Episode 5×2, “True Lies.” No thoughts on the title this week. Funny thing about the Arnold movie though. I totally remembered the movie as being absolutely awesome. My friend S— totally remembered the movie as being absolutely awesome. We talked our friend K— into watching it with us, even though she doesn’t usually watch Arnold movies. And then it turned out to be this Islamophobic, misogynistic, cartoony violence waste of time (I still stand by the truth serum scene as being cool, though). By and large, it was pretty embarrassing to recommend an action adventure movie when Tom Arnold is the best part of it. Anyway, oh yeah, Vampire Diaries. I hope Damon teaches Katherine about hair gel this week.
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Cold Open
- How the F– is Katherine that strong? Like, major car accident, running all night on bare feet through the woods with no sleep and no food, maced in the face, facing a bigger lady and she beats the crap out of her? And screw realism, the thing that keeps getting me is that she’s been coasting by for centuries on supernatural strength. My biggest hope last year, for whoever got the Cure, was to show them having a difficult time with basic crap like opening jars and pushing cars stuck in the mud, much less fending off mind-controlled assaulters. This is disappointing.
- Oh yeah, tough guy Matt with a shotgun. Was last week’s mystery possession leading up to him getting last year’s Jeremy’s plotline?
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Everything up until the first commercial break.
- Aw, if I’m not mistaken that’s that place from “The Last Day” where Elena said she wanted to stay human. That’s sweet that Stefan wanted his hallucination/memory there (I don’t know why he didn’t place them at the top where they had their triumphant “I want to be human” climb…less scenic? that waterfall looks all symbolism-y behind them).
- Dude, girls, just come up with a code word for “vampire.” Seriously, you’re pausing, looking around, lowering your voice, hissing “vampire,” pausing, looking around to see if anyone heard, and then continuing your conversation at normal volume. So seriously, code word.
- Okay, you stopped whispering “vampire,” at least, but now you’re just throwing the word around redundantly. Sentences “no mention of the
vampire-gaping wounds on her neck” or “if we’re exposedas vampires!” do not need the V-word for comprehension, particularly when you’re already on the subject (see how easily I crossed it out?). Caroline’s not an idiot, Elena. - Dude, now I feel stupid. Stefan’s hallucination took place at the quarry, right outside where he’s buried. Now I’m wondering if it’s all the same place as in “The Last Day”, but still…Hallucelena is right, why would he hallucinate himself right there?
- Damon…um…do you really need a human to drain the quarry? You. Are. A. Vampire. Swim around for a few hours without a snorkel until you cover every inch of it. This is like Ron Weasley not thinking to use magic to fix his crappy dress robes. Solutions, people! Do I need to read your canon right out to you?
- “I’m the freaking moonstone.”–Katherine. Bwah!
- Wes Maxfield. God, this character was totally named after something a five year old British Earl names his pony.
- “Blah blah-think about dead bodies while partying”-Dr. Maxfield. “Creep-y”–Caroline. “But Hot-tie.”- Elena. And Elena once again establishes herself as only being aroused by guys who are 100% comfortable, right off the bat, around mass death. I think her first conscious scene ever with Stefan (not counting the boys’ bathroom) was in history class when he talked about a whole bunch of civilians being unjustly slaughtered in the Mystic Falls church. And that was about the time she got cartoon hearts in her eyes. Come to think of it, Elena’s a bit weird.
- Should have talked to her honestly Damon. Now you have to run really fast even though I’ve observed repeatedly how you prefer road trips in your snazzy car with your Editors cds. What a shame, they have a new album out this year too.
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Everything up until the second commercial break.
- Oh Silas, from throat slitting to relationship discord-sowing, is there any level you won’t stoop to?
- I forgot to notice it until just this second but Matt’s not acting all possessed so I guess the gun thing in the cold open was just a red herring and we’ll find out about Nadia later. Which leads me to a different question which is, how exactly did he know to randomly pull a shotgun on Katherine if he’s not imbued with some kind of predatory spirit and no one put him in the know? So many things about Matt we’ll never learn when he appears in only 8% of every season.
- “Damon! Towel! Knock!” “Caroline! No one cares! No!” I can’t help myself, that was funny.
- “That’s because you haven’t had sex with me.”—- Damon to Silas. I’m just going to leave that there under a pin.
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Everything up until the third commercial break.
- Silas in Stefan’s body (you know what I mean) and “Traveler” in Matt’s had kind of good chemistry. Good for fanfics.
- We finally see the Other Side! Even here, only Bonnie greets Matt, and she doesn’t talk about his problems (like his most recent death or current mind-possession). And Bonnie’s the nicest character in the group. I begin to think that Matt must be the loneliest person in the world sometime.
- That’s…that’s some fucked up kink Caroline’s going to walk into. Also, what’s with the striped hockey stick and with keeping the vervain-dosed vitamin water around?
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Everything up until the fourth commercial break.
- That was kind of beautiful, Elena. Caroline is going to be so mad about all the bloody holes in her chairs, but otherwise…I’m digging this.
