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tori_reviewsThe Vampire Diaries 1x13: Children of the Damned
This episode is kind of an odd duck I guess. It’s another decent episode that doesn’t do anything wrong, it just isn’t doing much that I care about.
This show is proving kind of interesting to look at as a middle point between the story telling on Buffy and what I’ve seen in the modern Marvel and Star Wars shows (and others of that ilk). It’s less episodic than Buffy (in both good and bad ways), which allows some episodes like this one to not have that much of its own plot. I could say that episodes like this are in line with modern storytelling that know over time more people will consume it in bulk (if not binged) than do in broadcast, because it is relevant to the overall story but not all that much on its own.
And that all makes it strange to compare to say Obi-wan where I often complained episodes didn’t do much for the plot. More happened in those Obi-wan episodes, there was usually some big event that made sure that it *happened*, but there wasn’t a story being told. This is a small part of an overarching story, but you can see the story is still going on within it, even if not a lot happens.
This episode is nothing to write home (or blog much) about, but in comparison to modern shows, I find more to appreciate it. People who like the shorter-form series will argue against episodes like this, because they’re not necessary or doing a ton to advance the plot but modern shows are the poorer for not having space for this kind of episode. Without doing a lot of its own heavy lifting, it’s able to shore up episodes around it. It’s a thankless place to be, but I have more appreciation for it now that I would have before TV moved away from doing this kind of ep.
What I would bother to complain about (which had occurred to me before the episode suddenly remember things that had been previously set up) was how Bonnie could go on a date with a vampire and not realize it. Anna sort of suggests that maybe a vampire at full strength doesn’t read too off to a witch, but I’m not quite ready to say that makes sense.
In apparently my new recurring segment of ways Elena/Elijah is better than the Triangle, Damon can’t tell when Elena’s lying. Which means he’s either not listening for it, or her heart doesn’t give away that she’s lying to him. Either way, I think E/E comes out on top.
As for the timeline, if one really needs to add time, there may have been a day or two between last episode and this one. If I ignore Damon’s lack of patience, I’d say it could have been a bit longer; but knowing Damon’s lack of patience, it’s more likely we’re starting the next day (although Stefan and Elena do move between houses in the meantime).
What’s really befuddling is the 1864 timeline. Even if I didn’t remember that we see papa Salvatore die within a day or two of Stefan and Damon, I wouldn’t imagine he’d last long once the boys turned. So when did the Founders decide to go after Emily? She’s clearly free (…I wrote it but I’m going to leave it alone as the Confederates probably don’t think of her as ‘free.’ But they hadn’t captured her as a witch yet) when they round up vampires, and the plot is rather contingent on her being free at the time; but Emily would have to have her grimoire to preform the tomb spell (again, plot kind of demands it) so when did the Fell to Gilbert to Salvatore chain of custody begin for it to end with papa Salvatore before Stefan has a chance to kill him?
At some point Emily had to made the Gilbert rings too, though I wasn’t looking closely enough to see if Johnathan was already wearing one (that would have been a brilliant bit of foreshadowing that would go unnoticed by most viewers, if he was wearing Alaric’s ring). And if I recall correctly, he does have the ring not too long after vampire roundup night, since Stefan and Damon go around killing a bunch of the Founders.
I’m a little surprised there was no note in either the Gilbert journals or passed down through the town council about vampires being able to walk in the sun. Papa Salvatore clearly knew Katherine was going about in the sun, as had Pearl (those Gilberts just can’t resist vampires, can they?).
Also, I guess I was sort of on the right track with my guessing about Emily. The bit where she promises Anna that she’ll see Pearl again must come before Damon manages to find Emily. So something is out of joint here. Because we haven’t yet heard anything about Emily knowing about Katherine not being in the tomb; and Emily must have believed she was down there, or she should have been more upset with Katherine leaving her behind to be found out by the Founders; at which point she would have at least sold Katherine out to Damon.
We do get a better take on Katherine in this episode than we did in the 1x06 flashbacks, but it’s definitely still not a complete version of the character. There is still a bit of having Katherine’s persona changing based on who she’s interacting with, but it’s closer to being able to say that it’s something she does deliberately to convince people of her different personas. Besides, where I noted that 1x06 seemed largely to be Stefan’s POV of Katherine and so might be an unreliable narrator, this episode is a bit janky too. It doesn’t have the same view on the flashbacks as the earlier episode; but we don’t know enough to call it an objective view of what happened either. And so Katherine remains something of a conundrum as we have no consistent view of her, not even her own at this point.
What am I shipping?
Can I say I’m friend-shipping Stefan-Elena? This episode doesn’t encourage me to like them as a couple but there are moments when I can see them being good exes and still making a good team. With the present versions of the characters that is, especially when it comes to Stefan; the times when they actually do break up usually involve them (but mostly him) being so awful to each other that I don’t even want them interacting much less trying to be friends or a team.
Who do I hate the most?
Once more I find Stefan mostly tolerable, so Damon takes the crown. It’s also the first time he plays with the idea of turning Elena into a vampire as a prop in his schemes and as a joystick to control Stefan, so he also earns that title instead of just landing in it.
