Hey all, sorry it’s been so long between posts. To be honest, karma has caught up with me and the copy-violating website I had been using to watch episodes has been given me computer issues. I am inordinately proud of myself that I figured out how to fix my own computer without much fuss (I’m like a baby who gets proud of small things), but I took it as a sign to slow my roll and just wait for the DVD at this point, and to just watch the remaining four episodes at that point. It’s been very frustrating and isolating, since I can’t go to any VD websites, for risk of exposure to what would to any other person be news or discussion, but would to me be spoilers. Do they all become human? Does Bonnie destroy the world? Does Katherine kill Elijah in his sleep for the twenty in his wallet? I have to know!
Speaking of the Season Four DVD, it will be released September 3rd, and looks to have zero special features (boo!). For having practically double the ratings of any other show on the whole network, the CW is not doing a whole lot to reward the fanbase. I know they have a convention every year, you’d think they could at least just throw in a video of that or something. But anyway, the DVD is released September 3rd, and the new season premieres October 3rd. The Originals is going to premiere the same night, and then it’s going to switch to Tuesdays to be partnered with Supernatural, a show I just discovered this summer and is actually pretty nifty btw. Anyway, here’s the cover art. Thoughts?
It looks a little ‘high school drama department puts on a Gothic drama,’ what with the dry ice, the huge, fake stones, Stefan’s stiff and uncomfortable looking suit jacket, and Elena’s….what is that? I mean, she’s beautiful, don’t misunderstand me, and she’s beautiful in the picture too, but it’s kind of like what an innocent girl imagines a domme vampiress might dress like. Wev. I still like it okay. I like the color palate. I put the other seasons below. My least favorite (I’m referring to cover-art) is Season Three, because it looks like a bunch of pastels got processed through a neon filter, plus Stefan looks like he just got finished midwifing a hemorrhaging calf. My favorite is Season One, in terms of aesthetics. I like the palate, the sky, the atmosphere, the way it’s all drawn to a very clear center-point in the crow (there’s an art word for that I can’t remember), and the actors all look pretty. The problem is, it doesn’t really capture the mood of the show at all. I have no problems whatever with Season Two, beyond the fact that it just looks so generic…like it could just be any promotional image for the show…heck, for any show.
While we’re on the topic of DVD’s by the way, if you’re in the market to shop for any, the first two seasons are your best bet. Amazon will list the specs, and I’m just going by memory here, but they have an audio commentary apiece, some interviews, gag reels, deleted scenes, and featurettes. Also, Season One actually has the full length audio book of L.J. Smith’s The Awakening, so that’s pretty cool. Downside of Season One, and I never really see warnings of this, but the deleted scenes are paired with the wrong episodes for some reason. So (I forget if it’s the one ahead or the one behind) but the scenes will correspond really wrongly when you click on them and you won’t know why, but it’s not just you.
Lastly, I did see the first twenty or so minutes of “The Originals.” The episode, obviously, not the show. So, since I haven’t posted in forever I thought I’d just give some preliminary thoughts, except this is pretty unfair since I haven’t even seen the entire episode, much less the spinoff itself. Mostly I wanted to speak on the series itself in some actual way since it’s been so long, so bear with me.
What I’ll give it credit for is that it already is trying to distinguish its voice from the mothership show, which I know is something that’s important for every spinoff to do, and every spinoff struggles to do. Klaus is true to the character that (I’m presuming) his fans enjoy him for without needing his Stefan/Elijah/Rebekah crutches to bounce off of. So yay Klaus. Or whatever. And, um…this is me trying to be objective. But I didn’t really like it that much, to be honest.
It seemed like they were making Klaus sympathetic by creating a character who was a bigger, and more powerful ass than Klaus, and who controls the entire city of New Orleans (can you believe it, the entire city?), and so now Klaus has a Season-long (or maybe half-Season-long) arc to wrest back control of the city he for some reason feels entitled to whereupon pigs will be sleeping in the bed instead of Farmer Jones but Boxer will still go the glue factory I’m sure the witches will still actually be oppressed and Klaus will still be controlling, back-stabbing and abusive to his subordinates, just like Marcel seems to be, so who really cares which one is in charge? Let them fight it out; I’m going to share a potato vodka with Moses the raven until Haley shows up to do something interesting because whatever.
The one breath of beautiful fresh air was Elijah, and I just got a faint whiff before the offensive popup nudie ads of computer virus time popped up (just like virtual Bourbon Street! I hear), but I think this episode finally put in context for me one of the things I’ve always liked about him. Most of the men on this show, most especially Klaus and, apparently this Marcel guy, play the alpha role by being the loudest and most long-winded guy in the room. Elijah is the opposite. When he alphas a situation (“alpha” isn’t a verb but it should be) he does it by being the quietest guy in the room, by being careful with his words, and then just moving in and revealing that he has the reins of the situation. How many times did Damon impotently flounder at Elijah’s hands in Season Two and how awesome was it every time? But anyway, here he basically shows up, kills a few henchmen, offers to help what’s-her-name, and that’s all I saw, so for all I know he’s been rewritten to be a bombastic “bigger-than-life” anti-hero just like everyone else just so the tone didn’t seem so discordant.
What kind of threw me, though, is the misogyny of the whole thing. The single scene from Mystic Falls is Elena locked in a cellar not talking. All right, everyone gets locked in that cellar at some point, and there needs to be a reason why the plot’s not moving there this week, fine. But then you get to New Orleans, where it’s supposedly Haley’s quest to find her birth parents/birth legacy, and she gets duped, incapacitated, imprisoned, and never heard from or mentioned again (at least until my video got stopped), all in under, like, five minutes. And then you have the two cool witches (who, admittedly, I couldn’t tell apart. But I did like them). One of them gets murdered in a crowd of a million cheering dudes all so Marcel can play “mine is bigger than yours” with Klaus. And Elijah, who I do like, mind you, just rescued the other witch, because she’s not allowed to use her own available magic to protect her own damn self, because Marcel is a misogynistic control freak.
I know the Marcel character and the Marcel/Klaus dynamic needs to be established in only 44 minutes, but I was really looking forward to seeing what they did with Haley. She’s going to be a main character too, and unlike The Vampire Diaries (in its beginning seasons) she’s going to be a main female character with actual superpowers. She has a chance to actually be a major player in sh*t that happens in more ways than just the power of her words, choices, or bloodline. I’m also curious if they’re going to go the romance route with her, the f*ck-buddy route, or if she’s going to be a sometimes friend sometimes enemy (which I think could be coolest of all).
But I’m being awfully long-winded…I think it’s because I’ve had a few weeks now to dwell on twenty minutes and so it’s expanded into feeling like it’s the whole show. Watch me get egg on my face come DVD opening day.
Anyhow, apologies for the infrequent updates.
Best wishes to all. TTFN.