The Vampire Diaries 2x08: Rose
Dec. 20th, 2023 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsThe Vampire Diaries 2x08: Rose
Well, I can finally stop talking about how eager I am for Elijah to show up on the show, and just start talking about how much I like Elijah.
But we’ll get to that, I’m going to speak a bit more broadly first. Because this is a really good episode…right up until they stake Elijah. Then it has like 15 minutes of concluding scenes, including far too much Triangle focus, and it just drags. Also, is it just me, or was the pop music overused in this episode, too much and too loud (and coincidentally left out of the scenes in the mansion where they were trying to have some actual atmosphere instead of just playing more pop music)?
I’ve never liked the fact that this episode is called ‘Rose,’ as Rose is kind of incidental to the point of this episode. While the episode names are rarely all thar significant in this show, they can be creative sometimes or have a name that is a keyword to the episode so if you do look at the titles you can guess which ep is which. But Rose is not the major character that this episode introduces, nor is she the one who drives the action, nor is she even the central figure in her plotline. Basically, for every reason, this episode should have been called ‘Elijah’ if it was going to be named for one of the characters. And it probably should have been something more…broad but evocative. Something like ‘The Old One(s)’ or…something.
I’m going to put this out there to keep in mind through my next few points. It’s a theory I’m not wholly sold on or committed to in spite of it being my own theory. I think there’s a solid chance that as originally conceived Elijah was not intended to survive this episode; and quite possibly not meant to be an Original. Even if it is true, I don’t know at what point in the development process that intent might have changed but I almost want to do a recheck of some scenes and see if Elijah is referred to as an Original when we see the person talking. If those references are ADR-ed, I’d say that’s solid evidence that it was very late in the process that they decided to keep Elijah in the story. If we do see people’s faces when they refer to him as one of the Original family then I could be completely wrong or it could have just been an earlier change that left traces in the story progression.
Because…I don’t like that Stefan and Damon (with a little input from Elena) were able to take out an Original so easily. Yes, he comes back, which works as a reveal, but it still makes Team Mystic Falls seem…competent. They should have been entirely outclassed in this fight; they should have barely gotten away with their lives, along with the knowledge of just how powerful the threats coming for them were going to be. It should have been an object lesson, that sure they were able to defeat Katherine, but they got lucky in a lot of ways, and that was an enemy they at least somewhat knew what to expect from.
Rose has several bits this episode where she points out how little Elena knows about vampire culture and the supernatural. That Elena has no idea of vampires outside of Mystic Falls, or what else is out there. And with such a gap in her knowledge it means one of two things; either Stefan and Damon keep her in the dark, or they don’t know either. And I think it’s a combination of the two, because I do think there are a lot of gaps in their knowledge of vampire society even if I think some of those have to be willful blindness at some point (this is reasoning for in character, the actual Doylist reason is that the writers haven’t made it up yet so they don’t know what Stefan and Damon ought to know) and admittedly at least a bit of compulsion involved in Stefan not knowing anything about the Originals.
But the honest ignorance reason that lets me be more generous to them as characters is all the more reason why they should not have won in this fight. They had every disadvantage in that fight, and yet they came out ahead. That’s just backwards storytelling, and I guess is part of what starts the Originals’ story off on the back foot. We should see an Original as all powerful before we see that they aren’t; but this does it backwards and has one beaten before trying to build them up as all powerful.
Truly, even if my theory is correct an Elijah wasn’t conceived as an Original, I still think the Salvatores win the fight too easily. He’s clearly meant to be a very powerful vampire in one way or another, and my point about knocking them down after beating Katherine still stands. There’s no cost to their victory, they’re not even bloodied, and in all of those concluding scenes there’s never reflection on just what dangers they are up against now.
And no, I don’t count Stefan bringing that up just a bit with Damon. That scene isn’t about how insanely outmatched they are (or should be) by the prospect of Original vampires they know nothing about; it’s about Damon’s manpire issues and the fucking Triangle. Rose’s appearance and bringing up Klaus is the only place they build on the growing threat; and that one continues the theme of how little the Salvatores know about anything, but it’s so much less horrifying to think about how much they don’t know when that ignorance didn’t stop them from defeating one Original already.
