- So some of you might remember that in the late 2000s, "Twilight" mania dominated pop culture. A lot of books, shows and movies came out that were trying to capitalize on the supernatural teen romance trend. All monsters were fair game but the gutsiest production
teams just also did vampires. The first Twilight film
hit theaters in 2008 and "The "Vampire Diaries"
aired on the CW in 2009. Like Twilight, "The "Vampire Diaries" is
based on a book series. This one written by L.
J. Smith but the books are not actually derivative of Twilight. They came out like a decade before. Any similarities you might
notice are just a coincidence or they stem from the
fact that this is a genre and genres have tropes. My first experience with
"The "Vampire Diaries" is that my friend Bailey
put it on when I was sick with a 103 degree fever
and kind of delirious. And she was keeping me
company and she knew this would be the only way to get me to start watching this show. It turns out with "Vampire Diaries," it doesn't matter if you're delirious, you're still going to have a
consistent viewing experience. So anyway, after this,
we subsequently spent an entire summer bingeing
the whole rest of the show. I say the whole show, what I actually mean around four seasons. And there are eight. It felt really long, but yeah,
we only made it about halfway before we decided it
became too bad to continue. But for the purposes of this
video, I have caught up. I am a "Vampire Diaries" expert. I just want to give like a fly
overview of the experience. It's like a travel log, but a show. The good, the stupid,
just those two things. So this vid is intended for people who haven't seen "Vampire Diaries" and people who have alike. And since this is YouTube, I have organized my thoughts into a numbered list. And before we proceed, I
just need to lay it out there that my shorthand name
for the series is VPD. The real acronym is TVD,
"The "Vampire Diaries" but I call it VPD, "Vampire Diaries." And you're just going to have
to make your peace with that. Okay, here we go. Part one, the love triangle. I was going to do a section called like "the story" or "the premise." And then when I was writing
this out, I realized that the love triangle just is that. Twilight had Team Edward and Team Jacob and "The "Vampire Diaries"
had Team Edward... No, "The "Vampire Diaries" had
Team Stephan and Team Damon. Again, this similarity is a coincidence. Love triangles are very
popular in the YA genre. Unlike in Twilight, both of
Elena's options are vampires. They're also brothers, which
I think is a pretty okay idea. I hate love triangles as a plot device but usually the two men
in the love triangle are just adversaries. So the idea of having them be brothers and having a relationship
with each other too I think makes it a lot more interesting. At the beginning of the series, Damon and Stephan are just
total enemies, but as it goes on it becomes clear that they
actually really love each other. They are bronemies. Just sounds like brownies. So love interest number one is Stephan. They obviously cast and styled
the actor to be reminiscent of Robert Pattinson in Twilight. Just look at his hair and
his big rectangular head. - How old are you? - 17. - How long have you been 17. - Wait, how long have you... - I've been 17 years old since 1864. - Stephan is the good boy vampire. He's also extremely boring. Just a handsome brick of styrofoam. The most nuance they
give him is making him a vampire allegory for alcoholism. Like Edward Cullen, Stephan only drinks, animal blood, but we find out the reason he does that is because he cannot drink
human blood in moderation. Most vampires can, but Stephan can't. And if he has even a little bit of it he goes all jittery and starts craving it which since he's a vampire
leads to him murdering people. - You don't get it. I can't stop Elena. I'm a ripper, a ripper doesn't stop. When that clock ticks down, I'm going to have to feed on you. - I thought this was a pretty cool idea. Obviously, if you're looking at the alcoholism parallel, the fact that it makes him a crazed murder is a little insensitive
but it is an allegory. It's not supposed to be one-one. Also in Twilight, it's
portrayed as very noble that the Cullen's only drink animal blood but for the newer vampires in their family they also steal blood
bags from the hospital and that's portrayed as like
totally cool for them to do. Yeah, guys, I'm sure they
weren't using that for anything. Stephan drinks, animal blood for a reason that not only makes sense but also adds something to his character. Also he robs the local blood bank when he's struggling with his addiction and it's portrayed as like a really bad
thing and a huge red flag. - He has a fridge, full of stolen blood bank
contraband in the house. - Oh my god. - Anyway, I said this
was the most interesting thing they did with Stephan. So it's important to note
that in later seasons they just completely forgot about it. You even see him drinking
human blood from the blood bank like it's no big deal. Love interest number two is Damon. He is obviously the bad boy alternative. He gets more interesting
storylines and quippy one liners. I think the actor they got
for him is really good too. I mean, after enough
episodes, you start to notice that he has one face he makes to punctuate every single one-liner. I can't think of a way to describe it other than "Damon's eyebrow face" A very eyebrow heavy performance but I appreciate that he
reads his lines in a way, other than the most
obvious way to read them every single time which is honestly a rarity in CW acting. In later seasons he actually starts to
go way too far with it. Like some of his line reads
are just straight up cuckoo - Doesn't sound crazy. It is crazy. - Stop defending me. - The guys' a werewolf. He'd kill me the first chance he got. - If you were racer you'd know what I'm talking
about, but you're not. Also, I'm pretty sure this
guy was somebody in "Lost." So I'm sure a lot of you were very angry that I just called him the
actor they got to play Damon, but I didn't watch Lost. So you'll have to take
me court over that one. Anyway, Damon was the
obvious fan favorite. And you could also tell by the way he was written that
he was the writer's favorite. Let's just put a pin in that. Oh, it's a bulletin board. I can literally do that. (moans) I just dropped one and I can't find it. So that'll be fun later. Our heroine Elena is a
high school sophomore, I think. They all look comically too old to be the ages they play. - I've got my ring. I could get in, get out. No spells necessary. - Gee, thanks. You 16 year old child. - It's not fair, 16 years old. He shouldn't have to live like this. I'm the kid ma'am. You're supposed to be responsible for me. - Which only gets funnier
when characters are vampires and theoretically frozen in age while their actors keep getting even older like Damon is supposed to be 25 for the entire run of the show. And the actor is already
too old when they cast him. And then he's pushing
40 when the series ends. So you look at Damon in season eight and you're supposed to buy that this man was admitted
into a high school dance. Anyway, Elena lives in
Mystic Falls, Virginia which has a history of
supernatural activity. The vampire brothers are
both in love with Elena because she looks identical to Katherine, the sexy evil lady who turned them both into vampires in the first place. I feel like we see this so
often with vampires where like if they love any modern woman it's because she looks identical to a previous love that they had. I think that's so lame. Like I understand that people have a type but that is taking it way too far. I think the reason we see it so much is that it's really good writing shorthand to not have to think of a reason
that they love this person. So that's basically the
premise of the show. These two vampires wanna date Elena, and then every season a new supernatural threat comes to town or I should say every half season, they tend to break it
up into shorter arcs. Which honestly I like, and I'm a fan of because it forces the
show to move really fast and not waste time. So they'll bring in witches,
werewolves, other vampires just kind of whatever they decide exists that season. Number two, the supporting cast Elena has two best friends,
Caroline and Bonnie. Well, it's kind of
written like Caroline is the superficial cheer
captain slash acquaintance and Bonnie is Elena's real best friend. - See you guys later.
- Okay, bye. No comment. - At the beginning, they
hang out with Caroline as like a group, but
privately, both of them seem to find her kind of annoying, especially in the early episodes. We see that Bonnie is the one that Elena actually confides in, but Caroline is later
turned into a vampire which makes her much more
involved in the central storyline. And Bonnie is employed as a
very utilitarian character. She's a very powerful witch - I predict, this year
is going to be kick-ass. And I predict all the sad
and dark times are over and you are going to be beyond happy. (flesh squelches)
- No. Jenna. ♪ In the moment we lost as a ♪ (gasps) It's not his delivery. I don't want to be, I can't. I'm so sick of crying. No, no, Jenna, Jenna, I can't. No.
(glass smashes) (gentle music)
(Bonnie sobs) - Whenever the plot needs to move along, they'll just write in some
new ability that Bonnie has. But then consequently, I
feel like we see a lot more of her doing spells than
having any kind of inner world. We're going to go ahead and put a big pin in the character of Bonnie. Their group includes Matt,
Elena's ex-boyfriend now friend who is mostly interesting because he stays a human
for the whole series which is quite a feat. Personality wise Matt is kind
of like Kristoff from frozen. Like he's nice. And that's it. Elena's parents are already
dead when the series starts because if your protagonist is a teenager and you want them to go have adventures it's just a lot easier if
their parents are dead. If you watch, you'll notice that a lot of these kids get orphaned
over the course of the series. - So handsome. - Thanks. You look pretty good too mom. - Oh, a compliment. I think I'll (indistinct). - Anyway Elena has a
little brother named Jeremy and their legal guardian
is Jenna, the cool aunt. (flesh squelches)
- No. - Jenna's supposed to be a grad student. So she's meant to be young but her actress is literally
only two years older than Elena's, which is a little extreme. Then we have Alaric Saltzman who is the school history
teacher, vampire hunter, and when he joins the squad he's kind of the team surrogate dad. And when the cast grows
up and goes to college he follows them and
becomes a college professor a la Mr. Feeney. Not to reveal how old I am
by referencing Mr. Feeney. I mainly wanted to mention Alaric because his name is so funny. Like they wait several episodes to reveal he's a vampire hunter as if we're just going
to think there's nothing up with the new guy in
town named Alaric Saltzman. And that's it. I'm realizing now that this
is a very short section. The reason it's a short section
is there's a point later on the list called the characters I hate. And a whole lot of people are there. Number three, the lore. When you're dealing with
supernatural creatures you have to establish how
your universe of choice works. Lots of universes have covered vampires which is werewolves but they tend to work in different ways. The first season of the show is pretty good about explaining its rules. Vampires are super fast and super strong and can compel people, which
is basically mind control. They can look into your eyes and make you do things
or command you to forget they drink your blood. If a vampire feeds you, their blood can accelerate healing. In the first season Damon has this ability
to make Halloween fog machines start blowing all over the place. And a spooky Crow appears
to Harold his arrival. What do you see? What I can do with the phone? This is never explained
ends a few episodes in and never returns. The spooky Crow is all over the pilot. I missed that guy. I guess they didn't renew
his contract between seasons. Maybe he had a falling out with a castmate to kill a vampire. You have to drive a wooden stake through their heart or
ripping out their heart decapitating them or lighting
them on fire would work too. And if they go in the sun they will light on fire
themselves more on that later these vampires have to be invited
into houses, which I love. That's such an underrated
classic vampire rule. And when vampire stories
write it out, you know they're taking themselves too seriously. They do some funny stuff with it too. Like this newly turned vampire
can't get into his own house. And next thing I know I can't get into my house because my
foot local through the door you have to be invited him. I know I live alone. So And this one vampire is dragged into a house while knocked out then wakes up and hasn't been invited in. So it's like he starts suffocating. The last notable weakness is
the herb vervain touching. It burns them injecting. It works basically like a tranquilizer. You can put it in jewelry or you can even put in
food or drink, but as long as it's in you or are you have
empire cannot control you. Wow. So much to remember. But my favorite quality about vervain is that if you trick a vampire into drinking it they'll do a comedy spit take. Okay. For the record vervain is
the same thing as verbena. So if any of these late two
thousands teens in the show our bath and body works shoppers and their lotion of choices coconut lime verbena,
they're basically invincible. Unfortunately in modern times coconut lime verbena
has been discontinued. So we're all going to die and it's bath and body works fall to
turn someone into a vampire you feed them vampire blood and then kill them while
it's still in their system. And then they have to feed
on human blood themselves. This kind of doesn't make any sense. I already said that
vampire blood can heal you. I need a drink of blend. So we often see our human
characters getting shot and stabbed and brought to death store. And then a good vampire
gives them their blood in their fine. But then the most common way
we'll see people get turned into vampires is they'll
drink vampire blood and then get their next snap. So where does vampire
blood magic draw the line between what injuries that
can heal and what injuries? It will turn you into a vampire from dying
of there's this really confusing story beat where
Jeremy wants to become a vampire. So he drinks vampire blood and then takes a bunch of
pills, but it doesn't work. And Stephan says it's because the vampire blood
healed the poisoning from the pills as it was happening. What about the pills? He didn't take enough to die. So, and his blood actually
healed them of that. But if it can heal an overdose
or a serious abdominal wound why can't it heal a
broken neck or drowning? Oh, speaking of blood vampires drink it. They can live on animal blood,
but it has disadvantages. Damon explains that
drinking human blood is what gives them pyres their
supernatural powers. So by drinking animal blood
Stephan is weaker physically. And also if he tries to compel people,
it's like very hit or miss. If vampires don't drink any blood at all it won't actually kill them. They'll just grow steadily weaker. And finally their body
will start to desiccate and they'll stay in kind of a stasis as a mummified corpse until
they're fed blood again. So it's kind of like my relationship to G fuel energy formula
use code, horse girl. They said, if I move enough
product before my contract ends they'll name a flavor after me we also have a few other
Halloween monsters running around deer are witches and vampire hunters and
werewolves werewolves. They're dangerous because
their bite can kill a vampire. But honestly I hate the werewolves not a single good
characters and werewolves. And as early as season two the world building starts to
get extremely funny, at least to me, because it's always
just whatever the plot calls for in that moment. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is set in stone. And obviously if you operate like that for like eight seasons things are going to start
to get really sloppy. So let me just give you one example. I said that Elena is identical to Stephan and Damon's
old vampire girlfriend. So why is that? Well, Elena is a magical
creature called the doppelganger. What's a doppelganger. Well, it's a human that
has no special powers but looks like Katherine. You'll notice. I said Katherine, and not someone that's because Elena is the only
doppelganger that we have. We don't know what it means. It's just a plot device. So that Elena looks like their ex so that they're in love with her. But later seasons expand
on the doppelganger thing entirely to create
new ideas for the plot. Like there will be a ritual or a prophecy or something that means a new
Halloween monster that's come to town needs Elena's blood. And then in season two they add the lore that
Katherine herself was also a doppelganger of a different person. And remember when I said that Elena was the only doppelganger ever well in season four,
they changed their mind. Yeah. It turns out that Stephen is also the
doppelganger of an evil male Which yeah I guess you can save money by just making your principal
cast double up on roles. And then in season five, we find out that the person that Elena and Katherine are
doppelgangers of is a Mara. And that tomorrow is
actually the handmaiden of new which character that they've just written in that season. And then in the spinoff
show, we find out that Elena and Katherine had another
doppelganger in between them and Tamara, whose name is
Tatiana, besides nothing of value. It's just one of those things that
happens when you've been out of ideas for five seasons
straight, number four, the birth of "Vampire Diaries" let's
have a little history lesson. I said that LJ Smith is the author of "The "Vampire Diaries" books. But interestingly, they were not her idea in the early nineties Harper Collins approached
Alloy Entertainment a book packaging company and told them that they
wanted 18 vampire series. Look, packaging is when
a publisher decides they want a certain type of
book for sales purposes and they just want a
third-party company to kind of throw it all together for them. From what I can tell,
this is way more common in the world of non-fiction
like, if you're at the checkout stand at Barnes and noble
and you see a coffee table book of photos or a novelty cookbook or a crocheting instructional book. And it comes with a crochet hook and yarn. That was probably the
result of book packaging. The publishing house went
to the company and said we want a crochet book to
sell at Christmas time. And the book packaging
company found someone who knew how to crochet a
photographer to take the pictures someone to write the blurbs, et cetera the book isn't anyone's baby. It's just a product that
a company wanted to sell. Sometimes book packaging
companies will develop a book in-house and then pitch
it to publishing companies. And sometimes they handle
children's book series where a bunch of different authors can each
