Friday!

[lizardbeth]

First, let me bitch about how this crossover epic has taken over MY LIFE. It's ridiculously long, involves lengthy flashbacks (this is me, after all -- if I can't have prophecies I have flashbacks), guest appearances, allusions to Hamlet... Sure is fun though.


Onto last night TEEVEE.



Other than fulfilling the mystical contract that keeps Mark Sheppard employed I don't even know what this episode was.

I do enjoy Crowley. He hits that Baal shaped hole in my heart of the total untrustworthy smirky ally who is completely unrepentant about being evil, and yet when it's in his best interest, he'll be on the good guys' side.

And it was fun seeing Whitney again (even if I kept half expecting Kristin Kreuk to show up to make the trifecta complete). Since he was channeling his inner Patrick Bateman, I kind of liked that part, too. Having him be a pharmaceutical CEO was awesome.

But I can't believe they didn't gank Pestilence in this one. Twenty minutes of this was completely NOTHING. hrmf. And I am especially disappointed because I usually like Edlund eps.

ETA: you know, I figured it out. This episode gave me the same impression that BSG "Deadlock" always has - -that something went wrong behind the scenes. "Deadlock" was weirdly edited. And this one just feels like,I don't know, there WAS originally a Pestilence battle in the back half and it was taken out, and the rest of it was stretched to cover the hole. Maybe they redid things after S.6 was approved. So it's filler, but sort of emergency filler.

Or something. I don't know, it's weird.



And meanwhile on a show that actually KNOWS how to pace a season--



PEARL NOOOOOOOO! I knew Kelly Hu wasn't going to stay,but still... not like that. AW MAN. Anna needs to do the famous ring-snatch-vamp-kill move on Sucky John like NOW.

I am an unrepentant angst whore so I also LOVED the rest of it. Look, in Interview with the Vampire - I always liked Louis more than Lestat. And this is totes the same thing. Not Angel - he didn't WANT his soul back. Stefan is more like Louis, in that they never really lost it in the first place, even though it would make their un-lives so much easier.

But seriously, how awesome was Elena for going in there and utterly REFUSING to be frightened of him or letting Stefan push her away? I utterly reject the idea that she was stupid to go in there. No. She KNEW he wouldn't hurt her. Hell, he'd had the chance right before she darted him, and he didn't do it then, even when he was strung out on the blood and her neck was RIGHT THERE. So of course he wasn't going to do it when he has more control. NOt to mention he let the bottle just sit there, which was a pretty good indication that his suicidal depression was overwhelming his hunger. Was it still a risk? Sure. But it wasn't dumb or unconsidered.

But this laid a few things more about Stefan clear to me: first, Stefan has always carried the weight of Damon's sins, and his own. should he? No, because as Damon says, they're Damon's acts, not his. But to Stefan, there's always going to be that "but for me, Damon would never have done all the things he's done." (with bonus "I couldn't control myself over the blood with Papa, and it ruined everything, forever"). And second, the lure of the blood isn't just in the power of it, but it's the lack of conscience. I think that part about it being a switch was very important (and makes some sense in a self-preservation way, for a vampire - it makes them pure predators if they can just put aside their feelings).

When he's drinking it, it's easy to just give in to the temptation of not feeling bad about ANYTHING. And that's the curse of having a conscience in the first place, is not just that he feels guilty about stuff, but it's that much more appealing to just forget it 'for a little while'. But if he shuts it off, then he does horrible things like pimp out a girl's LIFE to his brother just because he's lonely. It's a slippery slope: he can't "learn" to control himself on human blood, because when he has it, he uses it to turn off his conscience/empathy and give himself over to the monster, so he doesn't have to feel anything. But he knows it's wrong not to think of people as people, not to mention wrong to torture and kill them for no reason. So basically, it's all-or-nothing; there's no middle ground.

(BTW, funny that this episode actually parallels some things in my crossover. This is what John struggles with as well, in a different way -- empathy is a LEARNED skill with him. And he understands that pain and grief are the other side of happiness and love, and you can't have one without the other. But it's terribly tempting to just want the good stuff)

Anyway, other awesome things happened, I'm just all about empathy and will and people being past sociopathic killers before they got over it at the moment.

Obviously discovering it was Stefan who made Damon finish the transition to being a vampire was a fabulous reveal. The Damon and Alaric trip was great.

Damon continuing to be hung up on that bitch not so much. 'I hate you because she turned you - WHUT? Damon didn't even care about that in the flashbacks. Terrible clunky effort to keep them at odds over Katherine.

ISOBEL - eek.

Anna/Jeremy -- AW... Love Anna so much. She's just adorable.

Love Elena pwning John. "Which mother?" HA

As much as I realize Anna now definitely has the right to kill his ass, I kinda would like Jenna to do it. I don't know how, but (a) Jenna needs to be more involved, (b) Jenna hates him, (c) it would be awesome because he'd never expect it from her.

*reads* Good heavens, could I babble more?



OH SHOW. CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT WEEK.