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tori_reviews2023-09-04 11:55 pm
jedi_of_urth) wrote in tori_reviews2023-09-04 11:55 pm
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The Vampire Diaries 2x02: Brave New World
The Vampire Diaries 2x02: Brave New World
Well, I liked that episode…I think. But I also kind of wish it had been entirely different.
Let’s get the timeline problem out of the way. In the most obvious way, this literally has to be the next day from last episode, meaning it has been a grand total of two days since the end of s1. This whole carnival probably should have just been part of the Founders’ Day events. Most of the Lockwood stuff feels like it’s been more like a week since the Mayor died and Mason showed up. And this doesn’t feel like immediate fallout for what happened with Damon last episode; but at the same time there’s stuff that does seem to be a fairly immediate reaction. So once more, the timeline is a mess.
I remain unconvinced that the show is really following through on stuff it set up with Bonnie. This references her threat about not letting Damon hurt anyone (again, it was only two days ago), but in order to frame her as in the wrong, the show has her reacting to something that isn’t Damon’s fault when there are things (i.e. the Jeremy attack) that definitely are proof that Damon is basically a lost cause. And while it is remotely possible to read into her actions that she’s projecting her own guilt onto Damon, it definitely isn’t addressing her guilt for both leaving the Gilbert device intact and making the call to give Caroline vampire blood (and being the one to tell Katherine that they had given Caroline vampire blood). There’s a lot of material being built with Bonnie, but she’s largely an afterthought in the story.
While I do appreciate the parallels with Elena and Jeremy demonstrating the best of humanity, and that people can choose to reject the instinct for revenge, I end up feeling like it’s done for the needs of the story rather than real consideration of their characters. It’s not out of character for either of them, they both have issues with death and neither is inherently anti-vampire. But in this instance, Damon isn’t the bad guy because he’s a vampire; he’s a threat because he doesn’t think and he hurts people and he doesn’t care. He’s not sorry that he would have killed Jeremy if not for the ring; he may or may not be relieved that it didn’t take, I’ll leave him that much space, but he’s not sorry. He’s not sorry for what he did to Caroline last season. He’s not sorry for threatening Elena, the one person he at least sort of cares about being mad at him.
I’m a bit divided on how to view how the group decides to deal with Caroline’s transition. By which I mean, the three leads are all completely in character, to the point that I find all of them frustrating. Damon is being overly practical, and Elena overly emotional; while Stefan is just being weak. I’m mostly on Elena’s side, and find her perspective the most sympathetic, but I also think she’s being naïve and a bit selfish not thinking about the longer term effects of letting this play out. But where Elena has her particular brand of selfishness that stems from compassion and grief; Damon is just selfishly trying to clean up a mess that he doesn’t want to have to deal with for longer than an hour.
You know that point I come back to about how a proper love triangle has the person in the middle choosing which version of themselves they want to be? Well Stefan is the one in the middle of this love triangle, pulled between two extremes of an optimistic goal and pessimistic resignation. But he’s trying to be both, trying to believe that Elena is right while actually believing that Damon is; thinking that Elena’s choice is what they *should* do, but he can’t actually disagree with Damon’s stance on what *will* happen. Stefan here reminds me a lot of how he will act later in the season and show; that he can get away with not making the hard calls because he knows Damon will. Stefan doesn’t need to even raise the concerns about how this could go bad, because Damon is spelling them out, so Stefan doesn’t have to be the one to argue with Elena about the best way to handle this.
If it weren’t for how much that echoes (pre-echoes? it's really not quite foreshadowing as it’s just increasingly obvious characterization) later behavior that I don’t like, I would probably look more kindly on Stefan here. It’s okay that he does want Elena to be right, and he wants to at least give Caroline a chance so they don’t have to kill her; he’s just not as optimistic as Elena is that it can end well. The same thing kind of goes for how Stefan addresses Elena’s feelings during this story, especially the scene after they deal with Caroline. Watching Elena, I was very reminded of some of the later times in the series where she’s freaking out, and someone (usually a Salvatore) ends up making her pain somehow about them. Here, Elena herself pulls herself back from a full freakout, but Stefan appears to have been willing to support her through it if she needed some time to process everything that was going on; and his action at the end is actually kind of sweet to try and reassure her that it’s not the end of the world, and that he was listening to her and what she wanted, and he’d give her as much of it as he could. But I end up side eying it because of how much the scenes remind me of later events where I hate Stefan with a burning passion.