write different installments under a shared pseudonym. The Hardy boys and Nancy drew both came from book packaging,
Halloween entertainment specifically focuses on why a book series. And they're actually
responsible for some pretty popular ones like gossip
girl and pretty little liars. So LJ Smith, then a rookie
author was contracted on a work for hire basis
to write a vampire series. And from what I can tell
Alloy really just said we want a teen romance series about vampires and no further instruction. The characters themselves, the plot lines the world building, all of that seems to be Smith's invention. I haven't read the books
myself, but my impression is that they are not very
similar to the TV show. Like the showrunners read
the dust jacket synopsis of "The "Vampire Diaries" books. And then that was the
framework for maybe as much as the first season, the
broad strokes of a lot of the major characters are the same. And the basic premise is the same. But other than that, like
the seasons of the show don't correspond to
individual books and the two diverged a lot also from what
I've heard, the books really went off the rails. Let me consult some Wiki summaries. Damon has become possessed
by the evil thoughts demon Shinichi and his twin
sister Misael who have been invading the town using
mystical and evil Malak Elena's struggles to adjust
back to her human form. After having spent so much
time in the spirit world she later changed his
back to her human self but simultaneously loses her
angel power, human Bonnie Elena, and Meredith attend a
party hosted by a woman named Bruce Wood who transforms
to it huge owl every night. I wish that It was in the show after finding the seven
Kitsune treasures, Damon and Stephan killed Shinichi
who was trying to stop them However, a magic tree stakes and he dies. Okay. So my point is the
books are their own thing. Let's move on. Number five, dating tree Speaking of magic trees. So everyone dates everyone in "The "Vampire Diaries"
because this is a teen drama. That's just the way it goes. And I think the writers
like to kind of test out different pairings and see
what the viewers respond to but it does make it a little funny. When you look at just how
interwoven the shipping chart gets and for handy reference, I made one there's nothing physical to hit but I'm going to put it right up there. And this tree is only Canon pairings where they've dated kissed, or at least expressed interest
in the other party. During the show, if I was
denoting popular fan pairings the chart would look even crazier. You might be looking at this
chart and asking yourself if there are any gay people on this show. And the answer is for
all intents and purposes. No, none of the core cast
are anyway, unless you count like a kind of fetishized
threesome that happens with one of the women one time. And it was never mentioned again. No, if we're being honest
here across eight seasons of "Vampire Diaries", there
are four gay characters. First up is Caroline's dad. Caroline's dad left Caroline's
mom before the events of the series because he's
gay and that's mainly used as a punchline, like ha
she couldn't keep her man. He left her for a man. That's so embarrassing. Mom. I want to talk boys. I'll call dad. At least he's successfully dating. He does finally show
his face in season three as an evil vampire hunter
who tortures his own daughter for being a vampire in I'm not kidding. An apparent allegory for
gay conversion therapy. You can't change who I am. You remember this it's not
subtle when Carol luck would call and tell me about you sat down cried. I've learned to adapt. I don't need to be fixed. Can't That's definitely what
they were trying to do but also why would they
try to do that for co mom and jock boyfriend have to
save her from her evil gay dad. Then he threatens to tell the
town council that Damon is a vampire, which the characters
refer to as outing him. And when Caroline's dad dies
it's because he gets halfway turned into a vampire and
refuses to drink blood to complete the transition. So if we're still tracking the
metaphor in this whole story arc, Caroline is figuratively
gay and Caroline's gay. Dad is figuratively homophobic,
and Caroline's dad is dying of an illness that only
temporarily acting gay can cure doctor walks in and
says, I'm sorry, it's terminal. Unless you kiss one man. One time It's all in my beliefs to coming in. The vampire is wrong. And he's like, I can't, I'm too straight. And then he dies. Oh, also when he's dying, Caroline is like do you want me to call your
boyfriend who has only existed off screen? And whom you have supposedly been living with me to call Steven? No, no, we haven't spoken In a while and he's like, no, who cares? Season five gives us our next
gay character, Luke, a gay which we know he's gay
because he says I'm gay. He was about to take my shirt off. Relax. I'm gay. And your brother And other characters. Talk a lot about how he's gay. I'm pretty sure Damon
is more of those type. We never see him with another man on screen
before his first appearance. He apparently had been with
some guy named David David. Don't my. I'd seen your frogs
fall horrifying, please. Oh man. David dumped you and off screen too. Luke shows up to a nice
party and his sister is like how did you get in radiologists? I met at the gym. Oh yeah. Where is he? Luke? This guy who
brought you to the party? Where is he? Cause he's not anywhere in frame. The sister mentions the
radiologist again later is a singular twin with
the sugar daddy radiologist but he never shows his face. And then Luke dies in season
six, season seven gives us our first on-screen gay couple with a pair of lesbian witches who
are dating each other. Let's see What else has happened together. I suppose there's no one I'd rather explore this dreadful world with And that's it. Apparently legacy's the new
new spinoff has gay characters in it. I haven't seen it. Good for them. I guess. Number six, magic jewelry. If there's one thing girls like more than jewelry, it's
magically significant jewelry. There are the daylight rings which let vampires go out in the sun. In the first season, they're treated as like a really coveted object because you have to get a
witch to make one for you. And which is don't like vampires. You and Damon are the only ones with these nifty little daylight rings. But the longer the series goes
on, it's like, well you only need a couple witches who like vampires for every vampire in
the series to have them Hold on. We should get an sat before
sunrise for you yesterday. There's the vampire hunter ring which brings the wearer back to life. If they die of supernatural causes you have lockets with vervain
inside to protect the wearer from vampire compulsion, Elena Caroline and Jeremy I'll get those. Although sidebar about the necklace Stephan gets Elena to
wear it before she knows about vampires because
he wants her to be safe but he can't tell her about it. So he can just give her jewelry. It's a good, subtle way to
get her to wherever vein. But after she does know about vampires why doesn't she just start drinking? Vervain there were multiple points in the show where somebody
takes her necklace away from her and then immediately compels her. And on the other hand,
we have mom who finds out about the vampires in one
episode, but she drinks for vain. So they have to hold her captive for like an entire day
while the vervain passes out of her system before they
can compel her to forget. So given the extreme
difference and advantages like even if she really likes the necklace why doesn't Elena just also drink for vain and to have both as a
backup these jewelry items honestly all seem like built-in
merchandising opportunities which might be calculated even though it was also in the book. And honestly, I'm fine with this kind of self-indulgence because I
remember that when I was a kid I really loved fantasy
stories with magical jewelry. Remember when you'd go to the
Scholastic book fair and some of the girls books would
be shrink, wrapped together with like a necklace or a charm
bracelet as a selling point. I remember there were
these Juul princess books. I couldn't tell you what they were about but each of them came with a ring. There's also a magic music
box imbued with which magic that can temporarily incapacitate
every vampire in town. There's the moon stone which is a pretty rock
that looks like a bar of soap and is needed for
a magic ritual hilariously. When the main characters have it they actually hide it in
the household soap dish. My personal favorite
magical item is the Gilbert family pocket watch,
which is also a compass and the compass points to vampires. If you think that sounds
really overpowered and that it could
potentially undermine a lot of dramatic storylines,
you would be right midway through season one, they just
stopped mentioning the compass and hope we don't notice but I noticed you don't even write it out. Like it gets destroyed or something. It just ceases to exist
and never comes back. Number seven, China beach. So most of my VPD binge watching
back in the day happened on the CWS on-demand
programming, which runs ads. And I don't know why this is but the CWS on-demand
programming tended to just run the same handful of ads
again and again on everything. And for some reason the one ad that played
more than anything else was for the season one DVD
box set of China beach The series that brought women to the frontline and dare to show. The other side of war gave him a home. He died so far away. It's played so many times. We could literally recite
it from memory like, Hey you know what? Twins watching a sexy vampire
show want to buy a DVD box set of a show from
1988 about the Vietnam war. - [Narrator] China beach. I didn't think he let
me walk away from this Juxtaposition is just so good Order in the next 10 minutes. And we'll take $10 off. - Anybody come for a swim? - [Narrator] That's right. You'll get the complete first season. The trailer just does such a bad job of making the show look appealing to anyone that's not
already familiar with it. Like what did they think
their demographic is here? - Don't pull the dagger out. - [Narrator] Order now and we'll ship your complete
first season for free. That's a savings of almost $7. - I know what they want
and I give it to them. - This is my favorite line in the ad. It's just so grave. - It matters to me, he's my brother. - In Iowa he's your brother. Here, you can be just another spent shell. I realized that China beach is not actually part of VPD canon, but it is definitely part
of the experience for me. ♪ You're the mirror of my mind ♪ - [Narrator] The series that brought women to the front line. - Joan's straight to it now. - [Narrator] And dare to
show the other side of war. I gave him a home before he
died so far away from it. - [Narrator] Hits the beach with the most anticipated DVD release in 25 years. I think it deserves its
own page on the fan wiki. Number eight, product placement. Speaking of ads, the sponsors
get a lot of love with at and T as your service
provider, you can easily find the abandoned house
where your kidnapped sister is being held, captive, or look up efficient torture
methods for werewolves Will Spain. What else? Oh, every store says
something different when Ms says it causes like
canopy, which sounds Google doesn't exist in this universe. Find your biological mother on being. I pinged it. I searched for all the Petersons in this area born the same
year as Isobel found three Have you faked your own death? And you have to hide from an ancient vampire
in an underground cave. When is that? It is my (indistinct) we're
going to be stuck here. Then we might as well have been here. CW shows also feature a library of pretty obtrusive pop songs. It's my impression that this is some kind of
cross-promotional agreement. They even have a section of the CWA website that
like tracks playlist of what songs have been
featured in what show? I feel like the editors are just
given this big digital library and told to use like
two or three an episode. And the results are highly variable. Sometimes you're just watching
a scene and you're like Or you can just leave. Don't abandon my friends died. I'm listening to imagine
dragons radioactive in the next room. Oh no it's just playing it a weirdly
loud volume in the scene. Well, she went to Stuckey
without enough virus. So a very wordy song to play
over your expository dialogue but the best thing about
the music and the show is that a lot of the time
the lyrics are comically on the nose about what's
happening on screen. okay. Hey, good things. It's time to don't I can't tell if the editors have a
sense of humor about this or if they genuinely think
this enhances the experience. Number nine, LJ Smith. When I told you about the
birth of "The "Vampire Diaries" I kind of buried the lead. I like to do that. It's like dramatic tension,
but also this is YouTube. So like people might just click away and miss the interesting
stuff and it's my fault but it's also their fault. Anyway, I'd like to talk about the book series, author, LJ Smith. So just like the TV show the books had a love triangle of Stephan Damon and Elena just like on the show Damon was overwhelmingly the fan favorite and he was also the author favorite. However, he was not LOE
entertainment's favorite. Allegedly. They saw where
Smith was taking the story and they told her that it had gone too far
from their original vision. And that Elena had to end up with Stephen Smith
disagreed and she was fired. Yeah, that's right. Remember that work for hire stuff. "Vampire Diaries" is for
all intents and purposes LJ Smith's brain child, but she
does not own the series even so I'm sure she felt a
degree of job security after her books spawned a
TV series and became famous but she was wrong and
they fired her in 2011. As the show was entering its third season because they were Team Stephan whose team Stephan LJ Smith wrote
books one through seven. And then there were six
more books after that. They still say created
by LJ Smith on the cover. But if you read the small print they clarify that they
were not actually written by her three of the six books. We don't even know who wrote them. It's literally an unknown
uncredited ghost writer. I find that very spooky. It's such a big franchise. Like how can that happen? I'll only retain the rights to what LJ Smith had submitted to them. So allegedly the first
two books after she left still used some of her
outlines and even some passages of her writing may have made
it into the finished product but she's made it clear on
her personal website that as released the books, do not
follow her intended vision. And I guess we'll just never
know her intended vision right? Some fans of the series bought the
new ghostwritten books and LJ Smith charitably
told them not to boycott it. God knows why, but a lot of her fans abandoned the series
because it was inauthentic. And also it was a bad thing
that Alloy did to her. And meanwhile, since she
had already plotted them out LJ Smith went on writing
"The "Vampire Diaries" books that she wanted to write. But unfortunately because she didn't own the
rights to her characters this writing would just have
to go into her personal files because there was no legal
way to distribute them. Right? So fun fact from 2013 to 2018 Amazon's Kindle marketplace
launched Kindle worlds. This was a short-lived
project which allowed fanfic authors to publish
their works for profit on the Kindle marketplace. The works could only use
materials from a pre-approved list of copyright holders
that Amazon had already signed an agreement with
readers pay to access these fix. And then the profits would be split between the writer and
the copyright holder. This was a pretty unprecedented concept. And as you can imagine,
it was really hard to find copyright holders who
were willing to go in on it. In fact, upon the projects launch they had only signed an agreement with one copyright holder and
it was allied entertainment the properties available
for use where gossip girl pretty little liars and
"The "Vampire Diaries". So by an extremely weird twist of fate LJ Smith was able to not only publish but profit off of her unreleased
"Vampire Diaries" books which were now fan fiction. I doubt she actually made
that much money off it but I am glad she got to
get her work out there. And in the process make Alloy Entertainment
look like fools, which in my opinion, they are really
mean fools greedy mean fools not to sound too heated about it. Unfortunately, this isn't the
comeback story of the year for LJ Smith, aloe
entertainment is still profiting off all these books and they will forever. And I find it very unlikely that LJ saw even a cent of the TV revenue. I'm sure all that went into
Alloy's pockets as well in 2018 Kindle Worlds closed permanently
with very little warning to the authors who had become
reliant upon it for income. And I don't think LJ spits
final "Vampire Diaries" novels can be found anywhere anymore. Meanwhile Smith's social media presence
has been completely abandoned. One of her last blog posts was about battling a really
serious auto-immune disease. So it's unclear if she's
still actively writing if you're LJ Smith's niece
or webmaster or something and you're watching this
video, here's my two cents. You can't sell the books. So I think he should put them for free on the website and also
embed like a coffee or a PayPal button in the
navigation header, you know unrelated to cover website costs. Anyway, I guess my whole point for this section is just,
don't write for these guys. They don't care about you. You can make them any amount of money and they won't care about you. And as soon as they have
your signature on a contract they own you forever. I know if you're a new author
and you can't get a job it's really appealing to
take paid ghost writer work. And I guess that's all well and good. If you're writing an
installment of babysitters club or warrior cats for
the love of God, do not create universes or characters
for Alloy Entertainment. They don't deserve them. Give them as little as they are paying you for and assume they're your enemy again not to get too heated or anything. My other point here is consider buying one of LJ Smith's books that she actually owned
from what I gather. That's every series except "The "Vampire Diaries"
and The Secret Circle. I understand that my audience
is probably not her audience but I don't know. Maybe you have a niece or
like donate it to a library but we'll be circling back to the rest of her bibliography later. Number 10, Caroline singing career. Prior to her role on
"The "Vampire Diaries". Caroline's actress was a
professional backup singer. Here she is with Hannah Montana. (upbeat music) During VPDs run. She was seemingly trying to launch like a country music career. And so of course the show shoehorned in multiple situations in
which she could sing songs. ♪ Hit me with your best shot ♪ ♪ Why don't you hit me
with your best shot ♪ ♪ Let us go into the dark ♪ ♪ And I still ♪ It's extremely unnatural every time. - Look, we listened to you
sing we clapped our our hands. Can we go now? - Like this first scene where
she uses her vampire vine control powers to make the