This episode is kind of an odd duck I guess. It’s another decent episode that doesn’t do anything wrong, it just isn’t doing much that I care about.
This show is proving kind of interesting to look at as a middle point between the story telling on Buffy and what I’ve seen in the modern Marvel and Star Wars shows (and others of that ilk). It’s less episodic than Buffy (in both good and bad ways), which allows some episodes like this one to not have that much of its own plot. I could say that episodes like this are in line with modern storytelling that know over time more people will consume it in bulk (if not binged) than do in broadcast, because it is relevant to the overall story but not all that much on its own.
And that all makes it strange to compare to say Obi-wan where I often complained episodes didn’t do much for the plot. More happened in those Obi-wan episodes, there was usually some big event that made sure that it *happened*, but there wasn’t a story being told. This is a small part of an overarching story, but you can see the story is still going on within it, even if not a lot happens.
This episode is nothing to write home (or blog much) about, but in comparison to modern shows, I find more to appreciate it. People who like the shorter-form series will argue against episodes like this, because they’re not necessary or doing a ton to advance the plot but modern shows are the poorer for not having space for this kind of episode. Without doing a lot of its own heavy lifting, it’s able to shore up episodes around it. It’s a thankless place to be, but I have more appreciation for it now that I would have before TV moved away from doing this kind of ep.
What I would bother to complain about (which had occurred to me before the episode suddenly remember things that had been previously set up) was how Bonnie could go on a date with a vampire and not realize it. Anna sort of suggests that maybe a vampire at full strength doesn’t read too off to a witch, but I’m not quite ready to say that makes sense.
In apparently my new recurring segment of ways Elena/Elijah is better than the Triangle, Damon can’t tell when Elena’s lying. Which means he’s either not listening for it, or her heart doesn’t give away that she’s lying to him. Either way, I think E/E comes out on top.
As for the timeline, if one really needs to add time, there may have been a day or two between last episode and this one. If I ignore Damon’s lack of patience, I’d say it could have been a bit longer; but knowing Damon’s lack of patience, it’s more likely we’re starting the next day (although Stefan and Elena do move between houses in the meantime).
What’s really befuddling is the 1864 timeline. Even if I didn’t remember that we see papa Salvatore die within a day or two of Stefan and Damon, I wouldn’t imagine he’d last long once the boys turned. So when did the Founders decide to go after Emily? She’s clearly free (…I wrote it but I’m going to leave it alone as the Confederates probably don’t think of her as ‘free.’ But they hadn’t captured her as a witch yet) when they round up vampires, and the plot is rather contingent on her being free at the time; but Emily would have to have her grimoire to preform the tomb spell (again, plot kind of demands it) so when did the Fell to Gilbert to Salvatore chain of custody begin for it to end with papa Salvatore before Stefan has a chance to kill him?
At some point Emily had to made the Gilbert rings too, though I wasn’t looking closely enough to see if Johnathan was already wearing one (that would have been a brilliant bit of foreshadowing that would go unnoticed by most viewers, if he was wearing Alaric’s ring). And if I recall correctly, he does have the ring not too long after vampire roundup night, since Stefan and Damon go around killing a bunch of the Founders.
I’m a little surprised there was no note in either the Gilbert journals or passed down through the town council about vampires being able to walk in the sun. Papa Salvatore clearly knew Katherine was going about in the sun, as had Pearl (those Gilberts just can’t resist vampires, can they?).
Also, I guess I was sort of on the right track with my guessing about Emily. The bit where she promises Anna that she’ll see Pearl again must come before Damon manages to find Emily. So something is out of joint here. Because we haven’t yet heard anything about Emily knowing about Katherine not being in the tomb; and Emily must have believed she was down there, or she should have been more upset with Katherine leaving her behind to be found out by the Founders; at which point she would have at least sold Katherine out to Damon.
We do get a better take on Katherine in this episode than we did in the 1x06 flashbacks, but it’s definitely still not a complete version of the character. There is still a bit of having Katherine’s persona changing based on who she’s interacting with, but it’s closer to being able to say that it’s something she does deliberately to convince people of her different personas. Besides, where I noted that 1x06 seemed largely to be Stefan’s POV of Katherine and so might be an unreliable narrator, this episode is a bit janky too. It doesn’t have the same view on the flashbacks as the earlier episode; but we don’t know enough to call it an objective view of what happened either. And so Katherine remains something of a conundrum as we have no consistent view of her, not even her own at this point.
What am I shipping?
Can I say I’m friend-shipping Stefan-Elena? This episode doesn’t encourage me to like them as a couple but there are moments when I can see them being good exes and still making a good team. With the present versions of the characters that is, especially when it comes to Stefan; the times when they actually do break up usually involve them (but mostly him) being so awful to each other that I don’t even want them interacting much less trying to be friends or a team.
Who do I hate the most?
Once more I find Stefan mostly tolerable, so Damon takes the crown. It’s also the first time he plays with the idea of turning Elena into a vampire as a prop in his schemes and as a joystick to control Stefan, so he also earns that title instead of just landing in it.
