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1) There's something--not sad? about Elena having more faith in Stefan than Damon does. I would say something pithy about love conquering all, but this show fucking loves proving that that's not true. Also, Damon's known him longer, so this for him is yet another S4 stage: the Stefan Salvatore Shame Spiral.
2) "Go away, Damon." WHAT.
Okay, so Alaric's first thought, upon hearing someone bang on his door, is to yell at Damon to go away. Never mind that Damon's been invited in and I'm pretty sure Alaric's locks are for shit; his first instinct is to tell Damon to go away, because Damon's the only company he gets. That is both depressing and great.
3) "Whatever Damon knows, you know." Sadly borne out to be true, but really great slash fodder WHAT I'M JUST SAYING. Ugh, you guys, the thing coming up--you know what if you're spoiled, and I'm not getting into details if you're not--is gonna fucking kill me.
4) I love that despite being a drunken shitshow clad in a hair shirt, Alaric's appointed himself Elena's de facto parent. Which, you know, he might sort of be anyway depending on the legality, because he was married to her birth mom. I also love that he seems to mean it, which will hopefully make him shave and brush his goddamned hair.
5) I also love that Klaus legitimately seems to like Stefan. That...does not bode well for Stefan in terms of awful things he's done, but it's amusing. Also amusing: that despite liking him, Klaus considers him totally expendable, because that is what that guy does. Remember, he killed all his siblings. That guy is not a joiner.
6) So...werewolves live like people who travel around following Phish? Huh.
(Actually, I appreciate that werewolves, having dwindling numbers, try to do that. On the other hand, if you guys really did want to increase numbers, you'd have more babies and try to induce them into killing someone. I am not advocating murder; I am saying, sperm banks might help in terms of actual feet on the ground.)
7) Ahahahahahahahahaha Caroline guilting Tyler over biting Damon and Stefan having to leave. Ten bucks says she ends up a Salvatore, and not by marriage.
8) "We don't need a witch." OH MY GOD YOU REALLY DO. That's what I've figured out this year, I think: these guys--and Gilberts especially, but all of 'em--come up with good parts of a plan, but the plan as a whole is a fucking nightmare that works (if it works) entirely by accident. This is the only time I will ever advocate plans by committee, but for real, give it a shot. Or, I don't know, PHONE TREE.
(No, I will never, ever stop with the phone tree.)
9) Also awesome: Tyler showing Elena where to find werewolves via a handy iPhone app. Everything's on the internet these days, isn't it? Jesus.
10) "If you don't come with me, I'm going out there by myself." Elena, you know I love you, but some day you are going to say that to someone who has their own shit to deal with, and you are actually going to have to go out there by yourself, and then it will end in tears. You need to start saving that in your back pocket for, like, Plan F and not Plan B.
11) So I guess you do need human blood to transition and not, say, a handy squirrel. But you don't have to kill someone. The vagaries of becoming not-human are always more complicated than I think they're going to be.
12) UGH CAROL LOCKWOOD. I don't--we've talked about this before: it is really, really hard for me to hate someone on this show. (Thanks, guys, high five for that.) But the extent to which I dislike Carol Lockwood is impressive. Yeah, she married into this, as Bill says--and we'll get to Bill, don't worry--but she bought into it like a mad bastard: she's the de facto mayor, she's on the Council, she hates vampires as much as someone not in the founding families can. And like most of the Council, she never, ever considered what would happen if she knew one: she just hates. She drinks, and she hates, and she loves her son.
(As a sidebar: how sloppy have you fuckers gotten that Carol Lockwood figured it out? Jesus.)
But Carol's not Liz. When faced with the truth, Liz slammed shut emotionally: she told Damon to keep Caroline away until the vervain was out of her system, then to erase her memory of what happened. She didn't want to know. The second time around, she hemmed and hawed until that whole awful night with Damon dying and her accidentally shooting Jeremy. And Caroline was there--constant, reassuring, level-headed. She saw the truth: Caroline wasn't different, not in anything but the best ways. She wasn't a monster. She was different, yeah, and that was scary, but she still wanted to go to a good college; she still loved her friends; she was excited about dances and picnics and how her hair looked. She was the better part of herself. She wasn't a monster.
