'You're Undead To Me' - The Vampire Diaries, Season One

The Vampire Diaries

Season One

Episode Five

'You're Undead to Me' - 5.0

I don't think I've used Sara Canning yet.

I've got to give The Vampire Diaries its props - they managed to have the main character realise the big truth at about the time I thought they should. Many shows have a habit of forcing their protagonist to come to a million incorrect conclusions before finally seeing what is right in front of them. Not TVD, which chose to have Elena make a revelation I thought would take a lot longer than five episodes. Kudos, because that was a pleasant surprise.

Ok, I hope I haven't got ahead of myself. She seemed pretty sure, but she hasn't really confronted Stefan about any of it yet - though if he can give a believable explanation that isn't 'I'm a vampire' then I'll be incredibly impressed; although hella annoyed.

This episode was about coming to terms with irrationality I guess. Poor Caroline may not have fully grasped what happened to her on account of Damon, but she made some decisions that will definitely impact on the two of them in the times to come. Bonnie decided to approach her Grams about her growing abilities after causing hilarious chaos at the sexy car-wash, which in my opinion was strange. These kids are supposed to be jail bait, like the ages of sixteen or seventeen, yet they are doing a bikini fundraiser. Is that normal in America? God, I sure hope not.

Regardless of what could be child porn, this episode on a whole was... alright. It wasn't boring, but until the end nothing really happened. Damon moaned around in his prison, killed Zach (oh, no. that is sad. i don't think i'll ever be happy again.) then went and seemingly killed Vicki - that was more shocking, and will have definitely cause some repercussions. Yay! A mildly important character is dead! Conflict shall arise!

I was a little annoyed by the manipulation of Caroline, though I can't really fault it. The idea kind of makes sense, though I thought Damon would be too weak to pull tricks like that.

Bonnie managed some tricks though, first taking some water revenge on a mean bitch, then setting fire to a car because she didn't want to clean the pavement. After the initial magical prank, I was impressed to see that Bonnie almost relished her power at that point. For a second there it looked like we were heading slowly towards a Willow Rosenberg scenario, however after the small bout of pyrokinesis our resident witch went crying to her Grams. I never get this in television shows with magic - what teenager would not love to be powerful like that? Seriously, tell me! I mean, who didn't feel a little disappointed when they turned twelve and hadn’t yet received a letter from Hogwarts? I sure did, but maybe I'm weird.

You know what else I don't understand? Jeremy. First few episodes he's all 'buy my narcotics' and 'I'm so high, dude' and 'you don't understand my pain' (not real quotes) but now he's complaining about having too many drugs, and talking about spending sober-time with girlfriend Vicki. Next he's all uptight about stealing Elena's medication. To me, this is lazy characterisation, and is really just the writers attempting to make an unlikable character less of a dick. It's not working. Just stop. There was probably more potential in a drug-storyline anyhow. Maybe Jeremy can do some interesting things now Vicki's kicked the bucket.

On a final, Vampire Diaries-you-have-issues note, what is with the family ties? Has every Fell been a journalist in Mystic Falls? Is that the only occupation they can have? The Forbes clan too, what is with the bloody sheriff's department? I'm pretty sure sheriffs are elected, so it doesn't really make sense that a Forbes was always a sheriff. I hope they have some sort of reason for this, and not just the whole 'brought-up to do one thing' nonsense. This show is dumb.