Going back to TVD, closing out season 1
Aug. 28th, 2023 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsI don't think I ever quite finished with my TVD season 1 wrap-up thoughts, but I did have enough for a post about them.
Okay, so I’m going to write this not being sure if it will be its own post or tacked onto the end of the season finale review. (Hmm, I think I may have gone on long enough to make it its own thing.)
I’ve decided I’m not going to do episode grades for this like I do with Buffy. The radical difference in quality between a good Buffy episode and a bad Buffy episode means there’s some value in giving them grades. Vampire Diaries on the other hand is a) less markedly episodic and b) more homogenized in quality. There can be trends of improvement and degradation; there can be stand outs from those trends for good and bad; but it’s a lot harder to grade.
It would be somewhat more relevant to graph my investment in the show, but that can really only be a personal chart. Because I found I didn’t have much investment in any of the plots after 1x14; and that it really got worse the closer we got to the season finale. But if say someone is able to invest in Damon’s character or especially his and Elena’s relationship, then the last few episodes of the season would have probably been something they were interested in. And it’s not like I’m immune to this; I think s3 takes an immediate and irreversible downturn when Elijah leaves (they waited too long to bring him into s4, by then there was no saving that season. Though 4x18 is possibly my high point of the season, again for personal investment reasons).
But I suppose I can tally the answers to the closing questions. So, what am I shipping, and who do I hate most (so far)?
-In the shipping race: ‘Nothing’ takes first place. I would say it was by a narrow margin, but considering that a) plenty of things I counted were by narrow margins over nothing and b) some of the things I did count weren’t actually in the episode (I twice counted Elena/Elijah as the ship I was most invested in for the episode), I think it’s fair to give ‘nothing’ the crown.
--Following that was Elena/Matt as the quiet ship I hold dear. Then Jeremy/Anna, which I’m somehow even less passionate about than the quiet ship I really only want as endgame. Matt/Caroline rounds out the answers that weren’t just things to put down in place of nothing; and I only see them as a short term ship anyway.
-In the hating: Damon takes it easily. More than half the episodes went to him exclusively, and when you add in the times I hated Damon and Stefan evenly, that’s a solid 75% of the season. In the race between the brothers it’s an easy call this season. I expect it to be less so in later seasons as I hate Stefan more, and there are plenty of other people to hate instead of just a couple of instances I decided not to just hand it to Damon.
I do have a couple of broad topics I think deserve to be brought up before going forward with the series. And then a couple observations about how my opinion coming back to this season after so long away from the show/verse.
This show sort of feels like a relic from a longer time ago than it really is. Not that 13-14 years is anything to sneeze at in terms of the pop culture landscape, and there have been some substantial shakeups in the entertainment landscape in that time, but in some ways this show feels more dated than Buffy. Or maybe it’s more that…Buffy feels a bit more timeless in spite of all its 90s trappings; while this grew out of a moment in media trends that we are definitely not in anymore. It makes me a bit curious how late TVD, later Originals, and into Legacies may or may not have grown with so much change in audience views.
But this is before, say, Game of Thrones became a cultural touchstone; with its wide sweeping narrative. It’s functionally before the MCU, when there were just a couple of superhero movies that hadn’t come together yet and ignited the shared universe boom of media. It’s in sort of a lull between phases of Strong Female Character insistence or representation/tokenism movements. It’s apolitical in a way we haven’t been seeing from shows in several years now; which may be worth a meta on its own, about how it’s very Obama era detached from politics, to the point where it eschews them entirely even when maybe it should be a little more aware of the messaging it has.
Its main cultural influence is Twilight, and the backlash against Twilight. It does sort of try to avoid some of the most common complaints of Twilight, but the very structure of Twilight won’t let them avoid the some of the biggest pitfalls. Love triangles just don’t seem to have the same part in fandom culture as they did at this point.
Maybe I don’t watch enough media aimed at teens, but I can also see a few reasons why this would happen. With average TV seasons being shorter now, there’s less room for ups and downs, ins and outs of a love triangle in flux to keep people guessing/thinking about what a good/preferred endgame would be. By a similar token, since so much TV is…not just serialized but has to be plotted more like a novel than a story evolving in near real time, it’s easier to have your stories click together at the end with a decided endgame. This isn’t exactly a complaint, I don’t get a lot out of love triangles (and this one is especially bad for me), but I’m not sure I like the reasons to have less love triangles out there.
I’m having a hard time telling if I like this season more or less than I did before; both on first watch and when thinking about it while I was still into the show. As usual, unless something is spectacular, analyzing it tends to lead to a lower opinion; except that I always had kind of a low opinion of this show and this season. I’ve said before that the Katherine arc that starts s2 is the first stuff I really got into, and the party really doesn’t start for me until Elijah walks in. I guess we’ll see if that still stands.
