My Impatient and Slightly Annoyed Reflections on the Nonetheless Quite Good Vampire Diaries Season Premiere....

I feel so conflicted about The Vampire Diaries these days.  Yes, it's still an amazing show, and the writers have mastered a type of suspenseful, never-lets-up pacing that few other programs can match these days.  But Delena is starting to feel like the ship that those same writers just won't let sail, despite their multiple and persistent implications to the contrary.

 You guessed it: Spoiler Warning.

Take the Season 4 premiere, for example. Why is every single moment between Damon and Elena 50,000 times more emotionally resonant than any between Stefan and Elena?  Why do the Stelena moments feel like friendship, while the Delena scenes scream true love?  I mean no disrespect towards the Stelena ship, but this story is clearly structured so that the viewer starts off Team Stelena and gradually drifts into Team Delena.  LJ Smith made the story that way, and the writers of the show have no problem capitalizing on that compelling dynamic, even though they seem to lack the nerve to go all the way with it.

This is how LJ Smith got fired from her own book series: by planning a Delena endgame.  What?  Doesn't she have the right to choose the ending her characters deserve, according to her, their creator?  Seriously, it's absurd.  I really hope the writers of the tv series have more common sense than to flinch away from a written-in-the-stars pairing just because it will ruffle a few purists' feathers.

TVD is starting to feel the way Dawson's Creek would have if Joey and Pacey never got together and the writers kept on pushing Dawson/Joey at us.  It's getting to be just awkward.

Then there's Klaroline. 

This is a much easier ship to sail on.  In a way, these two really should never be, and I like Forewood so, so much more than Stelena.  But we get to enjoy that sassy, sexy interchange between these love/hate participants, Caroline and Klaus, without feeling the emotional whiplash that the Stelena/Delena back-and-forth has come to be.

In other news....I miss Alaric.  I'm loving Bonnie's new tumult and am hoping she gets a better love interest this season.  Jeremy and Matt are both persona non grata to me after their behavior in the previous season's finale.  Asshats.  

It's beyond suspension of disbelief to expect us to buy that this gang are still in high school.  We're getting into One Tree Hill Season 4 territory on that one.  They had better graduate Mystic Falls High School before they just turn into teachers one day.

I will always watch and love TVD, but I wish the writers would give Delena shippers our day in the sun.  I mean, even Dair on Gossip Girl and Lexana on Smallville got one season or so.  Those couples were much, much less meant-to-be than Delena, but the writers saw the chemistry and let things ride out.  Clearly, a couple that could very well be endgame deserves no less.