I'm going to go slightly against the grain here. I decided to check out the show despite having misgivings. It wasn't as bad as I thought, though that's not saying its all that good either.
One thing that I noticed was a blase kind of attitude, on the part of the TV producers, regarding underage drinking. I was a bit surprised to see almost all the teens drinking alcohol, even the good girl Elena. I thought the show opened with more bite (pun intended) than I expected, but after that I guess it's all Twilight-lite (never saw the movie but it seems like it has that kind of vibe). I'm not sure why Elena wasn't freaked out when Stefan just shows up and disappears, or why she invited him into her house at the end, when it was late as hell at night. Where was her aunt? The evil brother Damon has a nasty enough smirk and I did like how they explained why Stefan could walk in the sunlight and that he was weaker than Damon because he didn't feast on human blood. I also didn't quite buy the dialogue the teens were speaking. I've been out of high school for a long time now, but I just can't see kids today saying some of those lines. How many teens know about Hitchcock or The Birds for example?
I think it has the potential to be a guilty pleasure and perhaps a safer alternative to the Twilight movies and it should do well perhaps for its core audience, which I'm assuming are young teenage girls. I was reared on Blade and he would've chopped up diary writing vamps like Stefan in seconds.
She may have a winner with the impossibly pretty, hairless chested vampires.
