TVD reaction post
Nov. 2nd, 2013 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthSo you may have noticed (but to be fair, you probably didn’t) I haven’t talked about this week’s TVD yet, because I was feeling apathetic on Thursday night and probably a bit contrarian to not watch vampire stories on Halloween. And really I only decided to watch it tonight because I started rewatching The Originals and decided just maybe I’d watch some TVD.
TVD 5x05
This episode felt really scattered to me. It seemed like all the plots, with the possible exception of the Katherine-Nadia one, were fairly shallowly explored.
The Caroline/Tyler plot...well it does have a problem in that I don’t really care. And while their last couple scenes were well performed they felt really tangential to any story actually going on. It’s a mop up of dangling plot threads, a clearing the way for Stefan/Caroline, and putting Tyler back on that bus where he can I assume pop up as a guest on this and TO when he gets around to it. Klaus is just such a non-issue now on TVD apparently that having him as a huge motivating factor in this drama makes it feel all the more disconnected from the TVD story. But then, I’ve felt that about a *lot* of the Tyler/Caroline story over the years, it just ends up being off in its own little bubble.
The college vampire conspiracy society plot shows a lot of potential, and in that plot it’s like Elena is a real character again. Elena and Aaron need to get drunk and hang out in cemeteries together and commiserate about survivors’ guilt. I can’t decide if I’ll end up shipping it; after all, if I’m going to ship Elena/Matt-stand-in, I might as well just stick with shipping Elena/Matt, but right now Elena needs someone pulling her away from the Triangle awfulness and into a story where she gets to be Elena again and Aaron seems like the person who could do that. And I really want to know what’s up with professor-man, so the show had damn well better not pack Elena off home when she’s on the verge of getting a real storyline.
The Silas plot...I didn’t dislike it, I mostly just resent it for not being the conspiracy plot that’s so much more interesting and about a character I actually care about finally, and her being that character again. The Silas plot involved Damon and Stefan, so I inherently care less about it. Tessa (I can spell that) is growing on me, she unleashed some righteous fury on Silas and I approve of people unleashing righteous fury on Stefan, Damon, or people who look like them (and Silas also for being Silas). The final turn I guess I’ll wait and see, but I do think it moved too fast to reverse what happened in this episode. Leave Silas out of it for an episode or two and let Elena have a real plot for a bit (hmm...that seems to be a sticking point for me), give Stefan’s amnesia a solid narrative, let the damn story be about the characters instead of the villain for a moment, you did it with Elijah back in the day and I liked Elijah way more than Silas.
Okay, the Katherine plot. This was the one story I felt was paced alright. It could have used a little more space (and I’ll get to the end in a minute), but it worked well with the time it had. I heartily approve of giving Katherine a legitimate storyline. And discussing her backstory with Klaus felt less out of place than bringing Klaus into the Tyler/Caroline breakup...though now that I say it that maybe just be my tastes in play; Originals and doppelgangers go together like peanut butter and jelly and how badly I wish ND had just moved to TO somehow...and now I’m getting off track.
Anyway, I loved Katherine’s story with Nadia, that felt right for her character journey. The ending...well it involved the Silas plot robbing my doppelganger girls of their starring roles. As much as I was against the human-Katherine plot at the end of last season, I’d kind of just started to come around to it, and for the series to waste this reset button on Silas it’s hard for me to approve. (I doubt anyone will be surprised that in my heart I was hoping for human-again-Elena, which was a contributor to why the initial human-again-Katherine and now undoing it make me grouchy.) The show barely scratched the surface of what it could do with Katherine being human, and while I suppose this end may not be the end of that, I’m grouchy that it was never about her. Damon got to call the shots with Katherine’s humanity and I will never approve of that; somehow I just keep getting more and more pissed off about Damon’s existence, and really show, I already hated him.
Basically as usual, if it’s not a Petrova I don’t care. I do want to know more of Nadia’s backstory though.
TVD 5x05
This episode felt really scattered to me. It seemed like all the plots, with the possible exception of the Katherine-Nadia one, were fairly shallowly explored.
The Caroline/Tyler plot...well it does have a problem in that I don’t really care. And while their last couple scenes were well performed they felt really tangential to any story actually going on. It’s a mop up of dangling plot threads, a clearing the way for Stefan/Caroline, and putting Tyler back on that bus where he can I assume pop up as a guest on this and TO when he gets around to it. Klaus is just such a non-issue now on TVD apparently that having him as a huge motivating factor in this drama makes it feel all the more disconnected from the TVD story. But then, I’ve felt that about a *lot* of the Tyler/Caroline story over the years, it just ends up being off in its own little bubble.
The college vampire conspiracy society plot shows a lot of potential, and in that plot it’s like Elena is a real character again. Elena and Aaron need to get drunk and hang out in cemeteries together and commiserate about survivors’ guilt. I can’t decide if I’ll end up shipping it; after all, if I’m going to ship Elena/Matt-stand-in, I might as well just stick with shipping Elena/Matt, but right now Elena needs someone pulling her away from the Triangle awfulness and into a story where she gets to be Elena again and Aaron seems like the person who could do that. And I really want to know what’s up with professor-man, so the show had damn well better not pack Elena off home when she’s on the verge of getting a real storyline.
The Silas plot...I didn’t dislike it, I mostly just resent it for not being the conspiracy plot that’s so much more interesting and about a character I actually care about finally, and her being that character again. The Silas plot involved Damon and Stefan, so I inherently care less about it. Tessa (I can spell that) is growing on me, she unleashed some righteous fury on Silas and I approve of people unleashing righteous fury on Stefan, Damon, or people who look like them (and Silas also for being Silas). The final turn I guess I’ll wait and see, but I do think it moved too fast to reverse what happened in this episode. Leave Silas out of it for an episode or two and let Elena have a real plot for a bit (hmm...that seems to be a sticking point for me), give Stefan’s amnesia a solid narrative, let the damn story be about the characters instead of the villain for a moment, you did it with Elijah back in the day and I liked Elijah way more than Silas.
Okay, the Katherine plot. This was the one story I felt was paced alright. It could have used a little more space (and I’ll get to the end in a minute), but it worked well with the time it had. I heartily approve of giving Katherine a legitimate storyline. And discussing her backstory with Klaus felt less out of place than bringing Klaus into the Tyler/Caroline breakup...though now that I say it that maybe just be my tastes in play; Originals and doppelgangers go together like peanut butter and jelly and how badly I wish ND had just moved to TO somehow...and now I’m getting off track.
Anyway, I loved Katherine’s story with Nadia, that felt right for her character journey. The ending...well it involved the Silas plot robbing my doppelganger girls of their starring roles. As much as I was against the human-Katherine plot at the end of last season, I’d kind of just started to come around to it, and for the series to waste this reset button on Silas it’s hard for me to approve. (I doubt anyone will be surprised that in my heart I was hoping for human-again-Elena, which was a contributor to why the initial human-again-Katherine and now undoing it make me grouchy.) The show barely scratched the surface of what it could do with Katherine being human, and while I suppose this end may not be the end of that, I’m grouchy that it was never about her. Damon got to call the shots with Katherine’s humanity and I will never approve of that; somehow I just keep getting more and more pissed off about Damon’s existence, and really show, I already hated him.
Basically as usual, if it’s not a Petrova I don’t care. I do want to know more of Nadia’s backstory though.
