Saturday, May 2, 2015

The Vampire Diaries, Season 6, Episode 20: I'd Leave My Happy Home for You



Vampire Diaries tries to do its level best to make me dredge up one teeny tiny fuck to give about Jo and Alaric’s upcoming nuptials. They fail – even when they throw in a male stripper and Alaric manages to invite the whole damn town to his party.

Of course in the middle of Jo’s now rather pathetic hen night (hey, doesn’t Liv get an invite? She is Jo’s sister) Bonnie decides to ask Elena about the humanity cure. C’mon Bonnie, you’re already throwing a Hen Night here you’ve managed to drag a total of 3 guests (INCLUDING the bride) and now you’ve got to talk about Elena too?

Honestly, at the wedding the priest is going to break off mid ceremony to talk about Elena. All the speeches at the reception will be about Elena. She will throw herself onto the dance floor, shoving Jo and Alaric aside so she can have the first dance.

They continue to talk endlessly about Elena taking the cure and Elena briefly raises that there are actually some really fun elements of being a vampire and Bonnie hits the elephant in the room – human Elena may not love Damon.

Damon and Alaric also talk about this at Alaric’s ridiculously huge stag party. C’mon, the wedding is the coming up and everyone is talking about Elena? They care about this wedding even less than I do!

Tyler, Matt and Enzo show up because everyone else was invited and we have to be reminded there are actually characters more pointless and superfluous than Alaric and Jo on the show.

While Stefan decides to call Caroline and whine. Ok I don’t like the characters but I’m feeling bad for Alaric and Jo now, absolutely no-one cares about them at their own parties. Anyway Enzo’s at the party to recruit Stefan to help his ripper mother

Who is currently hunting a Luke look-alike. Don’t tease me like that Vampire Diaries, it’s not cute. So Stefan goes to intervention her mixing lots of dubious addiction comparison with a heavy dose of passive aggressive spite over the whole she doesn’t really want to be their mother thing.

Stefan calls Damon to tell him all about it but Damon is largely uncaring (which I don’t disagree with – is there a reason he should?) of course Enzo has heard about Damon wanting to be human (somehow? Because it’s in the script I guess? Apparently because he got Alaric drunk which is ridiculous because everyone on this show drinks enough to be drunk all the time). After much snarking Enzo drops his own opinion on Damon turning human – he’s far too selfish for it.

Stefan continues to try and connect to his mother but Lily tells him why she’s not exactly warm and fluffy towards him – she doesn’t dislike Stefan but she doesn’t like who she was when she was his mother. She lived with an abusive, cruel husband and considered herself broken and weak – she’s not a very different woman and doesn’t want anything to do with who she used to be or any connections to that time – including her children. She then stabs him and runs off after killing a waitress. The lady likes her dramatic exits

Back to Matt and Tyler and their big plan to become cops is running awry because Tyler has realised he has a chance of killing someone as a cop – which means he’ll become a werewolf again. Matt decides to pick a fight and accurse Tyler of needing self-control (what, to not kill people in a potentially violent profession? To suppress his werewolfness? Because being a werewolf is controllable now? What does Matt know about it anyway?) Tyler hits him and walks away.

Elena and Damon meet up for more turning human discussion and Elena finally touches on an important element: Damon loves being a vampire and may resent her for turning him human (Damon also talks about being able to eat fatty food without any concern)

Of course Damon and Elena having a heart to heart leaves Jo and Bonnie alone (seriously on Jo’s hen-night? Elena you’re a terrible terrible friend. Do Jo and Bonnie even know each other?!) And Lily arrives all pissed at Bonnie for not rescuing her friends but Bonnie isn’t impressed – no she won’t rescue them even if she could. Lily tries to eat her and gets angry witched – but Bonnie lets up for some bizarre reason and Lily throws something at her neck, stabbing her. Witches vs vampires, the powers change so randomly. Lily then goes to eat Jo who screams that she’s pregnant. This is a line for Lily, especially since she realises Jo is carrying twins and she zooms off.


Damon and Elena talk some more and finally decide, against all common sense, to take the cure. Elena takes the cure and all her memories of Damon which Alaric removed come back. She’s human. And is both ecstatic about it – and still in love with Damon. Which is when Stefan calls to say they can’t take the cure because Lily is too dangerous – and she arrives and breaks Damon’s neck

Oh fun Elena, you get to be a hostage again! To be fair she was pretty good at being a hostage while vampire as well. Elena now has to run from a dangerous vampire without all the wonderful advantages that being a vampire brings.

