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bookgazing) wrote2013-02-23 00:11
bookgazing) wrote2013-02-23 00:11
The Vampire Diaries: Series Three: Episodes 11 - 15
More thoughts on series three of ‘The Vampire Diaries’, which are probably mostly of interest to Amy and Iris. As always spoilers behind the cut tags.
Episode Eleven: ‘Our Town’
• Aww Caroline and her speech about being stuck and how the point of 17 is to get to 18. I remember thinking that when I was a teenager (especially because 18 is when you can legally drink here and I was forever getting asked for ID when trying to sneak into places).
• And I thought the idea to throw her a party in the cemetery was appropriate. It’s so creepy-cute and that kind of fits with the teens and vampires mix of the show.
• I want Caroline and Matt to go back to being friends on the strength of this episode. Just friends though because Forwood forever, obviously.
• Everything Bonnie says about Elena’s choice to have Jeremy compelled is right, but at this point in the program (after two series of sad, sad character death) the practicality of Elena’s choice is hard to argue with. This split between Elena (and the viewer’s) desire to keep Jeremy safe and Bonnie’s concerns about the ethics of forcing this course of action on him (come on, compelling is never right, it’s gross to take away someone’s choice) reminds me of Jeanne’s recent musing about choosing safety over freedomAmy’s post about this episode:
I think of ‘Interview with a Vampire’ as my first grown up vampire book, so I enjoyed seeing that we share another piece of vamp canon Amy. I was always a big Lestat fan and enjoyed the second book most – how about you? And vamps without human consciences make for just as good characters as vamps with regrets I think. It’s just a different character arc and as long as the writers give them value sets of some kind, motivations and compelling stories they can be exciting to watch. Sometimes you can come to understand humanity by seeing a total lack of it in characters.
I just don’t want these kind of vamps dating any human characters I care about, instead I like them to exist in an entirely vamp world. Although to encourage viewers to love those kinds of world, media generally has to refuses to make the humans the vamps snack on more than disposable victims characters, so audiences don’t sympathise with them and start hating the vamps… I guess that’s where fan-fic/special episodes/other TV and media could come in, to flesh out the human characters. And that’s one of the ways we end up with vamp stories focused as much on the humans as the vamps. Vampire TV circle of life, maybe?
• PS. The sire bond is still terrible. The End.
Episode Twelve: ‘The Ties That Bind’
• Since Isobel, John and Jenna died, the program hasn’t spent much time looking at the theme of making family, instead of inheriting familial bonds. Abby and Bonnie bring that back into focus as they confront how the past has distanced them and Abby explains her relationship to Jamie. I’m glad to see this thread being picked up again, because TVD tends to shine for me when it focuses on depicting families. It puts a lot of different kinds of families on screen, and each family, not matter what its composition, is allowed to be real and individual. And it’s one of the few programs I can think of that understands and respects the idea that families which feature all kinds of relationships, can be constructed.
• Hurray Elijah is back. The most honourable vampire of all (except when he’s off switching sides). He still looks dashing in a suit.
• After watching this episode, I really need a Forwood vid of Tyler, Caroline and Bill set to ‘Fix You’ by Coldplay. He will do whatever it takes to break the sire bond, because he cares about her. It is only his love for Caroline that can shake him out of his cultish allegiance to Klaus. She is saving him every day. <3
Episode Thirteen: ‘Bringing Out the Dead’
• How do I even talk about this episode? The story line between Caroline and her dad was perfect. It’s the first time a character has chosen to die instead of convert and to be honest, I never even thought about whether a person would choose death instead of vamping out. It made me think about vamping and staying vamped as a decision, perhaps one that other characters do not attend to especially thoughtfully. The last time we saw someone allowed to think hard about becoming a vampire was when Elena thought that path might be inevitable. I guess that’s a theme for this series, what with Esther and the reason behind her plans (which I’m going to talk about in a moment). But where will this theme take us in a show which has made us care for so many vampires?
• *weeps* Candice Accola you do sadness and emotional connection so well.
• Iris, in the comments on my first post you talked a little bit about the gay subtext we were drawing from TVD and whether Caroline and her dad’s conversations about becoming a vampire continuously function as sub textual discussions about being gay. If they do then wow is the subtext of Bill’s decision in this episode upsetting. He would rather die than convert…um. Personally I think the sub textual links are inconsistent and broken, like that’s a fault of the programs and Bill is openly gay, which would seem to cancel out that particular strand of negative, homophobic subtext. But that interpretation is undeniably there for the reading, if you assume consistent subtext.
