Contents
Enter the terms about the best youth TV shows in the search box and you will see that «The Vampire Diaries» has extremely high ratings. Six seasons of the popular TV show are not the reason for producers to stop at what they have achieved. Every actor there is a superstar now. You can often find The Vampire Diaries images, quotes, tutorials how to make the heroine’s hairstyle or makeup on the social network sites.
Definitely this TV show is well done. It has the talented starring and an intricate plot with a lot of mysteries. Moreover, the directors are generous in creating bright costumes, throwing parties in the eternal cheerful Mystic Falls in order to create an environment of event and fairy tale. Add here the romantic theme of two brothers being in love with one girl. So you will get the main aspects of The Vampire Diaries plot. However, the quality and glory of this TV product are no more than the bright wrapping for what might be inside.
Let’s start from the very beginning.
Early episodes include an introduction to the popular love story between beautiful heroine Elena and two vampires. As it should be, one of them is a «good» guy and another one is «bad». The «bad» vampire is absolutely unattractive for Elena. She starts hating him more shortly after hearing that he is a murder and in fact is not «vegetarian». But the world flows, changes – the «evil» brother turns into «cheerful» one and sort of stops killing people for love to Elena. The girl is happy and almost forgets about his old life by becoming his lover to the fourth season.
Cast
Let us don’t go deep into the plot and introduce you to the cast in two variations. The first is what the characters were in early episodes and the second – in the fifth season.
Elena
Early episodes: Elena was a human being. She was a real protagonist and a good example to be followed. She was clever, beautiful, generous, brave, strong enough physically and mentally, extremely caring, selfless and self-sacrificing young woman. Her meaning of life was the beloved partner Stefan.
Season 5: Elena was a newborn vampire. She murdered about 3 humans on camera being driven by the series of «breaks» during the previous season. She came to terms with her vampire nature and emotions for the moment. She dated Damon and wished to be a doctor..
Stefan
Early episodes: despite of his shadowy old life Elena’s beloved partner Stefan was the second to none of the main protagonist in his moral power. He was sharp, self-possessed and faithful friend. His kindness and willingness to save the unfamiliar girl were the main reasons for Elena’s friend Caroline to fall in love with him. His meaning of life was to be with Elena and to help his brother in finding his way.
Season 5: Stefan was trying to live as normal human after several «breaks» (i.e. after murdering a dozen of people). Sometimes he thought about leaving Mystic Falls forever.
Damon
Early episodes: Damon (his name is similar to «Daemon») was a handsome, but dangerous, cruel and despicable vampire. He revealed as the local serial killer in the beginning of the show. This was the mystic-detective start of the plot. His meaning of life was to revenge the Stefan’s murder of his girlfriend.
Season 5: Damon was Elena’s lover. Overcoming the stress (which was provided by killing people and raucous lovemaking) he was struggling and still afraid of splitting up with his girlfriend after each quarrel with Elena.
Catherine
Early episodes: Catherine was Elena’s alter-ego visually and her opposite mentally. Catherine was selfish; Elena was ready to sacrifice herself for others. Catherine was cheating; Elena was more or less pure. At least, she looked like this in contrast to 16-year-old pregnant Catherine and flighty Caroline. To be a vampire was the Catherine’s conscious decision. Elena, as any adequate person, was against that. Elena has been always modestly dressed. Catherine’s clothes and manners were coarse. She had an extremely bright make up as well. Her meaning of life was to get both Damon and Stefan as her slaves and lovers. Do you think it’s an appropriate idea for the teenager show? According to Catherine’s description of her active private life, she has already had relations with both brothers.
Season 5: Catherine was the only character who was not changed during the show. However, she finally made a choice between two vampires.
Caroline
Early episodes: Caroline was a human being. She was nice and fun, but a girl of easy virtue trying to explain Elena that she was too serious about everything and can’t understand the simple life truth: «Boy likes girl, girl likes boy, sex!» (quote, season 1, episode 2). Caroline was self-righteous and tactless enough. She was jealous of Elena and makes any attempt to be better than her friend. As everyone in the show, Caroline wants to find love by trial and error.
Season 5: Caroline was a vampire handled «breaks» and killed a dozen of people. We have reached the most unthinkable moment of the story. The self-righteous girl, who deserved to be named by any offensive word, turned into local Cinderella. Despite of everything she got the first prize in the Beauty Contest. Her number of admires is equal to Elena’s one now.
She is one of those who gives advices to others how to deal with guys. Klaus, another vampire, fell in unrequited love with her. That’s why people started calling Caroline as a hard-to-get-girl. That was despite the fact that she slept with Damon after the second date at the age of 17. Her meaning of life was to find a love and, surprisingly for us, help her friends.
Klaus
Early episodes: Klaus was a main antagonist during the second and third seasons. He was a powerful vampire mixed with wolverine. He murdered just for fun and holds prisoners at home in order to have them for the dinner. His meaning of life was to make an army of mixed creatures as he was to start a war between vampires and wolverines where the winners would be his «soldiers» and to head the mystic world.
