Monsters of Television

Awesome Vampire Caroline

SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!  AVERT YOUR EYES!  DON’T EVEN LOOK AT THE PHOTO!

Last week I wrote that Caroline the vampire was pretty much the best thing ever. This week, however, as we are descending deeper into the rules about vampire transitioning, I am beginning to ask questions. This is a bad thing when dealing with a genre program. Suspension of disbelief works just fine until the program itself starts messing with the rules. Then, trouble starts.

Not that this episode did not offer a series of delights.  Damon, as always, was charming.  Learning that the Lockwood family might be werewolves, Damon called Mason and Tyler “Lon Chaney Sr. and Jr.” and himself “Bela Lugosi,” noting that based on his movie knowledge, “Lugosi, which is me, is totally screwed.”

My nagging questions follow after the jump.

With suspicion firmly planted in their minds, our not-so-happy trio of Stefan, Elena, and Damon sought help from Rick, or rather from Rick’s missing/vampire wife Isabella’s old files at her university.  Question: How long has Isabella been gone?  She has an enormous office at her university, and somehow, it has remained completely untouched for months.  I don’t know of a university that isn’t strapped for cash and space–how come this one can just leave her office vacant all this time?  See, questions with genre lead nowhere good.

Rick, Elena and Damon set off to learn more from Isabella’s completely unchanged office.  Elena assures Stefan that it is okay he stay behind to watch out for Awesome Vampire Caroline since “Rick and I can bond in our anti-Damon solidarity.”  The lady doth protest too much, perhaps?

For the rest of the episodes, Elena and Stefan are apart, so I’ll take each of their stories separately.  Gotta say, though, Rick, Damon and Elena makes for one awkward trio.  Who thought that was a good idea?  Stefan and Awesome Vampire Caroline are pretty great, save for the fact that Stefan wants her to be less awesome by learning control and that it is wrong to kill and other annoying things like.

First up, Elena’s world.  Because she’s the one with Damon, and I like him.

Rick has a brief scene with Jenna before they depart, mostly so the audience can be reminded that Jenna exists.  What her purpose is on this show remains somewhat elusive.  What’s the point of having a teen show with a completely ineffective and useless guardian?  Buffy’s Mom was constantly in her face, reminding us of the challenge of the teen-parent dynamic.  Hmm, then again, can’t really think of a program that bothered to do much with parents–the old 90210, Dawson’s Creek, heck, even Twilight.  So scratch that–Jenna being useless is a grand tradition of teen fare.  Anyway, Rick kinda sorta wants to get with Jenna, but she shuts him down, telling him to deal with his missing/vampire wife business.

While hanging in missing/vampire Isabella’s office, a grad student working on site suddenly appears in the room with a crossbow and shoots it at Elena!  Damon, ever the gentleman, steps in front of Elena and take the arrow in his back.  Elena, still mad at Damon, is unmoved.  Damon, however, is rather annoyed with the graduate student, stating, “that bitch is dead.”  At which Elena threatens to never speak to Damon again.  He jokes that she is overestimating his desire to talk with her, but poor Damon is a sucker for Elena/Katherine/brunettes with a vaguely Eastern European ancestry.  Rick explains everything to the grad student, and she says, “oh, why didn’t you just tell me that Damon is a vampire and Elena has a vampire doppleganger up front?”  See?  So easy to explain.

Isabella’s files are relatively useless, but the grad student turns out to be a font of folklore wisdom.  She explains that vampires and werewolves are cousins–having both been cursed by ancient Aztecs.  Vampires are cursed to serve the sun, and Werewolves the full moon.  Another little tidbit is that the bite of a werewolf kills vampires.  Can anyone see where this is going?

Last thing the grad student knows?  A doppleganger will try to undo the other’s life.  The implication is that Elena interprets this as Katherine wanting to ruin her life, but I think it would be way more interesting to see Elena completely unintentionally destroying Katherine’s life.  Gives Katherine more motivation than just being, you know, evil and bat shit crazy.

Last clue that is vague but likely will shape the future of the season?  After they return, Damon gives Katherine a book he found in Isabella’s office.  Its title is Katherine’s last name, which apparently was some sort of secret that only Damon knew.