• And urgh I wish they hadn’t made Bill appear quite such a disturbing fanatic when he first appeared on screen, so his decision to die didn’t feel just a little bit zealous and rigid.
• Also, good going TVD, you killed the one openly gay character on your show. * slow hand clap followed by eye roll of epic proportions* And removing Bill’s partner from his life, to make sure there were no realism hurdles to jump when Bill decided to die? That’s a pretty unimaginative move.
• At the same time, TVD put a gay character into their supernatural program and gave him a significant story line… which eventually led to his death. What are conclusions?
• The dinner is excellent. Everyone is all *glares* and polite hatred radiates through the house. The tension is immense. And then we have some new vampires for the plot to play around with. The character list feels a little over stuffed by this point, but one of the vamp brothers is called Cole. Like in ‘Charmed’! That name is a total tweak for me.
• And I enjoyed Ric’s 90th fake death. There was a puzzle, they worked it out and executed it in a with the typically brutal approach to life saving I’ve come to expect from TVD. The scene was full of urgency and I think it requires creative thinking to inject urgency into a Ric reincarnation plot line now, because he always comes back. I have to admit I’m always waiting for the day when Ric won’t be able to come back. Will it feel like a huge shock, because I’m so used to him waking up again, or will it feel like a lazy way to throw over a character like Sirius Black’s sudden magical death?
Side note: It’s interesting to re-examine Rory’s repeated magical reincarnations in Who in the light of a program which uses the device so shamelessly and yet seriously.
Episode Fourteen: ‘Dangerous Liaisons’
• Loved it! Vampires should just spend their whole lives crafting elegant balls.
• Esther is just…AH! Let me talk about her a lot. The basic gist of Esther’s motivation is that she wants to destroy her grown children, which seems bad, but she tried keeping them alive before and her kids have turned into monsters, so… hurray for murder, I guess. At first she seems like a typical example of the ‘unnatural’ murdering mother (bonus points for subtext TVD as she actually is unnatural/supernatural) who the audience should judge. But it’s not long before she’s given narrative space to explain herself reasonably, allowing the audience to better understand her and her decision. Characters, who are framed as ‘good’ because of their opposition to Klaus, like Elena and Stefan, agree that her actions are necessary. Both of these aspects provide narrative validation for Esther. This validation keeps her from being entirely set up as the ‘unnatural’ stereotype, as the ‘unnatural’ mother can generally expect condemnation from everyone else in her narrative.
While I think the morals of the characters that back her decision are supposed to be viewed with a little bit of suspicion by the audience, the fact that their morals are questionable doesn’t automatically mean that the narrative directs viewers to completely reel back from Esther’s plan. Elena provides the on screen manifestation of conflicted morality by wondering aloud whether all of Esther’s children deserve to die. She’s become much harder this season, generally willing to take less morally clear cut action to try and ensure that success of plans to kill Klaus. And this means that when she expresses doubts about the morals of a plan the audience is primed to take those concerns seriously, whatever the (now pretty morally bankrupt) Salvatore brothers may say. But Elena does agree to the plan in the end and Esther makes a persuasive case (even Elijah the most honourable of the originals doesn’t compare with Good Stefan).
Still, the way Alice Evans plays Esther feels quite cool, emotionally detached and because of this, slightly creepy; in fact her vibe is rather reminiscent of Klaus’ chilling manner. This makes sense, because she’s a TVD vampire and as we know they apparently have the ability to dial down their emotions to avoid pain (except perhaps not, who knows with this anymore), but this acting decision also links her character a little bit with that typical idea of the ‘unnatural’ mother. Maybe it encourages the audience to be repulsed by her? Making the fanatical Finn, whose inability to care about his own survival is reminds me a lot of depictions of disturbed and wild eyed flagellants, her confident does quite a bit to set her plan up as creeptastic. And that could be worrying, because it would be very easy for this plot line to fall into the trap of validating ideas about the evil of particular kinds of mothers, or start including subtext which demonises abortion. Still, I think it sufficiently distances itself from all that (Esther’s kids are grown after all and she’s weirdly not yet individualised enough to be aligned with any particular female stereotypes).
The way Evans plays her role makes me curious to see whether the series is going to be able to approve her ideas about her children (who are most of the time rather detached mass murderers), or maintain the primacy of the viewer’s sympathies for original characters like Elijah and Rebekah.
