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Vampire Diaries: You’re Undead to Me

“What do we really know about him, anyway?”

Take that, dramatic irony! Since the beginning, we’ve known about Stefan and Damon, but our heroine hasn’t. What really matters, though, isn’t that Stefan drinks bunny blood and requires a 1000 SPF ring. He’s a Seinfeld fan, and a good cook. He still struggles with that lying thing, though. Like having his brother locked in the basement.

This was one of those transition episodes, building up towards Stefan’s big reveal to Elena, building up to some resolution between Damon and Caroline, building up the Logan angle. It’s always hard to know what to say about these episodes. It’s even harder with this one, since Damon was too vervained to get a single snarky one-liner in—and, no, I don’t think his joke about needing someone to mow the lawn is up to his usual standard. Although it was awfully on-the-nose.

Stefan and Elena are languishing: they know, and we know, that they’ll wind up together. But teenage angst and TV show rules dictate that they wait a while. Caroline continues to be drawn to Damon, who has some sort of medium-relationship with that crow. Jeremy and Vicki are enjoying their altered states, and Bonnie’s struggling with hers. The look on her face when she accidentally lit the car on fire was astonishingly vacant. Her powers are certainly growing, and she doesn’t seem too concerned about the harm she’s causing.

The council is getting going, too. If Logan had only listened to Elena when she told him what she was looking for, this season would have taken a very different shape. And, by the way, where does Elena’s aunt come into all this? Why doesn’t she get to join the council and take her sister’s place?

By the end of the episode, Elena pieced together the vampire thing, Damon escaped (and killed uncle Zach), Logan found the magic watch, and Jeremy and Vicki are on the skids. As I recall, the next two episodes were when I became a convert. It’s one specific moment that did it for me: I’m already semi-giddy with anticipation.

Bites:

• Stefan: “In the Dark Ages, when a vampire’s actions threatened to expose or bring harm upon the entire race, they would face judgment. They sought to re-educate them rather than punish them.” Ambiguous pronouns aside, this seems unlikely. The impulse to change someone’s mind rather than punish their bodies began in the Enlightenment. See Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault.

• Caroline: “You’re going for stripper-pole vibe this year…Maybe we should watch the cars in slow motion.” Why save the stripper-pole vibe for a single day? I try to look like lounge-act hardware at least twice a month.

• Elena: “Sorry…ugh…so not sexy.” I get stuck in my sweaters all the time, so I feel sympathy. Cardigans, babe. Cardigans.

• Matt: “She’s big on trust. So whatever you’re holding back from her? The more you try to hide it, the harder she’ll try to figure it out.” That’s not trust. Isn’t that the opposite of trust?

And Pieces:

• Stefan has a very eclectic set of tastes in books, movies, and TV shows.

• I am enchanted by the implication that the Salvatores replicate without women, and seem to spontaneously generate uncles. Maybe they have a magic ring for that, too.

• Instead of starting with a bite, this episode began with a betrayal: Stefan punishing Damon. Neat twist.

• Damon bit Vicki (again!) in the penultimate scene, but the real nail-biter came when Elena asked Stefan what he was at the very end.

Oh, I don’t know. Two and a half out of four... um... chickens parmesan.

(Screencap courtesy of vampire-diaries.net. Thanks!)

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for doing this. I missed TVD the first time around and someone on my flist convinced me to give it a try. It's really nice to have someone talking about the episode I just saw, even if you know where this is all going. You aren't giving away spoilers and you are at least meeting my need for a need for some kind of discussion about the episode.

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  2. Great insights with the Dark ages, spontaneous uncles and Matt confusing trust and distrust! I am intrigued to know about your moment of engagement with VD, I wonder what it is?!

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  3. I'm happy to wait for Josie to reveal her moment of engagement, because I haven't seen these episodes yet and this was the first one where I could feel myself getting sucked in, pun intended. A little darkness for Stefan was very welcome. Poor Zach.

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  4. Oh, no! The pressure is on!

    Don't get too excited about my moment of conversion: it's just one word, but it's said in such a great way, and such a funny context...well, you'll see.

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  5. So which one word from episode 6 or 7 was your conversion point. I haven't noticed it mentioned in the corresponding reviews.

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  6. Hi Patryk,

    I got the number wrong: it's episode 10, and the line (well, the line delivery) was "That sucks."

    It's hilarious, in context!

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  7. Found it. When I wrote the above comment I was at episode 9.

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  8. Well, at least the demeaning bikini car-wash fundraiser included the cheerleaders and football players so it wasn't just demeaning to women.

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  9. "I try to look like lounge-act hardware at least twice a month" - my image of you has been changed forever by this review. Josie.

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