band at a bar back her up you know what? I'm gonna sing. - Come on off the stage. - You are gonna to let me live
out my rock star fantasies and you are gonna be my backup. - Well I'll be. - This scene also gets honorable mention because they have Caroline
sing Eternal Flame in an episode with a B
plot about a teenage witch tragically burning to death. The two scenes are supposed
to be separated by an ad break but if you're watching
without ads, you get this. ♪ Is this loving an eternal flame ♪ (crowd applauds) (man grunts) And of course, if you're
watching with ads, you get this. (crowd applauds) (upbeat music) ♪ Through the mirror of my mind ♪ - [Narrator] The series that brought women to the front line. (man grunts) Number 11, the villains, there are a lot of villains in this
show, and I'm only going to talk about the ones that
I have stuff to say about. So if a villain doesn't
come up just to see him, I think they're boring and they suck. Season one's villain is literally Damon which I think is especially
funny considering how unthreatening he becomes as
little as one season later. (object thuds) - No. - Anyone, any time, any place. - And I know we don't
deserve your forgiveness but I need it - And I need some time,
maybe a lot of time. Sure, of course. Take all the time you need. Another early villain is the council. These local families that have formed like a vampire hunting coalition. The council is really lame. They're just like these old money jerks and they're so way too
inept to be threatening. Like when they're trying to
figure out who the vampire in town is, they hold
this founder's day party. - How's that search going? - Oh, we had the founders
party and anyone who arrived during the day was
eliminated as a suspect. And all the rest were just dead ends. - And it's like, hold on. You know, there's a vampire
running around town. And your best plan was to
invite everyone in town into your house. This is my boyfriend, Damon. Oh, come on in. There's this one story arc where a bunch of ancient
vampires get resurrected, but then they all just
like hole up together in a little house on
the outskirts of town. This one doesn't last that long. It's just kind of funny to me as like one of the stupidest villains, just a bunch of vampires stuck in a house. A lot of whom we know very little about . It's like a goosebumps tier threat. Like, okay, thanks. I just won't move into that
house and I'll be good. Every scene they have is them
squabbling amongst themselves about how they don't
like being in the house - I didn't stay locked up for 145 years to end up locked up here. - Maybe you should quit complaining. - And negotiating whether
they can leave the house to which the answer is always no. - I'm tired here Rawls,
I want out of this house why can't we go into town? - Eventually. - Wow. The terror Katherine is the vampire who looks just like Elena, obviously played by the same actress. They tell us at the beginning that she died a long time
ago, but she's a vampire. Obviously she didn't die. Obviously she comes to town. Katherine isn't what I
would call like a big bad of any of the seasons. But she's in a lot of them as just like a supplementary bad guy who comes around and causes drama. - Oh It's okay to love them both. I did. - I really like Katherine. I think she's fun. The canon way to tell
Katherine and Elena apart is that Katherine wears her hair in curls and Elena usually has it straight, but Elena also sometimes curls her hair. So that's kind of confusing, but fun fact, whenever the actress is playing Katherine, the hair is awake. So they both have brown hair. But if Elena shows up in her
hair looks a little too shiny and half a shade darker it's Katherine. The most iconic villains
are the originals. They are the first vampires ever made from whom all current
vampires are descended. Instead of being explicitly
evil, they're just kind of working toward their own goals. And sometimes that puts them at odds with the main characters,
which makes them a lot more interesting as villains to me. Also despite being ancient they bicker amongst themselves
constantly, which is fun. - Will you shut your mouth. The next thing to come out
of it will be your teeth. - Don't start Nick. I didn't say anything. - Drop it. (speaking faintly) - Since they're older than the others, they have extra powers. Like instead of just being
able to compel humans they can also compel other vampires and sticking them through
the heart won't work unless it is wood from
a particular rare tree. Klaus is notable for being a fan favorite because he's a bad boy
who cries all the time. He's basically diet spike from Buffy. Like he's made soft by
the love of a woman. - Are you going to kill me ? - On your birthday? You really think that low of me? - He goes from indiscriminately killing supporting characters... - No Jenna. - To making soulful pencil
drawings of his favorite horse? I can appreciate his drama as a character. He's just so much all the time. - Don't make me do this
to you again Elijah. Go on kill her. Come on old man. Kill her. Kill her. - I can't be killed. I have nothing to fear from any of you. - He's always on that Klaus. My favorite of all of them and
maybe my favorite character on the show is Elijah. Who's like a vampires' vampire. Like what Captain Barbossa is doing for "Pirates of the Caribbean." Elijah is doing for the "Vampire Diaries". Like now that's a genre of Empire. I mean, look at his entrance to the show. (foreboding music)
(hinge creaks) ♪ Through the mirror of my mind ♪ - [Narrator] The series
that brought women- - I remember hating this guy
on my first watch through. And I honestly think it's just
because his hair is so bad. I couldn't get past it. It's like a middle part. Halfway between Tiktok
boy hair and a bowl cut. It doesn't even look real. It looks like a cheap wig. And I don't think it is. It just looks like that. It makes me uncomfortable. I want to say, I don't believe in old school vampire
would get this haircut but like who am I kidding? I feel like old-school
vampires would be super prone to terrible haircuts. Anyway, they change it later. I'm sorry, Elijah. I'm sorry I judged you. Part of the reason this
guy is so fun is you have all these vampires so far who look and act like teenagers
or at least TV teenagers. And then this weirdo shows up
Serving Paul Revere energy. He's dressed like a grownup. And he talks in a super stilted way - Which is a mere three hours from the time we know it was Mystic Falls. I surmised it had everything. In my opinion, Elijah is one of the only vampire performances on the show that you buy as an old soul. Like, okay. Yeah. I believe this guy
could have been alive for hundreds of years, right? - I had a family over the centuries close
hunted them down one by one. And he took them from me. - There's even this scene
where he's trying to act like a normal human in
front of Elena's aunt. And the actor makes it
sound really unnatural. Like he's not used to
speaking in a casual way. - Thank you so much for inviting me into your home in Jenna and Elena. I hope to see you again. Sometime soon The originals got such a positive response from viewers that they ended up getting their own spin-off
show called the originals. - The blood never stopped flowing and the party never ran - This town is my home. I want to be I watched like a season and a half of it. And it's honestly one of the
worst shows I've ever seen. There's Kai. He's a very late in series villain and
shown to be very powerful. But the performance is
just so unthreatening. They definitely did that on purpose. Like he's supposed to be one
of those quirky villains. That's like he's peppy and so
random, but he's also evil. Welcome to his dark twisted mind. These kids were murdered. Hello? Not everyone died. I had a soft spot for one of my sisters because otherwise I
would have cut her lungs out and not just to explain
what you can survive without a split. But this guy is just giving
me such pitch perfect energy. I don't know how to
explain it any other way. I kept calling the actor,
the guy from pitch. Perfect. And he's not, I looked it up. He wasn't in pitch perfect or glee. I assumed he must've been in one of them. Doesn't he feel like he was? I think he must just look like someone that was whenever
he's in scary villain mode. It's just annoying. Like I'm not scared of you. The scariest thing you
could do is sing an acapella eighties cover for a little
while we have the sirens. And I was honestly really excited to get another Halloween monster in the Canon but they just look like boring humans. Boom. They grow claws sometimes
and like to swim in pools. And that's all we get. This is season eight, stop pretending. You're too good to have
characters with animal body parts. Oh my God. Imagine if we had gotten sent
ours, that would be the dream. The sirens weakness is a tuning for and you can tell it's their weakness because when you use it, they go you feel like I did it Slurpee. Or like there's this in mine was like and then you have the travelers
and they have this line. So you know what they
mean by the traveler? Oh, goodie gypsies are here. Oh, I'm sorry. You call yourselves travelers now. Right? It's much more. They're having them say travelers because they want to be
as culturally sensitive as possible as they have this group of people be their evil Halloween
monsters for the season. You know how much I hate
travelers travelers are ruthless. It's also seen as this was a later season the whole storyline was really boring. Was it worth it guys? Was it? I think whenever our heroes
are fighting a whole squad you know, you're in for a bad time. At least when it's a single villain the character gets
fleshed out a little bit. But when you have the counsel,
the travelers, the heretics it's just a bunch of no-names. It makes it feel like it's
an annoying obstacle instead of an interesting face off,
Oh my God Merrill street. Before I close out this section I just want to mention one character from "Vampire Diaries" who is
living rent-free in my head. He's just a little guy, a
little villain of the week. Vampire he's in like two
episodes in season one but this guy wants to kill Elena. And so he waits for the Gilbert
family to order a pizza. Then he kills the pizza guy. Then he dresses up as the pizza guy and then takes the actual
pizza to the Gilbert house. Great. It's going to be $22. He does all this. Assuming he'll be invited
into Elena's house as though people regularly
invite pizza guys inside here come in, just put it on the table. His plan works by the
way, which is insane. It shouldn't have. And if it hadn't then where would he be? He just spends, God knows how long waiting for all the pieces of his
plan to fall into place. Only to deliver a pizza
to Elena's little brother without incident, and then
turn around and go home. You have yourself a good night. I guess your time is less
valuable when you're a vampire. Anyway, the vampire gets
killed the same episode but I'll never forget him. Team pizza, empire, number 12,
good and evil switch early on in the show. And evil vampire indicates
that the reason so many vampires are evil murderers
is that when you're turned into a vampire, you gain
the ability to switch off your compassion. This just seems like kind
of a shorthand explanation. When we first hear it,
like when you're an empire it alters the way you view the world. It reorders your priorities. It makes you see humans as prey Is exploding with power. David, I can hear things from far away. I can see through the darkness. I can move like it's magic
and the guilt, the pain Damon I can turn it off. So I took that to mean
that when a vampire is good it's because they're putting in some level of extra effort in order
to maintain their humanity and not just kill everyone. But as the show goes on and
the writing team gets shuffled around a little, this goodness which becomes a very literal concept. Turn off that pesky humanity switches it's a vampire off switches. One of the biggest perks
being undead gets you down. Well, this is humanity on her off. Yeah. I'm thinking there's
another option here. Play a bit of a demo. Yeah. It turns out every
vampire has an actual switch in their brain that they
can flip to good or evil. I'm not going to let you do that. That's not your choice to
make skip is your problem The evil. And they have it. So if you really love someone
or a loved one is in danger they can basically talk
you out of it and turn you good again, which again
initially seems like kind of an abstract concept, but
then later seasons also make this painfully literal. They add this idea that
you have, what's called an emotional anchor. And that is the one or maybe
two people who are capable of bringing you back. So we have this stupid episode
where Caroline's humanity is off, but evil. Caroline wants to stay that way. So she negotiates this weird
humanity off chain where she's like, okay, Stephan can
turn my humanity back on. So I need to blackmail
Stephan to get him to turn his humanity off and keep Elena away because she could turn Steph good. Who could in turn, turn me good? And I don't want that. Stephan wants to save Sarah's Life. All he has to do
is shed his humanity off the series that
brought women to the front. And Damon's like, don't worry. We'll free my mom from a prison world so she can turn Stephen's humanity on and he can then turn her good
because she's evil right now. And then we'll turn Caroline back. It goes from this place of
like, even if a vampire is at their worst and most evil,
they still love their family. And that can push through
to like a cookbook of how to turn people good. Again, that's all in one
of the college seasons which makes sense because
those are the worst ones. I hate this kind of stuff
because making it so literal also renders it
completely uninteresting. You don't get as many morally
gray character moments and they don't often surprise
you because they're either in good mode or evil mode
and they act accordingly and it diminishes the characters
agency in anything they do because it basically splits them into two different characters. But I'm sure that lack
of agency is on purpose because then you don't have
to feel conflicted when villains get redeemed after
doing really terrible things Flip the switch. I'm sorry. The viewers like that. Damon is a bad boy, but he
also has to be a good boy and totally devoted to Elena
in order to be romantic. But if he's too much of a
good guy, he'll become boring and unsexy. So whenever that happens, you
can just have his humanity gets switched off again and he
can spend another half season being evil and sexy for awhile. Damon's last evil switch
in season eight is the funniest because of
how over it, everyone is Take your pick because I'm
going to bury everyone. He's running around threatening everybody. Like I'm a very bad boy. I'm really evil this time. Damon, just go. Everybody's just like, Ugh, cut it out. Damon. The writers also
obviously do all this to give the actors a chance to
flex those dramatic muscles as clearly evidenced by the
fact that the humanity switches not the only way we get evil versions of the characters they have. Stephen's ripper personality which is when he drinks human blood and goes into a crazed blood lust. - I'm a ripper. A ripper doesn't stop. Also. I already mentioned
the whole doppelganger thing. Elena has an evil doppelganger. Stephan has an evil doppelganger. Alaric gets possessed by one
of the originals for awhile and act evil. Tyler gets possessed by Klaus. Tyler gets possessed by a traveler. Matt gets possessed by a
traveler and does this accent It's travelers. I thought the question If there's any opportunity for actors to play multiple roles, they take it. Number 13, vampire and human switch. Another thing they switch
around all the time to add drama is the mortality of the cast. Humans get turned into vampires. Humans get turned into
werewolves, werewolves, get turned into werewolf, vampire hybrids. And then a couple of seasons
in vampires get turned into humans. They this idea of the
cure and there's only one. So vampires are fighting over it. So the resolution to the
cure storyline ends up being that Elena and Katherine are in a brawl and Elena
shoves it into Katherine's Mouth. That's pretty funny. And also probably the
most interesting thing they could've done with a
cure because Katherine is like the one vampire who
likes being a vampire and didn't want it. So that's a great way to end that story. A plus for that one. But of course this is
"The "Vampire Diaries". So what I mean by resolution is they end up circling back to it later
and undermining all of that. And the cure ends up used on six different vampire characters over the course of the series. This is what I'm talking about. They can never leave well enough alone. Season five also introduces the idea of a magic purification spell,
which can cure vampirism. So then we ended up seeing a
total of 11 characters cured of vampirism plus countless
unnamed extras who might happen to be in town. I said that thing earlier about how the vampire
characters are supposed to freeze in time. And part of me feels like they
introduced all these cures and had people getting cured and uncured intentionally
to muddy the waters about exactly how old these
people are supposed to look for the record. It always bothered me
just how many characters wanted the cure. I mean, I believe a few of them want it but like fighting over it. And they're all pretty bad about articulating why they want it. I mean, I understand characters
who are just resistant to becoming vampires in the first place. Just no thank you. Or no homo as Caroline's dad would say there are some drawbacks
to being a vampire. The characters on this show don't have
a lot of those drawbacks. Here are all the drawbacks to being a vampire that I can think of. You'll notice I fit them on two post-its. You have to drink blood. Fortunately, the show
establishes pretty early on that blood tastes yummy to
vampires, so it's not gross. And also they can do this
without having to kill people. Everyone, you know, will
age and die without you. So yeah, that would be pretty lonely. Except in this show,
loads of them are vampires best friend, vampires, boyfriend vampires a whole vampire found family and any human family
members tend to be killed off pretty early. That's not a factor anymore either. Can't go out in the sun. I don't do that anyway
also, which is make rings. So you can go out on the sun. Can't stay in one place for too long or people will notice
that you're not aging. All the vampires in this
show are super wealthy. So having to move
frequently is not a problem. They can just travel the
world if they want to. And even if you weren't a wealthy vampire you could just compel people. So you're pretty well
set for room and board. Evil vampires are constantly
showing up to kill you. I debated whether to include this on the list because it seems
like it's only a factor. If you're a vampire, who's
also the star of a TV show. It's got to be easier to lie low and go off the grid than
these people make it look especially when you have mind control. So all I can say to these TV
