Vampire Diaries 4x02 - Memorial
Oct. 18th, 2012 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyOh, hmm, something that popped out at me in the previously: Grams saying "You've made your choice" to Bonnie. And Bonnie's choice results in what looks like the destruction of Grams' spirit. Choices do tend to always seem to lead to pain, death, and blood on this show, don't they?
It's impressive that Stefan can now make me roll my eyes using only the previously. Please, show, give him some scenes with Caroline. I think she's the only person he hasn't been either a douche or a liar to recently.
"I think I'd like her to skip that part," Stefan says. This sums up Stefan in a lot of ways, really -- he's all about trying to ignore or skip the hard or painful parts. He wants to live in denial and pretend that he can order reality to suit his ideals instead of actually dealing with the world that he's facing. It's a shame that after everything Stefan went through in S3, he actively resisted learning anything that season was trying to teach him and went straight back into the methods that he'd already proven over the course of a century did not actually work.
But hey, why try to learn from past mistakes, right?
Note that Elena tries to share her problems drinking the animal blood with Stefan (9 minutes into the episode) and he dismisses her concerns completely because he doesn't want to deal with them. He doesn't want to deal with the issue, so he tells Elena not to worry about it. He's done this before with her; it's a pattern.
So, you know, another 'romantic' scene that's all about denial and a foundation of emotional disconnection (following along the "I'm smiling" scene in 4.01 where neither of them are but can't admit it to each other).
Oh, Damon's grief over Alaric is pretty touching. "That seat's taken." *hugs*
Note that when Elena tells Damon she can't do things all his way re: drinking from humans, he listens to her concerns and comes up with another plan rather than dismissing her feelings and insisting that it has to be only the one way.
"Blood-sharing is kinda... personal." Reminds me of how Stefan jabbed at Damon with the whole 'Elena lets me drink from her' thing back in S2 (not mentioning that it was only tiny drops). He said it because he knew it would hurt Damon/reinforce Stefan's so-called 'claim' on Elena, despite it being a wild mischaracterization of what was actually happening.
They cut from the blood-sharing scene to a Caroline-Tyler sex scene. REAL SUBTLE, GUYS.
And, yeah, the blood-sharing scene was damn heated. But we knew it would be; the Anna-Jeremy scene back in S1 was similar.
Note that even though Elena has problems with both animal blood and Damon's blood, when she throws up Damon's blood, he's the one she calls. And that can probably be traced right back to Stefan dismissing her feelings and fears and Damon taking them into account. Neither of their current solutions worked for her but only one of them acted like her bodily reactions mattered. And, again, this time he tries yet another solution -- human blood via blood bag. He's offering options. 'Try me, try bags, try people, but just please don't die', basically. And Elena notices and appreciates that.
"She told me she was fine."
"Well, then, she lied."
Yup, that's Stefan and Elena. This episode is so aware of the issues inherent in S/E, actually. I'm very pleased.
And then, of course, Stefan punches Damon because Stefan and Elena don't have an honest relationship. He always gets mad at Damon when he learns that Elena and Damon have been having heart-to-hearts that exclude Stefan.
So, Stefan confronts Elena at the end for lying to him. He gets mad about it. On the one hand -- well, he's not in denial, so that's good that they're actually talking about this thing they do where they're constantly lying to each other -- on the other... what a hypocrite. He built his entire relationship with Elena on lies. He continues to edit the past to make himself look better at every available turn.
And even here, he thinks he can fix everything with pretty lights. He's still thinking he can take the easy way out.
Oh! And did anyone else want to smack the hell out of him for daring to say Alaric's name? He was not your friend; you did not give a shit about him. Shut the fuck up about Alaric, Littlest Salvatore.
Mmm, after his anti-vampire rhetoric in the previous episode, Jeremy still tries to reach out to Damon here. It doesn't work but he tries.
Proud of Tyler. He knew he was the one there with the best chance of surviving, since he'd done so before, so he stepped out and deliberately made himself a target so that the whole farce could end.
Matt continued to be terrific this week and Caroline was good. Liked her helping Elena through not eating April. Though I notice that no one is apparently even pretending that they dislike compelling anymore.
So, April: I like her thus far. Her conversation with Elena at the memorial was good.
Apparently 'everyone in town' loved the pastor who we hadn't heard of until last episode.
Connor: Hmm. Interesting.