(I’m like 90% sure that one of the tie in books had Stefan and Damon (and maybe Lexi) in New Orleans in the 1860s, which would have been the height of the Mikaelsons’ reign, just saying.)
So yeah, I think you can see that the conclusion of the episode’s action bothers me a lot. This ends up being the beginnings of a problem that is going to haunt this show for three seasons (and leave a shadow over it and TO long after), because there was no realistic way to get the three leads out of that situation once they were up against an Original that doesn’t undercut the power the Originals should project.
But the introduction of Elijah up until that point is excellent (with a couple of caveats having to do with future reveals). It’s actually part of why this theory hangs on in my brain; because the gist would be the DG just showed up and was so damn good at this part that they kept him around and had to cover for the fact that Team Mystic Falls needed to get away from this fight intact. It isn’t just Gillies, the production around him does an excellent job of making him seem ancient and powerful and regal; in a way that shows how everyone we’ve known up until then is a kid compared to him. He’s terrifying and one could already think that you shouldn’t trust him as far as you can throw him, and yet…you kind of already understand what he means when he gives someone his word; pay attention and he never lies, lose focus and you’ll be easily mislead.
(One thing I’m planning to pay careful attention to this time is that I think Elijah tells Elena exactly one out and out lie in the show; that he’s not going to fall for her. He does play with the truth and he fails to follow through on some of the things he says he’ll do, which does damage what his word means; and it depends on one’s interpretation of the gazebo scene whether he really thought he was talking to Katherine or knew it was Elena so everything he said could be a lie. But I think there’s a case to say that ‘it’s one I won’t make again’ is the only outright lie; and his eyes were already screaming the truth.)
Now, for a certain type of Elena/Elijah shipper, their first meeting is already an invite to start shipping them, but that certainly wasn’t me at the time, and kind of still isn’t. What’s to come for them does retroactively cast a shippy light over their intense eye contact (it’s not quite eye sex yet) and lack of personal space, but that’s not the kind of thing the appeals to me without a further dynamic to relate it too.
But I do think that this meeting does begin to set up their dynamic, at least well enough that through ship goggles it looks like it fits. Elijah would kind of like to objectify (in the literal sense of seeing her as an object) Elena, but she manages to catch him off guard at several points and he doesn’t hate that about her. Elena is a stronger person when it comes to dealing with Elijah, whether it’s trying to negotiate with him or having to actually fight him. Elena is an underpowered protagonist who through her own resources manages to gain the upper hand against her overpowered opponent.
And the important word in that last sentence is protagonist. She’s been a combination of damsel in distress and Doctor Who companion (there to have things explained to them) all episode, and it’s not an uncommon state for her to be in. But Elijah is her…villain for the moment. Where Katherine avoided Elena, coming at her from the sides and really more involved with the brothers, Elijah is always up close with Elena, which forces her to be the one who steps up to try and deal with him. Which is why it must become Elena that brings him around to working with Team Mystic Falls (and why it would have been fitting for them to develop that dynamic into something else over time).
But let’s talk about some of those things that don’t fit retroactively. I really don’t know how we’re expected to buy the eventual retcon that Elijah helped Katherine escape. His entire grievance with Trevor is based on Trevor having failed to keep Katherine around, and he kills Trevor for it even 500 years later. It’s almost as if in trying to make Elijah seem more honorable by saying he protected Katherine, the writers actually undercut the honor he originally had. If Katherine’s escape was Elijah’s doing, then blaming, hunting, and killing Trevor isn’t exactly honorable. (It’s possible that TO found a way to force these pieces together, but I have my doubts; especially as they were doing it almost entirely without ND’s presence.)
The funnier bit of retconning is Elijah not noticing that Elena is wearing Ester/Rebekah’s necklace. Does he think it’s a cheap knock-off or something? Does he think that would be too big a coincidence for it to be the real thing? Really, I think he’d be paranoid at the discovery; as far as he knows Rebekah is at the bottom of the ocean and the last person who could have had access to Rebekah’s necklace would have been Klaus, so how did it end up on the doppelganger? Even if it’s a replica, wouldn’t that invite some question as to why and how she has something that looks like Rebekah’s necklace? While it doesn’t make sense to say this now, there’s certainly a part of me that thinks he comes to see it as Elena’s necklace, and that it’s only right it can be hers as she’s part of the family as far as he’s concerned.