vampires is like, be better. And maybe if you settle down somewhere as you start making friends just start turning so
many people into vampires that you effectively have
an army living in town. Is that evil advice? Am I the evil vampire I might be but it's still effective advice. There are things you
can't do as a teenager. And if you're 17 forever,
that will be annoying. Fortunately, none of the 17 year olds in this show actually looks 17. So I'm just going to cross that one off. He will be able to rent cars and drink in bars to
their heart's content. And the last one can't lead a normal life. What even is a normal life because it seems very relative
as this list has established. There's not actually a lot. You can't do as a vampire. So it's not a big deal. So I don't really see
a lot of drawbacks here but even so I get, when Elena is mad when say Damon feeds
her, his blood forcibly in case she dies because he
wants her to become a vampire. If it comes to that She personally doesn't want
to come back as a vampire. And that's a really big
decision to not have agency in but whenever the topic
of the cure comes up the reason they give tends to be they want to have babies and vampires can't have babies. - I saw you reacted when he
found out I was pregnant. In the next eternity of her
life flash before your eyes and it scared the hell out of you. I mean, I've always
wanted a family before... So it's kind of a bummer
of a reminder that that's never gonna happen for me. - This is just extremely weird to me. And it's even weirder when you
consider that Elena herself is in fact adopted and twice
over if we want to go there. I don't see anything that
would stop these vampires from adopting and raising a child. They'd have to move every couple of years because their parents
would be visibly not aging, and they wouldn't want
to attract attention. And that's kind of a bummer
for kids if they make friends. But like a lot of kids have parents whose lifestyles require that. Anyway, shout out to this conversation, which
is extremely out of line. - You will never have his children Elena. And you are too maternal
to not have children. - Can you imagine anyone
saying this to you? - Ironically, Caroline is a vampire and his leader impregnated
by witch magic, so. Ridiculously long story short. Rick and Joe's twin babies
magically transported into my readily available
womb by the Gemini coven. I feel like vampire media always has to be in love with the idea that it's better to be human
because the audience is human. So it's weird if your conclusion is just
being a vampire is awesome. Hell yeah. Only "Twilight" had the guts to do that. So anyway, I get why they do this but I don't have to like it. Number 14, dead and alive switch. I guess it goes without
saying that any series with any kind of supernatural
element has no respect for the boundaries of life and death. So this show frequently
kills and unkills characters. It's funny because some of
the deaths are permanent either because the actor
wants to leave the show or because the writers
have run out of ideas of what to do with them. You'll notice a lot of the permadeaths are
parents and guardians. - No, Jenna. Whenever there's a permanent death it's treated with a lot of gravity. Like there's a big emotional sendoff and a pop song and sometimes a voiceover from the character or the implication that they're watching the
surviving characters from heaven. Okay. I promise, I
don't understand my God. You're a ghost. That's usually the best indicator as to whether a character is actually dead but even then they sometimes come back. But in most cases if they get the big pop
song, they're dead for good. And if they get anything less than that they're coming back. Remember this show even
has a magical ring where if you die wearing it,
you come back to life. And that ring pulls a lot of weight when we still
have human cast members. Oh wait, did I say a magical ring? I'm at two magical rings. They are identical. And both have this power. Also the ring has all these loopholes. Like if you are supernatural,
it won't resurrect you. And if you're a human, it
will only resurrect you. If you are killed by a
supernatural creature which also includes mundane ways to die like blunt force trauma, as long as it's being inflicted by
a supernatural creature. So it won't work if you're hit
by a bus, but it will work. If a vampire is driving the
bus, there are those times in "Vampire Diaries"
when you die for real. But if you're a supernatural creature your soul goes to the other side which is like a purgatory that
you can be brought back from by which if only we knew a powerful witch or if you're an original vampire you go to the ancestral plane. You can come back from there to via which magic or ancient mummy hand. And if you're anyone else,
you can become a ghost which also means you stick around and dead vampires are not
excluded from becoming ghosts. Now that I've told you
about the three different switches that the writers
a "Vampire Diaries" employ I would like to tell you a brief
history of Alaric Saltzman. Alaric is a vampire
hunter with a magic ring. So he dies many times and is brought back to life so many times that
magic causes him to become evil. Then he's turned into a vampire but not just any vampire and
enhanced original vampire which is like an original
vampire, but stronger. Then he dies still evil, but comes back as a non evil ghost to
watch over the character. Oh my God, your girls A couple of seasons later Bonnie uses a spell to
bring him back to life. But by life, I mean he's still an enhanced original vampire but he's himself again. So he's good. Then he crosses a magical boundary which removes the vampire
magic from his system but also reverts him back to dying of the wind that killed him
in the first place he dies. But then he's resuscitated
this time medically by his girlfriend who is a nurse. This means he's alive again but no longer a vampire
number 15, raising the stakes. Do you like my vampire pun? Okay, let's proceed. One problem with the
show running this long is you have to keep upping the ante for anything to pose a threat
to these kids in season one Elena and her friends are humans. She has a vampire boyfriend
and the villains are a lot of other Halloween
monsters that come to town. But remarkably early into the show almost all of the cast are
Halloween monsters themselves. Elena gets turned into a vampire. Bonnie finds out she's a witch. Tyler is a werewolf. Caroline is a vampire. Tyler is a vampire. Yes, it's the same. Tyler. He's both a werewolf and a vampire a few characters that stay
human typically have some kind of magical object that gives
them a supernatural gift. The thing is, if all of your characters have
supernatural powers and or are undead it's hard to have a villain
that poses a threat. So either have to keep
expanding the Canon to make bigger threats or invent loopholes which can retroactively weaken
your powerful characters. "Vampire Diaries" does
both to speak figuratively. The whole "Vampire Diaries" is just like the writers paint
themselves into a corner. And then they realize they've done that. And then they're like, whatever. And they just walk across
the paint, ruining it. It's such a good example of a TV show that doesn't plan ahead at all and just make stuff up as they go along like the vampire hunters
eventually dumped vervain and the town's water supply. This helps level the playing field between humans and vampires which means our no largely
vampire main cast is playing on hard mode, by the way it wouldn't that make the
bags blood toxic to them. Cause we still see them
drinking it all the time. I know they're getting it from
the Mystic Falls hospital. And I just assumed that the hospital's
blood is locally sourced. Maybe it's not. And how are all the vampires
showering within city limits? Speaking of plot holes,
the longer it's been since they introduced a
rule, the more likely it is that they've doubled back
on it or contradicted it in some way, like in season
two Elena's vampire mom burns in the sun in the middle
of this cemetery full of dead leaves and doesn't
lay anything on fire. So it's implied that the
fire, when a vampire burns in the sun is magical and
thus only affects the vampire. But then in season six, Elena is fighting which in the high school she
runs into the science lab sticks her hand into
the sunlight coming in through the window until
it bursts into flame then turns on the gas and turns her own burning
hand into a flame thrower. I'm like 90% sure that's not
supposed to work that way but also I can't be mad at it. Like how can that not
put a smile on your face? The writers also keep adding newer and bigger villains who
cancel out the old one. Like they add the original vampires who can compel normal
vampires and are stronger. So they're a pretty good threat. But then after a couple of seasons the originals are mostly on their side. So like who are they going to fight? And also can't the originals
now help them that's okay. We'll add in an enhanced original empire. It's like an original, but
stronger for the record. The spinoff gets something
called an upgraded original vampire, which is similar to an enhanced original vampire but it's made from a
vampire instead of a human. So it's even stronger. So where do you go from there? How about the world's
first immortal being now? I know what you're thinking. That sounds a whole lot like an original vampire, but it's not. It came before that
and it's more powerful. The main cast has Bonnie. Who's a Bennett, which which we're told is the most
powerful bloodline of witches but then how will magical
villains be a threat? Well, we'll add in an original,
which I'm not kidding. They did the same thing they did with the original vampires,
just with witches. Also there's another coven
called the Gemini coven. And they're the most powerful witches. I know I said the Bennett
witches were the most powerful which is, but that was
technically not a lie. The Gemini are only so
powerful because they have two twin witches who absorb each other. So it's the power of two witches. So it's more powerful
than we add the travelers. A subculture of which is who are stronger because they've been around longer. I know that sounds like an
original, but it's different. Forget those other two kinds of witches. These are the powerful
ones, but after all this what are you supposed to
do for your final season? Like where can you go from
here to raise the stakes any further? Well, I left this out
of the villain section because I wanted it to be a surprise. The season eight villain is the devil Save your brother. All you have to do is kill them. Arcadeus is this ancient psychic? Who's a super nice guy until
he's village turns on him because he keeps trying to
counsel them about their impure. The thing you imagined,
brother, it is impure For the record. He's burned at the stake by
the people of his village. So the empire diaries Wiki says he was killed by the village. People, this darn village people first they killed Caroline's data. Now this Yes, with his last breath,
he let loose a psychic glass. So powerful that it created it. So moral. Sure. That's how they introduce the devil with all these qualifiers. It's a place which people have called hell Well that hell if you want does it matter what name you give it or whether you believe
in it or not either way. That is where Kate feeds
on the souls of the dam. This hell place. So some people have called him the devil. He's roughly equivalent
to a sort of devil. They're clearly too embarrassed
to just have this guy show up and be like, I'm the
devil bad news guys. The devil has come to town. They don't even call
him the devil that much. They're just like, this is Cade
whom some people might know as the devil, in my opinion their restraint is their
own worst enemy here. They do so many other stupid things. And then suddenly it's too embarrassing to give me a proper devil. If they had just gone for
it, it would have been an a plus a little aggressive here. The phrase, the season
eight villain is the devil. And you're just like, yes. Oh my God, fantastic. But like, I never thought
I'd say this about a show but I'm disappointed by
their use of the devil. I wish it had been the real devil and the sirens should
have just been demons. I will say with all the
new stuff they keep adding. It's really funny to just
skip to a late season episode of "The "Vampire Diaries" and
watch the pre episode recap without context was just
like totally inscrutable. Just word salad. Be on "The "Vampire Diaries"
travelers are about to make their move. Their leader. Marcos is here. Sirens use mind control
to who are their victims to the death, the Maxwell
heirloom and the tuning fork. Those things fit together
to make the hammer that swings inside of bell when properly
assembled this bill becomes like a mystical, super Vale. Number 16 characters. I hate, I think this might be a CW thing but "The "Vampire Diaries"
loves to write a new characters. Maybe read the room and
see how the audience feels about them a little and
then divert their path. Like they'll bring in
a new character to be somebody's love interest. And then the audience is
like, Nope, don't like that. So they'll stop. But then that new
character will still exist. And then they'll just be
kicking around for three seasons while the writers are like Mo
Elena has a younger brother Jeremy, I believe Elena does
not have a brother in the book. So the writers added him for a reason but I believe that reason is misguided. I think their thought
process was literally just Elena needs someone to worry about. So Jeremy can be put into
danger to cause drama Flip the switch. But Elena already has a lot of likable friends to worry about. And those relationships
are better established than Elena's with Jeremy at the beginning. Jeremy's character trait is that he has rage issues and
does really hardcore drugs. Great. It's the first day
of school on your stone. Is it on you? You need to chill
yourself right to myself. What does that stoner talk? I mean, his parents died
just before the start of the series. So Jeremy is acting out because of that. He's just perpetually grumpy and brooding about everything you can tell. The writers just never quite
know what to do with him. A few seasons in, they try
to make him a vampire hunter and he whines about that. Like he whines about everything else. And then at least once
a season, they introduce some new forgettable
female character, just for the express purpose
of dating Jeremy and only. So he has something to
do and it's always boring because he's boring and they always die. Also the actors just really stiff to me. He's like the walking embodiment
of Jim from treasure planet with his early two thousands
skater boy hair even talks in this weaselly little
voice like he's voiced Axiom. One of those Disney ingenue
boys, like a Latin or Hercules Protects me from compulsion as to curse. Cool. I did a little
research on that stone. You showed me I looked up interviews
because they had to know if it was a character voice or
if he just sounds like that. And the answer is, he
just sounds like that McQueen. I am in, I played Jeremy Gilbert in "Vampire Diaries" and Jake in Parana. He just is a Disney
ingenue boy in real life. And that makes it even
funnier when they give him his vampire hunter subplot,
where he gets extremely bulked up. And we're meant to see
him as a threat to the empires but he still has the same
presence he always has Can think about is killing vampires. Like what are you going to do? Jeremy sing at them about Santa Fe. Next character I hate
is Vicki who looks just like Bella Thorne. She's literally just a
female version of Jeremy. Yeah. They really just did this twice. She's the delinquent little
sister of a different character. And she's also on drugs. She has moments of
humanity, but mostly feels like a mean-spirited
caricature of an addict. The nail in the coffin for me on that storyline is when
she gets fed vampire blood and also gets addicted to vampire blood. Like really? Can I have another hint? Okay. Let's seriously. Her one trait is just
getting addicted to things. She dates Jeremy for a bit which of course means she dies early on but they have the
audacity to bring her back as a ghost multiple times. Please appreciate that my bootleg shirt says
when the show airs on the CW. Can I get the logo to match up? No. (giggles) I hate uncle John, he's Elena's uncle but he's also her secret
biological father. And he's also a vampire hunter. He's kind of an antagonist But he has big Neil Patrick Harris energy. So I can't take him seriously. Even worse, they try to do scenes with him and Jeremy sometimes as kind
of a father figure to him. And I'm just like, "Oh, I can't." Speaking of parents, Elena's
biological mother is Isobel. And I hate her too. - You look just like her, it's eerie. Ever met Katherine. She found me after I turned. - I don't have much of an
opinion on this character because I just can't get
around this performance. - Since I was last here I've been doing everything
possible to find Klaus. We knew our best chance was to find him before he could find you. - I don't understand how it's so bad. - He thinks I'm helping him protect Elena. So he's been very useful in keeping me informed on
everything that's been going on. - Most of the cast is really solid even when the writing is weak but this is honestly the most wooden and stilted performance in the entire series. - They visit every week
and they bring flowers even though there's no one buried here. The Isobel they knew is dead. - I looked it up and I guess the actress
has been in a lot of stuff. I haven't seen it. I don't know if she's good in that. Like maybe this was just
a really misguided choice but I don't know if
something's really wrong here. Wes Maxfield. Yeah, that's right. Wes Maxfield, a name that
is somehow less plausible than Alaric Saltzman. He's the season five villain. He's like this evil scientist
that experiments on vampires. A late season concept if ever I've heard one. They even retroactively
wrote this plot line where Damon was
experimented on at this lab in the fifties and had amnesia about it. I wish I could have amnesia about this whole season of the show. - You study infectious
disease transmission. - I study vampires. - What? - Anyway, I don't buy
this actor as a scientist, any more than I buy sci-fi channels, Luke Tipple as a scientist. - My name is Luke Tipple. I'm a scientist, an adventurer, and for the next six
weeks, I'll be leading you on what will be a perilous
journey through time. - And he must be British or something because he speaks in that
very stilted and nasally way that British actors do when they're struggling to sound American. - This is the handwritten medical findings of Dr. Grayson Gilbert Your father. - It makes the modulation in
his sentence is really bizarre. Like he's a text to speech
program or something. - Your heroic vampire
friends can let you ride off into the sunset without
running a few tests. - There's this one character, Anna, who I don't necessarily hate as a character, but she's
another Jeremy girlfriend. So another waste of time, she's fine when she's
