Posted by Crissy Calhoun | November 14, 2010, 12:04 (EST) | 98 Comments
Category: TV Series
We’ve had a lot of new actors on TVD these past few weeks but it’s still Nina Dobrev at the heart of the show. Watching her act opposite herself, toss out various accents in scenes that span centuries (she’s Bulgarian, she’s English, she’s an American teen, she’s a croaking partially desiccated vampire!), and bring two very different characters to similar emotional places at the end of the episode — both Katherine and Elena mourn the danger they put their loved ones in — it’s been said before but it bears repeating: someone give this girl a raise, an Emmy, a high five, and a hug. We’re lucky to watch an actress so on top of her game week after week.
The Petrova Fire: I never imagined that there would be a situation where I would cheer for a girl hanging herself but trust The Vampire Diaries to make that kind of awful amazing. Katherine’s a fighter. She refused to let someone else decide her fate, and she did whatever she could to escape it — taking advantage of Trevor and Rose, killing herself, using Proto–Ms. Gibbons as a shield and to feed on, and spending 500 years running from Klaus. “Better you die than I” is Katherine’s motto, and it’s that fierce sense of self-preservation that’s earned her the nickname “psychotic bitch.” But we also see that, just like Elena, Katherine cares deeply for her family; she lost everyone — her daughter, her parents, every other Petrova. Could she allow herself to truly love anyone again, knowing what their fate would be with Klaus’s taste for vengeance? Unlike Trevor and Rose, or Stefan and Damon, Katherine made the decision to survive alone but she isn’t completely heartless. With Katherine’s sorrow over her parents’ portrait, we see that what Rose says to Damon is true: that while the way to survive is not to care about anyone, there isn’t actually a switch a vampire can flip to stop feeling.
Katherine’s story, which Elena believes to be true, shows Elena the fate she faces — will she make the same choice Katherine did and value her own survival over others’? Like Stefan the Protector, Elena has always tried to protect her friends and family as best she could, often at the risk of endangering herself. But how can she do that in this situation? If she turns herself over to Klaus, Tyler and Caroline (or two other people) will die too in undoing the spell, and who knows what kind of chaos would result from a vampire-free-for-all. If she decides to run or turn into a vampire, her friends and family would suffer the same fate Katherine’s did. Though Katherine and Elena lament their fate at the end of Katerina, they share that Petrova fire — the unwillingness to give in to hopelessness. Contrast their can-do attitude with Rose, who has, since the 1490s, been crippled by the threat Klaus poses. Without Trevor, she’s crumbling, and while Damon has a certain amount of trust for her, she’s twice been willing to hand over a Petrova doppelganger in order to save her own life. While Rose did just lose her sole companion of half a millennium and the Originals are making their presence known by giving her a serious sunburn, I’m so accustomed to the keep-fighting spirit of our Mystic Falls gang that I found Rose’s multiple breakdowns off-putting. Hopefully the romp with Damon will help brighten her spirits.
So Many Ingredients: While we still don’t know how the Aztecs got their hands on Petrova blood to bind the curse, Katerina provided a lot of other information about how that pesky Sun and Moon curse works. If one half of it is broken, the other half is permanent — explaining why a vampire who already has the ability to walk in the sun would care about breaking it. If the werewolves break the moon curse and can shift at will, they are a mightier force against the vampires, the bulk of whom would still be confined indoors all day. Breaking the curse requires much more than just a moonstone and some doppelganger blood: Katherine reveals that you need a vampire, a werewolf, the Petrova doppelganger, the moonstone, and a witch to break the spell. Vampires are easy to come by, witches a little trickier, and werewolves a rarity. But a Petrova doppelganger makes an Original wait hundreds of years for her appearance. Both Slater (compelled by Elijah) and Katherine suggest that by destroying or deactivating the moonstone, the curse cannot be broken. Is that the answer to their predicament? (We should bear in mind that last season a mystical object was destroyed, but even without the crystal, Damon and company found a way into the tomb.)
