Sunday, October 20, 2013

Copycats

I don't like True Blood. I don't like Twilight. Actually, in general, I don't like TV shows or movies about vampires, unless they're Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel. A few years ago, I made an exception for The Vampire Diaries and started watching the show when it premiered.

The first season was okay. The second was good. The third was great. And then everything went downhill last year, during its fourth season. The show became repetitive. I think we spent three or four episodes on an island, maybe more, and if I wanted to spend extensive time on an island, I'd watch Lost, thank you very much. The entire season was a mishmash of the same idea, over and over again- "I want the cure." "Give me the cure!" "I will kill you for the cure." Of course, it was coupled with the love triangle of Stefan, Elena, and Damon.

Now, let me tell you something about love triangles. THEY. ARE. BORING. No one cares. Let me explain. Teenyboppers? Yes, they care. But when a group of writers has an entire show riding on whether the heroine (and I use that term very loosely when I apply it to Elena Gilbert) chooses Hero A or Hero B, that is just shitty writing right there. Not only is it shitty, it's heteronormative. And here we return to what I explained just three weeks ago about the CW's lack of LGBTQ characters. Yeah, that's right. Name one LGBTQ character on The Vampire Diaries OR The Originals (besides for Caroline's dad who was in the show for all of five episodes).

My next bone-picking with The Vampire Diaries is how much Julie Plec and her team of writers just copy and paste from Joss Whedon. Stefan in a box underwater for an entire summer? Hmmm, I wonder where I've seen that before (Angel, season 3 and 4). A witchy sidekick whose power grows so fast she loses control? Willow Rosenberg (a superb character in all the ways Bonnie is not) does come to mind. An ordinary guy like Matt? Hmmm, anyone met Xander Harris before? And now we've got Gypsies! Oh my God, that does not sound familiar at all. The heroine (again, term used very loosely) ends up in a relationship with the bad vampire instead of the good one? Wow, this is all very original storytelling. Honestly, if Elena walks away from both Damon and Stefan and starts giving us a speech about cookie dough, I might scream.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that Joss Whedon was and always be the master at what he does, and with the knowledge that the characters and the actors who played them on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel were better than the actors in the copycat.

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