Jads

I thought exactly the same! Maybe it's indicative of how superficially I am watching this show now but everyone looked hot even Matt (who I have never fancied before!). PW seems to know how to his friends to look their best. I think I might be on my own but I have actually enjoyed the last 2 episodes more than the rest of S7. Does it make sense? Not really. Is some the dialogue clunky as anything? Yes. I really wanted Stefan to say to Damon that despite all the bad stuff about Damon, Stefan knows that he has a good side independent of Elena. That would have made sense. I liked seeing Tyler back. In fact for me, the major plus points of last 2 episodes have been putting the main characters in a room together and very little heretic stuff. Nora can stay though, she's better away from Mary Louise. I do find the idea of Matt working with huntress intriguing. They have been hinting at Matt going anti vampire for so long and it looks like he might get a LI too.

I was toast when Francis saw the bush with the white petals. I hate historical inaccuracies but the fan girl in me liked the fact that he died saving Mary. I think generally Toby Regbo has done a pretty great job making Francis likeable despite some of the weird u turns his character has had to make. Bash telling Catherine was beyond strange and inappropriate (historically). Also why wasn't Charles at the funeral? I think Mary will need to hang around at court for a bit just to check she isn't pregnant but then it's back to Scotland. Are they planning to follow her there? I have to say I'm not very interested in Elizabeth, I would like to follow Catherine instead. French history is about to get really bloody!

This makes so much sense especially the hybrid aspect. Don't get me wrong, I hated the sire bond sl first time around but it didn't need to be so gross.

Wow, did the heretics just get interesting ?!? On a different note, I find the appellation "heretic" in this case really odd. A heretic is someone whose beliefs usually religious differ from the norm. The point is that a heretic makes a choice whereas being a siphoner seems to something you just are due to genetics (I do get how ludicrous discussing the genetics of magic is ;) ). It's just a small plot point and I guess there were persecuted but still. I feel like JP and CD decided upon the name after watching Reign and didn't really think it through.

I liked this episode but ended up watching it in bits so feel I'm missing stuff. Firstly is the Jacob character in Stefan's dream an imaginary character? I wondered if initially he was the third Salvatore brother - the long lost relative of Zach and Sarah. PW 's 1860s hair is so terrible it always makes me laugh. The Defan scenes were absolute gold and the highlight of the season. I really liked that it was Damon who got the secret out of Stefan but had to push him to the brink. Stefan has always been honourable in the way that the show has told us that Elijah is meant to be. I actually thought the way Caroline dealt with Valerie was cool. She decided she was going to trust Stefan and not let Valerie push her buttons. Although Caroline, Valerie is not going to cut it talking the way she does and saying she's from Liverpool. I found that unintentionally hilarious. I don't like this whole pregnant Caroline and Alaric as the fiancée thing. I doubt Liz Forbes would approve either. Also how pregnant is Caroline? I mean Jo must have been at least 6 weeks by the wedding plus another 6 weeks and it's twins. Did she not hear the 2 extra heart beats she's carrying around? The Gemini coven always had a weird founding families vibe to them so I could see Valerie as a member. The magic siphoning thing could be a result of a defect in the magic gene magnified by the effects of inbreeding within the coven?

God I miss Lexi. She would have slapped Stefan and told him to fess up. Or bashed his head against a car door.

With regards to the stone soul body match up situation, when Bonnie was doing the spell she just seemed to randomly go through a bunch of spells until one stuck. Whereas the heretics have more information so probably hit on a more exact spell. There were also 3 of them so maybe the magic was stronger. I have always thought that Bonnie has needed a magic mentor which why I loved Grams so much. If ever there was a time to bring back Lucy Bennett this is it!Jenna being in Jo would be great - how much would that screw with Alaric 's mind. I wonder if Isobel could squeeze in too?

I interpreted that scene somewhat differently in that Damon seemed to know about The Valerie Story from Stefan but had a good old snoop in Stefan's diary anyway to glean some more details. Stefan has always tended to be more private than Damon. Let's be honest, everyone has read Stefan's diary at this point.I really want to see some pre Katherine Defan too - I think I read somewhere that we would get some.

