Dear Diary, 

I couldn't have been more wrong.  I thought I could smile and nod the pain away...

Give me a stake break.  As I sat in my bed, eagerly awaiting television's latest vampire hors d'oeuvre, I was although now, regrettably excited.  

Having spent the vigor of my youth planning ways in which TV's hottest werewolf Oz (played by Seth Green, ooh baby) and I could be together, demanding my mother bought me overalls like Willow Rosenberg (which later came in handy in a grade 3 performance of C'est la vie by B*Witiched) and spending a large sum of my 1999 Christmas money on the Official Sunnydale High School Year Book (the signatures were printed, but oh my god it was like the Hellmouth opened right then and there in Dymocks with amazement) - it is pretty evident that Buffy and I shared an infallible bond, transcending both day AND night and one which initiated my love affair with all things 'vampire'.   

So on Tuesday, I was full of all kinds of trepidation.  From the cleverly edited ads, it looked like The Vampire Diaries might have been my Summer saviour as I sought respite from the absence of True Blood or at the very least a B grade version of Buffy with more GHD action and valley girl sluts (though I'll always keep Buffy's Cordelia at numero uno).  Two days later and I have already drafted a letter to the American Government offering my body to science, in the hope they can give me that wasted hour of my life back. 


Step One was in progress, I had been successfully 'glamoured' by both network 9 and Go!  But what ensued in the next 60 minutes was perhaps the most cringe worthy hour of television that I have ever witnessed.  

A brief synopsis of the Pilot episode suggests your classic girl meets boy, boy is a VAMPIRE.  But on a deeper level it contains so much more tripe.  Four months after the death of a car accident that killed Elena Gilbert, 17 and her 15 year old brother's parents they are faced with starting the new school year at Mystic Falls High.  This is when I knew our relationship, albeit brief, would be terminated.  Mystic Falls High, are you kidding me?  It sounds like the concoction of Kristy in the Babysitter's Club or worse a Kokoda survivour seeking to erect a place which encompasses that element of 'mystery' that they cannot explain, but surely witnessed.  

I digress, Elena and her friends are immediately besotted by the handsome and brooding new student, Stefan Salvatore your resident in-the-closet-vampire, sure he is no Edward Cullen, Angel or Bill Compton but he will suffice.  Elena and Stefan are instantly attracted to one another, but she grows increasingly aware of his strange behaviour - no shit you both met in a cemetary at the foot of your dead parents' grave.  The episode climaxes when a bon fire party the following evening is interuppted when Vicky (your resident slut) has been attacked by a Vampire.  Stefan goes home where his assumptions are confirmed, the identity of the attacker is revealed to be his vampire brother Damon (clever name there, change one letter to 'E' and you get demon, the true personification of evil), both sharing a sibling rivalry.  

Sure at a glance it doesn't seem a show that woeful that it would motivate me to title a blog Television's Worst Show, but it is the finer mechanics and inaccurate detail of the show, that like Stefan left me 'squirming'.  

Firstly the dialogue was if possible, more hyperbole than Home and Away.  Stefan the main culprit, at the onset of their blossoming romance warns Elena 'I've never been good at...chit chat'.   True words of a vampire, no shit dude you've spent a century biting the neck of anything that moves and has an O positive blood reading.  But wait it gets worse, when he slips into his oracle persona, telling Elena 'you won't be sad forever'. 

Subplots aplenty, counterfeited from 'insert teen drama here', when Vicky at the bon fire nearly gets raped and her nerdy admirer intervenes she is less than appreciative saying 'I don't need your help, he was just drunk'. Sure thing babe that's why your shrill scream caused such a pandemonium, oh wait that was when a vampire took a stab at your neck. Well, you deserved it BITCH.  Or perhaps my favourite subplot - the escalating cat fight between Elena and Caroline for the (dead) heart of Stefan, portrayed tragically in the final moments of the Pilot, when 'inebriated' Caroline whines "She doesn't even try and he just picks her, she's the one everyone picks...FOR EVERYTHING".  Yeah, ok you made you point in that single sentence about 400million times alone, really set the pace for episode 2 when the seduction of Stefan begins. 


In three words let me tell you another reason why this is currently the worst television show:
THE CROW MOTIF
This black crow hovering around the cemetery, sitting perched on fences, appearing in dreams got about more airtime than any paid actor (perhaps a smart move in the current EFC).  But oh my lord its inclusion in those 'poignant' scenes was a heinous crime against the cinematic 'metaphor'.  Elena's friend confronts her with her alluded to psychic abilities saying she had a premonition involving Elena and a crow, minutes before the audience sees the reality of this premonition.  Is this some Sookie Stackhouse rip off?  If so it was poorly executed.  But perhaps the worst pop culture reference to be included in a TV show ever, superseded this faux Phoebe Halliwell psychic, when Elena sees THE crow in the cemetery and says to Stefan and I solemnly quote "It was so Alfred Hitchcock...he did The Birds, right?".  

But my major qualm with The Vampire Diaries is with its inaccurate portrayal of the vampire doctrine.  While in some instances the show does abide by the vampire discourse, such as when Stefan first visits Elena at home but cannot enter her house because was not invited in, they let one fundamental law slide. 

Let me set the pace Stefan is enrolling at Mystic Falls High when told he won't be able to because their are no records of his previous educational and medial histories, so naturally he glamours the innocuous secretary.  But wait, doesn't school occur during the bright hours of...DAY?  What the fuck is a vampire doing bugging out in the effing SUN? This is an infringement against the vampire ethos that such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood, that authors Stephen King and Anne Rice have inexplicably explored, yet has somehow escaped the show's writer Kevin Williamson (Dawson's Creek).    

Not to worry for what the show lacks in accuracy, they compensate in a soundtrack that would have been played on Triple M in 2005, exacerbating the macabre and alienation of Stefan with a Placebo cover of Kate Bush's Running Up that Hill.  Where is the Kleenex?

I was still willing to give The Vampire Diaries a second chance until I witnessed the atrocity that was the episode's ending.  Elena writes in her diary:

All you can do is be ready for the good so when it comes you invite it in.

Needless to say at this precise moment Stefan is standing tentatively at her front door waiting to 'invited' inside.  The audience breathes a sigh of relief when, finally after enduring 60 minutes of the most annoying minutes ever Elena says "do you want to come in?". 

Cut, Black Screen.