TVD 4x11
This post got kind of out of control before I got around to say what I wanted to say, and yet still after I had my computer freeze on me and eat a lot of my getting-there twice, so I think I'm about to give up and post. The visual that sums up this episode, I think, is a particular kill we see up close and personal for the first time in a while. Vampire hearts don't come out smooth the way hybrid hearts do. They have veins and arteries sticking out like needles in a pincushion. These people are all way, way more tangled up in each other than is any good for them.
Gilberts/Klaus/Kol/Damon
Damon's arrogance and recklessness is really wonderfully drawn-out here. He talks to and about Klaus as if he has any standing to actually strike a deal with the most powerful being on the continent. He takes on Kol as if he could actually fight an Original; Kol plays along just long enough to get Jeremy out of the way before taking control of the fight. And then Damon makes it all the way back to the Gilbert compound assuming that he could have even escaped if Kol had actually wanted him dead.
I don't really buy that Damon tried to throw himself on the grenade FOR JEREMY, though Damon does have a tendency to bond with the people around him no matter how much of an asshole he is. I do think, on balance, that it makes sense for him to have reacted so completely to being compelled. Damon, who strips people of their free will so casually and so consciously, would rather die than be forced to do something he doesn't want to do.
But he is, mortifyingly. Damon is stripped of his free will and even his memory of it happening; Kol compels him to cut into himself with the exact same method Klaus used against Katherine. Even he seems to know it's karmic justice - there's an uncanny lack of whining from him throughout the episode. I just really liked the effect of him stalking Jeremy through the tunnels, not being particularly sneaky or malicious, but still fucking scary.
Kol's use of Damon as the fall guy is pretty brilliant problem-solving: skip the hunters' curse, get rid of a pain in his ass and someone who stood a decent chance of keeping Elena around long enough, and have a fall guy he could produce to Klaus. I'm less sure why he doesn't just, you know, kill Elena, though I guess as long as the cure and Katherine are out there it wouldn't necessarily solve his problem to do so.
And so finally Elena comes around to her plan to kill just Kol to increas Jeremy's mark. This is really revealing. Most obviously, she is a Machiavellian little minx - it's a big gamble, but with a very high reward. And they can tell themselves they're the good guys in all this, because Kol himself moved against him first, even though they full well know that has nothing to do with the vampires in Kol's sire line. The people that Klaus turns are "innocent people;" anyone in Kol's line is Stunt Vampire 43 who totally has it coming. Never mind that it would include someone who just got turned last night, because they wouldn't have to know about it. That kind of defeats the purpose of the hunters' mark, IMO? Because it's all about that visceral, personal urge to fight. Killing Kol, in those cosmic terms, would just be killing Kol. I'm not as sure that decreasing the number of vampires in the world significantly is the worst idea (because, you know, RUTHLESS UNSTOPPABLE PREDATORS), and it's a great sneaky plan of Elena's, but it's a pretty big leap.
Kol may feel threated by Klaus (more on Original dynamics later) but he and Klaus are equals as relating to the hunters and regular vampires; they even form something of a team to keep the Gilberts in perpetual fear. Kol can burn their home to the ground, and in reminding them that he could, Klaus is also threatening that he could do it. And in threatening Elena's loved ones and the people in her town, he's reminding her that if he doesn't get them as the Big Bad, then someone else will.
Bonnie & Shane
Just days - the day? - after he manipulated her into using expression and almost killing April, she's back in his office, trusting him. He uses the lightest touch to steer her into self-blame for his messing with her head and her power. She thinks that having called him out means that she's back on top of the situation, because Bonnie so rarely calls anyone out on their stuff that the people around her usually know that she is sensible and means business and she can depend on them listening to her, and she's never had Elena's ear for social interactions. She's completely unprepared for Shane's mind games, even if she weren't riding a high of magic.
Bonnie's dad, too, tries to mess with her mind, by going out of his way to say Shane plays with the "weak-minded," but then shows himself to be just as susceptible to Shane's game. (I'm starting to doubt that he was a pharmaceutical rep, if he's had so much experience with people like Shane.) Shane is grasping wildly by the end there, but he knows exactly the right buttons to push - Bonnie is a "prodigy" that Shane and only Shane can push to great heights; without him, though, she's a "time bomb" and going to lose control, not just to destroy herself but to make a big scene about it. And Bonnie's dad reacts by throwing another neg at her, that she needs "help" even though she can't see it. He could've said, a better coach, other witches, anything to acknowledge her power and autonomy. Silas is right that Bonnie's on the edge, of course, and in that case he's a fairly conventional truth-telling villain: Bonnie is as isolated and vulnerable as she is because she's stuck between a lot of worlds with her powers.
The episode is really good at showing how and when it works that Shane lies with the truth. He says things that are or might be true, and then says what he wants the person to do as if it's some kind of logical solution to their problem. And because he's generally in control of whatever situation he's in, they trust him even when they know they shouldn't. Once he's arrested, off his home turf and professing faith in Silas, he's grasping wildly and starts to look "full-on crazy."
