First times:
first rain-soaked kisses; first time you heard or said “I love you.” First and
last times matter more than the in between. Think about it. Dwell on it, if
you’d like. Beginnings and endings matter more than the journey in between,
which is antithetical to the human experience. We don’t remember where we began
and we dread where we end. The second act of our lives, the longest and most
fruitful, becomes a poor footnote, barely remembered, and not worthy of three
sentences in a newspaper. Why is that? Such a question deserves pondering
elsewhere. The Vampire Diaries’ episodes are broken up by advertisements
directed towards young girls, pre-teens and teenagers, young college students,
who experience firsts more often than the demographic of the WWE fan. First
loves and first kisses, or one’s first hardships in life, a break-up, a death,
the loss of friendships, has more immediacy with the young than with older men
and women, where one feels nostalgia, perhaps bittersweet or perhaps not, akin
to seeing a childhood toy and remarking, ‘I remember when’ and then all that
remains is the memory but not the feeling.
Damon fails to
recapture the memory of the middle between him and Elena. Alaric’s compulsion
of Elena to make her forget limits the storytelling for the former couple.
Damon will pursue her or he won’t. Elena will let him or she won’t. Damon
pursues her through the past, because she asks him where he told her loved the
final time. The question leads to a story and that story leads to other stories
about the other parts of their love life. The night of the meteors and the
pouring rain renders Damon without speech because he doesn’t want to audibly
remember the night: too immediate, too painful. He can give her the memory, but
he can’t return to her the feeling. People can’t force a feeling.
Of course, one
of the staples of overwrought and melodramatic romances are dramatic gestures
of love. Die for someone and their love will linger longer than the light from
stars long dead. Elena risks death to break the compulsion; she wants to
remember the rainy night when she and him were wet, muddy and cold, and went
home. Leo Tolstoy, during his ascetic anti-artistic period in latter part of
his life, may appreciate the cold telling of the story, devoid of details, but
Elena wants the details and wants to know why Damon can’t tell more than what
he barely tells, the heart of it caught in his throat, barricaded by his
tongue. “Don’t die for me or for it,” Damon tells Elena, in so many words. The
opening of the episode has a scene between Alaric and Damon where Alaric
recalls to Damon his many poor decisions in his life that Elena remembers apart
from their relationship. Bad, selfish, sociopathic and psychopathic Damon is of
the past, until narratively convenient, and, selfless, heroic romantic Damon,
of the present, encourages Elena to live her life. He died, she moved on, and
found happiness with a model medical student. It won’t happen. Elena looks
longingly as Damon walks away. Damon drinks a bottle of bourbon, which he takes
with him into the cemetery, and then sees Bonnie’s teddy bear.
Bonnie remains
in Kai’s personal hell made for him by his coven, surviving the wound from the
arrow Kai shot into her stomach. Kai wants to leave, but Bonnie won’t take him
with her. She hid her magic in a safe place—like his sister, Jo—and neither
will leave the hellscape. Damon, removed from the Elena situation temporarily,
motivated by the teddy bear, will act save Bonnie, whom he threatened to kill
several jokes in a jokey way, will continue his heroism by saving her.
Other firsts,
though: Liv reminds Tyler of the first person she killed for his sake, and
Stefen learns about Caroline’s feelings for him for the first time. Liv and
Tyler have only one scene together, in which she exposits the aforementioned
‘first kill’ thing with Tyler, and they flirt. The Stefan/Caroline scene of
first feelings happens after Tripp dies and after they save Caroline’s mother
from Tripp’s friend. Tripp’s yet another villain to die early during his
villainous run. Tripp, very briefly, tries to explain why Matt picked the wrong
side. Matt doesn’t counter that his friends represent the ‘right’ side, but he
concedes that it’s complicated. Tripp loses any leverage because his plan if
ever taken involved threatening Sheriff Forbes’ life. TVD villains can only
surpass the brutality of the Mystic Falls crew in one way: attacking human,
defenseless loved ones of the Mystic Falls crew (or by separating characters in
a dramatic, final seeming way, i.e. death without magic to bring the character
back).
Tripp’s a minor
inconvenience that Enzo takes care of off-screen by vamping him. Enzo throws a
further complication in Stefan’s and Caroline’s evolving complicated friendship
by letting Stefan know why Caroline dislikes him so: because she likes him so.
The A plot had overwrought melodrama; so, too, does the B plot. Caroline likes
Stefan in more than friendly ways for his kindness, his goodness, his
stability, etc., and she still hates him because if she doesn’t she’ll hate
herself for ruining their friendship. Stefan and Caroline still haven’t shared
one first: a kiss. After more filler and convolution, which is not only for
this particular arc but general across the show’s storytelling, those two
vampires will lock lips and beget new drama. There’s always the Elena of it
all, isn’t there?
Other Thoughts:
-In two words, “Do
You Remember The First Time?” dwelled on the past: what was and not what is.
What is engages this blogger more than what was. I think TVD has done two or
three Damon-Elena relationship flashback episodes. It’s a relationship defined
more by those two characters’ separation than by an active relationship. Damon
explained to Alaric, but really to the audience, why the compulsion didn’t
break with Alaric’s vampire death. I would quibble with the explanation, but
that’s insanity.
-Rebecca
Sonnenshine wrote the episode. Who directed the episode? Will my memory recall
the name without looking it up? It will not. My apologies.
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