Given all of that, and the fact that I didn’t find 01.03, “Broadway Limited”, to be of much interest, I’m going to keep this post short.  Episode 3 served to push the plot forward but not necessarily to add any depth.  Now we know that Jimmy can get jealous and is perhaps suffering a little shell-shock (as the audio we hear of gunfire, marching orders, and mayhem while he rests in a sleeper car tells us).  Now we know that Arnold Rothstein has got some friend he doesn’t like, whose initials are V and D.  Now we know that Nucky is genuinely disappointed in Jimmy. And, I’m beginning to wonder if by now we’re supposed to think that Nucky may actually be Jimmy’s father, or at least have had a very, very close relationship with his mother, Gillian (portrayed by Gretchen Mol). This is all very good to know – keep it in your back pocket for future episodes.

But “Broadway Limited” isn’t as shallow as I just let on, since its narrative arc puts Agent Van Alden under the microscope. Two weeks ago, I suggested that Nucky is ultimately a man of doubt and a man of hesitation. Thompson does bark orders and he does wear a stern face, but he worries a lot and seems reluctant to act when action is needed (that’s what his brother is for, I suppose).  Van Alden is a different story, though.  What we see in Agent Nelson Van Alden, portrayed wondrously by Michael Shannon, is a man of action.  Van Alden is unafraid to strike when needed.

Van Alden is also a man moved by his own zealousness.  For the past two episodes, I’ve watched this character reference faith and hell (but not necessarily religion or God) in ways that define him against other characters on the boardwalk.  Van Alden is not only a god-fearing man, but a federal agent who believes he is a soldier of Christ.  What we see during his interrogation of Arnold Rothstein’s wiseguy is a zeal that betrays a contempt for those who neither know nor follow the righteous path.  So much for the separation of church and state in America:

But compare the zealot Van Alden shows himself to be in the clip above: physical, angry, passionate and moved by power of God’s wrath, with the quiet and dull man he is at home, surrounded by his wife, his bible, and his crucifix:

(Until I watched this scene, I was wondering if Van Alden stood in for a German ultra-protestant faith, i.e., a storybook take on the zeal that can be found in (and often misinterpreted outside of) Calvinism. But the crucifix muddles that idea.)

What we have here is a chance to compare the zealous man of action, driven by faith as much as he is by the law, with his sedate, if not depressing home life.  But let’s not stop there.  Instead of comparing only what we see of Van Alden on the job with what we see of him at home, we should ask ourselves if Boardwalk Empire wants us to compare what we see of Van Alden’s home life, and what it represents as the ideal American domestic space that is free of alcohol and its vices, with that of what goes on in Domity’s apartment or Nucky’s hotel suite.  Jimmy’s and Nucky’s home lives are far from perfect, but both characters have found some kind of pleasure that we, the audience, would appreciate.

It’s a reminder from the producers that in this series about good guys and bad guys, the bad guys are a little more like us than we usually imagine them to be. That’s not going to change the bad guys into good guys at the end of the day, but it does make us wonder what the good guys’ motives are.  If the United States amended the constitution to restrict the nation’s freedoms (and strictly speaking, Prohibition did just that) so we can live a wholesome, zealous life like Van Alden does, then it’s little wonder that few people were on board and that the likes of Nucky Thompson, as rich as they became through their poor ethics, were seen to be doing a service to their communities.

We picked up on this guilt in Episode 1.  Throughout the episode, he continually tells the people around him that he’s not a kid anymore, that he’s been places, done things, and is a changed man.  But what matters most to Jimmy isn’t that he’s grown into an adult but that he’s become a fallen man:

Even though all the people around him thinks he should be proud of his service to the state, Jimmy clearly is not.  The young man carries a large chip on his shoulder.  Maybe that’s why he doesn’t take up the Feds’ offer to work for them again, this time as an informant for the Bureau of Internal Revenue: there’s a good chance that Darmody doesn’t see working for the government as any nobler a profession than working for a crime boss.