A Solid Maybe: Legends, rumor, centuries-old secrets, and lies — in Katerina, the characters try to distinguish fact from fiction. Damon isn’t sure if Rose is trustworthy; Elena turns to a known liar for the truth; Caroline attempts to dupe Stefan into staying away from Elena, who doesn’t want him to know she’s turned to Katherine for help; there’s more to the Martin Family of Warlocks’ relocation to Mystic Falls than Bonnie or the rest of us know; and Slater is involuntarily made a liar by Elijah’s compulsion. And it’s in this atmosphere of duplicity that loyalty is the most highly valued quality, among both humans and vampires.
In a lot of ways, this episode felt like a set-up for what’s to follow: armed with a better understanding of what Klaus is after, what will Elena, her two protective Salvatore brothers, and the rest of the Mystic Falls Scoobies decide to do? One thing is certain: the stakes are higher for everyone than they’ve ever been before.
Compelling Moment: Bulgaria, 1490. The entire opening sequence was amazing — answering one of the series’ longstanding mysteries while delivering heartbreaking background on Katherine — but the briefly glimpsed relationship between Katerina and her mother was particularly moving.
The Rules: Rose says that a vampire’s ability to turn off his or her emotions doesn’t really exist, that after a few hundred years, you just fake it. (Which makes a lot of sense, since none of our vamps have been particularly convincing when they’re supposed to be devoid of emotion.) Elijah is a “special vampire” (he’s cagey about whether or not it’s his status as an Original which marks him as different) and he has the ability to compel another vampire. Caroline says Tyler also has the urge to kill people, which is interesting since there’s been no indication that humans are a primary food source for werewolves. Like vampires growing stronger with age, the Code of Friendship dictates that the older friendship (like Caroline’s with Elena) wins out over the newer one (Caroline’s with Stefan) when it comes to keeping or spilling secrets.
Foggy Moments:
- Katerina got herself strung up on that beam and dead rather swiftly. I suppose rapid-fire noose-making skills, like the ability to whittle, is something we’ve lost over the generations.
- So Elijah couldn’t compel Elena without first removing her vervain necklace, but he can compel a vampire? While that’s not strictly contradictory, it feels a bit uneven.
Other Thoughts and Questions before The Sacrifice (EP210):
- Katerina’s mother was right: taking the baby away turned out to be better for the child. She survived Klaus’s vengeance.
- Loved the contrast between the raw emotion of Katerina begging to just hold her daughter once and Katherine’s flip way of telling Elena about her past “shame.”
- Does Luka know his father is working with Elijah?
- Did anyone else’s heart melt when Stefan told Caroline she reminded him of Lexi? Their friendship is one of my favorite new pairings in season 2.
- It seems a little counterproductive for Klaus to have Katerina’s entire family killed (without a Petrova line, there is no chance for another Petrova doppelganger) if he wants to break the curse. But if his interest in breaking the curse is what Slater says it is — to beat the werewolves from breaking it first — then by killing off the Petrovas, he believed he had prevented that from happening.
- No one on The Vampire Diaries is completely evil: Elijah may take your head off for betraying him but he’s a generous supporter of the arts. That was a hundred dollar bill he dropped in the guitar case.
- Jeremy took Bonnie’s preference for Luka over him very graciously. That boy really has grown up.
- Katherine’s insistence that Klaus will show up felt like a promise that we’ll be seeing Klaus this season.
- Elena finally figures out the real reason behind Katherine’s return to Mystic Falls. Stefan was right to believe there was more to it than Katherine’s affection for him.
As we wait patiently for December 2nd and The Sacrifice, we can show our thanks for such a great season so far by voting daily for the People’s Choice Awards And, as always, sound off below with your theories, opinions, and spoiler-free comments!
Crissy Calhoun is the author of Love You to Death: The Unofficial Companion to The Vampire Diaries. When not obsessively re-watching CW shows, she works as managing editor at ECW Press in Toronto. She blogs on TVD, Gossip Girl, and other random things she falls in love with at crissycalhoun.com and tweets @crissycalhoun.
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