Season 5: Klaus was a lonely wolf with sad childhood, a person who needs love and understanding. It was not an exaggeration! Klaus was really shown as lonely and depressed hero to find his faithless mother and his aggressive father guilty. He was a very talented artist. The State Hermitage got his paintings in the collection. Klaus became more or less a friend of the main protagonists. Notwithstanding, we don’t know if he stopped killing people or not. The absence of his humans’ dinner on camera doesn’t mean something positive. As it was said above, Klaus came from a long line of main antagonist to romantic hero by loving Caroline fill up some notebooks with her portraits.
Tyler
Early episodes: Tyler was a wolverine-protagonist, a friend of Elena. His unusual power was discovered after murdering. Actually, the strangest moment here is that every wolverine realizes his nature this way. He is involved in eternal struggling with his beast’s instincts trying to be a good friend, but having some problems with uncontrollable anger issues.
Season 5: As one more mixed creature of vampire and wolverine, Tyler found the way to control his enormous energy. In other words, he started murdering the bad guys only. He also asked his girlfriend to distract Klaus, knowing about the romantic feelings. Is he brave doing like this, isn’t he? He was spotted in betrayal and murdering his allies.
So, being introduced in the storyline of each character you may notice that good and bad are unclear in this show.
Everyone is a murder but it’s not a reason to be happy and have some fun.
Morality of film
Let us talk about morality of the film itself now or, to be exact, about problems, how characters solve them and their influence on the audience.
Idea one – to sacrifice is useless.
Elena met Catherine, her alter-ego, during the second season. That was the main difference between two doubles. Due to the special superpower they were both needed Klaus to complete the magical ritual. The point was that, first, Catherine and later Elena have to die. They made completely different decisions. Catherine escaped from Klaus and was keeping running around the world after being turned into a vampire. He murdered her family in revenge.
In contrast, Elena decided to sacrifice herself in order to save her family. We think it was a brave and noble thing. So, what’s with consequences? Elena’s parents and aunt were murdered in different ways, i.e. her family perished due to the sacrifice. Elena herself escaped being a vampire. However, it didn’t last long. During the third season, sacrificial Elena-human was perishing and turning into the monster putting her family at risk.
It seems that this is a good final for the naïve fairy tale about good and bad. However, the show is going on, telling us the adventures of Eena-vampire. Sometimes she has «breaks», talking with other murders, but till visits the college, drink beer and blood from a blood bag and dreams about medical careers. She is king and helpful.
During the show you can see Elena’s transformation from idols to the cruel monster being afraid of them in early episodes. This is evident in the fourth season due to the genocide arranged by Elena.
Idea two – genocide is an appropriate thing when you have to save the human life of the one girl.
The hard truth is that according to the logic of the scenario, vampires are the poor victims of magic rituals. They are divided into «good» and «bad» guys, but the one race in general as witches, wolverines and so on having all rights to survive. But, it turns out, it’s easy to murder them as a class. We mean that every vampire is a relative to the one of five primogenitors. If you murder each of them the vampires will stop living on the Earth. It you murder one of them, the «tens of thousands vampires» of this bloodline will die (quote).
The main protagonists realized that Klaus was one of the primogenitors during the third season. They tried to clarify was he related to them or not. It’s pretty simple. If they were from the same bloodline, he would be safe. If not – the hunting would be. Well, how about the thousands of «good» vampires? Finally, it revealed that Klaus is their ancestor. They left him in peace.
Elena was addicted to this idea during the fourth season. She murdered the one of the ancestors for the sake of her own personal interests and arranged the magical ritual to destroy as many vampires as possible. A kind of genocide is over. Elena is on the safe side because of belonging to another bloodline. By the way, that is to find the treatment for Elena to turn her into a human. What on earth is the value of such humanity?
Idea three – the loss of innocent human life.
We think it’s clear enough about an approach to the death. Let us compare the two episodes from the first season and the fifth one. Elena slapped Damon’s face because of his inaction in mass murdering during the first season. She has no idea that there is for his sake. She made a scene and realized that hates him.
Elena and Caroline couldn’t deal with a new roommate during the fifth season. It was one night when the girl screaming for help but was dropped off the roof before her roommates realized something. She was murdered. The some time past and you can see how easily Caroline and Elena forget about an incident discussing the new roommate. What’s the purpose of this episode?
Idea four – the conscience is a witch’s curse.
To be short the film morality is the following: sacrifice is useless. In order to get your aims you should be as sly as a fox. Good is weak, evil is powerful.
According to these statements, Elena comes the complete way of the lovely girl to the cruel murder. She was depressed about her parents’ loss and her love to the monster in the beginning. During the fifth season you can see a cheerful and energetic girl who bathes and throws the parties. There should be sorrow, remorse, sadness, but it isn’t.
By the way, there is the best demonstration of scruples in the fourth season. After Elena’s breaking the neck of the guy who tried to murder her brother, she got a kind of curse. We call this «shame». During the entire episode she was haunted by nightmares. The hallucinations in the form of friends and relatives blame her in murdering and call her a monster, an embarrassment of the nature and a blood-drinking dead person. She was about to commit the suicide when faithful friends saved her having committed… another murder in form of magical ritual. They helped her lover and friend to get rid of the remorse. Why is this supposed to be bad?