I like vampires as much as any other slightly romantically inclined middle aged female. I’m definitely more a Whedon than Meyers girl, but I certainly understand the appeal the latter has to my kid’s female classmates and their moms. So I tried The Vampire Diaries for its sexy vampires but I stayed for its smart plotting and believable characters. As Annie Petersen describes in her “Vampire Diaries: The Best Genre Television You’re not Watching“, its appeal is not in spite but because of its generic qualities. Moreover, it is a genre show that embraces narrative complexity and revels in its quick pace, introducing and killing off characters ceaselessly, yet giving most of them enough of an identity to make us care.

There are two characteristics Annie doesn’t address that stand out to me: the depiction of women and the way problems aren’t artificially caused or perpetuated. All too many shows these days may feature strong female characters, but they often do little more than talk about or for the men. The Vampire Diaries has a set of surprisingly complex and even more astoundingly likeable characters who consistently are depicted as real friends. They fight and disagree; they forgive and make up. As thelana describes in her excellent post on Female Friendly Shows: This is the show that had an entire episode just dedicated to the three main female characters sitting down together, catching each other up, apologizing to each other and then having a seance together. Most importantly, they actually talk to one another about their lives and worries and do not constantly keep things hidden from one another.

Which brings me to my other point, namely, the way misunderstandings or plain ignorance often get used as plot points. While foreshadowing may be a useful device and narrative irony certainly has its place, I often grow frustrated with shows when the entire plot depends on a misunderstanding or a refusal to be open and honest, when there is no storyline except for people acting less aware and smart than we know them to be and than we expect adults (or even near adults) to behave. Admittedly, there are certainly instances of that here: if you know there are evil bloodsucking vampires around town, it’d behoove you to warn your family not to invite strangers into the house.

And yet, the show doesn’t rely on using character ignorance to create drama, allowing me to watch without rolling my eyes or yelling at the screen. When Elena’s young, pretty aunt gets hit on by what we know is an evil hungry vamp, she not only doesn’t fall for it but also has been protected by her niece with the necessary herb. When Elena does not get invited into a home she accurately deducts that this person might indeed know about vampires. When the viewer starts to suspect that Elena’s birth mother might be random history teacher and vampire hunter’s dead wife, the characters figure it out as well and, as a bonus, actually share that information.

Also, unlike more episodic genre shows that are built around the secrecy that often comes with otherness, such as Buffy or Smallville, The Vampire Diaries refuses to return to the status quo of general ignorance. Instead, when Elena’s brother is confronted with weird behavior and strange faces and drained bodies, he actually Googles vampires and confronts his quasi girl friend. Or rather, and I’ll end with this more unsettling example of intrusive product placement, he Bings it. So where the show itself manages to make me belief in these characters because they act and think like real people, it is that commercial intrusion which, as Rebecca Tushnet argues, destroy[s] suspension of disbelief more than the presence of vampire diaries.

It’s a teen show, it’s vampire-based, you might think it’s derivative Twilight crap.

But Vampire Diaries is doing something particularly skillful with a scenario that could as flat as the rest of the product that passes for programming on The CW.  And here’s why.  

1.) The Set-Up:

Vampire Diaries tells the tale of a beautiful teenage (orphan) girl who attracts the affections of two century-old vampire babe brothers. They love this girl, Elena, because — GET THIS — she is a dead ringer for the ancient vampire, Katherine, who turned them into vampires — but that they both loved!

Elena’s doppleganger, Katherine, circa Civil War

2.) It’s pure genre.

Genre television works within a (relatively) established paradigm, draping its narrative on the fact that it is pre-established as a “procedural,” “a sitcom,” etc.  Which isn’t to say that genre television is bad; but that there are expectations that show challenges or confirms to various extents.  Vampire Diaries is teen television and follows many of those codes, but it is also melodrama.

Let’s not consider melodrama a genre, but, as per Linda Williams, a “mode.”  Thus it’s a way of expressing a certain genre, and Vampires Diaries is a teen television expressed in the melodramatic mode — which means that it employs a high level of seriality coupled with intense, skyrocketing emotions.

There is a lot of mooning and looking into the distance and a complex web of exboyfriends, secret hook-ups, and frenemies.  There’s ample use of an earnest indie soundtrack, manifesting the melos that accentuates the moments when speech simply fails.

Yet the show manages to pull off this who-loves-who, who’s-a-witch and who’s-a-vampire, who-are-our-heroine’s-real-parents business with a straight face.  Therein lies the key to Vampire Diaries‘ genre success: it revels in its very genre-ness.  Vampire Diaries takes the melodrama to 11.

But it’s also not camp, which is crucial.  We like to think that teenagers only want snarky or satirical texts, but sometimes we all want emotions to be worthy and legitimated.  Which highlights another crucial function of the melodrama: it makes the world seem, even for one moment, morally legible.  In the end, our vampire hero loves and cherishes our human heroine, and all is right with the world.

3.) Intertextuality.

Vampire Diaries is the child of no less a teen auteur than Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek). Even as the text oscillates between flashbacks of the antebellum South and an absurdly quaint contemporary Carolinian town, it also manages to acknowledge and play upon its antecedents.

In one of my favorite moments of this show, the “bad” vampire brother leafs through Twilight, exclaiming “What is up with this Bella girl? Edward is so whipped!”  What’s more, the good and bad brothers are clear ‘descendants’ of Buffy’s Angel and Spike, and the text regularly highlights its knowledge of the vampire genre, explicitly manifesting and debunking aspects of vampire lore.  Vampire Diaries is earnest and straight-faced, but it’s also smart, like that cute nerd in high school.

4.) Innovation.

As a pre-sold, Alloy Entertainment Product, it could rest on the laurels, riding the cultural wave of Twilight and True Blood.

But Vampire Diaries regularly employs intricate flashbacks to another century.  Costumes!  Teen vampires meets narrative complexity! It’s also crafted a heroine who is no Bella — she’s smart, has her own volition, and speaks her mind.  She has sexual desire, and isn’t meant to be some cipher for the return to the cult of true womanhood, as is made so disturbingly transparent in Twilight. The show refuses to be abstinence porn (Twilight) or soft-core erotica (True Blood).  There’s a coven of vampires locked in a vault beneath a seemingly peaceful Southern hamlet.  Can you get more obviously, beautifully allegoric?

I realize I may have made the show sound like a blood and thunder soap opera  — The Perils of Pauline meets My So-Called Life.  Good.  That’s exactly what I was hoping for.  Both of those ‘programs’ demonstrate, in very different ways, the pinnacle of melodramatic plotting.  And Vampires Diaries deserves its place amongst them – not to mention your viewership.  So why aren’t you watching?