A supernatural teenage drama (okay, mostly we’re talking about melodramas, yes) has to be hyper-vigilant where its story is concerned. True, an attention to story never hurt any form of serialized entertainment, but a supernatural teenage drama lives or dies on the knife’s edge of its story. It’s got to be well-ordered, cohesive, and well-maintained. In order to keep the stakes (ha, I said stakes in an article about The Vampire Diaries –– but no time to laugh about it now) appropriately high from week to week, this can mean sacrificing things like a character’s emotional journey. That happens on Teen Wolf almost every single episode. This week on The Vampire Diaries, while we technically visited hell (can we call the ‘90s era place where Bonnie and Damon are dwelling hell? Just for clarity’s sake?) and hunted vampires and/or fled from vampire hunters, the emotional focus of the episode was on Elena moving on to a new and presumably Damon-free chapter of her life. It was nice to see a less tortured Elena fannying about the show’s peripheries, but not as nice as it was to see Caroline and Stefan’s situation become more fraught. At this point, storywise and my own desires aside, it seems like a romantic relationship between the Caroline and Stefan is inevitable. Caroline ugly-cried over Stefan for two episodes in a row: As far as TV goes, they are as good as engaged. It was a fun foil to Damon and Bonnie bickering in hell. Though newcomer Kai indicates that their fighting must mean they care about each other more than they let on, this didn’t set off any new relationship warning flags for me about a potential new-couple alert. Damon’s prickly with EVERYONE, especially with the people he cares about. By Kai’s logic, for all we know Damon still has a shrine built to Alaric up in his private dressing chamber which he contemplates daily while fondling himself. As entertaining as that premise may be, it’s also highly unlikely.
