WORD to what you said about missing Vicki (I'm SO ANNOYED at the way the show basically used her as a prop for the Poor Matt Pity Party this season while ignoring who she was as a person.) I think one great thing that she brought to the show was that she was virtually the only character I can remember who was allowed to have a differing view from the majority re: Elena, where that viewpoint was allowed to carry some weight, have some validity.
What I mean is that increasingly, since S1, the show expects us to accept as Objective Truth the fact that Elena is this Wonderful, Compassionate, Empathetic, Unselfish Person, a Great Friend and generally an A+ human being. People who feel differently about her are Evil, and/or end up being punished for their views, or presented as being motivated by jealousy or just generally Bad People themselves. (I think this is a big part of why Bonnie increasingly lost her individuality and got silenced on the issue of vampires and became--IMO--reduced to a prop from S2 onwards. She came back to life to some extent in 3x07 when Grams showed up: and I think that was in large part b/c Grams was a character who, in S1, wasn't drinking the Elena and Salvatore Kool-Aid. She had her own priorities and her own agendas, her own identity.)
But Vicki was different. She had an entirely different POV on Elena, and that POV was respected by the show at least to SOME extent--not wholly so, of course, but more so than at any other point in the show's history IMO except maybe with Caroline in 3x04, and Bonnie in 1x19. Her, "Let's get one thing straight, you perky little bitch" speech is still one of my favorite scenes from S1--and it was great b/c the show let the audience look at a different side of Elena for once and didn't TELL US WHAT TO THINK ABOUT HER. This has increasingly gotten lost, IMO, and the show has suffered for it.
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timeasmymeasure
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What I mean is that increasingly, since S1, the show expects us to accept as Objective Truth the fact that Elena is this Wonderful, Compassionate, Empathetic, Unselfish Person, a Great Friend and generally an A+ human being. People who feel differently about her are Evil, and/or end up being punished for their views, or presented as being motivated by jealousy or just generally Bad People themselves. (I think this is a big part of why Bonnie increasingly lost her individuality and got silenced on the issue of vampires and became--IMO--reduced to a prop from S2 onwards. She came back to life to some extent in 3x07 when Grams showed up: and I think that was in large part b/c Grams was a character who, in S1, wasn't drinking the Elena and Salvatore Kool-Aid. She had her own priorities and her own agendas, her own identity.)
But Vicki was different. She had an entirely different POV on Elena, and that POV was respected by the show at least to SOME extent--not wholly so, of course, but more so than at any other point in the show's history IMO except maybe with Caroline in 3x04, and Bonnie in 1x19. Her, "Let's get one thing straight, you perky little bitch" speech is still one of my favorite scenes from S1--and it was great b/c the show let the audience look at a different side of Elena for once and didn't TELL US WHAT TO THINK ABOUT HER. This has increasingly gotten lost, IMO, and the show has suffered for it.