Having gone through The Originals, I was curious to see where that spin-off was born, and I have to admit that The Originals works a bit better than The Vampire Diaries, at least in terms of flow, but The Vampire Diaries has a lot more drama and characters to juggle.
The fifth season starts with Elena heading to college. A transitional time for our blood sucking 90210 clan, but an open setup for wonderful opportunities for murder, mysteries and mayhem. The first episode starts with the untimely murder of Elena’s bubbly roommate and shifts back and forth between characters with a heavy focus on Stefan’s frightful predicament — he is locked in a case underwater.
The Stefan storyline for this season is actually intriguing, though incredibly slow to develop. It’s a heavy burden on the beginning of the fifth season, and it works to an extent. The beginning of the season goes back and forth on Stefan and how he is struggling to fight his way out of continual hallucinations and dying over and over again. That part of his story is absolutely fascinating. Sadly, the space between cutting to his problem and getting back to the family’s problems, such as coping with Bonnie’s death and other family issues, is spaced out oddly.
If they had focused just solely on Stefan and brought his evil ‘twin’ Silas into the mix to support and drive the mystery, this would have been an epic storyline. Sadly, what you get is a bunch of interrupting stories about Damon, Elena, Jeremy, Katherine and Jeremy that just seem to add to the unbalanced breaks a bit on Stefan’s moment. It just seems out of place and the disruptiveness doesn’t allow Stefan’s tragic events to get going. Once we get to the end of Stefan’s predicament, once he finds a way out, and take care of his murderer, Silas, then his story starts standing out amongst the rest. The very thought of an individual, immortal or not, trapped and continually drowning over and over again is pretty damn creepy. It’s emotional and there were opportunities for it to be magnified into something great.
The writers chose to setup the rest of the season in between Stefan’s moments and disrupt what could have been something great, thus leading to a messy beginning of the fifth season. It’s a lot of stories mixed with a great story, which makes that ‘great’ story seem like it belongs in the backseat.
Having said that, the stories that are set up during this timeframe actually become stronger when the second half of the season kicks into fifth gear.
One of the coolest storylines in the fifth season surrounds Bonnie. She is dead, but ends up making it back to the living only to find herself as the anchor between the living and dead worlds. During the midseason there is a wonderful episode called ‘Dead Man on Campus’ where her fifth season story really blooms. She comes to terms with being alive, getting back into things, and comes to terms with being an anchor between worlds. One of the coolest parts of this ‘coming to terms’ moment is when she talks to an older witch, who thanks her for being there in the transition from life to death. Whoever played the witch seems like she could be the sweetest person in the world. In addition to her own settling down, Bonnie also tells Jeremy (her boyfriend), who accepts her the way she is. It’s a simple story that sets up later events, but nonetheless very emotional for such simplicity.
One story that I absolutely hated during the fifth season, which didn’t make sense to me, was the brief relationship between Caroline and Jesse. Jesse is a newly turned vampire in this season, against his will from Wes, and Jesse is coming to terms with feeding on people. Wes regretfully turns Jesse into a vampire-on-vampire feeder, which puts everyone in danger, especially Damon, and he is taken out by Elena. Now, this should set up a revengeful storyline between Elena and Caroline, but it ends up being an ‘eh’ sort of situation. It’s like Jesse was a completely useless character, while he was alive. His story started with a poof, ended with a poof; there simply needed to be a bit more substance to him, but there wasn’t.
This is the only example of a ‘going nowhere’ storyline in season five, but there was a lot of opportunity for something to come out of it.
The rest of the season at this point starts getting some traction, as we have Damon getting a new, albeit incredibly crazy friend named Enzo, who seems to drive a wedge between everyone’s established relationship. There is also a fun (sad) storyline of Katherine dealing with the fact that she is mortal and coming to terms with what that means with her friends/family, as well as her health.
The fifth season of The Vampire Diaries is good, but not great. I think it starts slow, misses some opportunities, but gains some ground as it moves forward. It certainly ends on a high note (not telling you), so get through it for a storytelling reward. If you’re a fan of the series, then you know what to expect.
As for how the Blu-ray portion of the fifth season goes it rates somewhere between decent and good. It’s a rare thing these days that a Warner Home Video HD transfer stumbles, but with the fifth season of The Vampire Diaries, the quality tends to fluctuate a bit. In some of the really darker scenes, especially in the large mansion, you actually do get a bit of graininess coming through and what looks like a compression issue here and there. Half of the time you get a perfect picture, but with so much black in the show and the contrasting whites, which tend to be extreme sometimes, it’s nearly impossible to avoid imperfections. That’s not an excuse because that’s the choice of the show’s looks, but it does tend to stray a bit in terms of quality.
With that said, I have to admit that the cinematography in the show is actually quite good, though the dependence on a lot of close-ups is more playing it safe than letting the scenes work out from afar. This show deserves some great wide shots. It can be gorgeous and it should take some lessons from The Originals, which tends to do that quite well due to its environment.
The audio portion of this release comes to you in DTS-HD 5.1 and the aspect ratio of the show is 1.78:1.
Finally, as for the special features, here’s what you’re getting:
– I Know What You Did… In the Last 100 Episodes
– The Vampire Diaries: To the Other Side and Back
– A Day in the Afterlife with Kat Graham
– Comic-Con Panel
– Gag Reel
The show is very confident now that it has crossed the 100 episodes mark (yay!…for syndication possibilities) and it shows in the first featurette. Very amusing stuff. The other features are pretty stout with information and fun, as is the gag reel. There isn’t a lot here, but what you get isn’t bad at all. Fans of the show will like it.
