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tori_reviewsTwo posts in the same week; it's too soon to say I'm getting some consistency back, but it's something.
The Vampire Diaries 1x16: There Goes the Neighborhood
Among all the tangents I got on last time, one I ended up not bringing up a general thought on this section of this season. That it’s kind of boring overall. Remove a few trappings of the supernatural that occasionally intersect with the plot, and this is basically any other teen drama, and unfortunately when comparing it to other teen dramas it’s pretty mid-tier and forgettable.
As I’ve said several times over about this show and Buffy, there’s a part of me that does feel that episodes like this need to exist, to show that the characters do have periods of calm between big drama events, sometimes things need to simmer. And this show will lose that as I recall, and I will complain when it does. But just because I do want episodes like this to exist doesn’t mean I always like them when they do come around.
There also ends up being an unfortunate sense of denial about this episode; and I’m not sure whether to focus on the characters’ seeming denial or whether to extend it to the writers thinking the characters can be this…normal. Some of it almost seems intentional, because with Elena and Stefan setting normal as their goal for the day, we see that they’re not seeing some of the serious problems going on around them. When the characters in a supernatural teen drama want to act like they’re in a regular teen drama, the supernatural stuff is still there on the fringes of their lives. Jenna almost gets picked up by a vampire; Jeremy has a whole plot going on where he wants to be a vampire; there are tomb vampires gathering and no one is paying attention.
And this not-quite-acknowledged sense of denial puts me in a weird place with Stefan and Elena in this episode. I feel like I do get it from Elena’s side, that this is probably what in her mind their relationship is, or at least ‘should be,’ and it’s what she will look back on in times to come as if this is the primary thing their relationship was. One where the supernatural drama can be put to the side and they can just be loving and fun and supportive. If I was more charitable than I usually am, I can extend that to Stefan too; either that he’s giving Elena the normal day she wants, or because he too wants to think their relationship can be this. Either is alright for him to be doing and I wouldn’t begrudge him it. And maybe in a different world, they even could be this; Stefan at this point seems well enough adjusted that if other supernatural shit didn’t come into their lives, he could indeed pretend to be normal for a while.
But what I can’t tell with this episode is if it’s just a house of cards build in an tornado zone or if it’s meant to seem like a solid foundation that is about to be put under attack. I don’t remember what I thought when I watched this episode for the first time, whether I even wanted it to be the latter; but knowing what the show becomes, I can’t help but see it as the former.
From this episode (and to a lesser extent last ep), I would say that this would be a fairly boring show to watch if it was your basic mid-level CW teen drama where one of the characters just so happened to drink blood on occasion. It doesn’t at this point have interesting enough characters to care much about except in the face of external supernatural shit. Also the dialog writing is rough, especially in trying to fast forward Matt and Kelly’s drama.
For my timeline check in, I’m not sure what to say about this one. In keeping with this being a generic plot, it has the sort of timeline you could see in a lot of other shows. Meaning, it’s probably been a few days, there’s nothing that says it must be right after the last one; but not a lot has moved on since last ep so probably not a lot of time. I think Alaric would be a gauge for whether it’s been a day or a week, but he’s not in this episode. Which makes me kind of think it can’t have been too long, because the local folks haven’t brought up there being another missing/dead person and Damon would probably have been told something if people knew anything.
On a separate timeline, Pearl mentions having 400 years on Damon, if true that would make her even older than Katherine. And, assuming that Anna is Pearl’s daughter from when she was alive, she’s older than Katherine too. Then we have to wonder how long they all knew each other for; and what Pearl (and likely Anna) may or may not know about Katherine’s backstory. They’re both gone by the time we get into the doppelganger and Original business so we’ll never really know. Also, do we assume that Pearl and Anna were east Asian people who came to Europe, or do we ask which Original wandered over to east Asia and stated turning vampires? (I think I might end up saying Mikael for fic purposes.)
Like Damon, I’m very skeptical of Pearl’s ability to find Katherine in the modern world. For one, it presumes that anyone can predict what Katherine might do, and Pearl didn’t see the 1864 play coming. For two, Pearl’s not going to know the kind of places Katherine is drawn to in the world these days, she’s still got a lot to learn about what the world has. Now, if she does know the doppelganger business, she could know that Katherine will be coming around trying to turn the Elena situation to her advantage.
