100 Reviews: 24
Jul. 16th, 2012 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthOh man guys, it’s this episode...THIS EPISODE.
TVD: 2x19: Klaus
I AM FULL OF FEELINGS FOR THIS EPISODE. These days I always am but even back when I first saw it, before adding in heaps and piles of shipping feelings, I loved this episode.
I always loved the development of Elijah and Klaus’s characters, Elena taking control, Jenna being let in the know. But this episode would have scored high marks with me even without those for just one thing: the Sun and Moon curse being a fake. It never made sense if you stopped to think about it for two minutes together and this episode seemed to finally own up to that by saying it wasn’t real. It was a tool of manipulation and control, but it was all a lie.
Which does make things pretty tragic when you think about how many people have died believing in that lie.
But before I get to the meat of the episode, I probably ought to discuss the Salvatores. For one, the fact that that this episode was strategically placed after the last one to remind me why I don’t like Damon. In 2x18 I was on the verge of...not thinking Damon was good, but a character that would be a lot more interesting to me as he owned his morally dubious actions and intentions. And then this episode came along to remind me that, sure sometimes he’s that, at other times he’s the guy who’s in an oh so very creepy and wrong “relationship” that makes him someone I just can’t deal with. His behavior towards Elena this episode didn’t help matters as he moves beyond protective into controlling; he’s at best on that line usually, but it’s still noticeable when he goes over it and this was definitely over it.
Stefan this episode is just...he’s kind of got late s3 Stefan flavor to him. He’s outwardly bowing to Elena’s every whim but as soon as she’s not around he starts to feel controlling and awful. However, I would also like to state for the record that Stefan seems to think having Elena’s respect is super important and then guess who walks in together? Yep, Elena and the guy she has nothing but respect for.
And for the record, RicKlaus was giving Stefan a lot more sex eyes this time around. In fact, these days I think that entire scene was really to mess with his lost love rather than Jenna who he really didn’t care about one way or the other.
But let’s get down to what this episode is actually about: Elijah falling in love with Elena and proving that they have a way more awesome relationship after six hours than she has with either Salvatore after six months.
I should state that I didn’t see it that way first time around. At least not consciously; I think subconsciously I was going look at the way he’s looking at her, look at how they work together, look how much eye sex they’re having right now, look at the staging of that respect conversation, this is perfection just waiting to happen but it didn’t become a conscious thing for a while still.
I should also probably address the elephant in the room, Elijah/Katerina. But I think the essence of it is really summed up by that conversation between Elijah and Klaus.
K: We do not love and we do not care.
E: We did once.
That “we did once” is what I think primarily drove Elijah when it came to Kat. He looked at her and saw Tatia born again, so he’s struggling with all the emotions that brings up, plus he does end up pitying her (in part because of her resemblance to Tatia) for her role in this plan they have going on. If she doesn’t have to die (and again, in my headcanon Tatia ended up dying tragically at some point in all these spells and curses and new creatures) he would rather she didn’t. He’s not the one who told her about the ritual though (do we know it was Trevor? That seems most likely), after getting the elixir he pretty much sat back and watched things play out.
Anyway, I don’t feel like Elijah/Kat was ever really a thing. Even first time through I wasn’t sure what to make of it, because it doesn’t read like love, and that “we did once” always jumped out at me as being more true than reading it as affection for Kat herself. And now I have a better handle on it and can say that I definitely feel that way. It’s not that he felt nothing for Kat, but it was so much an extension to Tatia feelings that I wouldn’t call it love.
Whereas his feelings for Elena are in spite of her being the doppelganger. He made himself not project his old feelings about Tatia onto her, and he was expecting someone more like Kat, only to find himself someone he really respected (respect again) and cared about. Cares about and does a really bad job convincing anyone he doesn’t. Sure he might have been going for ‘I won’t let my feelings get in the way of family this time around’ but even then, he’s looking at her like that when he says it; it completely gives away how much risk there is of that even if he’s determined not to let it happen. And yes, even back before I was shipping it I thought that (I wasn’t shipping Elijah/Kat either so I didn’t see that shipping entered into caring in either case); it’s so freaking obvious he cares about Elena at that point.
