The Vampire Diaries, “My Brother’s Keeper”

The best television provokes an emotional response. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It excites you. It depresses you. It even angers you.

And I’m not going to lie. That ending made me angry.

Throughout the entire fourth season thus far, the love triangle between Elena and the brothers Salvatore feels like it has been walking a tightrope. Although the triangle has been around since the first season, it’s always been more of a character runner than the main story. This season, though, Elena’s transformation into a vampire and subsequent changes have thrust this story to the forefront of all of the action, turning the show into more of a love triangle with a cool supernatural background than the cool supernatural show with the love triangle in the background it used to be.

For the most part, the show was handling this transition with grace. The key reason—so wonderfully conveyed just last week in Elena and Stefan’s breakup scene—was that the transition was always framed as coming from a character place. Elena’s transition into a vampire brought about personality transitions she couldn’t deny, transitions that led her right into Damon’s arms, and she decided to explore those feelings.

But with one little revelation from Caroline, one little sliver of an idea that all of Elena’s changes since becoming a vampire might be due to her having a sire bond with Damon, all of those decisions she made went away. If that’s the case, yes, this episode provoked an emotional response from me: anger, pure and simple.

Elena is often a troublesome character. As the human center of a whole mess of supernatural insanity, she’s often forced into the damsel in distress mode, shoved into the role of the woman saved by a virtual army of different men. Despite this, the show has consistently allowed Elena to be strong, to make her own decisions about the trajectory of her life, and even to sacrifice herself. Elena Gilbert is mature, she’s fierce, and she’s a fighter. So why is the show trying so hard to frame her most mature decision yet as something beyond her control?

When Elena walked away from Stefan, it wasn’t because she didn’t love him. It was because she recognized that her love for him wasn’t what she needed right now. But by saying Stefan wasn’t what she needed right now because fancy supernatural fairy magic dust is forcing her to feel that way, well, that’s insulting. It’s insulting to Elena as a character, it’s insulting to fans of both couples, and it’s insulting to the show itself, because it’s smarter than this.

Look, this show loves twists. It’s great at twists. It’s especially great at pulling the rug out from under the audience, so this could all be a ruse, and Elena’s choice could very well be her own, and we could all be laughing about this like we did the Sun and Moon curse by next week. There’s one big difference between the two situations, though: That was about plot, and this is about character. Undermining your lead character’s agency to serve a temporary plot twist seems like a terrible choice, whether in the short or long term. In order for Elena the vampire to work, Elena the vampire needs to grow. Framing growth as part of a magical connection and not allowing it to come from her as a character is simply maddening, even if it doesn’t end up being the permanent solution.

The thing is, although the content of the last-minute twist was enraging to me personally, this was a pretty good episode of The Vampire Diaries; too good of an episode to be swallowed up by one frustrating choice. It was centered on a social event, which always brings out the best in the show. The dialogue was snappy. Caroline and Klaus’ interactions were wonderful. Stefan and Jeremy started down a really morally complicated road. Matt moved in with Jeremy. Stefan moved in with Caroline. Elena and Damon danced. It was beautifully paced and edited. And, most of all, there was some major development on the main story arc of the season.

If the show is doing one thing right this season so far, it’s the story of Pastor Young, Connor, Professor Shane, and Jeremy Gilbert. The story truly feels like an onion, with each episode peeling back another layer and revealing more about where this is all headed. Starting with Pastor Young, evolving that into super-hunter Connor, connecting him to Professor Shane, and then bringing in one of the gang in Jeremy has been a study in how to evolve a mystery plot effectively and still leave enough questions hanging each week to keep the story compelling. This week, the added knowledge that Hayley and her newly sired bond-free hybrids tie into Shane’s plan ratchets up the mystery even more. This is obviously leading to a big confrontation revolving around the grave of Silas, which Shane wants for his own purposes and Klaus and Stefan want for cure purposes, and Bonnie is the only witch who can open it. It’s a mystery that touches every single character on the show—even poor, ever-useless April—and that’s just smart writing.

As for Jeremy the hunter, he’s suffering a similar problem to Elena: His choices are superimposed on him from a supernatural source. The difference is, it works here, because Jeremy’s situation doesn’t creepily tie him to another person potentially against his will. Jeremy’s situation forces him to fight his lifelong nature and want to kill his own sister, which is an internal conflict rife with interesting character and plot potential. Brother and sister pitted against each other in a supernatural war of wills is great television. Woman subliminally forced into a sexual relationship with a man because of supernatural forces?

Yeah. Not so good.

Stray observations:

Snarky, angry Stefan is the best Stefan, and Caroline is great as his anti-Ripper “sober sponsor.” But how does everyone fall on him using his powers of compulsion to figure out if criminals are bad enough to deserve being turned and staked? Stefan is like the judge, jury, and executioner all in one, and it sits funny with me.Caroline not liking Damon is understandable, but can’t the show allow her to say it’s because he totally mind raped, manipulated, and almost killed her? The audience remembers, so let the characters.Matt Donovan is the best. I will accept no assertions to the contrary.Stefan: “Let’s not pretend like this isn’t the best day of your life.”Klaus: “Let’s get you a drink, I’ll tell you all about being the bad guy.” “My brother wants to kill me.” “Welcome to the club.”