• Oh look, another character is afflicted with a self-hating desire for suicide. Still not gonna talk about suicide explicitly TVD? Nope. Let’s just add it to the long, long list of very obvious, unresolved subtext issues in this program.
• Rebekah and Matt’s jacket - d’aww. Yes, yes, she was going to murder him, but we all forgive her because she’s surprised into happiness by a little basic human kindness, right? Good, glad we agree. I feel like being a vampire lady, she took on this typical vamp character (hard, racy and bored by feeling) which is equal parts pose and reality. But Matt’s action surprises her out of her mind set and reminds her there is another way to be. Also, this moment made me think that maybe somewhere along the way she internalised the hard taunting of her brothers/the world’s belief that she is just a monster and this caused her to lose her sense of worth. Maybe it pushed her to take on that character even more as a form of protection? All of a sudden, it’s too hard to break from that way of being and lashing out comes first, but here she’s reminded that not everyone automatically sees her as a vamp. It’s so many years since people started incorporating surprise vulnerability into their monster characters as a matter of course, but I am still charmed by it.
• I am totally down with Matt rejecting Rebekah, because it makes sense for him, but does he always have to be such a dick when asserting his own needs? Ever since Tyler said he was probably feeling alone (welp), I feel horrible for Matt, but perhaps he could think of other people sometimes? I suppose dramatically his reaction here shows a complete contrast to the jacket moment, and if I’m right about Rebekah’s self-worth issues then his rejection makes her night with Damon seem perfectly in keeping with her character development. Damon is the exceptional twister of women and sleeping with him is almost a symbol for female self-loathing, but he’s also coming pitiably close to being the end of the night dude – the man that women consistently go to when their first choice refuses them, because they need physical comfort. I mean, I don’t worry about him or anything, the end of the night dude makes out ok and his societal status is much better than the end of the night girl’s. Plus, Damon does not seem to notice this recurring pattern (probably because he’s too busy getting off) so I reserve the right to hold all tears. Still, it’s a little bit sad on a human level, sort of.
• On a mildly depressing personal note, this episode is where I started liking Klaus. Yep, that’s a thing I’m doing now. He’s just so obviously desperate for Caroline’s approval and is so much softer around her. Still, I’m not sure I really want them to have a relationship, because while Caroline is great at keeping her authority around him while she hates him, I’m not sure how well she’d be able to keep that up if they were in love. She’s prone to inferiority complexes and Klaus’ situation as a rich man, an original and the hybrid makes it likely that she’d soon be down on herself. The power balance of that couple would be extremely uneven (although Tyler is also super rich, but his innate dickness and struggle to overcome that puts them on a more equal footing). Also Klaus has an ‘I can show you the world’ thing going on, which means he would be leading the way, educating her etc. Do not want. And he seems like the kind of dude who would be turned off the moment a woman actually wanted him, or needed him, or was a little bit jealous which means he’d cast Caroline aside as soon as she had a genuine emotion. Again, do not want.
Episode Fifteen: ‘All My Children’
• This episode reminded me of ‘The Sun Also Rises’ from series two, but dull. How can there be so much fire and just no dramatic tension?
• Abby being turned is unacceptable. Firstly this is Persia White, no one better be kicking her out of their program. Secondly, this means another African American character has died on TVD. And although she isn’t dead forever in the show’s terms, her transition from witch to undead vampire still feels skeevy given TVD’s history of killing off African American, Asian and Latino characters. Thirdly, I want Bonnie and Abby to have lots of episodes together, even if now they can’t investigate their magic together (which was such a promising story line). Bonnie has never had the same kind of present, in depth family connections as the other characters. Her relationship with her Grams was so touching, the way the two actresses played it so simply, but I’m hungry for a new story line about Bonnie and live relatives. I hope making Abby a vampire (and so less vulnerable to Damon’s deadly whims) means she gets to stay on the program and spend time talking to Bonnie.
• I was so glad that the program gave Bonnie space to reject Elena after Abby is turned. I think one of the best things the program has done is allow Bonnie to honestly express herself when Elena’s life negatively impacts hers. That aspect is under cut when Bonnie continues to be her friend no matter what, but at the same time I feel like her decision to return to their friendship so often makes sense. It is really hard to cut old, deep friendships out of your heart and it is much easier to blame those around your friends for everything they bring into your life. It is especially easy to shift blame if the people around your friends are murdering vampires. So, I like that Bonnie’s feelings towards Elena shift from time to time, but I do wish that she was given more of a chance to discuss why her feelings shift and where she’s at with their friendship to other parties on screen. I would love to see her have a heart to heart with Caroline, or Matt, or even Jeremy (y’know when he gets back) that let the viewer see her emotional struggle developed it a bit more for us all.
