#season 8A was just so fab I got over most of it

[kmze]

"S7 therapy"  Good one,Kris!

I can see what you mean with regards to Melinda and yes 6×19 was,indeed,brilliant.But unfortunately the same cannot be said about 7×03 and 7×11.I side eyed the flashbacks because they made me physically cringe.I think Allowitz shot that episode. "I don't care about the past..." didn't exactly work for me and I blame the writing and the direction of the retconned story for that.

As for 7×11, I honestly felt bad about Paul.He was not bad at directing episodes but there's so much one can do if the script is terrible.Stefan's post-hell was severely downplayed to service Damon's hell.The voice-overs were stilted and awkward.Stefan's story was plain atrocious.Yes we got a call back to 2×02 via Stefan's hallucination but I had a very dark perspective of those scenes.Stefan's need for his brother multiplied so much for having abandoned him in a faux reality that he not only suffered from insomnia and paranoia but his subconscious guilt for letting his brother drown reflected as hallucination- Damon wanting to Kill Caroline aka his happiness because he didn't believe he deserved to be happy.I might be completely wrong but as a pessimist,this is where my mind went when I watched the episode.(I think Julian faced something similar with Lily when he was in the stone.)This was followed by him not being there when Caroline was dying alone at the hospital and Stefan immediately blaming himself "I almost killed her"(7×12/7×13).I mean if the writers were in the least bit sincere,they could have explained that being the reason why Caroline wasn't there with him since he "killed" her instead of having You-Know-Who be an enabler of his toxic-codependence with Damon to slither into his good books.Don't get me wrong.Maybe as a general viewer or Damon fangirl (which I believe Melinda was)it was an overall good episode but as a Stefan and SC fan, it was thoroughly disappointing.

I had no idea about Rebecca-Elizabeth friendship though.That does explain a lot.I guess it's similar to Plec-Candice, Plec-Paul, Plec-Ian,Plec-Nina friendships.Can we categorise this as workplace politics and blatant favouritism?These kind of stuff are more prevalent in the private/corporate sector,film/television industry being one of them.(Notice how I didn't mention one name here and we all know what she went through and how deserving of quality writing she was.)

Also I think Sonnenshine never liked Caroline.She wrote 4×21/22 where Elena straight up refused to apologise to Caroline for trying to murder her and her mom during her no-humanity bender. No wonder You-Know-Who was so passive-aggressive toward Caroline for no reason although that was a pattern in most episodes, Melinda Tsu's included where she even physically attacked her.

I have heard Rebecca and Michael Narducci are friends too and Rebecca being a small town girl who got out of the small town apparently inspired Narducci to write the "Small town boy small town life" line  to give an insight about how manipulative Klaus was that he would dangle a tempting offer in front of someone to beguile them.Narducci drew a parallel of this scene with 2×22(also written by him)where Klaus did the same with Stefan by making him drink from the blood bags.

7×16 gave me nightmare for weeks and then I convinced myself it was a big f***ing  joke since it aired on the 1st of April.

I do remember reading the door symbolism metas back in the day and I loved them. As for the letter scene in the 7×18,I noticed forced ambiguity in the writing which is why I couldn't care less about it. It felt more like tokenism.Like I said there was an obvious passive-aggressiveness in the way her episodes were written.Also You-Know-Who's treatment of Caroline seemed like she saw her as an inferior.She gave me Quetsiyah vibes at times but at least Tessa was wronged and Amara was part of it.Caroline had nothing to do with what happened with her and yet it seemed like she wanted to put her down consistently for some reason.She even straight up mocked her indirectly calling her an uneducated,unambitious yorkel. I would blame TVD writers for this though since they seem to inherently believe women exist to tear each other apart over men.What infuriated me the most was how SC references like " spinning the globe" (6×20), "something more" (6×19) was used inappropriately in SV scenes.I have no idea why she was constantly self-inserting as Caroline even though she didn't seem to like her.What was even the point?

Anyway,thank you for letting me rant.We could probably write a book on the endless absurdity of this season but it's not worth it.

Haha rant away Anon, I totally get how that can be cathartic.

I do get why the flashbacks in 7x03 bothered people, and yes the way it's shot and the emphasis it's given is all on Dries' direction as showrunner at that time. However for me I really loved Stefan's speech about not caring about the past and only caring about Caroline being there and safe and with him. I love it because whenever that was the situation (which of course was rare on this show) he was his happiest and it's all he ever wanted.

Maybe I need to rewatch 7x11 to remember stuff (but since I'm doing a rewatch I don't want to watch anything out of order) but I didn't really mind getting flashbacks of Stefan's hell. I thought the flashbacks did enough to show how unstable he was after he came out of it and that was why Damon was so unstable. I do agree that the stone was trying to tell him that Caroline was his happiness and Damon was always the one getting in the way of that. I liked that we saw how Stefan needed Caroline to help bring him out of the darkness and then I really loved how we got to see him spill his guts to her when he ran to the baby shower to make sure she was okay. 7x12 I have way more problems with but I guess I've just accepted that was Dries fault and she basically got removed because if it so I just chalk it up to that (I look at it from a Doylist POV). Valerie just found every possible way to insert herself and even Damon called that out in 7x16. She just became so non-threatening in the end and honestly I was happy she got to live, most of the time characters like her get killed off. I mean she really was just a mish-mosh of Katherine and Rebekah as women who wanted Stefan and they would be mean to his current girlfriend (Rebekah) and scheme (Katherine) because that's all Dries could do, rewrite what already happened into a cheap knock-off.

See when it comes to writers having favorites I think that's fine, they're human and they get attached to certain characters just like the rest of us. The key is you need to have a competent show-runner who knows how to not let that favoritism override the script by making sure everyone has clear direction and knows the path. Dries didn't do that, the flow was all over the place because certain writers she could control (Sonnennshine/Young) and others couldn't (Reynolds). I always felt like Elena being a bitch to Caroline in 4x21/22 is just because she's a bitch, and I think Elena HATED TO HER CORE how Caroline excelled at being a vampire when she failed miserably. She hated how much confidence it gave her and how much it elevated her in the 'verse whereas vampirism was the beginning of Elena's downfall. I find the "small town boy, small town life" line really funny now because even though Caroline travelled a bit in regards to the school and helping her daughters in the she still stayed in that small town by the end of the 'verse so he was WRONG HA!

Yeah I can see how it's to each their own in regards to 7x18, one of those episodes I get why people don't like it but I also get why people love it. I love the letter because it was part of an over-arching theme with Stefan that every time he thought he was going to die he only thought of Caroline. The letter to me was more important for the present when Stefan said "I need to write a letter in case I don't make it out of this" because up until that point we didn't really know how much Stefan still loved Caroline (because of Dries!). Also loved how after Valerie entered Stefan's head she realized that too, I mean the episode before this she was all about helping Alaric so she could keep Stefan and then suddenly she was like "yeah there's no point." I just thought it was powerful that after all the scheming Valerie did to get Stefan into her life from Caroline as soon as that scar was gone she didn't even try. I can't remember what the "something more" reference was but the globe wasn't a big SC thing so it didn't get me (stuff like the coffee totally because THAT was their thing). I guess what I'm trying to say is I see the flaws in that season and totally get why most hate it and why it might have been too little too late by the end of the season. But for me the fact that Julie came back and added things to try and how she fixed them made sense it was enough for me to just get over most of the bad stuff (except the snow scene in 7x09).