The last third or so of the episode has some moments where the direction/camera angles are way too tight. I rarely notice such things, so when I do it’s often because it was really grating on me in some way. And this was grating on me.
Okay, enough beating around the bush, let’s talk about Caroline herself. And how, as good as this episode is for her, and as good as she is in it, I wish it had something much more special. I wish we had only followed Caroline through this episode. It actually would have papered over some of my issues with the episode if the other characters had been in off-screen-land except where they intersected with Caroline’s story. Even putting an extra day or two before the on screen plot circled back to deal with the other events of the season premier would have given that barest bit of time for things to call down on those fronts. It would have obscured the show not dealing with elements of character motivations/reactions that Caroline doesn’t yet have the context to get.
Actually, come to think of it, it might have been fascinating if we hadn’t had the premier, and started the season with Caroline waking up with only hazy memories of the day before and we watched her piecing it together along with trying to figure out what was happening to her, and through her been reintroduced to the rest of the cast. We see, say, Bonnie’s reaction to seeing Caroline as a vampire, and it doubles as Caroline learning more about Bonnie’s witch powers. Maybe we see Elena and we’re not 100% sure if it’s Elena or Katherine because Caroline isn’t.
I’m not saying it would have been the best choice for the show to do that for the season premier, but it was an interesting momentary idea. I do stand by my stance that this episode should have had a tighter focus though. Because the scenes of Caroline going through her transition are some of the best parts of the show so far. It’s horrific and fascinating to watch, and about as well written and acted as you’re going to get on this show (although the nurse’s attitude could have stood to be reworked a bit).
I think Stefan’s interactions with Caroline also would have worked better if we had been more in her head. After an episode of Caroline being confused and when people do understand what’s happening they have more or less all rejected her, only for Stefan to end up actually looking like the guy we’re usually supposed to see him as. That idea is there a bit, might even have been the intention, it just doesn’t fully read that way to me. But I’m not sure if that comes from his other scenes in this episode or because I’m so aware of how little business Stefan has trying to help anyone manage their vampire instincts. In show time it’s been like a week and a half since his last blood bender; this is basically the blind leading the blind, even if he is the only option there is to coach Caroline through this.
I also wish we had seen signs of Caroline remembering what happened with Damon outside their confrontation scene. She has scenes of compelling the nurse without any indication that she even knows what compulsion is much less how much it’s been used on her. And I’m not sure how her reaction to Damon showing up after she kills not-Trip even fits with the earlier scene; although there could be an interesting take in how easily she falls back toward Damon in her moment of grief and pain.
As for her killing not-Trip… Well it is partially Damon’s fault, not that Bonnie has any way of knowing that when she accuses him. Damon made not-Trip get into a fight with the Lockwoods, which got him all bloody, which drew Caroline’s attention and she killed him in her hunger and vampire instincts that she doesn’t understand yet. I don’t blame her exactly for this kill (there will be things to say in a few episodes), but I do wish it ended up haunting her more than we are going to see happen. She did kill him, even if it was probably closer to manslaughter than murder, and I’d have liked to see her struggle with having to live with that.
There’s also something to be said for the how much the children of the Founding families have been left in the dark about the dangers around them. With Caroline and Tyler’s stories both showing how little they know about their world and families (and it’s not like Elena and Jeremy are much ahead of them). This point isn’t going away anytime soon though, so I’ll just gesture to it for now.
It’s also part of why I think Elena becoming a vampire ends up being thematically redundant. Because there is something being established with this generation being able to choose different paths than their family histories that is best served with human Elena. That even if everyone around her is vampires/witches/werewolves/eventually a hunter thrown in/add some ghosts, but there needs to be a human point who is still *choosing* to accept the supernatural on its own terms. And a) the show doesn’t care enough about Matt to have him work in that role; but b) even if could, he’s not from the inner circle who had generation after generation been taught to reject the supernatural.
…well that was a point I wasn’t expecting to come up in this review, but there it is I guess.
What am I shipping?
While I did like Stefan/Elena more than usual, I’m going to tentatively say Stefan/Caroline. It’s only slightly more than not committing to anything, but it’s what I’ve got.
Who do I hate the most?
