The Vampire Diaries 2x12 Review

[iaria]

Descent

• I knew Rose was going to die and while I’m not pleased about yet another female (vampire) being killed off I actually liked how they did it. I think she got one of the best deaths, at least in the immediate minutes surrounding it, of anyone on this show. (Those last few minutes were great, the preceding 50 – no so much. Dying of a werewolf bite is actually really horrible.) I think those last minutes made it much sadder, actually. It made me cry. She’s not one of my favourite characters but by the time of her death I really liked her and I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to live on and become Damon’s BFF and to mentor Caroline, and become friends with Elena and Stefan. I’d managed to get over my expectations about her to like her for who she was not who I thought she should be.

Her death... fit. It didn’t feel gratuitous to me like Anna or Pearl’s did. It felt – earned. I mean it didn’t feel unexpectedly random (Pearl) nor as if it was all about motivating someone else (ie. fridging her for Damon’s personal growth, Anna). I mean, yes, a really big part of this episode was the story of Damon being motivated and feeling all over the place over Rose slowly dying and her death. It had an impact on him and that was certainly played on. But! The episode also spent a significant amount of time on Rose herself and exploring who she was and how she was feeling. Mostly via her scenes with Elena we got to see her fear and grief, we got to hear her regrets and thus her dying wasn’t told entire from the point of view of someone else (Damon) but also her own. So it didn’t feel like fridging her to me and I am really thankful for that.

• I also really felt like this episode gave us a better look into who Rose was as a character than all the previous episodes combined. Rose wasn’t a badass. She was someone who preferred the peace of the country, who wanted family and friends, and who spent most of her life running and afraid, never letting herself have either of them. She was... timid for all her age and power and I don’t think that is a bad thing. She’s certainly a very different vampire then we’ve seen before. I wish we could have seen more of her. It makes me so sad that she spent so long afraid and never got the close friends or family she so wanted.

• I loved that final Rose/Damon scene. ♥ Everything about that scene was wonderful to me and it was my favourite one of the episode. In fact that scene is now one of my favourite scenes in the entire series.

The big thing about Rose’s death as far as Damon goes is that I think it was the greatest moment of mercy and selflessness we have ever seen from him. It was compassion at its very core. He fought to save her even when he knew there was no hope, even opening himself to an enemy, and in the end he gave her back the happiness and peace she’d been missing for centuries. He gave her home and then after she found peace he killed her liked she wanted. I just... *hands* I really loved that scene. I loved the dream he gave her – the location and the sun – I loved their talk and him reassuring her “I think you will see whoever you want to see”, I loved them holding each other, and I loved him staking her while in her dream she laughed, finally free. I loved that he waited until she told him that she wasn’t afraid anymore before he took the stake. I loved how sincere his “I’m glad” was when she said her pain was gone. I loved him crying as he staked her. Just - ♥. I thought it was beautifully done.

• The Rose/Damon scenes these last couple episodes have been so great. There never would have been any grand love between them but even after so short a time there was an ease and loyalty between them that made me able to see them being close friends for centuries. The scene where they’re sitting on the hill with him holding her and them clasping their hands together was wonderful and clearly so comfortable for both of them and I just really grew to love them.

• I really loved the Elena/Rose scenes. I liked Elena comforting Rose and trying to help her and I loved her holding Rose’s hand. I loved Rose telling her “don’t be afraid of me”. I think Elena and Rose could have had a really great friendship.

• Elena was a bit foolhardy this episode – looking for Rose in the dark house knowing she’d lost it once before – but she also fought back – the nails to the shoulder (awesome!) – and she didn’t open the door when Rose called for her. I actually totally would have expected her to because that’s what Elena does. For once Elena’s self-preservation instinct took precedence over her deep empathy and compassion.

• I wish Elena had been more affected by Rose’s death. I mean she was clearly affected by Rose’s pain throughout, and was sad at her death but I guess I wanted more. I wanted... tears and grief I think. It makes sense that she wasn’t affected more since she didn’t really know Rose that well I wanted someone other than Damon to grieve for her.

• “Damon, I’m your friend. ... And a friend usually knows when their friend is hurting.” Wow. Its one thing for Elena to include him in ‘people I care about’ but it’s an entirely new thing for her to straight out say ‘I’m your friend’. Huh. That happened sooner than I thought it would. It was inevitable – not even for Doylist reasons but because that’s just who Elena is and what her relationship with Damon is like – but I figured that it would take at least a couple more episodes if not till the end of the season for her to reach this point. It was also very interesting how Damon replied to it by saying casually ‘I’m well aware of that’. He has worked so hard to get back in her good graces that I think I was a bit surprised at how indifferently he reacted to finally getting confirmation that he had her friendship back even in his grief, guilt and anger. I guess her including him in ‘the people I care about’ a couple episodes ago pretty much confirmed it for him.

• The scene where Elena hugs Damon to comfort him after Rose’s death immediately made me think back to 1x14 ‘Fool Me Once’ and I think that was probably entirely on purpose. That time Damon lost so much and was numb and showed little on his face. This time Elena hugs him and he isn’t blank. In fact he has to actually fight back tears.

