The Vampire Diaries 2x04: Memory Lane

[jedi_of_urth]

The Vampire Diaries 2x04: Memory Lane

Screw it, I started writing this review weeks ago but my thoughts were even more scattered than usual, so after a re-rewatch of the episode I’m not even going to try and organize them very well. Partly because not very many of them build on each other and I ended up with several small (but likely to be rambled about) disconnected points.

Also, I can’t help but feel that my drive to review this show is waning (come posting time, it clearly was and has). I kind of want to just settle in a watch for a while, and I’m not sure how the impending arrival of Elijah and the Originals feeds into that. It might be exactly what I want to do reviews of, but I also may just want to absorb it and get on with writing some fic instead of trying to review the episodes. We’ll see how this goes (it went…poorly).

I’ll stand by my first draft assessment that this episode is fine but never a favorite of mine. There’s not a lot in it that I actually like, but I do understand that it needs to exist and it’s functional at the things it needs to do. And since the thing it most needs to do is flesh out Katherine’s character, and I like Katherine, I can’t say I dislike it that much even if I’m not overly fond of the episode itself.

-On the other hand, it does have some of the absolutely worst product placement I’ve ever seen. And this show is often not very subtle when it comes to product placement.

-I couldn’t help but get distracted this episode with the fact that the writers haven’t yet decided that they can just use neck-snapping as a time out button with vampires (and anyone wearing a Gilbert ring). Between Stefan needing to vervain Katherine and then her stabbing him in the leg to keep him out of action I feel pretty sure later seasons would have just broken some necks.

-One thing this episode really doesn’t address is what Katherine’s plan was for Stefan and Damon if they hadn’t gotten themselves killed trying to rescue her. Where they compelled to kill themselves the next day before her blood was out of their system? If that’s the case, I think that might have gotten a mention as something they remembered after the fact. But should I believe she was just going to leave them behind to live out their human lives, because that doesn’t seem to be what is implied here, or by the fact she had Emily make them daylight rings.

-On a similar subject, let’s do some tomb vampire math. Katherine told Lockwood to round up 27 vampires, including her. And that’s how many are listed as having been killed in the church. Which would imply that only 26 vampires were actually in the tomb for the last 150 years. Except, I can’t tell if she gave up Pearl and Anna. We know from last season that Johnathon Gilbert certainly didn’t know to expect Pearl was a vampire and Anna can’t have been on the list or the number of collected vampires wouldn’t match what was expected.

Now, by virtue of having recently posted my 1x12 review I recall there was one other vampire form 1864 that didn’t get caught; so maybe Katherine didn’t give up Pearl or Anna, but by taking Pearl they got to 27 without catching the other guy? Which would mean there wasn’t much of a list, only an expected final tally, and/or that Lockwood wasn’t paying that close attention to who was brought in. But I really don’t think the writers thought through it in this much detail.

-On a still connected note, Stefan says that Katherine had been the one to turn most of the tomb vamps (though we know not all; they weren’t even all from her line as Pearl and Anna were as old or older than her and would have been capable of siring some of them, including Harper at minimum). Which is a another good mark of how much of a betrayal it was for Katherine to send them all to their deaths; she’d used them to make a production of things in Mystic Falls so that word of her supposed death with them would get around.

-Speaking of, I’m inclined to assume Katherine has more or less always known about werewolves, as there would probably have been some stories about them floating around in the build up the Klaus trying to break the Curse 500 years ago.

-While I’m at it, what is the timeline of Katherine in Mystic Falls in 1864? She’d have to have been there for at least a few months, right? To have either brought in so many vampires or turned quite a few new ones to surround herself with. They always say that it’s 1864, but was it most of the year (hmm, I think they referenced the date of the Battle of Willow Creek and therefore the vamp hunt back in s1), or was it like a season during which all this happened.

-Anyway, I would say that there is a bit of free time in the TVD timeline between last episode and here. Probably not a lot as Katherine wouldn’t have waited that long start putting schemes in motion nor would Tyler have waited very long to get on Mason’s case about being a werewolf, but there’s at least some time to play with.

-Plus, it’s really not clear how much Mason knew before the party vs. figured out during it, and whether the events during the full moon played any part in him figuring things out. It’s entirely possible he was basically briefed on the whole Salvatore situation before he even came back to Mystic Falls, but I can’t get a read on his performance of knowing things.

-I have mixed feelings about Elena’s choice to use Caroline as a buffer during the party. To some extent it depends on whether that was the original intention or if she had invited Caroline before she realized Damon was behind everything. And I’m not sure why Bonnie wasn’t invited, setting up an adult party and a teen party that coexist (clearly Stefan was invited…or would have been if no one was invited until an hour before the party happened). It’s really not fair of Elena to make Caroline the buffer between herself and Damon, and if it’s someone on her current side regarding Damon there are plenty of other people who don’t particularly like Damon either.

