Episode 5×1, “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” Brand new season! Anyway, the title just means, presumably, that (just like in 3×1) they’re doing a time jump between last season’s end and now. The title refers to that movie that Sarah Michelle Gellar was in and let me check–Holy crap Nina Dobrev was 8 years old when that movie was in theaters. Anyway, on with the show.
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Cold Open
- I like the rebooted previouslies in comparison to last years’, but seriously…there is no way any newbie in the world could watch what just happened and have any clue what the frick was going on with the narrative. Futile endeavor and all that.
- Am I remembering correctly? Every time Elena and Damon have screwed so far in this series there’s been a non-sexy voiceover over the images to detract from it for no good reason? We’re five seconds into the new season and Delena shippers are already giving the side eye to Julie Plec as they reach for their mute buttons.
- Wait…Matt, Rebekah, and a third lady all having sex together at once? What the hell is a consensual kinky scene doing on a PG show like Vampire Diaries? Seriously, this is really out of left field. Every time they show sex on this show it’s always either True Love or or disturbingly predatory rape that they never call rape (okay, and once in a while it’s just really gross advantage taking of). My point is, they don’t generally show people having sex for fun just because sex is fun. I’m kind of thrown here. The college years really are going to be different, aren’t they.
- I don’t know how Katherine is still human but her “little woman walking the streets” face is kind of hilarious.
- And I laugh at all the names in Elena’s phone. These are all people she shunned as being too mundane once she started running with vampires, yes? That, or she would have stayed friends with them except all her new friends kept killing them all.
- And Stefan’s still in a box. I hope we find out that Silas has been doing something these past (2? 3? 4?) months in Stefan’s absence that required Stefan’s absence, because so far no one seems to be affected, and so keeping Stefan out of the way just to do it is looking more and more like it’s only a ploy to worry the audience over the our summer break (we were all very worried) instead of organic storytelling.
- And crap I wrote a lot of notes for a cold open.
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Everything up until the first commercial break.
- Please don’t make Jeremy go back to school. That’s just embarrassing for him after being publicly dead and all, and unnecessary for the show, since they barely had any high school scenes when everyone was a high school student instead of just, you know, only him. Poor Jeremy. Just quit Jer, Elena will never notice. I love her and I think she think she cares, but she’s not a great big sister.
- And they are officially going to Whitmore, which I’ve already concluded last Season to be the worst college ever, what with they’re employing Grams (who was publicly pretending to be both alcoholic and crazy) to teach witchcraft, and also Professor Shane, grown man who parties with roofied undergrad girls, hypnotizes underaged girls in his office, takes priceless artifacts off-campus to cowtown high schools with no security, and who also teaches magic. And that’s just what we’ve gotten from inference.
- Poor dead Bonnie. This is like the very definition of bitter-sweet.
- And poor Jeremy. Between loyalty to Elena and loyalty to Bonnie, he not only has to pretend that he faked his own death, he also has to appear to be speaking to empty air all the time too.
- Come on, Katherine, humans have combs (or scrunchies). Get it together.
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Everything up until the second commercial break.
- Some lady in Prague stole the Lazarus ring? That has to come back later. Like, I don’t even care how much later. But some lady in Prague who can’t die and doesn’t know why is going to come to the attention of some Big Bad (I mean, no one on this show even knew about the rings originally outside of the Gilberts and Emily Bennett, so…)
- Silas…could have just read Liz’s thoughts without publicly cutting her wrist with a knife and announcing his true self for anyone to hear, yes? So then, we must conclude, he really is quite the ham. He’s like, the anti-Stefan. So that’s a good tell for when Real Stefan gets back.
- I was ready to be quite impressed with Jeremy who’s come a long way with fighting since the early days, but then I just remembered he still has all those Hunter skills. Anyway, I’ll just admire those biceps and reiterate how cruel it is to force this kid to go to school when no one else had to.
- I’m glad they showed us that hallucination. I hadn’t even thought about it, really.