Let’s talk a few quibbly things, since I can’t just let the time inconsistencies go when they make so little sense. One, this episode takes place immediately after the previous one, it has to, so there is absolutely no flex time and really not even time for people to have compared notes. As such, I have to question how Elena knows where Katherine and the moonstone are as she wasn’t told that and I don’t know when she could have been. Also, Aimee has been missing for maybe two hours longer than Elena, and there’s a whole search party out for Aimee while people barely notice Elena is gone? Just in general, the masquerade ball was apparently on a Sunday night, since school is happening the next day. I can gather that Matt is sleeping off his dunk and compelled status, but Tyler went to school the day after having at minimum seen someone die (and in reality helped cause it)?
The director may have done a very good job with framing Elijah, but clearly couldn’t think of anything for Rose and Trevor to be doing in most scenes as they spend most of the time boarding up windows, and I think do the same ones multiple times. It’s also pretty unclear what time of day this is taking place, and doesn’t try at all to convey the passage of time at most points. Which makes me question how far Rose is going to get as it appears to still be daylight outside and we gather she doesn’t have a daylight ring given that she’s always boarding up windows (I will assume she went to the garage and took the car, but that doesn’t exactly put her outside the range of the Salvatores chasing her.
When they first search for Elena’s location, they say it’s 300 miles away; they later say that it’s three hours away, which are not the same thing. While I can accept implications and fanon that vampires are quite capable of driving faster than most humans would be able safe to, there comes a point when they are going to have to stop and compel police to ignore how fast they were going. Plus even with faster reflexes, the terrain can still limit how fast it’s safe for the car to go and be able to make turns and adjustments as needed. Plus even if vampires don’t need to stop for all the reasons humans might, cars have to fuel requirements. So I don’t believe that they could have driven 300 miles in three hours, even going, much less coming back.
I think if Jeremy hadn’t been attached to the missing Elena plot, he really should have been the one to talk to Tyler. I’m not quite calling it a mistake, as I can see why Tyler would want to know what was up with Caroline before turning to Jeremy for a sympathetic ear; but I could call it more evidence that this show can’t conceive of developing relationships that aren’t romantic (I know I said I could ship Tyler/Jeremy but I would take it as friendship too). Though I think I would say that Tyler should be starting to wonder what the Founding Families know about the supernatural world; Jeremy’s ancestors were writing about werewolves and curses and the like (as far as Tyler knows, without knowing the rest) and Caroline mentions their families as something she wants to talk to Tyler about.
Trying to think back on my old opinion, I don’t think I hated the prospect of Caroline/Tyler; I always saw Caroline/Matt as a dead end so I was on board with her having a different love interest who they could do more with. And vampire/werewolf is good setup for drama in most universes like this. Tyler is coming along as a character, even if I wasn’t all that invested in him. But I don’t think I’m quite over his s1 behavior this time through, so I’m not quite keen on what’s getting started here. It still has nothing to do with Matt.
I really don’t want to talk about Damon’s confession scene. It creeps me out more than a little and I don’t care enough to analyze it. I think this might be the point when if a viewer isn’t already sold on Damon they’re probably never going to be. Of course I could be proven wrong and even I could come around in later seasons, but I’m not expecting to. This feels a lot like the writers are now just going to assume that viewers like Damon; some may not like him as much as Stefan as a love interest, but he’s clearly meant to be seen as sympathetic and acceptable. If the writers have failed to bring a viewer along with them to that viewpoint by this point, there’s probably always going to be some parallax between the viewer’s point and the angle the writers want viewers to look at Damon from. I wrote him off too long ago to be sure I feel that much differently about this ep than the last few, but I have that sense in this scene.
Well, I guess I talked about it some, but I think that’s all I have interest in. Unless I think of some more Elijah notes.
What am I shipping?
I have a soft spot for Jeremy/Bonnie, but come on, you know the answer. I finally get to answer Elena/Elijah in an episode that Elijah is in.
Who do I hate the most?
