I’d have to disagree about this one, this time she really wasn’t trying to kill herself, it was just the hallucinations, and she is a baby vamp so she’s not that strong to overcome it, I mean Klaus knew that she would, and even he tried to kill himself when it happened to him, and he’s a lot more powerful than her, so yea with this scenario she had no intention on doing so. But her Mom being the key that really made her go, that just brought it on home. Damon will see that she has fun, Caroline will too, hell maybe even Matt. 

This review was amazing! She introduced things I’ve never really thought about! Why can’t I see such things in TVD?

I’m sorry, this is so beautiful, i have to post it, lmao, if you don’t want to read it, don’t….but it’s sooo good, hell i might just have to post it on the other site to shut everyone up! Lol

So Elena goes through purgatory and works through all of all her guilt and hurt and self-doubt… and then she wakes up and she is glad to be alive and she loves Damon.

It’s that simple, and after three seasons of meticulous build-up, the show has earned the right for it to be that simple – that sudden and not sudden – that gloriously matter-of-fact.

The short-term catalyst for Elena giving into her feelings for Damon is twofold: becoming a vampire has intensified those feelings, and she has decided that she is allowed to have them and not hate herself for it. But the actual feelings long pre-date Elena killing the hunter or becoming a vampire.

Who can say exactly when Elena fell in love with Damon? There was always attraction, right from the start, and then when they spent that day together in Georgia she discovered that they had fun together. And so out of attraction and amusement, a sincere and abiding affection grew. But when exactly did it become something more? At a guess, I’d place it somewhere around the time Damon almost died and Elena felt like her heart would give out if she didn’t kiss him, if she didn’t tell him just a little bit of the truth: she likes him now, just the way he is (read: it doesn’t matter what you do, what I do, what anybody else does, you are in me – my head – my heart – you have become mine, and I am yours whether I can admit it yet or not).

If the ‘when’ is unclear, the ‘why’ is not. Elena loves Damon because he makes her laugh, because he makes her think, because he is fucking brave, because he can live for so long on so little of her, because he insists that she matters most even when she insists she doesn’t matter much at all, because he’s seen her at her worst and adored her, because he’s seen her at her best and it has changed his life. Because they have emotional intimacy on overdrive. And let’s be real, because they really, really want to have sex with each other.

With all that said it’s clear that the question isn’t so much why Elena would reach out and take hold of Damon’s hand and gaze at him with the googliest of eyes, as why not.

Isn’t that what Damon asked outside that fateful Denver motel room? Why not?

And for the longest time the ‘why not’ was Stefan, and if it hadn’t been Stefan it would have been Damon, because you can’t very well go around letting yourself be in love with someone who snaps your baby brother’s neck for therapy (and all the rest). And then, when it wasn’t Damon anymore, it was Elena and her hitherto fierce devotion to the girl she should be, to the things and the people she should want.

When he says that there may be a way out of this for her, she knows that it doesn’t just mean a way out of being a vampire, it means a way out of this moment and everything it means for the two of them, it means a way out of Damon and Elena and being so close. And she doesn’t want it. Does anything on her face spell relief? Does anything say Oh thank god? And don’t make the mistake of thinking the glow of wonderment has anything to do with Stefan or the prospect of a cure. That is all about how Damon is taking the high road – for his brother and for her – and she’s not surprised, because she knows him by now, but she is still just a little bit floored.I swear to God, you guys, Elena does not want this cure, and I think that eventually she’s going to say it out loud. In the break-up scene she tells Stefan she’d like nothing more than to get that girl back, but the truth is that she knows that she can’t – that she won’t ever – not even with a million doses of this supposed cure.

When Stefan says that her feelings for Damon have been magnified it is a very precise choice of words – not increased, not altered – magnified. Magnification works on existing amount, and from everything we’ve ever been told about vampirism, everything is magnified. There is no picking and choosing. This necessarily implies that what Elena felt for Stefan, even as she chose him in the final episode of season 3, was in some way less that what she felt for Damon.

And it makes sense. I mean, we all saw the difference between the passion she exhibited outside that motel room in Denver and the sedate gentleness with which she let Stefan kiss her in the finale. We all saw how she wept when she told Damon she had to let him go. It was the bitterest thing she’d ever had to do. It was as bitter as death. And it was done because she knew death might be approaching – for both the Salvatores, for Alaric, for her best friend, even for herself. It was the end of the world, and all she wanted was to say goodbye to the people she had loved. The very last thing she wanted was to open a fresh wound, right when it might turn out to be fatal – to Damon, to her, to the end of her little human life.