However, it’s one thing for Jimmy to be suspicious of Uncle Sam and think him a liar, and another to carry the personal burden he does.  Jimmy went to war for the US and came back haunted by the fact that he’s going to hell, so the honourable discharge awarded to him is not worth the paper it’s printed on.  He keeps his record of service hidden from his family and out of his own reach: hidden behind a steamy rid and far too hot to touch.  They represent a part of him he’d rather not remember – the young kid who was duped into going to war.  His country may have won victory, but he’s become the fall guy who did all the dirty work, had praised feigned in his direction but then was soon forgotten about, and is now going to hell because of it all.  It’s no wonder that he keeps the money he collected on the unsanctioned heist in the same wallet as the discharge: it’s all dirty to him.

Keep in mind here that I’m only two episodes into Boardwalk Empire.  I argued in my first post that I think Nucky Thompson is a man of doubt.  Time will tell if I’m right, but I have a hunch on that one of for the long term.  I also said I think Jimmy Darmody is a flat character, and I’m willing to hold to that, for now.  Jimmy is carrying a lot guilt with him these days, but guilt doesn’t necessary make for a dynamic character.  It makes for a character burdened by his emotions.  What sort of range of action and consequence we see from these emotions is what will mark Jimmy.  He doesn’t have to turn back and become a good guy to become dynamic: he just how to show something more than ability (or practice) to stew in his juices.

I’m watching this series a year late and I don’t know anything about it beyond the fact that Steve Buscemi is in the leading role and will probably win every award (save the 2011 Emmy for best actor, of course) for the life of the show.  So far, Nucky Thompson is intriguing.  We may only have seen 90 minutes of his life, but 90s minutes is a lifetime and a half on television, so it’s fair to make sweeping generalizations.   We’re going to like Enoch Thompson from the very beginning because we’re intrigued that despite his many years, he doesn’t know who he is or what to make of his life.

In many ways, he’s the corrupt politician we should despise (e.g., the Temperance League, I’m sure, will one day start a movement to vote him from office – it is an election year, after all).  Enoch says different things to different people, willingly breaks the law, racketeers, and threatens people with their lives.  And, he’s knows he’s a bad guy: note how he offers the entire shipment of Canadian whiskey to Rothstein only if he arranges for his own men to pick up the contraband liquor.  Nucky Thompson’s business isn’t running booze but actually up keep up appearances, for the Temperance League, for Atlantic City merchants and council, and for himself.  Nucky is corrupt because he doesn’t say what he means. But when he does, we’re either in trouble or we’re dead.

But what draws us to Nucky is not that he’s low-life bad guy. If his character was so flat, that he’d become an out-and-out villain and the audiences would draw all their allegiances against him.  Instead, Winter writes into Nucky several “The bad guy is a good guy at heart” traits we’re familiar with.  Nucky is charitable in the community and gives to the poor, and he still mourns over the death of his wife who passed 7 years ago.  He may not be a Robin Hood, but he’s no Sheriff of Nottingham, either.  But where Winter really takes things to the next level, and what makes Nucky so compelling to us, is that this supposed man of action doesn’t know who he is.   Nucky Thompson is fully aware that he’s a good guy and a bad guy, and he’s confused if not troubled by it (cf. Tony Soprano, another Winter character).  When Jimmy Darmody gives Nucky a packet of cash for quiet money and tells him he can’t be half a gangster, Thompson stands for a moment, thinking about the meaning and consequences of the Jimmy’s words.  What’s so unsettling to Nucky is not that he’s about to cross that line into real gangsterism, but that he’s crossing even though he’s not sure if that’s what he really is.  Jimmy, the young kid who doesn’t-know-nothing actually knows his path, but Nucky, the wise leader of those who walk on the boardwalk and those who walk in the alleys, can’t make up his mind.

So here’s the thing.   Winter and Scorsese doesn’t want us to see Nucky Thompson as completely bad.  We would write off the character here and now as full-time gangster since he took the cash, but I think we shouldn’t.  Nucky may do bad things, but he’s not necessarily a bad guy.   He’s more like a child figuring out how to muddle his way through that big grey space between right and wrong than he is a through-and-through gangster.  As much as Nucky keeps telling Darmody that he’s young and has got a lot to learn, Winter and Scorsese wants us to realize that he’s the one who’s got some real learning ahead of him  Witness the brief episode where Nucky stops in front of a contrived nursery-incubator store and stares at a newborn child in the window (a narrative device if I’ve ever seen one).  Nucky is focused on, if not entranced by the helpless, breathing newborn as it is weighed and then placed in an incubator: a refuge from that world that will stabilize its environment and nurture its growth.  Witness Enoch staring at a fortune-teller’s storefront, where he is as interested in the fortune teller (and her possible evil eye) as he is with the fortune tell’s advertisement, which superimposes the question “What does the future hold for you? over his reflection in the window.  Scorsese and Winter are telling us is that although Enoch knows up from down and which we he’s facing, he’s not sure of which way he wants to face.

Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire: a man who doesn't know who he is

This is what marks Enoch as a character of interest.  This man, for all his certainty, for all his action, is a man of doubt.  Enoch Thompson is compelling not because we don’t know who he is but because he doesn’t know who he is.   Compare this to Jimmy Delaney, the ambitious and cynical protegé, who has come back from the war, who has seen things and done things and knows his guilt and knows what he wants to do in life.  We’re curious to know what Jimmy will do next, but his certainty about his life and actions – however ashamed and resigned he may be – makes him one-dimensional and nothing more.   Enoch is where it counts.  Boardwalk Empire isn’t about boardwalks, empires, gangs, guns, or booze.  It’s going to be about this one middle-aged man figuring out where is life is leading him and what to do next.

• Boardwalk Empire
• Vampire Diaries (our collective “guilty pleasure”)
• Downton Abbey, perhaps?
• Possibility : Game of Thrones

But all the same, is America really ready for The Event?  Face it, it only has been five or six months since we said our goodbyes to Jack or Charlie or whatever his name is and all his friends on the island.  Is it too soon for us to go down this super-natural-realism road again?  Frankly, I hope that’s not the case.  I like a good sci-fi/fantasy series that’s rooted in the hear-and-now, so I think I’ll like The Event the same way that I liked Lost and adore Fringe. I just hope the rest of the world is ready to keep pace with it.

Jason Ritter of The Event - still stunned to find out he's a leading man.

Other notes, part one – oh my lord the eye candy vs the average joe in the season premiere.  Sarah Roemer, the fiancé, was downright gorgeous!  But the star of the show was very much an everyday everyman.  I notice that leading men nowadays tend to have stunning faces, but Jason Ritter doesn’t have it on this one.  Maybe that’s part of his character – just an everyday sort of guy?

Other notes, part two – it was nice to see Laura Innes from ER back on television.  I always admired her acting.  Now all we’ve got to do is figure out what’s up with her gang and why they’ve been holed up in Alaska.  Terrorists, or Aliens, or both?  Maybe Fox Mulder can tell us…

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I’ve got some problems with Vampire Diaries, as you’re all aware.  There’s too much plot and not enough plot development, and there are too many vampires and too much death for this sleepy little town to really deal with.  Seriously, aside from the council, which even has Damon in its midst, this is a town of complete innocents.  I want to see real struggles on this series that make people question what it means to be a person and what it means to be a member of a community.  Because that’s what vampire stories are ultimately about – what it means to be who you are (or aren’t), and what it means to belong to a group or to live among them.  But with Vampire Diaries, all we get are a series of “Let’s be friends and get through this together” moments even though Mystic Falls’ blood faucet is always wide open.

But I digress.  Back to this week’s episode, which features a recently turned and transitioned Caroline.  Unlike last season’s Vicki, and from what Damon, Anna, Catherine, Pouty Boyfriend and all other vampires mention about transitions, Caroline seems to have it all mostly under control.  Okay, so she did tear the face off of one innocent Mystic Falls lad (who was black, by the way – if you’re black in Mystic Falls, you’re either a witch or your vampire dinner – it’s a serious trend), but when Matt came to visit her later, she got her vampiric urge to make a mess of his neck and kept it all under control.  Good on you, Caroline, for being a good guy Vampire.  But bad on you, writers, because this isn’t believable at all. (*)

Caroline is going to have a fit if she doesn't get any good lines in this Vampire Diaries scene.

There is one thing I did like in this week’s episode, which is the fact that Caroline has finally found some backbone.  I felt bad that Candice Accola, who portrays Caroline, has had to deal with this “dumb blonde” nonsense throughout the entire series.  I think the way she portrayed Caroline confronting Damon in the high school hallway shows that this actor can do more than smile her way through a scene.  Hopefully her new vampire state will give Accola a couple more choice scenes to work with – but I definitely wonder how she’s going to be able to keep all this hidden from mom and QB boyfriend.

