How do I write what, in my mind, I already know will be a rambly post? Just to forecast the end if you want to skip the bloated text of the middle, I will say now that I fully intend to cover Season Four as it comes out.
Okay, so technology is wonderful. Streaming video via internet is a wonderful invention, and the resigned greed of television’s “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality (which allows for show websites to upload entire episodes at a time)…all wonderful. It creates a nice viewers’ insurance policy for me when I want to go out and do something on Thursdays and yet have long since lost access to the now-rarely sold VCRs, preventing me from recording episodes in absentia. (Yeah, there’s DVR. But I’m rich like the Donovans and can’t afford it). So I wrote my last post on October 11th, fully intending to watch the season premiere that night. And then I didn’t.
….Okay, so here’s a few things. I’ve been so very excited about Season Four all summer, but also so anxious. Whether it’s a popular opinion or not, I feel like the show really went off the rails when the show focused so much on the Originals (who nonsensically killed no one and also whined a lot). I feel like Elena was unevenly written, Bonnie was almost absent, Caroline did little aside from being Klaus’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Stefan’s moral progress (plotwise) was very hard to chart (seriously, how can he flip his own switch back to good when he was compelled to turn it off? You can’t undo compulsions unless the compeller dies or changes his mind….?!…), and other things I’ve whined about and will whine about again when my recapping progress gets to Season Three, so I’ll just stop right now. The reason I mention my disappointment in this particular post is simply to get across just how much I was anticipating/dreading Season Four’s premiere. If the premiere was great, than the badness was a fluke; if the premiere was bad, than the badness is a trend. So I think, in the back of my mind, building up a cache of unseen episodes allowed me to postpone knowing which outcome it was to be.
Second of all. Knowing I had the option of hoarding up episodes online before I viewed them allowed me to postpone making any decisions with regards to writing. For one thing, I hadn’t decided if/how to blog about current episodes, since the roundups and my thoughts entries, rightly or wrongly, require more effort than I seem to have the time/energy for on a weekly basis. Also, I’ve enjoyed going through the show from the beginning, episode by episode, because it’s given me a different way to analyze what’s happening. Knowing how what is being set up will eventually flow into future events very much affects the way I view an episode on re-viewing. For obvious reasons I can’t do that with an episode that’s brand new.
So the solution…is indefinite. I’ll do a post per episode and call them Reactions. Terminology is kind of futile…just how is the term “reaction” different from “my thoughts” after all? But it is what it is. Beyond saying that the Reactions will be different, I can’t be too specific simply because it’s very difficult to guess, in advance, the form a work of writing will take before you begin to write it. They won’t be summaries, except I might interject small snarky summaries into them (if I’m moved to). I guess “reaction,” as a word, is all about a sense of immediacy. However I feel directly after the episode, whether thoughtful, hyper, irritated or abstract, that’s what I’ll write to. Kind of like if this were an internet chat room, though hopefully with better spelling and focus. Also, there will be much more speculation in these entries, so we can all preserve in retrospect just how bad a guesser I truly am.
Umm…I guess that’s it for now. Reactions won’t always go up on Fridays simply because I don’t always manage to catch VD on Thursday nights. But, if at all possible, I will try to always have a new post up before the next episode airs. In the meanwhile, I get to have an upcoming week this week that you all can envy, because I have five new Vampire Diaries episodes in a row to enjoy, before things go back to normal and I’m stuck in the usual cliffhanger purgatory.
And just so I get to comment on the show in some way, I’ll conclude by ignorantly speculating what’s going on in some pictures I found by typing in “vampire Elena” on google image.
- Let me speculate…the vampirism is settling in and the nudge of nascent fangs are starting to get to her. I don’t know if I buy this acting though, when my wisdom teeth grew in they hurt like MoFos. Conversely, maybe Elena’s already full-blown vamp here and she’s picking the skin of little children out of that unfortunate bicuspid gap, because the fangs keep tearing any floss she attempts to use.
- This looks to be a publicity still and, while I’m sure this is not at all what the photographer intended, the posing of Nina Dobrev has suggested a very odd narrative to me. Given the position of her torso/tummy, she looks like she’s lying on her side. If that’s the case, than I can only assume she’s holding a detached human limb in her hands. I would’ve thought that Caroline would be the vampiress dainty enough to take her meals in bite-sized, disembodied pieces, but it’s all Elena here. And she’s even left behind her typically subdued clothing in favor of what looks like is probably a very pretty dress. I can’t tell who that person is behind her, so I’ll just assume that’s the corpse she’s leisurely dissecting (the skin is awfully pale, after all)
- Well, clearly Elena’s comfortable with her life now, and someone told her a funny joke just as she was taking a good chug of blood. She did the epic mother of all spittakes, and is now bothered at the cleaning ahead and the need to restock.