Like Debbie, I’m another big fan of The Vampire Diaries who’s disappointed by the direction the series has taken since Elena has turned off her humanity.

The whole episode, “Pictures of You” seemed forced.  Why does Elena need to torment her friends?  We get she shut off her emotions but why does that turn her into a harassing bitch? A sort of strange and kind of random prom, how many dances does this school have per year? Caroline going to Klaus for a dress, the boys trying to make Elena have memories that bring her out of her trance, a very quick cameo by Tyler – he came back for 10 minutes?  All sort of disjointed and poorly written.

This felt like a filler episode, and I could think of better filler than this. And, I am a little afraid for next week. Seeing the real face of Silas … is this a jumping the shark moment?  Is the make-up going to be awful and just make this take a turn into hokey land?  I would have been happy to NEVER see his face.  Did we learn nothing from Alfred Hitchcock?

Where do we go from here? I couldn’t care less about Rebekah and her teenage turmoil. At this point I kind of hope Elena dies or is tortured. Put us all out of our misery. It is sad when the character I liked most in the episode is Bonnie. Enough already. Let’s speed this up and get back to a story line that is actually fun to watch.

Julie Plec — where have you gone? Did you use up all your creative juices on the Jeremy death episode (which was AWESOME)? Please come back and bring me back the show I used to love. The Vampire Diaries needs to figure out what it wants to be and get there — fast. Is it going to be the well-written show full of characters we love coming to terms with the supernatural pieces of their human lives, or the sensationalist, teen bullying show that it’s turning into?

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As moving and significant as it was, I had my reservations about how The Vampire Diaries went off into their wonderfully short winter hiatus this year, with “Stand By Me.” It was well-written and -acted, cathartic and transitional and important, but what comes next could be a very slippery slope. Taking away yet another human character will have its consequences for sure, but taking away the humanness of Elena, a trait upon which this series is driven, could be a grave mistake.

And from what I saw last week, that’s exactly what it is. I’m not sure I’ve ever considered an episode of The Vampire Diaries to be horrible (sub-par, maybe), but “Bring It On” was a complete train wreck.

The good news is that nothing lasts for long on The Vampire Diaries — it’s a quick-moving storyline filled with twists and turns — so they should be able to right this sinking ship fairly easily. Here’s what needs to happen to fix this potential disaster. …

Klaus and Haley have no chemistry.
I understand that The Powers That Be are setting up The Originals spin-off (of which Haley will surely be the weak link), but there are several problems with the Klaus/Haley storyline. First of all, the only reason fans love Klaus is because of the humanness he shows when he’s pining over and/or wooing Caroline (it’s not his twisted, Grinch-like grin). Don’t even get me started on what will become of TVD and the Caroline/Klaus dynamic when Klaus jumps ship to the spin-off. And don’t even tell me that Caroline should go with him, because she shouldn’t.

While it’s looking like Haley will be a descendant of the original werewolf bloodline, and that’s cool and all, save it for the spin-off and get her out of Mystic Falls. We have limited time with Klaus and Caroline, Tyler’s out of the picture for right now, so let’s play, people. There’s nothing more appealing than Caroline wrestling with her divided feelings.

Tyler is integral and so is Elena’s human side.
I’m not sure what drives The Powers That be to send Tyler off every spring, but it’s getting old. He’s been an important part of the story throughout the seasons, and he’s still integral in my book.

But here’s the real storyline that needs to be mined: Tyler’s an orphan now (granted, he’s also 18) — both of his parents and his uncle have been killed — does he need to shut off his humanity? No. So why does Elena? She’s been through the wringer, for sure, and she’s lost a few more people than Tyler has … but shutting off her humanity is definitely not the answer (as evidenced by the horrendous “Bring It On”). Over four years, Elena has proven how strong she is — why can’t the Salvatore brothers stop trying to save her, control her, shelter her? This is all just a little too close to the Twilight crap now. No one wanted to turn off Tyler, so stop treating Elena like Bella … she’s stronger than that, and unlike Bella, she doesn’t want a vampire man to dominate her.

I’m sure Tyler is the answer to helping Elena regain her humanness. It can’t be one of the Salvatore brothers, because that would negate her inner strength and independence. Once and for all, Damon and Stefan need to see that they don’t have to baby Elena — she can take care of herself.

More Matt on my screen.
Listen here, TVD writers, and listen good. I’m on board because of the juxtaposition of humanity and supernaturals. I don’t want to watch a show that’s filled with vampires and werewolves and super-human fight scenes. The struggle of the supernatural characters with their human side and how to make peace with their blood-sucking side is a big draw, believe it or not. Watching how the humans reconcile themselves to the strangeness in Mystic Falls is crucial. What would Sunnydale have been without Xander?

Matt is probably one of the most important characters on The Vampire Diaries right now, and sadly, he has to do his important work without Jeremy. He not only shows us that humanity can find a way to survive the supernatural catastrophes in Mystic Falls, but that without humanity, it would surely crumble.