- Awesome. They couldn’t really steal the Buffy the Vampire Slayer plot where the roommate turned out to be a demon, so they did it in reverse, where they were the demons to the unexpected slayer.
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Everything up until the third commercial break.
- Is that a different party frat from last year when Damon and Elena had no problem getting in? It must be. shrug. Anyway, I like Jesse and new roommate girl. It would be cool to have new cast members, since April and Meredith apparently got lost in a closet somewhere or something.
- “Says the guy who once killed me.” “Yes, in the privacy of your own home.” I flove you Damon. And Ian. It’s all in the delivery.
- You killed new roommate girl? Dude, did you guys not just read my bullet point?
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Everything up until the fourth commercial break.
- “Katherine called me first. Remember? It’s always been me first.” Silas!Stefan to Damon. That was money, Silas (and Paul Wesley, so props to that). Too funny, and I love that they have this callback to “The Return” when they also have Jeremy referencing that time Damon murdered him. Come to think of it, we also have Matt kissing Rebekah up against a tree (Tyler kissed Vicki against a tree in “The Pilot” and Klaus kissed Caroline against a tree in “Growing Pains”) and Stefan considering turning off his humanity switch, which is similar, anyway, to “The Birthday.” Well…or, there’s a timejump like in “The Birthday.” If only Silas had said “Hello brother.” At any event, all four Season premieres have officially been homaged. Awesome.
- Beat by a 100 pound human girl who hasn’t been in a fair fight in over five centuries–while she’s naked, on her back and currently being strangled. Not your best showing, Silas.
- “God you’re slow. I guess vamp speed came with the upgrade.” -Damon to Silas. hee! Didn’t love the line reading though, that’s a pretty chill way to talk to the father of all vampires who has the power to control your thoughts.
- And poor Jer (I should make a macro for that sentence), didn’t Katherine kill you like five different times you were stuck in that tomb with her, not to mention killing you for real-real in Silas’s cave, and now you’re stuck having to protect her for the greater good? That sucks.
- Hey, Megan (sp?) was their roommate and she died. Doesn’t that mean Caroline and Elena get straight A’s for the semester now?
- Heh, Damon’s annoyed he’ll have to learn how to spell doppelganger. Hang in there Damon, I still refuse to learn how to type those two little dots that are supposed to go over the A.
- Oh good, Silas did have a reason for locking Stefan in a box at the bottom of a lake. Now, why did he wait three months again?
- Vampire Diaries Trope: Car crash!!! From too many episodes to recount. It’s a good thing Elena got turned because I assume compulsion is the only way these people even get insurance anymore.
- Also, Katherine hasn’t been in a car crash as a human. Wouldn’t it be just terrible if she got lower back pain for forever like my sister did? Oh, realism.
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Everything up until the fifth commercial break.
- Holy shit, I don’t know what that was but the most surprising thing of all is that Matt is getting a plot line! And it doesn’t even have to do with fourth tier romance storyline!
- I was always hoping Elena’s parents would get a back story. It just seemed like something was there. Particularly given their hidden room of torture weapons in their lake house.
- Poor Jeremy. (Damn, I need that macro).
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Everything before the end.
- Aw, I know it was half self-interested but still, Damon is like a daddy.
- And…Damon didn’t tell Elena anything, which is a sitcommy contrivance but whatever, he’s not wrong.
- So is this like the longest town celebration in history?
- Oh Silas, that was just…That was just so incredibly mean. Stefan’s been drowning in a claustrophobic, humanity-threatening safe for three-months and Bonnie still just swept in as most sympathetic figure of the episode.
- “I need you to help me find someone. You all know Elena Gilbert. Well the girl that I’m looking for looks exactly like her.” -Silas to the crowd. Damn, they must be…so confused right now.
- And what with Bonnie a ghost and Matt all possessed/passed out/whatever in the alleyway, there is literally no one left in the core group who can report to the others what’s going on.
