This past Thursday, the CW premiered a new spin-off show entitled “The Originals.” It is based off characters from season two of “The Vampire Diaries”, the original vampires who previously ruled an empire out of New Orleans. Despite the popularity of “Diaries,” the pilot episode was confusing, especially for those unfamiliar with the world of vampires. Too many storylines were presented, which was probably a hurried attempt at keeping the viewers enticed, but it merely came off as an inability to be concise with important plots.
The episode opens with an unnecessary introductory scene, wherein a young sailor meets the Mikaelson Family. Elijah (Daniel Gillies, “Spiderman 2”) appears to be the eldest, with his composed sister, Rebekah (Claire Holt, “Mean Girls 2”), and their wild brother, Klaus (Joseph Morgan, “Immortals”). In the scene, the three display their killing prowess. Sadly, the special effects are not any better than what was seen in “Twilight”, so the ability to take the show seriously has already become a struggle. Klaus’ performance is the only one who stands out in the entirety of the show, yet even then he fails to wholly terrify. At first, it appeared that the sailor was going to have more importance, but he never again appears, and the Mikaelsons continually show their thirst for blood through violence in the rest of the pilot. This time could have been much better spent explaining the confusing plot lines.
The real plot begins as Elijah follows Klaus to Louisiana after he has been summoned there by some witches. The plot gets a bit muddled here- the witch who had summoned Klaus is dead, but her sister is imprisoning a woman with whom Klaus had a one night stand and impregnated. The child is some sort of miracle baby because the woman, Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin, “Tomorrow When the World Began”), is a werewolf while Klaus is obviously of the neck-biting variety. The plot continues to thicken as Marcel (Charles Michael Davis, “Grey’s Anatomy”), a previous protégé of Elijah, now dominates New Orleans. He has got some issue with supernatural beings and wants to kill everyone but himself. Additionally, Klaus has werewolf abilities even though he is a vampire, which lends itself to his malice. Some kind of romantic energy also begins to pass between Hayley and Elijah, which is probably not going to go over well with Klaus. And these are not even all the potential plot directions the pilot included. Granted, “The Vampire Diaries” pilot was another swing-and-miss, but the show has infinitely improved since its starting days, as hopefully “The Originals” will.
The plot proved to be most confusing in its explanation of relationships. For avid watchers of “Diaries”, these characters are well-known, but when ten different, important people are thrown into a pilot, the viewers struggle to remember them all. Additionally, several of the characters look alarmingly alike, which adds more difficulty to telling the varying vamps apart. It proved difficult to connect with the characters because too much time was spent discerning which characters were which. By introducing vampires, witches and werewolves in a single fifty minute episode, it may be hard to keep viewers interested. If the writers had waited to reveal the witches and werewolves later, it would have added much more plot intrigue. Now that all the supernatural beings have been revealed, there does not appear to be much that can shock anyone anymore.
One of the more painful scenes to watch is the face-off between Marcel and Klaus. Truthfully, the actors put much effort and fervor into their portrayal of dangerous vampires, but it is another contrived machismo scene, this time with fangs. There is a lot of hissing, a weird English dialect that only the vampires use and more bark than bite. In the post-“Twilight” age, it proves more and more difficult in the passing years to present a vampire that is actually scary. Too many books and movies have now begun to present previously horrifying monsters, from lycans to zombies, as redeemable beings who are now only seen as meek. A vampire that doesn’t drink human blood? It’s like depriving a lion of meat and expecting it to be satisfied on mere vegetables.
The creators of “The Originals” are going to have to put in a lot of work to increase the quality of this show right away. Because it is a spin-off, it is easy to fall into the trap of expecting these characters to already be developed and fully understood in the viewers’ minds, but for those unfamiliar to the show, their allusions and actions fall flat. Deeper character portrayals would potentially change the entire show around, but at the moment, “The Originals” leaves much to be desired.