• And dun dun dun plot twists… involving a tree. Really, how excited are we supposed to get about that?
Just two more discs to go.
Episode Eleven: ‘Our Town’
• Aww Caroline and her speech about being stuck and how the point of 17 is to get to 18. I remember thinking that when I was a teenager (especially because 18 is when you can legally drink here and I was forever getting asked for ID when trying to sneak into places).
• And I thought the idea to throw her a party in the cemetery was appropriate. It’s so creepy-cute and that kind of fits with the teens and vampires mix of the show.
• I want Caroline and Matt to go back to being friends on the strength of this episode. Just friends though because Forwood forever, obviously.
• Everything Bonnie says about Elena’s choice to have Jeremy compelled is right, but at this point in the program (after two series of sad, sad character death) the practicality of Elena’s choice is hard to argue with. This split between Elena (and the viewer’s) desire to keep Jeremy safe and Bonnie’s concerns about the ethics of forcing this course of action on him (come on, compelling is never right, it’s gross to take away someone’s choice) reminds me of Jeanne’s recent musing about choosing safety over freedomAmy’s post about this episode:
‘I have a thing that I like, with vampires, which is the idea of vampires not bound by the restraint of human conscience. It's why I loved that episode earlier in the season that was set in the 20s where they were rich and beautiful and evil and in love. Obviously a story like that can't be sustained because you need conflict, etc. But I like it. And you know, one of my first vampire books ever was Interview with the Vampire where they go to Europe and there are old vampires and it's all very mysterious and romantic. I like these old vampires. So when Klaus comes in to Caroline and talks about what good things she could get out of this vampire life, and Klaus is like...the oldest of old vampires and speaking in his British accent and you can sort of visualize them ruling the world because Caroline is a royalty type (tiara earlier in the ep! :) I just....I sort of loved it. It evoked that old vampire story feel for me.’
I think of ‘Interview with a Vampire’ as my first grown up vampire book, so I enjoyed seeing that we share another piece of vamp canon Amy. I was always a big Lestat fan and enjoyed the second book most – how about you? And vamps without human consciences make for just as good characters as vamps with regrets I think. It’s just a different character arc and as long as the writers give them value sets of some kind, motivations and compelling stories they can be exciting to watch. Sometimes you can come to understand humanity by seeing a total lack of it in characters.
I just don’t want these kind of vamps dating any human characters I care about, instead I like them to exist in an entirely vamp world. Although to encourage viewers to love those kinds of world, media generally has to refuses to make the humans the vamps snack on more than disposable victims characters, so audiences don’t sympathise with them and start hating the vamps… I guess that’s where fan-fic/special episodes/other TV and media could come in, to flesh out the human characters. And that’s one of the ways we end up with vamp stories focused as much on the humans as the vamps. Vampire TV circle of life, maybe?
• PS. The sire bond is still terrible. The End.
Episode Twelve: ‘The Ties That Bind’
• Since Isobel, John and Jenna died, the program hasn’t spent much time looking at the theme of making family, instead of inheriting familial bonds. Abby and Bonnie bring that back into focus as they confront how the past has distanced them and Abby explains her relationship to Jamie. I’m glad to see this thread being picked up again, because TVD tends to shine for me when it focuses on depicting families. It puts a lot of different kinds of families on screen, and each family, not matter what its composition, is allowed to be real and individual. And it’s one of the few programs I can think of that understands and respects the idea that families which feature all kinds of relationships, can be constructed.
• Hurray Elijah is back. The most honourable vampire of all (except when he’s off switching sides). He still looks dashing in a suit.