• I have to shake my head at myself because I didn’t see that final scene coming but I should have because that is what Damon does. He suffers some emotional trauma and/or issue and reacts in the most childish way possible by immediately lashing out. We’ve seen it over and over again at this point and it’s basically a signature Damon move. Oh, Damon. For a minute there I thought we might actually see some growth in him with him letting Jessica go but, no, of course not. Sigh. One interesting thing about the scene was that Damon used the very first trick Katherine taught him to catch humans and in fact the same tactic he used the very first time we saw a vampire kill/him.

• I did have a couple issues with this episode –

1) When Rose lost it and Elena locked herself in a room why the hell did she grab a stake and sit in the middle of the dark room instead of out on the nice sunny balcony where Rose couldn’t get her if she got into the room? Possibly the show was trying to ramp up the tension but it made Elena look dumb.

2) Why the hell did it take Damon so long to get back to the house? It’s especially ‘wtf’ considering Jules tells him that Rose will eventually go rabid and he knows Elena was alone in the house with her. Why the hell wouldn’t he have immediately gone to the house to check on them? Actually, what the hell was he doing for those hours between meeting Jules and getting home once it was dark? There were some serious timing issues in this episode and unfortunately it made both Elena and Damon look very stupid. Who was it Elena called earlier? I’m pretty sure it was Damon but it makes no sense that he wouldn’t come immediately. Oh, I guess she could have gotten his voicemail and that’s why she just hung up like she did. But then why didn’t she try to call someone else – Stefan or Bonnie or Caroline for help, or Alaric or Jeremy to see if they could find Damon and send him. Instead she spent hours sitting in that room waiting. It was ridiculous.

3) Damon stopping to talk to Elena in the house, including telling her Rose was dead and he didn’t care, made me shake my head at TPTB so very much. Rose is a vampire, with vampire hearing, which both Damon and Elena know. Why would they have such a conversation in what amounts to her hearing range?

• “You went on a murderous rampage, it happens.” – Damon. Hmm. Apparently. It’s interesting because we get two murderous rampages this episode: the first by Rose when she’s out of her mind, and the second one by Jules mostly off-screen. Only with Jules it’s questionable just how much control she has over her wolf. She had enough to know/remember to go after Damon so was she aware when she tore apart those campers? She was certainly rather blasé afterwards about killing them and started cleaning up in a way that indicated that she’d done it before many times. And certainly her killing the cop was intentional. It appears that Jules is very like pre-series Damon.

• I’m continuing to enjoy the Caroline/Tyler scenes a lot. In fact I like them a fair bit more than Caroline/Matt. I’m hoping that Tyler ends up being the vampire coven’s mole in the werewolves. Also I can’t wait until Tyler is brought more fully in the know – Elena knows, the Salvatore brothers, Jeremy knows, Bonnie is a witch, what happened to Vicki – that will be fun (and they’d better not skip that scene!) On the other hand, Tyler learning the truth about Mason could go badly. The fact that he was working with the vampire who turned/killed Caroline could be enough, with what’s been happening between Caroline and Tyler the last few episodes, to tip things to her side if he listens.

• Does vervain get more diluted when people drink it? It would make sense to me that it would which in turn would make Stefan drinking from a slightly drugged Elena make more sense than drinking it from a glass. Are she and Stefan going to continue to have him drink her blood?

• I liked the Alaric/Stefan scene and I love Alaric is now ‘doing Damon’s dirty work for him now’ which in this case generally means spying and he’s just fine with that. If Alaric is ‘in the know’ about Rose does that mean Bonnie is as well? I’d think Damon or Elena would have turned to her to see if she could save Rose.

• Does the fact that Rose has never liked taking a human life mean that she never flipped her switch? But it seems from her talk with Damon a couple episodes back about it that at some point she did use it.

• Does Elena just not go to school anymore? How did she explain her absence all day? Also – Stefan?

• I love Damon’s bedroom. It’s gorgeous and I want it. It’s so open and pretty and I loved the open bathroom. Okay, the curtains were rather eh. During the first scene in there I found myself more interested in the room than what was happening between Elena and Rose. I was a bit surprised as well that it was Damon’s bedroom. I wonder what it means that we’re now getting a look at it?

• I wonder where Damon buried Rose? She meant something to him so there is no way that he would just bury her in the forest. My fanon is going to be he placed her in the family cemetery.

• “I don’t know if you know this but sometimes vampire’s die.” – Damon. Ouch. That was really lacking in self-awareness considering that Damon killed Stefan’s vampire best friend in front of him. Yeah, I think he knows and possibly Damon shouldn’t bring it up (though Stefan had no reaction to it).

• My first reaction to seeing John was ‘I don’t want John I want Isobel!’ and I stand by it but thinking about it more getting the possibility of some John/Elena interaction works for me. I found it interesting that she called him ‘uncle John’ instead of say ‘John’ even knowing the truth. One big negative about it being John and not Isobel is the fact that the show just killed off a reoccurring female character and then brought back a male reoccurring character who survived previously when he should have died instead of a different female reoccurring character. It leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.