[S6E18] I Never Could Love Like That
On the road to Whitmore, Damon tries to prepare his mom to talk to Stefan and bring his humanity back. She states that she overheard Damon and Bonnie talking about the cure. She knows he's afraid he'll lose Elena if he gives it to her. He tells his mother that she needs to give a performance of a lifetime because she claims that she wasn't coming back to America for Stefan and Damon like he thought.
[S6E18] I Never Could Love Like That
With Stefan, Lily tells her she's a ripper like him. She pours on the motherly warmth, telling Stefan the story he wants to hear about visiting him the day of her funeral. Damon watches as she reacts the sweet sentiments he fed her earlier. She promises never to leave him again. It works. He turns his humanity back on and hugs his mother with tears in his eyes. Stefan takes a few moments to contemplate all the killing he's responsible for then resolves to go find Caroline.
Elena tells Damon she was jealous when she heard about Jo's pregnancy because she always wanted a family and knows it's never going to happen not that she's a vampire. Damon asks how she could feel if things could be different, but doesn't elaborate.
They get an urgent call from Jo. She says they have to get the ascendant back from Lily. She explains that long ago Lily met a group of heretic witches who could siphon power like Kai. She turned them, and as vampires they always have power to siphon, so they're both witches and vampire, and ruthless. They were coming to kill the Gemini coven when the coven stopped them and sent them to the prison world with Lily. "Imagine Kai with the bloodlust of a vampire, now imagine six of them," Jo says. So Lily wasn't sent to the prison world because she killed 3,000 people, she was just caught up at the wrong time with the wrong people.
Matt hated vampires, hybrids, and all the supernatural beings that came to Mystic Falls as he blamed them for his many problems. However, in reality, Matt's problems likely started the day their dad left him, and he felt like he had to take care of his mother and sister (and couldn't rely on anyone else).
This, in turn, explains Matt's more serious and reserved personality, as it seemed like he had to grow up quicker than his friends (which partly led to his distance from the rest of the gang). He never seemed to have time for fun and was always left behind by major events in the town.
Although Matt proved to be a good guy, there were often times when he showed that he had a terrible jealousy streak and could be extremely immature if his feelings were hurt (as evidenced before Elena even started dating either Stefan).
His invisibility saved him from trouble most of the time because he could easily have ended up the same way as Tyler and Jeremy. Being normal also helped reduce the intensity of the action in the town, as he was the best example of what a normal person's life in Mystic Falls looked like. He became the human face of the show.
Matt had been through so much by season 8 that he became impervious to pain. Having been abandoned by his father at a young age, lost most of his family, and several of his friends, Matt felt like his life in Mystic Falls had been a wreck.
However, he grew up quickly and learned to fight through pain and loss, taking most of it in without talking to people. Losing both Vicki and his mother hurt him the most. When he talked to their ghosts convincing them not to join the dark forces, he expressed the deep love and care he felt for the family that he couldn't tell them when they were alive.
He had lost the side of him that cared more, using his hatred for vampires as the excuse for hurting everyone. In the end, he seemed to be jealous of the rest of the Gang because they actually had a life and attention that he never got.
This is the only thing that gives me hope in a very darkening future for Densi. Can we trust Deeks? Is he the first to believe that nothing will separate him from Kensi? Does this mean he will be ready to fight with all himself for the first person he has really cared about and loved?
I think: The last time I spoke to my father, he told me the man he\u2019d been secretly and unofficially treating for pedophilia by encouraging him to work with children was \u201Ca hero. The last time I spoke to my father, when I suggested this man should stop working with children and start seeing a therapist, he accused me of trying to \u201Cruin his life.\u201D Then: My father issued a proxy to address his congregation who said that trans people are deluded, suicidal, and in need of Jesus. I think: Those things cannot possibly be true. They cannot all have happened, they cannot all have happened this year, they cannot all have happened in my life. I think: My father used to say he loved me all the time. I think: My father would not do that to me. So often I say to myself, My father would never do that to me. The question follows: What are the things your father would never do? The question follows: What are the things your father is capable of? The question follows: If you didn\u2019t know this, why should you trust your own knowledge of your father? And then I think: Sylvia Plath wore this territory out, and better, a while back. And then I think: There\u2019s a reason I avoided fatherliness in my work for so long. And then I think: Well, that didn\u2019t work. Finding the concept of father issues tiresome is no protection against them, as it turns out. And then I think: Did I find them tiresome, or was I terrified? Against my father I have no resilience, just like everyone else.
