Pilot: Vampire Diaries Episode Review

I Predict

Whenever someone asks about Twilight, I say that I already went through my spiky-hair vampire phase. Obviously, this might refer to Buffy, but I must admit that my first introduction to fang-angst was The Vampire Diaries books by LJ Smith.

I read them over and over and over. (Reason number one I don't hold teenage melodrama against any of Meyer's fans.) So what do I remember about them after all this time?

Stefan likes Elena. Elena likes Stefan, but she also is drawn to bad boy Damon. These days, I'm a little more aware of how annoyed I get with the bad boy motif, however, so Damon better bring some humor to the table or that's not going to be enough to save him.

I suppose it won't be fair to judge this one by the pilot, since I pretty much can guess what will happen: boy meet girl, boy falls for girl, someone is horribly murdered, boy decides that he can't be with girl because it is too dangerous.

It will be the week-to-week of this series that determines whether I care or not. If they start building their own mythology and find a way to explore it, they'll be good. If it's nothing but Romantic Drama with some vampires thrown in, I'll lost patience pretty quick.

Was I Right?

I have to admit that I was always more interested in the idea of the books than in the books themselves. Even as a teen, there was an understanding that they were more entertainment than Great Literature. I'm not horribly attached to any particular element of the stories.

That said, the show followed what I remember of the books pretty close, except for a few changes here and there. The characters don't look the way they were described. Elena is brunette and not blonde, for example, and Bonnie had red hair and freckles in the novel. But there's nothing intrinsic to the characters in their hair or skin color, so there's no reason to get hung up on that.

Elena lost a younger sister and gained a sullen little brother - which is understandable since it give the writers another character to play with. Some other family relationships have been rearranged and I think she's also missing a best friend. And really, how many sidekicks does she really need?

The big shift was making Stefan and Damon part of the history of the town instead of Italy, and dating them from the Civil War instead of (if I recall) a couple of centuries before that. And they now have a "family" member in town in the form of Zach. It gives Stefan someone to talk to right off the bat, which cuts down on him brooding to himself. One can only approve of that. 

I think the take-away is that they must have gotten a pretty good grip on what made the books appealing to my inner teenager because most of the changes are things that are reletively painless or active improvements like the brother Jeremy instead of some flightly little sister who seemed to exist for no other reason than to get menaced at some point.

Plot-wise in the episode itself, not a lot happened beyond Stefan coming to town and meeting Elena, though the groundwork was laid for things like Bonnie being psychic, conflict with ex-boyfriend Matt, and the possibility of some folks being more suspicious than you'd think of Stefan and the "animal attacks." (Can't remember if that was in the books or not; I almost think it might have been.)

They did a good job with the relationships. It is a little hard to buy any of these people as high schoolers, even if you didn't suspect a lot of the actors are about five to ten years older than their characters. Common wisdom is that kids spouting grown-up dialogue is kind of trademark Kevin Williamson, however, and I have to say I was impressed by the number of actual conversations in between the longing glances.

I was also happy about the lack of "I love you so I'm mournfully stalking you" crap from Stefan. He came to town to meet Elena. He walked up to and met Elena. I suppose the "stalking you is romantic (really!)" is where Damon comes in, but I really hope they make him more interesting than that.

My main hope for the pilot was that it not actively annoy me, which it didn't. I'm not bonding with the show the way I did with Buffy or Firefly, but then I'm not exactly the target audience, either, so that's to be expected. I'm curious enough to see what happens and it's on at a convenient time and not conflicting with anything. I'll tune in next week.