That's not what Carol Lockwood sees. Carol sees that Caroline died and something else came back in her place--a slavering monster that eats people (never mind that the amount of "mountain lion attacks" has decreased sharply in recent months) and ruins lives. She said as much to Tyler--"I don't want you seeing that girl anymore. She's a monster." Never mind that Tyler isn't human himself (and neither was Mason--and her husband, if she followed that through, except he never killed anyone to trigger the curse); never mind that when she saw what he was, Carol screamed like she was trying not to piss herself, terrified in the lizard part of her brain.
I don't think you need to be killed, Carol. I think you need a shitload of vervain and a Damon Salvatore Special, yeah, but you'd be just as well served by a long talk about how people can be just as evil as the monsters they're protecting themselves from.
13) "It's a new order, sweetheart. You join us or you die." In theory, that is terrifying. In practical application, you are making defective mutants. Scary, but not an effective fighting force.
14) Seriously, can we have someone who's *not* Tyler worried about Caroline at some point? Bonnie's out of town, fine, but everyone else is all "what, she's fine." NO SHE'S NOT. Remember last time? She got tortured by Mason's asshole friends? There was a sleepover afterwards?
15) Wolfsbane grenade! I missed you, Steampunk Inventor Saltzman!
16) Elena gave Alaric the Gilbert ring back! Alaric's keeping it! You are reasonably unbreakable again, Saltzman! THIS SEASON IS ALREADY A DELIGHT.
17) Ahahahahaha Damon just shoving Elena into the river. And Elena's horrified "You told him!", followed by Ric's "uh, yeah, because this is a dumb-ass plan and backup is a good thing to have."
18) "Thanks for the tip, brother." Aaaaaaaaaand that's my heart making a little clenchy thing, because--look, I'm not saying anyone's ever going to replace Stefan, because that is nuts. I'm saying Damon trusts Ric enough to even say that jokingly, which I don't think any of us could have called back when Damon totally murdered him.
19) "Right now, you're both acting like idiots." Oh my God Alaric Saltzman stop being my spirit animal.
20) "You don't build up your army once the war's started. You make it so big no one dares try to move against you." Goddammit Klaus, stop making sense. I don't want to like you, sir.
21) Anyone else think Klaus is cute when he has the teeny werewolf fangs? Just me? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, SHOW, WE HAVE HAD THIS TALK BEFORE.
22) Matt kept all of Vicki's stuff! The picture of them as kids! I'm sorry, Donovan, you're gonna end up on Team Salvatore. Just go buy a vervain starter plant and start learning to make stakes. It saves time in the long run.
23) SO: Hybrids are, as of now, dangerously unstable. They take longer to come back, they come back feeling miserable, occasionally do parkour, cannot control their changes, and end up dead within about six hours of their creation. Somewhere, a bunch of dead witches are laughing so hard they're falling over.
24) ALSO: It is a reasonable bet that the hybrids are unstable because Elena is not, in fact, still dead. This will end great when Klaus figures it out, if he hasn't already. (Stefan! Get a better poker face! You are still a shitty liar!)
25) "I'm the reason [Damon's] out here!" "I'm the reason he's out here!" Ladies, ladies. Just have a three-way. Everyone wins.
26) People say there's no weird CW/WB casting pool. I'm just saying, it's 2011 and I'm watching a fistfight between David Gallagher and Ian Somerhalder.
27) "I didn't call [Elena]." Stefan, seriously: learn to lie. (It's worth it for Damon's "bitch, please" face.)
28) "Let the vampires fight the hybrid-zombie-mountain man. I'll take care of the humans." See, Carol? That is how you do that without being totally speciest against vampires. He trusts Damon to take care of himself. He trusts Elena--and not incorrectly, given past behavior--to occasionally wander in situations where murder is happening.
29) "You're not a lost cause. You're just lost." THANK YOU. You had like two months to drink and be emo, Saltzman, but school starts up soon and Klaus is trying to make a murderous mutant army. It's time to mourn in private and start stockpiling weapons again.
30) Vicki: I can come back!
Anna: Don't trust Vicki!