For the lyrics \u201CFathers be good to your daughters / Daughters will love like you do,\u201D the Council of Wronged Transmasculine Sons find you utterly guilty. We do urge you to repent before we kill you.
In November of last year my father ate me alive. My father has strong teeth like a dog\u2019s. Do you remember the episode of One Tree Hill where a dog eats Dan\u2019s heart before he can get a transplant? It was like that, and I have no body now. My father has so long to live, two hearts, and I am old, old old. My father love love loves G.K. Chesterton, who wrote:
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, \u201CDo it again\u201D; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, \u201CDo it again\u201D to the sun; and every evening, \u201CDo it again\u201D to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
It was Kate who had it all figured out and basked in the joys of being a kid. She wanted to spend time with the family, play games, and watch movies. Kate may have had plenty of issues with herself, and though she may have been a late bloomer, she was always the most aware. She knew these were the good days that she could never get back, so she helped facilitate so many of those key memories for the boys.
For Rebecca, that life was weaved in seamlessly through her journey to the caboose car on the train. Ever since she was a little child, Rebecca absolutely loved riding on the train with her father, so it was fitting that she took one last ride with a final destination in mind.
As all those loved ones said their final goodbyes, it was acknowledged that Rebecca heard everything they were saying deep in her subconscious as she saw flashes of memorabilia that meant something to her throughout the years along with visions of characters in various moments in time.
Most irritating Rory or Lorelai moment:Both women are needlessly passive aggressive to the men in their lives. Instead of telling Logan that she's still pissed about the bridesmaids, Rory gaslights him at the paper, claiming that she rewrote his piece because she didn't think he would turn it in on time. She also resets his alarm, causing him to miss a class, and reminds him that haphazardly base-jumping off a cliff in Costa Rica is probably not wise (she's correct there). Oh, and let's not forget how Rory uses Jess as a pawn in her immature vengeance game, reminding me that I can never be "Team Jess" because by the time they're adults, he is far too good for her.
Sharpest insult or one-liner:April may be annoying, but she's full of zingers. If I could go back in time and relive my childhood, I would use it to tell adult men crushingly unfiltered shit like, "Your books are really easy to skim." I hope she also raised her hand in class and told her math teacher that his Chris Rock impression is "borderline racist." Although I'm sure it was actually 100% racist because look at this man:
Thoughts:"The Real Paul Anka" has a few funny moments but is largely forgettable, despite the epic guest spot. I'm down to watch Paul Anka the human act like Paul Anka the dog (and vice versa), but listening to Lorelai's dream at the start of the episode makes me want to jump off a ledge. If I were Rory, I would put the phone on mute, go do something else for ten minutes, and come back with fake enthusiasm like, "Wow, that's crazy." I prefer the S3 dream sequence opener where we see Lorelai's dream sans narration. At least the "pregnant with Luke's twins" bit reveals something about Lorelai's subconscious. I'm not sure what the human/dog body swap is trying to communicate. If I had that dream, my conclusion would be that I had too much pre-REM weed.
In typical Gilmore fashion, this is yet another episode where Lorelai and Rory ignore their problems instead of acknowledging and confronting them. Luke has fully compartmentalized his relationships with Lorelai and April, treating them like people who live on entirely different planets and could never possibly meet. It's weird as fuck, but Lorelai never calls him out on it, which probably makes it easy for him to carry on as if barring his fiancée from meeting his daughter isn't wildly antisocial behavior. When Luke casually mentions that he's attending Jess' open house in Philadelphia with April, the verbal bitch slap is deafening. Apparently, it's NBD for April to meet everyone in Luke's life but Lorelai. Instead of pointing out his hypocrisy, she makes this face: 041b061a72