The Vampire Diaries - Plan B



*** / ****
To have a really good antagonist, he or she has to one-up our show’s heroes. It keeps us coming back, hoping to see that evil-doer pay. Nina Dobrev was given a golden opportunity to both play the protagonist and antagonist. Dobrev had to add enough to each character to differentiate them. I do believe that Dobrev perhaps lacks the acting chops to significantly separate the two, but she does enough to give the two characters, Elena and Katherine, two personalities. In Memory Lane, Stefan awakens to find Katherine snuggling up with him, thinking it was Elena. Dobrev applies a certain particular facial change and subtly alters how she talks with the wickedness within her (and how the dialogue furthers her scheming and dangerous agenda) towards those at odds with Katherine while Elena is soft-spoken, gentle, and offers affection and friendship to those she loves and likes. Katherine is actually honest in what she says to Stefan: she is in love with him and always has been. Stefan had been warned not to continue his romance with Elena. They defied her and Elena’s Aunt Jenna pays for it. While away, Katherine has been “influencing” Jenna to spy on Elena. While Caroline was off with Elena and Stefan, Katherine took the time to “enchant” Jenna in secret, looking to discover if Stefan obeyed her warnings.

Meanwhile, Damon can’t help himself. No matter how he tries to not hurt Elena, his behavior always seems to eventually cause her grief. Elena and Stefan’s romance once again is undermined by Jenna stabbing herself in the stomach at Katherine’s command. This comes after Damon calls Katherine from Mason’s phone, mocking her after killing him. Mason bids the show adieu after being kidnapped—once Bonnie reluctantly applies her “brain on fire” aneurism, painful but to those who heal recoverable, to him—by Damon. While Stefan learns of the moonstone’s whereabouts in the well (told to him by Bonnie in a text), Damon sets out to torture Mason over his ties to Katherine and reasons for her wanting the moonstone. Because Mason is a werewolf, Damon shows no mercy, telling Jeremy while holding him in a chokehold (Jeremy finds himself in a chokehold a lot, doesn’t he?) that if the roles were reversed he’d do the same. Mason truly loved Katherine and believed he loved her, while Damon assures him that she was just using him. A hot fireplace poker is used by Damon to torment (and stab) Mason during his interrogation…this is rather sadistic, with Damon not at all bothered by his actions. He rips out Mason’s heart, considering this an act of benevolence, seeing as Katherine had capitalized on his naiveté. Well, Damon called him stupid, despite the fact that he had been just as much a patsy…the irony.

Jeremy just wants to be in the action, it seems. He arrives at Damon’s home, feeding him information about Tyler. Jeremy tries to keep Damon from following through with the murder of Mason, his efforts were in vain. And Damon continues to bully Jeremy, either with verbal jabs or physical altercation. Jeremy is often on the other end of animosity. He does promise Elena, as they agonize in the hospital after Jenna stabbed herself, that Katherine would suffer for what she done. That is kind of the chum to lure us back to the show over and over: seeing Katherine get what’s coming to her. That is where the ultimate satisfaction lies. Poor Stefan, in tears and aching in heart, just breaks as Elena tells him they must split up. And she departs as Damon tries to apologize for antagonizing Katherine. Elena, tears welling up in her eyes, just accepts that regardless of Damon’s actions, Katherine “won”.

And so how will Stefan respond to the loss of his beloved? At the beginning Stefan is lying in bed, under the covers with Elena. After a night of passionate sex (as implied later by Jenna, who is a “light sleeper”), the two of them seem happy and comfortably alone despite Katherine’s orders not to be intimate or together. Katherine was rolling around in bed with Mason. These two juxtaposed together, one is real while the other a façade. Katherine just wanted the moonstone, while Elena and Stefan just want to be a couple. And it is the love denied gothic soap staple, a textbook refusal to give the viewers what they want: their young couple being allowed to have a relationship without interference. That is part of the attraction as forces working against two who love one another often succeed. Viewers dedicated to the show want to see Elena and Stefan persevere the obstacles blocking their desire to be a couple, but Soap Opera 101 realizes that romance pitted against seemingly impossible odds, often under quite a tumult, keeps them coming back for more. So Elena and Stefan part ways as Damon remains frustrated at how his impulsive decisions have repercussions that hurt others.

While Bonnie finally gets a little time on the show, it is spent talking with Elena about their friendship suffering in the wake of Caroline’s vampirism thanks to Katherine. Katherine’s “if I can’t have Stefan, no one else can” grudge, vindictively orchestrating opposition against Elena; it has led to collateral damage. Katherine blatantly told Stefan that Elena would watch those she loves harmed. So Jenna is in the hospital and Caroline is a vampire. Bonnie helps Damon because she likes Stefan. But her witchcraft used to help Damon is out of courtesy only to Stefan. Bonnie is more of a device than a character further developed while caught within the vampire-werewolf-Katherine story arc. Besides opining to Elena about their friendship suffering, Bonnie is given very little. I hope for more. I have felt Bonnie has been the character undervalued and underdeveloped during the show up until this point. I think she’s much more than a plot device that helps propel the story of the Salvatores and Elena forward.

Caroline, on the other hand, is given a little screen time yet receives some good support by the writing team, allowed to bond with her mother (who realizes that since being turned, her daughter is emboldened with strength and isn’t as insecure or wrought with vulnerability) before blanking out the last few days, placing lies about having the flu and still enduring her estrangement with her daughter, purposely ignoring her in place of developed understanding between them. Painful as it was to “blind her mind”, Caroline felt it necessary to protect her mom.

So Mason is dead and Liz no longer remembers discovering the Salvatores are vampires, removing serious threats against the show’s principles. But Katherine is still out there, and her diabolical mind can concoct plenty of misery for those keeping her from the moonstone. So without Mason, Katherine eyes a “new werewolf”, putting a hold on Matt, ordering him to be the victim of Tyler! Can she be stopped? How long can she continue to torment Stefan and Elena?










The sequence with the well has Stefan dropping down into Vervain spiked water, gradually diminishing as Elena panics, requesting Caroline's help. Bonnie can do very little, as well. But with Caroline extremely strong, working a chain as Elena is descended into the well to rescue him, help was indeed arriving in the nick of time. Caroline speed racing to the rescue is just awesome. While down there she encounters snakes, seemingly bitten, yet no signs of effects ever show. I thought that peculiar. She does feed blood to Stefan. Agreeing to let Stefan feed from her to gain real strength, Elena was willing to give. But in order to keep her loved ones safe, she will remove herself from Stefan's life. So he'll feed from elsewhere...or from someone else? 

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