Vampire Diaries

Anyone watching this?

It's surprisingly not too bad, least in my opinion heads and above Twilight for that type of crowd. Kevin Williamson is writing and producing and he's got a good track record for the most part with Dawson's Creek, Scream and The Faculty.

It's based on a set of tween vampire books which I've never read (probably a good thing) but so far the acting is good, they are not afraid of killing characters, the story line is interesting and the production values are pretty high (as compared to the ever falling production values of Smallville )

It's before Supernatural so someone's got to be watching it and the ratings are decent for the dreaded Thursday time slot.


Evan

I'm watching. I'm not all that into it, but it's okay. The reason I'm watching is because my wife was *REALLY* into the books when they were first published. When she heard a television show was being made, there was a squee heard here like you wouldn't believe.

Everyone has been saying how this is a Twilight rip off, and she does her proud "Well, actually..." routine, it's pretty cute. However, we both know why the this obscure book series has been turned into a weekly program, and that reason rhymes with "Bwilight."

Anyway, yeah, it's not really my thing, but I'm watching.

btw, who dreads Thursday? Dollhouse would kill for a Thursday.

I started watching it because my wife loves Vamps and was expecting a Twilight rip off but in fact I enjoy a bit more than that series. I don't hate it and I liked the shots they took a couple of weeks ago at Twilight in the actual show.

Having never read any of the Vampire Diaries books and only Twilight (still trying to block out the memories) I can only compare Twilight the movie to the Vampire Diaries tv show and the acting and writing in the Diaries is a whole lot better then Twilight the movie, in fact my wife who really is not a fan of the vampire genre said " Twilight may have been watchable if they switched in the actors from the diaries and the storyline."

I'm a sucker for most vampire releated show and books and so far I'm pretty impressed, the pacing of each show has been good, no real filler episodes and they present a decent amount of back story and characterization with each episode, I only hope it keeps up. So far the show has been a complete suprise hit for me.

It's pretty funny while watching reruns of Wolf Lake on SyFy earlier this week I noticed that Luke in Wolf Lake is Stefan in Diaries, so he goes from a werewolf to a vampire....

and the couple of potshots at Twilight were enjoyable last week


Evan

I really don't dislike this show at all - it's no Buffy, but very few shows are. The characters aren't as stupid as the Twilight characters, it's well cast - I really like Elena and the witch chick. Sure it's kind of dumb that these guys use their real names for 150 years and no one's put it together, especially the secret cabal that's hunting them. But the show is much better than Melrose or BH901210.

Yeah i'm watching it but i'm not loving it yet hope it gets better? i'll give it the full season and see how it is at the end.

I love it.

And it may have been made due to Twilight's success, but it's nothing like Twilight. It's only four episodes into the show and there's already way more going on in the show than just the Stefan/Elena love story.

I've read the books as well, and though they're different than the series, they're also nothing like Twilight.

Our two teenage daughters watch the show. The wife watched an episode to make certain it was "semi-appropriate." She read the books and she didn't seem interested enough to continuing watching the show. I watched Twilight and I will watch Bad Moon in November since the wife and daughters enjoyed the books / first movie.

Personally, I will leave the new kinder, gentler vampires to the ladies

Darkseed said:

Our two teenage daughters watch the show. The wife watched an episode to make certain it was "semi-appropriate." She read the books and she didn't seem interested enough to continuing watching the show. I watched Twilight and I will watch Bad Moon in November since the wife and daughters enjoyed the books / first movie.

Personally, I will leave the new kinder, gentler vampires to the ladies

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Compared to Twilight the "bad" vampire in the Diaries is semi bad ass, Damon doesn't seem to mind killing folks left and right and it seems at least 1 person dies every episode but compared to say.... Carpenter's Vampires or Near Dark, they are kinder, gentler but nothing compared to the sparkles!


Does anyone know if the books are written for the true Tween or more all over ages like Harry Potter (enjoyable for all ages)?

FQRizzo said:

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We'll they did do Wolf Lake back in 2001, which I guess would be the comparable werewolf story. Was a pretty good show too, SYFY occasionally has the 9 episodes on TV.


Evan

I have seen the whole of the first season, and I think it's the best Vampire TV show that I have ever seen on TV.

Alright. Thank god there was a thread for this. I need to talk! My wife has been jonesing for us over the summer to watch more new tv shows since ours were in repeats and she wanted to try the VAMPIRE DIARIES. We are on ep 17 of 22.

I knew Ep one got reamed in the reviews, but I also knew it really picked up in popularity as the season went on and supposedly "got good".

