In preparation for the new season, I’ve looked over where we have been so far in this journey of discovering just how obsessed one woman can get with a teen vampire soap opera (embarrassingly obsessed, in case you missed it). I am not a “hater”, and you all know who you are, but I am not an apologist either. I know there are issues with this show that I love, but there is still a great deal to recommend it. Much more than on just about any show. I have given up on True Blood and am thrilled to pieces it is being put out of its misery next year, yet there is much to be discovered on this show about one man’s emotional arch from naive boy, to unbridled killer, to antihero, to actual hero. What, did you actually think the heart of this show was a teenage girl and her diary?
Let’s start with that teenage girl, shall we? I know that it is very fashionable to hate on Elena, just as it has always been fashionable for we ladies to hate on each other to prove some kind of credibility to the men we seek approval from. (Here is where I pissed off half of you, right? Then it’s just like my recaps.) As a grown-ass woman I have a hard time digesting how I would deal with all that Elena has face between the ages of 16 and 18. I had a nervous breakdown during this time when I didn’t get into my first choice of college and my prom date groped another girl. I do believe if I had lost my adoptive parents, biological parents, guardian aunt, substitute father/guardian, and also discovered there were vampires and my blood was at the center of a thousand year old curse, I may make some bad decisions along the way.
It doesn’t help that not a single person seems to give a damn about what Elena wants. Even the one person who really sees her and wants her happiness more than anything, turned on her this year. Yes, I’m talking about Damon. Here is one of the bad. I can forgive him when he force-fed her blood to keep her alive if the sacrifice with Klaus went to hell, because she has to sort of be alive to be able to make her own decisions, and I never thought martyrhood was a valid decision for Elena. However, when she went off the rails and chose to beg Damon to turn it all off (yes, I do believe she was consciously asking for that), Damon and Stefan thought they would be surrogate daddies and decide what was best for her. They would force that fucking cure down her throat for her own good and she should stop worrying her pretty little head over it. After finally breaking out of her box, Elena had the chance to be an incredible vampire. She already was a better version of Elena as was her wont of not being up for sacrifice every 5 damn minutes, now they were going to take that opportunity from her and shove her right back up on that pedestal; perfect daughter, perfect friend, perfect compassion, perfectly rubbish.So she was a little bitey with the cheer competition. She didn’t KILL that girl, which already made her a better vampire than bloodaholic Stefan. So she was drinking and dancing on tables. Welcome to most girls in their 20s. Every single person around her was deciding what was best for Elena because of what their own baggage told them.
Now to Damon. I don’t even know what to say. I adore him and his character arch, even though it took a very bad dip this year. He was always the one to see the big picture and have the very best plans. This whole cure fiasco had bad idea written all over it and the only person to scream it from the mountaintops was Kol, for god’s sake. Damon should have seen right through it immediately and said “Hell to the no.” Instead, he blithely went along with Shane, ignoring his gut reaction (WHICH HE SHOULD NEVER IGNORE), because STEFAN thought Elena needed to be human? When had Stefan ever been right about anything? Stefan cannot even be around a papercut without taking out a girl scout troop, what did he know about being an emotionally stable vampire?
“Oh, but Stefan is responsible for how well Caroline turned out.” Yeah, let’s discuss that for a second. Caroline ignored Stefan’s teachings on animal blood and then was the one to prop him up more than he ever helped her. Also, the lesson she seemed to absorb this season better than any other was be a sanctimonious, judgemental snot about your friend’s love life while ignoring the fact you wanted to hump the actual demon in your midst. I adore Klaus and his dimples and the humping to me makes perfect sense, but he did sort of paint the town red in a bad way. Caroline had been my sparkly unicorn of happiness and then she backslid into season one Caroline, who no one wanted back. She is better than that.
The last friend from the original trio breaks my heart more than any other and I don’t know how it can be fixed. Bonnie is dead. The one character to be used and abused even worse than Elena was given such an undignified exit. Elena had more people die and more happen to her, but the whole circle focused on her all the time. When did anyone ever take a look at Bonnie and, oh I don’t know, THANK her instead of consider her like a bottle of cleaning solution you keep on a shelf? “What, we have a mess again caused by our own stupidity? Let’s take down this bottle of LiquidWitch© to remove that stain and then place it back, not to be thought of again until we have another catastrophe. Yes, eventually we’ll use it all up, but that’s neither here nor there.” We never got a dark Bonnie that I was hoping for, where she says “Fuck all, y’all. I’m outty.” God, I wanted her to team up with Silas and really make them twitch.
