The Vampire Diaries
By Nick Manteris · 0 Comments · Leave a Comment
In the rush to cash in on the current hot teen vampire trend, the CW snapped up the rights to a young adult book series and The Vampire Diaries was born. (To be fair, they supposedly already had the rights and were just waiting for the right creative team.) Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec were the creative team chosen for the job, the former created Dawson’s Creek and wrote Scream and the latter has written for Kyle XY. Vampire Diaries actually plays like One Tree Hill with vampires instead of basketball or Roswell with vampires instead of aliens or…well, you get the idea. To drive the point home, the main female protagonist, Nina Dobrev even bears a passing resemblance to Shiri Appleby from Roswell and the voiceovers from the characters have a very One Tree Hill vibe.
Just like True Blood and Twilight, the unfortunate hallmarks of the new generation vampire mythology are also present in Vampire Diaries. There’s a best friend character claims that she can see the future and vampires that walk around during the day. At least the hint of a magical ring explains things better than “We’re all sparkly in the sunlight and stuff.” There’s the requisite Twilight reference and this is a perfect time to point out that the book series that this show is based on predates Stephanie Meyer’s creation by slightly more than a decade.
The pilot episode starts with a song from Silversun Pickups and the cold open ends with an allusion to The Lost Boys. Most of the rest of the music in the pilot is pretty good, with songs from The Raconteurs, MGMT, Placebo and Bat for Lashes, but some of it doesn’t mesh well with the visuals onscreen. LOST’s Ian Somerhalder eventually shows up as a bad-boy vampire, Kayla Ewell plays promiscuous enticingly as Vicki and the best line of the show is the response to: “It’s not a competition, Caroline.” Vampire Diaries seems like more of a teen drama than a vampire show, but it might be worth sticking around for a while just to see what they do differently than everyone else.
