nastiness it was. Anyone but Damon and it would’ve been barely scraping the surface of justice. The memory he kept forcing her back to was pretty much the only thing that wasn’t her fault in her 500 years of sociopathy - anything but that could’ve led to a real crisis of conscience rather than the blow of powerlessness and trauma. (His morphing into Elijah specifically was amusingly apt: one lovesick dupe with a grudge pretending to be another, more formidable specimen of same.)
Which doesn’t even touch the Stockholmy creep factor of Stefan’s interactions with Katherine. She’s finally in a position where he believes she can’t hurt him - that will never actually be the case, ofc, but you can get why he would feel that way here - and so he soothes her and pets her and unconditionally tells her what he would want to hear. And that’s just as unfair as Damon tormenting her with her family’s deaths: her treatment of Stefan is one of her very few sins which can’t be partially or tangentially justified by Klaus or Elijah or any of it.
Because that is how doppelgangers work. Damon wants to suck everyone into his whole vortex of chaos, so he tortures her with the it’s all your fault. Stefan wants to compartmentalize and find blamelessness and purity, so he tells her it’s not your fault. None of them are acting fairly, and the result doesn’t balance out, it leaves us feeling less comfortable. If you think this is about fairness or fault, you haven’t been paying attention.
And then Elena! Elena’s much-vaunted ~forgiveness tends to fold into her unconscious doppelganger charisma, but this time around she really did look her double in the eyes and try to be the person she wants to be - partly because she’d underestimated Katherine (projecting her own feelings of vulnerability at the moment), and Katherine looked at Elena, remembered who she herself is, and summoned that last burst of adrenaline in order to survive.
lol@ Klaroline OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER. It’s just ew. Especially the way he held off on telling her he’d brought Tyler back, because ofc she would’ve turned right on her heel and left him. That said, I don’t agree that this is, yk, disrespect to or destruction of Caroline as a character? I think that’s an understandable trauma management thing, to try to feel a little less vulnerable to her systematically fucked-up world by siphoning off some of her horror at the big bad wolf into “oh this is my bad boy fling” and “I can afford not to have such high standards for control all of the time” and “why be afraid of Damon if I can suppress my fear of Klaus.” I mean, she’ll be best off when she can trust her instincts a little bit better on which standards she doesn’t mind losing and which ones help keep her together, but…the growth process of getting there is pretty messy for most people.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/326683.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.