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The Originals: The Complete First Season

The Originals: The Complete First Season

Season: 
1
Studio(s): 
Regular Air Date: 
Mondays @ 8PM ET
Network(s): 
On DVD: 
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Grade:
C
Seasons: 
1
Episodes: 
22
Discs: 
5
Bonus Features

Pilot Commentary, 5 Featurettes, Unaired Scenes

THE ORIGINALS:
New Orleans' French Quarter is known for its oddities but what people don't know is that it was built by the first vampires, the Mikaelson family. The siblings are The Originals, the first vampires, and they built the city of New Orleans but a century ago the siblings where exiled from the very city they built. Since that time the city has become the home for other vampires along with werewolves and witches. It's a melting pot for the strange and the mythical but when Elijah (played by Daniel Gillies) returns to New Orleans he finds out that there is more going on in his city then he knew about. Elijah discovers that Hayley (played by Phoebe Tonkin) is pregnant and the baby could either be the most important child to be born in the vampire/werewolf community or the most dangerous. But even with all their power, the Mikaelson family will have to be careful about who knows that they are back in the French Quarter because Marcel (played by Charles Michael Davis) is in charge of the city and he will not let go of his power without a fight.
 
SEASON ONE:
The Originals is a spin-off of the show The Vampire Diaries that's centered about vampires, werewolves, and witches. It's plot is about the first vampires who built New Orleans, was exiled long ago, are now back in the city but now they have to deal with all the complications that's going on with other vampires, werewolves, and witches. There's a ton of drama being had in this show, for example, there's a witch that's been killed where they body is out in the streets, there's a power struggle going on between the groups, the Mikaelson's have their problems with each other, and of course all the love stories going on. It's basically a drama show that has vampires, werewolves, and witches in it that are all good looking young people.


When I say that it's good looking young people, that's really all the show is about. In fact the first words to describe the series on the back of the DVD case are these, "The sexy and spellbinding..". I wouldn't call it "spellbinding", for me it is more like drama-bound. As for the "sexy" part, if they meant that it's sexy because of the cast of actors they use in the show, then yes it's sexy because they are all good looking people but if they mean the show itself is sexy, well I can see how some might think it is but I thought it was just a sex sales show. When did vampires and werewolves get to be models? I remember a time when the vampires would look like normal people while in their human side but when they changed into actual vampires, they would become ugly, demon like even, monsters at best, with pointy teeth. That's not happening in The Originals, all that you get is vampires that go from being models with normal human teeth to oh no they are now vampires that are still models but with two pointy teeth. Ok, let’s even say this is how it is, when you're a vampire all the change that happens between human look and vampire look is the pointy teeth, but where are the normal, average looking ones? The people that don't look like they belong in a magazine modeling clothing, the ones you see behind the counter of a fast food restaurant?


Now as for the show and all its drama laced story lines, it's one that I didn't really enjoy. Maybe it's because I don't go for stories that are about good looking male vampires that have a bad boy side but are really just soft good people inside that find themselves doing bad things for their own good reasons. Maybe it's because I don't care much for the stories that show the good looking girls that fall for the bad boy vampires where their relationship is almost forbidden. Then there's the fact that every episode is one huge drama fest where the characters are always having some big problem like should I keep this baby or not, oh I can't trust anyone anymore, oh look there's some cryptic message that's going to give some surprising information, and I can't forget the whole feuds. Maybe if this show was only a half hour long instead of an hour I might have liked it some, but the hour long drawn out dramas and plots and all the different characters just dragged on for me. By the time I got to the last episode, which this first season was 22 episodes long, I just didn't care anymore about the fight between Marcel and Klaus or Hayley and the baby. All I wanted was to see the season end but when I finally did reach the ending I disliked the sappy way everything is concluded so much that I have no desire to ever watch this show again. I really did try to find something in it that I liked, what I found was that is that I liked the way it's shot, the sets are nice, the costuming is good, I even liked the idea of the plot of taking the first vampires and putting them in the current time, but it just became a teen drama that I couldn't enjoy.
 

Lee Roberts
Review by Lee Roberts
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