Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A century old vampire falls in love with a young girl. He has to be near her. He has to know her. They meet each other and have a torrid heart wrenching love affair until another man is introduced into the mix. Now the young girl is torn between these two men. Whomever will she pick? What will be the fallout from her selection? Why the hell do we all care? Why haven’t you all stopped me yet because I KNOW YOU ALL HAVE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE!! It’s been used several times. In recent memory? Angel/Buffy/Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Bill/Sookie/Eric from True Blood. Edward/Bella/Jacob from Twilight. And now (and for the purposes of this article), the ever present Stefan/Elena/Damon love triangle that quite consistently drives the story for The CW’s hit series The Vampire Diaries. With the fourth season of the show based around the L.J.Smith book series of the same name about to premiere tonight, I decided to take a look at The Vampire Diaries: The Complete Third Season DVD boxed set as a refresher (YES I SAID REFRESHER!).
I’m a good man. I help my friends. I love my family. I don’t do drugs. I uh…I do drink. I do that, but I don’t hurt people. I’ve never maliciously wounded anyone. I’m a good person. I, however, am ADDICTED to teen dramas. That is my vice. You cannot make me feel bad for it. You cannot stop me from watching them. I simply do not care about your opinion of me. I remember watching Party of Five for the first time when I was a small child, and since then, I’ve been hooked. Whether it’s Dawson’s Creek (my personal favorite [I own all six seasons {TEEN ANGST!!!}]), One Tree Hill (the show really stopped being good after the fourth season), Gossip Girl (the show really stopped being good after the first season) or The OC (four wonderful seasons of Seth, seething, scandal and f*$%ing Marissa….), I’ve always had a soft spot for these shows. They draw me in with their complex characters living complex lives (that’s really a lie. They’re all caricatures of shows that came before them [OH! Look! It’s the poor kid or the outcast that’s suddenly part of the in crowd! {Yeah! I’m lookin at you Josh Schwartz! <JK! I love your work! Chuck is the BOMB!|Did I just say JK? Oh sweet hell! I’m turning into a Diablo Cody character!|>}]). I really do like the opportunity to turn my brain off a bit and let the everyday lives of the inhabitants of Capeside, Tree Hill, or Mystic Falls take over.
One of the issues with “The Vampire Diaries” is that there is a bit of a mythology to the series that you need to know. Mythology that I’ve somewhat comically covered over on tvdalahunter.tumblr.com. A show that started with a bunch of humans has now become a veritable smorgasbord of supernatural creatures.There are vampires and witches and werewolves (OH MY!). We have psychics, ghosts,doppelgängers and something called a “hybrid” (not the car driven by self-righteous people [it’s a vampire and werewolf combined {a werepire or vamwolf if you will <those both suck. Screw it. They’re hybrids>}]). And then there’s ONE GUY! ONE DAMN GUY! that is just a human. This third season starts with a pretty compelling ghost story that centers around one of my favorite characters on the show as well as brings back some of the people that the show had lost in the first season. Also, Stefan, our resident good guy vampire boy scout that oh so dearly loves Elena, has fallen off the wagon. And by “fallen off the wagon”, I mean that he is dismembering sorority girls and reassembling their dead bodies (Yeah. This teen drama is a bit darker than “OH NO! Will Peyton Sawyer decide to do cocaine to be popular like the bands she books?”). This season gave actor Paul Wesley an opportunity to explore a different side of his character, and as an actor he really seemed to relish in that chance. I’ve just never cared for the character of Stefan, regardless how interesting they try to make him. My favorite character on the show, Caroline (played by the lovely Candice Accola), isn’t given as much heavy lifting this season as she was given last season with her vampire transformation.She fell to the wayside in favor of the back story of “The Originals”. The Originals are The Vampire Diaries vampire genesis. They are the ones that kicked off the whole blood line. One of the VERY FEW special features on the DVD set is a look into the history of not only the show’s original vampires but also a real world study of how the vampire myth came into existence.
The season ends on a nice little possible game changing cliffhanger that will take more than a few episodes to resolve. The third season of the show creates a better world for these characters to live in, but one of the main issues is that The Vampire Diaries has created a world with too many interesting characters. You will go several episodes without seeing characters that are important to the story. You are introduced to characters that should be important to the story that die an episode later. It’s a problem that needs to be corrected in the upcoming season, but look for more and more characters to be introduced.
As for the boxed set itself, I would have liked to have seen more special features. A 9 minute featurette on Stefan’s turn to the darkside was interesting in the sense that it showed that the actors and writers collaborate on making the show better for not only the viewers but also the performers. The aforementioned featurette on the history of The Originals is made all the more intriguing with the use of an interview with an actual scholar that has studied the history of the vampire mythology throughout the ages. Aside from those two featurettes, the only other offerings on this boxed set that you don’t get from watching the show when it originally aired on television are a scant handful of deleted scenes and a gag reel. Maybe it’s my love for all things Whedon, but Joss’s DVD sets include a season overview featurette where the cast and crew break down each episode and how it relates to the overall story of the show. Give me episode commentaries with some of the writers, producers and actors. Show us a panel from Comic-Con. I want more from this world. I want more from these characters and the actors that portray them than just over 30 minutes total of special features. I give season three of The Vampire Diaries as a show 4 out of 5 stars. I give season three of The Vampire Diaries as a DVD boxed set 2 out of five stars. So with a little bit of math, the final score for The Vampire Diaries: The Complete Third Season is 3 out of 5 stars.