The Vampire Diaries: Before tomorrow, let’s discuss ‘The Killer’

The beginning of this is to explain the lack of reviews/recaps. Please skip down to get to the “review.”

After receiving a comment like this one, “crashing” another post as they said it… and receiving the most hilarious email I’ve been sent as a result of this site, I couldn’t let another episode go by without reviewing it (somewhat). Here’s what the email said:

I have been sitting at my computer for two weeks trying to f***ing
find the vampire diaries recaps where are they im seriously thinking
something is wrong are you okay i need them! medic medic plz 911

Okay, that one was about the photo recaps. But still. Regardless, I thought I would take this space to apologize about a lot of things in one fell swoop. Re Photo recaps: What’s been happening is this, I didn’t anticipate how busy I would be this semester. You may or may not know that I’m a fulltime student, and photo recaps take a lot of time, which in a period in which every class I’m taking has a semester-wide project, I haven’t had a lot of. I apologize about not doing them. And I don’t know if I’ll ever begin doing them again. There are other reasons which you can probably easily guess why I decided to stop the Vampire Diaries ones and not the Gossip Girl ones, but the main reason is I really only had time for one show at the moment. (I even skipped an episode there!) Now about the two reviews I’ve skipped. Well, I’m doing this one right now. And the previous one was just because of time, yet again. The same happened last week for “The Killer,” but this is an episode we should definitely talk about, at least a little bit.

I’m sorry that I haven’t really kept up with my blogging duties. And there are a lot of emails I need to reply to, as well. (If you’ve sent me an email in the past three weeks, just hold on, I will reply!) As other areas of my life get hectic, this part suffers and that’s not fair to the people who have been around and made NWN what it is today. I sincerely apologize for that and I hope you know I don’t take anyone for granted. I’ve been cryptic about this in the past, but I have a dream about something in the future that I want to do that could maybe make up for it? Or at least explain! Anyway, I love you.

Now on to the review.

Well, I don’t want to delve too much into my review-ness, even though sometimes people tell me they love the stream of consciousness. But mostly, I would love for us to have a little chat (hopefully people comment!) about the significance of this episode. We couldn’t let the week go by without discussing what could be one of the defining episodes of the series. Let’s begin with the bad and then transition (pun!) into the good.

First off, lately The Vampire Diaries has been having plot holes the size of the grand canyon. I can’t confirm this one personally, but others have told me that Katherine has in fact drunk blood from bags before. So this entire doppelgangers have to drink from the vein business continues to seem quite forced. Then again, those people could have been wrong; I have no idea. But if it turns out they’re right, I have a hard time believing it going forward. On one hand, I understand what the writers are trying to do here. They want to make it harder on Elena to not kill someone. But the truth is, her having to drink from the vein doesn’t add all that much to the suspense. So she went a little too far with Matt. Big deal. She could have done that without needing the vein, if that makes any sense. Why couldn’t she have just dealt with her bloodthirst normally? And by that, I mean, she could be craving human blood from afar and almost-kill someone by hunting them down. This way, it just seems like if Elena didn’t need the vein, she’d be perfectly normal and no one would be in harm’s way.

I don’t know if what I mean is being conveyed correctly, but I hope that above paragraph made some sort of sense. That’s just one of the plot holes. The other is timeline. Season 3 started off with senior year. Episode 9 of last season was homecoming; homecomings usually happen in the beginning of October. Then two episodes ago, it was Halloween. That would mean that the latter half of season 3 happened in less than a month’s time. Is that how long Jeremy was gone? Is that how long Tyler was gone? For like a week? What sense does that make? And now there’s going to be a Christmas episode which would mean that time has accelerated quite quickly. I feel as though no one is as adamant as I am about this! I should just let it go.

And the final one isn’t as much a plot hole as it is one of those “duh” twist moments that the series has had for some time now. As soon as Connor told Jeremy that only potential hunters can see the tattoo and that it grows with every vampire you kill, it seemed pretty obvious what was going to happen next. (Let’s not even talk about “Hey, let’s compel April so that we can give her vervain to never be compelled again!” WHAT?)

That said, the season’s most perfect twist came with a literal twist to Connor’s neck by Elena. Holy effing smokes, guys! WHAT? This is, truly, the only part of the episode that actually mattered. But it was an extremely important part of the series going forward, I would hope. I just was not expecting it to happen this soon. One on hand, Connor had to be “dealt” with because he was just a bit too intense. But on the other, this is still the first person that Elena has killed, and he was a human to boot. The fact of the matter is that she was also following Damon’s orders and truly believed that the way he saw the latest conflict (and how to correct it) was the right way to go about it. She’s mentioned this before, explicitly telling him that she truly believes the way he lives his vampire life is on the right path. Vampires should live like this, she stated.

It’s obvious that this is going to be a recurring theme for the remainder of the season (as if the show doesn’t drill that into your mind enough with every passing episode). I’m intrigued with how it will be handled in tomorrow’s episode. The obvious answer, to all of us, is that Connor needed to be put down in a sense. But in many ways the inherent problem with feeling any sense of… well, anything… for Elena’s sorrow is that the series never truly values human life. They tried to do it earlier this season when they lit all of the lanterns, but it may just be a case of too little too late. Even the scene outright told us that. I know it’s in Elena’s character to put everyone before herself (for the most part), and I can understand that she would think the act was deplorable, I just hope that when the next episode airs I’m able to “buy into it” a little bit more. Nothing of value was lost, however. Jeremy is going to become a hunter and he will lead everyone to the supposed cure. Connor being dead is really only bad for the audience. Let’s face it: the guy was kind of entertaining. I mean did you see how he killed that one hybrid? No, the other one! In matter of fact, both deaths were amazing.

Onto Stefan. Once again, it’s a bit tricky. Should we value that he wanted to find the cure so badly that he decided to fulfill Klaus’s wishes and keep quiet? Or should we disagree, given you could take it that he doesn’t think Damon nor Elena are well-equipped to deal with this information? His omitting of information did, indirectly, cause Elena to kill Connor, so there could possibly be direct consequences for his actions on behalf of Elena. Personally, I go in and out of both options all the time. I know that, personally, Elena sometimes can be the worst and during those moments I’m fine with Stefan trying to deal with everything on his own. And then other times, in a more objective sense, I see it as Stefan not thinking Elena is up to the task. And objectively speaking, even though Elena is in a period of transition as a character, it still makes her this weak damsel who needs saving all the time. And I don’t like that.

I’m also riding the fence on Bonnie. I like that Bonnie is finally somehow getting a storyline that isn’t just to prop up everyone else’s (even if they’re related weirdly), but I could not care less about Teacher Guy. (Also anyone think it’s creepy he can hypnotize Bonnie to take of articles of her clothing?) Well, I guess that’s not much of a con. Whatever allows Bonnie to tap into the depth of her magic is sort of okay with me. Make that happen.

And finally, over at Tyler’s house… duh Tyler didn’t cheat on Caroline, which would have been completely out of character. And Phoebe Tonkin, who is amazing, recently must have visited Australia because her accent is out of control!

All right, that’s basically what I thought of the episode (though I could have left some stuff out because it’s been a week). But now I’m interested in what YOU think! Let’s discuss!