The Vampire Diaries: Team...Elena!

You know, sometimes it's easy to forget about Elena. She's one of the three central characters (along with Damon and Stefan) but despite her importance to the mythology of the show, she's so often just a pawn in all the machinations going on. Her circle of friends is increasingly supernatural -- vampires, witches, werewolves, but she remains relatively powerless. Still, early on, I began to realize that she wasn't like that other girl in love with a vampire, and last night's episode solidly confirmed it.

The thing that bothered me most about Bella in Twilight was how quickly and unhesitatingly she decided that she wanted to become a vampire so she could be with Edward forever. She didn't give a second thought about essentially giving up a normal life. But Elena, in an extremely well constructed reveal in last night's episode, emotionally admits to Stefan that she doesn't want--never wanted--to become a vampire. She loves Stefan but she wants to stay human, grow old, have choices. I'd been a little annoyed at Elena recently because of her insistence that she'd rather die than the people she loved but this revelation really brought her up a notch in my estimation.

And of course, Stefan, being the best vampire boyfriend ever, reacted so understandingly. He actually pushed her to tell him, even though he probably already knew that was how she felt. It was just a really tender and beautifully acted scene amidst all the general craziness of the episode.

I don't want to go into too many more details because I still think that everyone who reads this blog needs to go back and catch up with this show, but man, this show has NOT been running out of gas. I'm consistently amazed at how many different insane plot twists they throw in every single week but in a way that still makes sense. Only two episodes left!