T.01.08 Port Angeles

In Which Edward and Bella have their first Date.

Skimming past all the dresses and girl talk we find ourselves in Port Angeles (hey look, the Vampire Volvo's here, too) with Jessica and Angela, who are very friendly and slightly boring. Bella apparently thinks so too because she ditches them and gets lost in the warehouse & rapist district which everyone knows is just south of the tourist shoppes. Just down Main, take a left at the authentic Irish Pub.

To be as fair as possible, SM describes Rapistville Heights fairly well (it's dingy and forlorn), but the story of how clumsy (and now directionally challenged) Bella managed to wander into the middle of it comes off a bit weak. I think if you followed those directions you'd loop several times back on wherever you started. Plus I'd love to see the statistics for Port Angeles tourist district versus Warehouse district on violent crimes because it's all awfully cliche. One minor note, the rape squad that follows Bella seems fantastically well-organized. She's literally described as being "herded" rather than stalked or just followed menacingly. That implies a level of hunting prey wolf-style. SO if some  fantastic beasts of the evening aren't revealed to be behind this episode, I'm going to call foul.

As expected, at the last possible PG-13 second Edward arrives on his gleaming silver Swedish stallion and whisks Bella off to safety. He's quite irate and insists that Bella distract him so that he won't go back and kill the crap out of the throng of construction workers and longshoremen threatening Bella. We have a truly amusing moment where Bella reveals a plan to end Tyler's infatuated remorse by running him down with the truck, thus evening the injury score. I admit laughing at this whole conversation, so points there.

Edward uses his magics to find Jessica and Angela and convinces them to leave without Bella so he can feed on her. Bella reveals internally that she's aware of Ed's mind tricks, which emphasizes again that Bella is somehow special. We even get a word for the vampire-mind-trick: dazzled, which is awful. I'd ignore how awful it is if only they didn't use it endlessly during dinner and beyond.

Dinner. Ye gods, dinner.
Edward dazzles the waitress into getting a better table, where he insists Bella take his jacket and order something to eat. We also get an absolutely endless description of how Edward routinely ignores hot women throwing themselves at him. Somebody got ignored on a dinner date or something because ye gods the hostess does it, the waitress does it repeatedly and it just refuses to end. I assume this is shorthand for Edward only having eyes for Bella, but it doesn't work. The reason is mirrored by Edwards other new stupid trait: he's an oblivious moron. He doesn't know his eyes change color. He doesn't notice ladies coming on to him. He's ignorant of the fact that he (ugh) dazzles people.

So it comes down to Edward being so detached that he ignores things or Edward being a giant moron. He doesn't know he's mind-tricking people and I honestly have to conclude that it's not that he's so involved with Bella that he doesn't notice the other women, he's just too dumb to notice them fawning over him. I realize that's not the author's intent (although I can't know exactly what that intent is here), but so help me if it's hard to come to any other conclusion.

Fine. Dinner is interesting for the same reasons that other parts of the book work: the details are good and the conversation is decent, when it actually makes sense. Now that Bella has Edward (sort-of) alone, she leaps into the questions. We learn:

• Edward is psychic. This isn't a global vampire trait.
• Bella is locked away from his big brain for some reason.
• There's some distance limits.
• He wanted to kill her on the first day & has some kill/love attraction to her.
• He can find people with his big brain
• He can find people by their scent
• He has killed people.

Really. Killed. Lots, by the sound of it. Bella's not bothered. We also get into a long discussion of Bella being a magnet for trouble. There's an attempt at a supernatural vibe around this, but it comes down to her always being in danger. This means Edward can come rescue her over and over and over and over again. That, young lady readers, is how your relationships should be constructed. With you as a helpless, clumsy domestic type who can be rescued and eternally protected by your big, strong man.Take notes and then go make me a sandwich. Faulkner's kidneys, this is utter nonsense.

Finally we get a detailed description of Edward's perfect chest and some very tentative touching in which Edward is revealed to be a living statue. That's not hyperbole on my part or metaphor in the text. His skin is cold, chiseled, hard and seemingly lacking in electric current. I'm adding references to statuary and his chest to the drinking game. Man up and pour the Scotch, people.

Next time, we get to ride home in the Vampire Volvo (again) where the interrogation continues.

SumUp D-
If I were judging the moral of the story here, it'd be a flat F. Honestly, Bella is slowly becoming a cartoon and Edward is already a literal statue of a knight. Aside from the time where the girls are together, some of the dinner description and Bella's journey into the seedy underbelly of town, this was a truly bizarre and awful chapter. I don't think any sumup is going to pull it together, sufficed to say I'm not happy where this is going.