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Some Final Thoughts
- I’m curious if this is going to be one of those seasons where a bunch of stuff happens with some people and a bunch of stuff happens with other people and they never really interact with each other, kind of like that one season of Gilmore Girls or..um…I know it’s happened before. Isn’t that going on with Glee right now? I only really watch that show through trickledown hearsay, but I think I heard something like that. Anyway, if they did that…I don’t have too much of an opinion I guess. As long as they did it well.
- So is Tyler never coming back? I have to be honest, while I do like Tyler, I’ve gone past missing him and have begun finding his absence boring. They need to get him back here and keep him or just kill him altogether. Or send him to The Originals, because the more wild cards that show has the better I think it would be.
- I always really enjoyed the relationship between Damon and Jeremy, embryonic though it was, and it looks like they’ll be developing it more. Awesome. Interestingly, instead of it continuing to be about Jeremy seeking a father figure it’s more about Damon seeking a little brother figure (not Stefan-style little brother, more like a little brother who actually needs help and protection).
- So Silas is just terrible. I can see why Qetsia restrained him like she did. Now the question remains…why did she ever love him to begin with? I mean, unless he was normal before and just went completely warped in all the millenia he was frozen (which, admittedly, was probably it come to think of it.) Okay, screw Qetsia then. Bonnie’s dad died because of her.
- So, not to be all slow but I was a little confused by the camera direction when Silas was reading people’s thoughts and the camera got a little wonky. Were we meant to think that Silas’s vision was weird or that the recipient’s vision was? None of this was going on last year when he got in people’s heads.
- Don’t know what’s going on with Matt, but it looks interesting. And of course, those Gilbert rings are clearly nothing but trouble for absolutely everybody.
- But with regards to Matt and my comment in the cold open…that was a genuine comment of surprise that the show demonstrated adults having healthy-but-not-true-love-kinky-sex and it being okay. So naturally, the third person is the threesome is not only a pickpocket, she ends up being a mystical-stalker-violater-evil-wtf-er that hasn’t been explained yet. So yeah. Sex ain’t good kids, unless it’s True Love. (Sadly, this is still more sex positive that the Buffyverse’s view of sex.)
- Poor Bonnie. I can’t imagine she’ll be a ghost for too long, which is why I’m not getting too hung up on it. But I really shouldn’t discount how sad it must be to just go along with your friends as they go through their milestones and just, not be there. And also, good acting Kat Graham. You break my heart all the times (and geez it happens a lot) a family member dies.
- To an extent I liked Stefan’s hallucinations in that 1) it kept Stefan’s character in the mix, 2) kept reminding us that Stefan was, actually, still suffering in spite of everyone else’s good times, and 3) they were fixated on whether keeping or losing humanity would be the best way to deal with pain. That’s an interesting dilemma and, not to cheapen real life suffering, but a lot of journals or autobiographies of people in immensely tragic situations do discuss the dilemma of maintaining faith and of love in the world or losing all that, so this is kind of the vampire equivalent. What I didn’t like about Stefan’s hallucinations. First of all, they were kind of boring. Second of all, and this is the real big one: Damon is the devil on his shoulder telling him to lose his humanity and Elena is the angel on her pedestal saying she believes in him and telling him to keep it on. After four whole seasons. I mean, Elena, I get…it’s overidealized but she never lost faith in him in Season Three so whatever. But Damon worked his ass off to get Stefan his humanity back, and made a lot of sacrifices to make sure that Stefan kept it after the fact. So what I didn’t really care for was Stefan maintaining this “Damon’s the evil brother, I’m the good but susceptible brother” crap that, now that I think about…actually, I rescind everything I just said. I’m not being snarky here either, I’m serious. That was pretty clever. Stefan and Damon like to keep themselves in their “good brother” “bad brother” boxes (no pun intended) so I guess this played to that. But if that was the intention, I just wish they had made what they were doing more obvious so I didn’t have to fanwank the artistry so much.
Conclusion: This season’s off to a great start! I mean, kind of. I don’t know necessarily where it’s going to go, but I loved everything so far, and any complaints would be more like quibbles. My show is back and it’s fricking awesome! I give “I Know What You Did Last Summer” fifty bottles of “vitamin water” out of fifty.