Upon watching it, it's absolutely nothing like Twilight at all and not much to do with high school. (thank God). If anything it starts off mercilessly ripping off Dark Shadows for much of it's premise (which isn't a bad thing as characters take on double roles as their ancestors). But as the season wears on, despite many trappings which could make this a good show, most plots seem pulled out of their ass five minutes before the cameras started rolling with poor set up, which is strange as it is based off of books. The show never gets great, but it wasn't actively bad either. I wouldn't recommend it, but I would def finish the season just to see where it went.

And then something happened that has never happened to me before on a tv show I have watched--- they started writing the cast 100% out of character to accept things they shouldn't. It's like if the Avengers let Wolverine on the team and let him maul and mutilate people even though that's not what the Avenegers stand for just because he is a Marvel best selling character. Oh, wait...

It guess it began when Stephen didn't really care that much that his ancestor (Zach?) got killed by Damon. Then several episodes later, by the time Damon ruthlessly kills Stephens oldest friend Lexi in front of him, Stephen isn't written to care all that much, in fact, she's pretty much forgotten about right away with no thoughts of revenge at all by the next episode. WTH?

But then, a few eps later Lexi's husband comes looking to kill Damon in revenge and Elena begs him to spare Damons life (for no reason my wife nor I could really figure out. It made no sense. They have wanted dead in the past and is pretty much chaotic evil), and the husband does spare him only to be killed by Damon, then Damon kills the bartender who gave him up too all in front of Elena. And Elenas is laughing with him on the car ride home enjoying their bonding experience together like nothing happened. WTF???

Never have I seen a show written so insultingly to the audience with characters written so badly out of character. Murder is murder no matter what species you are and Damon has been proven evil time and again. There is no way she shouldn't have been bat-____ crazy in rage. She even liked Lexi.

From those points on the show lost any credability or hope to become something good, and has become an enjoyable train-wreck for all of the wrong reasons imaginable. I have never seen a show get written so bad. I am seriously mortified.

This show isn't great... but it's far from terrible.

creature4000 said:

This show isn't great... but it's far from terrible.

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Oh, agree with that about the series story wise. As a story it is not great but not terrible. It's the oddball, contrary characterization that ended up making it terrible for me. The writers have Damon doing all these awefull things but at this point have the main "hero" characters giving Damon a completely free pass for the sake of basically only keeping Damon alive, to the point that to actually accept the characters would really have acted that way after the way they had been established would have been retarded.

It was sloppy to have Stephen not really care about the loss of Zach and particularly not being that broken up about Lexi. Those we major events. To have Elena not care that Damon killed Lexi's husband who was justly looking for revenge nor the bartender, Bree, pretty much suddenly makes Elena into a sociopath unless she was charmed, which she wasn't.

Like I said, it was just insulting writing and I guess I am so annoyed because that's such a weak move. (shrug).

See, they explained a lot of the Vampire characterization with the ability for Vampire's to turn off their humanity. The ability to feel nothing. So vampire characterization is acceptably inconsistent!

As for Elana, she want's Damon spared and to be friendly with him because she loves Stephon (spelling?) and knows that losing his brother would destroy him. She also knew that there was some part of him that was good. The show has a number of faults and is obviously not perfect, but its a hell of a lot better then most recent Vampire tales!

I just finished watching the rest of the season, (18 on) and just to give a fair review I have to say the final (6?) eps of the series were much better plotted out and a huge step up from earlier in the season. It went from being just a mediocre show to becoming a very good show (of what I hope was the show finally coming together). I don't know if these final eps were after a long writers break (they usually are) where they re-accessed or whatever but I hope this is the level of quality the show manages to stay at now.

While I still feel the earlier Elena/Lexi/Damon parts were handled extremely weak, I was very happy early in these back-half of eps that there was a really good scene of Elena stating how she knew Damon was still morally irreprehensible and evil just to set the story straight at that point for the audience because it was needed.

Hulksmashed said:

See, they explained a lot of the Vampire characterization with the ability for Vampire's to turn off their humanity. The ability to feel nothing. So vampire characterization is acceptably inconsistent!

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I'm not meaning to harp on it because it just a review, but I would argue your brother screwing you over when he murders your best friend is NOT the time to turn off you emotions. There needed to be repercussions story wise from Stephen for Lexi. Just sayin'.

Keep in mind, if you watched it on tv as it happened I am seeing them now all in a row with no breaks, repeats, or whatever in between that would give the story experience a different perspective of time passage.

Just finished season 1 - 2nd half much better than first, but god help me, I actually like the show.....Sorry they killed off anna!

Yet another 100+ year old vampire getting down with high schooler. Where is pedobear?

Wife watches the show. I catch it a few times with her. It's at least better than Twilight. The main chick is hawt and the guy from LOST is such a ass. I like him.