Monsters of Television

Since nothing happened this week on TVD, let's remember the reason it is never a bad show, even when not good.

I really, really hate to write this. I’m serious, this is tough. These reviews take time, effort, and patience. I don’t enter into them lightly. So when I have to write a rather negative one, it bums me out. I don’t do this to bitch and moan—rather, I am excited about this show and I always want it to be good. For reals.

But this week? The Vampire Diaries was not terribly good. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t like the premiere of Perfect Couples (wretched) or the awfulness that was the DC season of Top Chef (frustrating) or the finale of Rubicon (hah—wrote that just to annoy Noel). No, wait, it may be a bit like the finale of Rubicon, because that most excellent show failed to deliver…something happening. We didn’t get answers, the plot didn’t advance enough, there was little satisfaction after a season of questions. This week’s TVD was sorta like that. Before you freak out, I’m going to give a brief diagnosis of this week’s problem. Then I’ll offer a few more elaborate thoughts. Then you can tell me why I’m wrong. I welcome it. I want this show to be good. And I’m not always right. [Note: I wanted to rewatch parts of the episode so I could confirm my opinion, but my DVR decided not to record the show, so what we have is my reaction to first viewing alone.]

I’ve had to write something like this about TVD before—its pacing is a blessing and a curse. The show moves so fast that you sometimes wish it gave you a bit more time to savor the moment. Then when it slows down, you get annoyed that it didn’t deliver enough thrills. This week wasn’t quite like that. There were sparking lights, a big showdown, Damon dancing—all stuff that shows much potential for goodness. But the episode never came together. I kept waiting for the twist, for the reveal, for the stakes to raise. I can envision a review of this episode that thought this week delivered all that—the twist was the resurrection, the reveal was the Elena deception, and the stakes were seemingly life and death. But life and death becomes less meaningful when no one dies.

I’m the first person to admit I’ll be furious if Alaric gets killed off. His disappearance this week at the end of the episode has left a pit in my stomach—how is Klaus gonna leave Ric after he departs that body? But sometimes genuine loss can advance a story in a unique way. If there isn’t at least the risk that someone will go, then the tension never raises high enough to engage the audience fully.

Here’s what I expected the reveal to be (super spoilery—WARNING)—Bonnie was so committed to saving Elena that she was going to die for real. Not through some vague (unexplained) spell. But rather, she was going to die. Twist—she was going to die with Damon’s blood in her. So she’d be a witch and a vampire. Now, that would be loss. And stakes. And sacrifice.

But I’m not sure that is what happened. It seems they somehow found some magic way to save Bonnie. Well, if it was that freakin’ easy, then why all this talk about Bonnie having to die to defeat Klaus?

There may be more answers coming, but at this moment, the episode left me deflated. And that is not how TVD usually operates—this show is exhilarating, exciting, and always—fun! This week was just kind of lame. Can’t imagine a worse thing to say about it than that.

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Mommy Dearest is back! Ready to f some shit up. (Spoiler alert: she does a good job of that.)

The Vampire Diaries is back! And boy ever. Just when you thought this series had gotten a bit tired, it reminds you that there are few rules here. For instance, the endless betrayals by Katherine and Isobel eventually begin to seem routine—gee, Katherine can’t be trusted—who would have guessed that? But then a new type of betrayal happens, and the show takes a new direction. I imagine there are other viewers like me—waiting to see how long the writers and producers of TVD can keep up this lightening pace. According to this week’s episode, they aren’t slowing down a bit.

Some events that occur during this episode excited me (Matt!), some horrified me (Ric!), and some simply entertained me (all things Damon). But despite my personal allegiance to particular characters (Ric again) or aversion to them (Bonnie) I have to admit that particular moves suggest the writers’ are all too aware of critiques and have responded to them.

The title of this week’s episode speaks to a whole host of characters—Katherine, Isobel, Uncle John, Elena, Awesome Vampire Caroline, among others. All these characters are unsure who to trust. The best answer in the world of TVD, of course, is trust no one, but as these characters reach out to find someone in whom to put their faith, they remind us that the human part of all of them (dead and undead alike) is that part who wants to believe in someone else. It is an interesting message for a show that often fails to highlight any drawbacks to being undead, perhaps suggesting that it isn’t the status of your beating heart that matters, but rather the ability of your heart to care for another—that is what divides the alive from the dead.

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Mystic Falls has a witch problem.

The houseguest of the title is Katherine, shacking up with Damon and Stefan. Her interactions with Damon throughout this episode were kind of hilarious. He is working so hard to hate her, but Katherine still has the ability to wound him, and she knows it. Damon needs to take my advice about exes—buy an island, put them on it, sail away. Nothing good comes from hanging out with an evil ex.