Stefan catches up with Damon and in the middle of the crisis of Lily running around killing people decides now is the perfect time to tell Damon what an arsehole he is for making the decision to become human without consulting him

He then goes to Lily who has given up her attempt to kill Elena for an epic bout of self-pity and blaming it on Stefan (I miss the logic behind her current mess being Stefan’s fault). She contemplates suicide and for reasons that escape me, Stefan tries to talk her out of it, appealing to her maternal instinct… she tries to murder him instead and Damon vervains her

Bonnie does get to a hospital and Damon’s vampire blood fixes her up. And Jo tells Alaric about the twins – which isn’t all good. She’s part of the Gemini coven, which means her family (what’s left of it) will all want to grab the twins and make them do the twin merge. Alaric pledges to follow her into obscurity so they can hide from her family and, hopefully, so they can trim some excess characters

Trimming the excess doesn’t meaning killing Lily, but it does mean imprisoning her for a “winter’s nap” in Damon’s words. But Elena has a bombshell – with all her memories back she remembered she and Damon debating taking the cure together in the past (I don’t remember this but I’ll take their word for it). Then Damon really really didn’t want to be human – and she’s realied that Damon has kind of rushed into the decision this time. She wants him to talk to the other people in his life, she wants him to think about it – she wants him to be sure that he really wants this. Damon seems pretty angry by this.

Lily is in one of the Salvatore cells where Enzo leaves her, calling it a “family matter” to Stefan. Because he intends to imprison her for eternity until Lily sees him as her son – while she pledges to get her people back and unleash carnage.

And in the prison world, Kai is still alive and seemingly leading the heretic witchpires. And planning an escape




Can we pause for a moment and consider how grossly inappropriate this show can get due to casting actors in their 20s as teenagers? Because here we have Elena, technically a student of Jo’s, hiring a stripper for her

I don’t know about anyone else, but my university frowned on students hiring strippers for the professors. And never mind that Alaric was, kinda sorta, for some time Elena and Jeremy’s almost guardian.

I am glad we looked at Tyler’s ridiculous plan to become a police officer - because someone living in terror of ever becoming a werewolf again really shouldn’t be picking a profession that involves carrying a gun. I’m glad the show rather belatedly recognised the foolishness of this.

On Damon taking the cure – I think it’s a terrible idea. I think, of all the vampires on this show, Damon is actually one of the few who has nearly always loved being a vampire. He lacks the level of angst and moping that just about every other vampire has had at some time. He is the vampire who most enjoys being a vampire and the vampire who most clearly realises there is NO DOWNSIDE TO VAMPIRENESS (yes I will keep repeating this). If he does this for Elena it may sound like an epic romantic sacrifice, but I think 10 years down the line (and remember Elena is considering irrevocably changing her entire life, at the age if… what, 19? 20? Maybe 21 on the outside? To be with a guy) or 20 years down the line when the spectre of mortality raises its ugly head there’s going to be some hellish resentment there.

And Stefan has a point. Sure, becoming human has to be Elena and Damon’s decision, but they’re acting like the only people in their lives are each other, like they have no friends or family they may want to listen to first

Which is why I do agree with Elena stopping him – though I think she should have done the same herself before becoming human. Damon’s decisions does make no sense an hasn’t been thought through – if they’re going to have any kind of relationship this needs to be resolved.

Stefan, Lily has said repeatedly that motherhood and the memories it brings does not give her any joy or comfort. Repeatedly invoking it to try and get her on side seems… not smart. I’m actually really glad it doesn’t work. Lily has given powerful, emotive reasons why motherhood is such a source of pain for her and why she doesn’t embrace Stefan and Damon. To have all that vanish because MOMMYNESS would disregard what she has said or decide it’s all irrelevant.  Which is also why I hate that Enzo left her calling her imprisonment a “family matter”. Enzo is the only person around who Lily has embraced as family – she has repeatedly rejected Stefan and Damon as family. Stefan doesn’t claim ownership because he insists that he wants her to be his mother. Stefan needs to stop trying to force a family template on Lily that she herself has rejected – he’s 150 years old, time to get over needing mummy when mummy doesn’t want to play the role.

I am actually vaguely hopeful that a number of these storyline suggest extraneous characters are soon going to be culled from this series - it's just too big, with too many people who are just too uninvolved in any main plotlines