Sun Blogs: The TV Yogi
Vampire Mediocrity: Now with character development!
November 4, 2009 - 12:00amGood Lord! Is it that time already? What? You say it is Wednesday? Which Wednesday I might ask? Instead, perhaps I won’t ....
Halloween returned this past weekend to tempt us Cornellians with the Devil’s ways (unstable table dancing, pumpkin beer, hot Ghostbusters and that sandwich at CTB with all the bacon that shall not be mentioned. I ate one today!!). Oh yeah. The lovely and inscrutable (joke!) Vampire Diaries returned as well to mystify our brains and seduce our silly bleeding Americampy hearts.
No. Seriously. Actual “Things” happened. Let’s talk about it. OK! Go:
My most Godzilla-sized problem with this show, thus far, has been that there seems to be nothing special about this town and its folks. It might as well be Friday Night Lights with vampires, or Stars Hollow with Vampires, or One Tree Hill with Vampires. That last one is particularly ghastly (I hold my breath when I flip past that shit like it’s a Salem graveyard). However, we finaaaally start to see a few personal complexities in the characters just like with real fleshy people! Oui Oui, C’est Incroyable!
Cougar Vicki sloppily attempts to come to terms with being dead (L). Elena and Stefan are trying to be everyone and their mother’s mother. Damon is sad because his toys are broken. Poor baby Jeremy becomes even more broken. The twitch finally realizes that magic is like totes awesome! and THEN an unspeakable crime occurs, to which I will return in a few paragraphs.
Stefan and Damon declared a momentary truce this week. More than ever, we detected the unequal nature of their relationship. As often as we are beaten over the head with Stefan’s increasingly boring heroism, we’re also discovering his physical impotence in relation to murderous Damon. Oh word! You spent decades attempting to be a good person? Whatevs ... you ain’t no David Boreanaz, foo. Despite that fundamental and irreversible flaw, the lame and ugly aspects of Stefan’s vampiric ascetism could lead to interesting developments. Hopefully next week’s “Stefan falling off the wagon with a blonde” exploration will look into these things.
Damon the Smiley Demon put on his sad face. Nihilism gave way to some feelings? (Julie’s note: Haha remember in True Blood: “That was pure NIHILISM!) Hmm ... let’s say disappointments. Julie may disparage my efforts to psychoanalyze those liberated from morality, but I nonetheless forge ahead! Damon was forced to experience some of the more unsavory consequences of his impulsive behavior. People getting hurt, you say? Hah! No silly. He realizes that occasional playtime with people-babies doesn’t always result in funtimes for him. He turns Vicki not only because he is bored but also because he is super sad and lonely. I mean let’s review: The guy has no apparent friends, he was dating a creepy cheerleader whom he obviously detested, his brother hates his guts, and the reincarnation of his lost love seems destined for the aforementioned guts-hating brother. Sure, he’s not so chipper after the death of Vicki because he’s lost one of his faux playmates, but he’s probably also realized that he’s not getting what he desires with all his smiling, bull-shitting and random murdering.
Stefan and Elena have become the stodgy old folks in this show, seeing as the only “parents” around are Tyler the meathead’s small-time richy rich drunks / poor Scooby gang members. I expected to find this annoying but it actually gave these two characters some much-needed dimension. Thus far, I’ve been assuming that Elena had just picked Jeremy up at the loser-druggie pound and penned him into his room to occasionally let him out to light a spliff, eat some kibble and take care of cougar-related “needs.” Finally, we see these two randos as brother and sister, comforting each other after realizing that for some reason, death is intertwined with their lives. Parents dead. Then Vicki dies. Elena looks like this dead bitch. Then they’re both dating dead people. Is there a theme? Who the hell knows? Reason is beyond me at this point. Is it man’s inhumanity to man? No … that’s not it.
After that lackluster flashback to his youthful meanderings with tricksy ho / more fun Elena, his discussions with Vicki about his own struggles throwing off the mortal coil make him much more believable. He didn’t just pop out of the womb with a giant stake up his ass, correct? I mean he is certainly suffering from some kind of psychological condition. He’s obsessed with the doppelganger of the crazy biddie who killed him while she was making some freaky brotherly love. I say that’s weird, but all the gals say I’m old-fashioned.
Unfortunately, none of this can really make up for the DEATH OF VICKI. I MEAN OF ALL THE Y#&@*(%&#(@Q$%#(&%#(@Q&A stupid things.
