Okay, so this is the episode where we find out what sort of creature caused Elena’s car to crash and would have attacked her if not for Damon’s random rescue. It was a vampire. He and Anna (also unexpectedly a vampire) are working together to get the tomb open. Why? We don’t know yet. From the distance of two and a half seasons away, it’s all been explained as much as it ever will be. Anna wants to get into the tomb because her mother’s interred in there. Yes, she knew Katherine and the Salvatores as humans, et cetera. Knowing that she and Damon wanted the same thing, it does seem a bit odd that she didn’t just approach him and work together. I assume it must be a combination of not trusting him and knowing that he and Stefan (even as humans) failed in just about every plan they’ve ever attempted. But that’s not really what I’m interested in right now.
Noah. The vampire who got a Gilbert invite because Jeremy was too lazy to move a pizza twelve inches. Events fly by in this show so quickly that sometimes I look back and realize there are characters and/or miniplots that the show never really clarified, and we didn’t notice because we’re so accustomed to having things explained for us down the road. Noah is one such instance. Who the heck is this guy? We know, for certain, that he knew Katherine and that he knew the Salvatores as humans, but he was forgettable enough that they don’t remember him. So was he a vampire at that point or was he a human? If he was a vampire, why didn’t the Founders round him up that one night and stick him in the tomb? It’s hard to believe this guy was as slippery and self-preserving as Anna and got away. If he was a human, how did he get vamped? It obviously wasn’t a Salvatore. It couldn’t be Katherine, or he would know she wasn’t in the tomb. The most likely answer is Anna and that is just so unlikely. She does have a pattern of picking very stupid henchmen but I don’t know why she’d do that in 1864 knowing she’d be stuck with him for 150 years before she even had a need for him. But if Anna didn’t make him and he was already vamped, why did she seek him out down the road? Is he really a better ally to pick sight unseen than Damon? Continue Reading
Time Marches On…: “Unpleasantville” covers 2 days and 3 nights.
begins the night that “Bloodlines” ended.
ends 20 days after Day One.
Number of Deaths: 1
Runner Up: Jeremy ordered a pizza, Noah delivered a pizza, and no acne-ridden teen showed up with a second pizza after the fact. So…where exactly did Noah acquire his pizza? I would deeply love to say that Noah ate the pizza guy because that’s funny, but sadly, the show neither confirms nor denies said noms. It would also be hilarious if Noah actually worked as a pizza boy, coincidentally, in order to make ends meet.
Noah is staked by Stefan.
Number of Un-Deaths:0
Number of Foiled Death Attempts:2
Noah attempts to kill Elena in her home.
Noah attempts to kill Elena at the Decades Dance.
Actual References to Diaries:8
Damon looks for his dad’s journal in the family book collection.
Alaric asks Jeremy to read his primary source, Jonathan Gilbert’s journal (aka “porn for a history teacher”). Jeremy gives it to him.
Stefan gives Damon their dad’s old journal.
Anna asks to borrow Jeremy’s ancestor’s journal, but he already gave it to Alaric. This upsets her.
Anna reminds Noah that she’s trying to get the journal (“sticking to the plan”).
Noah tells the Salvatores that you need the grimoire to get in the tomb, and that Jonathan Gilbert’s journal might give the location.
Stefan figures out (out loud) that Damon’s looking through their dad’s journal to find Emily’s grimoire.
Ben asks Anna if she got the journal.
Blood Drunk Onscreen:0
Compulsions used: 0
(foiled) Damon compels/interrogates Alaric, but Alaric has vervain.
Vampires Going into Vampface:5 1/2
Noah when he’s at Elena’s house just before the dance.
Anna’s veiny eyes (halfway) flair up when talking to Jeremy, because discussions of diaries get her hot.
Noah, when he’s about to bite Elena in the cafeteria (oddly, his vamp face goes away when she stabs him a bunch; as a predator you’d think that’s when the fangs would really start flashing).
Noah, when he’s about to bite Elena just as Stefan arrives to stop him.
Anna, as she stalks Ben leaving the Grill at closing time. (fakeout!)
Ben when he flings Anna against the wall. (fakeout! again)
Please enjoy this Season 4 promo for “Growing Pains” (heh).
Okay, quick rundown:
Damon: I expected him to be a bit cheerier about the whole thing
Stefan: Exactly what I expected, states the obvious and lets everyone else make the decisions
Jeremy: Adorable with Elena, but with Bonnie…Jeremy has consistently been the only one to (at least out loud) express concern over Bonnie’s physical well-being via using magic. On the one hand, it’s nice that someone is, on the other hand, it got pretty boring in Season Two. Maybe we’ll see the return of him mopping up her nosebleeds too.