Damon. Although for now I can maybe kind of delude myself into thinking the show is trying to show him as still a villain, because he very clearly is the villain here.
Well, I liked that episode…I think. But I also kind of wish it had been entirely different.
Let’s get the timeline problem out of the way. In the most obvious way, this literally has to be the next day from last episode, meaning it has been a grand total of two days since the end of s1. This whole carnival probably should have just been part of the Founders’ Day events. Most of the Lockwood stuff feels like it’s been more like a week since the Mayor died and Mason showed up. And this doesn’t feel like immediate fallout for what happened with Damon last episode; but at the same time there’s stuff that does seem to be a fairly immediate reaction. So once more, the timeline is a mess.
I remain unconvinced that the show is really following through on stuff it set up with Bonnie. This references her threat about not letting Damon hurt anyone (again, it was only two days ago), but in order to frame her as in the wrong, the show has her reacting to something that isn’t Damon’s fault when there are things (i.e. the Jeremy attack) that definitely are proof that Damon is basically a lost cause. And while it is remotely possible to read into her actions that she’s projecting her own guilt onto Damon, it definitely isn’t addressing her guilt for both leaving the Gilbert device intact and making the call to give Caroline vampire blood (and being the one to tell Katherine that they had given Caroline vampire blood). There’s a lot of material being built with Bonnie, but she’s largely an afterthought in the story.
While I do appreciate the parallels with Elena and Jeremy demonstrating the best of humanity, and that people can choose to reject the instinct for revenge, I end up feeling like it’s done for the needs of the story rather than real consideration of their characters. It’s not out of character for either of them, they both have issues with death and neither is inherently anti-vampire. But in this instance, Damon isn’t the bad guy because he’s a vampire; he’s a threat because he doesn’t think and he hurts people and he doesn’t care. He’s not sorry that he would have killed Jeremy if not for the ring; he may or may not be relieved that it didn’t take, I’ll leave him that much space, but he’s not sorry. He’s not sorry for what he did to Caroline last season. He’s not sorry for threatening Elena, the one person he at least sort of cares about being mad at him.
I’m a bit divided on how to view how the group decides to deal with Caroline’s transition. By which I mean, the three leads are all completely in character, to the point that I find all of them frustrating. Damon is being overly practical, and Elena overly emotional; while Stefan is just being weak. I’m mostly on Elena’s side, and find her perspective the most sympathetic, but I also think she’s being naïve and a bit selfish not thinking about the longer term effects of letting this play out. But where Elena has her particular brand of selfishness that stems from compassion and grief; Damon is just selfishly trying to clean up a mess that he doesn’t want to have to deal with for longer than an hour.
You know that point I come back to about how a proper love triangle has the person in the middle choosing which version of themselves they want to be? Well Stefan is the one in the middle of this love triangle, pulled between two extremes of an optimistic goal and pessimistic resignation. But he’s trying to be both, trying to believe that Elena is right while actually believing that Damon is; thinking that Elena’s choice is what they *should* do, but he can’t actually disagree with Damon’s stance on what *will* happen. Stefan here reminds me a lot of how he will act later in the season and show; that he can get away with not making the hard calls because he knows Damon will. Stefan doesn’t need to even raise the concerns about how this could go bad, because Damon is spelling them out, so Stefan doesn’t have to be the one to argue with Elena about the best way to handle this.
If it weren’t for how much that echoes (pre-echoes? it's really not quite foreshadowing as it’s just increasingly obvious characterization) later behavior that I don’t like, I would probably look more kindly on Stefan here. It’s okay that he does want Elena to be right, and he wants to at least give Caroline a chance so they don’t have to kill her; he’s just not as optimistic as Elena is that it can end well. The same thing kind of goes for how Stefan addresses Elena’s feelings during this story, especially the scene after they deal with Caroline. Watching Elena, I was very reminded of some of the later times in the series where she’s freaking out, and someone (usually a Salvatore) ends up making her pain somehow about them. Here, Elena herself pulls herself back from a full freakout, but Stefan appears to have been willing to support her through it if she needed some time to process everything that was going on; and his action at the end is actually kind of sweet to try and reassure her that it’s not the end of the world, and that he was listening to her and what she wanted, and he’d give her as much of it as he could. But I end up side eying it because of how much the scenes remind me of later events where I hate Stefan with a burning passion.
