(no subject)

[frelling_tralk]

I loved The Vampire Diaries this week, the Stefan and Damon relationship has always been my favourite. The flashbacks with Damon and Stefan really helped explain why Stefan was so wary of Damon at the beginning of the series, plus Damon's issues with Stefan in 1994 make sense with his lingering bitterness over Stefan never coming looking for him when he was being tortured for so many years. It always bothered me a little in the past flashbacks that Damon and Stefan just seemed to want to hang out with one another again, which was pretty far from the 'eternity of misery' dynamic that opened the show, so I felt like this episode really helped pull some of that together and explain why they were on such bad terms in early season 1

They both looked soooo good when they were by that car I have to say, and lmao at Stefan trying to convince Damon to drink the rat blood :P I enjoyed all of the little nostalgic touches too, like getting to see Uncle Zach again and explaining his relationship to them, or seeing younger Liz with the pic of Caroline and talking with Damon for the first time.

Damon and Bonnie scenes continue with being surprisingly awesome with their banter, aww at Damon getting quite protective over her this week, the two of them really seem to have bonded. I even found myself liking Kai more this week. Well perhaps like is the wrong word lol, but I found his character, along with his fucked-up background, pretty interesting!

Loved all of the Stelena scenes, the fake proposal was hilarious, and I really liked all of Stefan's words on what they both loved about Damon and how he still has to live on without him

Only gripe about this episode is that, while I love that they brought Alaric back, I wish that they had more interesting storylines for him outside of another romance with a Doctor :( I feel like they still don't know what to do with him outside of his bromance with Damon


I found Tripp quite sympathetic this week actually, after hearing the background about his wife being killed in front of him, and then being compelled to believed that he was the one responsible. I appreciate that indiscriminately frying them in a van makes him no better then them in a way, but eh I'm kind of over the show constantly showing us how awful characters like Damon and Enzo can be when it comes to slaughtering innocent people, and then expecting us to root for them over humans. I know that following vampires is the premise of the show, but still...I'm not necessarily saying that I want Damon marked for death, just that I'm having a hard time condemning the POV of a character for finding characters like Damon (who just last season killed Elena's friend after "Elena" breaks up with him) or Enzo (who this season kills and turns Stefan's girlfriend to make a point) a threat that need to be eradicated. Like we're not talking about characters with a dark history who are working to change, the show has made it clear time and time again that is just who they are, they are never truly going to change and become model citizens, so is it really wrong for a human to consider them too great a threat and better off dead?

But honestly I kind of felt like that back in season 1 too. It seemed like Stefan and Damon's father was being portrayed as closed-minded and in the wrong for not listening to Damon and Stefan, and we were naturally supposed to be horrified at seeing the vampires muzzled and dragged off to burn. But I could see it from his POV then too, the vampires were behind the killings and Mystic Falls was under threat for real. How else should their father have handled it if he suspected that a predatory species like vampires posed a real threat to the town, taking them all out must have seemed like the only option, yet I feel like the show wanted to present it as if only he had listened to Stefan and not been so quick to judge. Umm Stefan was being mind-controlled by Katherine, that was the only reason that he was defending Katherine and on the side of the vampires, and her turning his sons into vampires did lead to them having their own massive body count over the years

I don't know if this is a really weird way of watching the show though lol, and I'm certainly not condoning going after individual vampires like Caroline and Alaric who have done nothing wrong (which I do realise that is most likely going to be the case with the dedicated Vampire hunters), but eh with ~unreformed vampires~ like Katherine, Damon, and Enzo, I can't really find it in me to blame the characters who see them as a threat to be taken out. That's actually a totally rational POV when you take a step back from them as characters that you've gotten to know and like, and remember the amount of humans that they've killed or used as playthings


And Doctor Who!

I liked the whole fairy tale theme of this episode, and the visual of Maeve in the red coat lost in the forest :) I've seen some complaints on it sending the wrong message by saying that Maeve shouldn't have been put on meds, but in the context of the episode it didn't really bother me because it seemed to fit with the whole fairy tale theme for the Doctor to argue that adults shouldn't so quickly dismiss actually listening to what kids have to say. Heh at how frustrated the Doctor was at the kids all taking the Tardis in stride, Peter Capaldi was fantastic at working with the child actors in this episode. And major aww at the Doctor's face when Clara tries to send him away on his own because she doesn't want to be the last of her race.

I was confused as to where the older sister was supposed to have been when she suddenly appeared at the end though, was she supposed to have been hiding in the bushes the entire time or something?!? It felt like they were going for a heart-warming moment there, but it just felt so random that they didn't pull it off for me at all :p

And Danny saying that there are wonders closer to home and he feels no urge to travel with the Doctor was absolutely fine, but again it makes me wonder what exactly him and Clara are supposed to have in common when Clara is someone who is addicted to adventure and seeing what's out there. I don't think we've seen them really connect over anything so far?

And next weeks trailer certainly looks very intriguing!

Comments

[tellshannon815.livejournal.com]

Oh I'm glad to see you say that about Tripp, because that is so often how I feel about characters - we may be meant to hate them but looking at it from their point of view it's understandable why they react in the way they do. Seriously, don't ever get me started on the Others on Lost as one example, but there are lots of other characters I could say the same about.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I just can't really see them as the bad guys for going after vampires who actually do kill and use their brainwashing powers on humans, in their shoes you would totally consider them a scary threat to take out! It would be one thing if it was just prejudice against vampires as a species full-stop and they weren't actually hurting anyone, but we've seen many vampires freely killing people, so I can't really blame characters like Trip for feeling like the obvious course of action is to take them on. Like in his first intro we see him being concerned at people trying to shut up a young girl from talking about how she was attacked and drained of blood, yet somehow the writers are expecting us to side with the regulars and want that attack covered up because Elena has ~personal issues~ after all, never mind the threat that she represented to the innocent townspeople going about their business. In Trip's position I would have been side-eyeing them all too

And I love your icon :)