Elena/Stefan/Rebekah
As Elena is losing her illusions about who she was, she is flung into a whole status/identity crisis about who she is. Matt clings desperately to an idealized picture of human-Elena, who would never leave Jeremy in Damon's care, except for al of those times she made Jeremy unbelievably vulnerable to Damon's influence. That scene where she tries to get Klaus to intervene to save Jeremy is so great. First she talks to him like Queen Bee Elena, expecting to get what she wants by putting him down, but Klaus doesn't care that it's his fault, so that's a miss. Then she tries to appeal to him as an equal, as the sole remaining heir to House Petrova, and he takes that even less seriously, because of course she's not the doppelganger anymore. He makes her accept her place as the youngest of his descendants and beg.
Stefan is keeping something she wants from her - if it is something she really wants - but Stefan and Damon, she's always known, have priority for each other, and she really does believe she's sired to Damon (regardless of the existence of a "sire bond," there's enough there that she'll do what she tells him and they all know it).
"This is how I've alwasy beeen. You just don't know how I look when I"m not in love with you." Which is a really subtle way of turning everything abck around on her again, right, because it makes THEIR RELATIONSHIP responsible for how he is ALWAYS. He deliberately echoes the language Rebekah used while she was holding them hostage, which suggests that his change in mood and attitude is due to finding out about HER feelings. And it positions him as being totally reflective of her wishes and opinions - it was what, two days ago? that he was totally in love with her and having his heart ripped out by her not reciprocating his feelings. Now that she's SAID she doesn't love him, well, he doesn't love her either, SO THERE. YOUR MOVE, GILBERT.
And Elena turns that all around on him by making EVERYTHING he does, says, or wants about HERSELF. Yes, there's NO REASON he could possibly even like Rebekah except to be PUNISHING HER. Even though she doesn't want him anymore, him wanting someone else AT HER is a BETRAYAL, because he's supposed to pine for her and be putty in her hands.
She puts Damon through a similar test, where if he loves her ENOUGH he can fight off Kol's compulsion. The thing about mind control - or even manipulation - is that it's not, like, "mental suggestion, you know, if you don't have any conscious priorities which might sway you in another direction." Gay Batman and Professor Crazy's hard-earned and specific mental tricks to avoid compulsion entirely (not to fight it off after the fact) notwithstanding, that's victim-blaming ass, right. I think that's the outgrowth of a lot of her cognitive dissonance on trying to blame Stefan's behaviour last season on Klaus, and specifically his compulsion early in the season. This is how she can say well, Stefan is an asshole who doesn't care about her, but also, that he was FORCED into acting the way he did. He just didn't love her enough; he was just weak-willed.
Stefan's move toward Rebekah strikes me as him trying to seize back some self-respect after losing Elena to Damon - basically the only thing he's really had on his brother is that the doppelganger prefers him, and once that stops he feels more like the left-behind little brother than he probably has for over a century and a half. And he's also trying to take back the wounds inflicted by Rebekah's takeover at school the night before. But getting with her is also just fun, a middle ground between ripperdom and isolation, and isolation and deception, that he's never tried before, and he needs to, badly.
Originals
Kol is, ultimately, a loudly-barking puppy which would far rather play than bite. He's highly status-conscious, while not at all being status-anxious: he's perfectly happy to have his fun with the peasants but obey his big brother to the letter without question. He tries to mess with Rebekah by saying Elijah's ashamed of them. He brings a white-oak stake to a dagger fight. Whether or not he was planning to kill Rebekah, he certainly scares her into thinking that he's willing to take things further than she is.
Kol met a bunch of cultists who convinced him that awakening Silas will bring about the end of the world. Not only has it taken until S4 for there to be stakes outside of the main cast, but also, now that the end is mighty well nigh, Our Heroes are on the wrong side of the fight. The question for the rest of the season is: is Elena's precious Petrova genetic material worth the END OF THE FUCKING WORLD? And there's a lot in there that I don't so much want the show to try to deal with explicitly, because it would go so wrong, but I think it could be a really interesting story about demographic anxieties, about reproductive exploitation being destructive and horrible even outside of the personal violation the direct victim experiences.
Rebekah is rebounding from her fallout with Klaus in a way that makes all her centuries of experience and perceptiveness shine. We've only known her for a year in our time, and a short few months in hers (even less considering how much of that time she spent daggered). Klaus is the Big Scary lurking in the dark for the main cast, but for Rebekah the boogeyman was Mikael for a thousand years and then Esther for a difficult few months last season, and she's only now processing the dissipation of the us-against-the-world bond she had with Klaus. When she finally got the message early this season that she couldn't depend on him, it really was liberating for her in some ways. She's clearly reacting to Klaus in being drawn to Stefan. A big part of it is trying to seize back some control from him after he got one over on her with Klaus. But she's also smart and insightful, sexy and quick on her feet.
This was just such a great episode for all of the cast members involved - it put all their flaws and weaknesses brutally on display; I have never liked them more.
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