Explanations for the categories I’ve created in the roundups.
The Big Deal: One of the great (though unacknowledged) running jokes of the show is how inordinately socially-committed Mystic Falls is. This ranking categorizes the big events each episode, whether they be masquerades, beauty pageants, or film viewings in the town square.
Time Marches On…: The goal of this category is to list how many days and nights the episode covers, and where it fits into the timeline of the series. (My long term goal is to prove that they graduated high school after only 52 days). In all seriousness, this series is very good at beginning its episodes in clear-cut relationship to when the previous episode ended. When it’s not super-duper obvious (say, like when the episode ends mid cliff-hanger and picks up to finish hanging that cliff) I’ll look for clues like if they’re wearing the same clothes or if they’re having conversations it wouldn’t make sense to not have the day after certain events. If it’s ever completely unclear how much time has passed…I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, but I’ll certainly notate the ambiguity. Also, I’m noting how many days have elapsed between the current episode and “Day One.” Day One refers to October 18, 2009, a.k.a. the very first scene in the pilot when Damon eats those motorists.
Number of Deaths: This ranks the number of deaths per episode; all deaths including accidents and deaths that are later reversed by vampirisms, magic rings or what have you.
Number of Un-Deaths: This category ranks the number of times death is reversed per episode, via vampirism, magic rings, or what have you. It does not include people who are almost killed but saved in some last minute way.
Number of Foiled Death Attempts: This category ranks the number of times that there is a direct intention of killing someone, but that attempt fails. If the intention is ambiguous (e.g. if two people are fighting and you can’t tell if they’re just trading blows or it might theoretically lead to death) I won’t count it as a foiled death attempt. This category only measures when the attempt is obvious and already begun through physical action.
Actual References to Diaries: The show is called The Vampire Diaries. I want to keep track of how often the title is actually relevant to the episodes. This includes number of times a voiceover comes from a diary, how many times characters read from diaries, and the number of times a diary is alluded to visually or by a character’s words. I’m also including grimoires and cave paintings as diaries, since they are written retellings of personal information.
Blood Drunk Onscreen: I’m curious how much vampiring actually gets shown. This includes drinking from blood bags. This does not include references to offscreen behavior, such as Stefan and his woodland diet. This also does not include vampires baring their fangs and lunging for people, but the camera cuts away before that last step is shown (this happens more often than I’ve realized). This also does not include a character coming upon a bloodied body, even though the deduction of what happened is pretty obvious.
Vampires Going into Vampface: That makeup! Those contacts! Those teeth! This is in honor of the actors who spend a crapload of time in the makeup chair just for the few seconds their vamp face gets shown. I give partial credit for eye reddening that doesn’t result in full-on vamp face.
Compulsions Used: Just what it sounds like. This category tracks how many times a vampire successfully compels someone else to do something. It only includes offscreen compulsions when the fact of their occurrence is super obvious, such as Caroline saying she can’t take off her scarf and doesn’t know why. This does not include compulsions foiled by vervain.
Shirtless Moments (guys): This tracks how often we see shirtless men. “Abdominal Moments” might be a more accurate, if less pithy, name for the category, because I’m including such moments as when Stefan lifts his shirt to look at a manly injury on his abs, or when Damon dances with a wide-open, unbuttoned shirt, and you can still see everything. I’m tracking these moments 1) for fun and hotness, 2) because actors are people too, it takes a certain amount of courage to bare yourself so this (hopefully) is honoring that, and 3) because I’m genuinely interested in how this show subverts the male gaze that critic Laura Mulvey describes so well. Historically, the vampire genre has been geared for a male audience, and as part of that tradition you get decrepit old guys biting writhing young virgins, or scantily-dressed and oversexed vampiresses attacking chaste, prim men. For the last 20 or so years the genre has slowly been shifting to a female-centered audience, and as part of that shift I’m noting an exponential frequency in the quantity of attractive male vampires being sexualized for the (heterosexual) female gaze. Go ahead to google image and type in “shirtless vampire.” You’ll be impressed and appalled at how huge and varied a quantity of images come up. So one of my (casual) long-term goals of this blog is to numerically track how often male versus female characters are sexualized for the camera.
Shirtless Moments (girls): Basically, see my explanation for the shirtless men category. Now, this is a network show at 8 pm, so “shirtless girl” means “girl in a bra.” This show will never be True Blood, after all. Anyway, this just ranks shirtless moments rather than sexualized moments. For example, in “Friday Night Bites” there are a few scenes where a bunch of cheerleaders are in skin-tight short-shorts and tank tops. I’ll call those (remarkably) rare moments out as honorable mentions when they happen, but they won’t be included in the official ranking.
Jewelry Moments: Man does this show love its bling. Now, every episode people are wearing their magic rings, vervained necklaces and what have you, so this category only ranks the moments when the magical items are vocally (or pointedly visually) referenced. By “jewelry,” I’m also including magical crystals and pocket watches.
Egregious Product Placement: I know every show in the world has a million product placements per episode that are so common they’re almost invisible, so this isn’t about that. This is about when the product placement is so over the top it’s just hilarious. I’m looking at you, Bing. And you, Ford automobiles.
Dream Sequences/Flashbacks: This category ranks dream sequences and flashbacks as a united score. The reason I’m combining the two is because what I’m really measuring is how often the linear narrative on the screen veers off course to provide supplementary information to whatever is going on that week. The dream sequences and flashbacks have to actually be shown though. For instance, if one character tells another character that he rescued her from a car accident, that doesn’t count. If, in a later episode, we visually see a flashback to the rescue, than that gets counted as a flashback. Ditto for dreams.
