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“Pilot,”
“The Night of
the Comet,” “Friday Night Bites,””Family Ties,”
“You’re Undead to Me,” “Lost Girls,” “Haunted,” “162
Candles,” “History Repeating,” “The Turning Point,” “Bloodlines,”
“Unpleasantville,” “Children of the Damned,” “Fool Me Once,” “A Few
Good Men,” “There Goes the Neighborhood,” “Let the Right One In,”
“Under Control,” “Miss Mystic Falls,” “Blood Brothers,” “Isobel,”
“Founder’s Day”
by Walter
Chaw You can
diagnose things like Kevin Williamson’s tween opera “The Vampire
Diaries” by
how much of the dialogue consists of peoples’ names. “Hey, Ben
is
with Carrie down in the tomb with Josie and Halley. Chris said he and
Caroline
would meet us there, but then Damon said that Stefan was going instead,
but
Stefan still has feelings for Elena…” OMFG, amiright?
Add
to
that a liberal use of music by the likes of Matt Kearney, The
Fray, and
Bat for Lashes, mix sloppily with
flavour-of-the-month genre fetish,
and, voilà!, the kind of thing everyone describes as a “guilty
pleasure”–which basically means they’re not telling you they
also enjoy “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”. The
remainder of the dialogue is interested in secret parentage, secret
siblings, and this and that about lore to establish credibility
while simultaneously demonstrating that everyone involved in
this one has read more books
than Stephenie Meyer (a low bar) and is aware of Stephenie Meyer…and
Heath
Ledger…and Emily Brontë. Never mind, you wouldn’t understand.
Similarly
difficult
to understand are magic rings that allow vampires to walk around in
daylight,
ancient tombs sealed by Creole witches led by that bitch from “A
Different
World”, and a complex series of events that need to happen before one
of
this show’s vampires is able to turn one of this show’s hot little
nymphos into
a vampire. It’s a metaphor–not for abstinence, per se, but maybe for
embarrassing tumescence. That’s right, “The Vampire Diaries” is a
boner joke.
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How else to explain all the instances of one of the
undead heartthrobs turning away in shame and
horror when he starts vamping out?
“Oh, this? It’s, um, nothing. Nothing!” How recognizing this begins
to decode “The Vampire Diaries” is more complicated. The
show is about romantic entanglements among the adolescent
set–essentially, it’s
that scene
from Margaret where Anna Paquin gets yelled at
for writing an opera and
casting all the other people in her life as the chorus, as well as a pretty
good
representation of how stupid and moony teens tend to be, thus
explaining its
home channel (the CW), its popularity (four seasons and counting), and,
of
course, its
“Smallville”/”Dawson’s Creek” target demographic. None of this is intended as criticism so much as recognition that
criticizing
“The Vampire Diaries” is a lot like having a rational conversation
with a teenager, deep in the throes of self-loathing, sexual
confusion/frustration, and an almost complete inability in certain
arenas to
function rationally. It’s stupid and wise in equal
measure–or should
I say, it’s wise about how stupid it is, meaning that otherwise reasonable
non-tween
people can admit to liking it under the umbra of “guilty pleasure”
without recrimination. The same can’t be said for the Twilight
saga, so:
win.
Our heroine is cute Elena (Nina Dobrev), revealed (through a
voiceover diary entry–a
conceit
that’s dropped after a few episodes, thankfully), as the series opens,
to have lost her parents,
satisfying her status as heroine of both Judy Blume and Disney
varieties.
Elena looks just like Victorian tart/vampiress Katherine (Nina Dobrev),
who
maintained a not-as-unusual-as-it-is-today ménage-a-trois
with two cute
brothers, droopy Stefan (Paul Wesley) and bad boy Damon (Ian
Somerhalder).
Katherine, of course, turns Stefan and Damon into
vampires, and a century-and-a-half or so later, Stefan comes out of hiding
when he
spies his immortal beloved resurrected as romantic Elena. Meh, been
there done
that; there’s even a cameo photograph as part of the opening
credits,
and a good part of the series’ success rests on its ability to
be
entirely familiar to its base so that it can become more instantly
addictive.