Elena chose Stefan because it was all she had left to do. But now that she actually has to think about “always”… she’s thinking again. And she’s thinking it’s been a quiet kind of torture resisting Damon all this time. So imagine what a thousand years would be like with her emotions on overdrive?

And this is the thing: if she does become human again, maybe everything she feels will be less intense. But she’s not going to stop being in love with Damon. That’s done. Stefan can cure her all he wants, but he won’t save her. Damon has already done that. And when she thanks him for it she means that he saved her from the sun, sure, but she also means that he saved her from her own worst instincts, from her own unkindness to herself. And the wonderful thing about this, my friends, is that it is entirely reciprocal.

That’s exactly what Elena did for Damon, way back in season 1 in her kitchen when she knew nothing of him and still saw straight through to the heart of who he is. She said she was sorry, she said he had lost too. She told him that some things could matter again. And that was a spark. That was when Damon set off on his long, agonizing journey back to humanity – and not only back to humanity, but beyond that – all the way back to the person he might have been if he’d never lost his mother, if he’d ever really had his father at all.

Back in season 2 after Rose died Damon lay out on the road and told an unfortunate stranger that he was “lost”. And he really, really was. But now, when nobody can find Elena, when she needs him more than she has ever needed anyone, he knows exactly where to be.

This is what they save each other from: their mutual existential crises. Neither of them has known who to be or what to want – in short, how to live in the world, since, well ever. They were both damaged young, in a way that arrested their development and left them floundering emotionally and psychologically, and it’s only now that either of them is starting to get a foothold.

OMG! Even in death he was annoying!!! I was thinking WHY??? WHYYY ARE YOU STILL HERE!!!! He pissed me off even more when he was dead, lol…..God I really hope he’s gone for good now.

You and me both I never liked the character.

Okkkk………..THIS IS DEFINITELY THE LAST ONE……..But can I just ask that we all cut Elena some slack too? She’s trying. She’s doing her very best not to break anyone’s heart too badly (even though that’s more or less impossible at this point). And that’s why when Stefan says that he drove Elena to, cue euphemism, ‘care for’ Damon, she lets it lie. She’s knows it’s not true. She knows Damon is a lot more than that to her on levels that have nothing to do with anything Stefan has ever said or done. But what’s the point in rubbing salt in the wound? Elena still loves Stefan, very much. And if you love someone and you’re telling them you’re in love with someone else, you don’t write them sonnets about it, you know?

(Elena can write sonnets for Damon later if she likes, though. I’ll be happy to listen.)

As for who officially broke up with whom here… it’s a moot point. I would say that in any reasonable world, Elena broke up with Stefan, because she is the one who wants somebody else. Admitting to intense, undeniable feelings for a guy’s brother is pretty much a one way ticket to Splitsville, so the moment Elena took that step, she locked Stefan into saying he couldn’t be with her anymore. He said the actual words, but she set the whole thing in motion.

Having said that, the Stefan we used to know might not have been so encouraging of this particular brand of honesty. Yes, he told her to figure out her feelings for Damon in 318, but when she didn’t come back from Denver and say “I love you and only you, Damon is the bad brother, I see that now, ours is a forever love, please ask him to leave town…” when she in fact said scary things like that they should talk about private Damon/Elena activities that happened and can never unhappen… Stefan retreated into denial. He asked Elena not to tell him in the guise of telling her it was okay not to tell him. At that point he knew beyond doubt that Elena, at the very least, “cared for” Damon, and yet he was determined to fight for her any way he could.

Now? Not so much.

Earlier in the episode when Elena stabs Stefan and sprints out of Klaus’ prison cell, Stefan calls Damon and says that he should go and find Elena, that he’ll be able to talk her down, that she’ll listen to him… and then he says, with more weariness than a simple stake to the chest warrants, “Tell me what I need to do to end this.”

And you guys, sometimes this show is so genius that I can’t even deal with it. Because that’s it right there. That’s Stefan letting go. That’s him knowing that if Elena comes home safe she will not be coming home to him. Because she has changed, and he so badly needed her to stay the same.

So Elena breaks up with Stefan but Stefan lets her. Stefan says the words and Elena agrees. It’s all agonizingly mutual. And I think that realistically this has to be the end for the two of them. As in the end. And I don’t say that because I think they could never fall in love again. I don’t say that because Stefan and Elena’s relationship has been so damaged that it can never be salvaged. Nothing is beyond salvation on this show – nothing and nobody – and if anything has proven that it is Damon/Elena happening.