• After watching this episode, I really need a Forwood vid of Tyler, Caroline and Bill set to ‘Fix You’ by Coldplay. He will do whatever it takes to break the sire bond, because he cares about her. It is only his love for Caroline that can shake him out of his cultish allegiance to Klaus. She is saving him every day. <3
Episode Thirteen: ‘Bringing Out the Dead’
• How do I even talk about this episode? The story line between Caroline and her dad was perfect. It’s the first time a character has chosen to die instead of convert and to be honest, I never even thought about whether a person would choose death instead of vamping out. It made me think about vamping and staying vamped as a decision, perhaps one that other characters do not attend to especially thoughtfully. The last time we saw someone allowed to think hard about becoming a vampire was when Elena thought that path might be inevitable. I guess that’s a theme for this series, what with Esther and the reason behind her plans (which I’m going to talk about in a moment). But where will this theme take us in a show which has made us care for so many vampires?
• *weeps* Candice Accola you do sadness and emotional connection so well.
• Iris, in the comments on my first post you talked a little bit about the gay subtext we were drawing from TVD and whether Caroline and her dad’s conversations about becoming a vampire continuously function as sub textual discussions about being gay. If they do then wow is the subtext of Bill’s decision in this episode upsetting. He would rather die than convert…um. Personally I think the sub textual links are inconsistent and broken, like that’s a fault of the programs and Bill is openly gay, which would seem to cancel out that particular strand of negative, homophobic subtext. But that interpretation is undeniably there for the reading, if you assume consistent subtext.
• And urgh I wish they hadn’t made Bill appear quite such a disturbing fanatic when he first appeared on screen, so his decision to die didn’t feel just a little bit zealous and rigid.
• Also, good going TVD, you killed the one openly gay character on your show. * slow hand clap followed by eye roll of epic proportions* And removing Bill’s partner from his life, to make sure there were no realism hurdles to jump when Bill decided to die? That’s a pretty unimaginative move.
• At the same time, TVD put a gay character into their supernatural program and gave him a significant story line… which eventually led to his death. What are conclusions?
• The dinner is excellent. Everyone is all *glares* and polite hatred radiates through the house. The tension is immense. And then we have some new vampires for the plot to play around with. The character list feels a little over stuffed by this point, but one of the vamp brothers is called Cole. Like in ‘Charmed’! That name is a total tweak for me.
• And I enjoyed Ric’s 90th fake death. There was a puzzle, they worked it out and executed it in a with the typically brutal approach to life saving I’ve come to expect from TVD. The scene was full of urgency and I think it requires creative thinking to inject urgency into a Ric reincarnation plot line now, because he always comes back. I have to admit I’m always waiting for the day when Ric won’t be able to come back. Will it feel like a huge shock, because I’m so used to him waking up again, or will it feel like a lazy way to throw over a character like Sirius Black’s sudden magical death?
Side note: It’s interesting to re-examine Rory’s repeated magical reincarnations in Who in the light of a program which uses the device so shamelessly and yet seriously.
Episode Fourteen: ‘Dangerous Liaisons’
• Loved it! Vampires should just spend their whole lives crafting elegant balls.
• Esther is just…AH! Let me talk about her a lot. The basic gist of Esther’s motivation is that she wants to destroy her grown children, which seems bad, but she tried keeping them alive before and her kids have turned into monsters, so… hurray for murder, I guess. At first she seems like a typical example of the ‘unnatural’ murdering mother (bonus points for subtext TVD as she actually is unnatural/supernatural) who the audience should judge. But it’s not long before she’s given narrative space to explain herself reasonably, allowing the audience to better understand her and her decision. Characters, who are framed as ‘good’ because of their opposition to Klaus, like Elena and Stefan, agree that her actions are necessary. Both of these aspects provide narrative validation for Esther. This validation keeps her from being entirely set up as the ‘unnatural’ stereotype, as the ‘unnatural’ mother can generally expect condemnation from everyone else in her narrative.
While I think the morals of the characters that back her decision are supposed to be viewed with a little bit of suspicion by the audience, the fact that their morals are questionable doesn’t automatically mean that the narrative directs viewers to completely reel back from Esther’s plan. Elena provides the on screen manifestation of conflicted morality by wondering aloud whether all of Esther’s children deserve to die. She’s become much harder this season, generally willing to take less morally clear cut action to try and ensure that success of plans to kill Klaus. And this means that when she expresses doubts about the morals of a plan the audience is primed to take those concerns seriously, whatever the (now pretty morally bankrupt) Salvatore brothers may say. But Elena does agree to the plan in the end and Esther makes a persuasive case (even Elijah the most honourable of the originals doesn’t compare with Good Stefan).
