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Hmm that wasn't too bad, Elena's grief was handled better than I was expecting from the trailer. I still wasn't a huge fan of it tbh, mostly because I'm not really a fan of Delena oops, but Nina did a nice job with it and I was happy that Elena's feeding on people didn't come off as quite as bad in the context of the episode. It was more Elena being out of control with blood lust, rather than her feeding on humans because of ~issues~ as I was fearing. (Not sure about Elena planning to be a Doctor though lol, other than the obvious with the easy access to blood, where did that motivation come from!? Yeah her father was a Doctor, but I always thought that Elena wanted to be a writer?)
I actually found myself more bothered by Matt, Caroline, and Sheriff Forbes trying to cover up Elena's assault. It's almost strange to look back now at the beginning of the series where the humans viewpoint would take priority, now it's all about it being a bad thing that Mystic Falls is free from vampires, it brings to mind Alaric's words in season 3 about Liz and Carol being so compromised now that they're putting their own family, the 'monsters', ahead of the innocent citizens that they had once sworn to protect. I actually thought that it was super-creepy when Matt practically kidnaps that poor girl, and then Caroline pops up ready to compel her. I just wonder if we're supposed to recognise the creepiness, and whether the show plans to explicitly address it, or if it's supposed to be recognised as not being that big a deal as the characters were all acting to protect Elena from discovery? I guess there must be some part of the show that wants us to recognise that the characters we are following are the monsters now though, as the opening teaser did have the classic horror movie opener that we got with Damon in the early days of season 1, only with Elena as the predator this time
Oh and I wasn't sure what to make of Elena asking Alaric to compel her being presented as one of the cliffhangers, I guess that means that Alaric is going to agree to do it? And then no doubt that Damon will return just as Elena no longer loves him, cue all the angst. It could even be a way of bringing the triangle back and having Elena fall for Stefan again, after forgetting about her love for Damon, although perhaps that's a bit of a stretch! Anyway, I just feel like the characters should know better at this point, it feels like a retread of emotionless Elena from season 4 obviously being a terrible decision even as Damon was choosing to do it, and I hope that Alaric would know better :( But we'll see how they handle it I guess!
I kind of liked the return to the douchier season 1 version of Tyler if I'm honest lol, and hmm he seemed to spark with Liv. I'm not opposed to that at the moment, although it does make me a little sad that it seems like the show is very definitely done with Tyler/Caroline, I get the feeling that the show is gearing up to be more about Stefan/Caroline now... Oh and it did strike me as rather odd for Alaric to warn Tyler about possibly retriggering his werewolf side. Yeah he's got a hot temper, but it's not like it's going to be that easy for him to accidentally kill someone again?! He only triggered the curse because of Katherine's influence back in season 2, same with Mason, and Tyler's dad never triggered it at all, even though he clearly didn't work much on trying to control his temper. Werewolves being as rare as they are would make sense with that curse actually being a pretty difficult one to break, yet Alaric seems to believe that Tyler's likely to activate it again just a few months after becoming human again? Not showing a very high opinion of Tyler there! :P
I'm REALLY bored of Jeremy's character, he did do the whole moping thing back in seasons 1 and 3 though, so I guess that was about time to bring it back around again for season 6! Lately it feels like his character is going nowhere, I wish they'd just let him stay dead as I really don't think that he brings enough to the show to justify the ridiculousness of bringing him back to life after months of being dead.
Umm not much more to add really I don't think, I really enjoyed Caroline's scenes, it's always nice when she gets a scene with Liz, and her scenes with Elena were great too. And the ending with Damon and Bonnie was nicely surreal lol, Ian looks surprisingly good in flannel :P Also I enjoyed having Ric back, although I'm not that into the show already setting up a new relationship which him which I'm probably not going to care about again, although heh I did appreciate the throw-away reference to what happened with Meredith!