In other news, one of our clueless characters discovers there are vampires in town. This character’s reaction to the news was horror and anger—an incredible scene depicting a vampire’s hopes dashed against the shores of that island where exes should live.  This scene delivered.

Less successful this week was the depiction of the witches. Many viewers have commented about the oddity that witches in this world are apparently exclusively African-American—the implications of that for race studies are profound. On a more practical level, however, it seems the witches are best used in small doses, as with Katherine’s witch, Lucy. Lucy came to town, caused havoc, betrayed Katherine, demonstrated her awesome power, offered Bonnie advice, and got the heck out of dodge. Awesome. When witches stick around too long, though, they end up betraying one of our heroes and getting killed. Why Bonnie hasn’t learned that she should better corral these witches, I do not know. Oh, wait, yes I do. Though being redeemed slowly by her sexy affair with Jeremy, Bonnie still has moments of extreme suckitude. After Dr. Martin stole her power, instead of turning to despair, Bonnie should have gotten tough and gotten her powers back. Perhaps she could have spared some lives.

This show is at its weakest when it makes certain points of mythology super vague or otherwise allows characters to act in inexplicable ways in order to justify a delay in the action. I bring this up because the show went out of its way to justify showing a band at the Grill. During a conversation between Awesome Vampire Caroline and Matt, she notices a stage being set up at the Grill, so Matt explains that the Grill needs more business and has hired a band for that night. Later, the girls make a plan to go see the band. We get all kinds of exposition to justify this band at the Grill. But the logic behind having to leave the dagger in Elijah—forever—for him to stay dead? We’re supposed to just take that for what it is–justified by some sort of vampire honor code. Bonnie sucking it up that Dr. Martin stole her powers? Totally understandable—in a completely inexplicable way. Why would she not try to explain to Dr. Martin that her goal was to protect Elena, an innocent? I know I shouldn’t ask too many questions, but sometimes the show brings its less believable moments into a spotlight that can’t be ingnored.

As it is, Bonnie’s failure to talk sense to Dr. Martin led to all this week’s biggest shenanigans. Interestingly, Katherine did very little to force others to act—instead, she offered comedic relief. So our heroes were largely acted upon rather than taking charge. This goes for Ric, trying to deal with Jenna’s anger; Damon, trying to ignore Katherine; Awesome Vampire Caroline, hemming and hawing about Matt, and even Elena, whom we barely see this episode.  With Elijah gone, Elena’s plan to save her friends is kaput.  You’d think she’d be actively trying to forge another plan rather than leaving it to the Salvatore brothers.  Didn’t she say she was in charge last week?  What happened to that girl?  Oh, yeah, girl’s night.

I struggle with these weekly recaps because they inevitably descend into nitpicking.  Was this episode enjoyable?  Darn tooting it was.  Did it offer a few surprises?  Yep.  But did the central plot expand?  Only in one major way.  Damon learned something from the Gilbert journal that only he and Stefan have seen.  We also learned a few things from Katherine that are likely all mixed with lies anyway.  A couple of reveals at the end of the episode set us up for more adventure when the show returns in a month [argh!].  But that means this week provided set up and it is for the rest of the season to execute.  Makes for a less satisfying episode.

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Don't let his mild-mannered career fool you--dude is Bad Ass.

I read some comments on Twitter that suggested this episode started slow and got bogged down in flashbacks. Allow me to disagree. Sure, the flashback stuff can distract from the always-more-interesting awesomeness of the present moment, but there was much goodness to be had this week.

Right at the top of my “goodness” list is Alaric Saltzman. Can I say enough about why this character rules me? Important to note: Alaric? Not undead. Yet he still manages to be quite the badass. As the show’s coolest humans, aka guys who don’t take guff from vampires, I kinda want Ric and Uncle John to form a bromance. Course, I haven’t actually seen Uncle John kill a vampire, have I? So maybe he isn’t good enough for Ric.

Elena and Stefan largely took a backseat this week. Sure, they talked about the past, and that final scene was pretty terrific, but largely, this episode was about Ric and Damon negotiating their friendship. Not sure if I was supposed to read a parallel between Stefan’s relationship with Lexi and Damon’s relationship with Ric, but I won’t mind if it goes that way. There’s a respect between Damon and Ric, solidified this week, that I hope the writers nurture.

There are some issues with this episode.  The rules surrounding the Originals seem awfully slippery–less for logic than for the writers to have an excuse to surprise us.  Trouble is, surprises work best when they are consistent with the world view developed by the show.  Without that, they are cheating and cheap.  But hey, this is a show about vampires so I won’t be too particular about realism.  More troubling is that Damon seemed to have a breakthrough (the bad kind) a few weeks ago–rediscovering his need to suppress all genuine emotion.  Other than feeding on Andie, though, we aren’t seeing much of that.  I hope the show is just taking its time, waiting for the darkness to explode in dramatic fashion.