Damon. He staked Elijah and he creeps me out in the last scene.
Well, I can finally stop talking about how eager I am for Elijah to show up on the show, and just start talking about how much I like Elijah.
But we’ll get to that, I’m going to speak a bit more broadly first. Because this is a really good episode…right up until they stake Elijah. Then it has like 15 minutes of concluding scenes, including far too much Triangle focus, and it just drags. Also, is it just me, or was the pop music overused in this episode, too much and too loud (and coincidentally left out of the scenes in the mansion where they were trying to have some actual atmosphere instead of just playing more pop music)?
I’ve never liked the fact that this episode is called ‘Rose,’ as Rose is kind of incidental to the point of this episode. While the episode names are rarely all thar significant in this show, they can be creative sometimes or have a name that is a keyword to the episode so if you do look at the titles you can guess which ep is which. But Rose is not the major character that this episode introduces, nor is she the one who drives the action, nor is she even the central figure in her plotline. Basically, for every reason, this episode should have been called ‘Elijah’ if it was going to be named for one of the characters. And it probably should have been something more…broad but evocative. Something like ‘The Old One(s)’ or…something.
I’m going to put this out there to keep in mind through my next few points. It’s a theory I’m not wholly sold on or committed to in spite of it being my own theory. I think there’s a solid chance that as originally conceived Elijah was not intended to survive this episode; and quite possibly not meant to be an Original. Even if it is true, I don’t know at what point in the development process that intent might have changed but I almost want to do a recheck of some scenes and see if Elijah is referred to as an Original when we see the person talking. If those references are ADR-ed, I’d say that’s solid evidence that it was very late in the process that they decided to keep Elijah in the story. If we do see people’s faces when they refer to him as one of the Original family then I could be completely wrong or it could have just been an earlier change that left traces in the story progression.
Because…I don’t like that Stefan and Damon (with a little input from Elena) were able to take out an Original so easily. Yes, he comes back, which works as a reveal, but it still makes Team Mystic Falls seem…competent. They should have been entirely outclassed in this fight; they should have barely gotten away with their lives, along with the knowledge of just how powerful the threats coming for them were going to be. It should have been an object lesson, that sure they were able to defeat Katherine, but they got lucky in a lot of ways, and that was an enemy they at least somewhat knew what to expect from.
Rose has several bits this episode where she points out how little Elena knows about vampire culture and the supernatural. That Elena has no idea of vampires outside of Mystic Falls, or what else is out there. And with such a gap in her knowledge it means one of two things; either Stefan and Damon keep her in the dark, or they don’t know either. And I think it’s a combination of the two, because I do think there are a lot of gaps in their knowledge of vampire society even if I think some of those have to be willful blindness at some point (this is reasoning for in character, the actual Doylist reason is that the writers haven’t made it up yet so they don’t know what Stefan and Damon ought to know) and admittedly at least a bit of compulsion involved in Stefan not knowing anything about the Originals.
But the honest ignorance reason that lets me be more generous to them as characters is all the more reason why they should not have won in this fight. They had every disadvantage in that fight, and yet they came out ahead. That’s just backwards storytelling, and I guess is part of what starts the Originals’ story off on the back foot. We should see an Original as all powerful before we see that they aren’t; but this does it backwards and has one beaten before trying to build them up as all powerful.
Truly, even if my theory is correct an Elijah wasn’t conceived as an Original, I still think the Salvatores win the fight too easily. He’s clearly meant to be a very powerful vampire in one way or another, and my point about knocking them down after beating Katherine still stands. There’s no cost to their victory, they’re not even bloodied, and in all of those concluding scenes there’s never reflection on just what dangers they are up against now.
And no, I don’t count Stefan bringing that up just a bit with Damon. That scene isn’t about how insanely outmatched they are (or should be) by the prospect of Original vampires they know nothing about; it’s about Damon’s manpire issues and the fucking Triangle. Rose’s appearance and bringing up Klaus is the only place they build on the growing threat; and that one continues the theme of how little the Salvatores know about anything, but it’s so much less horrifying to think about how much they don’t know when that ignorance didn’t stop them from defeating one Original already.