I think it’s interesting to take a step back and look at Anna here. In a way it’s also relevant to Damon, but we’ll start with Anna. As far as we know, Anna had only been planning on rescuing her mom without as much of a plan past that. Both in terms of ending up with a houseful of vamps and her relationship to her mother. Although Anna may be upwards of 500 years old, she is still seen as a child; on top of which, a girl, in the company of vampires who have not grown with the times. She may be the only one who understands the world they’re living in, but they don’t take her seriously. And, however old Anna was, she seems to have played the part of a child through 1864, but since then she has been on her own without her mother’s protection. She’s very much used to being in charge of her own life now, serving her own agenda which didn’t really seem to include trying to take over Mystic Falls.
I either don’t recall or never really knew what the end goal of trying to take over Mystic Falls was. Wanting revenge I can understand, but what would they do then? It does seem to be mostly be Pearl’s plan, and the others either go along with it or not, but still I ask why is it important to her? I’m tempted to say this is a symptom of not really understanding the modern world yet, not getting just how much easier their lives would be in a bigger city or one that at least doesn’t have the history this one has.
But I said Anna’s situation reflects on Damon’s, because her dissatisfaction with what’s come from her efforts to rescue Pearl aren’t too different from what Damon would likely have felt even if Katherine had been in the tomb. He wanted to be seen as her hero, but she’d likely either be stuck in the past or expect to still be the one of them in charge. I’m not sure exactly what Damon had in mind for Katherine had he rescued her as planned, I’m not sure he knew any more than Anna what to expect, but I don’t think he would have ever been perfectly happy. He just got it as a ruder awakening than Anna is going through.
So I think that just leaves the love square, which I definitely have thoughts on, but can’t quite work up the energy to delve into them. This does make me kind of wonder how the show ever pulls off Stefan/Caroline, except that being a few years older Caroline is better able to handle the feeling of being second choice. That or Stefan does a better job of managing her feelings about that than Matt does; because even though Matt’s speech in the car is sweet and well meant, I don’t know that it really resolved the core issue in their relationship, or even really balanced the scales of that night. Because between Matt’s enduring love for Elena and his new guy-crush on Stefan, I don’t think Caroline was coming out ahead on this one.
What am I shipping?
And yeah, I get why Caroline feels like things didn’t go the way she wanted, because Elena/Matt are definitely showing so many reasons why I ship them. Also the Anna/Jeremy stuff is…I have sort of complicated feelings about, but I can get onboard with the ship.
Who do I hate the most?
I’m not even sure I hate Damon in this one, but my base level hatred of Damon is enough to put him at the top still.
The Vampire Diaries 1x16: There Goes the Neighborhood
Among all the tangents I got on last time, one I ended up not bringing up a general thought on this section of this season. That it’s kind of boring overall. Remove a few trappings of the supernatural that occasionally intersect with the plot, and this is basically any other teen drama, and unfortunately when comparing it to other teen dramas it’s pretty mid-tier and forgettable.
As I’ve said several times over about this show and Buffy, there’s a part of me that does feel that episodes like this need to exist, to show that the characters do have periods of calm between big drama events, sometimes things need to simmer. And this show will lose that as I recall, and I will complain when it does. But just because I do want episodes like this to exist doesn’t mean I always like them when they do come around.
There also ends up being an unfortunate sense of denial about this episode; and I’m not sure whether to focus on the characters’ seeming denial or whether to extend it to the writers thinking the characters can be this…normal. Some of it almost seems intentional, because with Elena and Stefan setting normal as their goal for the day, we see that they’re not seeing some of the serious problems going on around them. When the characters in a supernatural teen drama want to act like they’re in a regular teen drama, the supernatural stuff is still there on the fringes of their lives. Jenna almost gets picked up by a vampire; Jeremy has a whole plot going on where he wants to be a vampire; there are tomb vampires gathering and no one is paying attention.
And this not-quite-acknowledged sense of denial puts me in a weird place with Stefan and Elena in this episode. I feel like I do get it from Elena’s side, that this is probably what in her mind their relationship is, or at least ‘should be,’ and it’s what she will look back on in times to come as if this is the primary thing their relationship was. One where the supernatural drama can be put to the side and they can just be loving and fun and supportive. If I was more charitable than I usually am, I can extend that to Stefan too; either that he’s giving Elena the normal day she wants, or because he too wants to think their relationship can be this. Either is alright for him to be doing and I wouldn’t begrudge him it. And maybe in a different world, they even could be this; Stefan at this point seems well enough adjusted that if other supernatural shit didn’t come into their lives, he could indeed pretend to be normal for a while.
But what I can’t tell with this episode is if it’s just a house of cards build in an tornado zone or if it’s meant to seem like a solid foundation that is about to be put under attack. I don’t remember what I thought when I watched this episode for the first time, whether I even wanted it to be the latter; but knowing what the show becomes, I can’t help but see it as the former.
