Thursday, February 4, 2010

Vampire Diaries - Unpleasantville, S01E12

Vampire Diaries has the uncanny knack of making me actually think about Vampire lore and its development and place in society.

Last week, Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) wrote a paper commenting on his great-grandfather's journal about vampires during the civil war, indicating that these monsters were a depiction of the Union soldiers threatening the peace of the area. So this week, when vampire Noah (Dillon Casey) showed up on Elena (Nina Dobrev)'s doorstep, posing as a pizza boy, and thus got her permission to enter, I began thinking about where that part of the lore came from.

Likely, it was a warning - don't let just anyone into your home. How many times, when someone comes to your front door, do you ask them inside? Maybe it's just into the foyer, to keep the cold out, or keep the cat in, maybe they are bringing in a delivery or are there to fix your cable? And you may ask how often that happens after dark, but here, in Canada, in the winter months, dark comes pretty early. And, fine, the likelihood of vampires being real is pretty slim, but does that mean that we should be any less cautious about who we ask in? If Elena, who knows there are vampires out there and knows that one is after her, does not pay attention to whom she lets in her front door, how careful are the rest of us?

On top of getting my mind thinking, Vampire Diaries was also really fun this week. Between the 50s style dancing and the developing love stories, there was a generally happy tone. Elena and Stefan (Paul Wesley) are happily reunited, and past the Katherine thing, Matt (Zach Roerig) and Caroline (Candice Accola) have the beginnings of what might turn into the only normal relationship on the show, and Alaric (Matt Davis) and Jenna (Sara Canning) are going to go on a date, despite his issues about his late wife.

I must comment on the wife, Isabelle. She was from Virginia and has the same name as Elena's birth mother. Too bad that a simple mention of her name wasn't thought enough for us to notice it; Jenna had to give Alaric a questioning look, as if to say there could only be one Isabelle in the entire world - it is such an uncommon name that your wife must be my niece's mother.
Subtlety people, subtlety!

Ah well, this episode was terrific regardless, allowing most of the characters to shine, even if only briefly. When Stefan and Damon (Ian Somerhalder) tortured Noah, and then killed him, for the first time we really saw Stefan's dangerous side. It's good to know that if any vampire other than his brother threatens Elena, he's ready to protect her. Also, when Alaric was passing by, and Damon questioned him, but he was holding vervain, now that was just a beautiful moment of Damon being over-confident, and Alaric sweating about it just enough.

What was your favourite part of the episode?

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