- I’m choosing not to have much of an opinion on the Caroline/Jesse ship until he lasts at least five episodes without dying. I will compliment the show though, that, unlike her other love matches (Damon, then Matt, then Tyler, then Klaus), they’ve already shared something like four conversations without any acrimony or condescension or interpersonal violence. So, our little Caroline’s growth arc is evolving, yay!
- Oh Jer, nice try. The Hunters have only been a real threat so far due to Batman like abilities. That is, stratagems and utility belt kind of contraptions. They basically never win in hand to hand combat. (Good luck though, I’m sure you’ve wished you could punch a Salvatore with impunity at least once and this is the closest you’ll get).
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Everything up until the fifth commercial break.
- Silas, you just got your own blood inside Jeremy’s body and now you’re about to kill him. Eh.
- Cool beans, we can create a Vampire Diaries trope for how vampire Elena will literally burn down her home whenever she starts to freak out.
- And Caroline reacted just as I hoped. Heh.
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Everything before the end.
- A) Poor Bonnie, B) shouldn’t Jeremy be quickly dying from a massive chest wound? I am seriously puzzled what we’re meant to think happened there.
- Nadia is seriously…Okay, what?
- How holier than thou, Elena. You discovered Season One that your father forged your birth certificate. So..probably.
- I really don’t want to be catty. I really don’t. Dr. Maxwell has the most nasally annoying voice that if the casting director wasn’t deliberately seeking that out then something seriously went wrong. I cannot stress how much I do not want this guy to be a love interest.
- Teenagers, mayors, and police officers who aren’t Liz Forbes. Seriously, be anything in that town except for those three things and you’ll probably be fine. Anyway, RIP cop guy. At least you just got drunk to death instead of Ripper-ed apart while still alive like you might have been.
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Some Final Thoughts
- Nadia. Um…what? So there are gypsies in Prague, whose raison d’etre was to keep Silas buried away in Nova Scotia or wherever, and Nadia had a threesome with Matt and Rebekah and stole from them (and now we learn she’s a gypsy for Bonus Racism!), and after figuring out what the Gilbert ring is only by looking at it (which no one else in the entire supernatural world save Emily Bennett knew about) she somehow figured out that Silas was loose from his tomb, and that Matt was from a small town in Virgina, and that Silas would be in that same town in Virginia, all from this ring, and even though it’s the gypsies’ main reason for being, only two of them hopped the pond to stop Silas? I don’t know what makes this less believable, the possibility that she coincidentally picked Matt and Rebekah for her threesome and that’s what got all this started or the possibility that she eyed them and divined that these two strangers would aid her secret agenda. FFS!
- And the gypsy is now out of Matt’s head. Bye bye, Matt’s chance at an independent plotline. Maybe next year.
- I don’t have much to say. In drama, there are two kinds of revelation: when the audience knows something that the characters don’t (dramatic irony), or when the characters know something that the audience doesn’t (I forget the name for that kind). Dramatic Irony is much harder to pull off in a way that people actually enjoy watching, which is why most writers don’t bother much with it, but here they’re doing two big story arcs that are soaking in it: a) Bonnie’s dead and no one (except Jeremy and us) knows, and b) Stefan is in a box for months and drowning repeatedly and no one (until eventually Damon 2/3s of the way through last episode) knows until the end of this episode. The reason I’m going into this much detail is this: The joy in dramatic irony is in watching the characters’ learning the information we already know. If they don’t react in interesting and/or emotionally engaging ways then…it’s pretty boring. And the anticipation has been pretty boring. I’m being unfair…it hasn’t been that boring. But it’s going to be if people don’t start reacting in unexpected ways.
- To go along with that, the Elena/Damon conversation should have been much richer than it was, if the show simply had to give it to them to begin with. They were working out the issues in their relationship (she somehow seems to have a psychic connection with his brother, he doesn’t trust her to deal with her hometown problems and maintain her current life, they’re always getting violently or magically attacked by stuff) and somehow, they managed to not actually, really much talk about any of it. Wasted opportunity.
- Furthermore, Elena’s character, and Caroline’s in particular, is suffering by all of this non-discovery. Elena and Caroline are okay with only communicating with Bonnie through text message all summer long? And I get, sort of, why Elena wouldn’t communicate with Stefan, if she just thought she was following his lead of non-communication (he wasn’t exactly pleasant after their last breakup either). But Caroline has no quarrel with him to begin with, and she’s his honorary AA sponsor now that Lexi’s dead. She should care about his feelings, and she should also care that he doesn’t begin mass slaughter. I realize in both cases that this is pure plot contrivance rather than intended character development, but this is kind of like in Buffy Season Seven when half the season goes by until “The Killer in Me” when the plot point of the episode rests on the fact that no one has hugged Giles a single time since his return to America months earlier and you realize to yourself that these people just don’t give a crap about each other anymore, do they? (VD characters still do, but it’s lessening year by year). In other words, for the sake of (not terrible riveting, to boot) narrative necessity, the show is eroding the three-dimensional humanity of its characters, bit by bit. I’m being harsh, the writers just need to watch out for that.
- I’m not buying Katherine’s redemption arc. I buy that they’re writing one, I just don’t buy that it would happen. Not like this, anyway.
Conclusion: Not amazing but I liked it fine. I give “True Lies” seven cops in a box out of ten.