Once Stefan reveals himself as a dreamy transfer student, good at
football and
making his asshole history teacher look like an asshole, lo, there’s
brother
Damon, out for mayhem in the form of cheap sex, the casual accumulation
of
blood puppies (first up, druggie slut Vicki (Kayla Ewell), then preppie
gal-pal
Caroline (Candice Accola)), and dramatic tension in an inevitable
triangle that
reforms around Katherine doppelgänger Elena.
It’s interminable and predictable, with late-’00s
slick production
design and a soundmix to match. And the
plotting
is basically predicated on introducing as many characters as possible,
a
bedroom scene every three episodes, and a bloody attack or murder
every
two. Somewhere around episode 6, Depeche Mode
appears on the soundtrack to announce some vampire lore and Stefan’s creation story; long about
episode 10, a
vampire
hunter, Alaric (Matthew Davis), is introduced, and
then episode 14 or so sees a tomb of
vampires released into sleepy Mystic Falls just because.
There’s another cute
best
friend, Bonnie (Katerina Graham), who’s a witch and has a
grandmother
(Jasmine Guy) who is also a witch. There are witches, see, because
“Buffy
the Vampire Slayer” is a huge, well-respected cult hit. These witches
seem
involved in the business of making things hover, burst into flames, and
smithing magic rings that allow the wearer immunity from supernatural
harm–sometimes resurrection, other times the ability to walk around during
the
daytime. It’s like a role-playing game for nerd-girls. The vampires are
strong
and fast, aren’t afraid of crucifixes or holy water (something
Stephen
King played with to marvellous effect in ‘salem’s Lot),
and can only
change others by um, drinking, having them drink, then killing them and
then…I
don’t know. Doesn’t matter, it’s a metaphor.
Vicki lasts seven episodes in the most thankless
mini-run of this first season as she’s killed at least five times by
different
people before her finally dying, and then mostly forgotten until her
corpse is discovered, covered in mulch, when bimbo
Caroline falls
down a riverbank trying to get a cellphone signal. By the third time
her neck
is snapped or she’s mortally drained of her precious humours in the
show’s
clumsy attempt to tell a very special story about domestic abuse, it’s
actually
kind of funny. I confess I was rooting for more creative ways to
not-quite-kill
her for the remainder of the run. “The Vampire Diaries” also
‘very-special-episodes’ Elena’s little brother Jeremy’s (Steven R.
McQueen)
struggle with substance abuse among younger teens, Stefan’s late-season
battle
with blood-aholism, and Caroline’s ongoing self-esteem problems
despite the
fact that she’s clearly the school Heather (to quote another:
“Everybody
wants me as a friend or a fuck…and I’m only a junior”). There’s
something
for everyone, really, for every girl-type and how they see themselves,
and for
every lonely middle-aged lady-type who imagines herself a MILF still
attractive to someone who looks like Ian Somerhalder. Speaking of hot
women of a certain age, Mia
Kershner plays Alaric Van Helsing’s (un)dead wife and
bears
some resemblance to Melinda Clarke, who plays the single slut
loser/misunderstood drifter mother of Elena’s jock ex-boyfriend Matt
(Zach
Roerig). She does fuck Damon, almost or something, one or both, or maybe
they
didn’t. Anyway, it’s going to happen.
Gradually, the show stops having its
“children” go to school in favour of shouting matches
involving names and relationships, then lots of culling of all the new
faces introduced and filling up the spaces in episodes ever more cluttered. There are entire subplots that rise and fall–all
of them
involving mothers slapping daughters during arguments, tweens falling
in love and
getting jealous, and then, for flava, all of the above in period
fetish-wear.
Apropos of nothing, I do want to notice that Caroline switches
from a
nice little bra at the cliffhanger of the second episode to a nice
little
nightie as
the action resumes in episode 3 with no explanation, except that
Caroline’s
superpower is the ability to audition for an underwear catalogue while
not
acting in a tween vampire show. While we’re at it, I want to notice
that Stefan
has this adorable habit of not being able to pronounce things like
“lapis
lazuli” in exactly the same way that Alec Baldwin’s soap-opera doctor
character on SNL pronounces “cancer of the anal canal” as
“canCOR…of the anal CANE-al”. That is to say, you find your
pleasures where you may, because it doesn’t talk about anything, but it
has a representation for everything–meaning that its closest analogue
is that
shoutout that arena rock stars give to whatever city their
manager
has whispered to them that they’re in for that night’s performance.