Okay, so I’m going to write this not being sure if it will be its own post or tacked onto the end of the season finale review. (Hmm, I think I may have gone on long enough to make it its own thing.)
I’ve decided I’m not going to do episode grades for this like I do with Buffy. The radical difference in quality between a good Buffy episode and a bad Buffy episode means there’s some value in giving them grades. Vampire Diaries on the other hand is a) less markedly episodic and b) more homogenized in quality. There can be trends of improvement and degradation; there can be stand outs from those trends for good and bad; but it’s a lot harder to grade.
It would be somewhat more relevant to graph my investment in the show, but that can really only be a personal chart. Because I found I didn’t have much investment in any of the plots after 1x14; and that it really got worse the closer we got to the season finale. But if say someone is able to invest in Damon’s character or especially his and Elena’s relationship, then the last few episodes of the season would have probably been something they were interested in. And it’s not like I’m immune to this; I think s3 takes an immediate and irreversible downturn when Elijah leaves (they waited too long to bring him into s4, by then there was no saving that season. Though 4x18 is possibly my high point of the season, again for personal investment reasons).
But I suppose I can tally the answers to the closing questions. So, what am I shipping, and who do I hate most (so far)?
-In the shipping race: ‘Nothing’ takes first place. I would say it was by a narrow margin, but considering that a) plenty of things I counted were by narrow margins over nothing and b) some of the things I did count weren’t actually in the episode (I twice counted Elena/Elijah as the ship I was most invested in for the episode), I think it’s fair to give ‘nothing’ the crown.
--Following that was Elena/Matt as the quiet ship I hold dear. Then Jeremy/Anna, which I’m somehow even less passionate about than the quiet ship I really only want as endgame. Matt/Caroline rounds out the answers that weren’t just things to put down in place of nothing; and I only see them as a short term ship anyway.
-In the hating: Damon takes it easily. More than half the episodes went to him exclusively, and when you add in the times I hated Damon and Stefan evenly, that’s a solid 75% of the season. In the race between the brothers it’s an easy call this season. I expect it to be less so in later seasons as I hate Stefan more, and there are plenty of other people to hate instead of just a couple of instances I decided not to just hand it to Damon.
I do have a couple of broad topics I think deserve to be brought up before going forward with the series. And then a couple observations about how my opinion coming back to this season after so long away from the show/verse.
This show sort of feels like a relic from a longer time ago than it really is. Not that 13-14 years is anything to sneeze at in terms of the pop culture landscape, and there have been some substantial shakeups in the entertainment landscape in that time, but in some ways this show feels more dated than Buffy. Or maybe it’s more that…Buffy feels a bit more timeless in spite of all its 90s trappings; while this grew out of a moment in media trends that we are definitely not in anymore. It makes me a bit curious how late TVD, later Originals, and into Legacies may or may not have grown with so much change in audience views.
But this is before, say, Game of Thrones became a cultural touchstone; with its wide sweeping narrative. It’s functionally before the MCU, when there were just a couple of superhero movies that hadn’t come together yet and ignited the shared universe boom of media. It’s in sort of a lull between phases of Strong Female Character insistence or representation/tokenism movements. It’s apolitical in a way we haven’t been seeing from shows in several years now; which may be worth a meta on its own, about how it’s very Obama era detached from politics, to the point where it eschews them entirely even when maybe it should be a little more aware of the messaging it has.
Its main cultural influence is Twilight, and the backlash against Twilight. It does sort of try to avoid some of the most common complaints of Twilight, but the very structure of Twilight won’t let them avoid the some of the biggest pitfalls. Love triangles just don’t seem to have the same part in fandom culture as they did at this point.
Maybe I don’t watch enough media aimed at teens, but I can also see a few reasons why this would happen. With average TV seasons being shorter now, there’s less room for ups and downs, ins and outs of a love triangle in flux to keep people guessing/thinking about what a good/preferred endgame would be. By a similar token, since so much TV is…not just serialized but has to be plotted more like a novel than a story evolving in near real time, it’s easier to have your stories click together at the end with a decided endgame. This isn’t exactly a complaint, I don’t get a lot out of love triangles (and this one is especially bad for me), but I’m not sure I like the reasons to have less love triangles out there.
I’m having a hard time telling if I like this season more or less than I did before; both on first watch and when thinking about it while I was still into the show. As usual, unless something is spectacular, analyzing it tends to lead to a lower opinion; except that I always had kind of a low opinion of this show and this season. I’ve said before that the Katherine arc that starts s2 is the first stuff I really got into, and the party really doesn’t start for me until Elijah walks in. I guess we’ll see if that still stands.
