The Vampire Diaries

Oh vampires, how interesting you used to be. I used to be all about vampires, but lately things have just gotten out of hand. They have super-awesome powers, but also limitations so that they’re not just all powerful. But things have been changing, now they can go out on cloudy days or even sunny days if they have a magical ring. This causes them to take advantage of their eternal youth to pose as teenagers in high school. Pretty much the only drawback to being a vampire nowadays is that you have to be polite about getting into peoples’ houses. That doesn’t seem fair at all. In that case, I say everyone in a vampire related storyline just become one already, it’ll be fun. Because of this trend towards vampires that are pretty relaxed about the rules, I expected to not be wowed by this show. After watching a couple of episodes, I had this strange feeling. The feeling that... I liked it.

I watched the latest episode, which is pretty far into the first season. It was conveniently titled Let The Right One In, after my current favorite vampire movie, so I was automatically more interested. The episode was a little hard to follow for me, there are a lot of characters and it was hard to just jump in there almost near the end of the season and catch up. By the end of the episode it had captured my interest and I wanted to watch it from the beginning. Luckily, the characters tended to call each other by their names and often referred to their relations to one another. But the lighting was dark and moody through most of the episode, leaving most people’s faces half lit. And considering that for some reason 98% of this town is pale with dark hair, it was hard for me to tell them apart.

Despite only having a fuzzy idea of what was happening, I wanted to find out more. Like, where did all these vampires come from? Why did they all decide to descend on Mystic Falls at once? Is everyone in this town related? Why did the blond girl wait until it was dark outside to look for cell phone signal in the woods when her car got stuck in the mud hours ago in full daylight? Burning questions, I know. I watched the first two episodes of the season to get a better hold on the characters. The show mostly revolves around Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), a sad girl who lives with her aunt and brother after her parent’s death in a car crash. On the first day of school, she meets a mysterious new guy named Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley), who her friends accurately describe as being straight out of a romance novel. Well, at least his name. He’s mysterious because he’s a vampire, and he’s come back to his home town after a pretty long time to live with his distant descendants and pretend he’s not a vampire. Meanwhile, there’s a rash of animal attacks, which we all know from Twilight is short for a vampire problem. By the end of the episode the cause of all the commotion is revealed to be Stefan’s brother Damon (Ian Somerhalder), who’s just there to make things difficult for him. It seems poor Elena resembles their old shared girlfriend, and they’re working on repeating history.

There was a pretty stark difference between the 17th episode that I watched first, and the first two that I watched afterward for clarification. It seems the show’s gotten better with time. The later episode was much more violent and dark, with more suspenseful spooky happenings. The first couple of the season were very teen focused, with lots of scenes in school or at parties. The kids in this town party way more than any other non-television show teenagers. Also, the beginning and endings were narrated by Elena and Stefan writing in their respective gloomy diaries. So, overall the series started out on a much cheesier note. It also reminded me a lot of Dark Shadows, another supernatural soap opera drama type show. That one was also based on a vampire who returns to his home town to hide out and falls in love with a mortal who resembles his long lost love. General spookiness ensues. Since I really like Dark Shadows in a geeky way, I was surprised that I wasn’t put off by the similarities. It also reminded me a lot like Twilight with two vampires instead of a vampire and werewolf. Mainly because it’s made for teenagers and most of the characters are in high school, but no one sparkled so that was good. I can’t abide sparkly vampires.

There’s a surprising amount to like about this show. Perhaps I just had a really low bar set for it based on other teen-age shows I’ve watched lately, but I think I’ll watch the rest of the episodes. It’s like a kid movie that adults can still enjoy. Sure some parts are lame, but other parts make up for it. Some of the actors are genuinely entertaining and make up for those that are more stiff. The humor, when it appeared, made me laugh more often than roll my eyes or frown disapprovingly. The effects aren’t terrible, and the fight scenes are well choreographed. Everyone’s well groomed and pretty, with fancy cell phones. The fact that many of them look too old for high school seems to fit the show, even though it's hard to tell the adult characters from the teenage characters. There was also a lot of music, more than I'm used to hearing in shows I usually watch. But it was mostly music I listen to, like Neko Case, and The Dead Weather. I think it's a perfectly adequate show despite being aimed at teenagers. And infinitely better than Gossip Girl.