Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: D | 330 USERS: C- YOU GRADE IT Elegy for Our Lady of Perpetual Victimhood
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.30.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.I remember when I used to care about the characters on this show. Now I'm down to Matt and Jeremy -- that's it. I guess I kind of care about Bonnie, but not really, because the show killed her off last year. She's a corporeal ghost. There's no there there. I used to save the episodes until I could buy the DVDs. I don't think I bought the Season 4 DVDs, but I cleared the TiVo, because I needed the space. Throughout Season 5, I've been deleting each new episode as soon as I submit my full recap. Whatever… I'm not the show's target audience, but I'm quite sure my 15-year-old daughter is. And she is now so far behind in watching, I'm not sure she's going to bother to catch up.
Damon lays Katherine's corpse to rest in the old tomb where she should have been trapped 145-plus years ago. Mia and Nadia need it to perform a spell that will seal Katherine's spirit to Elena's body. Essentially, she'll have the keys to the place. They succeed, because this is Katherine's story now.
Before the deal is done, Katherine rips off Matt's vervain bracelet and compels him to get her up to speed on the finer details of Elena's life. She then makes sure Tyler finds out that Caroline slept with Klaus. Impersonating Elena, Katherine also tells Damon he was right: he is no good for Elena. It's too much pressure for her. Every time they quarrel, she has to worry about how he'll act out.
Maybe the fandom wouldn't be so bone tired of Elena had she gotten to tell off Damon as a part of a story that forced Damon to make some serious choices about who he wants to be, regardless of Elena. No, she just accepted that he had perpetuated a convoluted revenge scheme against people who had never did him any personal harm because they had the misfortune to be related to a sadistic bastard.
Now Damon is back in league with Enzo, and the first thing they do is kill off that poor Whitmore kid. When Elena eventually regains control of her own body and finds out what Damon has done, there are only two ways the story can play out. Aaron's death should be what finishes Damon for Elena. If Aaron's death doesn't finish Damon for Elena, it will finish her for me. Seriously, if she blames Katherine for setting him off, yet fails to hold Damon accountable for his choices and actions, who is she anymore? I don't know. I just know she'll be nobody I can care about.
I need something or someone to make me care about how this all ends. Are these characters on a journey that's even worth watching? Do they have arcs? It feels to me like we're just reading ticker tape. Some numbers rise. Others fall. Show, much like the stock market, I'm not invested in you.
It didn't have to be this way. Elena started out kind of awesome. Sure, she was sad and still coming to terms with her parents' death, but she was smart. She was a fighter. She was fairly competent. Somewhere along the line, this admittedly vulnerable character turned into the perpetual damsel. I remember looking forward to the day she turned into a vampire because I foolishly thought it would put a stop to the victimhood of Elena Gilbert, but it only made things worse for most of Season 4. In Season 5, she finally accepts who and what she is, and now she is no more. Sure, she's not dead, but she's not here. Worse, she is at Katherine's mercy, like the past four and a half seasons never happened.
I'll be back with the recap, ASAP. In the meantime, please grade the episode at the top of the page, and then come on over to the forum, where we're weaving Matt a new vervain bracelet, bathing him in vervain water and shoving vervain buds in all his nooks and crannies.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This is akin to "The dog ate my homework," recap, except in this case the dog threw up my homework, i.e. recap. My poor little dog has been seriously sick (her tummy, but she also tested positive for Lyme disease antibodies, which is unrelated to the nausea). In addition to that, we're having a snow storm, I'm sick (a cold or something), and I thought I had one more day to write this up. Then at supper (which was way fricking late, because my husband had a meeting out of state) one of the kids mentioned today is Tuesday. After cooking, clean-up, pre-storm shopping, sneezing (well, I suppose that's between sneezes), and OCD hand-washing, I started this recap at 10:00 PM, and only under protest. I'd rather be watching Supernatural reruns, and I haven't been a faithful Supernatural viewer (although I do catch up, over time) since Season 6. So my lovelies, we're gonna wing it.
To begin, I'm plagiarizing myself from the middle of my recaplet: I need something or someone to make me care about how this all ends. Are these characters on a journey that's even worth watching? Do they have arcs? It feels to me like we're just reading ticker tape. Some numbers rise. Others fall. Show, much like the stock market, I'm not invested in you.
Were I approaching this recap in any way that could be considered ordered, reasoned, or academic, the previous paragraph would be my thesis statement, but c'mon, I'm sick, tired, and sick and tired. The thesis statement is: blah. Raise your hand if you feel the same way. If not, tweet at me, or respond in the comment section of this recap. I won't try to argue you out of liking the show. I'm trying to argue myself back into liking it, again.
Right now (and yes, I've heard from many of you that I'm being too hard on the show, and you're probably right), I hate its bloody guts and want it to be the surprise cancellation of the year. I cannot justify that desire. I guess I can say, I don't really want cancellation, because I never want to see people lose their jobs, but right now I want to stop watching and make the pain go away. Since that's not an option, and baby needs a new pair of shoes (and needs to go to college next year), let's do this thing. (P.S. I hate you, Gerber Life ads. I expect this will be mostly script parody, with part bitchery, and part stuffy-headed incomprehension. I know. I sell myself, like a boss. You ready? Me neither.)