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The Vampire Diaries, “My Brother’s Keeper”

The best television provokes an emotional response. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It excites you. It depresses you. It even angers you.

And I’m not going to lie. That ending made me angry.

Throughout the entire fourth season thus far, the love triangle between Elena and the brothers Salvatore feels like it has been walking a tightrope. Although the triangle has been around since the first season, it’s always been more of a character runner than the main story. This season, though, Elena’s transformation into a vampire and subsequent changes have thrust this story to the forefront of all of the action, turning the show into more of a love triangle with a cool supernatural background than the cool supernatural show with the love triangle in the background it used to be.

For the most part, the show was handling this transition with grace. The key reason—so wonderfully conveyed just last week in Elena and Stefan’s breakup scene—was that the transition was always framed as coming from a character place. Elena’s transition into a vampire brought about personality transitions she couldn’t deny, transitions that led her right into Damon’s arms, and she decided to explore those feelings.

But with one little revelation from Caroline, one little sliver of an idea that all of Elena’s changes since becoming a vampire might be due to her having a sire bond with Damon, all of those decisions she made went away. If that’s the case, yes, this episode provoked an emotional response from me: anger, pure and simple.

Elena is often a troublesome character. As the human center of a whole mess of supernatural insanity, she’s often forced into the damsel in distress mode, shoved into the role of the woman saved by a virtual army of different men. Despite this, the show has consistently allowed Elena to be strong, to make her own decisions about the trajectory of her life, and even to sacrifice herself. Elena Gilbert is mature, she’s fierce, and she’s a fighter. So why is the show trying so hard to frame her most mature decision yet as something beyond her control?

When Elena walked away from Stefan, it wasn’t because she didn’t love him. It was because she recognized that her love for him wasn’t what she needed right now. But by saying Stefan wasn’t what she needed right now because fancy supernatural fairy magic dust is forcing her to feel that way, well, that’s insulting. It’s insulting to Elena as a character, it’s insulting to fans of both couples, and it’s insulting to the show itself, because it’s smarter than this.

Look, this show loves twists. It’s great at twists. It’s especially great at pulling the rug out from under the audience, so this could all be a ruse, and Elena’s choice could very well be her own, and we could all be laughing about this like we did the Sun and Moon curse by next week. There’s one big difference between the two situations, though: That was about plot, and this is about character. Undermining your lead character’s agency to serve a temporary plot twist seems like a terrible choice, whether in the short or long term. In order for Elena the vampire to work, Elena the vampire needs to grow. Framing growth as part of a magical connection and not allowing it to come from her as a character is simply maddening, even if it doesn’t end up being the permanent solution.

The thing is, although the content of the last-minute twist was enraging to me personally, this was a pretty good episode of The Vampire Diaries; too good of an episode to be swallowed up by one frustrating choice. It was centered on a social event, which always brings out the best in the show. The dialogue was snappy. Caroline and Klaus’ interactions were wonderful. Stefan and Jeremy started down a really morally complicated road. Matt moved in with Jeremy. Stefan moved in with Caroline. Elena and Damon danced. It was beautifully paced and edited. And, most of all, there was some major development on the main story arc of the season.

If the show is doing one thing right this season so far, it’s the story of Pastor Young, Connor, Professor Shane, and Jeremy Gilbert. The story truly feels like an onion, with each episode peeling back another layer and revealing more about where this is all headed. Starting with Pastor Young, evolving that into super-hunter Connor, connecting him to Professor Shane, and then bringing in one of the gang in Jeremy has been a study in how to evolve a mystery plot effectively and still leave enough questions hanging each week to keep the story compelling. This week, the added knowledge that Hayley and her newly sired bond-free hybrids tie into Shane’s plan ratchets up the mystery even more. This is obviously leading to a big confrontation revolving around the grave of Silas, which Shane wants for his own purposes and Klaus and Stefan want for cure purposes, and Bonnie is the only witch who can open it. It’s a mystery that touches every single character on the show—even poor, ever-useless April—and that’s just smart writing.

As for Jeremy the hunter, he’s suffering a similar problem to Elena: His choices are superimposed on him from a supernatural source. The difference is, it works here, because Jeremy’s situation doesn’t creepily tie him to another person potentially against his will. Jeremy’s situation forces him to fight his lifelong nature and want to kill his own sister, which is an internal conflict rife with interesting character and plot potential. Brother and sister pitted against each other in a supernatural war of wills is great television. Woman subliminally forced into a sexual relationship with a man because of supernatural forces?

Yeah. Not so good.