Okay, I'm calling it now: that's not Vicki. It's something wearing her shape to fuck with people. The only other option is that Vicki is going to get a weird vengeful-woman edit, which, if anyone deserves it it's her, but this is a show that still uses Magical Negros, so I am a tiny bit iffy on how it'll be handled. (And frankly, I prefer the idea that there's evil shit out there in the dark trying to use our loved ones against us. Creepier idea than just "VENGEANCE!")
31) It is actually really depressing that Jeremy doesn't remember how Vicki died, and Matt doesn't remember the last time he saw her before she was a vampire.
32) "I was wrong."
"Are you drunk?"
"No!"
Not the strangest thought, Salvatore. Don't make that face.
33) "When I drag my brother back from the edge, I want you to remember the things you felt while he was gone." And again, I am not even remotely a Delena person, but I like the way they're handling it here: as close as Damon comes to being respectful, like in the finale ("Take all the time you need"). I am more than slightly iffy as to how he'd be as a boyfriend, and God knows that entire town's head would cave in, but it's not totally impossible.
(Also, whatever their personal relationship, Ian and Nina are selling it as the characters, not as people who have possibly been dating for upwards of a year. High five. SHUT UP I LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE ARE PROFESSIONAL.)
34) "No, he's an insufferable martyr that needs his ass kicked." Damon Salvatore, I will never, ever quit you.
35) "Daddy?"
Okay, I was totally spoiled for this, but Bill Forbes is talking Carol into letting him basically murder his kid. That is fucked up. I hope you're gonna miss him, Care, because I sort of want your mom to SHOOT HIS ASS DEAD.
36) That said, I would maybe also like to see Stephen at some point, because I have been fascinated by Caroline's dad for two seasons and really the entire Forbes family dynamic because they and the Fells are the only people without any history of supernatural shit in the bloodline--at least, 'til Caroline and Logan--and that is sort of neat and goddammit why do I want to write Five Families Fic I hate you show.
Next week: Stefan has an ex! Damon has a totally creepy list of people Stefan has murdered! Caroline has a dad WHO IS TORTURING HER, LIKE, WAY TO BE, GAY ABSENTEE DAD WILLIAM. "The End of the Affair", next Thursday.
Starting this week, the accompany review/recap/nattering for TSC will be up Friday nights, so as not to half-ass both of them. (Also, this way if you watch one and not the other, there's no spoilers.)
2) "Go away, Damon." WHAT.
Okay, so Alaric's first thought, upon hearing someone bang on his door, is to yell at Damon to go away. Never mind that Damon's been invited in and I'm pretty sure Alaric's locks are for shit; his first instinct is to tell Damon to go away, because Damon's the only company he gets. That is both depressing and great.
3) "Whatever Damon knows, you know." Sadly borne out to be true, but really great slash fodder WHAT I'M JUST SAYING. Ugh, you guys, the thing coming up--you know what if you're spoiled, and I'm not getting into details if you're not--is gonna fucking kill me.
4) I love that despite being a drunken shitshow clad in a hair shirt, Alaric's appointed himself Elena's de facto parent. Which, you know, he might sort of be anyway depending on the legality, because he was married to her birth mom. I also love that he seems to mean it, which will hopefully make him shave and brush his goddamned hair.
5) I also love that Klaus legitimately seems to like Stefan. That...does not bode well for Stefan in terms of awful things he's done, but it's amusing. Also amusing: that despite liking him, Klaus considers him totally expendable, because that is what that guy does. Remember, he killed all his siblings. That guy is not a joiner.
6) So...werewolves live like people who travel around following Phish? Huh.
(Actually, I appreciate that werewolves, having dwindling numbers, try to do that. On the other hand, if you guys really did want to increase numbers, you'd have more babies and try to induce them into killing someone. I am not advocating murder; I am saying, sperm banks might help in terms of actual feet on the ground.)
7) Ahahahahahahahahaha Caroline guilting Tyler over biting Damon and Stefan having to leave. Ten bucks says she ends up a Salvatore, and not by marriage.
8) "We don't need a witch." OH MY GOD YOU REALLY DO. That's what I've figured out this year, I think: these guys--and Gilberts especially, but all of 'em--come up with good parts of a plan, but the plan as a whole is a fucking nightmare that works (if it works) entirely by accident. This is the only time I will ever advocate plans by committee, but for real, give it a shot. Or, I don't know, PHONE TREE.
(No, I will never, ever stop with the phone tree.)