Caroline: cute. May be in a car/bus/plane crash with another blonde girl (Rebekah?!), which is also the only plot point with some degree of mystery.
Tyler: I was going to complain that he had nothing to do here but have sex outside, and then it hit me like a freight train that it’s Klaus in Tyler’s body. Which means (unless he’s honest from the beginning) Klaus is going to rape Caroline. Because Klaus is disgusting. And because the showrunners like it when my ears bleed.
Matt: absent (yeah!)
Founder’s Council: some kind of Mexican standoff? Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go great against four vampires and a kid with a Lazarus ring. On the bright side, it looks like the Council won’t just be Liz Forbes, Carol Lockwood and a bunch of extras. They may get speaking parts and names and everything. That could go somewhere.
Elena: is dying. She was so much more fun when she woke up as a vampire in the book. Maybe after transition they’ll go there.
Bonnie: She’s been such a great witch ex machina so far, why stop now? (Her Season Three cliffhanger involved not letting dead witches boss her around anymore, doing what she felt was best, and saving Klaus’s life to save her friends. I hope the reason this promo contains nothing pertinent to that is because they don’t want to give anything away, rather than they’ve decided not to deal with it for several episodes).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Okay, so here’s the thing. Elena’s transition reminds me of Elena finding out that vampires are real; it’s a plot point they have go through and show on screen, but it’s not all that interesting in and of itself. So I guess they feel the need to add heightened drama and suspense to make the episode seem more unpredictable than it actually is…but there’s really only three ways it can go (just speculation, no spoilers):
Elena chooses not to transition and she dies
Bonnie successfully dies, comes back, and saves Elena just as she says she wants to, and Elena’s human again.
Bonnie fails and Elena decides/is forced to/accidentally becomes a vampire
Okay, so obviously #1 won’t happen, because I’ve seen television before. #2 could happen, because the only time Bonnie has ever failed at magic is when she was new to magic and the episode was horribly written. But I think it’s unlikely because a) the show will be a lot more interesting if it moves forward and b) that would squander the goodwill of most of the fanbase. So that leaves #3, which has the kind of Vegas odds where you’d have to bet a thousand dollars to win a hundred.
And so….the only real unknowns are what that car/bus/plane crash was all about, and do people actually learn about Klaus-as-Tyler yet or not. On the other hand, even if there’s little action it could still be good. Episode 2×20 “The Last Day” was basically all set up, and mostly about Elena deciding whether or not she wanted to be a vampire, and I thought that ended up being a pretty nifty episode. And maybe this will be a kind of odds/evens thing…like, “The Pilot” was one of the weakest episodes of the show, and “The Return” was one of my favorites, and “The Birthday” is probably the episode I hated more than any other (if I keep up my current blog discipline you’ll find out why in roughly four years!); so if the trend is bad-good-wretched-x, than maybe x will be “great” (and 5×1 will be unwatchable).
Shrugs. I’m looking forward to this, because it will be good to see my show coming back. I just hope they use Bonnie’s screen time on plotlines that aren’t clearly doomed to go nowhere. What I want most of all though…I want a return to the fun. I mean, I like the dramatic, and I probably have a bigger soft spot for angst than most women my age should, but it’s kind of reaching full saturation here. They (and we) need a breather, and sexy teenagers with superpowers really should have fun more often than this group does. I mean, don’t cheapen the darkness of their lives, of course. But, I think the reason that Damon and Caroline are the fan favorites is because they can stay jokey and upbeat (even if crying on the inside and all that) when life is going badly. So, I don’t want everyone smiling all the time or anything, but if we’re in for a few episodes where everything’s predictable, than my personal hope is that we have fun doing it.
Well, I didn’t want to and I didn’t have to but it ended up happening anyway–I watched all eight seasons of Monk. I mean that as no disparagement of the show; I like it and I’ve watched it in the past…it’s just that I’ve seen it relatively recently and didn’t want to sit through it again. But a few weeks ago, in a bout of severe insomnia, I popped in a disc thinking the upbeat voices and music would lull me into sleep and well, eight seasons later, here I sit. It’s like if you’ve ever come home from work and you’re so freaking tired and annoyed and you sit down in front of the TV with an old bag of potato chips you haven’t tried yet and, you’re not enjoying them, but you have a few anyway before deciding to try something else. Only, everything else is in the kitchen and that’s at least twenty feet away. And so, even though they’re neither nutritious nor tasty, you eat the whole damn bag of chips anyway. And you’re still hungry and you’re still desperate and no one is watching so you even lick the damn foil when there’s nothing left. That’s what this marathon session felt like to me. I didn’t want it, need it, or benefit from it, but I was just too tired to stop.