You know, if I were to make a list of my favorite Elena/Elijah scenes half of them would probably come from this episode alone (pretty much every scene between them from here on is shippy too, but there’s like two more this season and our gold half dozen or so in s3; which may be shippy as hell but involve lying and death threats while being shippy) because every moment between them is just perfection.
-Elijah wakes up
I’m pretty sure all the doppelgangers were collapsing into each other for Elijah at that point. He’s flashing back to the moment he met Kat, where he’s clearly flashing back to Tatia and we just don’t get to see it. It’s also the only time Elijah has confused Elena and Kat, which I’m pretty sure he can claim extenuating circumstances. And then there’s the way he’s clinging to Elena as he tries to figure out what’s going on; it’s very frantic, but we get so little physical contact between these two I guess we’ll have to take it.
-Can I trust you?
I love that they both have to deal with that question. And seriously, the moment she hands over the dagger, Elijah’s got this look of ‘Huh, she gets it. (Oh right those squishy feeling I had right before this happened...).”
But on a continuity note, how did they manage to sneak out like that? It was clearly the middle of the night when Elena went to chat with Damon, where did Stefan think she was all night? I could be persuaded to think Elena and Stefan went to be and later on she decided to go clear the air with Damon, but even then it’s clearly been a while by the time Elijah wakes up and still MORE time before anyone notices she left and that’s with the racket Elijah made as he was getting out of the house.
-An honorable man
The shear amount of eye sex going on during the scene in the car is intense, and for the first time it’s two sided. Elena’s seducing Elijah with honor and respect but her eyes are even ahead of that. She’s offering to work WITH him, which is something that we just don’t get in this show’s main relationships; someone’s always calling the shots and others react to it, but Elena and Elijah actually strike up a partnership. The thousand year old lord vampire and the 17 year old kid are more equal than just about any relationship on the show.
-Inside the Lockwoods’ (1)
Okay these scenes aren’t the most dynamic, but again it’s characters TALKING to each other, that’s just so amazing on this show. It’s also about showing Elijah’s chattier side, getting some digs in about them killing him, making an OMG reference, and seeming to be pretty good storyteller although we see the flashbacks instead.
-Outside the Lockwoods’
The eye sex is back once they’re outside. We also find out about Klaus’s artistic skills, though giving the distinct impression that Elijah paid more attention to this whole scheme. Mostly notable for revealing the fact to curse is fake, and that it leads to...
-You have my word
Yeah, by this point Elijah’s falling hard and then she turns around and argues with the same values of family and honor that he would use. Some of which she does because she’s arguing with him and some is just because it’s who she is, a lot of it’s both. And he *gets* that, because *she* gets it. And he already respected her, though it’s in a tricky area after the stabbing and everything, but this is the moment where it matters whether he should, or if she deserves it. He really wants to believe her, in way that it hadn’t mattered to him up to then; he mostly does trust her, but he feels like he’s on shaky ground.
-500 year old talks about love
Yeah, I’m including this moment because it’s clearly all about where Elijah’s head is at the moment, which makes it kind of weird. Sure, it’s part, possibly a large part, because Elijah’s in a similar place to where he was 500 years ago, finding he doesn’t want to sacrifice the doppelganger; and he probably did want to...trust Kat all those years ago. Even though it doesn’t seem much like he ever did, he’s feeling conflicted about what that means when it comes to Elena’s likelihood of living up to her word.
So anyway, Elijah ends up thinking back on when he and Kat talked about the meaning of love. It’s odd in part because he doesn’t seem to have set himself up as a romantic prospect for her, the conversation is really about her and Klaus and Trevor, but it prompts Kat to give her philosophy on love; to which Elijah gives his: a rather sad statement that he doesn’t believe in it. A lot of the sadness comes from the fact that he’s admitting to *this* girl, who reminds him so much that he used to believe in it, that he doesn’t any more. Probably in some part because of Tatia actually, but we don’t know that.