(* – yes, i do realize how ridiculous it is for me to talk about things being believable when I’m watching a teen vampire drama.  work with me here…)

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Daybreakers : We look angry because we're pissed off at how bad this movie is.

Excuse the pun, but Daybreakers sucked.  I finally got around to watching the 2010 film about a vampire world that is about to run out of its most precious commodity – humans – and now i know why the movie ran completely under the radar: it was downright awful.  I feel sorry that a top-rate cast (Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill) working with an innovative spin on the popular vampirism popular plot device a finished product that can’t decide if it is b-grade action material, horror, or philosophical melodrama.

Where to begin on this film?  It’s 2019; a disease, genetic mutation, or virus swept through the human population more than a decade ago, which has left most people in the world living in a vampiric state.  Some of the typical vampire tropes exist in Daybreakers – the sunlight, the wooden stakes (or crossbows, in this instance), the fangs, the albino complexion.  But in this film, vampirism has become social dominant: some treat it as a condition while others see it simply as evolution.  To be a human is to be the other, and to be normal is to be a creature of the night.

Enter the plot.  Meet Ethan Hawke’s character, Edward what’s-his-name.  (Why must vampires be called Edward?)  Edward is a hematologist who eschews human blood and is in search of a cure.  Edward believes his employment with a Bad Guys Pharmaceutical Research is morally reprehensible, but it also the only way he’ll ever get to find a cure.  Things happen. Humans are found; a cure may be possible; drama ensues; the sun comes out from time to time, etc.  Good guys comes through in the end.

This movie was a complete and utter disappointment. I had great expectations for it. I expected to watch a film that questioned the post-human condition.  I expected to see a not-too-distant future where people had to live with the consequences of genetic engineering, of forced evolutionary measures, of a world where biochemistry pushed the clock too far ahead for anyone to fully comprehend the consequences.

Of course, the “evolution” we encounter in Daybreakers was inadvertent – vampirism began as a disease or infestation, but the movie makes clear that didn’t take long for society to see it as a giant leap forward in human progress.)

I really hoped that Daybreakers would have given us a chance to ask to question our humanity,  i.e., to consider what it means to be human at a time when cloning is nigh, when biological and even mechanical implants has become commonplace.  Instead, all I got was a shoot-em-up with bad special effects and a sulking Ethan Hawke.

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The Vampire Diaries is back on the air for Season Two, and Chez Nous couldn’t be more excited.  Both my partner and I really like this show for our own reasons. She digs on Ian Somerhalder (and who, couldn’t really?) and I really like the way the show deals with the concept of self-reliance.  The writers showed an uncanny ability to produce scripts that were more than just teenage vampire thrillers in the first season.   Add to that the superhuman nature of vampire folklore, and we’ve got a series that shows us gods amoung men dealing with petty human travails. excellent..

Well, that’s how it was in the first season.  I’m deeply troubled about the second season.  The “Katharine’s Back!” cliff-hanger startled me a bit last spring, and it still does this September, because the last thing this series needs is *more* vampires.  The only times this programme goes loopy is when there are more vampires than it knows what to do with, and when this happens, we get crazy action-packed episodes that do nothing but shout “supernatural!” in our face.  So far we’ve had Vicky, turned and killed.  A bunch of tomb-vampires, turned and killed.  A mad vampire on the loose, eventually killed.  Anna (an awesome actor and character who shouldn’t have been killed off) and her mom Pearl, killed, I’m sure I’m forgetting some others.

And why am I forgetting some – because we also have WITCHES AND WEREWOLVES.  Yes, the all-caps were necessary.  Please let’s not turn this into another series where the main characters have to deal with every supernatural element under the sun.  Can we just deal with only one (maybe, just maybe two) types of creatures at a time?  This way the abnormal will act as a plot device for us to explore some neat themes such as ethics, the other, ageing, the individual and the collective, and also let us look at Damon a little more.  But now we’ve got to deal with Katharine all season long and also a soon-to-be-turned-and-going-crazy Caroline.  Oh dear.  There’s no time for any catharsis.  There’s no time for any character development.  There’s no time for us to build up any real sympathy or other emotion for any of these characters.