not in a scene with him, but the Jeremy girlfriend drama is just the worst part of the show. And as a vampire, and I think she's supposed
to be frozen at like 15. And I like that. I liked the idea of that but they dress her absolutely horribly and never brush her hair presumably to make her look younger. But it's like, geez,
she's an immortal vampire. And still has absolutely no
idea how to dress herself. I feel called out by her. Like this would be me If I existed in the universe of the show. We all want to think we'd be Elena, but we'd actually be
the uncool teen vampire who's 400 years old and still thinks she should
be wearing a cap sleeve shrug and butterfly earrings to the formal. I also have no particular
feelings about Matt's dad. But he represents one of the worst writing moments on the show. So Matt has a neglectful mom early in the series and his
dad is not in the picture. Then in season eight the last season Damon needs
to get a magical artifact and attacks this random
auto mechanic outside town. Then suddenly Matt runs in like - Dead. (upbeat music) ♪ Through the mirror of my mind ♪ - Matt runs up to his dad like, "Hey dad, sorry I tracked
you down a few months ago and didn't tell you about vampires." And it's like, what's going on? - I know none of this makes any sense. And I know I tracked it
down a few months ago. I did You think this would be important,
but it all just happened off screen and they didn't
tell us until the moment they decided to write it in. Okay. The last character
on my list is Tyler. My reasons for hating him
are both rational and unfair. He's this jock that gets
turned into a werewolf. You start the series as
the school bully, and It's not going to happen. It's not going to just have been. Not that you're not like that. No. I said no. Leave her alone. Wow. Vicki Donovan says,
no, that's a first step Seems to have some other
negative characteristics. They just kinda throw this
out there on the table and then never circle back to it. Never address it again. He's a good guy. Or maybe that was supposed
to be his latent werewolf aggression. And that makes it okay. Anyway, the unfair
reason I hate him is just that he seemed so stupid. Like no thoughts, head empty. I think it's this actor more
than the writing, something about him just gives me
such zoo Lander energy Tyler And not Ben Stiller as zoo Lander. But like if the characters zoo Lander
was trying to act in a TV drama So much for that sidebar,
I'm not your little anymore. You think you're too cool for school but I got a news flash for you,
Walter Cronkite, you aren't. Anyway, Tyler is a pretty major character and has a lot of screen time,
but I dislike him so much that it kind of circles
around to being fun. When he's on screen. That's the nicest thing I've said about anyone in this section. So far number 17, good stuff. Elena's friend Caroline is like the ditzy cheerleader archetype. And she gets turned into
a vampire and you sort of expect her to get killed
off shortly afterward Like mentioned. They're like, well we might have Caroline
turned into a vampire. And I was like, great. Every female they've turned
into a vampire has died. I'm like But instead she's just a vampire with very little status quo change. She actually kind of thrives on it. Like she still has all the same friends and she goes to school
and lives with her mom but she's just a
happy-go-lucky vampire now. And I like that. I think it's funny. Another nice thing about
Caroline is that she's usually the one insisting the
cast do normal human things. My favorite moments of
the show are when they do relatable things that
actual teenagers do. And those moments are
surprisingly few and far between but when they do happen. So usually thanks to Caroline Elena's friends
in general are good. The actresses for Carolina, Elena and Bonnie all have such good chemistry and feel like they're actually friends. That's part of why I said Jeremy was
such a useless character because Elena already has these
girls to bond with and worry about my favorite part of
this show is all the villains. And I don't mean that the villains
themselves are a slam dunk. A lot of them are too
similar to each other. And the show starts to
feel really repetitive in the later seasons. But specifically the thing
I like about the villains is that they tried to make
all the villains sexy and as such a lot of the
villains were fan favorite. And that meant that instead of just killing off the
villains, when their arc ended the showrunners usually
tried to keep them alive and just have them be defeated
so they can return later or eventually they would just reform them and have them stick around awkwardly. As part of the friend
group, I call this the my little pony solution and I love it. I think it's cute and funny. And it's good. Every time. Speaking of redemption arcs Daymond is usually portrayed
as like a morally gray guy. Who's in love with Elena but otherwise this loose
cannon who could kill anyone at any time Any time As his redemption arc
plays out, they also have in bond with all the other
supporting characters. Like he hangs out with her brother her teacher, her friends,
her friends, moms. And I like that. I feel like so often
when you have this story where a bad boys redeemed by
love, there's this big emphasis on the idea that he's only a
nice guy for this one woman. And if she wasn't around,
he'd still be super bad. I assume this is for the sexiness
factor, but I don't know. It always bothers me. It makes it seem way less genuine that this bad boy is
actually self-reflecting and trying to be a better
person in this series. It's very obvious that if Elena died Damon would still have a moral compass and continue to be good
and help her friends. It's especially obvious because spoilers Elena essentially does die. And that is what happens. And we'll get to that later. And lest you think I'm
exclusively Team Damon. I liked Stephen. Stephen is on the list of things I lie. I know I've been mean about him and called him boring because
he is, but he's a good guy. He's very captain America. We go on the announcement
and come back out. All right, then I won't come out. So normal stuff. I can't think of a better reason to die. Damon is the guy you want
to watch a TV show about but Stephan is the guy you
would actually want to date. And I liked the actor who plays him who you can tell is very charismatic when he's given anything interesting to do which is not often enough
because you know, it's Stephan. What else? I like that. We're supposed to believe this
as a freshmen college dorm. Hi Who are you? I'm making your roommate Man, a third roommate and
our luxurious addict loft. How will we make enough room
around the roaring fire? There's this old vampire named Michael who in my opinion, gave us the
best death scene in the show Truly held nothing Back in one episode, there's
a party in a corn maze. I love corn mazes, and I
think that's everything. Number 18, the video game in
1996, they released a vampire diaries point and click
mystery adventure game for PC Based on the books, not
the show, obviously. Well, based on the books, in
the sense that the show is base on the books, which is like not very much. So I played it. You play as Elena who is
trying to stop an evil vampire from getting a magic
dagger that will help him harness the magical energy of the town. Pleasure to meet you, sir. My name is Elena Guild. Great. It uses real life actors,
which is ambitious at least but each character exists in
one location, the entire game. And there are only like six locations and
they all look like that. Depressing brand of
nineties, McMansion opulence Damon shows up looking
like Denny from the room. Of course she's enjoying the party. How could such a pretty girl do it? And other characters are also
represented in name only. You also have Mikael who is
featured in the show as Michael. You just got to see his
amazing death scene. And he comes in and it's like, "Oh." - It was so nice of you to join me for the christening of
my humble art gallery. - I wonder which character is the bad guy. This was honestly one of the
worst games I've ever played. And I love point and
click adventure games. I've got a putt putt
behind me for God's sake. This was just such an early incarnation of this genre of game. I feel like games like this
usually rely more on clicking around the environment to
trigger events and find items. But this whole game only has like 10 objects for you to find. And many of them won't
be used until the end. So most of the gameplay is dialogue trees. - Do you know anything about
that dagger that Mr. Richards just added to his collection Aunt Judith? - Dagger, no it sounds awful. - A couple of times I
got stuck and I thought, well if I just go around
the whole town again and talk to every character, eventually one of them will tell me what I need to do to progress. But sometimes until you
find the arbitrary item that you need you are
actually just stuck in a loop. The dialogue trees, freeze, where they are the characters repeat themselves. And also once you initiate a conversation the dialogue is not skippable. So you just hear it all a million times. This entire thing is
Stephan's character intro. Every single time you talked to him I've been worried about you,
Elena porous, growing stronger. I can feel it. Look just promise me that. You'll be careful for Noah. Okay? Tell me what you discovered. Maybe I can help you for the record. No, he can't. I need a whole lot of money to buy it. Can you read me the money,
Stephan, anything I have? I would gladly lend you Elena. You have in my heart, but
I have no use for money. So I can't lend you any Times. Speaking to a character twice in a row will yield a new
result, but not often. The first item I picked up was a shovel. And I feel like I'd been
playing for a while. By the time I found it. So since it was my only item,
I just went around town. Fruitlessly brandishing it at everything. Like maybe I can hit this with my shovel. The one exciting moment in my whole play through was when I tried
to dig up this grave and the woman's ghost showed
up and tried to attack me. This was after no other
supernatural occurrences whatsoever just an angry ghost in broad daylight. They also have this game mechanic where it occasionally switches
between day and night. I wasn't sure if time
changes were triggered by actual time passing or how many locations I visited or what but I did notice that you
can make it jump forward by returning to Elena's bedroom and activating the going
to sleep cut scene. Some things can only happen at nighttime. So when you get stuck, you're not sure if it's because you missed
an item that you need or because you need to talk
to everyone in town again in case one yields a new dialogue option or because you simply have to wait for it to get dark before
anything can happen. I ended up just fruitlessly
circling the town re clicking all the same
places I'd been before talking to the same six people in the same order and then going to sleep to make
it change from day to night. It's like it's oppression simulator. The worst part of the game was when I needed
money to buy a Runestone from an art collector. So Elena who talks like this goes, Oh no I need a lot of money. And I asked her aunt first, obviously but the aunt says, no No, I'd give you anything. I have Elena, but I think
we need to be a little more careful with money right now. And then I'm like, well, great. I guess I have to ask everyone else until the plot moves
forward, but it's fruitless. And you know, it's fruitless because again there are only like six
characters in the game and the six characters are
like the school librarian the grounds keeper at the cemetery and I'm having to crawl to them. Devoid of all hope. Like, can you give me a lot
of money to buy a Runestone? And obviously they're like,
I'm the school librarian. I don't have a large
sum of money to lend you or I just clean up weeds
at your parents' grave. I don't know you that well this is actually a really
inappropriate thing to ask. And I'm like, Oh my God, I know that. I know that. But the game is making me ask you. I didn't want to, the game is
forcing me to humiliate myself and watch all these
unskippable dialogue trees while characters explain this to me it feels like the game
is making fun of me. It also doesn't help that some of the items you pick up are so low rise that you literally can't
tell what they are. I thought this was like a
prescription, a concert ticket. And then when I finally caved and looked up a walkthrough guide I found out it was a book of matches. Speaking of the player's
guide, I looked it up and then as soon as I read it I didn't feel bad about looking it up because I never would have
gotten it without the guide. There's this item I picked up which I thought was an African mask but apparently was a large statue. And you're supposed to lay
it across this trap door like a bridge and walk across it. Yeah. I could have played this game for a thousand years and not gotten that. So after four hours of gameplay and with the help of the walkthrough I made it to the secret chamber
obtained the magic dagger. And then I could not find which part of the screen to click on,
to get out of this room. I circled for tens of minutes. I tried everything. I clicked every inch of the screen. And then I finally accepted
that I would be going no further and just looked up gameplay footage. And you're just going to
have to be okay with the fact that I did that because I'm
not finishing this game. Okay. Anyway, what how did the game end
Elena defeats me kale? And it's kind of like impossible to even tell what's going on. Amazing death in every adaptation. There are a lot of cut
scenes that I really love. This story is pretty high stakes but simultaneously all of
the scenes have such low. Yeah. I died in the late 15th
century when my own brother killed me in a duel. And ever since then,
I've fought that evil. That's part of my soul Reveals. He's a vampire like he's telling you
his major on a first date Damon and I quarreled and dueled over the girl we both loved or the vampire whose blood
we both had in our veins. We died on each other's swords
and both became vampires. You have to highlight the end cut scene and the credits, which are amazing. - [Woman] I want to be with you always. (gentle music) (thunder rumbles) (upbeat music) ♪ This is mine ♪ - Number 19, the clothes. The wardrobe department is
so aggressively hit or miss. I have this notion in my head
that out there in Georgia somewhere, the CW just has a big warehouse of generically trendy clothing. And the wardrobe team
probably has a really short turnaround. And they're just kind of
working with what they have. For (indistinct) with a
cast this good-looking, it is surprising how misguided some of these choices are. Elena does better than
most, but that might just be because the actress has that willowy kind of build where clothes are mostly going to hang off her
in a very neutral way. I mean, look at this fit that dress ends in such a weird place it's basically a long floral shirt. She's in evil mode this episode. So she's supposed to look intimidating but she just looks like she forgot pants. Typically Elena's signature
look is skinny jeans and a solid colored long sleeve top in shades of blue or purple. And then she wears a lacy white
blood lust top underneath. It's very two thousands which I guess might mean it'll
come back into fashion soon. So that'll be weird. I wear this stuff all the time. Do you remember when that was in fashion? And they would like have shirts with attached cami tops
or worse fake cami tops. And then when you looked inside the shirt it was just a triangle of
fabric sewn into this area. In general, the signature Elena
color is definitely purple. And Katherine definitely noticed this because it's usually
what she wears when she's trying to impersonate her. The town of Mystic Falls
has non-stop parties, events and theme dances, like
at least three per season which is obviously just an
excuse to dress the pretty actors in crazy costumes and period clothes like their little dolls. And the vampires also have loads of flashbacks in various areas. So we get vintage clothes there too. Caroline has done the dirtiest
by the wardrobe department all these horribly gaudy
pieces all at the same time. And just these weirdly unflattering and ill fitting garments. This outfit from season one
should have been burned. It looks like a maternity dress on her. Anyway, I do like that. Each of the characters has a
unique and consistent style. Elena's outfits feel simple and casual. Like you believe that a real teenager would
wear them to high school. Bonnie dresses, a little girlier. She wears a lot more roughly tops and dresses and she's
queen of the cardigan. And Caroline wears garbage
that she finds on the street. Number 20, "The "Vampire Diaries" not the show, but the object. This show actually
contains "Vampire Diaries" and non "Vampire Diaries". I guess the pilot and first season show Elena
writing a lot in her journal which the showrunner seemed
annoyed to be shackled to because she drops
it as the show goes on. But as if to justify the title we do have other diaries
sprinkled all throughout the show. And I like to watch for the diaries because I think it's
cheesy every time Stephan like Elena is a lifelong journaler. So that is a true vampire diary. Elena's ancestor maintained
the Gilbert journal which is an important historical document and also a kind of vampire hunters John Lynn, Gilbert journalist, whole life but down to the bitter insane drunken end You guys learn about the Gilbert journal from a which Emily Bennet's own journal not to mention all the plot
significant, which is grimoires which let's be honest are also diary. Damon maintains a video
diary for a hot minute but I would argue that that doesn't count. The show is not called the vampire vlogs Modern new version Of a dead man's journal. And there are a couple of one-off episodes that use
various characters, journaling as an excuse to have
narration or a framing device. But that tends to be
single isolated episodes. There's no consistency,
but my favorite instance of trying to shoe horn diaries back into it comes at the end of season six. Elena is entering a death like sleep and is saying goodbye to her
friends, possibly forever. Both of you pay it all down. Everything that you accomplished in your lives have free crush, be fall in love when you start a
family writing it down. So that one day when I
wake up, I can read all about my best friend's lives
and feel like I was there. So yes, her parting words
are, keep this diary for me. It's like somebody in the writer's room spat out
their coffee, like, Oh my God we forgot to have a vampire
diary for like four years. Number 21 racism. I would those "Vampire Diaries"
writers were getting really comfortable right about
now looking at the timeline and seeing that I hadn't
mentioned racism yet. They're all settling in
for a long winter's nap. We'll hear it at the
show is set in the town of Mystic Falls, Virginia,
which is a very traditional town have like 20 holidays a