Silas. What is there to say about this storyline other than HELL YES, finally Paul Wesley gets to be the badass he needs to be and not mopey mop Stefan. I loved the Rippah and hope Silas is horrible in a million ways and Paul eats every piece of scenery on the set. I am almost giddy with the prospect. I make no secret of my issues with how Stefan is written, but many take that for a critique of Paul. It isn’t. Can you not just see a smirking Stefan and Bonnie making the town of Mystic Falls dance to their tune?
I don’t see how this can happen with Bonnie dead. And this is another issue with the show. Yes, it is a mark of its greatness that people who matter die on this show. They have to in order for vampirism to mean something. However, does anyone else have grief burnout? So many characters died, beginning with Vicki, that left a little hole in my TVD heart. Vicki made perfect sense and was the game changer this show needed. Lost Girls was the show’s way of saying “Yo. We are not Twilight and we will stake you in the gut.” Caroline turning did nothing but improve her for the longest time. Jenna dying was horrible, but perfectly in line with being aware of the repercussions of your actions. They saved Caroline and Tyler, not giving a damn if two other people died as long as it wasn’t their people, and in turn someone even closer to home was killed. Didn’t really teach them a lesson because they continue to think only their people matter when it comes to death, but it was one I digested well.
But then they killed Alaric (sob! drink!). I get the politics behind Matt Davis leaving the show, but they know the reality of new shows, especially ones with such an incredible premise as Cult, failing so there should have been an opening for him to return. You can argue about closure, story, blah blah blah. Fuck that noise. Alaric was the heart and empathy of the show and with his passing, this last season lost a bit of that. Matt is an attempt at replacing him and DON’T YOU EVER HAVE MATT CRYING ALONE IN A CAR AGAIN OR I WILL HAVE AN ULCER, but Matt has enough crap on his plate with trying to buy a happy meal and a shirt that fits. He has not lived long enough to bring the gruff gravitas Alaric did. I truly feel Alaric’s missing presence is what led all of the characters to be off this year.
With Jeremy’s death, no matter how temporary, it was just too much for me. This boy has suffered just as much, and quite possibly MORE than Elena, at an even younger age. He has now lost every girl he loves and even his puppy back in Denver. Could someone at least ship him that dog? There needs to be conflict and darkness for a supernatural show to succeed, but there at least needs to be a glimmer of hope within the black or what is the point? Jeremy is now back, but he’ll have to live with the fact Bonnie paid the ferryman for his ride back from the other side. What kid can handle that guilt on top of all the other guilt he already bears?
The last bit of mess is in regards to mythology. No, I don’t mean the tangled mess of Silas, although I still don’t understand. He needs to drop the veil so when he dies he can go to heaven to be with the woman he loves and must take the cure so he can actually die, but she is dead and in heaven so must have been mortal even though it seems like there may be something supernatural about her and Quetsooya (I LOVE YOU KAT) is dead or alive or who the heck knows. No, the biggest one I have an issue with is the age of vampires is supposed to affect their strength, yet Elena kicked Kat’s ass (not likely), Jeremy overpowered Kol (excuse me?) and Damon got the jump on Silas (what now?). Every time we have one of this mythology hick-ups, it takes me right out of the plot. Stop it. Don’t give me the argument about how this is all make believe so rules don’t matter. Bullshit. If you design a universe it has rules and you MUST be true to them or the viewers cannot trust anything you say. I already suspend my belief so much I am the Golden Gate bridge, so don’t push it.
That brings us to this season and the promo pics showing two girls with bright smiles on a college campus. I am having a very hard time reconciling all that has happened with those shiny faces. I know time has passed, but probably not more than like 3 months. It is such a tempo change it may just give us all whiplash. I know I was just saying we must have hope in order to balance the bleak, however there must be an acknowledgement of the PTSD they each must be suffering. There cannot be a reset and complete brush off of all that has occurred or it is like none of it mattered. It all mattered. Jenna mattered. Alaric mattered. Vicky, Carol, Grams, Isobel, Jon, Kol, Flan (maybe not him), Richard, Mason, Bill, Rose, Anna, Andi, and BONNIE mattered. Please let their deaths stand for something more than an emotional appeal.
