Sun Blogs: The TV Yogi

Vampire Diarrhea: Now with shirtless dancing!

It was a week of resentment and pain for any civil war re-enactors who might watch The Vampire Diaries. Holy Anachronisms! We got some flashback action to the 1850s in order to flesh out Damon and Stefan’s history including plenty of contemporary language, a bowler hat, vampire sex, confederate uniforms and totally northern accents.

Not to mention: Where were the strict southern parents? In fact, where are anyone’s parents on this show? Still, this plot development was fairly exciting, seeing as the story thus far has gone like this: “So there was this girl ... she was hot ... we both liked her! And now we’re dead.” I’ll momentarily overlook the historical inaccuracies, because, well, I can always lie to my re-enactor buddies. Plus it’s the CW!

Last Week: Elena decided to employ some brain power and tied together the facts about Stefan: this weird dude doesn’t get injured, he doesn’t even try to get to second base, he gets recognized by olds, he has weird face veins, people are dying. And did I mention, how, against CW boy character rules, he’s taking it slow?! This has been a long time coming. This show has moved glacially thus far. Rando deaths plot developments do not make. One of the interesting elements of Buffy was that her secret was shared with some of the normals. This provided the actual drama of young kids dealing with impossible circumstances, as opposed to just having some secret dudes do secret things that they erase in your mind later. Then you’re asking: Is it real if they don’t remember the violence? Is the plot real? Is it real that I watched this show? Let’s hope.

At any rate, Elena knows, and thus begins the avalanche of exposition. Shock! Katherine was a vampire. She was also a tricksy hobbit ho! She spent a summer toying with Stefan and Damon, and created—wait for it—a rivalry! Strangely, Katherine is unabashedly cruel. It’s surprising that bleeding-heart Stefan the lion-hearted boring-face would fall for such a harlot, since we have no indication that she’s using Jedi-mind tricks. Marginally interesting as it may be, fey, smiley and violent Damon was the only one truly in love with this chic. Whoa! Confusing. Except not.

What is strange is that we learn Damon was a Confederate soldier. One of these cats actually fought in one of the bloodiest wars of all time, and it’s the smiley one? I believe that True Blood’s Vampire Bill shot some well-meaning Unionists; do I believe fancy-pants vampire who seems like he’s just flown in from LA did? Whatever ... It’s the CW!

Back in modern times, Elena is absorbing this sad (ly boring) tale. She was probably thinking: “Ew I’ve been making out with an old dude!” Speaking of olds, freshy-fresh Damon was recovering from his sad day in lockup by eating a lot of druggies. He seems to be fine, even though drinking Caroline’s drugged blood drugged him. Shouldn’t he be high? No? Can’t keep the vampire lore straight. But they don’t sparkle, and that’s priceless.

Vicki the cougar falls prey to Damon again because the CW may be sending us a message about substance abuse. But later we learn its because they’re sending us a message about her underwear. She’s tough and stays alive and wins a trip back to the cave for her persistence. (“I can’t believe you just alluded to Plato in a VAMPIRE DIARIES recap.” – Julie)

Let the cavorting begin! I do buy Damon as a consistently impulsive character, and fulfilling this image (if not any others), he lets sad cougar Vicki have a bit of his blood so she’ll stop bleeding and start being super-fun party gal! Seriously, the phrase “Party till the sun goes down” is employed. What follows can only be described as the depth of absurdity: Damon and Vicki spend several minutes of primetime dancing around the cave. Dancing around! Open shirt staircase sidestepping ensues! Underwear dancing! Running through halls to serious emo crap is awesome!

Then I realized that something else must be happening. Clearly, this show was supposed to be a comedy staring Ian Somerhalder as an emotion-free party boy vampire playing Richmond coolest bars and grills. He’s the spunky, maybe-gay host and he invites sad friends who don’t really like him to travel in his comedy troupe. Then they dance and sing and look smiley and play (at acting)! No doubt, he wraps up the evening by putting on his bowler hat and serenading the other characters before trying to murder them. They just ignore him and he sings quietly to himself in a pink sparkly suit. (Other people: ‘I’d watch that show!’ Indeed.)

But I digress. Damon decides to turn Vicki into a vampire because he’s amused by her utter lack of “self-esteem.” Another message? No, but it is another underwear moment.

The lame-version of a Scooby gang the writers have cobbled together out of creepy cheerleader's mom (the only living parent around), sad ex-boyfriend news anchor, and some assembled town notables finds the dinky watch that becomes a vampire detector. Cool.

Naturally, this will all end badly: Vicki runs home to baby-boy toy Jeremy and Stefan recognizes her budding vampirism. After nearly feeding on Jeremy, she runs off, closely followed by Stefan, who is closely followed by both the Scooby elder-gang and his wayward sibling. All meet, Stefan gets shot with some splinters and is saved by Damon, who swears he is the only awesome comedy troupe leader who will murder his brother. Obvs the Scooby gang-member quickly lies dead. And poor sad cougar, after having decided to just die a human, can’t resist the Scooby blood (like a Scooby snack, yum!).

In order to complete the sadness, Elena dumps poor old Stefan. Womp Womp. But wait, something actually good happened in the plot! Sure, we’ve still got a mythology that makes no sense and ridiculous dialogue, but we now we have a new vampire who is of the normals and the town is starting to awaken to presence of their toothy frenemies. Perhaps these elements will allow the show to examine some the interesting questions of agency arising from Vicki’s transformation? Who can say?

What I can say is: Bring on the Dancing Vampires!

I was kidding, CW. Go sit in the corner with NBC and think about this mess.

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