The stakes are life and death, literally!
From the we-hardly-knew-ye Vicki (Kayla Ewell) and Jeremy’s dearly departed Anna (Malese Jow) to last night’s most recent victim that on the off chance you have yet to seen the episode we aren’t about to spoil here, if there is one thing we continue to marvel at when it comes to THE VAMPIRE DIARIES is the often expeditious way in which the creative team kills off characters — no matter how much of a fan favorite they’ve become, or how they look shirtless. Suffice to say, television is that much more exciting when you know that at any given moment, any one of the show’s plethora of supporting and guest starring characters are at a real risk of turning the common kitchen knife they were just moments ago using to help prepare dinner, and stabbing themselves in the stomach (again, go watch last night’s episode!)
Story moves faster than a locomotive.
And speaking of last night’s episode, as Elena, Bonnie and Caroline peered down the vervain-filled well that was rumored to have housed the moonstone that Katherine so desperately wanted, we couldn’t help but chuckle for a moment. Why? Well, if this were any other show, the episode might have quickly faded to black in an effort to tease yet another plot-line (cough*LOST**cough*cough). Thankfully, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES isn’t any other show and rather than continually stretch out the arrival of Katherine, the introduction of wolves to Mystic Falls and virtually every other plot twists that continues to be thrown at fans a mile-a-minute, co-creators Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec aren’t holding back anything. Including…
Killer Cliffhangers!
Seriously. How WIlliamson, Plec and the entire writing staff of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES manage to do it on a weekly basis we’ll never know. But if there was a Guinness Book of World Record for string of jaw-dropping cliffhangers, surely THE VAMPIRE DIARIES would be more than deserving of it. So much so that that we can’t recall an ending to an episode that didn’t have us furiously calculating the exact number of hours, minutes and seconds until the next one.
Paging Emmy Voters, Line one.
(Note: Stop reading now if you have yet to watch last night’s episode) Solid storytelling and witty-one liners can only take a show so far. For a series to really reach the level of addictiveness that THE VAMPIRE DIARIES has, one needs the acting chops to back it up. Which luckily, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES has in spades as evidence by last night’s episode, see: Stefan’s (Paul Wesley) heartbreaking reaction to Elena’s insistence that they break up for the good of their loved ones, Damon’s (Ian Somerhalder) ability to maintain our sympathies even in the midst of ripping someone’s heart out, Caroline (Candice Accola) having a heart-to-heart with her mother moments before she erased her memory and Jeremy’s (Steven R. McQueen) continued evolution from a sullen self-involved teenager to a confident man willing to risk everything to find his purpose. What’s more, Nina Dobrev — who unfortunately will never get the accolades she deserves being pigeonholed on a CW Vampire show continues to thrill and amaze us each and every week as she juggles two deliciously different characters (Elena and Katherine) in incredibly believable fashion.
A not-to-shabby cast in the looks department never hurst.
At the risk of destroying all credibility and painting ourselves as little more than an incredibly shallow TV Addict, we think that fans would be hard-pressed to disagree with the fact that television is that more fun when the stars look like. We’re just sayin’ 