I have decided to give up trying to make sense of the plots and focus on my favourite characters and their interaction ie Defan. This was episode was great stuff - Damon pushing all Stefan's, Stefan's exasperation with Damon. I think Ian bringing his A game this season and I am back on the Damon Train again. I hate this Valerie sl but I'm hopeful that it's going to unite the Salvatores in going after Julian. I totally missed the whole Bonnie flash forward but Bonnie and Enzo is just bleurgh. I did like seeing Ms Cuddles again.

If Stefan goes to hell, maybe he'll find Katherine there? The Caroline carrying Jolaric babies spoiler is freaking creepy.

I think you're right that the age difference wouldn't be a problem (I don't think Alaric is older than mid 30s though). I think the amount of emotional baggage Alaric has would mean that Bonnie and Caroline would probably avoid dating him. I could see Alaric having a complete mid life crisis and having a fling with a 20 year old just not B or C.

I have wanted Bonnie and Stefan to get together from the moment they were sat around the table at Elena's house talking about Salem witches. I've shipped Stefan with all the Bennett witches with the exception of Abbie. I would love this! I think it's going to be Enzo though, yawn. I read that Julie Plec had confirmed there would be no more Sarah Salvatore which I'm kind of sad about as I liked Tristin Mays and thought her story had potential to being interesting when not weighed down with Enzo. I thought her and Matt were quite cute together too. Wow. Can you tell I don't like Enzo? I'm not keen on romantic Bamon but Bonnie deserves better than freaking Enzo. I'm trying to think of characters that haven't died.

I have decided that how much I enjoy TVD is related to how I feel about Damon. I watched the promo, Damon didn't annoy me so I'm in. Two things I didn't like - not enough Bonnie and by the looks of it, Caroline being tortured AGAIN. Seriously Plec?

Congratulations Candice and Joe. I read Carrie Ann ' s post and found myself nodding along. There was an interview at comic con where all the cast were making weird expecting jokes so I'm guessing she's at least 4 months along so February makes sense. If s7 is the last (fingers crossed ), they could kill off Caroline, have Bonnie 's curse magically transfer to her before this and then Elena wakes up. Or something. Just no magical baby, please.

So I carried on my re watch through S2 which I loved except the wolves barring Mason. I ffed through Rose ' s descent and Tyler ' s transformation both of which I felt went on too long and were too similar. For shallow reasons, I particularly enjoy the first half of the season. Stefan and Damon spend a lot of time hanging out in the Lockwood garden and for some reason, the light makes them both look jaw droppingly gorgeous. I don't know if PW suddenly grew into his face or if he's playing Stefan as a bit more confident but when Katherine calls him sexy, I find myself nodding along. I'm all for Defan so the early episodes are FTW. There are a couple of little physical interactions which are great namely when Stefan cuffs Damon on the shoulder when admonishing him for getting Jeremy involved and when Damon is using Mason's phone to bait Katherine, Stefan is trying to wrestle it off him and he swats him away. They are such brotherly little gestures. I also love the scene in Elena 's bedroom where Damon tells her he loves her but has to let her go. I've always interpreted that as being as much about his relationship with Stefan as how he feels about Elena. I'm still blown away by what a great job Nina does at differentiating between Katherine and Elena. I also think the rest of the cast do a great job of acting differently towards her. I am now re watching S6 purely because I saw a lot of things in s2 which I think pay off in S6. Well that and the ret con of Elena being in love with Damon from s3 ep1.

Ok more S1 thoughts: I think Ian Somerhalder has it completely wrong when he said Damon's S1 appeal was all about being sexy, revealing in blood etc. (recent Comic con panel). I actually think the whole Vicky arc is pretty detrimental to Damon 's character. He turns her because he's bored, that's pretty stupid. Even though I love Lexi as a character, Damon killing her at least is part of a plan (I'm ignoring the horrible ret con where he sleeps with her in the 70s and he kills her cos he's sad!). I really liked him infiltrating the Council through his chat with drunk Carol and bringing Liz the vervain, that was clever. Smart, scheming, Evil with a purpose Damon is a interesting character and one I can engage with. Damon dancing on a bar, shirtless is dull. Therefore I'll always enjoy '162 candles' over 'lost girls' even with the flashbacks. Gavel! I am struggling a bit with the Delena relationship in S1. Even pre Miss Mystic, Elena seems more flirty than sympathetic/ friendly than I remember. I am really enjoying her friendships with Bonnie and Caroline even if the latter is up and down. I used to like Elena so much and I'm sad as to where her character ended up. I also forgot how much I liked Jeremy pre muscles. I liked the fact that compulsion seemed to really change him from druggy dropout and into original enough teen settings and wish they had done more to examine the side effects of compulsion. Too often compulsion is used as a handy vampire get out clause for behaving badly without examining the issue of removing the human ' s free will. Which brings me into the whole Stefan stalking Elena and keeping secrets from her. I am definitely not ok with the whole scenerio but I'm trying to work out how the writers could have dealt with the whole information dump better. I'm struggling if I'm honest. Which makes it easy for me to be glad that SE have broken up. My final point of this huge ramble is to give IS and PW huge kudos for their portrayal of Defan. Even during S1,the brotherly dynamic is evident even if their relationship is strained to breaking point. Stefan's admission in the S6 finale about Elena bringing the 2 brothers together makes their scenes feel more poignant. Man, this show has degenerated into a crap fest. I probably won't be waxing this lyrical once I get to S4/5 :)

