The Vampire Diaries [TV Show Review]
four out of five daylight rings
Would recommend if: You have ever wondered if a love triangle could actually make sense, if it’s possible to hide something deeper beneath cliches, and if six-pack acting could really be worth watching. In short, if you’re curious about a well-executed teen drama.
Plot: Elena Gilbert lost her parents to a car crash just a few months prior to where the story picks up at the beginning of a new school year. The vampire Stefan Salvatore comes back to his hometown and enrolls in high school alongside Elena and her friends in order to get to know her – since she looks just like Katherine Pierce, his ex. Stefan’s brother Damon also comes to town, but unlike Stefan, he feeds on human blood. Damon is there to make good on his promise to Stefan to give him ‘an eternity of misery’. There’s a lot of typical teen-movie subplots and characters here: drugs, love, sex and all that stuff, but the characters are well written, three dimensional, and with developments you can understand and follow. Also, after a few episodes of ‘who’s the tall dark stranger?’ the plot line evolves into more supernatural battles rather than full-on romance, leaving the romance and the drama to be the effect of developments rather than the cause and sole focus of the show.
What makes this one stand out: There’s a number of things that really caught my attention with this one. One of them was the pace. Instead of one storyline pr season like most shows these days, this one has two or more major storylines pr season, plus different characters dealing with different issues all at once. Add to that the ’cause to effect’ thing they have going on, and you have a show with a natural progression rather than the more typical ‘what can we come up with now’ feel other shows have. While the evolution was probably not planned from the start, the new problems are so well blended in with the old ones that the transitions seem smooth and troubleless (though not for the characters of course).
I also have to add that I am thoroughly impressed by both Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder and their acting in this. Nina’s way of handling her multiple roles and making them distinct in both posture and tone is incredible in itself, but add to that the double challenge of one of her characters pretending to be another of her characters, as well as the development in how good they are at impersonating each other… You know how they say you only notice if a room has been cleaned when it hasn’t? Well, you might also notice if it’s been cleaned so well that every surface is shining and you can see your reflection in the floorboards. Well, I noticed this, and it wasn’t because it was bad. As for Ian Somerhalder; I mentioned six-pack acting above, which is a term I use for those scenes where a character takes his shirt off (with women it’s bikini acting) for reasons that add nothing to the plot and is basically like hairography in dancing (heard that on Glee once, not sure if it’s a real thing or not, but it made sense). Yes, there is a lot of unnecessary shirtlessness on this show, and at first, I put Ian Somerhalder in the six-pack acting category. However, the character of Damon Salvatore, and specifically his lack of self-respect or self-esteem, makes the shirtlessness make sense. For a guy how literally thinks he is so worthless that his looks are his best asset and his best deeds all happen in the bedroom, it makes sense that he would overly sexualize everything. Now, I since writing is something I understand, that is where I will always place the credit or blame, but even I have to admit that Hamlet would be torture to watch if the actors weren’t right for the role. Ian Somerhalder brings a charm and charisma to the role which makes the character fun and enjoyable to watch rather than cringy and creepy, and he deserves the credit for that. It’s hard to imagine any other actor could have done the character justice like that.
Most of all though, what makes this show so good is how forgettable it is. Yes, I did just use the word ‘forgettable’ as a compliment. Unlike most TV dramas, this show doesn’t have episode themes. This means that the characters are allowed to develop in the own time and pace, and you don’t end up with episodes where suddenly every girl is having boy trouble at the exact same time as if the universe is out to get them. Also, the fast pace means you won’t remember everything after watching it through just once. The character development means that if you do watch it back, you will be sitting there with all this knowledge of what will happen to them later, sort of like a Greek tragedy, but with an endearing side and humorous effect at times. This, of course, is only made possible because the writers have an attention to detail and remember what happened before (for example: in the very first episode Deman steals Stefan’s ring, and in the very last, he gives him his own ring).
The downside to the pace is that at times it can be hard to remember where a specific character is or clearly remember plot twists that drastically altered the story (spoiler alert: like if Bonnie currently has her magic or not). That being said, I have come to trust the writers of the show to know what they are doing, so if they say something is a certain way, I’ll take their word for and assume I simply missed something.
Personal comment: A friend gave me the first book ages ago, and I remember really liking it (I refuse to re-read until I have gotten a hold of the original version and not a translated one, seriously, it takes a downright genius to translate English into Danish and still make it sound good). As I’ve grown older I have come to realize that perhaps the books I enjoyed in my early teens weren’t exactly masterpieces. When I recognized the title on Netflix I thought maybe it was time to prove my past self wrong and accept that the story really wasn’t all that good. I watched the first episode, and it wasn’t crap, so I watched the next episode and that wasn’t crap either. I started paying more attention, actually looking for things to hate. And yes, already in the second episode we have the first shirtless scene, but that’s my own personal vendetta against the over-sexualization that bombards our TVs (seriously, you can’t sell coffee anymore without showing a woman in lace underwear). A personal vendetta is hardly enough to label a show as bad, especially if you want to convince other’s that it isn’t worth the time to watch. So I kept watching, and the show kept not being bad. By the end of season one, I was actually invested in the characters and enjoyed the storyline. I watched through the six season on Netflix, started over while waiting for the box set with the seventh season included to arrive, watched that and started over until I could get my hands on the final season. I am now back at season one again. Of course, it’s not as if I’ve been binge watching it ever since I first found it on Netflix, but it’s been a steady stream of ‘I miss these characters, I think I’ll return to their world for a while’.
As a last remark, I have to say I was really torn about how many rings (stars) to give this one. On one hand, it’s the best teen drama I’ve seen in forever, on the other hand, it is still a teen drama, and if I give this five out of five, what would I give Hamlet from 2009? In the end, it became a four – which also fits perfectly with two Damon rings and two Stefan rings, so it’s almost as if that was meant to be.
Details:
Title: The Vampire Diaries
Developers: Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec
Year: 2009
Genre: Supernatural drama
Number of seasons: 8