And then Damon talking to Alaric's grave. I can't even. Too many feelings. And he doesn't know that Alaric's spirit is there listening. And I just can't. Perfect ending is perfect and also made me tear up.
It's impressive that Stefan can now make me roll my eyes using only the previously. Please, show, give him some scenes with Caroline. I think she's the only person he hasn't been either a douche or a liar to recently.
"I think I'd like her to skip that part," Stefan says. This sums up Stefan in a lot of ways, really -- he's all about trying to ignore or skip the hard or painful parts. He wants to live in denial and pretend that he can order reality to suit his ideals instead of actually dealing with the world that he's facing. It's a shame that after everything Stefan went through in S3, he actively resisted learning anything that season was trying to teach him and went straight back into the methods that he'd already proven over the course of a century did not actually work.
But hey, why try to learn from past mistakes, right?
Note that Elena tries to share her problems drinking the animal blood with Stefan (9 minutes into the episode) and he dismisses her concerns completely because he doesn't want to deal with them. He doesn't want to deal with the issue, so he tells Elena not to worry about it. He's done this before with her; it's a pattern.
So, you know, another 'romantic' scene that's all about denial and a foundation of emotional disconnection (following along the "I'm smiling" scene in 4.01 where neither of them are but can't admit it to each other).
Oh, Damon's grief over Alaric is pretty touching. "That seat's taken." *hugs*
Note that when Elena tells Damon she can't do things all his way re: drinking from humans, he listens to her concerns and comes up with another plan rather than dismissing her feelings and insisting that it has to be only the one way.
"Blood-sharing is kinda... personal." Reminds me of how Stefan jabbed at Damon with the whole 'Elena lets me drink from her' thing back in S2 (not mentioning that it was only tiny drops). He said it because he knew it would hurt Damon/reinforce Stefan's so-called 'claim' on Elena, despite it being a wild mischaracterization of what was actually happening.
They cut from the blood-sharing scene to a Caroline-Tyler sex scene. REAL SUBTLE, GUYS.
And, yeah, the blood-sharing scene was damn heated. But we knew it would be; the Anna-Jeremy scene back in S1 was similar.
Note that even though Elena has problems with both animal blood and Damon's blood, when she throws up Damon's blood, he's the one she calls. And that can probably be traced right back to Stefan dismissing her feelings and fears and Damon taking them into account. Neither of their current solutions worked for her but only one of them acted like her bodily reactions mattered. And, again, this time he tries yet another solution -- human blood via blood bag. He's offering options. 'Try me, try bags, try people, but just please don't die', basically. And Elena notices and appreciates that.
"She told me she was fine."
"Well, then, she lied."
Yup, that's Stefan and Elena. This episode is so aware of the issues inherent in S/E, actually. I'm very pleased.
And then, of course, Stefan punches Damon because Stefan and Elena don't have an honest relationship. He always gets mad at Damon when he learns that Elena and Damon have been having heart-to-hearts that exclude Stefan.
So, Stefan confronts Elena at the end for lying to him. He gets mad about it. On the one hand -- well, he's not in denial, so that's good that they're actually talking about this thing they do where they're constantly lying to each other -- on the other... what a hypocrite. He built his entire relationship with Elena on lies. He continues to edit the past to make himself look better at every available turn.
And even here, he thinks he can fix everything with pretty lights. He's still thinking he can take the easy way out.
Oh! And did anyone else want to smack the hell out of him for daring to say Alaric's name? He was not your friend; you did not give a shit about him. Shut the fuck up about Alaric, Littlest Salvatore.
Mmm, after his anti-vampire rhetoric in the previous episode, Jeremy still tries to reach out to Damon here. It doesn't work but he tries.
Proud of Tyler. He knew he was the one there with the best chance of surviving, since he'd done so before, so he stepped out and deliberately made himself a target so that the whole farce could end.
Matt continued to be terrific this week and Caroline was good. Liked her helping Elena through not eating April. Though I notice that no one is apparently even pretending that they dislike compelling anymore.
So, April: I like her thus far. Her conversation with Elena at the memorial was good.
Apparently 'everyone in town' loved the pastor who we hadn't heard of until last episode.
Connor: Hmm. Interesting.
And then Damon talking to Alaric's grave. I can't even. Too many feelings. And he doesn't know that Alaric's spirit is there listening. And I just can't. Perfect ending is perfect and also made me tear up.