I have so many thoughts, I hope this isn't too jumbled. I have got under to the end of here goes the neighbourhood. I have pretty much enjoyed every episode. The whole season is so dark. The lighting is ridiculously dark. There was a comment above about Stefan being quietly menacing and wow he really is. I think what's so great about S1 is the villains. There are so many of them! Some downright evil like Frederick the tomb vamp, some are more ambiguous like Pearl. Is Alaric a goodie or a baddie? You never quite know.

Me! I started doing a selective re watch picking out my favourite episodes but then decided to just go for it and re watch the whole lot. I'm up to the car wash episode in S1 where Elena works out Stefan's secret. Previously it felt like this kind of dragged but I'm enjoying it much more. I still can't care about Vicky. I forgot how interesting Bonnie ' s finding her magic was. I love Grams and wish there was more Bennett witches both past and present. I usually make it as far as the end of S3 though. I might try S4 though.

I saw that interview. Ask Paul about directing and you get a totally different bloke. Glad they are letting him direct some more. Personally while we didn't really learn anything new from the comic con panel, I found it easier to listen to this year. I think a combination of it being first thing on Sunday morning and being followed by Supernatural meant there was less screaming and fangirling. Also Ian didn't say that much. Michael Malarkey is hilarious and I loved him throwing shade at Enzo's S6 SL. I didn't like Kat Graham being sat at the end. I wish they would put her in the middle but that seems to be JP 'S place whether that's to keep IS and PW under control or just because of her massive ego!

I have been thinking about the 3 girls and their relationship and personalities. Here are my thoughts: I totally agree that we are supposed to see Elena as compassionate and caring. Those are her strengths. I think Elena is always shown to be sympathetic in that she sees people's pain and feels pity for them but lacks the empathy and emotional intelligence to understand them. For example, I know we keep coming back to it but she was very sympathetic in S1 over Damon's treatment of Caroline and tried to stop it and defend her friend. In S4, she demonstrates a degree of victim blaming over the situation and demonstrates a lack of empathy. In early S6, she shows sympathy towards Alaric and his urge to drink blood but quickly changes the focus of the conversation onto herself. That's not to say Elena never demonstrates empathy. She understood in S3 that she couldn't bring Stefan back from his ripper binge and in S6, she was very understanding with Caroline on the day of Liz 's funeral (that neck snap was not deserved!). She is a bit inconsistent. Caroline is supposed to be a bubbly airhead but from the very beginning she is written as having more to her than that. She acknowledges her insecurity and neurotic nature. When she describes herself as shallow, it isn't that she is shallow, it's that's how she thinks she is perceived. I have a fondness for S1 Caroline who while lacking tact really does care. Take the MMF contest, Caroline makes a bitchy comment about Elena getting the sympathy vote, but when Elena tries to back out, Caroline knows she will feel like Elena has let her mum down so pushes her to continue. Another thing with Caroline is that you feel she does get looked down on a bit. Liz isn't a Forbes by birth (unless Bill married one of his cousins). I always got the feeling that Carol Lockwood thought Liz was a bit inferior while at the same time sucking up to Bill and that Carol sees Caroline as more Liz ' s daughter than Bill's. You then get the reverse snobbery aspect from Kelly Donovan. I'm going ignore S4&5 Bonnie because she became a sacrifice and plot device. In S1, she is initially portrayed as a light weight character all giggly and girly. The discovery that she is a witch quickly makes her get serious and Grams' only adds to that. Bonnie is fierce, loyal and someone you want on your side. Because she is so loyal, I think sometimes she gets taken advantage of by Elena, Damon, Stefan, Jeremy etc. In early S6, Bonnie is magic free and seems to revert to goofing around will Damon but once her magic returns, she gets serious again. It's also good to see Bon Bon not get pushed around especially by Damon in later S6. With Bonnie, I thought she was great in S1&2 and did stuff on her own terms. She could be quite black and white about things particularly where vampires were involved. I actually think the girls were all fairly similar types at the beginning - pretty, popular, heavily involved in school activities, smart, decent family life and they have each had a different challenge thrown at them which has brought out their inner selves. For Caroline and Bonnie, they seem to have grown. I'm reserving judgement on Elena because I liked her bit more in S6 aside from the witchy drugs/memory erase plot line. She is one of those girls who needs some time as a single woman. One last thing. When your friendship group is a three some, there will always be times when 1 person gets left out. I actually don't think it's always Caroline. I think she feels that way if you take the series as a whole, there are EB, BC and EC moments.