Number of times Katherine has been mentioned or discussed: In the course of Season One, Katherine is an invisible presence who is never (so far as they know) part of the narrative action. She’s unseen and long gone, and (aside from a few sporadic flashbacks) the audience doesn’t get to know her through first hand experience. So what this category is meant to rank is how the show sets up the mythos of Katherine; how do they go about making her a bigger than life figure so that, when she shows up, it’s a BFD instead of a wev. This category will only be in effect for the first season.
Magic Cast: This category ranks how often magic is used. Of course, since this is a paranormal show I’m being selective as to what I mean when I say magic. If an inert object does magic (e.g. a ring protects a vampire from daylight or a doorway holds vampires inside) it doesn’t count here. If something that is common to all vampires and/or werewolves happens (e.g. compulsion or turning on the full moon), that doesn’t count here. What counts is magic that is deliberately done by an active person. In other words, witches. But I’m also going to count when someone from a group does something that other people in their category cannot, so things like Damon astral projecting or Jeremy seeing ghosts also counts.
Best Outfit: I’m not a fashionista, so this is the category I forget to even watch out for half the time. But, the costume designer does do some beautiful work when you look at it. Usually, this will just be the outfit that appeals to me the most. Sometimes, it will be an outfit that I think says something interesting about a character or event, even if the outfit itself wouldn’t win for beauty.
Best Song: Every week, the music supervisor Chris Mollere provides a gorgeous sampling of indi-pop-rock hits. And just about all of them are awesome. Here is a good place to see the complete song selection over the course of the series (it also includes what scenes the songs plays during). In this category, I choose my favorite song in every episode. This is usually just the song I like best, regardless of how it’s used; however, if I like one song only a little bit more than another song, and that second song does more for the scene it’s in, I’ll choose the second song. If there’s a song that’s just amazingly apropos (I’m looking at you, “Bloodstream” by Stateless) than that song could be up against my favorite song in the world and still win.
Crappy Guardian of the Week: Okay, I don’t hate Aunt Jenna. I actually really like Aunt Jenna, and root for her, and sympathize with her. But, one of my favorite (unacknowledged) running jokes of the series is how bad she is at being a guardian. It amuses me in the same way all the social events amuse me. Given that, and the fact that she’s the only guardian in the main cast, Aunt Jenna will win this award the majority of the time. But I don’t hate her. I love her. And I think she’s a crappy guardian. Also, for the sake of categorization I’m only including the guardians that are onscreen each week, because otherwise the Donovan parents would never, ever lose.
Surprise of the Week: The Vampire Diaries is a show that thrives on plot twists, and so this category tracks the unexpected twists and turns the story takes. I’m tracking the events and revelations that the show thinks is a surprise, even if I saw them coming or didn’t care about them. I’m not including teeny tiny cliff hangers though. There will be a winner for best surprise of the week, but I will list and include all of them in the final rankings.
Hero of the Week: This isn’t necessarily who I think was the best character, or most grounded protagonist. This is about who performs the most heroic actions in the epic tradition. This is usually about saving lives or something on that grand scale, and does not include things like cheering people up.
Villain of the Week: This is a show where murder, human sacrifice, and villainous strategy are commonplace, so there needs to be a category to track that aspect. This category is not whoever is the current antagonist, otherwise there would only be 1-3 winners a year. This is a category about who does the most bad things that week, even if that means ranking a protagonist as the winner.
Badass of the Week: Heroes can be heroically badass, villains can be villainously badass, sidekicks can be sidekickilly badass as well. Basically, this is about people doing whatever it is they do so long as they do it with style. It could alternately be called the awesome award. This is for who I find badass, not for who the show tries to tell me is badass (I’m looking at you, Rebekah). I veer toward awarding this to the good guys, just because I feel a little weird identifying, for example, brutal torture as being badass, even when it’s done with great panache. Also, I veer toward good guys because otherwise Damon would get it most of the time, and I don’t want to always award the obvious. But villains and jackasses can also win this award if they earn it, they just have to have style.
Jackass of the Week: Because there are plenty of jackholes in the show, and most of them aren’t committing murder, there needs to be a special category calling them out for their crap. So this is for whoever behaves the most deplorably without actual felony conduct. Obviously, the murderer will be a bigger bad guy than the guy who’s rude to people, even if the murderer is pleasant. So this category allows me to distinguish the difference without having to rationalize mass murder and so on as being “not that bad”.
Sidekick of the Week: This is a category originally invented for Bonnie, because her absence from the roundups was loud in its silence. And it occurs to me that this is a great idea for a category anyway, because over time the characters start banding together and fighting for right, and they can’t all be the hero of the week. So basically, this is the award for the beta player in the story, whether they’re working for the hero or the villain. It’s someone contributes emotional support or active help to another character’s plans or storyline, without actually being the focal point themselves. If the seeming sidekick sneakily steals the agency spotlight, they can’t qualify that week.
Sadsack of the Week: Basically, this is for whoever gets the most trauma dumped on them that week. It’s usually fairly quantifiable, because you can add up events, but sometimes I use an alternate criteria. For example, if Hypothetical Character X has a lot of bad stuff happen to them, and Hypothetical Character Y has less bad stuff happen to them, but feels a lot more self-pity over it, than Character Y will win sadsack of the week, because they’re being pathetic. So, “Sadsack” is that magical combination between pathos and pathetic-ness, however I deem it per episode.
Best and Worst Acting: Okay, so truthfully, these awards are actually about the actors more than the characters they play. But the actors are real people, and I’d just feel guilty about calling a real person a bad actor in print, so I’m using the characters’ names because I’m the blog mistress and that’s what I’ve decided. Also, I think the acting steadily improves on this show until the point where everybody is consistently great, which means that over time 1) “best” will be ridiculously subjective, and 2) “worst” will have little meaning. It will basically be whoever is 1% less great than everyone else.
The Bloody Details 