The Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season Review

I’m a total sucker for vampires. Twilight hasn’t totally killed that for me yet. But I will admit…I had to be dragged into viewing The Vampire Diaries pretty much kicking and screaming. When it premiered last year, it reeked of the CW network trying to cash in on the success of the insanely popular Twilight franchise. I am pretty sure I even referred to it as “the K-Mart Twilight” last year on this very site. But then, I started hearing good things about it, both from trusted online sources as well as people I knew in real life. Could this cheesy looking show actually be…good? I decided to find out. In secret, without telling anyone I knew lest they blurt it out in public, I watched the show on DVD via the recently released Complete First Season box set. And while I can’t sit here and say that The Vampire Diaries is original, or even good, I can say I eventually had a fun time watching it.

For those who don’t know, the show is about Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) a recently orphaned teenager living with her aunt and younger brother. She meets a mysterious and ridiculously good looking boy in class named Stephan, who of course turns out is a vampire. (Unlike Twilight, the only reason Stephan is in high school is to keep an eye on Elena, not to repeat Chemistry 101 for eternity. It is still a stupid reason, but still less stupid than Twilight’s reason) But Stephan also has a vampire older brother named Damon, played by Lost alumni Ian Somerhalder, who is less goody two shoes than Stephan and has his own reasons for coming to town. And pretty soon, a love triangle begins. Ok sure, there are a million other little plot twists and what not, but essentially that is what this show is really all about in a nutshell: two hot supermodel vamps wanna bone a chick in high school.

Vampire Diaries is almost refreshingly free of any originality. I actually say that without any sarcasm at all. While other modern vampire material have all tried to play with the fertile metaphor that bloodsucker stories can provide (on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was “high school is hell”, on True Blood there is the whole civil rights metaphor, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles have too many metaphors at play so let’s not even get started) VD isn’t trying to be clever. They aren’t attempting to bring anything new to the table, they are content just being a vampire soap opera. This show is also almost totally irony free… While the vampire infested small towns of Buffy and True Blood have ironic names like “Sunnydale” or “Bon Temps” (French for “good times” didn’t ya know) on VD the vamp infested town is  the oh –so- on- the- nose named “Mystic Falls”. More than anything else, VD reminds me of 60’s soap opera Dark Shadows; not a show remembered fondly for great writing, acting, or originality, yet is fondly remembered anyway. It just had that certain something that made people fall for it, and VD has that quality too.

Now, If I keep bringing up other vampire shows or movies, it’s because it is incredibly  difficult to talk about this series without bringing up other better, vampire shows and movies, because VD gleefully rips off from just about every source it can. Brooding, attractive vampire boy in high school like the Twilight series? Check. Two vampires, one bad and one not as bad, who fall for the same pretty human girl, like on Buffy and True Blood? Check. A vampire who falls for a modern girl who is the spitting image of a long dead love, like Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula or Fright Night? Check. And the list of riffs on other similar material goes on and on.

The plot on VD pretty much consists of revelation after revelation concerning familial ties…we are constantly finding out that a dead relative isn’t really dead, or someone was actually adopted, or someone’s mom got turned into a vampire back in the day, etc. Take away the vampire element, and this show is really just Days of Our Lives or General Hospital. And yet, just like those shows, it insidiously becomes very addictive, and pretty soon you are hooked despite your own better judgement.

Even as a cheesy soap though, this show takes time to find itself. The first disc on the set, which consists of the first five episodes, is nearly unbearable to watch. The first few episodes are much more a typical CW teen drama, with very small doses of vampire action. But at the start of the second disc, revelations are made and this show starts to pick up and before you know it, you’re hooked. Not because you love the characters, because they are all as bland and generic as dry toast. Elana isn’t as awful and selfish as Bella from Twilight, but she also lacks any of the spunk or personality (not to mention special powers of her own) of Sookie Stackhouse or Buffy Summers. Not a feminist role model, but not a giant step back for the female gender either. She is just kind of there.  Good boy vamp Stephan only gets interesting when he falls off the wagon and gets addicted to human blood again about half way through the season, but like most television treatments of addiction, it usually only lasts an episode, maybe two max.  Stephan goes back to his boring self pretty quickly. But I still kept watching, simply because I  just wanna know what the hell happens next. And isn’t that the mark of a good soap? To be entertaining enough just so you keep watching?

There is one truly great thing on this show though: Ian Somerhalder as Damon Salvatore. The evil and unrepentant (but just nice enough to be sexy) vampire who steals every scene he’s in. It feels sometimes like all the writers on this show realize the only character with any personality on this show is Damon, so they pour all their energy into writing him, and just let some writers from the Lifetime network handle everything and everyone else. Somerhalder has a blast playing  an asshole that you can’t help to love, and I don’t think without him I would have kept watching.

Now, while Season One can be quite a bit of a slog to get through at times, what I’ve seen so far of Season Two is a pretty big improvement. The show is still derivative as hell, and sometimes doesn’t even make any sense, but is far more of a fun, silly supernatural romp than the first season show I reviewed here. But if you are the kind of person who goes for this kind of guilty pleasure, then by all means check out the DVD set. Just grin and bear it until the show gets fun, because it eventually pays off.