The last third or so of the episode has some moments where the direction/camera angles are way too tight. I rarely notice such things, so when I do it’s often because it was really grating on me in some way. And this was grating on me.
Okay, enough beating around the bush, let’s talk about Caroline herself. And how, as good as this episode is for her, and as good as she is in it, I wish it had something much more special. I wish we had only followed Caroline through this episode. It actually would have papered over some of my issues with the episode if the other characters had been in off-screen-land except where they intersected with Caroline’s story. Even putting an extra day or two before the on screen plot circled back to deal with the other events of the season premier would have given that barest bit of time for things to call down on those fronts. It would have obscured the show not dealing with elements of character motivations/reactions that Caroline doesn’t yet have the context to get.
Actually, come to think of it, it might have been fascinating if we hadn’t had the premier, and started the season with Caroline waking up with only hazy memories of the day before and we watched her piecing it together along with trying to figure out what was happening to her, and through her been reintroduced to the rest of the cast. We see, say, Bonnie’s reaction to seeing Caroline as a vampire, and it doubles as Caroline learning more about Bonnie’s witch powers. Maybe we see Elena and we’re not 100% sure if it’s Elena or Katherine because Caroline isn’t.
I’m not saying it would have been the best choice for the show to do that for the season premier, but it was an interesting momentary idea. I do stand by my stance that this episode should have had a tighter focus though. Because the scenes of Caroline going through her transition are some of the best parts of the show so far. It’s horrific and fascinating to watch, and about as well written and acted as you’re going to get on this show (although the nurse’s attitude could have stood to be reworked a bit).
I think Stefan’s interactions with Caroline also would have worked better if we had been more in her head. After an episode of Caroline being confused and when people do understand what’s happening they have more or less all rejected her, only for Stefan to end up actually looking like the guy we’re usually supposed to see him as. That idea is there a bit, might even have been the intention, it just doesn’t fully read that way to me. But I’m not sure if that comes from his other scenes in this episode or because I’m so aware of how little business Stefan has trying to help anyone manage their vampire instincts. In show time it’s been like a week and a half since his last blood bender; this is basically the blind leading the blind, even if he is the only option there is to coach Caroline through this.
I also wish we had seen signs of Caroline remembering what happened with Damon outside their confrontation scene. She has scenes of compelling the nurse without any indication that she even knows what compulsion is much less how much it’s been used on her. And I’m not sure how her reaction to Damon showing up after she kills not-Trip even fits with the earlier scene; although there could be an interesting take in how easily she falls back toward Damon in her moment of grief and pain.
As for her killing not-Trip… Well it is partially Damon’s fault, not that Bonnie has any way of knowing that when she accuses him. Damon made not-Trip get into a fight with the Lockwoods, which got him all bloody, which drew Caroline’s attention and she killed him in her hunger and vampire instincts that she doesn’t understand yet. I don’t blame her exactly for this kill (there will be things to say in a few episodes), but I do wish it ended up haunting her more than we are going to see happen. She did kill him, even if it was probably closer to manslaughter than murder, and I’d have liked to see her struggle with having to live with that.
There’s also something to be said for the how much the children of the Founding families have been left in the dark about the dangers around them. With Caroline and Tyler’s stories both showing how little they know about their world and families (and it’s not like Elena and Jeremy are much ahead of them). This point isn’t going away anytime soon though, so I’ll just gesture to it for now.
It’s also part of why I think Elena becoming a vampire ends up being thematically redundant. Because there is something being established with this generation being able to choose different paths than their family histories that is best served with human Elena. That even if everyone around her is vampires/witches/werewolves/eventually a hunter thrown in/add some ghosts, but there needs to be a human point who is still *choosing* to accept the supernatural on its own terms. And a) the show doesn’t care enough about Matt to have him work in that role; but b) even if could, he’s not from the inner circle who had generation after generation been taught to reject the supernatural.
…well that was a point I wasn’t expecting to come up in this review, but there it is I guess.
What am I shipping?
While I did like Stefan/Elena more than usual, I’m going to tentatively say Stefan/Caroline. It’s only slightly more than not committing to anything, but it’s what I’ve got.
Who do I hate the most?
Damon. Although for now I can maybe kind of delude myself into thinking the show is trying to show him as still a villain, because he very clearly is the villain here.