So that’s all I have to say for now. “But Maddie, what about the baby, and Rebekah, and Elijah and his perfect hair?” I am sure you’re all saying this right now. Well they have their own show, so maybe they should have they’re own rant.;)
Let’s start with that teenage girl, shall we? I know that it is very fashionable to hate on Elena, just as it has always been fashionable for we ladies to hate on each other to prove some kind of credibility to the men we seek approval from. (Here is where I pissed off half of you, right? Then it’s just like my recaps.) As a grown-ass woman I have a hard time digesting how I would deal with all that Elena has face between the ages of 16 and 18. I had a nervous breakdown during this time when I didn’t get into my first choice of college and my prom date groped another girl. I do believe if I had lost my adoptive parents, biological parents, guardian aunt, substitute father/guardian, and also discovered there were vampires and my blood was at the center of a thousand year old curse, I may make some bad decisions along the way.
It doesn’t help that not a single person seems to give a damn about what Elena wants. Even the one person who really sees her and wants her happiness more than anything, turned on her this year. Yes, I’m talking about Damon. Here is one of the bad. I can forgive him when he force-fed her blood to keep her alive if the sacrifice with Klaus went to hell, because she has to sort of be alive to be able to make her own decisions, and I never thought martyrhood was a valid decision for Elena. However, when she went off the rails and chose to beg Damon to turn it all off (yes, I do believe she was consciously asking for that), Damon and Stefan thought they would be surrogate daddies and decide what was best for her. They would force that fucking cure down her throat for her own good and she should stop worrying her pretty little head over it. After finally breaking out of her box, Elena had the chance to be an incredible vampire. She already was a better version of Elena as was her wont of not being up for sacrifice every 5 damn minutes, now they were going to take that opportunity from her and shove her right back up on that pedestal; perfect daughter, perfect friend, perfect compassion, perfectly rubbish.So she was a little bitey with the cheer competition. She didn’t KILL that girl, which already made her a better vampire than bloodaholic Stefan. So she was drinking and dancing on tables. Welcome to most girls in their 20s. Every single person around her was deciding what was best for Elena because of what their own baggage told them.
Now to Damon. I don’t even know what to say. I adore him and his character arch, even though it took a very bad dip this year. He was always the one to see the big picture and have the very best plans. This whole cure fiasco had bad idea written all over it and the only person to scream it from the mountaintops was Kol, for god’s sake. Damon should have seen right through it immediately and said “Hell to the no.” Instead, he blithely went along with Shane, ignoring his gut reaction (WHICH HE SHOULD NEVER IGNORE), because STEFAN thought Elena needed to be human? When had Stefan ever been right about anything? Stefan cannot even be around a papercut without taking out a girl scout troop, what did he know about being an emotionally stable vampire?
“Oh, but Stefan is responsible for how well Caroline turned out.” Yeah, let’s discuss that for a second. Caroline ignored Stefan’s teachings on animal blood and then was the one to prop him up more than he ever helped her. Also, the lesson she seemed to absorb this season better than any other was be a sanctimonious, judgemental snot about your friend’s love life while ignoring the fact you wanted to hump the actual demon in your midst. I adore Klaus and his dimples and the humping to me makes perfect sense, but he did sort of paint the town red in a bad way. Caroline had been my sparkly unicorn of happiness and then she backslid into season one Caroline, who no one wanted back. She is better than that.
The last friend from the original trio breaks my heart more than any other and I don’t know how it can be fixed. Bonnie is dead. The one character to be used and abused even worse than Elena was given such an undignified exit. Elena had more people die and more happen to her, but the whole circle focused on her all the time. When did anyone ever take a look at Bonnie and, oh I don’t know, THANK her instead of consider her like a bottle of cleaning solution you keep on a shelf? “What, we have a mess again caused by our own stupidity? Let’s take down this bottle of LiquidWitch© to remove that stain and then place it back, not to be thought of again until we have another catastrophe. Yes, eventually we’ll use it all up, but that’s neither here nor there.” We never got a dark Bonnie that I was hoping for, where she says “Fuck all, y’all. I’m outty.” God, I wanted her to team up with Silas and really make them twitch.