-But it does put an interesting thought in my mind, that if you ever think it’s cruel watching Stefan torture Katherine, substitute Caroline and Damon in their place (with Caroline finding an excuse to torture Damon). It’s not an exact parallel (as I do think the Stefan and Katherine dynamic is more complex than Damon and Caroline’s) but enough to say yeah Katherine probably deserves it.

-That said, I may think the S/K dynamic is complex, and I do agree with Katherine that it’s valid to question things such as why he kept the picture of her all these years, but her example to prove Stefan really did love her can’t be the one she brings up. Stefan may have been earnestly in love with the person he thought her to be the night of the founders’ ball, but that person isn’t Katherine. At most it is a version of Katherine, one who is more young-Katerina than the person she had even then already become centuries earlier.

Stefan’s defense against her bringing that moment up is wrong too. Just because his feelings in that moment were real rather than compelled or even made while under compulsion to not mind her being a vampire, his feelings were then still toward a person who he no longer believes ever existed (and I’d agree with him). He was earnestly in love with a fantasy; at most it was a fantasy they both wanted to be real, but that doesn’t mean it was.

-Although I do think there is some truth in his question about what it is about Katherine that makes him still care.

-Along with there being more than a little lie to him saying that he doesn’t pretend to be anything with Elena. At minimum he’s pretending to himself that he’s not pretending with Elena. He admitted literally last episode that he knows that the right thing to do with and for Elena would be for him to leave, but most of the time he pretends he doesn’t know that. And then there’s pretending that he doesn’t have walls full of names of people he’s killed. He pretends he’s never been the kind of guy/vampire who would do the things he has blatantly done.

-I suppose there’s a small chance to see a parallel between Stefan/Katherine and Stefan/Elena in that. If I believe that 1864 Katherine wanted to be the girl that she was pretending to be. But I’m not sure I can make that fit, Katherine and Stefan are inherently very different people and Stefan is really only capable of being one version of himself at any given time (which at the moment is the version he pretends to be with Elena) while Katherine can juggle better. Part of her may have wanted to be the girl Stefan thought she was, but she also usually had selfish motivations that she doesn’t successfully pretend don’t matter to her (at least in her own mind, even though they aren’t part of the person she’s outwardly pretending to be…sometimes).

-One of the things I like about this episode is that it manages to be triangle light in spite of being relationship heavy. While Katherine’s feelings do have a driving force in the episode, and Damon’s don’t go away, this ep basically treats Stefan/Elena as if the main relationship of the show. There are challenges to that relationship (both internal and external), but for once the show’s current central relationship is allowed to feel like a fact of the show in and of itself rather than as part of a triangle. This doesn’t mean I like them as the central relationship, but I’d rather have a stable central ship that I only mildly dislike than a triangle I hate (now, don’t expect me to be as gracious to Damon/Elena in later seasons, I hate that ship all on its own).

-That said, and it’s a small thing that I’m not sure if I should read much into (as Katherine was driving the dream at the beginning), but the dream does bug me. If it’s coming from his own mind, then Stefan is just obsessed with the idea of Elena and Damon getting together; and even if it’s Katherine’s influence, Stefan’s pretty easily distracted by the images she conjures up for him.

-Damon is still being a dick to Elena. But hey, Elena’s actually allowed to continue being angry for at least one more episode. I’ll take what I can get for a little longer I suppose.

-I do believe that Katherine believes she loves Stefan. I believe that Stefan believes he hates Katherine. I believe that Stefan believes he loves Elena. I don’t believe Damon believes that he hates Katherine. (This comment brought to you by the fact that in the delay in this review I was sampling some early s3 bits and stumbled across Damon hilariously trying to say there’s anything he wouldn’t have done for Katherine. I don’t believe that, and I don’t even really think he believes it; I believe he’s still pissy enough to want to see if he can get a rise out of her by saying it, and is probably further pissed off that it never works.)

-Does it seem a bit like I’m avoiding talking about Caroline? I sort of feel like I am.

-I sort of feel like maybe Mason’s dialog is just not super well written. I’d say the acting isn’t especially nuanced, which doesn’t help, but the dialog is often very unnatural. Which really doesn’t play off Damon well, especially when the moment calls for more than his laid back dude-bro behavior. Especially his last ‘you’ve made an enemy’ comment, is just badly worded. But I’ll say this for Damon (and IS), but he has being an intense dude-bro worked out.

-I’m not sure whether to put this on the writing or ND’s acting, but it seems a bit like Elena’s been put in a corner while Katherine comes out to play. I definitely still get the impression Dobrev is enjoying the chance to play the more flashy Katherine, but I’m not quite willing to say she’s downplaying Elena any more than the script is. I might not even take issue with this, as making sure to highlight the differences between the characters isn’t the worst idea, but the show can be so dismissive of Elena’s agency that I can’t help but be a little bothered.