I’m not going to write some long treatise on Monk. This is more some random thoughts and opinions I have on the show as a whole, written in the most elegant style possible: bullet-point style! So, just some general notes.
I thought they made really good use of their guest stars. I mean, you recognized them, but the roles weren’t written for them with winks and nods or anything. They were just well-written roles. I was especially pleased with Andy Richter as Monk’s man-crush; I guess that would be my top choice this time around. Least favorite would probably be Tim Daley playing….Tim Daley. Not bad, just least favorite. So Sharona thinks his playing a hit-man would go against his nice guy image and be a turn off, he’s happy for the advice and rejects the part, then George Clooney gets it and he’s mad at Sharona? Playing a violent hit-man would still go against his type, I don’t know why we (figuratively) get the whum-whaaamp trumpets of comic whoops. I was also disappointed by Richard Schiff’s turn, just because he was only in one scene and I would like to have seen more of him.
Michael Richards was originally supposed to be Monk. It might be unfair of me, after all, I only know him as Kramer, but for the life of me I don’t think he’d bring a tenth of the humor, the subtly, the pathos or the innocence that Tony Shalhoub brought to the role.
Natalie’s back story–while plausible–seems a bit much. Raised as a super-wealthy Davenport heiress, she revolted and married an upstanding but humble Navy Fighter Pilot. At the same time, she dealt black jack in Vegas and developed a really bad gambling problem. She also threw a man out the window in Vermont to defend a friend and spent time in a jail for it. Also, she was an exchange student in Greece and became a sometimes-nudist there. And her teenage daughter doesn’t seem to know a lot of this. This biography is, of course, possible, but after such an interesting and varied life it seems a bit sadder to see it reduced to being Monk’s girl Friday, handing him wipes and being on call 24/7 for all his (often childish) needs. Continue Reading
[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 3×13 “Bringing Out the Dead.” After a double-bromancecest date between Stefan/Damon and Klaus/Elijah, the evening seems to have come to an unresolved close. Then that compelled pretty blonde lady who looks like a suitcase lady from Let’s Make A Deal comes out to reveal a tray of Original-killing daggers. Klaus’s eyes go big…if they’re on the tray then they can’t be in the hearts of his siblings where he left them. Kol, then Finn, then Rebekah are all revealed. They take turns stabbing him, then Elijah tells Stefan and Damon to leave, because what happens next is “family business.”
From the beginning of the season, this is the reunion that you know will be happening, that you wait to have happen, and then it does and you’re like “oh my god it’s happening!” And I love this moment. Of all their 800 foiled attempts to kill Klaus this was easily the most exciting and best planned out (excepting “The Sun Also Rises”). And it really should have worked…Now, in Snow White parlance I’ve ofttimes dubbed the Originals Whiny, Bitchy, Mopey, Creepy, and Elijah; but, in all seriousness, if they could have kept the dynamic like this, like high stakes sniping where everyone and no one is constantly coming out on top, that could have been so much fun! (Instead, everyone kind of quickly fell into line behind Klaus or Esther and things were just redundant but more crowded). But I love this scene. Generally, this show is great when you don’t see things coming. In this instance, the buildup and anticipation made it that much more awesome.
Sidenote: everyone wakes up wearing what they died in. When, exactly, are we supposed to be thinking Kol died? Because based on his clothes I’m thinking somewhere between 2004 and present day.
[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 is the mandatory shipping entry. The clips below are too basic to need a summary; Tyler and Caroline have PG-rated sex, Damon and Elena have UST culminating in a kiss (from “The Birthday” and “Heart of Darkness” respectively). It’s interesting watching these clips out of the context of their episodes. In “The Birthday” I found the Tyler/Caroline scene one of the few saving graces in an episode I hated. I thought it was sexy and it finally cemented a pairing I really liked. Out of context and by itself, I have to admit I find it a little creepy in a Dateline kind of way, and also a little boring. Out of context. The Damon and Elena scene, on the other hand, I find I like much better outside of the context of its episode. I liked it just fine within the episode, for the most part, but the season-long build-up to this scene was really starting to drag to the point where Delena really either needed to have a serious talk where they called it quits, or have a much more compelling romantic scene than this was. In context. And again, I liked it fine, it just was so clearly trying to be one of the moments of the whole show, and it just didn’t pull that off for me. Out of context, I think their chemistry is incredibly strong and I can blissfully forget the fact that Elena’s beaten up little brother is sleeping on the other side of that door. Also, Florence + The Machine rock at life.