As for my other favorite, literal bromance—there’s some signs the show is trying to create a divide between our Salvatore brothers. Was wondering when that whole “Damon killing Lexi” thing would come back up. Could be a good way to get Damon to rethink a few things. But more about that…after the jump.

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World's dumbest plans--Werewolves prove once and for all that they are less evolved than vampires.

I’m a bit torn about this week’s episode. Some of my complaints about last week—Are all werewolves naturally sadistic? What the heck does Jules want with Tyler? Does Tyler have any compassion at all for his so-called “friends”?—remained issues for much of the episode. Not that there wasn’t goodness—Damon and Ric bantered like buddies, Jeremy and Bonnie got hot and heavy, Stefan and Elena were crazy cute—but I remain a bit less than satisfied.

This show is repeatedly praised for its fast pacing.  Things happen on The Vampire Diaries.  People die, many people get shot, stabbed, tortured, and lots of couples fall in love.  But without character development, all of that feels empty.  The first half of this season did an admirable job putting Tyler on the path to redemption.  He became sympathetic in his fear and pain, and his friendship with Awesome Vampire Caroline brought out the best in Tyler.  But in the past weeks, Tyler’s story has been pushed to the sidelines.  Even though the wolves have been the primary actors–doing all kinds of stupid things with the goal of getting Tyler and getting revenge–Tyler has not been given a chance to process all these actions.  He has followed other people without much comment and without a true crisis of self-preservation versus a duty to others.  There is much more than could have done with Tyler in the last three episodes.  Sadly, this potential was not fulfilled.  A rare instance of The Vampire Diaries failing to deliver the one-two punch of adrenaline and emotion.

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Just as I was beginning to like you...

I should begin with an apology for the extreme lateness of this post. I was out of town, unable to watch on my usual schedule. And as all fans of The Vampire Diaries know, the CW takes its own sweet time getting new episodes loaded into their video player. Ah, well.  Today I’ll offer thoughts on “Daddy Issues,” and tomorrow I’ll catch up by describing “Crying Wolf.”

In addition to my trip last week, I have experienced another change in my life—my partner has caught up with The Vampire Diaries at long last. We have spent the last two months watching season 1, and in the last week during my absence, he blew through season 2. This means I now have a buddy when watching this pretty great show. But that also means I can’t pause to take notes as I had been doing.

I bring this up because my reviews have gotten longer and longer as I’ve tried to be more and more thorough. This may change as I focus more on the big picture rather than individual scenes.  If I have any regular readers, though, I’m happy to oblige your preferences, so let me know what you think of these monstrously long recaps.  Too much?  Just right? Better to focus on particular scenes of interest rather than detail every scene?  Happy to hear your thoughts in the comments.

It was virtually impossible for me to dislike this episode as it featured the return of Jonathan Gilbert. Uncle John pretty much rules me—not just because I loved Anders on Alias as Sark but also because his character on TVD is wonderfully ambiguous. Just as Damon continually intrigues with his battle between good and evil, Uncle John may also provide a similar satisfaction. I believe he does love Elena, but when someone commits as fully to duty as does Johnathan Gilbert, that commitment may become a mania. Bad for Gilbert, but great for viewers.

The episode also begins and ends with a naked, bathing Damon. Sure, this may seem like pandering, but I am not going to complain. Even better, Awesome Vampire Caroline got a lot of story this week—she became the centerpoint of this week’s central plot and I appreciate how capably Candice Accola portrayed Awesome Vampire Caroline’s torture, anger, and devastation.

Notwithstanding these highlights, the pacing this week seemed to move almost too quickly.  As I’ll describe more fully below, sometimes the characters need a moment to breathe in order to, you know, change and grow.  I’m becoming a big fan of the Tyler-Awesome Vampire Caroline friendship, but I think the show dropped the ball a bit this week.  These two characters made big decisions this week, but we saw little of their process in making those decisions.  In particular, Tyler seemed pretty clueless during the entire episode, and I don’t understand why.  Well, I do understand, but I wish the show would have showed his fear and confusion more clearly. If Tyler is going to become a better person, then show me how and why that is happening, including a more thorough depiction of the motivation behind the setbacks we see this week.

This episode also put Damon in a bit of holding pattern.  Though he makes a number of ironic comments this week that remind viewers of his bid admission last week that he missed being human, he doesn’t actually do much.  Here’s hoping we see bad boy Damon get a bit more to do in the coming weeks.

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Quickly becoming TVD's most sympathetic character--who knew?