For what it’s worth, I think Nina Dobrev plays the double-character/evil twin role well.  That’s a hard thing to do.   Watching Katharine on screen, I thought to myself that Nina pulled it off so much better than other actors can.  Props to her.  But thumbs down to the producers and writers for taking us down this road.  Mystic Falls has gone through hell this past year.  I may have suspended my disbelief to work with a few vampires in this series, but for all of them to continually converge on this small town is becoming a little too ridiculous.

Episode 20 of The Vampire Diaries completes the unravelling of Stefan’s history and the telling of his tragic transition into an undead vampire.  Stefan explains that he was compelled to drink Katherine’s vampiric blood and died while the toxin was in his system; he was later overcome by the smell of his injured father’s blood

Through folly and misfortune, Stefan completes the transition into a vampire.

during an argument, which completed the transition.  Elena also learns, through Damon, that Stefan then coerced his depressed elder brother, who was willing to die a second death at the time, to feast on human blood to complete his own transition.

Ultimately, Stefan became a monster through a mixture of folly and poor luck, while Damon, our villain we hate to love, transitioned toward vampirism through the folly and poor judgment of his own brother.  In short, neither is right or wrong or good or bad, and both are to be sympathized.  The end.

But there is more to this week’s story than its simple plot line.  At the end of the episode, Stefan thanks his brother for helping Elena nurse him back to health.  Brooding and melancholic about his vampiric state once more, Stefan is short on words and heavy on emotion.  Rather than playing the arrogant trickster and disparaging his brother’s attempts to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders through either guilt or gratitude as he is wont to do, however, Damon speaks a few sentences that reveal a little bit of his own character:

STEFAN:  No, I mean it.  Thank you for helping her take care of me.

DAMON:  You brood too much.  Everything on this planet is not your fault – my actions, what I do – it’s not your fault.  I own them.  They belong to me.  You are not allowed to feel my guilt.

STEFAN:  Do you feel guilt?

DAMON: If I wanted to.  It’s there.

Damon’s words are sharp and determined in this scene: there are no subtle moments to suggest a synthesis of thought.  Rather, Damon speaks on a subject he’s given a lot of consideration to already, which is his individualism – his ability to be in control and be responsible for his actions and how they affect his world.  Damon knows there are consequences to his choices, and sometimes he’s even willing to feel the guilt.  And that’s why he’s evil.  Damon’s not an unthinking, unfeeling individual.  Rather, he thinks only about himself to the point that it often becomes arrogant and amoral.

But what if we were to scale back Damon’s individualism?  What if Damon did understand that he was responsible for his actions but was not so self-serving about them?  Do we not appreciate Damon when he is not selfish (like when he’s on a road trip to town with Elena or a trip to Vampire Farm to save his brother)?  Do we not appreciate him when he is not as arrogant as he often is, but is generally wise to the manner in which his days affect others?

Damon's self-reliant individualism prevents him from accepting Stefan's gratitude, or sharing his guilt.

I believe we’re seeing in Damon’s character elements of the self-reliant individual, which is a common theme in American popular culture, myth-making, and society.  Our heroes are often rugged individuals who are aloof; they are good judges of character, they often do the right thing, and most important, they are their own man.  They will not be responsible for another person’s problems, and likewise, they will tell their fellow man not to feel guilt for actions that move well beyond their own sphere of influence.  One shouldn’t look for sympathy from the self-reliant individual, as Stefan does, because the self-reliant individual will tell you that the weight you are carrying on your shoulders is not your burden in the first place and therefore the sympathy will not be offered in the least.

Consider Damon’s exhortation that his actions “belong to me.  You are not allowed to feel my guilt” with Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s understanding of individualism in Self-Reliance:

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule . . . may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Emerson argued, in part, that each man is his own.  That is not to suggest that each man determines his own morals (as Damon does on the days we don’t like him) so much as it is to argue that one is responsible for one’s actions and perhaps how these actions affect people in the primary instance, but after that it becomes a grey area.  And the acts of our friends, neighbors, and family may affect us, but they are not our responsibility, for:

Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood and I have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it.

Damon will not carry the burden of Stefan’s shame or of Stefan’s folly.  Damon may still harbor an incredible dislike for his brother because Katherine loved both of them, but ultimately the demons in Damon’s closet – the demons that he will feel guilt over when he decides to feel guilt, are his and his alone.

Read one of Emerson’s most emphatic statements in Self-Reliance and try to reconcile them against Damon’s relationship with Stefan, and against Stefan’s relationship with Elena:

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints.

