Hey faithful readers, I can’t apologize enough for falling so behind. For a while I fell back into my semi-chronic exhaustion, and then I had a really great week-long visit with friends I rarely get to see. But now I’m back. I’ll try to catch up with the classic moment series since I’m behind, but the good news is, either I catch up and you get more moments, or I don’t catch up, in which case…well, let’s just say that when I tried to come up with thirteen great moments I was kind of lying about one or two of them. So if I leave them off the list I don’t think anyone is worst off without it. Anyway:
[NOTE: Okay, so obviously I didn’t love Season Three of the show. But I have high hopes for Season Four. So every Thursday until the season starts I’m going to post a “classic” moment from Season Three. Hopefully this will rev up momentum, and/or create good karma in the world so the writers feel good and it will come out in their writing (a fan can hope). These moments aren’t chosen because I think they profoundly illustrate the thematics/narrative/characters of the season; rather, I’m specifically picking moments I have unadulterated, happy memories of. The memories of these moments don’t contain a single “I wish they went in a different direction” or “ouch that line was awkward and/or offensive.” Just good moments that I enjoyed, and that exceeded expectations.]
This week’s classic moment comes from episode 3×03, “The End of The Affair.” For context, present-day Klaus has just revealed to Stefan that once upon a time they shared a great bromance filled with cruel pranks on humans, hero-worship, and deflected desire by pretending it was Rebekah that deviant Stefan was interested in. Klaus evokes the memory of a simpler time, where people partied all day in fancy jazz clubs, wearing their finest clothes and drinking their illegal liquor and having great fun with cuckoldry; truly Klaus is to the twenties as The Princess and the Frog is to N’Awlins. Modern-day Klaus informs/reminds Stefan about Rebekah, and implies she’s one of the perks of joining Team Niklaus. He informs/reminds Stefan of the fun they once shared being very creepy bullies, with the unspoken implication that this brilliant camaraderie could all be Stefan’s once more, if only he’d flip his switch and recommit to BFFs for life. In this particular flashback, the three vamps are hanging out in a nightclub shooting the breeze when some angry husband accuses our Ripper of hiding his wife. Stefan beckons said wife to the table, flicks out his trusty pocket knife, and offers said husband an alternative to the alcohol he just disparaged. Watch and see how creepy.
First of all, flashbacks involving Stefan are always full of win, because they’re the only time Paul Wesley’s hair is shorter than an inch above his head. Second bit of shallow, I love how pretty everyone is in their clothes and their refreshing joie de vivre.
Now on to the substance. We’ve seen Ripper-Stefan be brutal, but I think this is possibly the most creepy and unsettling he’s ever been (and I say that filled with the memory of Stefan licking his father’s lifeblood off his own fingers that one time). For awhile now I’ve tried to figure out why this scene creeped me out so much (aside from the obvious, of course), and I think I’ve figured it out. This scene is full of sex. Sexual conquest and sexual anticipation, subtextual sex between Stefan and all four other people in this scene. Watch Stefan as he slowly pulls Lila’s glove off her hand, not even looking to see her face (the manner of it, I mean, the sensual tactility of the fabric resisting and then yielding abruptly off her by his practiced hands). The way that Rebekah cuddles and laughs, intimate and comfortable and very thrilled to see her new boyfriend being such a charismatic sadist. Rewatch the entire scene just looking at Klaus’s expressions, the way he gazes at Stefan, first teasing him about being good enough for an Original (i.e. himself), and then his thrill and glowing admiration when he sees how Stefan dominates an unwilling man. And then the exchange between Stefan and Liam. The dominance and submission, the compulsion to do something degrading and disgusting because the will of the dominant cannot be denied (there’s a whole cottage industry of dirty stories out there that go something like this).
Sexuality, of course, does not have to be creepy, nor does violence. Even when sex is violent (think Buffy and Spike in “Smashed”) it can just be the conflation of specific passions without a creepy factor. This scene...I’m not sure. Most people in this show tend not to realize their will is being taken from them while being compelled. Katherine once realized it, when Klaus had her stab her leg again and again for hours, and that was creepy as fuck. And now Liam realizes it, as he drinks his wife’s blood while they all laugh at him. Or is it something different? Stefan’s role heretofore has been that of the gentle lover who would never hurt you…and now we suddenly see this same lover with all kinds of creepy sexual subtext: rapiness, unfaithfulness, emotionally sadistic and abusive and master of all while light-heartedly not giving the slightest of fucks about any of it beyond the pleasure he gains.
And blood consumption, of course, is the classical symbol of everything vampires have ever (culturally) been actually about: violence and sex, united in one symbolic act. Whole mythologies have sprung out of this symbol but it’s always started there. Maybe this scene is creepy because in this case, it’s not the vampire partaking of the deviancy but rather imposing it on someone else? Or because it is retrieved with a knife (not teeth), and served in a fancy glass (not sucked), that forces this action of primal monstrosity to be gilded in this veneer of civilization, which of course is another fearful latent subtext in the vampire mythos (one which was much more effective when vampires were counts and gentleman rather than teenagers with backpacks…).
I don’t know. But at any event, this scene did more to make Ripper scary than all the times he hunted down and killed screaming virginal teens put together. It’s one of the creepiest moments of season three and, I would argue, of the series as a whole.
+++++++++++++++++++
Two other notes:
- Evil vampires don’t tend to require small pocket knives, right? Which leads me to think that this is not some improvisational joke, but a trademark prank Ripper goes to again and again when he wants to impress. Which is pretty funny to imagine, in a dark way.
- I really liked Rebekah in this episode. I was really bummed when Klaus killed her because I thought that was the end of yet another strong female vampire. But she was great. Here.