Let's just get this out of the way: this is not a good show...but I still love it. This is absolutely a guilty pleasure show for me.
By all accounts, it is pretty terrible. I mean, all of the tropes are here: love triangle between hot girl and two hot vampire guys, one broody semi-creepy stalker type and one seemingly carefree badass but actually emotionally deep type, a backseat poc friend, teenagers in high school portrayed by super attractive twenty-somethings with shredded hot bodies, even a girl narrating while writing in her diary.
The main character, Elena, is pretty annoying at times, probably because she was written as the helpless damsel in distress that needs her hot male vampire friends to save her all the time. Nevermind that she's continuously exploited by them and endures quite a bit of sexism from pretty much every guy she interacts with. Her lover, Stefan, is sometimes so cringe I have to look away or skip past his dialogue. Stefan's brother, Damon, is so over-the-top alpha male it makes me wanna throw up sometimes and he also does this weird facial thing that I think is supposed to be smoldering but definitely isn't.
Let me keep going. For a show that has a large portion take place in 1864, when some of the present day characters were alive, there is not a hint of slavery depicted or discussed that I can recall. One of the white character's "friends" at that time was a black woman who clearly had to have been a slave to her but this is never said. The setting is a small town that fought for the South in the Civil War so there's cute reenactments with highschoolers dressed up as Confederates that screams "heritage over hate" or some other Southern culture bs. Did I mention that two of the main characters were Southern sympathizers and one even fought for the Confederacy? Talk about room for exploration. But no, there's not even a whiff. Also, the show is really white. Like really white.
I think I've made my point: the show is terrible. Yet, here I am binging it. It's a guilty pleasure that I just can't look away from and I enjoy every second of cringe and melodrama. This is what I imagine daytime soap operas to be like. Maybe I should give them a shot too?
Review by Graham T.BlockedParent2021-06-08T17:56:57Z
Let's just get this out of the way: this is not a good show...but I still love it. This is absolutely a guilty pleasure show for me.
By all accounts, it is pretty terrible. I mean, all of the tropes are here: love triangle between hot girl and two hot vampire guys, one broody semi-creepy stalker type and one seemingly carefree badass but actually emotionally deep type, a backseat poc friend, teenagers in high school portrayed by super attractive twenty-somethings with shredded hot bodies, even a girl narrating while writing in her diary.
The main character, Elena, is pretty annoying at times, probably because she was written as the helpless damsel in distress that needs her hot male vampire friends to save her all the time. Nevermind that she's continuously exploited by them and endures quite a bit of sexism from pretty much every guy she interacts with. Her lover, Stefan, is sometimes so cringe I have to look away or skip past his dialogue. Stefan's brother, Damon, is so over-the-top alpha male it makes me wanna throw up sometimes and he also does this weird facial thing that I think is supposed to be smoldering but definitely isn't.
Let me keep going. For a show that has a large portion take place in 1864, when some of the present day characters were alive, there is not a hint of slavery depicted or discussed that I can recall. One of the white character's "friends" at that time was a black woman who clearly had to have been a slave to her but this is never said. The setting is a small town that fought for the South in the Civil War so there's cute reenactments with highschoolers dressed up as Confederates that screams "heritage over hate" or some other Southern culture bs. Did I mention that two of the main characters were Southern sympathizers and one even fought for the Confederacy? Talk about room for exploration. But no, there's not even a whiff. Also, the show is really white. Like really white.
I think I've made my point: the show is terrible. Yet, here I am binging it. It's a guilty pleasure that I just can't look away from and I enjoy every second of cringe and melodrama. This is what I imagine daytime soap operas to be like. Maybe I should give them a shot too?