Vampire Diaries: A Review

A discussion in my office today was spawned from a co-worker asking about vampire lore. While the stories vary, we decided that everyone has their own opinion on what a REAL vampire should be. There have been so many renditions of the classic story: Brom Stoker's Dracula, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, Dracula 2000, True Blood, and so on.

The most recent interpretation is featured on the teen/young adult station, The CW. A brief look at the new retelling shows some traditional vampy traits mixed with some new ones. The CW vampires can live in the day but must wear a special ring to keep from burning

up (very Joss Whedon and the ring of whatever-the-name-is). They live forever at the age they turn, drink blood of living (animals or humans), but I don't know if they turn people they bite but not kill. Also, there is a weird thing with controlling fog and crows.

token 'good/lovestruck' vampire: Stefan

mood : broody, tortured soul (if he has a soul), reflective

lifestyle: attempting to

live among people as a journal-keeping teenager in a small Virginia town

diet: animals

past: sense that he was bad but is now good, possible dead true love named Katherine

damsel: Alaina

mood: broody, reflective

lifestyle: a teen girl who writes in her journal, hangs out in cemeteries, tries to pretend everything is "fine", taking care of drug addicted bro who loves a girl that just got snacked on by a vampire.

claim to fame: looks like the long lost love of Stefan

past: parents died when drove car into lake, Alaina survived

token 'bad/interesting' vampire: Damon

mood: devilish, charming

lifestyle: living it up while immortal, has a knack for commanding fog and crows

diet: enjoys snacking on the living (including Stefan's new classmates)

past: left little bro Stefan 15 years ago, supposedly got him into the vampy lifestyle, promised to be a pain in Stefan's ass

With the onslaught of vampy stories on the horizon, will Vampire Diaries be able to stay afloat? I think that this might be the teenie-bopper's vampire fix while the older folk will go for the more adult True Blood. The show is not as Twilight as the preview featured and, in fact, I would say that it could be closer to the Whedon-vampires. Vampire Diaries features serious broody vamps with a lot more vicious, evil and entertaining vampires to heckle/torture them. I would never say that Vampire Diaries is like Buffy (that would just be blasphemous) but the show's writers are seriously taking a cue from Whedon, Buffy and the Mutant Enemy group instead of the fluffy world of Stephenie Meyer... and with that small difference Vampy Diaries could hold my interest and is worth a slot in my DVR queue.

Plus they had at least one decent song in their soundtrack that wasn't among the usual CW suspects, Placebo's "Running Up That Hill."