jedi_of_urth

Okay, so now I have a decision to make going forward with this: do I watch s3 for these things or not? Obviously I’ll end up rewatching s3 before s4 starts but if I’m not reviewing them I’ll just do a marathon a few days before the premier (aside from watching bits and pieces to keep my head in the show for fic reasons). And/or if I should go back and do s1, or take a break from reviewing TVD entirely. But for tonight...

TVD: 2x22: As I Lay Dying

This episode...is weird. As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s really a coda/epilog to the rest of the season or perhaps best viewed as a gap filler between the actual plot of s2 and where things will be in s3. And it feels that way, there’s a lot of moving pieces around to set up the next game here. Needed Katherine set free, Elijah out of the picture, Klaus out of town, Liz able to cover for our usual leads, Stefan to hand Elena off to Damon for the immediate future. The two pieces of set up that feel less like it (as in the end result is set up for the future, but didn’t seem completely done for that) being Stefan’s deal with Klaus and Jeremy’s death and resurrection.

About the only thing that qualifies as set up but feels more like a...goal is Alaric moving in with the Gilberts. And that’s mostly because Alaric was clearly in need of something to do all episode and in the end he ended up taking on responsibility for...at least Jeremy, since this episode isn’t really about his relationship with Elena. Ironically next season will be all about his relationship with Elena and mostly ignore Alaric and Jeremy’s relationship; and I’ll pretty quickly just on the Elena/Alaric idea (at least while Elijah’s out of the picture).

Speaking of Elijah, it’s weird how much...smaller...younger he seems around Klaus. Partly I think it’s that he’s no longer quite so in control as he’s been to this point, partly I think it may be falling into old habits of playing second fiddle to Klaus, partly I think he’s quite...flapped (as in the opposite of his usual unflappable) over having gone back on his word to...I’ll just say it like I mean it, going back on his word to Elena. Of course I also go back and forth on whether or not he knew she survived the ritual; and that could make him quite flapped especially if he doesn’t know it. *However* that is no excuse for Mr. carefully words everything to miss the fact that Klaus promised to “reunite” him with the family, and clearly that meant he was going to kill him (or dagger him) too, that’s always been obvious to me. So getting daggered is all his own fault for being an idiot.

Okay, so I can fanwank the Maddox did some mojo to get Ric to invite Kat and Klaus into the loft, and I can fanwank that Ric invited Stefan in at some point before this episode; however, ain’t no way Elijah had an invitation . If they hadn’t had Damon need an invite in two episodes ago I might be able to believe that Alaric’s repeated deaths had rendered him incapable of keeping vampires out like they will try and pull with why Elena doesn’t have control over invites into the Salvatores’ place in s3.

This feels like the first episode where Klaus is a character rather than a plot point/device and a random sadistic bad guy. And it coincides with the first time he really sets out to seduce Stefan. Sure, so far it’s just to the dark side, but there’s a fair amount of eye-sex (those Originals are good at the eye-sex) going on for it being just about seduction to the dark side. Klaus does pretty quickly into s3 get lightened up (not in a more good guy sense, in a more fun and slightly layered way, and then later a more bumbling way) a lot over the way he is even here, but they had at least taken a small step that way here.

You know, from the way it’s set up here, you would have thought these was going to be more of an arc in s3 about Bonnie and the witch spirits, but they never did much with it. Since that is the *one* plotline I’m actually interested in going into s4 I have mixed feelings rewatching this. Because they completely failed to capitalize on it in s3 but they’ve had time to think about it now so maybe we’ll finally get a good Bonnie arc in s4. Yeah, it’s a pretty slim hope for being the only thing I’m interested in at this point.

I’m kind of pissed off about one thing in Jeremy’s story, because it borders on saying that Jeremy shouldn’t dare go off on his own and shouldn’t do things that are important to him if the others aren’t with him. While this does piss me off slightly on Jeremy’s own behalf (seriously, kid could stand to be given some agency over his own life), it more pisses me off because it could just as easily be used as justification for the boys always hovering around Elena and trying to control her life, and I think we’re all pretty clear on how much I dislike that about them.

Okay, two things piss me off about it. Because did anyone ever *tell* Elena her brother had been shot? I’m sure they tell her afterward, but it didn’t seem important for them to tell her when they thought he was dead. I may fanwank it that Liz took her phone when she brought her to the police station and she had made a jailbreak before anyone could come and tell her but...it feels a lot like the Elena-Damon relationship being given higher priority that the Elena-Jeremy one, and...well I don’t like that either, ever.

The thing is, there really isn’t an Elena story is this episode. It looks like it might be at a few points, mostly early on, but Elena’s pretty much sidelined at this point. Now if that felt intentional, that after everything she’s been through she’s just turning it off (and it almost feels that way at the beginning) and the narrative was reflecting that, it would be one thing. But it really comes more across as Elena’s role in the episode wasn’t to be Elena but to be the Salvatore love ball that gets passed to Damon here. We get no growth in *Elena’s* feelings going from shutting Damon out to “I like you now.” We can assume she was just being nice to the dying guy but it’s presented like it’s a bigger deal than that. Hell, we don’t even see her reacting to the fact that he just BIT her when she decides to play nursemaid. So of course we don’t get her feelings on what happened to Jeremy while she was immersed in vampire drama, because that would be to acknowledge that she has a life outside of the Triangle.