year where everybody dresses up in their civil war, era ball gowns and hangs out at the old plantation house. They have miss Mystic Falls which is a beauty pageant
celebrating the founding families and an annual founder's day celebration. Not to be confused with
the founders party. I swear to God, that's a
real and separate occasion. You get both in the same season and it made the passage of time. Very confusing to me. Let's not forget the annual
gone with the wind screening. They actually changed the names around a little bit because in the books Mystic Falls was the town of
fells church and Mystic Falls. High school was Robert E. Lee high school. The video game adaptation
of course uses these names. And that section of the
game is absolutely loaded with Confederate flags
tainting an otherwise perfect video game. The kids dress up as Confederate soldiers for the school parade and the
director has Bonnie smiling and waving back like
no thoughts, head empty nothing to see here, by the
way that float was a recreation of this moment in local history. Got it. In class Confederate soldiers fired on a church with civilians Even the corn maze wasn't exempt. Hello, Confederate
scarecrow is nothing sacred. And Oh, I didn't forget
about the Salvatore. Damon was a straight
up Confederate soldier which they later amend to
Confederate loafer and dessert or I guess that's supposed
to make it better. I was simply having too much fun to return to battle your commitment to
the Confederacy is inspiring. There's this weird moment in
the finale or Stephanie is talking about Damon's good side. And he specifically cites his involvement in the civil war as one
of his positive attributes Brother, I looked up to this son who enlisted
the civil war to please His father. Yeah, man in the Confederate army. Maybe leave that one out
of the reference letter. Bonnie's ancestor. Emily Bennett is famous
in supernatural circles for being one of the most
powerful witches ever. And she's also Katherine's slave. Oh, sorry. Not slave. I meant handmaiden. Yeah. That's what they
called black servants in the antebellum South. There's sort of this implication
in the way it's acted that she and Katherine
have a longer history. And maybe they're just putting
on this servant charade while they're in the Confederate
territory of Mystic Falls. Like Emily always seems to
be smirking secretively. Like it's a little game they're
playing like, Oh, ha ha. We have fun here on this plantation. Maybe there are plenty of
points on Emily's timeline where she is not a slave and
she's just out there living her best life. But that's the point when we
see her in every flashback that's the outfit. Her ghost is apparently
wearing for all eternity. Let's try to consult the Wiki
to learn more personality. Little is known about
Emily's personality based on the number of
flashbacks she appeared in as she performed minimal roles in them. Cool. Bonnie herself is
the only black person on the principle cast. And she never seems to
wrestle with the idea that Mystic Falls has all
this Confederate history or that her ancestors were slaves. In fact, it's noteworthy that
racism seems to just not exist in Mystic Falls. There's a suggestion of
classism and Amber Bradley is Only on the court. So the patent doesn't look like its founding families only, which Tyler's dad is the mayor. And there are multiple girlfriends. He's afraid to bring home because they're not good
enough to impress his parents. But the characters in
question are always white. It's Vicky, right? Matt sister. Yes. Ma'am. That's what you get when you
bring the trash into the party. Matt is the only poor person in town. And I'm not saying this would instantly become a better show. If it had a grim arc wherein Bonnie is discriminated
against based on her race. Even if they had tried that I'm sure they would have
handled it very badly but like they decided to have
the town be so into tradition. They decided to keep it set in the South and they decided
to have all these flashbacks. That's what makes the whole experience. So surreal. The echoes of racism and
slavery are all over this place but it's only ever presented
as a colorblind utopia. There's this one exchange
Tyler has with his mom. And I think it unintentionally
really beautifully sums up the issue of race in
"The "Vampire Diaries". Tyler's ancestral estate was
this big plantation house and he finds a big, suspicious
looking werewolf holding cell in the basement because
his family are wearable. When he tries to ask his
mom about it, this happens This is the South honey but no one likes to reminisce
about the old slave days. Yeah, sure. They don't care. What was the original Plantation house, beautiful
antebellum architecture. And if it hadn't burned to the ground would
probably be living in it. Hmm. What's the deal with the
freaky underground cellar. We don't talk about those kinds of rules. The house was beautiful. Tyler, a beautiful house But we don't talk about those rooms. Oh, that's weird. I don't have a post-it up on my creepy bulletin board for racism. I could've sworn, I put one up there. Number 22 Elena leaves
at the end of season six the actress who played
Elena decided she wanted to leave the show. There was a lot of drama surrounding
her reasons for leaving. And the only reason she ever
gave was that she felt Elaine this story had reached an end. That's obviously a fake reason because like CW shows never
have natural steady arc. So they just kind of
putter around from season to season with greatly varying
quality until the show ends. You can't tell me the show ran out of ideas for Elena
after season six in any way they hadn't already run out
of ideas after season four. There's obviously a
super dramatic fan theory about how she left the show because of her breakup with her
CoStar who plays Damon. They apparently dated for
years and then broke up. And then he got married shortly before her decision to leave. I think that sounds fake. That's all I have to say about that sounds like little kid logic. I would wager that her departure had a
much more boring explanation. Like she was tired of living in Georgia for the bulk of the year. She had worked one job for
the majority of her twenties and hadn't had an opportunity
to go out for film roles. Maybe she asked for a bigger
salary and didn't get it. Maybe she heard some potential storylines for season seven and
thought they were real dumb. Whatever. The reason with
six seasons under her belt I feel like it would be reasonable at this point for the
showrunners to just end the show. But no, they continued
it for two more seasons. How you ask don't worry. I got you. So our pitch perfect villain
hates the main characters and loves drama. And he decides to play Selena
under a sleeping curse. So she will be in a coma until the moment her
best friend Bonnie dies. This is drama for all,
but especially for Damon who is in love with and dating Elena because it forces him to
either kill Bonnie or wait. Like, I don't know, 80 years Please don't go looking for
some weird witchy work around because as the incredibly
powerful leader of the Geminis I rigged this so that if
you do try to outsmart it both you and Elena will die instantly. It also leaves the writers
a convenient way to write Elena off indefinitely but be able to suddenly bring her back. If the opportunity
arises, it's pretty dumb and the villain should
have just killed Elena. It's not like death is
permanent in the series anyway but Hey, maybe they can make this work. I mean, yeah it's a pretty bad sign when
your lead actress decides she's over it and wants to
leave, but it's not like Elena was the glue holding
"The "Vampire Diaries" together for better or for worse. "The "Vampire Diaries"
is largely a fantasy about the hot boys that Elena is dating or could
be dating Elena in her time on the show was just the
conduit for that fantasy. So as long as some girls are dating
some sexy Halloween monsters we've got a show. So let's embark on our next point. Number 23, the Elena problem Elena was never a very character. You think? I mean one thing by that, but
I actually mean two things. You'll see, we'll get there. I don't want to make it
sound like I hate Elena. I've already talked about characters that I
hate and she wasn't there. But at the end of the day,
there's just not a lot to her. Elena is nice. She's very beautiful. And we're told she has
all these good traits. It doesn't help that the series begins after what we're told has
been a huge personality shift for Elena in the pilot episode she's returning to
school for the first time after her parents died in a
car crash over summer break. So we're told all this foundation to Elena that we just don't get to see. We are told last year she was popular but now she doesn't like to go
out and socialize that much. We're told she used to
cheerlead, but she doesn't do it. Now we are told she likes to read because she borrows a copy of
weathering Heights one time and then never expresses
an interest in literature. Again Weathering Heights by Alice Bell. I've lots of books that keep it. No, but I would like to read it again. BPD does show us things
about Elena too, but only in the broadest sense and
in pretty unrelatable ways it shows us that she's a good person by which I mean that when
vampires want to kill people she's like, no, don't kill people. That's wrong. We are shown that she's
loyal by which I mean that when vampires wants to
kill her friends, she says, no don't kill my friends. Take me instead. We're also showing that her family keeps
stock photos in the frames. They hang on their walls. So none of that is even the Elena problem. I'd like to focus on one particular thing
we are told about Elena. It's the saddest thing. And the thing we're told the most often Elena used to be fun. Yes. You like the cheerleader type of Elena. Oh, it's just cause her parents died. Yeah. I mean, she's Just totally going through a block phase. She used To be way more fun That she both was fun and had fun before the
death of her parents. To me, I feel like you hear
this concept at the beginning of a story and you think
maybe this will be resolved. Like maybe Elena needs to
get her zest for life back but she doesn't change or become
more carefree or whatever. And the show doesn't
concern itself with this. If anything, Stephanie
and Damon's interest in her seems to STEM from
how Solon she is and the fact that she looks like their
old girlfriend vampires. I don't want to say that
a moody introspective character is inherently a bad thing. Some people are just like that. But one of the characters that
keeps mournfully telling us that Elena used to be fun is Elena. I used to be more fun. Yeah. I get the sense that she
liked who she was before. She just can't reach it anymore. She suffered a tragedy and now has this existential dread where normal life feels trivial and meaningless. She's too. In her head. She can't care about high
school things anymore or enjoy cheerleading,
which she used to love. Then season after season, we see her go through this gauntlet of
grief, terror, violence Beyond happy Anything. The narrative
confirms her worldview like your existential dread was right. Elena. The things that
mattered to you emotionally and brought you joy
are trivial in the face of giant world ending problems
that plague you constantly. Then Jeremy dies. And it's the straw that
breaks the camel's back. And she switches her good switch to evil but even an evil mode. She's not fun. Evil. She's like completely numb. I mean, listen to the,
on the nose pop song. They play at the party. She's three. You were trying to keep
me from during the party. So party here Even have her say it again later, like you Get it. I don't care. Didn't you listen to my song and contrast her against
other vampires in evil mode. Other vampires are killing people. Yeah. But they're also pouring margaritas and singing karaoke. And Elena is here. Like I think a lie in
the middle of the road. There's this sequence
where evil Elena goes to a cheerleading competition just so she can feed on the other teams. And when it's time for their performance Caroline gets tossed up in the air and Elena is just like, Hmm what if I drop her like
an intrusive thought that she just acts on to see what happens? And you look at her face
after and she's not like, Hey which is definitely how I'd be. If I had just dropped Caroline,
because it's hilarious. He's just totally blank. She wasn't mad. It didn't excite her or make her happy. She just doesn't feel anything. If you're wondering
how the humanity switch plot gets resolved, Jeremy
just comes back to life. Yeah, that's it. He does a spell. Cool. I don't know what
we're supposed to take away from that. So it's just this bizarre elephant in the room that Elena goes
through the entire series dealing with trauma that was set up in the pilot and it's
just never resolved. What kills me is that this
show could have so easily tied in the growth moment
that Elena needed to have actually not to be petty, but
I counted the opportunities. They had to do that. And didn't, you know, roads not taken which could have had some
meaning for Elena's character. I counted five roads. Elena was with her parents
when their car went off a bridge into a
river and they drowned. So it's pretty obvious that
she's grappling with a combo of normal grief and very
strong survivor's guilt. That's only compounded later by how many other
characters end up directly or indirectly endangered
or dead because of her. But this is a vampire show and Elena ends up becoming a vampire. And I feel like that arc could
have been her teaching moment of Empire's existence
is inherently selfish. They need to drink blood to survive. So every day of Elena's existence
would become an assertion that she has a right to live
and a right to take up space. I think there's just implied that drinking blood is
self-care, but it's not not that figuratively or literally. So that's road, number
one, Elena being a vampire. It leads to an epiphany about how she has a right
to live and enjoy life. And if we're not going to
ever be a vampire forever then shoot, let's look at the
cure in the exact same way. The cure is in a literal sense life. And there's only one dose. But the question of
whether Elena deserves to have it is given surprisingly
little contemplation by Elena herself. The one time she tries to turn it down it's because they need it. That episode is a bargaining
chip for the villain. Like Rebekah wants the cure. So she gets mad about it. But every single other character just like unanimously decides that Elena should be the one to get it. When they get a second dose of the cure through which magic time travel,
they're all just like here. This is for Elena. So whoosh, that was road number two. Oh no guys. It looks like we missed
the exit back there. Elena deciding that she wants and deserves the cure
as a decisive character beat could have been your resolution. But now I'd like to rewind a little. I mentioned that Elena becomes a vampire but I didn't tell you how,
because it's important. So Elena becomes a
vampire when Matt is run off the road and go straight off whiskery bridge and into
the water, the same spot the same circumstances as the
crash that killed her parents maybe the council should
have allocated some funds toward better guardrails
instead of spending it all on food empire on encompasses
as if it wasn't clear enough the scene is very intentional
with its parallels cutting between the current accident
and the one with her parents. We see Stephan swim down to the car where Elena's father
is the only one conscious and Elena's father insists that he saved her first in current day. Elena insists that Stephan
safe, Matt, by the way I know this scene is sad,
but it's also kind of funny. Like everybody's here
having full on conversations in their submerged cars
in this amount of time you could have just saved
everybody for that matter. If you've already got the car door open and some people are conscious why can't Stephan just
yank those seatbelts and float everyone up together. Anyway, Elena gives her life to save Matt and it's presented as beautiful and good. And the way it's intercut with
the previous accident implies that Elena is making amends. The whole series she's felt guilty that she didn't drown
in that car that night. And now she's had a chance to do it over. And her choice was to drown. I'm just going to say it. I don't like this. The circumstances, the cutting
between the two crashes the sad pop song. It all seems to suggest that this was what was meant to happen. That it's sad, but Elena
is fulfilling her destiny by dying in the water under Wiki bridge Cosmic would be possible to get into two accidents in the same bridge. I don't know. Maybe it was fate drawing me back saying that I cheated death. The first time this
bridge is where your life should have ended. Not just once, but twice. I liked this car crash sequence so much that it accounts for the next
three roads not taken root. Number three is my least
favorite, but I'll say it anyway. Have Elena saved Matt? That's it? This car crash was a pivotal moment in Elena's life and she has
been handed a symbolic do-over. So how about instead of
floating there passively with her seatbelt buckled, she grabs Matt and help Stephan get him to
shore in a thematic sense. I don't like this because
to me it would imply that it was Elena's
responsibility to save her parents the first time around and that
she somehow failed in that. And I don't think that's a good message for a survivor's guilt storyline. It suggests that the survivor's
guilt is true and warranted but whatever it's possible if that would give Elena closure. So I added it to the list. Okay. Read number four in the show Atlanta gets her wish and dies for Matt but unbeknownst to her, she has
vampire blood in her system. So instead of staying dead,
she wakes up as a vampire. I don't like that because
it takes away her choice. So rude number four is
just having Elena choose to become a vampire. Maybe she carries some vampire blood on her person in case of emergencies. It's actually kind of incredible
that they don't do that. Like why doesn't every
human character just do that all the time. In this universe, we are shown that you can just keep blood
in a little violent room temperature and it's
indefinitely shelf stable. So like Damon wants her to be vampire. So maybe Damon has given
her a vial of blood. Like if you're ever in a
life or death situation drink this as opposed to dying. And she takes it to humor
him, but she's like, okay I don't want to be a vampire. I'm never going to drink this. So fast forward to the car crash. And she is now literally
reliving the incident that her survivor's guilt tells her. She shouldn't have survived the first time and she can tell Stephan to save Matt or whatever when they swim away. And now we have this
convenient scenario where she is trapped underwater with a ticking clock until she drowns. And she has to make this choice. So that's your opportunity for Elena to have a moment of like, no I want to keep living at all costs and you can still have an angst later because she didn't want to be a vampire but at least this is a way to wrap up one of her emotional story arcs. All right. And now road number five first. I don't want Matt in the car. I think it should be Jeremy. He's just her family. So it's a better parallel if you so little to do in the story. Anyway, from there, I figured
