Great Moments in Television: The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries season 1, episode 22, "Founder’s Day"

My decision to watch The Vampire Diaries was primarily based on nostalgia. Having read and loved L.J. Smith's books when I was in junior high, I was thrilled to see them having a rebirth both on the NY Times bestseller list and on the small screen. And only partially because it gave me many opportunities to exorcise my nerd rage in a health way by informing people who called TVD a Twilight ripoff, “Actually, these books were originally published in 1991, well before Twilight.”

The first episode was fine. Nothing I was too excited about, but good enough to keep me watching. But then it happened; sometime during the middle of the first season, I stopped telling people I watched TVD because I used to love the books and started telling them that this was THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISION and if they thought they were too cool to watch it then they were MISSING OUT. All of this came to a head in the season 1 finale, when the show became so awesome, that even satirically self-described bastion of “critics/hipsters/snobs/douchebags,” the AV Club (aka, one of my favorite web sites) had to sit up and take notice.

Major spoilers ahead! (Although if you haven’t watched this yet, what are you doing? It’s on Netflix Instant and in case you didn’t hear me before, it’s SO good.)

Classic Covers: The Secret Circle

These are the beautiful covers of the Secret Circle books, as I read them in the St. Agnes branch of the library on the upper west side of Manhattan in 1992.  I went to the library every day after school to wait for my dad to pick me up.

The library was a quiet temperate sanctuary after a crazy day of junior high.  More importantly, there were shelves full of wonderful books for me to browse, including every book in every LJ Smith series (The Secret Circle, The Vampire Diaries, The Forbidden Game, Dark Visions, and Night World).  But I found the Secret Circle books first, and I read them over and over again in my library haven. 

My Programs

I have finally watched both The Secret Circle and The Vampire Diaries from last week and am ready to reveal my favorite parts!  (Massive spoilers ahoy.)

My Best Parts: Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle

Every week I will be posting screenshots of my favorite moments from The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle.  These images are after the jump.  To the left is a photo I took of myself after I finished watching the season premiere of The Vampire Diaries.  I hope one day that The Secret Circle will inspire such a self-portrait, but for now it is just a pretty good pilot that I am excited to continue watching.

Do I even need to tell you not to look at this post if you haven't seen the episodes yet?

The Secret Circle Is Almost Here!

Speaking of things I can't wait for: The Secret Circle premieres on the CW on Friday, September 15!  Normally, I would be like any other fan girl, grousing that the show seems like it is not faithful enough to my beloved LJ Smith book series.  But The Vampire Diaries is so wonderfully entertaining that I have learned to Let Go and Let Kevin.  Smith, that is.  Do his thing, that is.

Was I upset that the Vampire Diaries TV show completely eliminated Meredith, one of my favorite characters from the book series?  Yes.  After two seasons of delightful, terrifying, exciting entertainment, do I still care?  Not so much.  I am hoping that The Secret Circle will be similarly wonderful so that I don't care about the characters that have been axed and the plots that have mutated.  And the trailer does look pretty exciting....  (But PS, don't watch it unless you want like the first couple of episodes spoiled)

Unfortunately, I can't embed it here, but I did take some wonderful screen shots that capture the flavor.

The Secret Circle Will (Hopefully) Be A TV Show!

In junior high knew that I was totally obsessed with L.J. Smith's Secret Circle books. Obviously I loved her Vampire Diaries, Forbidden Game, and Dark Visions books as well (I didn't read Night World until recently and I couldn't believe I had waited so long to read them), and no one was happier than me that the success of the Twilight series gave Ms. Smith a new surge of popularity. (Except maybe her. She was probably happier than me.) But The Secret Circle will always hold a special place in my heart. Witchcraft, hot boys, best friends, soul mates, and references to Greek mythology; what more could a girl ask for? And now, thanks to the success of The Vampire Diaries TV show and L.J. Smith's spot on the NY Times bestseller list, there is going to be a Secret Circle TV show!