From this episode (and to a lesser extent last ep), I would say that this would be a fairly boring show to watch if it was your basic mid-level CW teen drama where one of the characters just so happened to drink blood on occasion. It doesn’t at this point have interesting enough characters to care much about except in the face of external supernatural shit. Also the dialog writing is rough, especially in trying to fast forward Matt and Kelly’s drama.
For my timeline check in, I’m not sure what to say about this one. In keeping with this being a generic plot, it has the sort of timeline you could see in a lot of other shows. Meaning, it’s probably been a few days, there’s nothing that says it must be right after the last one; but not a lot has moved on since last ep so probably not a lot of time. I think Alaric would be a gauge for whether it’s been a day or a week, but he’s not in this episode. Which makes me kind of think it can’t have been too long, because the local folks haven’t brought up there being another missing/dead person and Damon would probably have been told something if people knew anything.
On a separate timeline, Pearl mentions having 400 years on Damon, if true that would make her even older than Katherine. And, assuming that Anna is Pearl’s daughter from when she was alive, she’s older than Katherine too. Then we have to wonder how long they all knew each other for; and what Pearl (and likely Anna) may or may not know about Katherine’s backstory. They’re both gone by the time we get into the doppelganger and Original business so we’ll never really know. Also, do we assume that Pearl and Anna were east Asian people who came to Europe, or do we ask which Original wandered over to east Asia and stated turning vampires? (I think I might end up saying Mikael for fic purposes.)
Like Damon, I’m very skeptical of Pearl’s ability to find Katherine in the modern world. For one, it presumes that anyone can predict what Katherine might do, and Pearl didn’t see the 1864 play coming. For two, Pearl’s not going to know the kind of places Katherine is drawn to in the world these days, she’s still got a lot to learn about what the world has. Now, if she does know the doppelganger business, she could know that Katherine will be coming around trying to turn the Elena situation to her advantage.
I think it’s interesting to take a step back and look at Anna here. In a way it’s also relevant to Damon, but we’ll start with Anna. As far as we know, Anna had only been planning on rescuing her mom without as much of a plan past that. Both in terms of ending up with a houseful of vamps and her relationship to her mother. Although Anna may be upwards of 500 years old, she is still seen as a child; on top of which, a girl, in the company of vampires who have not grown with the times. She may be the only one who understands the world they’re living in, but they don’t take her seriously. And, however old Anna was, she seems to have played the part of a child through 1864, but since then she has been on her own without her mother’s protection. She’s very much used to being in charge of her own life now, serving her own agenda which didn’t really seem to include trying to take over Mystic Falls.
I either don’t recall or never really knew what the end goal of trying to take over Mystic Falls was. Wanting revenge I can understand, but what would they do then? It does seem to be mostly be Pearl’s plan, and the others either go along with it or not, but still I ask why is it important to her? I’m tempted to say this is a symptom of not really understanding the modern world yet, not getting just how much easier their lives would be in a bigger city or one that at least doesn’t have the history this one has.
But I said Anna’s situation reflects on Damon’s, because her dissatisfaction with what’s come from her efforts to rescue Pearl aren’t too different from what Damon would likely have felt even if Katherine had been in the tomb. He wanted to be seen as her hero, but she’d likely either be stuck in the past or expect to still be the one of them in charge. I’m not sure exactly what Damon had in mind for Katherine had he rescued her as planned, I’m not sure he knew any more than Anna what to expect, but I don’t think he would have ever been perfectly happy. He just got it as a ruder awakening than Anna is going through.
So I think that just leaves the love square, which I definitely have thoughts on, but can’t quite work up the energy to delve into them. This does make me kind of wonder how the show ever pulls off Stefan/Caroline, except that being a few years older Caroline is better able to handle the feeling of being second choice. That or Stefan does a better job of managing her feelings about that than Matt does; because even though Matt’s speech in the car is sweet and well meant, I don’t know that it really resolved the core issue in their relationship, or even really balanced the scales of that night. Because between Matt’s enduring love for Elena and his new guy-crush on Stefan, I don’t think Caroline was coming out ahead on this one.
What am I shipping?
And yeah, I get why Caroline feels like things didn’t go the way she wanted, because Elena/Matt are definitely showing so many reasons why I ship them. Also the Anna/Jeremy stuff is…I have sort of complicated feelings about, but I can get onboard with the ship.
Who do I hate the most?
I’m not even sure I hate Damon in this one, but my base level hatred of Damon is enough to put him at the top still.