Still, the way Alice Evans plays Esther feels quite cool, emotionally detached and because of this, slightly creepy; in fact her vibe is rather reminiscent of Klaus’ chilling manner. This makes sense, because she’s a TVD vampire and as we know they apparently have the ability to dial down their emotions to avoid pain (except perhaps not, who knows with this anymore), but this acting decision also links her character a little bit with that typical idea of the ‘unnatural’ mother. Maybe it encourages the audience to be repulsed by her? Making the fanatical Finn, whose inability to care about his own survival is reminds me a lot of depictions of disturbed and wild eyed flagellants, her confident does quite a bit to set her plan up as creeptastic. And that could be worrying, because it would be very easy for this plot line to fall into the trap of validating ideas about the evil of particular kinds of mothers, or start including subtext which demonises abortion. Still, I think it sufficiently distances itself from all that (Esther’s kids are grown after all and she’s weirdly not yet individualised enough to be aligned with any particular female stereotypes).
The way Evans plays her role makes me curious to see whether the series is going to be able to approve her ideas about her children (who are most of the time rather detached mass murderers), or maintain the primacy of the viewer’s sympathies for original characters like Elijah and Rebekah.
• Oh look, another character is afflicted with a self-hating desire for suicide. Still not gonna talk about suicide explicitly TVD? Nope. Let’s just add it to the long, long list of very obvious, unresolved subtext issues in this program.
• Rebekah and Matt’s jacket - d’aww. Yes, yes, she was going to murder him, but we all forgive her because she’s surprised into happiness by a little basic human kindness, right? Good, glad we agree. I feel like being a vampire lady, she took on this typical vamp character (hard, racy and bored by feeling) which is equal parts pose and reality. But Matt’s action surprises her out of her mind set and reminds her there is another way to be. Also, this moment made me think that maybe somewhere along the way she internalised the hard taunting of her brothers/the world’s belief that she is just a monster and this caused her to lose her sense of worth. Maybe it pushed her to take on that character even more as a form of protection? All of a sudden, it’s too hard to break from that way of being and lashing out comes first, but here she’s reminded that not everyone automatically sees her as a vamp. It’s so many years since people started incorporating surprise vulnerability into their monster characters as a matter of course, but I am still charmed by it.
• I am totally down with Matt rejecting Rebekah, because it makes sense for him, but does he always have to be such a dick when asserting his own needs? Ever since Tyler said he was probably feeling alone (welp), I feel horrible for Matt, but perhaps he could think of other people sometimes? I suppose dramatically his reaction here shows a complete contrast to the jacket moment, and if I’m right about Rebekah’s self-worth issues then his rejection makes her night with Damon seem perfectly in keeping with her character development. Damon is the exceptional twister of women and sleeping with him is almost a symbol for female self-loathing, but he’s also coming pitiably close to being the end of the night dude – the man that women consistently go to when their first choice refuses them, because they need physical comfort. I mean, I don’t worry about him or anything, the end of the night dude makes out ok and his societal status is much better than the end of the night girl’s. Plus, Damon does not seem to notice this recurring pattern (probably because he’s too busy getting off) so I reserve the right to hold all tears. Still, it’s a little bit sad on a human level, sort of.
• On a mildly depressing personal note, this episode is where I started liking Klaus. Yep, that’s a thing I’m doing now. He’s just so obviously desperate for Caroline’s approval and is so much softer around her. Still, I’m not sure I really want them to have a relationship, because while Caroline is great at keeping her authority around him while she hates him, I’m not sure how well she’d be able to keep that up if they were in love. She’s prone to inferiority complexes and Klaus’ situation as a rich man, an original and the hybrid makes it likely that she’d soon be down on herself. The power balance of that couple would be extremely uneven (although Tyler is also super rich, but his innate dickness and struggle to overcome that puts them on a more equal footing). Also Klaus has an ‘I can show you the world’ thing going on, which means he would be leading the way, educating her etc. Do not want. And he seems like the kind of dude who would be turned off the moment a woman actually wanted him, or needed him, or was a little bit jealous which means he’d cast Caroline aside as soon as she had a genuine emotion. Again, do not want.
Episode Fifteen: ‘All My Children’
• This episode reminded me of ‘The Sun Also Rises’ from series two, but dull. How can there be so much fire and just no dramatic tension?