(I’m like 90% sure that one of the tie in books had Stefan and Damon (and maybe Lexi) in New Orleans in the 1860s, which would have been the height of the Mikaelsons’ reign, just saying.)
So yeah, I think you can see that the conclusion of the episode’s action bothers me a lot. This ends up being the beginnings of a problem that is going to haunt this show for three seasons (and leave a shadow over it and TO long after), because there was no realistic way to get the three leads out of that situation once they were up against an Original that doesn’t undercut the power the Originals should project.
But the introduction of Elijah up until that point is excellent (with a couple of caveats having to do with future reveals). It’s actually part of why this theory hangs on in my brain; because the gist would be the DG just showed up and was so damn good at this part that they kept him around and had to cover for the fact that Team Mystic Falls needed to get away from this fight intact. It isn’t just Gillies, the production around him does an excellent job of making him seem ancient and powerful and regal; in a way that shows how everyone we’ve known up until then is a kid compared to him. He’s terrifying and one could already think that you shouldn’t trust him as far as you can throw him, and yet…you kind of already understand what he means when he gives someone his word; pay attention and he never lies, lose focus and you’ll be easily mislead.
(One thing I’m planning to pay careful attention to this time is that I think Elijah tells Elena exactly one out and out lie in the show; that he’s not going to fall for her. He does play with the truth and he fails to follow through on some of the things he says he’ll do, which does damage what his word means; and it depends on one’s interpretation of the gazebo scene whether he really thought he was talking to Katherine or knew it was Elena so everything he said could be a lie. But I think there’s a case to say that ‘it’s one I won’t make again’ is the only outright lie; and his eyes were already screaming the truth.)
Now, for a certain type of Elena/Elijah shipper, their first meeting is already an invite to start shipping them, but that certainly wasn’t me at the time, and kind of still isn’t. What’s to come for them does retroactively cast a shippy light over their intense eye contact (it’s not quite eye sex yet) and lack of personal space, but that’s not the kind of thing the appeals to me without a further dynamic to relate it too.
But I do think that this meeting does begin to set up their dynamic, at least well enough that through ship goggles it looks like it fits. Elijah would kind of like to objectify (in the literal sense of seeing her as an object) Elena, but she manages to catch him off guard at several points and he doesn’t hate that about her. Elena is a stronger person when it comes to dealing with Elijah, whether it’s trying to negotiate with him or having to actually fight him. Elena is an underpowered protagonist who through her own resources manages to gain the upper hand against her overpowered opponent.
And the important word in that last sentence is protagonist. She’s been a combination of damsel in distress and Doctor Who companion (there to have things explained to them) all episode, and it’s not an uncommon state for her to be in. But Elijah is her…villain for the moment. Where Katherine avoided Elena, coming at her from the sides and really more involved with the brothers, Elijah is always up close with Elena, which forces her to be the one who steps up to try and deal with him. Which is why it must become Elena that brings him around to working with Team Mystic Falls (and why it would have been fitting for them to develop that dynamic into something else over time).
But let’s talk about some of those things that don’t fit retroactively. I really don’t know how we’re expected to buy the eventual retcon that Elijah helped Katherine escape. His entire grievance with Trevor is based on Trevor having failed to keep Katherine around, and he kills Trevor for it even 500 years later. It’s almost as if in trying to make Elijah seem more honorable by saying he protected Katherine, the writers actually undercut the honor he originally had. If Katherine’s escape was Elijah’s doing, then blaming, hunting, and killing Trevor isn’t exactly honorable. (It’s possible that TO found a way to force these pieces together, but I have my doubts; especially as they were doing it almost entirely without ND’s presence.)
The funnier bit of retconning is Elijah not noticing that Elena is wearing Ester/Rebekah’s necklace. Does he think it’s a cheap knock-off or something? Does he think that would be too big a coincidence for it to be the real thing? Really, I think he’d be paranoid at the discovery; as far as he knows Rebekah is at the bottom of the ocean and the last person who could have had access to Rebekah’s necklace would have been Klaus, so how did it end up on the doppelganger? Even if it’s a replica, wouldn’t that invite some question as to why and how she has something that looks like Rebekah’s necklace? While it doesn’t make sense to say this now, there’s certainly a part of me that thinks he comes to see it as Elena’s necklace, and that it’s only right it can be hers as she’s part of the family as far as he’s concerned.
