Despite the fact that I am, in vampire years, about 375 years too old for “The Vampire Diaries,” I’m so hooked after one episode that I feel like Vlad the Impaler when he was down to his last half pint of O positive.
This is a shock, because I’ve grown wearier of vampire morons than I have even of reality show morons.
But this one’s different.
Based on the best-selling young adult novels, the story begins on the first day of the new school year. Elena (Nina Dobrev) and her younger brother, Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen, the grandson of the late and very great Steve McQueen), have lost their parents over the summer in a car accident. They now live with their young aunt in their hometown of Mystic Falls.
Elena dreads returning to school and being the tragic girl, while Jeremy has taken a different route on the road to recovery — he’s become a drug dealer.
Lucky for Elena, she’s got Bonnie (Katerina Graham), her best friend, who is down-to-earth — until she starts having psychic visions.
Also new to school that first day is the (literally) devastatingly good-looking Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley), a (yes!) brooding guy who is hiding the fact that he’s (oh no!) a vampire. And a guilty one at that.
Elena goes to the cemetery to visit her parents’ graves and to write in her diary when fog starts overtaking the hillside and a raven alights atop the grave. She tries to run, falls, cuts her leg and bumps into Stefan, who also is visiting his dead relatives in the cemetery. (Not all the Salvatores were, er, “made” men.)
While Stefan tries to be empathetic, there is that luscious bleeding leg, so he does what vamps do second best — he bolts in a nanosecond, disappearing into the mist.
Turns out that Elena may be the reincarnation (or the descendant of) Stefan’s first love, Katherine, who died in the 19th century (in the novels, it was the Renaissance, but who cares?) and he’s come back to get her.
OK, so it’s a plot ripped directly from the moldy bandages of the original “Mummy” but, hey, if it worked several million times before, why shouldn’t it work now?
Seems that the long-dead Katherine bought the farm after falling in love with both Stefan and his even better-looking brother, Damon (Ian Somerhalder). Damon, a bad-boy vamp without the guilt, it turns out, has also returned to town from the undead.
So, where’s the vicious, bloody vamp action?
It starts in the opening scene and continues throughout “The Vampire Diaries” with such ferocity and speed that it’s truly scary.
These killers are more fun than a cemetery full of psycho zombie killers on Halloween.