But both Kat’s confession and Elijah’s are relevant to what’s he’s feeling in the now for Elena. He’s so very close to believing in it again, but it isn’t exactly going to be returned. Ultimately I think that’s fed into my Elena/Elijah shipping, because so many of the things he does, especially in s3, echo back to this in that the prove Kat wrong; his love for Elena is very real even if she never knows he feels it much less returns it.
-Going back to Elijah
She doesn’t tell Stefan that Elijah still has answers she needs, she doesn’t say they haven’t finished their discussion about what’s happening; she says she gave her word and that’s that. What gets me is that there are plenty of good reasons she could give, but it really seems like living up to her word to him is at the forefront of her mind. Because she needs Elijah on her side, way more than she feels she needs to defend it to the boys.
-The look (1..ish)
You know the one, when he looks up at her when she comes back and it’s just full of...wonder. Like, in spite of all the really obvious reason she would come back (and she gets right down to business instead of telling him it was about keeping her word) it’s like he really expected her to run and can’t believe she didn’t.
-Family history time
When she did come back, he finally stopped beating around the bush and told her the truth about Klaus. He had been hemming and hawing before, but he just starts in on it. And there’s a lot of just intimacy to that scene. There’s some eye sex, but it just feels really intimate, continuing to be about them forging this alliance that’s just them.
As a side note, I think there are a couple times Elijah referred to things as “thousands of years” but most of the time it actually was “a thousand years” so it’s only sometimes contradicting future canon.
-A common mistake
Yeah, I talked about this earlier, but it deserves another one. And possibly a gif:
You see what that moment does to me? I even have to use gifs for it. Because even when I didn’t consciously ship them this moment brought me REALLY close to it. Even not shipping them it’s still *intense* and clearly full of *meaning* and basically having to tell myself ‘I only ship Elena with Matt and that only endgame but if I was going to ship her with a vampire maybe...nah I wouldn’t do that.’ Basically this was the moment that kicked the door in to start me shipping them, I just didn’t realize it at the time.
-Another way
And after all that, there’s still more once they get back to the boarding house. Elena’s so...happy. Her gamble paid off big time; she’s been proven completely right about Elijah, what she’s been saying all along that he was her best option; she’s just built this whole new relationship with him, even if she hasn’t even started to think about just how deep it goes yet; and basically, she just won.
What’s more, Elijah’s last flashback is how he and Klaus’s relationship was destroyed by Kat, and Stefan and Damon are in the same position over Elena. Even more telling, it was basically over Kat as an object which is basically how Stefan and Damon tend to get over Elena when they’re confronting each other over the issues. Basically, I feel like that flashback is about Elijah being well aware of how the boys are treating the Elena issue, and how it cannot end well for them.
Elena and Elijah however are fully a team now. They just move in as the new power couple, even if they happen to not actually be a couple in the way I want them to be. Stefan continues to go along with Elena (I can hardly condemn him for doing that , except that he’s kind of two-faced about it), but he in no way shape, or form understands why she’s done this. Stefan trusts Elena, and it’s not like he has a better plan, but he makes it clear he doesn’t really understand. I wonder if on some level Damon senses that this is Elena trusting Elijah over ether him or Stefan. He’s angry that his plan and devotion wasn’t enough, that he was singled out and warned not to do anything stupid and this what Elena does instead. And it’s one thing to share Elena duties with Stefan and Bonnie but that Elena would pick Elijah over them to rely on doesn’t work for him. So basically he has to throw a tantrum and go abuse his pseudo-“girlfriend.”
To make a very long review short: this episode is perfect because it’s about Elijah and the relationship between Elijah and Elena where they actually talk to each other about things. Everything else in the episode matters a lot less than that fact.
Next time:
I might well do Boom Town, because that will probably be a much shorter review, and maybe I need a short review after this one.
