Why do I like it when Caroline is sad? She’s actually the best vampire we’ve ever met, the first to curb her hungriest tendencies while young, the one mostly likely to use her super-powers for good, the one intent on preserving her human family ties and friendships at all costs. Yet it was fun when her father tried to torture her into self-immolation, and her previous best episode was “Our Town,” where her sad birthday party turned into a happy funeral and ironic hipster wake where she got everyone to admit that she was dead, but life goes on.
Now it’s another funeral, this one for her mom, and it’s pretty real, because Liz died of natural causes last week. And the police send-off to one of their own is beautifully handled, one of the most respectful human funerals we’ve ever seen on this show; she gets the full flag treatment, and she deserved it. Liz was a great character, loyal to her daughter till the end, trying to protect the humans from the unavoidable vampire population of her town, finally acknowledged as such by Damon who created (at Elena’s urging) a fitting eulogy after reflecting on his earlier failure to do the same for his own mother a long, long time ago.
Elena is (very weirdly) the voice of reason this episode. With Jeremy out of the way and Bonnie still MIA, she has to go into full best-friend mode with Caroline, and doesn’t the girl who lost both adoptive parents, Aunt Jenna, both biological parents, and her brother (once) and guardian (once) know more about loss than anyone? So she tries to help, and she realizes why Caroline doesn’t really need it before anyone (called it last week, by the way: the Ice Queen Cometh, in that Caroline is planning to turn off her humanity after the insta-funeral, a thing these vampires can do if they get too upset).
When Elena tries to talk her out of it, they have a brilliant argument where Caroline says what we’ve all thought many times before: why does Elena get to be the only one to suffer, the only one who is too precious to feel all the feels that have come her way? Isn’t Caroline the better vampire, just as pretty and more deserving of special Princess Snowflake status than moody, selfish whiny Elena?
She rightfully reminds Elena that she turned off her humanity when Jeremy died (little knowing that Bonnie would bring him back to life), and burnt their freaking house down for good measure. And she had Alaric compel away her entire history with Damon when he was thought lost to the mortal plane as well. All Elena can say in rebuttal is that she now knows both choices were huge mistakes. Because of course when you have no humanity you do things like commit murder with impunity (like Elena and that waitress she killed just to piss off Stefan), and thus leave a wake of pain and suffering you will inevitably care about again someday.
Caroline’s not hearing it, though I hope they surprise us here and have her meet something bigger and badder than herself or just decide to feel again quickly, even despite Stefan being a giant ass-face and ignoring Damon’s advice and disappointing Caroline before the funeral about their prospects and then only seeing her beauty during her memorial song which is far too late you idiot. I blame him for never being there in the way Caroline needs. She hasn’t been very lucky in love when Klaus is probably the best of her suitors thus far.
So, Evil Caroline could mean a lot of things, which will probably come into conflict with Tyler and Matt (who have decided to join the police academy, why not?) and Bonnie (who makes it back after an improbable near decay of her 1994 prison world into an even weirder arctic Northern Lights 1903 prison for, of all people, Mama Salvatore), who gives Damon the hugest hug when she appears in his kitchen for real, finally.
Can’t all of these crazy kids ever be happy at the same time? No.