Monsters of Television

Love the scarf, Damon.

So I was out of town last week, which means this week is a SUPER SPECIAL TWO-FER!!!! That’s right, two eps of The Vampire Diaries [TVD], two reviews. Super exciting, I know.

This episode was sort of okay.  Needed more vampire Caroline (instead of “trying to be a good friend but secretly working for Katherine” Caroline).  Needed more Damon (amazing how the dude brightens a scene, despite being so dark).  Needed way less of the flashbacks of mooning teenagers in Civil War garb. But there were some good moments, to be discussed after the jump…

Episode 2.4 opens with Stefan’s bad dream about Elena leaving him for Damon, while evil Katherine whispers in his ear.  He wakes up to find Elena lying in bed with him (clothed), and I thought, “Gosh, is there NO supervision at her house?”  Hah, fooled me–and Stefan for a half a second–it was Katherine laying in his bed.  See how they tricked us?  They both look alike, you see.

Turns out Katherine was feeding the dream into Stefan’s head–she can do that cause he eats only rabbits and therefore has the strength-level of the Easter Bunny.  She wanted Stefan to know how it feels to see the person one loves with another.  This episode works pretty hard to make us think Katherine really loves Stefan, and my response to that is, who cares?  If she isn’t super hard core evil, I lose interest.  But I’m reserving judgment to see where this goes.

Damon and Elena have a little chat about her lie that she’d be his friend which was secretly a ruse to convince him to giver her secrets about Katherine (mind you, the book she got from him last week did not appear once in this episode, so it seems Elena is not great with the research).  Elena tells Damon, “I tricked you by using your own tactics.”  Good point, Elena!

Tyler and Uncle Mason share a pretty terrible scene together.  With these two, TVD is taking its own sweet time unraveling the story, and that leads to poor writing.  Tyler is all, “how does the werewolf curse get triggered?” and Mason is all, “where’s my moonstone, and maybe I’ll tell you.”  Mason seems to think Tyler is better off not knowing what triggers the curse–in what world does that make sense?  You’d think the kid would want to–oh, I don’t know–avoid becoming a werewolf?  The worst part of the scene?  There’s a freakin’ werewolf gene, now.  A gene?  Really?  But the gene only gets activated if something….happens.  I call this scene wasting time because we learned nothing from it.  Luckily, Uncle Mason is pretty hot, so that maked up for it, sorta.

So Stefan pretends to be unable to resist Katherine and then stabs the b@#$% in the back.  You know, I’m really liking what Katherine is bringing out in Stefan.  He then tries to torture her with verveine to get her to reveal what (besides her tender love for Stefan) has brought her back to town.  She’s not talking.  But the two of them spend the entire day together, which annoys Elena to no end because Stefan is not returning her calls.

While Elena is worrying about where is Stefan, she attends a barbecue with clueless Jenna, Rick, Mason, Caroline and Damon.  What a strange mix that is.  Honestly, Mason is pretty normal in these scenes.  As in, he can laugh and have fun and seem like a cool guy.  It was super odd to see people be less serious on this show–kinda liked it.  Mason tells Damon that he hears he’s a good guy, and Damon replies, “Really?  That’s weird, cause I’m a dick.”  Thinking I’m going to make a list of every awesome line Damon says for a future post.  But not this one.

I liked people seeming like normal people, but I absolutely HATED the flashbacks of Katherine, Stefan, and Damon in the olden days.  Get this line, uttered to Katherine by human Stefan, “I look at you, and I see an angel.  I touch your skin and my entire body ignites…I’m in love with you.”  Twilight, much?

I have an entire other episode to write about, so let’s summarize.

Stefan: Why are you really here, Katherine?

Katherine: Cause I love you!

Mason and Damon (the subtle version)

Damon: “I always pegged you for a lone wolf.”

Mason: “I’m sure I wasn’t half the lady killer you were.”

Mason and Damon (the explicit version)

Damon (to Mason): I know what you are and I don’t like you.

Mason (to Damon): Dude, let’s just be friends.

Damon stabs Mason with a silver knife. (Turns out, the silver-kills-a-vampire-thing is a myth).

Mason: Now you’ve made an enemy.

Caroline doing Katherine’s bidding

Caroline (to Elena): You’ll get old, he’ll stay hot, you’ll never have babies…

Elena: But I love him!

Question: Why doesn’t Stefan just kill Katherine?  Yeah, he wants to know what she’s up to, but I think the show needs to come up with a better reason.

In the end, Katherine reveals she’s trained herself to be immune to verveine.  Also her flashback showed us that she knows about the Lockwood moonstone, having once given it to Granddaddy Lockwood in exchange for him saving her from that burning church deal.  At the end of the episode, flashback Katherine promises she will see the dying-becoming-undead Stefan again.

Puke.

Meanwhile, Stefan and Elena have gotten tricky, staging a big fight to (1) test Caroline’s loyalty (she fails), (2) intrigue Damon (they do), and (3) fool Katherine (jury still out on that one).