My Problem with The Vampire Diaries

[itsnotmymind]

I'm watching The Vampire Diaries.

I'm partway through the second season. I'm not watching it all at once. I watch an episode here, and an episode there, sparsed amongst my re-watching of other shows. I do the same with Black Mirror, never watching more than one episode in a row. With Black Mirror, it's because the stories upset me, and I've decided I can't take too much at one time. With The Vampire Diaries, it's because when I watch several episodes in a row I end up wanting to bang my head repeatedly against the wall in frustration.

I enjoy The Vampire Diaries. Clearly I do, or I wouldn't watch it. I find many of the characters likeable. I think the speed of the plots is part of what keeps the show from having real depth, but I also find it entertaining to watch. Never a dull a moment.

But the show has some serious, extremely frustrating writing flaws. And if I had to name one reason why I decided I can't watch more than an episode at a time and still enjoy the show, it would be Damon.


Don't get me wrong: I like Damon! I like his eyes and his snark and his complications. He's my third or fourth favorite character*. My problems with the writing around Damon are not due to a lack of affection for him.

My problems with the writing around Damon are due to the fact that the show warps itself out of shape to keep him alive and protect him from the consequences of his actions. And by "actions" I mean "murder" and "rape".

Take, for example, Bonnie's choice to help Stefan save Damon in Founder's Day. I can buy Stefan prioritizing his brother over the well-being of the people his brother would murder. I could even buy Elena prioritizing Damon. But Bonnie? Believe that Bonnie would demonstrate her love for Elena by saving not Elena, and not Elena's vampire boyfriend, but Elena's vampire boyfriend's murderous brother who only recently stopped slaughtering people willy-nilly? And even then stopped only for purely practical reasons (I'm pretty sure that Damon hadn't expressed any remorse yet at this point)? The vampire whose actions led to the death of Bonnie's grandmother?

And note that Bonnie makes no attempt to assist any of the other vampires trapped in the burning building. Damon's special. Which, again, is a feeling I can buy Stefan and Elena having. But Bonnie? Seriously?

I can handle fictional characters being obscenely selfish. But I have a hard time handling fictional characters acting against their own interests to preserve to protagonist privilege of murderers.

Another example is Damon's attempted murder of Jeremy in season two. When he finally admits to Elena that he didn't know Jeremy would survive, Elena responds as if he had cheated on her best friend, or some similar minor betrayal. Her attitude is simply that the two can no longer be friends. Damon murdered her beloved brother of whom she is deeply overprotective in front of her because she spurned his romantic advances, and she thanks him for being honest and tells him that they won't be friends again. No concerns about her safety and Jeremy's safety? No anger at Damon aside from a high school-esque withdrawal of friendship? No expression of pain or trauma that someone she cared about murdered someone she loved in front of her?

Even worse, Damon responds by criticizing Elena for manipulating him - manipulating him to get information that she might need for the physical safety of herself and her loved ones. He speaks as if this were somehow comparable to his violence and that of Katherine. Also note that while she was supposedly "manipulating" him, he was lying to her and claiming that he hadn't tried to kill her brother when, in fact, he had. He may have regretted it afterward, but in the moment he absolutely meant to kill Jeremy, and he lied to her about this. But she's like Katherine because she's ~manipulating him.

So, yeah. I have issues with The Vampire Diaries.

*If you were wondering, my first favorite is Anna, my second is Jeremy, and my third is either Damon or Caroline.

Comments

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

I'm just gonna warn you right now: it doesn't get any better. The writing gets much, much worse as the show continues on.

I'm thankful that I only watched the first two season before promptly stopping because I knew beforehand how horrible the show was going to get, and knowing myself I would have absolutely no patience for that.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I wasn't even going to start watching it, but I saw the first season of The Originals (not realizing it was a spin-off of anything), and I got intrigued. I couldn't get into the second season of The Originals, but at this point I do still want to know about the backstories of Elijah and Klaus and Rebekah.

Since I'll probably eventually lose patience with it as well, you can spoil me. Was there a specific plot point you heard about that made you glad you quit?

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

It was definitely a lot of things, but mostly the romanticizing of Damon, who does horrible shit but isn't called out on it and is treated like he's the ~misunderstood brother. Also everything surrounding the Elena/Damon relationship, because of the actors having dated IRL during that time so the show had to focus mostly on them (even after they'd broken up), unfortunately everything about them was gross and disturbing, at least to me. There was one particular thing I remember during one of the seasons was that Elena had died, but Damon brought her back as a vampire and because of this she was "sired" to him and did whatever he told her to do without question. It was gross. And then the show killed off Katherine (my favorite character and main queen, btw) by sending her to Hell because she did horrible things to survive, but somehow Damon is saved and got to live a happily ever after in the end. Just, no.

I just, I don't know. Damon as a whole turned me off from the show entirely. I preferred him as an antagonist more instead of whatever they tried to do with him, by not admitting to his faults and allowing him to pay the consequences. And the horrible writing of all the characters, the way certain characters were mistreated, etc. I was actually happy when Nina ended up leaving the show somewhere near the end. She deserved much better.

I liked the Mikealson's and that's why I liked The Originals. I've only seen the first season of that, though. They are introduced proper in the third season of TVD, which unfortunately is when the show started going downhill.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

because of the actors having dated IRL during that time so the show had to focus mostly on them (even after they'd broken up)

...I don't follow this logic.

Yeah, Katherine being awful while Damon is saveable is kind of creepy. And that's a dynamic that's set up quite early on. Katherine's the bad woman threatening her innocent doppelganger, who must be protected by the tough men (never mind that they are as corrupted as the bad woman). Damon and Stefan are the brothers who at first glance seem polarized as Bad Boy/Good Boy, but are actually more complicated. And so Stefan seeks redemption by redeeming his brother - and Damon's redemption takes priority over everything, including all the things he has to redeem himself for.

I enjoyed the first season of The Originals, but I was sad when Rebekah left. I liked her. I also was Not Happy with Haley's increased prominence. I liked Haley at first, but then she becomes the werewolf princess and we're told rather than shown how naturally leadership comes to her and if I recall right, only one werewolf has a problem with her randomly showing up and taking over (while pregnant with Klaus' child, no less), and he was unsympathetic and bad and did bad things. So now I really don't like Haley and am not interested in her.

Also I'm bitter about Marcel's family/not family status. Sometimes they treat him like family, but other times they don't - like, he doesn't get to remember that Hope is alive. And on a Watsonian level this could be good characterization - but I don't feel the writing is fully aware of just how skeevy it is.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I mean I'm a big fan of the show, but I can't really disagree with any of that *g* The show had some very dicey morality, and it always let the protagonists get away with some truly heinous acts, while the few token bad characters (Katherine, Rebekah, Klaus) would be condemned everytime for doing the exact same things. Really it made no sense for Elena to ever act so friendly with Damon in the first place, the show wanted to tell us that it was a sign of her compassion, even though she had witnessed him attempt to kill her best friend Bonnie, kill her little brother, kill Matt's sister, and mind-control Caroline and leave her covered in bitemarks. Where was her compassion for them?

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Yes.