Damon attempts to make peace with Elena, but that cold hearted bitch seems immune to his charm.  Damon admits that he did not know Jeremy was wearing that ring, saying “I don’t know what I would have done” if he had killed Jeremy.  Elena returns serve with some honesty of her own–Damon has lost her as a friend for good.  At which point Damon realizes he never had a chance to atone–Elena used him to get from him what he knew about Katherine (i.e. the book) and now she has no use for him.  Hurt, Damon warns Elena that Katherine and she have more in common than he thought.  I sure hope so.

Obi-wan Stefan, meanwhile, is trying to housetrain vampire Caroline.

Being earnest if not Damon-style charming, Stefan convinces no-sense-of-humor witch Bonnie to make Caroline a day-walking ring.  Bonnie pouts a bit, and Awesome Vampire Caroline balks at the design of the ring (that part was funny), but Bonnie closes her eyes, thinks hard, and voila– instant day-walking ring.  They have got to find a way to make Bonnie more interesting.  How can a witch be boring and annoying?  But she sure is.

Not that being able to walk outside has helped Awesome Vampire Caroline much with her romantic life.  Matt is annoyed that she’s been blowing him off.  Then he gets annoyed when she shows jealousy toward some random girl and glamors her to make her go away.  Then he gets super annoyed when Awesome Vampire Caroline tries to eat him as a snack (in all fairness, he was dumb enough to cut himself on a tree–not sure how someone even does that–so it wasn’t really Awesome Vampire Caroline’s fault.  He asked for it).  So yeah, Caroline and Matt are splitsville.  Stefan let her glamor Matt to make him forget that whole snack part–cause it is okay to do that to cover your tracks but not okay to do that when jealous of random girl.

Question: what are the rules here, Stefan?  You tell Caroline she can’t be glamoring people capriciously, yet you allow her to glamor the one person that needs to trust her.  Seems awfully risky of Stefan to trust ACV when he himself has fallen off the wagon before.  Bet you a million dollars he wouldn’t let Elena and AVC go on a weekend road trip alone.  Poor Matt.  Doomed to be a tasty snack.

Oh, and a werewolf showed up while Awesome Vampire Caroline was snacking on Matt.  He tried to eat Caroline, but Stefan threw him off of her.  I don’t have much to say about the werewolf because the CW kinda cheated us on the most awesome part–the transformation.  Mason was all busy trying to chain himself in a dungeon, the only remnants of the former Lockwood estate, when Tyler brings some girl in there.  Mason runs with all his chains (note: Mason sweaty and wrapping heavy chains around himself is super hot) and sorta tries to chain himself to a tree, but then just gets in his car.  Where he remains until Stefan comes snooping.  The entire transformation takes place in the car–I cry foul!  I know you don’t have world’s biggest budget, CW, but show some creativity!  The wolf itself looked pretty much like a wolf.  Tyler, who arrives just as the wolf is attacking Caroline, recognizes the family resemblance in the wolf and now knows Mason’s deep, dark secret.

My last nagging question has to do with the vampire transformation.  I know that the humanity seeps out gradually, mostly being extinguished when the vampire first feeds on human blood.  But why, then, do all these vampires try to hard to be nice?  Sorry for all the Buffy parallels, but at least there I understood the rules (until that whole Spike business, which I think was a huge cheat).  Trying to make evil a choice with vampires is interesting, I suppose, but the struggle is being minimized here.  I’m not a Twilight fan, but at least there we saw how long it took Edward to be able to control himself around Bella.  And it was a constant fight.  The showrunners of TVD seem to want to have it both ways–some vampires are nice, some are evil, and only they can tell us which is which.

Stefan tells Caroline that the vampire in you magnifies all of your human qualities.  Stefan was super serious, so now he’s world’s most boring vampire.  Caroline catches on quickly, “I’m an insecure, neurotic control freak on crack?”  My question is deeper.  What would an insecure, neurotic control freak, amplified and desirous of blood, really look like?  The line between good and evil could be a bit more blurry here.  Then we’d have some real drama.

Oh, wait, I am forgetting…this is supposed to be a fun and silly show.  But we’ve seen more on the WB and the CW (like Supernatural).  TVD could do more if the rules had integrity.  But like I said, the minute they make me ask questions, that is a bad thing for genre TV.  The simple, pretty veneer of the show disappears, and I see the missed opportunities.  Always a bad thing to make your audience want more.