Anything you want me to babble on and on about?
TVD: 2x19: Klaus
I AM FULL OF FEELINGS FOR THIS EPISODE. These days I always am but even back when I first saw it, before adding in heaps and piles of shipping feelings, I loved this episode.
I always loved the development of Elijah and Klaus’s characters, Elena taking control, Jenna being let in the know. But this episode would have scored high marks with me even without those for just one thing: the Sun and Moon curse being a fake. It never made sense if you stopped to think about it for two minutes together and this episode seemed to finally own up to that by saying it wasn’t real. It was a tool of manipulation and control, but it was all a lie.
Which does make things pretty tragic when you think about how many people have died believing in that lie.
But before I get to the meat of the episode, I probably ought to discuss the Salvatores. For one, the fact that that this episode was strategically placed after the last one to remind me why I don’t like Damon. In 2x18 I was on the verge of...not thinking Damon was good, but a character that would be a lot more interesting to me as he owned his morally dubious actions and intentions. And then this episode came along to remind me that, sure sometimes he’s that, at other times he’s the guy who’s in an oh so very creepy and wrong “relationship” that makes him someone I just can’t deal with. His behavior towards Elena this episode didn’t help matters as he moves beyond protective into controlling; he’s at best on that line usually, but it’s still noticeable when he goes over it and this was definitely over it.
Stefan this episode is just...he’s kind of got late s3 Stefan flavor to him. He’s outwardly bowing to Elena’s every whim but as soon as she’s not around he starts to feel controlling and awful. However, I would also like to state for the record that Stefan seems to think having Elena’s respect is super important and then guess who walks in together? Yep, Elena and the guy she has nothing but respect for.
And for the record, RicKlaus was giving Stefan a lot more sex eyes this time around. In fact, these days I think that entire scene was really to mess with his lost love rather than Jenna who he really didn’t care about one way or the other.
But let’s get down to what this episode is actually about: Elijah falling in love with Elena and proving that they have a way more awesome relationship after six hours than she has with either Salvatore after six months.
I should state that I didn’t see it that way first time around. At least not consciously; I think subconsciously I was going look at the way he’s looking at her, look at how they work together, look how much eye sex they’re having right now, look at the staging of that respect conversation, this is perfection just waiting to happen but it didn’t become a conscious thing for a while still.
I should also probably address the elephant in the room, Elijah/Katerina. But I think the essence of it is really summed up by that conversation between Elijah and Klaus.
K: We do not love and we do not care.
E: We did once.
That “we did once” is what I think primarily drove Elijah when it came to Kat. He looked at her and saw Tatia born again, so he’s struggling with all the emotions that brings up, plus he does end up pitying her (in part because of her resemblance to Tatia) for her role in this plan they have going on. If she doesn’t have to die (and again, in my headcanon Tatia ended up dying tragically at some point in all these spells and curses and new creatures) he would rather she didn’t. He’s not the one who told her about the ritual though (do we know it was Trevor? That seems most likely), after getting the elixir he pretty much sat back and watched things play out.
Anyway, I don’t feel like Elijah/Kat was ever really a thing. Even first time through I wasn’t sure what to make of it, because it doesn’t read like love, and that “we did once” always jumped out at me as being more true than reading it as affection for Kat herself. And now I have a better handle on it and can say that I definitely feel that way. It’s not that he felt nothing for Kat, but it was so much an extension to Tatia feelings that I wouldn’t call it love.
Whereas his feelings for Elena are in spite of her being the doppelganger. He made himself not project his old feelings about Tatia onto her, and he was expecting someone more like Kat, only to find himself someone he really respected (respect again) and cared about. Cares about and does a really bad job convincing anyone he doesn’t. Sure he might have been going for ‘I won’t let my feelings get in the way of family this time around’ but even then, he’s looking at her like that when he says it; it completely gives away how much risk there is of that even if he’s determined not to let it happen. And yes, even back before I was shipping it I thought that (I wasn’t shipping Elijah/Kat either so I didn’t see that shipping entered into caring in either case); it’s so freaking obvious he cares about Elena at that point.