9) Also awesome: Tyler showing Elena where to find werewolves via a handy iPhone app. Everything's on the internet these days, isn't it? Jesus.
10) "If you don't come with me, I'm going out there by myself." Elena, you know I love you, but some day you are going to say that to someone who has their own shit to deal with, and you are actually going to have to go out there by yourself, and then it will end in tears. You need to start saving that in your back pocket for, like, Plan F and not Plan B.
11) So I guess you do need human blood to transition and not, say, a handy squirrel. But you don't have to kill someone. The vagaries of becoming not-human are always more complicated than I think they're going to be.
12) UGH CAROL LOCKWOOD. I don't--we've talked about this before: it is really, really hard for me to hate someone on this show. (Thanks, guys, high five for that.) But the extent to which I dislike Carol Lockwood is impressive. Yeah, she married into this, as Bill says--and we'll get to Bill, don't worry--but she bought into it like a mad bastard: she's the de facto mayor, she's on the Council, she hates vampires as much as someone not in the founding families can. And like most of the Council, she never, ever considered what would happen if she knew one: she just hates. She drinks, and she hates, and she loves her son.
(As a sidebar: how sloppy have you fuckers gotten that Carol Lockwood figured it out? Jesus.)
But Carol's not Liz. When faced with the truth, Liz slammed shut emotionally: she told Damon to keep Caroline away until the vervain was out of her system, then to erase her memory of what happened. She didn't want to know. The second time around, she hemmed and hawed until that whole awful night with Damon dying and her accidentally shooting Jeremy. And Caroline was there--constant, reassuring, level-headed. She saw the truth: Caroline wasn't different, not in anything but the best ways. She wasn't a monster. She was different, yeah, and that was scary, but she still wanted to go to a good college; she still loved her friends; she was excited about dances and picnics and how her hair looked. She was the better part of herself. She wasn't a monster.
That's not what Carol Lockwood sees. Carol sees that Caroline died and something else came back in her place--a slavering monster that eats people (never mind that the amount of "mountain lion attacks" has decreased sharply in recent months) and ruins lives. She said as much to Tyler--"I don't want you seeing that girl anymore. She's a monster." Never mind that Tyler isn't human himself (and neither was Mason--and her husband, if she followed that through, except he never killed anyone to trigger the curse); never mind that when she saw what he was, Carol screamed like she was trying not to piss herself, terrified in the lizard part of her brain.
I don't think you need to be killed, Carol. I think you need a shitload of vervain and a Damon Salvatore Special, yeah, but you'd be just as well served by a long talk about how people can be just as evil as the monsters they're protecting themselves from.
13) "It's a new order, sweetheart. You join us or you die." In theory, that is terrifying. In practical application, you are making defective mutants. Scary, but not an effective fighting force.
14) Seriously, can we have someone who's *not* Tyler worried about Caroline at some point? Bonnie's out of town, fine, but everyone else is all "what, she's fine." NO SHE'S NOT. Remember last time? She got tortured by Mason's asshole friends? There was a sleepover afterwards?
15) Wolfsbane grenade! I missed you, Steampunk Inventor Saltzman!
16) Elena gave Alaric the Gilbert ring back! Alaric's keeping it! You are reasonably unbreakable again, Saltzman! THIS SEASON IS ALREADY A DELIGHT.
17) Ahahahahaha Damon just shoving Elena into the river. And Elena's horrified "You told him!", followed by Ric's "uh, yeah, because this is a dumb-ass plan and backup is a good thing to have."
18) "Thanks for the tip, brother." Aaaaaaaaaand that's my heart making a little clenchy thing, because--look, I'm not saying anyone's ever going to replace Stefan, because that is nuts. I'm saying Damon trusts Ric enough to even say that jokingly, which I don't think any of us could have called back when Damon totally murdered him.
19) "Right now, you're both acting like idiots." Oh my God Alaric Saltzman stop being my spirit animal.
20) "You don't build up your army once the war's started. You make it so big no one dares try to move against you." Goddammit Klaus, stop making sense. I don't want to like you, sir.
21) Anyone else think Klaus is cute when he has the teeny werewolf fangs? Just me? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, SHOW, WE HAVE HAD THIS TALK BEFORE.
