The Vampire Diaries - 4 misconceptions of how it's supposedly inferior to True Blood

I remember seeing promos running everywhere for The Vampire Diaries (TVD as I will often refer to it) back in the summer of 2009 and thought to myself how the show would be a great way to curb my cravings for the next season of True Blood during its hiatus. It's been two years since The Vampire Diaries premiere and, without a doubt, I can tell you that I now use True Blood as my summer filler for the next season of TVD. Personally, I like The CW drama more than the HBO one — but it's ridiculous to choose favorites because everyone can have their cake and eat it too (an expression which makes no sense… why wouldn't you eat your own cake?). But to do that, we've got to get rid of the silly and widely-believed misconceptions that keep people from watching Diaries and proclaiming that Blood is a much better show.

Here are four popular ones (you'll notice they all stem on the idea that TVD is amateurish), in no particular order:

1. "It's a girly, teen soap. True Blood's for adults!"

I've heard this way too often around the Internet and in real life. It's not hard to look at which network the show is on and pigeonhole it as some teenage melodrama. I won't lie to you, the first six or so episodes of the series really put on a teenage gothic romance vibe that was undoubtedly hard to shake off. Even I abandoned the series after those first episodes. But the show got rid of the actual diaries, it got rid of Elena and Stefan's (dreadful) voiceovers as they journaled, and it changed tones completely.

Once someone's big secret is revealed in that first season, and after a certain someone dies: Vampire Diaries put its game face on. Unfortunately, the show insists on keeping its characters in high school… which I admit plays to the show's biggest detriments. It's kind of hard to think about 17 year olds having sex and killing people, but whatever. I just pretend they're all 25 or so. The real ages of the actors, anyhow.

I'm not saying that the show got rid of romance, that would be ridiculous. Practically every drama has a romance element. I'm saying that True Blood isn't any less of a romance soap opera than The Vampire Diaries. In fact, it may even be more than one.

Have you ever watched an episode of True Blood and thought, "Why are there, like, four guys that unrequitedly are in love with Sookie (who basically just bitches them out on a weekly basis)?" No? Because it's true. Bill, Eric, Alcide, and Sam. The Vampire Diaries may be working a love triangle pretty hard but it's not a love pentagon. Albeit, Sam isn't much of an "option" anymore on True Blood, but that still leaves a love trapezoid… and that's still more of a romance melodrama than The Vampire Diaries is. (And yes, Katherine factors somewhere in the love triangle, but it's a completely one-sided relationship… so actually, no she doesn't.) The show has just started to ham up the idea of the triangle recently, in any case, which seems on par with True Blood in terms of seasons but is slower-paced episode-wise.

Read misconceptions 2, 3, and 4 at NoWhiteNoise!