And I found Doctor Who..confusing this week
I mean I'm not the first person to mention it, but it really did come across as having a weirdly pro-life agenda with the Doctor trusting the three women to do the right thing and save the baby no matter what, even though they didn't have the information that he did on whether it was going to be a threat to the Earth. It seemed to be very emotion-based and 'it's a baby!!!' that they should be drawn to protect above all else, but oops I'd kind of been leaning more towards the astronauts POV :P It was probably easier for Clara to trust deep down that the Doctor wouldn't have just taken off if there really was a chance of the Earth's destruction if they made the wrong choice, but I'm not sure how the astronaut was supposed to know that
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(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 06:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 06:18 pm (UTC)And yeah idk, maybe it's supposed to be more of that idea of the characters having lost their innocence now that Tyler is aware of the supernatural and his friends are mostly the kind of ~monsters~ where killing can occasionally be a thing, because otherwise it seems like kind of a stretch for Alaric to assume that having a hot temper = Tyler snapping far enough to kill someone in the near future
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 07:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 09:18 pm (UTC)I guess that it can be read either way but, even with the Doctor leaving them to make the decision, he basically admits to Clara that he did so just knowing that she would make the correct decision in choosing life. It made me a little uncomfortable because there was such a heavy subtext of that egg being a baby and you can't just kill a baby
Also it bothered me when the Doctor took off, he didn't have to make the actual decision for them, but he could have been idk hung around and been a little supportive :( Clara has always been there for him in the past, in moments like the 50th special when he had to make the tough job of whether to pull the level or not, so I could understand her finding the Doctor's attitude paternal and condescending in abandoning them to make the decision in the belief that it would be the right one
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 08:03 pm (UTC)Obviously 4 months have passed, though, and we don't really know what happen in those 4 months but Alaric warning Tyler about the curse made a lot of sense to me, because he DID almost kill Luke in that one scene. I mean, he might not have in front of all those people but he's definitely NOT that easy to control as we have seen and I think Ric knows him long enough to know that too. Besides: Tyler didn't seem all to happy to be a "normal human" now, if I understood that right. I mean, he WAS saying he had all the power being a hybrid and now he lost it all... and he hasn't even a family anymore whatsoever... I think he DID like being a hybrid, so activating the curse isn't THAT far fetched if he ever wants to have strength and power again...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 09:26 pm (UTC)And I'd agree that the curse could be something that a dissatisfied Tyler chooses to activate, I just found it hard to believe that it would be that easy for him to slip and accidentally kill someone as Alaric seemed to be suggesting. I mean yeah he did get pretty physical with Luke, but I didn't see him as being that close to killing him
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 09:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 09:04 pm (UTC)That's exactly what I took from it, yeah. Elena was doing everything Damon-style, including using threats of violence to get what she wanted, and that shot of Caroline appearing to stop the injured girl from running certainly looked as though it was meant to be creepy.
I mean I'm not the first person to mention it, but it really did come across as having a weirdly pro-life agenda with the Doctor trusting the three women to do the right thing and save the baby no matter what, even though they didn't have the information that he did on whether it was going to be a threat to the Earth.
And this I totally did not see when I watched it, heh, so I was surprised when I read other people's reactions. I can kind of see the parallel but I thought of it more as a "one innocent life vs potentially endangering many" kind of dilemma...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 09:42 pm (UTC)that shot of Caroline appearing to stop the injured girl from running certainly looked as though it was meant to be creepy.
Just that whole thing with the sheriff now being in on it, and her and Matt immediately working to silence the traumatised girl was so so creepy to me! I'm wondering if they plan to do any more with that, perhaps bringing in some kind of subplot with the guy who was trying to confront Matt and hear what she had to say, he seemed to really have a sense of something being wrong there
And this I totally did not see when I watched it, heh, so I was surprised when I read other people's reactions.
Possibly they didn't have that in mind when they wrote it at all, it was mostly the emphasis on it being a baby and therefore absolutely wrong to kill it, even though it hasn't ~hatched~ yet, that was jarring to me
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 09:48 pm (UTC)I hope so, I think there's a lot of potential in a story like that.
it was mostly the emphasis on it being a baby and therefore absolutely wrong to kill it, even though it hasn't ~hatched~ yet
I think the emphasis was because of the baby's innocence. It wasn't the baby's fault that its hatching would destroy the moon, nor did they know whether or not it would be hostile.
Thinking about it, it reminds me a little bit of the Adipose in Series 4. They were babies with a life cycle that actually killed some humans, but the Doctor saved them.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 10:49 am (UTC)Definitely, it didn't end up going anywhere when Alaric called Liz and Carol out and had plans to take over the council to protect the innocent citizens of Mystic Falls, but hopefully they do have plans to go with it this time as the premiere had a great set-up for it, and it's something that's needed addressing for a while now. The creepiest part of it all to me wasn't that Elena's friends were all working together to cover-up her activities, but that even Liz was doing the same thing when she's supposed to be the town Sheriff, if her conflict of interest is that great then maybe she should have thought about resigning a while back...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 04:05 am (UTC)YANA. It grated so much when everyone was condescending to her to say ~thank you for not letting me kill the baby!!!!1~~~ Mess.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 10:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 08:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 08:25 pm (UTC)I was scoffing from the very beginning of this episode, really. "It's one innocent life vs. all of humankind" is a really shitty decision to have to make, but the choice seems pretty clear to me. That's not to say that I disliked the episode overall, even with Clara giving a big "fuck you" to the entire population of Earth. It had some good things going for it, like Clara's argument with the Doctor at the end or, um...probably some other stuff I'm forgetting...but the anti-abortion subtext was headache-inducing.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 09:07 pm (UTC)I wasn't a big fan of the episode anyway tbh, it seems to be an episode that's more interesting in terms of giving us plenty to discuss, but I was pretty bored for most of the first half of it :(