Stray observations:

Snarky, angry Stefan is the best Stefan, and Caroline is great as his anti-Ripper “sober sponsor.” But how does everyone fall on him using his powers of compulsion to figure out if criminals are bad enough to deserve being turned and staked? Stefan is like the judge, jury, and executioner all in one, and it sits funny with me.Caroline not liking Damon is understandable, but can’t the show allow her to say it’s because he totally mind raped, manipulated, and almost killed her? The audience remembers, so let the characters.Matt Donovan is the best. I will accept no assertions to the contrary.Stefan: “Let’s not pretend like this isn’t the best day of your life.”Klaus: “Let’s get you a drink, I’ll tell you all about being the bad guy.” “My brother wants to kill me.” “Welcome to the club.”

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MOVIE REVIEW: Chernobyl Diaries: Blu-ray

Oren Peli burst onto the scene with his "found footage" horror film Paranormal Activity, spawning a whole new slew of "found footage" films–typically low budget films that are relatively fast to produce and are easy money-makers for the studios. After producing the highly successful Insidious, Peli turned his attention to a new idea: what if there was some kind of conspiracy surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine involving radiated survivors? The result was Chernobyl Diaries and while it has a great premise and promising start, the end result is just another cheap horror flick.

Chris (Jesse McCartney), his girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and their friend Amanda (Devin Kelley) are in the middle of a European trip, working their way towards Moscow. They make it to Kiev, where they meet up with Chris' brother Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), where Chris reveals that he intends to propose to Natalie when they get to Moscow. Wanting to provide his brother and his friends with some excitement, Paul signs them all up for an "extreme tour" of the abandoned worker town of Prypiat adjacent to Chernobyl. Led by local "extreme" tour guide Yuri (Dimitri Diatchenko), the group is joined by another backpacking couple (Zoe (Ingrid Bolso Berdal) and Michael (Nathan Phillips)) and they all head out on the hours-long drive to Prypiat. They get to a checkpoint at the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, only to be turned away by the military–but Yuri knows a back way in.

They make it inside the abandoned city and begin to explore, dismissing the occasional hints that some kind of radiated mutation has been taking hold of the city. When night begins to fall and they discover that the wires in the van have been chewed through, their situation becomes dire. Things go from bad to worse when a pack of aggressive dogs attack Chris–and Yuri goes missing. Now the group begins to play a game of cat-and-mouse as they try to survive the night, find a way to fix the van, and get out of Prypiat–but there is something worse than dogs out there in the dark.

Until the attacks begin, the way Chernobyl Diaries is presented is relatively solid. Director Bradley Parker does a decent job of giving us sympathetic characters to associate with and cheer for and the back story of the Chernobyl plant disaster and abandoned town of Prypiat is certainly ripe with potential. But as soon as night descends and things start to go bad for our band of unsuspecting travelers, the film begins to devolve into a typical horror film with lots of dark imagery that makes you question what you're looking at, lots of moments of silence before something bursts onto the screen, and a few chase segments that, while well executed, don't bring anything new to the genre. There is creative use of "found footage" (in this case, an iPhone video) to show us what happens to some of the characters and the ambient music score by Diego Stocco really helps with the tension of the film. It's a shame that the film ultimately didn't build a compelling and memorable mythology to the Chernobyl disaster, especially since it certainly had the ability to do so. In the end, Chernobyl Diaries will stand as another example of a very low budget film (reportedly only $1 million to make) doing well–justifying more just like it.

Shot digitally, Chernobyl Diaries comes to Blu-ray sporting a solid presentation that mirrors the original look of the movie in theaters. During the first act of the film, things are bright and crisp with the color saturation set at a nice medium and good detail present in the image. Things change a bit when the action moves to Pripyat; the palette loses its punch, things appear more drab and, when nightfall comes, the image gets even darker and murkier. It never felt like anything was blown out or punched up and the overall impression is that it's a good looking film, for what it is.

Audio is presented in an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that focuses much more on front-and-center dialogue than I would have expected. The "tension" (and rare "action") scenes pack more of a punch with the subwoofer and surround sounds kicking in and Diego Stocco's ambient music is subtle and effective in adding an extra layer of dread and anxiety to the film, especially in the low end.

Four meagre supplements are included on the Blu-ray. An "Additional Scene" (HD, 1-minute) is just a brief moment where the leads make a "toast" to their trip and an "Alternate Ending" (HD, 2-minutes) shows a silly (and thankfully unused) alternate fate to one of the characters. A fake commercial, "Uri's Extreme Tours Infomercial," (HD, 1.5-minutes) shows everyone's favorite tour guide making his sales pitch for his extreme adventures, and "Chernobyl Conspiracy Viral Video" (HD, 2.5-minutes) gives us a little bit of back story into the actual disaster, as well as a taste of the 'conspiracy theory' that inspired the premise of the film.

No trailer or behind-the-scenes material is presented, although this version of the Blu-ray comes with a DVD version of the film, as well as an Ultraviolet Digital Copy.

Chernobyl Diaries has a really cool premise, but ends up a missed opportunity. The Chernobyl reactor meltdown disaster and the ghost-town of Pripyat can certainly inspire any number of different conspiracy theories, but, in the end, the film devolves into a standard "creepy things in the shadows attacking our cast" monster movie. It looks and sounds nice on Blu-ray, but the lack of any substantial extras and weak second half of the film, make Chernobyl Diaries a rental, at best.

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