• Abby being turned is unacceptable. Firstly this is Persia White, no one better be kicking her out of their program. Secondly, this means another African American character has died on TVD. And although she isn’t dead forever in the show’s terms, her transition from witch to undead vampire still feels skeevy given TVD’s history of killing off African American, Asian and Latino characters. Thirdly, I want Bonnie and Abby to have lots of episodes together, even if now they can’t investigate their magic together (which was such a promising story line). Bonnie has never had the same kind of present, in depth family connections as the other characters. Her relationship with her Grams was so touching, the way the two actresses played it so simply, but I’m hungry for a new story line about Bonnie and live relatives. I hope making Abby a vampire (and so less vulnerable to Damon’s deadly whims) means she gets to stay on the program and spend time talking to Bonnie.
• I was so glad that the program gave Bonnie space to reject Elena after Abby is turned. I think one of the best things the program has done is allow Bonnie to honestly express herself when Elena’s life negatively impacts hers. That aspect is under cut when Bonnie continues to be her friend no matter what, but at the same time I feel like her decision to return to their friendship so often makes sense. It is really hard to cut old, deep friendships out of your heart and it is much easier to blame those around your friends for everything they bring into your life. It is especially easy to shift blame if the people around your friends are murdering vampires. So, I like that Bonnie’s feelings towards Elena shift from time to time, but I do wish that she was given more of a chance to discuss why her feelings shift and where she’s at with their friendship to other parties on screen. I would love to see her have a heart to heart with Caroline, or Matt, or even Jeremy (y’know when he gets back) that let the viewer see her emotional struggle developed it a bit more for us all.
• And dun dun dun plot twists… involving a tree. Really, how excited are we supposed to get about that?
Just two more discs to go.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-02-23 14:45 (UTC)(link)Really enjoyed your thoughts on the gay subtext. Yes, if you take the subtext consistently I rather fear it's disturbing. I agree that the subtext is all over the place in TVD. Mostly, they have a hard enough time keeping their canon consistent, so I wonder if we'll get anywhere with subtext.
Bonnie: Yes. Amy and I got all excited about the fact that the show seemed to hint towards setting Bonnie up as a counterweight to the validation of Elena's choices (or mostly, choices made for the protection of Elena) in the show. I don't really remember what happened after this...
As for Abby. There is a later episode, I think, where Abby learns to deal with/addresses her turning. Will you please share your thoughts on that episode? And particularly the Bonnie/Caroline "balance"?
DO NOT WANT Klaus with Caroline. I do not mind seeing him pine for her, mostly (although it might take away from his being the big bad, which he supposedly still is), but Caroline with Klaus? No. I want Forwood to keep, even if I'm not a die hard shipper of them.
Hahaha at your last line about the plot twist. It's not really very exciting, is it?
You have almost made me excited again for TVD. Perhaps by the end of this series of posts you might have persuaded me and Amy to start watching again. Although.. no, I think I want to wait and see where S4 ends before I torture myself by watching it while it's broadcast.
- Iris
no subject
I still don't like Damon for Elena (gah, disk four, is there any way to erase that kiss - make it go away). I had a real long talk with someone who is for Delena offline about my problem (he is a murderer who doesn't want to change, she is opposed to the murdering - how can she love him long term?). But she has seen S4 and assures me he mellows... So idk maybe I will get into it when he stops killing everyone for fun, if that happens... If they were about casual lust for each other I would dig it, but because they're both supposed to be interested in a long-term, romantic relationship I keep having logical reactions to what they're doing. Maybe that's just my thing though, I mean, I don't know why anyone would start something like that knowing it can only end in despair, but other people might say that just because love can't be forever doesn't mean it shouldn't be....
And I do think Stefan is still kind sweet for her, but like I mentioned I am following the program's guidance to ignore lots of logical reasons why he's not. But I'm also with you, I wouldn't be too upset to see the program kill them both off/make them leave and see Elena single or with someone else (perferably not a vampire) entirely. I don't think absent Salvatore brothers would harm the program at this point as there are so many other interesting characters and relationships that could be expanded, to fill any plot space given over to them.
I've seen the Abby episode you're talking about now and I have reactions! Hopefully to be written up soon and then I can motor on towards the final episodes.
And yes, please let a more exciting plotline than the one about the tree turn up at the end. They tried so hard to make the tree thing exciting in the next lot of episodes (mwahaha I have this old sign that no one knows about *drammatic reveal music*) but I just... IT'S A WHOLE PLOT REVOLVING AROUND A TREE... It might work in another show, but TVD is known for its over the top dramz and action. A tree storyline is not going to cut it, at least not for me.