So I guess here’s where I explain why I made these part of my season three “moments” series. For a season so consumed with ships (or, really, a show so consumed with ships), Season Three only provided three ships that I cared about. They are: Tyler/Caroline, Damon/Elena, and Elijah/whoever the writers will someday pair him with (that last may only ever exist in fanfiction). Season 3 was really big into developing love interests for everyone, no matter how contrived (Alaric/Meredith), undeveloped (Bonnie/Jamie) or inexplicable (Caroline/Klaus). A girl has to do what she can to hang on to whatever bit of sincerity and sexiness she can discern in that morass of CW phoniness…
I’m not sure how to write this. Let me just explain what led me to liking the pairings.
Caroline. Caroline has a pattern of dating men who seem right on paper but are very abusive to her. You have Damon which…which I really shouldn’t have to explain why they were bad together. Then you have Caroline and Matt. In an entry I will someday get around to writing I will explicate exactly why I think Matt and Caroline demonstrate a mild form of gaslighting (and I know it’s an unpopular opinion but it just seems so blatant to me personally). Matt’s righteous good-guy schtick has Caroline believing that she is a bad, irritating person when she (for instance): tries to comfort him after the death of his sister, tries to support him when he breaks up with his best friend, is unhappy when other girls blatantly hit on him, wants him not to flood her hospital room with sunlight when she’s suffered a major head injury. And so on but I won’t rant. With Caroline’s canonically stated insecurity put right there in the pilot, her latching onto Damon’s mystical abuse and warping of her sense of reality, and then finally moving onto Matt, who in a far more human way puts her down and warps her sense of reality, I think the show was being pretty clever. And then in “Masquerade,” something awesome happened, and Cyler was born. Caroline’s journey to strength and self-confidence coincided with her happily metaphorical, mystical inability to be compelled (gaslighted) by anyone again. Her journey coincides with her leaving Matt (for his safety whatever). And suddenly there’s a new love interest who has parallel problems and needs, who respects her and finds her guidance useful, who appreciates what she risks (death when she watches over his transformations). The only time Tyler ever tried to make Caroline ashamed of herself was when he found out she helped cover up his uncle’s death…that’s a goodreason, Matt. And it’s healthy to establish boundaries and dealbreakers. And as evidence of growth on her side, she calls him on his shit too. Damon abused her and…let’s see, good friends Stefan and Elena knew and (to her knowledge) did nothing to stop the abuse. Caroline’s never called them on it. Brady and Jules tortured Caroline and Tyler was very slow to come to her aid (he did eventually) and she (rightfully) called him on it and broke off their friendship. And as much as I hate how this show continually fetishizes the tortures of Caroline Forbes, I was really pleased with the contrasting aftermaths. To me, that was more empowering than all of Caroline’s increased physical strength &c…to be able to definitively assert her own boundaries, to refrain from insta-forgiving and coddling someone just because she’s so desperate for affection that she doesn’t want the people who hurt her to feel discomfort about it. There’s more here but I’m yammering on and on for what’s supposed to be a simple entry. So to sum up, unlike her previous partners, Caroline and Tyler grow together and work together. The establish a long, strong friendship before they fall into bed, and Tyler makes Caroline feel good about herself rather than the inverse.
On Tyler’s end. I didn’t like Tyler in Season One. I mean, in the way you’re not supposed to like him, I thought he was written and acted just fine. But yeah, he was a douchebullycretin and they just didn’t have the time to do much more with him, which I think is fine because in real life some people simply are douchebullycretins. In Season Two, his journey to becoming awesome was parallel to Caroline’s, in ways I’ll get to when I get to it, but I’m already rambling too long. One thing I thought was cool was how they did…I’m not sure how to word it…failures and successful surrogates. Tyler’s Dad should have been his helpful parent, but he failed; Tyler’s mom took over and successfully was supportive without being overbearing. Uncle Mason should have been his helpful mentor, but he failed, and Jules took over and (in spite of her many deficiencies) seemed to genuinely care about him and helped him understand his nature. First Matt, and then Jeremy, were supposed to be his good friends, but they fizzled out and Caroline took over. And she was just so good at it. She helped him vent. She helped him evolve. She gave him a sympathetic ear (and my god does Season Two Tyler need one) while still encouraging him to be strong and grow.