You know, if I were to make a list of my favorite Elena/Elijah scenes half of them would probably come from this episode alone (pretty much every scene between them from here on is shippy too, but there’s like two more this season and our gold half dozen or so in s3; which may be shippy as hell but involve lying and death threats while being shippy) because every moment between them is just perfection.
-Elijah wakes up
I’m pretty sure all the doppelgangers were collapsing into each other for Elijah at that point. He’s flashing back to the moment he met Kat, where he’s clearly flashing back to Tatia and we just don’t get to see it. It’s also the only time Elijah has confused Elena and Kat, which I’m pretty sure he can claim extenuating circumstances. And then there’s the way he’s clinging to Elena as he tries to figure out what’s going on; it’s very frantic, but we get so little physical contact between these two I guess we’ll have to take it.
-Can I trust you?
I love that they both have to deal with that question. And seriously, the moment she hands over the dagger, Elijah’s got this look of ‘Huh, she gets it. (Oh right those squishy feeling I had right before this happened...).”
But on a continuity note, how did they manage to sneak out like that? It was clearly the middle of the night when Elena went to chat with Damon, where did Stefan think she was all night? I could be persuaded to think Elena and Stefan went to be and later on she decided to go clear the air with Damon, but even then it’s clearly been a while by the time Elijah wakes up and still MORE time before anyone notices she left and that’s with the racket Elijah made as he was getting out of the house.
-An honorable man
The shear amount of eye sex going on during the scene in the car is intense, and for the first time it’s two sided. Elena’s seducing Elijah with honor and respect but her eyes are even ahead of that. She’s offering to work WITH him, which is something that we just don’t get in this show’s main relationships; someone’s always calling the shots and others react to it, but Elena and Elijah actually strike up a partnership. The thousand year old lord vampire and the 17 year old kid are more equal than just about any relationship on the show.
-Inside the Lockwoods’ (1)
Okay these scenes aren’t the most dynamic, but again it’s characters TALKING to each other, that’s just so amazing on this show. It’s also about showing Elijah’s chattier side, getting some digs in about them killing him, making an OMG reference, and seeming to be pretty good storyteller although we see the flashbacks instead.
-Outside the Lockwoods’
The eye sex is back once they’re outside. We also find out about Klaus’s artistic skills, though giving the distinct impression that Elijah paid more attention to this whole scheme. Mostly notable for revealing the fact to curse is fake, and that it leads to...
-You have my word
Yeah, by this point Elijah’s falling hard and then she turns around and argues with the same values of family and honor that he would use. Some of which she does because she’s arguing with him and some is just because it’s who she is, a lot of it’s both. And he *gets* that, because *she* gets it. And he already respected her, though it’s in a tricky area after the stabbing and everything, but this is the moment where it matters whether he should, or if she deserves it. He really wants to believe her, in way that it hadn’t mattered to him up to then; he mostly does trust her, but he feels like he’s on shaky ground.
-500 year old talks about love
Yeah, I’m including this moment because it’s clearly all about where Elijah’s head is at the moment, which makes it kind of weird. Sure, it’s part, possibly a large part, because Elijah’s in a similar place to where he was 500 years ago, finding he doesn’t want to sacrifice the doppelganger; and he probably did want to...trust Kat all those years ago. Even though it doesn’t seem much like he ever did, he’s feeling conflicted about what that means when it comes to Elena’s likelihood of living up to her word.
So anyway, Elijah ends up thinking back on when he and Kat talked about the meaning of love. It’s odd in part because he doesn’t seem to have set himself up as a romantic prospect for her, the conversation is really about her and Klaus and Trevor, but it prompts Kat to give her philosophy on love; to which Elijah gives his: a rather sad statement that he doesn’t believe in it. A lot of the sadness comes from the fact that he’s admitting to *this* girl, who reminds him so much that he used to believe in it, that he doesn’t any more. Probably in some part because of Tatia actually, but we don’t know that.