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Something that The Vampire Diaries does so well is to make each episode stand out in some way, even though it is a serialized drama. There’s no “case of the week” to fall back on for structure, but the writers take that extra step to make sure there’s something special about each episode, through the character interactions, reveals, themes running through the episode or whatever gems they decide to gift us with each week.

“Memorial” was a shining example of a thematic approach. You could argue it was all about juxtapositions: the dead versus the living (or the undead, as the case may be with most of our characters), real morning versus symbolic mourning, the old versus the new and the loner versus the team. Likely there were many more, but these stood out for me.

I was struck by the comparisons between the old hunter, Alaric, and the new one, Connor. Granted, we still have a lot to learn about Connor, who right now seems very black and white … but we know what happens to the evils on The Vampire Diaries. Pretty soon, he’ll be falling in love with Bonnie, helping Elena and questioning his effectiveness as a vampire hunter. Right now, though, he’s in the camp that all vampires are bad, and he’s after them with an unexplained vengeance that I’m sure we’ll get the backstory on sooner than later. Alaric started off a bit like this, but quickly joined Team Salvatore. The loner didn’t stay a loner for very long.

Which leads me to the other places loners versus teams were juxtaposed in “Memorial.” Tyler’s speech at the memorial said it all. Tyler has had his moments as a loner, but when he purposefully sacrificed himself for the team — hinting at what he was doing in his speech — it was significant on so many levels. Something tells me we won’t be seeing Tyler as an egotistical loner this season; he’s on board, de-Klaused and along for the ride.

While Tyler was delivering his speech about the strength of a team, Connor was targeting them alone. It couldn’t be done — he couldn’t bring down the unified team as a loner. Connor’s dealing with something he’s likely not met before and watching him discover this will be a fun ride.

Another perpetual loner is Damon, and he reinforced this fact in the way he mourned for Alaric. He didn’t join in the team balloon ceremony — which was very beautiful and symbolic — but really wasn’t a true mourning of what they’ve all lost. Only Damon, talking to his lost friend Alaric at his grave, truly mourned. And seeing that Alaric is also mourning from beyond the grave was heartbreaking. That was the moment in this episode that made me cry: the moment that Alaric and Damon were having together that Damon didn’t even know about, that Damon couldn’t see his friend and how much he missed him as well.

Juxtaposing the dead and living in that balloon ceremony, though, struck me as a fun shout-out by the writers to what they have become known for: killing off main characters and that no one is safe on The Vampire Diaries.

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I’m really on the fence with Elena being a vampire. While it was time to shake up the love triangle dynamics a bit, I’m not sure this was the way to do it. Stefan and Damon subsisted on saving her, Stefan by respecting her choices and giving her freedom and Damon selfishly saving her from herself, sure that his way was the right way. Will these dynamics benefit from the Salvatore brothers no longer having to save their mortal love? I’m not sure they will.

One thing The Vampire Diaries definitely does is keep the story moving along at a very swift pace. While this works well for the OMG moments, I’m beginning to grow tired of it. Because the pacing is so fast, they miss a lot of ripe opportunities to explore character and storyline more in depth. Nothing goes deep and I’m craving that.

For instance, I was thrilled at the end of last season, when it was revealed that Klaus was in Tyler’s body. Well, that lasted for all of two scenes in the premiere, and that’s a huge stone left unturned. Michael Trevino was so good at channelling Joseph Morgan’s Klaus, down to the tilt of the head and the facial expressions. How fun to watch him play Klaus. And to see the dynamics between Tyler/Klaus and Caroline would have made for some really fascinating scenes and interactions. He said “Love” once, she figured it out and that was the end of that. The Vampire Diaries has so many lost opportunities like this one, and we’re missing out on seeing the characters grow and change because of it.

This season, I’d like to see The Vampire Diaries take some real chances with characterization, in dragging out the storylines and character interactions to mine the potential before moving the storylines along. If the writing is solid, and we all know how incredible the acting is on this show, then they’ll only benefit from this new focus. The storyline doesn’t have to change in every episode; it’s OK to play out a particular avenue over several episodes or even the whole season.

Now that Elena is a vampire, let’s slowly and deeply explore the new dynamics between her and Stefan. Let’s thresh out her feelings for Damon, especially now that she remembers everything he compelled her to forget. Let’s watch her struggle with her newfound immortality, while attempting to remain a good person and fending off the bloodlust successfully. Could she possibly become as amazing as Caroline did? She’s clearly a better woman for being a vampire — let’s see Elena rise to that challenge. That would mean she’s got to stop whining, she needs to be strong for everyone in her life, she needs to remain a pillar of constancy for Jeremy. Let’s not have her turn into an insecure  girl driven by her romantic desires only. We know her emotions are heightened now, so it could go either way. A somewhat strong character could be ruined by her selfish, lustful side.

And let’s not see all of this happen in one episode, only to focus on whatever new plotline is introduced.

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