So, having exhausted the characters I care about, let’s talk about the characters the episode was about. Really, aside from being the obvious choice for the titular I laying dying, Damon...is himself only kind of a character here. And Stefan this episode is sort of undercut by what we saw happen in s3. So which to handle first...

Might as well do Damon before I go on a Stefan rant. Now, I don’t know if it’s just that I’m about as far from a Damon fan as it’s possible to get, but I feel like Damon dying is more the reason so many other things in the episode happen than actually being about him. Because what does him admitting that he really mostly has himself to blame for being a vampire really add to his character? The audience already knew that, we’d seen him hunting with Katherine back in 1864; we knew he wanted her to change him so they could be together forever; we knew that, while Kat may have mislead him about the depth of her affection for him, particularly for him-and-only-him, he wasn’t the one compelled into loving her. And really, we’ve very seldom seen him deny any of those things, especially back in s1 when he was all about Katherine so it really doesn’t come across as if he’s having any kind of grand revelation about himself/his life.

However, the scene between Damon and Ric (the conversation neither of them was drunk enough to have) was interesting from Alaric’s POV. The scenes between Damon and Stefan were good for them as a pair, if not for Damon on his own. Damon’s illness is what gets Jeremy shot. And the scenes between him and Elena are just weird. Okay, I actually do like the first one, before Damon gets really sick, because that one felt like it was two characters (note Elena actually felt like character there) trying to deal with the situation between them, and Damon actually worked for me in that scene too, since he was trying to say goodbye without saying it, and apologize without quite saying it, and encouraging her without tipping his hand basically it actually felt like he cared for once. The later scenes though? Blerg, they do nothing for me because by that point Elena’s abandoned characterhood for the sake of the plot and Damon’s just saying thing because he’s dying (oh and he just got her brother shot, let’s not forget that).

Okay, Stefan...Stefan. At this point last season I was looking forward to Stefan’s arc after this. Because even though he wasn’t the most interesting here, I thought he had a lot of potential for a character journey afterward. How does the show deal with its main romantic lead turning to the dark side? How will Stefan feel about it when he turns the switch back on (because clearly he would at some point)? This should be a chance for us to learn who Stefan is when stripped down to his core and forced to come back from it.

Well, we got a few good episodes of that, I’m not going to take the first few eps away from them. But after that? What we’ve learned is that Stefan is an asshole who blames other people for his choices and acts like his actions from those choices shouldn’t matter and won’t acknowledge the people he hurt but will become more controlling of other people’s actions and reactions. Okay that’s a ways off, but I want to put my issues with Stefan here in context of my views after seeing this arc play out, because I can’t really judge it the way I did at the time any more.

Stefan makes a choice this episode. Of his own free will he valued Damon’s life over any that he would take by becoming a ripper again. Yes Klaus got him high on blood, but we saw during those scenes that human blood alone wasn’t enough to make him turn it off. That’s the result of him and Elena’s plan to get him to better handle human blood, he’s still rational, if eager to keep feeding, while it’s going on. And in the end, Damon’s been cured and what’s at stake is what Klaus might do if Stefan goes back on their deal. And there, finally there, he ought to understand why Elena was willing to die rather than defy Klaus; because he chooses to do what Klaus says rather than risk the consequences of defying him.

TVD morality tends to fall into very pack mentality. Better the deaths of a hundred strangers than three people you know. While I wouldn’t necessarily say the show says it’s “right” we’re definitely lead to feel more for Rose’s death than those hikers Jules killed the same night. Liz is presented as close minded for thinking vampires are murderers when THEY ARE (yes even Caroline, her first kill might have been more or less an accident, but those cops she killed to save Stefan and Damon? straight up her fault); because they’re in our pack and all those people (or at least most of them) that have died aren’t, we’re supposed to take the side that wanting justice for those people is wrong. If the vampires didn’t exist outside the laws of humans, they could be brought to justice for what they’ve done; but since vampires keep themselves secret, the humans who fight them have to do so in secret too.

Where am I going with all this? Because what Stefan does at the end of the episode is straight up murder a woman, and he’ll do it who knows how many more times in that ten years he was supposed to give Klaus, or even in the months he does end up spending with him. He’s a vampire, in TVD mythology he has the ability to turn off (or at least down) his feelings of guilt for doing that, and it’s all the more justifiable to him because he’s doing this to protect people he loves; but that’s not the same as not being at fault for it. What the show had the potential to do was tell a really complex story about what happens when he would be forced to confront what he did, not push it away and not feel about it; how does he live with it once he has to deal with it; what’s that process like?

While clearly I’m not the most forgiving towards characters, in the end the story didn’t ask if I could forgive him for this; it asked me to forget. It said it wasn’t his fault or his choice and any measure of guilt he did feel was enough since he didn’t do anything to feel guilty for himself. He doesn’t have to atone or find a way to live with himself after what he did, because it’s not his fault that he did it.

Wow, that’s a ramble, and I didn’t even end up bringing Elijah’s apology letter into it...

Next time:
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