Damon: not quite the hero, not quite the villain

If the self-reliant individual, a long-held American archetype of role model and hero, is to be found on The Vampire Diaries, then it is certainly found in the character of Damon, who is constantly trying to tell his brother to accept his vampire condition and live with the consequences, and not with Stefan, who constantly fights his nature, carries decades of guilt on his psyche, and constantly feels sorry for himself and for the people he loves.

I’m not arguing that Damon is a hero or an upstanding individual on The Vampire Diaries. Rather, I’m demonstrating some of the reasons why we’re drawn to this character.  Damon is his own man, and we are conditioned to like these people. They think for themselves and act for themselves, just as we’re taught to do in school and in life.  It’s only when Damon takes it to extremes and refuses to look six inches beyond his person to understand the consequences of his actions that we despise him for the self-serving, arrogant creature that he is.

(Update – How did I miss this – Direct references to Emerson in the first couple episodes? Clearly I should have started this blog when the show started.  Thanks to the friend who pointed out this great website to me.)

If ever there was an episode when The Vampire Diaries that demands we understand that perhaps there is a little good and a little bad in everyone, then this is the one, because such a lesson has been forced down our collective gullets in Season 01, Episode 19.  Reviewing the weekend that Elena struts her stuff for the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, complete with a southern debutante’s ball’s introduction to the world, this episode reminds us that there is no ‘normal’ in the life of the Gilberts, let alone in the (after-?  non-?) life of a vampire.

In episode 19, some characters act in ways we don’t expect them to and other characters declare that they don’t want to go forward with an event because they aren’t that kind of person.  But in both cases, the character’s real persona, their normal self (whatever normal is), is a combination of their good and their bad, their doubts and their declarations.

With Elena, we have an example of a person who doesn’t want to go forward with an act because it doesn’t represent her person.  Before the introduction at the Ball, Elena tells Caroline that the Miss Mystic Pageant has nothing to do with her and isn’t who she wants to be.  Elena doesn’t want to be the person who wears the gown and walks down the steps, she tells Caroline, while she wears the gown and moments before she does in fact take the walk.  Caroline might be coercing Elena to continue on with the pageant in this scene, but it nonetheless creates a subtext that asks us what we should do when we confront who we really are and who we’d like to be.  Elena has confronted a part of her character she doesn’t like – a part of her who wears gowns and goes to balls.  But rather than giving up on the entire show (which her independent spirit is entirely capable of, I’d argue), she steps down the stairs for the town.  Elena’s normal person is one who will wear the gowns, however much she dislikes them.

The directors love to play with light and dark when the vampirism comes to play.

This isn’t mere psycho-babble, though.  Well, it is.  But it’s not the only manifestation of a pop-psychology coming to the fore in this episode of VD.  Slapping our understanding of “person” and “normal” in the face is Stefan’s turn toward outright vampirism.  Moving well beyond simple bloodbank thievery to compelling victims to do his will and then feasting on their blood, Stefan gives us action and words that declare what he really is.  The younger Salvatore does a bang-up job playing Jekyll and Hyde with himself while his victim is compelled; Stefan explains to the camera how compelled he is himself to kill the poor girl and suck back every ounce of blood coursing through her own veins.  As Damon foretold to Elena earlier in the episode, this is the new normal for Stefan, and it’s hardly a “normal” atall.  What Stefan should have been accustomed to doing for the past 150 years – feasting on human blood – has created an incredible lack in his psyche as a vampire, and even then, as Damon points out, what is normal for a vampire – living off the living – is in no way normal at all.  Damon succumbs to his physical need for blood, betraying the fact that however ennobled he may be at any other time in the series, he remains that which he despises – a vampire dependent on the blood in the people around him to sustain his own life.

Stefan shows us that we can't always be brooding knights in shining armor.

Ultimately, this the Salvatore brothers’ actions in this episode leaves us sympathetic for Stefan and perhaps a little proud of Damon.  Stefan has got to deal with the fact that he’s fallen off the wagon, big time.  And as for Damon, we probably thankful (if not a little bit creeped out) by the way he’s helped Stefan and pinch hit when Elena needed her boyfriend.  But both cases come around to reminding us that the norm with vampires (and perhaps with people – uh-oh there’s the lesson for the day) is that there’s some good and some bad in all of us.