Episode 1320: Dissecting TV

So that was a pretty epic episode of The Vampire Diaries, even by that show's standards. Am interested to see how the storylines pan out in the season finale next week, and what's going to be set up for Season 4. (The Secret Circle wasn't too bad, but I think I've mentioned before that that show has finally started to come into its own. Here's hoping it'll get a renewal!) On a related note, The CW has also announced renewals for Supernatural (no surprise there) and 90210 (not really surprising, I guess). I'm assuming these are full season pickups, although I'm sceptical about another 22 episodes of 90210's storytelling. This week, it definitely showed signs of becoming like Gossip Girl, in that I can't tell if the writers are being self-aware and taking digs at the show's plotting, or they're just incredibly lazy and bad writers. I think with Gossip Girl, it's become clear that the writers are demonstrating self-awareness because while everyone else's storylines are pretty much random and pointless now, Blair's have been consistently interesting, barring the whole royal wedding fiasco. It helps that Leighton Meester seems to be the only cast member still committed to portraying her character and the craziness of a teen-turned-adult soap, as opposed to just phoning it in like Blake Lively seems to have been doing for a season or more now. Also didn't think this week's episode of Community quite justified the death last week, which seemed more like a plot contrivance to set up the storylines that will close the season, but as long as the remaining four episodes are zany, I'll let it slide. Hopefully, the fact that NBC rescheduled the last three episodes to air on the same night means that they're actually connected enough to form a three-part mega season finale. Community has always been good with madcap finales, right?