she could die to save him like she did for Matt and then come back of empire and hate that
she's a vampire, but then like the person she saves
should have survivor's guilt. It's incredible that they didn't do that. Matt feels guilty but it's not like
traumatic survivor's guilt. It's like normal guilt. Like, Oh man, I really owe you one, bro. How is she? I guess she's fine. Considering there's
anything I can do, you know short of giving her a
ride, he'll let me know. Right. Only lied because she
told Stephanie to save me first She's a vampire because of me. So I'd like to pay back or forward. So if Jeremy had survivor's
guilt, like Elena had Elena would now be
seeing her own situation from the opposite perspective. And she would be able to see
that there's no reason to feel guilty. I just feel like that could
have been a healing experience for her, for how many
seasons we were with Elena. I don't feel like we
got to see an evolution. She didn't even have any other
like minor flaws to work on. So I can't even be like,
she became more confident cause she was always
pretty self possessed. The Elena in the series finale
is identical to the Elena. We meet in the pilot except
she has a boyfriend now. So they have this final
voiceover from Elena and it's hitting a lot of the
same beats as the voiceover from the pilot. And we're meant to be
like, how far we've come? And it's like, yeah, how far
we've come chronologically. It's been eight years. And a lot of stuff has happened around you, but you've been standing still Stephan. When I met him,
I had lost my parents and I was dead inside, but
he brought me back to life. Well, Elena, when would have been nice as an audience to witness this change if Elena is any happier in the finale it's not for any introspective reason. It's just because the devil is dead. So the evil is defeated
and there's no more drama and that's not even anything Elena did. Her friends did it while she was asleep, which
you know, good for them. But how is that in any way,
instructive to the audience? What relatable narrative
can we take away from that? The moral of this story
is really just take naps kill the devil, get a
boyfriend words to live by I guess number 24, the bony problem. So for the majority of the series Bonnie had a pretty
adversarial relationship with Damon fans of the
show already know where I'm going with this one,
it's established that which is in vampires are
already kind of natural enemies because which has worked
closely together with nature and the elements and vampires
are supernatural abominations but also he's a jerk. They always get annoyed at each other. Okay. Do yourself a favor Damon. And don't ask me about Caroline. If I do this, you and me cultures No, he probably would have
already killed her 50 times over if Elena wouldn't get mad about it. I don't know if Bonnie
is aware of that time. He served in the Confederate
army, but like that can't have helped anyway in season six, Bonnie and Damon get trapped
together in a magical realm. I don't feel like
explaining it beyond that. But season six is basically
the Bonnie Damon corporate team building retreat. So Damon and bony bond. And then at the end of
season six, Elena gets put under that aforementioned sleeping curse. And remember the curse
goes until Bonnie is dead. If Damon wanted to see Elena, anytime soon he would have to kill Bonnie,
which is drama because not only does Elena love Bonnie,
but now Damon loves Bonnie too. And my Damon loves Bonnie. I mean platonically or do Y
the Damon Bonnie relationship more or less dominated two
entire seasons of this show but the writers were dead
set against just having them date each other. And that's very stupid because
what did I say earlier? Elena's just a conduit. The whole point of the
show is to have somebody dating all these eligible vampires. It doesn't really matter
who as long as they're likable enough to serve
as an audience surrogate if nobody is allowed to
date Damon, but Elena and Elena is dead in a coffin. That means the most
popular vampire boyfriend on the show is now rendered. Celebrate. The last
thing anyone wants to do For the next six decades is like cranky bitter sexless statements Salvador. Okay. Elena would never do
that to us, which is why she gave you very clear
instructions to live your life. How does the writers' room reconcile that? What do they think they're here to do? If I may make a bold suggestion,
I think this is a problem with a pretty easy and obvious fix. Just have Bonnie and
Damon date each other. They will be happy. Maybe they'll stay together. Eventually Bonnie will die and then Damon can date Elena again if he even still wants to I feel like fans would have freaked out about this because
Bonnie is not Elena. And also a lot of CW. Viewers are teenagers and teenagers. Haven't been alive that long. So they tend to have a very specific view of love and relationships. There's this idea that
you love one person ever. Like you meet them when you're 16 and you stay with them forever. And you're not allowed to
have loved anyone before them. And you can't love anyone
after them, even if they die. So I think Damon falling in love with an additional person
while Elena was asleep would be seen as diminishing
both relationships which I don't think needs to be the case. But I mean, this happens in real life. I mean, I mean, not all
of this, what do you mean? People break up or they're widowed and they find new and
fulfilling relationships and it doesn't erase the old ones. And I think especially when your story
deals with immortal characters that that is an interesting
topic to explore. I mean, they're living multiple
lifetimes and the people around them generally aren't
and they still have the bodies and emotional turmoil of teenagers. It stands to reason that vampires would
contextualize love and monogamy in very different ways than
our typical of mortal human. She will always be an Epic
contrary to popular belief. There are actually multiple
ones, especially for families. And I mean odds are Elena is going
to be asleep for 80 years. That's the most literal case of we were on a break that I can possibly imagine. People open up relationships
when they're going to college in different States. But Elena being dead in a
box, isn't enough for you. People. If you think about it Bonnie is probably the okayest person. He could date because
by magical decree, she and Elena are not allowed
to exist at the same time. So it's not like there's any
fear of an awkward overlap. Although the whole thing
would make this part of Elena's tearful, goodbye
kind of awkward in hindsight Buy it all down. Everything that you
accomplished in your lives. Every crush me fall in love. The thing is once Selena died they gave Bonnie a lot more screen time. And a lot more of her personality came
through in the writing. And the actress has good
chemistry with Damon who she spends a lot of scenes with. Elena was the protagonist for six seasons and still mostly felt like she would just be
whatever a scene called for in a given moment. Oh, so her actress has this like Elena voice where she like clenches up her jaw and slurs, all her words. Now with all these secrets just piling up as her way to break. It sucks. I am Seriously. I don't know. I like the Elena voice. I like this actress, but I just
feel like I had to point it out because after six
seasons you really notice it. And you're like, okay open your mouth when you speak Elena. Anyway, once Bonnie became
the surrogate protagonist I found out that I liked her a lot more. She jokes around more. She has a temper. She just seems like a
more rounded out lady. I think it would be worth it to at least ruminate on the nature of immortal relationships
or an angst about it. A little bit. The show shoves Bonnie,
all the way off the table as a love interest as though
it's taboo to even consider it in a show where everyone dates
everyone, almost the entirety of season seven is intense
Damon and Bonnie moments but they have to cushion every single one by having them reiterate
that they're best friends Bonnie Bennett bar, an amazing
woman and my best friend. You're my best friend. I'm your best friend, the right body. You are my best friend. Or they can say, I love you but then they have to add
some friends zoning comment. Like I love you like Elena did. And we both miscellanea Oh You're going to make me
face a future without Elena. And you're going to help
make me the best man. I can possibly be same way she did. I hit Meyer you. I believe that I live the same way. A little of you Honey and Damon, or even
a thing in the books. At least I think they are
the writing style of the fan. Wiki is it's too beautiful to understand. Donny is Damon's weak spot. And Damon has a lot of indescribable inner tenderness for her. Their connection and relationship is known as one of the most intriguing unusual and interesting
dynamics of the entire series. According to many readers and their connection is
an intriguing combination of platonic, romantic and sexual in nature crossing a fine line
between genuinely innocent or pure and intensely dangerously,
passionate and erotic. Yeah. I have no idea
what's going on there. It's like the explanation
equivalent of breaking even. So I hear you asking, who does
Bonnie Dayton stead honestly the writers always treated all of Bonnie's relationships
as a total afterthought. She spends a lot of the
series shackled to Jeremy the worst character as if any girl in high school would date the
little brother of her friend. And even when she's with him,
he's still cheating on her with the ghosts of his two
ex-girlfriends mere episodes after she used which magic
to literally raise him from the dead, the absolute disrespect. And it just feels like such a
raw deal that she ultimately gets Enzo. Oh no. It sounds like it's
time for my Enzo tangent and has such a derivative
energy to his persona. Like a guy who caused plays
as Jack Sparrow at conventions and feels like he needs to be
in character the whole time he's introduced in the college
season of the worst season. And he just feels like a
less charismatic retread of the 40 other bad boy vampires. We've seen by that point in the show. And we already knew this is a
much needed context for Enzo. Is that audience favorite? Bad boy? Vampire Klaus had been written
off to his own spinoff series Tuesdays this fall on the CDOT. And that also effectively killed the very popular Klaus and Caroline ship clarified L short furnace. If you've seen the petition with over 20,000 signatures asking about So when Enzo comes on the show he seems to me to be a very
obvious Klaus replacement. He's this British accented
bad boy with a sad backstory. And he flirts with Caroline
every time he's around her. - Huh. See you around gorgeous. Damon mentioned you get a little judgy. And then again, he also said
he had a thing for accents. - Hi, I'm your type. Well traveled, charming accent. Dodgy moron. - And arrogant. I guess that went over as badly as every other non
Clara line Caroline ship because they gave up on
that after like a season. And then it's that familiar
pattern I was talking about. We tried to write in a love interest. The fans didn't like
it, but he still exists. And now we've got this guy
and we don't know what to do with him for a while to
even try pairing Enzo with Stephan and Damon's vampire mom, God. So finally they settle on Bonnie because Bonnie is single and is single and they have no idea what
to do with either character. That's all Bonnie's
relationships ever get to be a sad afterthought. A tying up of loose ends
to add insult to injury. Enzo then dies tragically and
unlike other dead characters he doesn't get brought back. The happy ending for their
love story is Enzo looking on as a ghost, happy for
Bonnie, but invisible to her. And to keep my promise to Enzo I'm going to live this
life to the fullest. So come on, they put the Africa brochure on top a brochure for the
whole continent of Africa. There's this sad interview where
Bonnie's actress is talking about how excited she was
for the Enzo plot line because Bonnie had never
gotten a true love. If I ever wanted was to have
this character be with a map And well look how that turned out. I'm not trying to say
there's some favoritism happening here, but
let's look at Caroline. Caroline's had many, many boyfriends. And for the most part,
they didn't just shoe horn in new characters to date her
she's been paired at one time or another with almost
every major male character. She hooked up with Damon at the start of the show, Matt Tyler,
the main werewolf close as a major series villain
for multiple seasons. And Caroline is basically
his OTP and Oh yeah she marries Stephan that's right. Despite also being one leg
of the main love triangle. Stephan gets reassigned to Caroline when Selena
breaks up with them. And it's not like that's out of line. Basically every central
cast member has dated at least two other main characters. Remember my dating tree. So how come it's okay for Stephan to move on
and see other people. But when it comes to Bonnie suddenly Damon is totally off limits. Stephan dies too. So Caroline also ends the series single but the epilogue shows
her getting a letter from Klaus in the mail. It basically says our
relationship may resume in the spinoff series. The originals airing only on the CW along with a check for $3 million. So I'd say she made out
significantly better than Bonnie. All of Caroline's relationships
are major characters in their own, right? Who later ended up paired with her because they happen
to have good chemistry but all of Bonnie's
relationships are characters hastily written into date. Bonnie, it becomes a cliche
where some new blandly attractive guy will show up at school talk directly to Bonnie. And it's like, Oh I wonder what this character's here to do. Literally the only exception to this rule is Jeremy and Jeremy sucks. Sorry. And let's not even talk about the number of
times boys date, Bonnie purely to trick her or
use her in some way. Yeah. You shouldn't be so desperate. You made it too easy. I mean, the number of times is two times but that's still multiple
times and this kind of stuff doesn't happen
to Elena and Caroline. They even have Bonnie
date, her own brother. That's not a joke. Okay. Not literally. He was informally taken
in by her strange mother. So they're not biologically related or legally related and didn't
grow up together as siblings. So like by every metric they get up. So are we like related? Oh no But this is fiction. The writers could have
simply written anything else. They can invent any boy in the world for bonding to date and
the best they can muster for her is technically not incest. Boy, of course, in the tradition
of Bonnie love interest this guy is in like two episodes and then inexplicably vanishes
never to be seen again. Maybe they got complaints for the record. Bonnie also had this adversarial
tension going on with Kai. If Bonnie was any other girl on the show they would've made some
attempt at shipping these too. I know he's a villain but everyone else States they're villains. I already said, I hate Kai. So like, thank God this didn't happen. But come on, you know, I'm right. And remember Enzo, her
eventual love interest has already spent an entire
season flirting with Caroline. That's right. Bonnie doesn't even
corner the Enzo market. And that's not a very popular market. Oh yeah. Remember that thing about Caroline's actress
trying to have a singing career and they have her sing
in the show all the time. Well, Bonnie's actress had a
better singing career here. She is on Hannah Montana. Okay. She didn't sing on that. It was just an acting gig. I just thought it was
funny, but she really singles had actual music
videos got modest radio play and we don't see Bonnie singing
on the show and like, okay it looks like she mostly did pop. And it would be incredibly
weird if the character of Bonnie was suddenly
performing dance speeds at the local bar. But she had ballads too, as if it doesn't make perfect
sense to have a witch sitting in her dark academia
bedroom jamming on a guitar. Oh, I forgot. She didn't have a bedroom
until season three. Yeah, that's right. She's one of our leads
and it took them three seasons to bother location
scouting a house for her. They have her start learning
guitar in season seven. And I really thought I was
going to get my Stevie Nicks which jam session, but they
don't do anything with it. She barely even hums along. The only consistent
hobby Bonnie gets to have is magic to help the
writers out of corners not to mention the multiple chunks of the show where they just
write Bonnie out and say she's visiting her family. It's like Miranda and
the Lizzie McGuire movie. And he really missed you
so much to deal with. Like, you need to go home. It's boring around here with that. You think you're bored? My dad's side of the
family is like wet paint that never dries. Funny. Thank God you're home. I know we talked every day, but I miss you Talk to Miranda about this stuff. She's in Mexico city Completely stopped
pretending to have ideas for what to do with
Bonnie, but don't worry. She'll be back in town in time for a story arc ending ritual. What's this, Oh, here there's something hidden
under the Bonnie problem. Oh my God. I found my racism posted number 25. Where are they now? Not the actors. I think for them the answer is mostly
minding their own business except for Alaric who
apparently spends all his time demanding that people on Twitter come to his house so he can
fight them with his guns. His friends should check
in on him by calling him. Don't show up at his house on announced. I've heard he has guns but no I'm talking about the characters. I want to give a fly over of how the series wraps up
before the series finale they aired a 40 minute retrospective. I felt like if I was doing this video I ought to watch it and I had to buy it. It's literally just a
clip show interspersed with cast interviews
and not real interviews just like one sentence of an interview which they use to set up a series of clips Stephan being an outsider with all these dark secrets
was something that I really think that Elena gravitated
towards I'm Elena I'm Stephanie. She looked at Stephen right in the graveyard when she first met him. When he reached over and took the leaf off her sweater out of her hair. Thanks. If I paid $3 to watch this I know it's not much, but it's too much. They should've paid me. Think I'm ultimately gonna
use like one clip from it. God, I wasted my time. Anyway, I had been doing my
series rewatch on Netflix but then when I got to the finale I realized it would be more
fun if instead of watching it normally I just watched it through reaction videos
of the finale on YouTube. No, no Honestly, this is way better. I wish I could have
watched the whole series like this because they cut out all the unexciting parts
that they're not reacting to. Also the energy these
people have is incredible special mention to this girl who cried