22) Matt kept all of Vicki's stuff! The picture of them as kids! I'm sorry, Donovan, you're gonna end up on Team Salvatore. Just go buy a vervain starter plant and start learning to make stakes. It saves time in the long run.
23) SO: Hybrids are, as of now, dangerously unstable. They take longer to come back, they come back feeling miserable, occasionally do parkour, cannot control their changes, and end up dead within about six hours of their creation. Somewhere, a bunch of dead witches are laughing so hard they're falling over.
24) ALSO: It is a reasonable bet that the hybrids are unstable because Elena is not, in fact, still dead. This will end great when Klaus figures it out, if he hasn't already. (Stefan! Get a better poker face! You are still a shitty liar!)
25) "I'm the reason [Damon's] out here!" "I'm the reason he's out here!" Ladies, ladies. Just have a three-way. Everyone wins.
26) People say there's no weird CW/WB casting pool. I'm just saying, it's 2011 and I'm watching a fistfight between David Gallagher and Ian Somerhalder.
27) "I didn't call [Elena]." Stefan, seriously: learn to lie. (It's worth it for Damon's "bitch, please" face.)
28) "Let the vampires fight the hybrid-zombie-mountain man. I'll take care of the humans." See, Carol? That is how you do that without being totally speciest against vampires. He trusts Damon to take care of himself. He trusts Elena--and not incorrectly, given past behavior--to occasionally wander in situations where murder is happening.
29) "You're not a lost cause. You're just lost." THANK YOU. You had like two months to drink and be emo, Saltzman, but school starts up soon and Klaus is trying to make a murderous mutant army. It's time to mourn in private and start stockpiling weapons again.
30) Vicki: I can come back!
Anna: Don't trust Vicki!
Okay, I'm calling it now: that's not Vicki. It's something wearing her shape to fuck with people. The only other option is that Vicki is going to get a weird vengeful-woman edit, which, if anyone deserves it it's her, but this is a show that still uses Magical Negros, so I am a tiny bit iffy on how it'll be handled. (And frankly, I prefer the idea that there's evil shit out there in the dark trying to use our loved ones against us. Creepier idea than just "VENGEANCE!")
31) It is actually really depressing that Jeremy doesn't remember how Vicki died, and Matt doesn't remember the last time he saw her before she was a vampire.
32) "I was wrong."
"Are you drunk?"
"No!"
Not the strangest thought, Salvatore. Don't make that face.
33) "When I drag my brother back from the edge, I want you to remember the things you felt while he was gone." And again, I am not even remotely a Delena person, but I like the way they're handling it here: as close as Damon comes to being respectful, like in the finale ("Take all the time you need"). I am more than slightly iffy as to how he'd be as a boyfriend, and God knows that entire town's head would cave in, but it's not totally impossible.
(Also, whatever their personal relationship, Ian and Nina are selling it as the characters, not as people who have possibly been dating for upwards of a year. High five. SHUT UP I LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE ARE PROFESSIONAL.)
34) "No, he's an insufferable martyr that needs his ass kicked." Damon Salvatore, I will never, ever quit you.
35) "Daddy?"
Okay, I was totally spoiled for this, but Bill Forbes is talking Carol into letting him basically murder his kid. That is fucked up. I hope you're gonna miss him, Care, because I sort of want your mom to SHOOT HIS ASS DEAD.
36) That said, I would maybe also like to see Stephen at some point, because I have been fascinated by Caroline's dad for two seasons and really the entire Forbes family dynamic because they and the Fells are the only people without any history of supernatural shit in the bloodline--at least, 'til Caroline and Logan--and that is sort of neat and goddammit why do I want to write Five Families Fic I hate you show.
Next week: Stefan has an ex! Damon has a totally creepy list of people Stefan has murdered! Caroline has a dad WHO IS TORTURING HER, LIKE, WAY TO BE, GAY ABSENTEE DAD WILLIAM. "The End of the Affair", next Thursday.
Starting this week, the accompany review/recap/nattering for TSC will be up Friday nights, so as not to half-ass both of them. (Also, this way if you watch one and not the other, there's no spoilers.)
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That's not cool. ARGH. Now I'm really worried, but if I try to look anything up I'll be MORE spoiled and Grar. Not cool.
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