Silas. What is there to say about this storyline other than HELL YES, finally Paul Wesley gets to be the badass he needs to be and not mopey mop Stefan. I loved the Rippah and hope Silas is horrible in a million ways and Paul eats every piece of scenery on the set. I am almost giddy with the prospect. I make no secret of my issues with how Stefan is written, but many take that for a critique of Paul. It isn’t. Can you not just see a smirking Stefan and Bonnie making the town of Mystic Falls dance to their tune?
I don’t see how this can happen with Bonnie dead. And this is another issue with the show. Yes, it is a mark of its greatness that people who matter die on this show. They have to in order for vampirism to mean something. However, does anyone else have grief burnout? So many characters died, beginning with Vicki, that left a little hole in my TVD heart. Vicki made perfect sense and was the game changer this show needed. Lost Girls was the show’s way of saying “Yo. We are not Twilight and we will stake you in the gut.” Caroline turning did nothing but improve her for the longest time. Jenna dying was horrible, but perfectly in line with being aware of the repercussions of your actions. They saved Caroline and Tyler, not giving a damn if two other people died as long as it wasn’t their people, and in turn someone even closer to home was killed. Didn’t really teach them a lesson because they continue to think only their people matter when it comes to death, but it was one I digested well.
But then they killed Alaric (sob! drink!). I get the politics behind Matt Davis leaving the show, but they know the reality of new shows, especially ones with such an incredible premise as Cult, failing so there should have been an opening for him to return. You can argue about closure, story, blah blah blah. Fuck that noise. Alaric was the heart and empathy of the show and with his passing, this last season lost a bit of that. Matt is an attempt at replacing him and DON’T YOU EVER HAVE MATT CRYING ALONE IN A CAR AGAIN OR I WILL HAVE AN ULCER, but Matt has enough crap on his plate with trying to buy a happy meal and a shirt that fits. He has not lived long enough to bring the gruff gravitas Alaric did. I truly feel Alaric’s missing presence is what led all of the characters to be off this year.
With Jeremy’s death, no matter how temporary, it was just too much for me. This boy has suffered just as much, and quite possibly MORE than Elena, at an even younger age. He has now lost every girl he loves and even his puppy back in Denver. Could someone at least ship him that dog? There needs to be conflict and darkness for a supernatural show to succeed, but there at least needs to be a glimmer of hope within the black or what is the point? Jeremy is now back, but he’ll have to live with the fact Bonnie paid the ferryman for his ride back from the other side. What kid can handle that guilt on top of all the other guilt he already bears?
The last bit of mess is in regards to mythology. No, I don’t mean the tangled mess of Silas, although I still don’t understand. He needs to drop the veil so when he dies he can go to heaven to be with the woman he loves and must take the cure so he can actually die, but she is dead and in heaven so must have been mortal even though it seems like there may be something supernatural about her and Quetsooya (I LOVE YOU KAT) is dead or alive or who the heck knows. No, the biggest one I have an issue with is the age of vampires is supposed to affect their strength, yet Elena kicked Kat’s ass (not likely), Jeremy overpowered Kol (excuse me?) and Damon got the jump on Silas (what now?). Every time we have one of this mythology hick-ups, it takes me right out of the plot. Stop it. Don’t give me the argument about how this is all make believe so rules don’t matter. Bullshit. If you design a universe it has rules and you MUST be true to them or the viewers cannot trust anything you say. I already suspend my belief so much I am the Golden Gate bridge, so don’t push it.
That brings us to this season and the promo pics showing two girls with bright smiles on a college campus. I am having a very hard time reconciling all that has happened with those shiny faces. I know time has passed, but probably not more than like 3 months. It is such a tempo change it may just give us all whiplash. I know I was just saying we must have hope in order to balance the bleak, however there must be an acknowledgement of the PTSD they each must be suffering. There cannot be a reset and complete brush off of all that has occurred or it is like none of it mattered. It all mattered. Jenna mattered. Alaric mattered. Vicky, Carol, Grams, Isobel, Jon, Kol, Flan (maybe not him), Richard, Mason, Bill, Rose, Anna, Andi, and BONNIE mattered. Please let their deaths stand for something more than an emotional appeal.
So that’s all I have to say for now. “But Maddie, what about the baby, and Rebekah, and Elijah and his perfect hair?” I am sure you’re all saying this right now. Well they have their own show, so maybe they should have they’re own rant.;)