basically the entire time. She even chanted along with
Bonnie and her ancestors. She got a million views on this and she deserved every single one of them with a story like
"The "Vampire Diaries" a happy ending is difficult
by the final season they have well-established
that the afterlife is real. But if some characters are
vampires and others are dead and the vampires could
theoretically live forever there's still the threat
that they may never see their loved ones. Again. Also, if you end a vampire story with the vampires still vampires it's hard to be certain
that it's even a conclusion like they've spent eight
seasons with endless drama. So who's to say it won't go on forever. So to resolve this basically the entire cast that's made it. This far ends the series mortal Alaric is human Stephan who has been turned human and is now married to
Caroline dies before he dies. He injects Damon with his
blood turning Damon human Bonnie uses which magic
to literally destroy hell ensuring that all dead characters
are either gone forever or in heaven. Oh, and remember that sleeping curse where Elena doesn't get to wake
up until Bonnie is dead. Did it broke the spell? Yeah. When they wrote in the They specifically had the bad
guy be like, and don't even think about trying to undo this curse. If you even try, you will die instantly Incredibly powerful leader of the Geminis. I rig this so that if you do try to have smart it
both you and Elena will die. Then Elena wakes up and
Bonnie is still alive. And she's like, how is this possible? It took some time. I, I figured the switch thing out. Oh yeah. It turns out I could just undo it. So I ended it. It was kind of hard, but it
wasn't that hard, whatever. This is the best
contrivance in the finale. I'm glad Elena Caroline and
Bonnie get to be together because that's the heart
of the vampire diet. Oh my God. And we can be roommates
because we have an extra bed and we can clear out
half the closet airlines. I can't believe you're really all The strongest ship in
the show was friendship. So Stephan is dead. Tyler is dead. Enzo is dead. Jeremy is alive. Good for him. Matt miraculously, both survived and stayed human the entire series. And he's a cop. Now I think the only main character to stay a vampire is Caroline. She and Alaric opened an X-Men school for Halloween monster
children, a ghoul school. If you will, a monster high, if you will. Well, I choose I'll just use both. There's no a spinoff show about the monster school called legacies. So I assume both Lark and
Caroline will appear on there. I was impressed by just how many actors they
got to come back as spirits even if they were killed
off as early as season one Elena's parents come back
and they've been dead. The whole series Vicky comes
back and Jenna comes back. Who invited uncle John
Bonnie's grandma comes back. Caroline's mom comes back. Enzo comes back. I wonder if we're going to see... No, no they can't afford him. He's way too famous now. ♪ Nobody knows you the
way that I know you ♪ ♪ Look in my eyes I
will never desert you ♪ They did it. They brought this spooky crow back. Considering the kind of
show "Vampire Diaries" is I think it has a pretty perfect finale. They have all these callbacks to the beginning of the series,
which are very nostalgic. They have dialogue callbacks. Elena is writing in her diary again. They play the same dramatic the phrase song that
they played in the pilot. ♪ So let me go ♪ ♪ So let me go ♪ As if everything wasn't tied
up enough in a little bow. They even have an epilogue about how Elena and
Damon grow old together and then show us them
going to the afterlife and being reunited with
their loved ones in heaven. (thunder rumbles) (upbeat music) ♪ There's a smile ♪ Number 26, missed opportunities. Considering "The "Vampire
Diaries" ran for eight seasons, I am both sad and surprised to say that there were plot
developments on my wishlist which they never delivered on. Firstly, I feel like I say this about all villains in
everything, but I would have liked to see Katherine
get a redemption arc. I think the actress was so much more fun as Katherine and part of her
charm is that she's evil. But there are moments that hint at more like there's some kind
of humanity to Katherine in some seasons she's
even more ambiguously good like a loose cannon. And sometimes her interests
align with the heroes. There's one episode where
somebody is trying to kill Elena and Katherine offers
to pretend to be Elena. So when she gets attacked,
she eats the guy. And another episode after
Katherine has been turned human and Elena's of empire where Elena has to convince these vampire
hunters that she's human. So she has Katherine walk
into their party, uninvited. They should have cooperated
more often for doppelganger. Hi-jinks like that. A doppelganger is such a useful resource. We could have had a real sister sister situation on our hands. Why my doppelganger from the
portion of this video for me and you didn't even notice it could have at least been powerful frenemies but we don't even see
them interact that much probably because it's annoying to film. And when they do interact it's almost always with boring contempt. The series ends with Katherine
not only evil, not only dead but sent to hell. And then they destroy hell which I think is about as
far from a redemption arc as it's possible to get
redemption arcs, I want to be bold and ask for the biggest
redemption arc of all. I think they should
have redeemed the devil. Yeah, that's right. And there's more all the sexy bad boys in this show are redeemed by love by one of the girls and bunny. And then Def will have chemistry. They're both psychic
witches with tragic pasts. It's like I said before, take naps kill the devil, get a boyfriend. But now it's take naps. Get a boyfriend. The devil is your boyfriend. They have that stupid
lore where when the devil was tortured, played the village people his anguish caused a psychic shockwave so that it created another
dimension, which became hell. And when Enzo was killed Bonnie's anguish caused the same thing. But instead she created
a dimension that would keep Enzo's soul safe
from hell or something. These later seasons really tested. My focus sounds like the
devil's got a lesson to learn from old Bonnie and by a lesson to learn. I mean, marriage, I'm
thinking a church wedding. I mean obviously my first pick is
she should have gotten Damon. And my second pick is she
should have gotten Enzo but if both of them are
off the table, why not? The devil character has an
actual name other than the devil. But since he is the devil I only want to call him the
devil in a way it's fitting. Bonnie is the most powerful
character and in a show about dating bad boys, I
literally cannot imagine a bigger flex than redeeming
and dating the devil anyway better the devil than
single am I right ladies? The next thing I wish
for is an H2O reunion. Yeah. "The "Vampire
Diaries" features two of the three original cast members of
Australian mermaid show H2O. Just add water. I just feel like the
producers should have moved heaven and earth to get
the third mermaid on there. At least as like a villain
of the week guest star how could they not put no,
both of these characters ended up transplanted to the originals. So maybe they granted my wish on that show but honestly I doubt it. The originals has never done
anything, but let me down. I found it weird. We never got to the theme park episode. They had a traveling carnival come through town now and then,
but this show was filmed less than an hour's drive from
six flags over Georgia. I know the fictional town is
supposed to be in Virginia but I don't really care. I just really want to cross
promotional app where they take over six flags and ride monster mansion. I wish I could ride monster mansion. Mark. My words, six flags. If you ever get rid of monster mansion I will never go to your theme park. If I go to your park, I
will ride monster mansion. 14 times. I won't ride anything else. Anyway, maybe legacies will do this. It's not too late. Next thing I noticed something stupid. Like it's stupid that I noticed it. I don't think any young people
wore glasses on this show. Like none of them I'm not even certain any of
the grownups wore glasses. I that's just kind of weird. Right? It's weird. Isn't it. Anyway That's all I wanted to say about that. Next thing, nobody got a dog. That's just another thing. Nobody in this town has a dog. Next thing. It's time to get into LJ. Smith's bibliography. She has a lot of paranormal YA series and I think they should have
mined those for more content. Riverdale brought in other Archie comics properties like Josie and the Pussycats. And I think "The "Vampire
Diaries" should have done the exact same thing. You don't need to limit
yourself to just sexy vampires because all of LJ Smith's books were just about sexy boys from various
supernatural universes. The CW did adopt LJ Smith secret circle which is about sexy, which boys that series is also owned
by Alloy Entertainment. So LJ probably didn't get
a cent of that one either. It got one terrible season
of TV before being canceled. And it deserved it. But we don't have just sexy
witch boys to choose from. We have sexy psychic boys,
sexy vampire boys again. Yeah, she just did vampires again. At least she owned it this time. And my personal favorite sexy boy of unclear supernaturality who sucks you into an evil
board game, Jumanji style. Guess which series I
read in middle school? Yeah, shock surprise, it was the board game one. And in the third book, they
go to a haunted theme park. For some reason, the cover
of this book, prominently features famous midway
animatronic Laffing Sal. (man laughs) Very sexy. Actually just learn
while making this video that the board game
series has been purchased by Warner Brothers and might be getting a TV
show, which, oh my God, yes, please. Can you tell your PR
people to have me shill for this series? I'm an influencer look
at my conspiracy board. Nevermind. Can you send me a copy of
the Haunted! board game? You guys I'll say anything you want me to my damaging
my credibility right now. Send me the board game. Anyway. I think any of these could have and should have been
incorporated into VPD. Imagine you're watching season six and the gang gets sucked
into a board game. The show has spawned two spinoffs and neither one has a
very interesting premise. They're just taking supporting characters from "Vampire Diaries" and
writing about them or their kids. If you want to do spinoffs why not bring in a series
that can stand on its own? I'm just saying maybe secret
circle would have done better if it started out as a crossover. The last thing on my
wishlist, hear me out. It's Dracula. I really want to Dracula to show up. Can't tell me it's too corny. Cause the show was already plenty corny. I feel I was owed Dracula and
they can do their own take on him or whatever. Make him look young or old, make him act modern or
old timey and creepy. I just wanted him for
our last season villain. Like the cast is fighting
off all these villains of the week, feeling pretty
good about themselves. And then Dracula rolls into town. I think it should be illegal
to make a vampire story and not feature Dracula. That's it I've said my piece
actually wait, no, I haven't. If I'm making demands, I
also want Nosferatu freaky bald bat, monster looking Nosferatu. I demand Nosferatu. In conclusion, "The "Vampire Diaries" felt like it ran way too long
and spent a lot of that time meandering aimlessly,
but that's not really "Vampire Diaries" faults. I feel like it's almost
a necessary consequence of a show that's produced this way. The writers never knew how
much longer they'd have to stretch the story out. So they never knew how much
to change the status quo. That's how you get characters dying. And then being brought
back a million times you want to make big moves, but You can't commit to anything. So then that weakens the impact of everything that does happen. That's also how you get
terrible middle seasons like the college storylines which are just a lot of wheel spinning and which you can skip entirely
without too much trouble. I think this show could have had a really solid five seasons. And I'm not saying they should have ended after this season five because seasons four and
five were pretty weak. But I'm saying that if the writers had
known the whole time that they were plotting out five seasons they could have kept it really tight. Things would have probably
gone really differently and been a lot better also in my opinion and should have ended when
they graduated high school. And when they left for college you didn't get the sense that
there were bigger storylines. The writers had been waiting to bust out. It was just like they were half-heartedly trying to think of stuff. Oh, I guess they'll go to a frat party. So just stretch high school for however long you're writing the show or maybe go one year after high school but use that time to have them travel go on adventures, raise the
stakes, work toward a finale and set up what all these
characters we'll be doing in their lives or after lives. I guess the writers seemed
to have good senses of humor both in the sense that the
dialogue was legitimately funny and in the sense that a lot
of really dumb stuff happened. And in my opinion, this show was at its best when it was
being kind of stupid. The cast was generally really solid even a lot of the short-term
villains and guest stars. I also liked that it was helmed by a woman and that she
oversaw all eight seasons. She seems nice. I stan Julie Plec, I guess. Also good for her that
she gets creator credit and power over both the spinoffs. Get that coin girl. Unlike poor LJ Smith. And unlike me for that matter there's no way I'm making
a dime off this video. After I had the goal to use clips from the show I'm talking about and the clips have that
copyrighted backing music enjoy your pennies, Katy Perry. I wouldn't be making this
if I didn't have a Patreon. So either thank them or blame them. I find so much to like in this show that it's sad to see
those parts overshadowed by the bad parts, like
the bad representation or the way they handled Bonnie's character like a total bus crash. The kind where the bus is
being driven by a vampire. And the problem is wearing a magic ring. So it never dies. I feel like whenever I do see
people speaking critically of this show, it's not about any of
these legitimate reasons. It's not even about the cheesy dialogue or the bizarre plots or
the characters they hate because none of them have ever
even watched a moment of it. It's just because it's
a romance based show for teenage girls and that's
disgusting or whatever. So I'm glad we could have this nuanced conversation here today. And it only took several hours. I guess I'm cautiously optimistic that the newest series "Legacies" can give needed improvements to "The "Vampire Diaries" formula. I feel like I'm supposed to say whether I recommend
the show now, but gosh, I just spent a really long time talking about the entire show. If you can't make an informed
decision by this point I don't know what to tell you. I wouldn't recommend it for myself. It's just a really big time commitment. I hate the act of recommending TV shows. It's like, "Hey, would you like an 80 hour experience where you enjoy 35 of them?" But a lot of people really
like to watch TV shows like most of them are bad
and they watch them anyway. Like they'll just watch
20 different TV series in a given year and maybe
three of them are good. So how about if you binge watch entire
series on the regular? You should watch this one. Just add it to the pile. Just skip seasons four and five and maybe six, seven as well. You'd think that would
be confusing, but no you can just use context clues. I believe in you. Besides they have all that really graceful expository dialogue. - Last time a witch linked
me to my doppelganger. She fried my brain and I lost my memory. - So your (indistinct)
twin brother and a witch. Anything else I should know? - I'm gay and your brother. - And if you are confused you'll be confused in a funny way. Just embrace it. How about if you like Buffy watch this it's better than Buffy
and whatever you do, don't watch "The Originals." That's my job. So yes, that's my review
of "The "Vampire Diaries". You can slap that right
on the Blu-ray cover and then shrink wrap the Blu-ray together with a novelty piece of
jewelry, like a children's book. (upbeat music) ♪ There's a smile ♪ ♪ There's a smile ♪ ♪ That old feeling ♪ ♪ Deep inside ♪ ♪ Called me again ♪ ♪ Burst (indistinct) ♪ ♪ Turn away ♪ ♪ Take it easy ♪ ♪ The stars at night ♪ ♪ The sun by day ♪ ♪ They shape our dreams ♪ ♪ And light the away ♪ ♪ Maybe you feel alone ♪ ♪ Maybe you drown in sorrow ♪ ♪ Maybe your life's a bore ♪ ♪ Baby you've got tomorrow ♪ ♪ Precious life ♪ ♪ We all live (indistinct) ♪ ♪ Precious life ♪ ♪ Send your spirit ♪ ♪ In to stay ♪ ♪ And search the darkness for a face ♪ ♪ It seems all right ♪ ♪ I feel like I ♪ ♪ I need to make you understand ♪ ♪ But you'll find out ♪ ♪ In your own time ♪ ♪ Maybe you feel alone ♪ ♪ Maybe you're drowning in sorrow ♪ ♪ Maybe your life's a bore ♪ ♪ You will die tomorrow ♪ ♪ Precious life ♪ ♪ We are living now ♪ ♪ Precious life ♪ ♪ Precious life ♪ ♪ Precious life, precious
life, precious life ♪ ♪ Precious life ♪ Along with all my VPD swag, I ordered a real vervain bracelet. Like it has real pure verbena
extract in the chamber. It turns out vervain by
itself smells so bad. There's no way Elena tricked her aunt into wearing perfume of this stuff. There's no way the town water wasn't undrinkable when
it was spiked with it. There's no way vampires who are supposed to have a
heightened sense of smell would try to compel Elena without immediately smelling
that this was around her neck. In fact, there's no way you could walk into a human gathering wearing this without everyone in the
room immediately being like, "What is that smell?" It's not even bad in an interesting way. It's just so bitter. It smells like if celery was mad at you. I don't care how many quirky theme parties they throw every year. If the tap water in Mystic Falls comes out smelling like this, I am moving away.
THE SERIES THAT BROUGHT WOMEN TO THE FRONT LINE
TWO AND HALF HOURS??!! Well yes, i´ll take it.
I hope everyone that complained about her not uploading now understands how much work she was doing.
Are we really going to ignore the fact that "horsegirl" is a working promo code on gfuels site
2 HOURS?! As someone who watched this show in on/off in high school I couldn't wait when Jenny tweeted she was working on a
TVDVPD video, but 2 HOURS!!! I was not expecting her to go this hard, I'm screamingEdit: Love the blood bag
I need that embroidered on a pillow.
'I binged it' fucking killed me
My two fav things to watch (for very different reasons) coming together. Love it.
I had a really hard time keeping up with this, there were just so many zany details to keep track of. The entire part where Jenny was talking about "The Elena problem", she said a bunch of stuff that made absolutely no sense to me, and then I realized it's because I mixed up Elena and Katherine.