I cannot believe I am writing this, but here goes. Tyler is my new favorite character on The Vampire Diaries. I know, that is completely crazy, right? He’s a self-proclaimed dick. But among all the various happenings in the most recent episode, his storyline is the most effecting. The performance by Michael Trevino as Tyler is quite strong, and the character may give Damon a run for his money in the clever jackass department. If you read my posts about this show regularly, you know I am a big fan of Awesome Vampire Caroline. And now it seems I have found the best match for her greatness. Really hope the show continues to depict Tyler’s transformation with such honesty and rawness.

It isn’t possible for me to express how moving was Tyler’s transformation and Awesome Vampire Caroline’s refusal to leave him. He was terrified and experiencing shattering pain; all she could do was be with him, but you admire her compassion. I’m super nervous about how Tyler will react when he learns Awesome Vampire Caroline has lied to him (about Mason, about the Salvatores), but I am loving these two as a duo. I should also note that the visual and aural elements of his change were executed in impressive fashion by the program’s technical people—really good work for a show I don’t imagine has a huge budget.

As for the rest of our merry band of warriors, Elijah continues to improve upon his initial awful introduction—he’s becoming a real frightening bad guy. Elena got sidelined for the most part, but even trapped in her home, she proved herself a capable negotiator. And the best news? Someone I hate got bit by a werewolf. What excellent news!

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“The Sacrifice”

Still pretty, but getting way scarier.

Lots of people were doing dumb things to save people they love on this week’s The Vampire Diaries.  Even Damon, who was trying to preach wisdom to Elena about her kamikaze mission, did his own dumb thing.  But when Damon does anything, somehow it seems less dumb, only sexy.  And there was much Damon sexiness to be had.  Perhaps they are trying to make amends for that wretched incident with Rose last week (yep, still hate this character). Maybe they just can’t let go of the tension between Elena and Damon.  Or maybe they know that Damon is why this show sizzles.  Case in point—the first half of this episode was rather lame—and I can only explain it by noting a decided dearth of Damon dash (the alliteration took over—apologies).

Reviewing each episode of a series is a problematic business because it can force a person to make too-firm pronouncements: i.e. episode A was excellent, episode B was crap, and episode C was passable.  When we start debating whether an individual episode was weak, I worry we lose the forest for the trees—after all, I wouldn’t be writing about this show if I didn’t enjoy it with some consistency.  Also, I haven’t yet seen a crap episode of The Vampire Diaries, so when I complain about weaknesses, I’m quibbling.  That said, this episode may be worth exploring a bit deeper to see where the show tends to be weakest in order to highlight why it succeeds as often as it does.

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She's undead, naked with Damon, and still a crappy character. No fixin' that.

I feel like the writers for The Vampire Diaries have been reading my mind—so many small complaints that I have had in the past weeks were resolved or at least addressed in this week’s episode. Thanks, TVD!

This was another episode where we have more talking than action, but at least we got some good dish and a number of answers. Even better, Elena took matters into her own hands, so this week it was Stefan having to react instead of lead. I appreciate a feisty Elena, and Katherine seems to bring out the best in her. Let’s have these two gals go on a road trip next!

Still not in love with Rose, somewhat ambivalent about the direction Damon seems to be heading, and absolutely uninterested in Elijah (except for that cool trick with the coins!). But putting the spotlight on Elena was fitting, and the series has now erected some impressive obstacles for our newly empowered heroine to overcome. Obstacles = drama, and that’s a good thing.

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Come on--he's too pretty to be scary.

The Vampire Diaries took a bit of a break this week from its record-setting pacing. Instead, it allowed the characters to reflect on the many changes that have occurred in the past few weeks. At school, Tyler and Awesome Vampire Caroline are forced to stare at reminders that two girls died last week. Jeremy learns that there are limits to what Bonnie can do—and his subtle flirtation with her continues to develop intensity. Elena gets world’s chattiest vampire kidnappers to tell their their entire life history—a rather unrealistic series of conversations that provided the exposition needed to introduce new bad guys now that Katherine is out of the picture (for a brief moment).  Basically, a bunch of taking stock, reflecting, and conversing.  Little action.  Not necessarily a critique–more of an observation.

Meanwhile, in the episodes best subplot, Damon and Stefan take a little road trip to rescue Elena. I would have been perfectly content if this entire episode had focused on Damon and Stefan in that car. Amidst jokes about the requisite bonding that accompanies all road trips, our boys delve into the dangerous territory of Damon’s feelings for Elena and their own history of betrayal.

I’ve got some concerns about the direction the series seems to be taking, and I’ll discuss them below, but I loved the heck out of Stefan and Damon this week. Neither man has aged in 150 years, but they mature nevertheless. Their mutual recognition of their bond allowed them to move past so much nonsense—good acting and strong writing that deserve to be commended.

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