With the current vampire epidemic in the media on the rise, there’s no doubt that a couple of television stations were bound to try and cash in,such as the CW is with their new series ‘The Vampire Diaries’ — try being the key word. The new series airs at 9 o’clock on Thursday nights.
Every horror movie or ‘wanna be’ have used the ominous foreshadowing fog to signal danger ahead. You would think the veteran CW– formally the WB– would have been more inventive with an opening scene of a series premiere then to have a car drive into fog and then it’s riders to end up dead.’
Unfortunately they weren’t. Not only did they use fog once, they did it a second time in a graveyard and even added a crow to intensify the scene. The crow itself would’ve been fine, but fog suddenly appearing on the cemetery grounds is screaming’ ‘HELP US’ from the writers room.
As the show progressed, you find out that the crow is attached to the evil vampire, Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder) who is the brother of the good vampire, Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley)– but how he made the fog appear they still have yet to answer.
The main character, Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), whose younger druggie brother, Jeremy Gilbert (Steven R. McQueen), who supposedly is 15 but looks too old to be her junior ,was the sole survivor of a car crash which killed her parents a few months before school ended. Stefan, the good vampire, moves back to the town with his uncle and has to wear a family ring in order to be out during the daytime.
The worst part is that the connection between Stefan and Elena is very Tiwlight-esc.’ Stephan enrolls as a student in Mystic Falls High’ (seriously- they named it Mysitic Falls) where he bumps into Elena.
According to the CW official summery ‘ Stefan and Elena are immediately drawn to one another’ and the fact that one vampire can’t control his lust for blood while the other might as well be called Angel. ‘ Oh- just before the car rides into the fog there’s a short monologue while the camera pans the adjacent forest- Sound familiar? That my friends, was an hour long show.
A girl with two dead parents, a druggie brother and two vampires, one good and one crow owning dry ice obtaining evil vampire brother.’ I felt like I wasted an hour. It didn’t leave me wanting more ,but I did feel cheated only because I felt like they took too long to explain everything and then ended the episode in the middle of everything, but not in a good way. I wasn’t left wanting more- I was left wondering what was going on with the show.
As for the ultimate decision whether to Tivo or trash it- I’ll give it two more episodes and hopefully there’ll be more than just fog enveloping the storyline.