“Good
Evening, Suicidal Girl with Daddy Issues!” And 44% of the viewing
audience
flips open their silver Paul Frank Zippos.
THE
BLU-RAY DISC
Warner brings every nut-crushing instalment of “The Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season” home on four Blu-ray discs housing
1.78:1, 1080p transfers that alternate between crisp and
sure/crushed and noisy. Colour range fluctuates from scene-to-scene, detail goes waxy at random, and certain night scenes
look like amateur porn. I don’t know what’s up, but I’m somewhat loathe to
blame digital technology (the series was an early trial for the ARRI Alexa)–methinks sainted Marcos Siega, director of the first two tone-setting episodes, probably had something
to do with the irregularities, given that he’s more interested in “the
love story” than any other aspect of production. More on that later.
The audio, lossy DD 5.1 (surprisingly and you should
note) is
actually pretty solid for the medium, offering active surround channels and a clear reproduction of the reams and reams of exposition. Seriously, this
series
reads like Matthew 1. (I can’t tell anymore if it’s blasphemous to say
that.) There are opportunities lost, no question, but if you’re here for the
best of
mumblecore, well, feast your goth ears, son.
Williamson, contributing writer/executive producer Julie
Plec, and, completing the holy trinity, Siega contribute a
commentary
for the Pilot, talking at length about how they felt they had a
responsibility to the set of young-adult potboilers from which the
series took
its inspiration yet deviated from the storyline of the books fairly quickly, and
how everything came together like a fairytale to produce the best
television
show television has ever seen. Quick lip-service as to why they all
thought
another vampire product would be artistic rather than just parasitic
fails to convince, though they’ll mention this again in “Into Mystic Falls” (25 mins., HD), where
Williamson, Plec, Siega, and various set
designers
gather to relect on the mystical synchronicity that
brought
them together that had nothing to do with the bazillion
dollars
Twilight had wrestled from the
black-nail-polished and
friendship-bracelet festooned fingers of a nation of sad girls and
lonesome
mommies. It occurs to me that the audience for this stuff is generally
young
women afraid to lose their virginity and old women bitter about how
they lost
theirs. Woohoo! Each disc offers unaired and deleted scenes (in SD) that
add up to
about 15 minutes total running time. They’re mostly more exhausting
dialogue
sequences. Those looking for more violence or PG-rated sexuality will
be
disappointed.
“When Vampires Don’t Suck!” (19 mins., HD)
assembles scholars and historians like critic David Skal to do their
best to
pretend they’re not in a “Vampire Diaries” tie-in and
instead involved in an enterprise that’s a serious platform for their
expertise
and passion. Williamson and Plec return along with various cast members
to talk
over footage of a promo trip they took to a mall so that sad girls and
lonely
mothers in “Vampire Diaries” T-shirts can cry together in front of
them. “Darker Truth Webisodes” (8 mins., HD) string together four cheapo web
series involving some angry loved one from Manhattan trying to find and
kill
Stefan–a parallel storyline without any main character participants,
much like
The Bourne Legacy and about as successful.
“Vampires 101” (7
mins., HD) reveals that none of the cast knew what the lore was supposed to
be in
their universe until it was revealed to them by the scripts–reminding
me that a few episodes into the series, as they’re explaining the magic rings, they also take a
moment to take the piss out of Twilight. Danger: Glass
House Aphorism on the
right.
“A New Breed of Vampires” (13 mins., HD) boasts about how they cast beautiful twentysomethings and how Elena in the book is blonde
but
Elena in the show is brunette. There are some audition tapes in there, plus lots of gushing. A “Gag Reel” (4 mins., HD) demonstrates how
un-witty these people are as they flub their lines and break shit, while a
complete
400-minute audiobook of the first book in the “Vampire Diaries” serial, The Awakening, rounds out the set. A 12-page insert pamphlet lays out the
episodes in addition to directions for downloading said audiobook onto your
computer.