I was already sold on the two of them long before the sexing started. But as I said above, I loathed “The Birthday” and this was one of the few scenes that gave me hope the show was on the right track (and I swear, in context it’s sexy rather than creepy).
Now for Delena:
Actually, I preferred their bedroom scene in “Ordinary People,” but that’s more of a love triangle scene than a shipping scene.
Okay, I like Stelena too. In fact, when Elena asks him to the decades dance in “Do Not Go Gentle,” I thought that was one of the sweetest small moments of their relationship, especially that little smile Stefan can’t help but having in the end. However, I emphatically did not want Season Three to be about Stelena. No matter how noble his motives, Stefan willingly submitted to an indefinite period of indentured murdertude to the man who just murdered her and her aunt solely to become an even bigger Big Bad. I mean, save Stefan from Klaus, that’s good. But I would rather Elena’s emotional journey be connected to dealing with her conflicted drama of falling out of love with the man she thought she loved but who is really a monster, rather than what happened, which was Elena pining and waiting for him to be a good boy again so they could pick up where they left off. Which made me Team Delena for the season.
Delena….I don’t have much to say that wouldn’t require a much longer entry than I plan to write. From a real-life perspective they are, at best, unhealthily problematic, at worst, incredibly f**ked up. But then, genre shows are all about reality blending with surreality, and some things aren’t meant to be judged with the same weight they are in real life. Everyone just draws the line at different goal posts, is all. So, in a wish-fulfillment kind of way, I really like this shipping. Just, so pretty and cute and squee-worthy. I mean, that’s probably the most unflattering assessment of my affection, but I am trying to be honest and confessional here. I do think there are legitimate reasons to like them though.
Damon has never had to be a good person before. There were only three people he cared enough about to even try, his dad, Katherine and Stefan. With his dad, Damon was a perpetual disappointment so there was no point in even trying. With Katherine, she actively discouraged goodness in him. With Stefan, Damon was so betrayed and angry and conflicted that he intentionally avoided doing good because that was the only way to get though to Stefan. Now there’s Elena, and (he’s not very good at it, but) he tries to be good. It’s not like Spike trying to be good for Buffy, where it was 4/5s a tactical maneuver to win her and maybe 1/5s for goodness itself. Damon’s attempts to be good amp up once he realizes he can’t have Elena. In “The Return,” when she tells him like a million times (without doth protesting too much) that she would never consider kissing him, and then he snaps her brother’s neck (and I have a mouthful to say about that when I get to it), proving Elena’s antipathy to him to be completely valid, he really tries harder to be the kind of good Elena might want. Not so much in an effort to win her, but because (I think) he respects her enough to want to be the kind of good she finds value in for its own sake (which of course, mostly falls apart in “The Descent” but that’s neither here nor there). He’s kind of like Darcy in the last third of Pride and Prejudice, resigned to not getting the girl but wanting to be a better person anyway.
What I find so funny is just how much Damon sucks at being good. I mean, bless his heart because he really does try, but it’s like it’s been so long since he’s attempted or hung out with goodness that he has no idea how the parts fit together to actually be good. Which is why you have all his misguided attempts…force-feeding Elena his blood in “The Last Day,” secretly conspiring with Bonnie to risk Bonnie’s life in “Save the Last Dance,” bodily force-removing Elena from whats-his-name’s apartment in “The Sacrifice,” vamping Bonnie’s mom to save Elena in “All My Children” et cetera et cetera and it comes from a good place but it’s all so wrongity-wrong. And I’m rambling again which I’m trying to avoid. Suffice it to say, Damon loves Elena deeply and has no clue how to go about it, which I find a kind-of realistic, semi-charming flaw rather than bad writing (as with Matt or sometimes Stefan, where they tell us one thing and show us something quite different).
On Elena’s end, she has more fun with Damon and her attraction feels more like a living, vibrant thing. With Stefan, it’s all so fait accompli from the very beginning, and their mutual admiration and love and respect are so easy to come by that it’s often sweet but rarely compelling.
There’s more to say but I’m at 2100 words here. So to sum up, the pairings are not without their problems (both in nature and execution), but in a season with so many random and/or boring and/or unnecessary pairings, Cyler and Delena were my bright spots on the horizon.
***(Also, sorry about my overuse of parentheses. It’s been that kind of entry where I just can’t maintain focus.)