So why do I think this break-up has to stick? For two reasons. First, because Damon and Elena are both nothing if not steadfast in their affections, and given the way they’ve grown into one another over the past three seasons, it’s hard to see them growing apart in the show’s timeline. Second, for the sake of Stefan as a character. I would hate to see him hanging around having casual Damonesque relationships with women who will never be allowed to measure up and awaiting his turn with the girl with Katherine’s face. This needs to be the start of a journey of self-discovery for him – it needs to do for him what I wrongly assumed last season’s ripperdom would. And if he’s going to have any kind of romantic relationship along the way I hope the show respects him enough to let it be meaningful.

In my wildest dreams Stefan finally gets to hash out his Katherine issues, starting now. In my warmest, fuzziest bedtime thoughts he ends up falling for Caroline… and there opens a whole new chapter in Klaus and Stefan’s star-crossed bromance of doom.

Interesting stuff. But I feel that you’re being a little biased in your portrayal of Stefan. I don’t think everything he did was contrived. I know you’re a passionate Damon fan, but sometimes you can be overly negative about Stefan.

Also, and this is my opinion from reading your comments on this site, you tend to be very hostile towards  characters you dislike on the show. A little too hostile in my opinion. I think you can criticize them without making it seem as though they personally did something to you. I like you, and I like your passion for the show, and I would like to read a lot more of your commentary, but sometimes I don’t because of your often intense views on characters you dislike. I think you can keep the same passion you have, but just be a little more respectful in your criticism and attitude towards people on the show.

Oh this wasn’t my analysis, i had read it, it’s some1 elses review, i just felt it was sooo insightful I wanted to share it with the rest of you.

Dman……….if you want something a little nicer towards Stefan you can read this………

I won’t deny that it’s sad to see Stefan say he can’t understand why Elena would care for Damon when he’s in the picture. Nobody can deny that Stefan shows a tremendous love for his brother by his actions, but he’s never been terribly good at recognizing Damon’s worth in an objective sense. And it’s all the more depressing given that it’s something Damon isn’t too flash at himself; when he tells Elena Stefan is lying for the right reasons, he’s assuming that as long as his brother is ready, willing and able, Elena will want said, and he will go back to the bottom of the Salvatore pile – of course – obviously. And yes, it would be nice to see Stefan acknowledge openly that his brother is worth wanting. It would be nice to see him admit that it’s not all about the ways he has pushed Elena away, but the ways Damon has drawn her to him. It would be nice to see him be glad that Elena didn’t just use his brother while he was away – that she truly does care about him – too much to pretend that nothing’s changed.But come on. The guy’s getting dumped here! For his brother. And it’s been less than a week since he was being chosen, and told he was the best choice Elena ever made!I think we can cut him some slack for being just a teensy bit self-absorbed and myopic about the situation. He didn’t guilt-trip Elena. He didn’t bad-mouth Damon. He didn’t cling. He just let go and let it be, and I for one was kind of proud of him. If fandom could handle the situation with half the maturity and kindness Stefan showed in this scene, well… fandom wouldn’t be fandom.But can I just ask that we all cut Elena some slack too? She’s trying. She’s doing her very best not to break anyone’s heart too badly (even though that’s more or less impossible at this point). And that’s why when Stefan says that he drove Elena to, cue euphemism, ‘care for’ Damon, she lets it lie. She’s knows it’s not true. She knows Damon is a lot more than that to her on levels that have nothing to do with anything Stefan has ever said or done. But what’s the point in rubbing salt in the wound? Elena still loves Stefan, very much. And if you love someone and you’re telling them you’re in love with someone else, you don’t write them sonnets about it, you know?

Not a problem, I found this blog last (4×05) episode and have read all the others as well. I really like what she has to say about this show, very insightful even when it has a bit of a personal bias, not to mention hilarious at times too :D. I also read the Glee ones and they’re just as good :).

Yah they do take a while to get through, but I like that :D. I like reading in-depth and/or psychological analysis of the characters and such though so … yah I’m a little weird I know :D.

Words cannot say how much I love this post.

Awww you would love Glee!!! It’s a dramedy, so good, they are the hardest working cast on tv….I mean if you’ve ever seen Ryan Murphy’s work, like umm….NIP/TUCK! (Damn I miss that show) U’d def. like this, there’s never been anything like this on tv before, and they tackle sooo many real life issues, through all ages, it’s great….o btw, I watch BBT too…..religiously! Love it!