-I don’t remember if I bought the fake breakup the first time around. It’s not like the show leaves us in suspense for very long, so there wasn’t a lot of time to think about how the breakup didn’t really fit with the last time we saw Stefan and Elena. It’s just about believable enough to pass for the moment, which in character is all it needs to do, since it’s not really played as a fight as if suddenly issues come up. It seems more like stress and playing up their fear of Katherine, which is believable enough, sort of, until you account for the fact they’re having the conversation in public, which they absolutely would not do if it was real. How often do we actually see those two go out to eat anyway?

-One might wonder if the Founders’ Council stays aware of the reality of vampires so that the Lockwoods can cover for werewolf activities. So long as people know vampires exist but rarely if ever encounter one, but don’t know werewolves are even a thing, perhaps they pass off any time one of them does become a werewolf as having been a passing vampire.

-The thing is, that a lot of the stuff Caroline brings up is either true or stuff that I think Caroline might bluntly say or legitimately feel the need to say. But she’s rarely talking like Caroline when she does say these things. Caroline would be more likely to move from talking about why she broke up with Matt to saying something that makes Elena wonder how hard it is for Stefan to be with her, rather than the conversation going the other way around. Same goes for her warning Elena not to seem like a clingy girlfriend; if Caroline was acting like herself it would be more of a joke that had a sting of truth to it (even more given that officially she and Matt broke up because she was being clingy).

-The rant before the tow-truck arrives though, that seems a bit more genuine. Obviously Katherine was feeding her the words, and I’m not sure Caroline would have thought of all of that after being a vampire for about a week and a half, but it feels like there’s something genuine about it. And it may just be that I agree with a lot of it, and maybe the writers are laying out some truth through Caroline, but I think it’s more than just someone pointing out truths that Stefan and especially Elena aren’t willing to face.

-I know some people take issue with Katherine compelling Damon to leave her alone when Damon previously claimed Katherine never compelled him. But I’m mostly willing to let it slide. This is more like extra insistence that he do what she asks rather than truly making him do something that he couldn’t be convinced to do otherwise (Elena can practically compel Damon with the right eye contact and word choice for example).

-I have not issue with this series not adhering to the werewolves and silver part of the mythos, there’s a lot of supernatural mythos this show either doesn’t do or reinterprets. That said, their way of making sure the characters and audience knew it wasn’t a thing is contrived as hell. For one, the characters know there’s plenty of pop culture around vampires and witches that isn’t true for them (I think the silver thing is equally tied to vampires in some lore, it has to do with why they are said to have no reflection, as mirrors used to be backed with silver which wouldn’t reflect a being without a soul or something like that), so why assume that silver is so sure to work? For two, why would they have the family silver set out for a BBQ? Surely Damon could have brought his own silver weapon. Though I suppose I do enjoy Mason playing along with it for a while.

-There’s actually kind of a weird dichotomy around how the show is portraying Katherine’s feelings for Stefan (/her reasons for being in town). Not a single one of the characters believes that she’s there for Stefan, no matter how much she says she is; and yet I feel like the way this episode is put together is trying to sell that it’s at least possible she’s telling the truth. The way they put some of the flashbacks in (especially the hallway one and final one) seem to be…to use the word again, earnest. As if Katherine would believe her love with Stefan was so pure and good and something he should be open to again. It’s not quite trying to sell that that’s the real truth of the matter, but it is framing it as if it is in Katherine’s warped view.

Which in turn makes me wonder how much they planned vs. flying by the seat of their pants they were when writing this season’s arc. Because it’s not that long until we’ll start getting reveals about the game Katherine is actually playing here (the Originals, the Curse, etc.), and yet most of this episode is trying to convince us there’s some level of truth to her just being here for Stefan.

-I assume George triggered his werewolf gene/curse fighting in the war. Which again raises questions about the timeline here as he’s condescending to Damon about not going back to the army, but how long does he hang out in Mystic Falls for? Also, I think I want to assume Katherine did end up killing George like a week later.

-Should I call this E-minus three eps or O-minus three eps (to Elijah or Originals) until I can find out if greater interest in the show improves my energy to do these reviews.


What am I shipping?
Umm…Jenna/Alaric may be my new thing to say when I don’t quite want to say nothing, but nothing would be almost as true.

Who do I hate the most?
I kind of hate to say it, but I think I’m going to go with Katherine. On Caroline’s behalf more than anything else. Although I could easily be persuaded to change my vote to Damon; hating Kat for her schemes is kind of hating her for what I love about her, Damon’s just an idiot that I don’t want to spend any time around.