The Vampire Diaries Season 4 Episode 17 recap
Come on, didn’t you think he was so hot in that sleeveless? With the more-than-a-hint of eyeliner as he got all 80s soulful with her, and don’t tell me it was supposed to be the 70s, that was 80s Ren McCormick and St. Elmo’s Fire if I ever saw it.
This is much more what I was looking for. A little drinking and drugging from Elena (don’t you love how much they can have a teen get away with when she’s undead and doesn’t have to have a morality clause?), two wild women on the run getting the best of Damon and Stefan because they’re smarter and sharper – this is what I’m really into where my good-girl-gone-bad is concerned.
I will say I don’t know how the haircut helped so much, but it did. Maybe nobody’s ever been as much of a hair-method actress as Dobrev, but when it’s straight, she plays it straight. It’s like a curling iron gives her license to be naughty, and it’s actually amusing because they’ve been so consistent with it over the years.
I’m delighted, too, that we’re now in a place where Elena is considered, finally, to be the equal of the brothers. We know they’re often only two halves of a whole – with Elena finally divested of her morality, at least temporarily, she can own the two of them, intellectually speaking, and it’s about damn time. Plus, the show is hinting at another Elena & Katherine showdown, and I really, really enjoy these.
I wish the same intellectual capacity thing could be said for Caroline, who is really taking a long damn time to come down from her perch of feeling morally superior by being mean to Klaus. Aside from the fact that Bonnie is barely a human being, what with the selling out of everyone and the freely massacring and the possession, she seems only to be Caroline’s best friend when it suits her – the rest of the time, she forgets to even care that her “best friend” is missing for weeks at a time. I’m having a hard time feeling bad for her, and I think I’m supposed to feel that she’s lost without Tyler, but in fact I think she’s any port in a storm. Last week flirting with Stefan, this week seeing how far she can push Klaus.
And the answer is… not as far as you would have thought. I love that as far as his affection for him will take her, it won’t go as far as being her doormat. I love that he wants her to know how much like him she is, because no matter how you kill people, you kill them nonetheless. I love that he knows she gets away with a lot with him – but still not so much that she can abuse him for weeks on end and still climb into his arms when it turns out she’s a murderer a dozen times over.
So overall, very satisfying, with real people acting like real people and Stefan’s sanctimony on pause. I do really wish we’d seen how Silas in Professor Creepy’s body had convinced Rebecca to give him the white Stake – he implied he just infiltrated her mind, but Rebecca’s so malleable at this time, wouldn’t it have been great to actually see that? She’s another one who’s any port in a storm, does this mean one of the ports could have been Silas? Why don’t I get to see that?
We’re now closing in on the end of the season. Things are getting real – someone’s going to take a cure, someone’s going to fight it. Elena as vampire may not be for good. Hell, all the deaths we’ve seen may not be for good. Either way, these people are beginning – finally – to be who they were meant to be, particularly Elena. Let’s hope she doesn’t forget.