This post FTW. You know Caroline has a colour coded folder for just this eventuality which keeps on a shelf next to her party/wedding planning folder! Imagine: Alaric Saltzmann Likes: Bourbon, day drinking, ladies who can use Dr as a title, weaponry, Damon (sometimes) Dislikes: marking essays, Damon (sometimes) Emotional triggers: current limited shelf life squeeze, Damon, Jeremy, Elena Ultimate take down: vervain bomb followed by daggering KO kill: kill Elena

I do kind of love the English accent obsession on this show. As a Brit, they just sound normal to me and JoMo has a very standard decent looking British bloke look so I don't find him particularly attractive. He was previously in a version of Mansfield Park where he has a small bit part as Fanny ' s brother in which he looks utterly ridiculous! I am not judging the accent love btw, we Brits love the exoticness of American TV shows. Daniel Gillies' accent is probably the worst. I now know that he was trying to go for a mixture of accents given that Elijah has been all over the World but the effect is just mangled to me. (At this point, I feel I should apologise on behalf of the entire nation for the hideousness that is Andrew Lincoln ' s accent on the Walking Dead and Stephen Moyer's on TruBlood) I'm totally with you with regards to Klaroline. I hated the 5 11 romp in the woods. I know they felt they had to torpedo Forwood but seriously going to college combined with Tyler ' s were wolf mission was enough of reason for them to split. It's sad because even though Tyler didn't interest me much, the Forwood relationship was cute in a Romeo and Juilet way. Plus Tyler was never interested in Elena unlike Matt.

Wow - I honestly thought I was the only person who doesn't like Elijah. Aside from the fist full of quarters, I could never get on board with him. The honourable bit of him is classic tvd tell not show. Other least liked characters include S4 Klaus, Enzo, Vicky and probably Enzo again. Which I feel bad about because I think Michael Malarkey throws his heart and soul into Enzo and has the best English accent on the show. Give him some meaning show! My favourites are Stefan and Caroline because they seem the most consistent. I find Stefan's constant fight with his dark facinating and although S5 was generally horrible, Stefan finally getting closure with Katherine and Elena and his improved relationship with his brother have made him much more stable. When it comes to Caroline, I'm with Tyler the girl's got heart. She’s had quite a journey and I think it's great she's no longer second choice. I also really enjoyed her relationship with Liz and sobbed when she died (unlike when Elena got fridged which left me cold). I'm loving Badass!Bonnie at the moment and also loved her in S1&2 before she came Bonnie the sacrifice. She needs some interaction with Damon next season given that she's his new bff. One character I loved who got shafted was Lexi. She gets blamed for Stefan's ripper binges and for destroying the Salvatores relationship. I'm not sure I agree with that; I think she did her best. I hated the lame 70s flashback which Damon used as his excuse to kill her.

Elena and Stefan were both semi-staked in S6 but you're right, I think Jesse may have been staked in S5 and then nada! Staking does seem kind of dull way to die when you could go for decapitation, heart ripping, driving your camaro into a burning Mystic Grill or a trip in Trip Fell ' s van of death. The whole 'Vicky must die' thing does have some consistency in that we see a number of newly turned vamps die (Logan Fell, Jesse, Ivy, Kai). Damon would have staked baby vamp Caroline without blinking. I think it was Stefan that said most newly turned vamps don't last a year dependant on their contract of course ;)

So true!