Let’s talk a few quibbly things, since I can’t just let the time inconsistencies go when they make so little sense. One, this episode takes place immediately after the previous one, it has to, so there is absolutely no flex time and really not even time for people to have compared notes. As such, I have to question how Elena knows where Katherine and the moonstone are as she wasn’t told that and I don’t know when she could have been. Also, Aimee has been missing for maybe two hours longer than Elena, and there’s a whole search party out for Aimee while people barely notice Elena is gone? Just in general, the masquerade ball was apparently on a Sunday night, since school is happening the next day. I can gather that Matt is sleeping off his dunk and compelled status, but Tyler went to school the day after having at minimum seen someone die (and in reality helped cause it)?
The director may have done a very good job with framing Elijah, but clearly couldn’t think of anything for Rose and Trevor to be doing in most scenes as they spend most of the time boarding up windows, and I think do the same ones multiple times. It’s also pretty unclear what time of day this is taking place, and doesn’t try at all to convey the passage of time at most points. Which makes me question how far Rose is going to get as it appears to still be daylight outside and we gather she doesn’t have a daylight ring given that she’s always boarding up windows (I will assume she went to the garage and took the car, but that doesn’t exactly put her outside the range of the Salvatores chasing her.
When they first search for Elena’s location, they say it’s 300 miles away; they later say that it’s three hours away, which are not the same thing. While I can accept implications and fanon that vampires are quite capable of driving faster than most humans would be able safe to, there comes a point when they are going to have to stop and compel police to ignore how fast they were going. Plus even with faster reflexes, the terrain can still limit how fast it’s safe for the car to go and be able to make turns and adjustments as needed. Plus even if vampires don’t need to stop for all the reasons humans might, cars have to fuel requirements. So I don’t believe that they could have driven 300 miles in three hours, even going, much less coming back.
I think if Jeremy hadn’t been attached to the missing Elena plot, he really should have been the one to talk to Tyler. I’m not quite calling it a mistake, as I can see why Tyler would want to know what was up with Caroline before turning to Jeremy for a sympathetic ear; but I could call it more evidence that this show can’t conceive of developing relationships that aren’t romantic (I know I said I could ship Tyler/Jeremy but I would take it as friendship too). Though I think I would say that Tyler should be starting to wonder what the Founding Families know about the supernatural world; Jeremy’s ancestors were writing about werewolves and curses and the like (as far as Tyler knows, without knowing the rest) and Caroline mentions their families as something she wants to talk to Tyler about.
Trying to think back on my old opinion, I don’t think I hated the prospect of Caroline/Tyler; I always saw Caroline/Matt as a dead end so I was on board with her having a different love interest who they could do more with. And vampire/werewolf is good setup for drama in most universes like this. Tyler is coming along as a character, even if I wasn’t all that invested in him. But I don’t think I’m quite over his s1 behavior this time through, so I’m not quite keen on what’s getting started here. It still has nothing to do with Matt.
I really don’t want to talk about Damon’s confession scene. It creeps me out more than a little and I don’t care enough to analyze it. I think this might be the point when if a viewer isn’t already sold on Damon they’re probably never going to be. Of course I could be proven wrong and even I could come around in later seasons, but I’m not expecting to. This feels a lot like the writers are now just going to assume that viewers like Damon; some may not like him as much as Stefan as a love interest, but he’s clearly meant to be seen as sympathetic and acceptable. If the writers have failed to bring a viewer along with them to that viewpoint by this point, there’s probably always going to be some parallax between the viewer’s point and the angle the writers want viewers to look at Damon from. I wrote him off too long ago to be sure I feel that much differently about this ep than the last few, but I have that sense in this scene.
Well, I guess I talked about it some, but I think that’s all I have interest in. Unless I think of some more Elijah notes.
What am I shipping?
I have a soft spot for Jeremy/Bonnie, but come on, you know the answer. I finally get to answer Elena/Elijah in an episode that Elijah is in.
Who do I hate the most?
Damon. He staked Elijah and he creeps me out in the last scene.
