By Tara Stanzione | Staff Writer –
Season Four of The Vampire Diaries has begun and local fans are biting back with their thoughts on this supernatural series.
Entering its fourth season, The Vampire Diaries is incredibly popular. Mystic Falls, a town where vampires, werewolves, witches, and other supernatural beings continuously cause havoc, is becoming even more terrifying. The heroine Elena Gilbert remains to be endlessly torn between two vampire brothers, Damon and Stefan Salvatore.
Kristina Dziob, a Salve Regina University freshman, considers The Vampire Diaries entertaining, emotional, and filled with drama. She started watching the series a few months ago on Netflix and became hooked right away.
“It’s appealing because the characters are going through high school and college and the audience can relate to them easily,” Dziob said. “The actors are really good and viewers get attached to the characters very quickly.” Last season she was so attached to the character Jeremy Gilbert that when he died she “bawled [her] eyes out.”
She predicts that in this new season Bonnie, a witch whose Elena’s best friend, will come back to life, Elena and Damon will have relationship problems, and Damon will save his brother Stefan from being trapped because even though they fought over Elena for three seasons “brotherly love never goes away.”
Dziob also enjoys watching Switched at Birth, Pretty Little Liars, The Lying Game, and Teen Wolf, which she considers most similar to The Vampire Diaries.
Kristin (“Kiki”) Butler, a Salve Regina librarian, watched the series for about half of a season. Once she started missing shows, though, she lost interest, as she couldn’t follow why certain things occurred.
Though she is a vampire fanatic, she believes that The Vampire Diaries has too much drama and too many plot twists. She went on to say that a reason many fans may watch the show is because vampires are considered to be monsters that were once human, making them less monstrous and more like human beings.
“Vampires have become pretty big in pop culture,” Butler said. “In this day and age they’re considered to be dangerous and sexy…they’re alluring somehow and that really catches people.” Butler liked the premise, the love triangle, and the dynamic, of the show. “I did like the bit of it that I watched, but I think it would have worked better as a movie,” Butler said.
Butler’s favorite series have nothing to do with the supernatural and instead include reality TV showProject Runway, and the TV show comedies How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory.
Unlike Dziob and Butler, Matt Traynor, a Salve Regina junior, doesn’t like much about The Vampire Diaries at all. After being forced to watch a couple of episodes by his female friends he states that the only good thing in the show is the acting.
“It’s weird; the show tries to incorporate too many supernatural people into the real world all in one town,” Traynor said. He went on to say that he believes many young women watch the show for the men with sex appeal and the dream of becoming vampires themselves. “In the show normal people can become vampires and live forever,” Traynor said.
Like Butler’s, Traynor’s favorite series, also don’t incorporate paranormal beings. They includeEntourage, Boardwalk Empire, and How I Met Your Mother.
