Part of it could simply be that many of us don’t enjoy watching our own lives (i.e., Thirtysomething was a great show until I tried watching it AS a thirtysomething with kids and mortgage :); part of it could be that especially females may not dare to admit these guilty pleasures until they are older, less dependent on peer opinion, maybe even being able to justify it via graduate degrees and PhDs; but I think you’re right that we may consider realism differently than younger women do.

Maybe we focus on different aspects of general human nature rather than details? I’m thinking of David Simon’s defense of the realism of Treme this week where he talks about details and quotes Picasso, saying that art is the lie that shows the truth. Now, comparing TVD to Treme might be like comparing Treme to Picasso 🙂 But the underlying idea that it may not be the details of teendom but the truths about relationships and familial ties and compromises it addresses. And I think I’ve totally talked myself into a corner here, because I’m not sure these are at all the reasons why your students didn’t like it, and I’m not even sure I could support these lofty claims about the show…

So…instead of deleting, I’ll just throw it out there…maybe you can make sense of it? (Read my mind, so to speak : )

I think all of these, clearly seriality and romance, but probably mostly the melodrama. and while I loved Buffy to pieces, I think there was a self-consciousness and awareness of the central tropes and metaphors that I don’t feel in TVD, which is both more naive and more earnest maybe?

I’m just glad I’m not the only one here enjoying her not-so-guilty pleasure!

I agree that the non-vampiric plots seem to give the characters greater depth. It certainly makes them more interesting, and gives the show a feel more akin to a traditional teen drama than SF genre series a lot of the time. Maybe it’s just because Melinda Clarke is on the series at the moment, but a lot of these recent eps have reminded me so much of The OC, etc., with the traditional teen drama that gets complicated by vampires…rather than the other way around.

As for SF/horror and soap qualities–what soap qualities do you mean, exactly? The seriality? The melodrama? The romance? I think Buffy had all of those elements, at various points…

The non-vampiric plots are interesting, because they don’t necessarily mirror vampiric metaphoric ones nor do they necessarily complicate them. They are standing on their own, which might be why the characters feel so developed–they get to exist and mean beyond their relation to Elana and the brothers.

And I keep on thinking about sf/horror genre shows that contain that much soap opera like qualities and am coming up empty. Would we have to go back to Dark Shadows or am I just missing more obvious examples (maybe BSG might fit, but that’s more serious drama than the melodrama we see in TVD).

Add to that the fact that Stefan keeping that knowledge from her doesn’t cause Elena to freak out and vow never to speak to him again. Rather, she sees it for what it is–his attempt to find the truth before bringing it to her and upsetting her unnecessarily.

Likewise, in the double date episode, we get to see characters getting upset about things NOT related to vampires (on a VAMPIRE show, no less! Who’d’ve thunk?). Rather, we see one character having problems with his rather derelict mom and another worrying over whether her boyfriend is over his ex-girlfriend. This is refreshing, I think.