Vicki becoming a vampire could have been an investigation into inner strength, disaffected youth and what freedom really is. Instead, we got an early burnout to a great storyline that left me sad, torn (and lying naked on the floor). Damon tells Vicki that turned her in order to help her. The interesting thing about her initial transformation is that vampirism is clearly just another, more potent, version of her addiction. Damon supposed that he might free her from low-esteem and some other dumb-shit force-fed to teenagers in self-empowerment seminars, but, in fact he forces her to confront the necessity of responsibility. She wakes up to Stefan lecturing her about controlling her urges and not giving into base instincts. How interesting might it have been to explore this reversal of fortune! I’m all for the suggestion that it is inevitable that Vicki fails, that she’s surrounded by doom, that Stefan’s success is perhaps unique, but why now? An episode is not enough time to gain an attachment to any one character’s personal struggle. So out of this cool plot development we got a big: 0000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000. OK that’s enough. But forrealz.
Some additional weird things:
What the devil is going on with the music in this show? Please implement a staff-wide music library purge of all whiney, pseudo-emo, filler music. Get some songs that actually relate to and perhaps add to what’s going on. You’ve forced me to hold up Gossip Girl as an example of something.
What’s happening with this founder’s council? They are so totally inept that they don’t provide any kind of center of power. Why don’t they know about the magic ringz, forged in whatever mordor-like volcanoes there are on the eastern seaboard? Why don’t they know what the Salvatore brothers looked like? Is it just that they forgot things and lost learning like the Medievals? Are pictures of those cats lying in wait in some Islamic vault? No. I am forced to conclude that they are just incompetent dummies.
I’m temporarily suspending belief on whatever outrageous lore is here employed. Caffeine warms their blood? She has to pee? Wait she doesn’t? Actually, now I have to, ugghh.
Damon hitting on drunky Daisy Buchanan was priceless, because drunk disillusioned olds acting sexy-like is ALWAYS funny. But it also showed that he’s spending some time thinking and spying instead of just stirring up trouble for the hell of it. Useful! This change seems to be more than an aberration when we see him protecting Elena from his own bloodlust and Jedi-mind tricking Jeremy for her. This is a Damon who’s almost contrite. He’s obviously attached to Elena and feels he might have gone too far. When he tells her that he “really doesn’t care about any of this,” it’s either a noticeably atrocious lie, or bad acting. Who the hell knows.
*
At the end we have this melancholy gathering of Elena, Stefan and Damon on the porch. I had the sense that this whole show might be accidentally saying something about pre-destination. These three are clearly tied together. Elena isn’t Katherine, but she’s taken over her role in holding the brothers together. She can’t rid herself of her attachment to Stefan, and by proxy, Damon. The three look as if they’ve all been complicit in a crime. I am curious as to the true connection between Elena and Katherine. Is she Katherine’s great-granddaughter or something? That would be gross (awesome)!
Overall, this was a serious improvement. I’m judging improvement on the level of the verbosity the episode inspires in me. Halloween found these characters coming into their own a bit, and confronting some truly scary elements of all this fun magic, vampire stuff. Also, references were generally superior to last time. Haha, he would make a joke about Anne Frank! (Julie: Inappropriate!) Boo to 16-year-olds saying “glib” multiple times. The filming was way more interesting and I liked the bluish V. Mars-esque hues. Elena even got bitten! Jasmine Guy joined the cast! Dead Like Me was so much more awesome than this shit!
Carry on, my wayward teen drama, carry on.
hello
How could they pass up the great joke-set of Vicki's hiding place being the backseat of Tyler's car? Vicki, who they go out of there way to tell us is slutty, is found in the backseat of a footplayer's car? The jokes write themselves.
Was it just me, but did you find it that when Vicki gets a "vampire urge," her first thought is to pee and then her second thought is called Jeremy? So that's what's Vicki is into. Makes me think Jeremy, Tyler and a couple of other boys around town are some yellow-stained bed sheets.
Why does everybody think Elena and Katherine are related? I mean sure I look my family, but me and my great-great-great-great parents are twins. That's more a sign of incest that Elena's genepool is so limited. I'm going with Damon cloning Katherine and switching babies with Mr. & Mrs. Gilbert back in the day. I know that will never be the explanation, but how come no character ever mentions that it's not just a simple resemblences. Katherine and Elena are clones of each other.