But both Kat’s confession and Elijah’s are relevant to what’s he’s feeling in the now for Elena. He’s so very close to believing in it again, but it isn’t exactly going to be returned. Ultimately I think that’s fed into my Elena/Elijah shipping, because so many of the things he does, especially in s3, echo back to this in that the prove Kat wrong; his love for Elena is very real even if she never knows he feels it much less returns it.
-Going back to Elijah
She doesn’t tell Stefan that Elijah still has answers she needs, she doesn’t say they haven’t finished their discussion about what’s happening; she says she gave her word and that’s that. What gets me is that there are plenty of good reasons she could give, but it really seems like living up to her word to him is at the forefront of her mind. Because she needs Elijah on her side, way more than she feels she needs to defend it to the boys.
-The look (1..ish)
You know the one, when he looks up at her when she comes back and it’s just full of...wonder. Like, in spite of all the really obvious reason she would come back (and she gets right down to business instead of telling him it was about keeping her word) it’s like he really expected her to run and can’t believe she didn’t.
-Family history time
When she did come back, he finally stopped beating around the bush and told her the truth about Klaus. He had been hemming and hawing before, but he just starts in on it. And there’s a lot of just intimacy to that scene. There’s some eye sex, but it just feels really intimate, continuing to be about them forging this alliance that’s just them.
As a side note, I think there are a couple times Elijah referred to things as “thousands of years” but most of the time it actually was “a thousand years” so it’s only sometimes contradicting future canon.
-A common mistake
Yeah, I talked about this earlier, but it deserves another one. And possibly a gif:
You see what that moment does to me? I even have to use gifs for it. Because even when I didn’t consciously ship them this moment brought me REALLY close to it. Even not shipping them it’s still *intense* and clearly full of *meaning* and basically having to tell myself ‘I only ship Elena with Matt and that only endgame but if I was going to ship her with a vampire maybe...nah I wouldn’t do that.’ Basically this was the moment that kicked the door in to start me shipping them, I just didn’t realize it at the time.
-Another way
And after all that, there’s still more once they get back to the boarding house. Elena’s so...happy. Her gamble paid off big time; she’s been proven completely right about Elijah, what she’s been saying all along that he was her best option; she’s just built this whole new relationship with him, even if she hasn’t even started to think about just how deep it goes yet; and basically, she just won.
What’s more, Elijah’s last flashback is how he and Klaus’s relationship was destroyed by Kat, and Stefan and Damon are in the same position over Elena. Even more telling, it was basically over Kat as an object which is basically how Stefan and Damon tend to get over Elena when they’re confronting each other over the issues. Basically, I feel like that flashback is about Elijah being well aware of how the boys are treating the Elena issue, and how it cannot end well for them.
Elena and Elijah however are fully a team now. They just move in as the new power couple, even if they happen to not actually be a couple in the way I want them to be. Stefan continues to go along with Elena (I can hardly condemn him for doing that , except that he’s kind of two-faced about it), but he in no way shape, or form understands why she’s done this. Stefan trusts Elena, and it’s not like he has a better plan, but he makes it clear he doesn’t really understand. I wonder if on some level Damon senses that this is Elena trusting Elijah over ether him or Stefan. He’s angry that his plan and devotion wasn’t enough, that he was singled out and warned not to do anything stupid and this what Elena does instead. And it’s one thing to share Elena duties with Stefan and Bonnie but that Elena would pick Elijah over them to rely on doesn’t work for him. So basically he has to throw a tantrum and go abuse his pseudo-“girlfriend.”
To make a very long review short: this episode is perfect because it’s about Elijah and the relationship between Elijah and Elena where they actually talk to each other about things. Everything else in the episode matters a lot less than that fact.
Next time:
I might well do Boom Town, because that will probably be a much shorter review, and maybe I need a short review after this one.
Anything you want me to babble on and on about?
