The Vampire Diaries; Caroline Forbes, from Cheerleader to Vampire Queen

When I first started watching The Vampire Diaries, I was just a teenager coming off the Twilight train and looking for something better. I definitely found it with this show. With a story full of dark humor, fantastical intrigue, and endless sass, it was a good trade.

First and foremost: Caroline Forbes. She begins the show as the Type A, controlling, cheerleading, classic blonde prom queen. With a show full of vampires, witches, and werewolves, you really need someone normal to relate to. No one likes to admit to being neurotic, but we all have our moments. Enter, Caroline. The relatable one.

In the second season, Caroline gets caught in the middle of Katherine’s games and gets turned into a vampire. Initially I was like, she is crazy. She cannot be a vampire, this is a bad idea. But Caroline actually turns out to be the best vampire in the whole show.

She figures the whole vampire thing out, embraces her personality, overcomes her insecurities, and channels her frustrations into becoming an even bigger queen of her own little world.

Some people might be crippled by becoming a member of the undead. Caroline rolls her eyes, scoffs, flips her hair and rolls with it. It’s awesome.

Caroline isn’t the only amazing character. Elena has so much heart, Bonnie just wants to protect her friends, Stefan is a top notch romantic, and I live for Damon’s sassy faces.

Damon is the initial villain, but his self-deprecating humor and genuine love for Elena turns him into… if not a good guy, than at least entertainingly helpful. My favorite Damon moments, other than his extreme sass, is his bromance with Alaric. They have a solid friendship built on scotch and recklessness.

One of the great things about this show is the actors really get to have fun. With the flashbacks, doppelgangers, possessions, and freaky dreams, there’s a lot of different scenarios in one plot. Elena has an evil twin (who is a seriously entertaining villain), Stefan has flashbacks showing his alcoholic Vampire habits and gets possessed by Silas, Alaric gets possessed by Klaus, and even Caroline changes drastically at one point after her mom dies.

Things get really interesting when the original vampires waltz into town.

If the moonstone-werewolf-doppelganger sacrificing drama wasn’t enough, Klaus is suddenly added to the situation.

Klaus is temperamental, possessive, and childish despite being freakishly old. He uses everyone around him like pawns in his own personal game of chess. He warms right up to Caroline, probably because she rolls her eyes at him adorably and clearly isn’t afraid of him.

What’s interesting about Caroline’s love life is she always seems to get chosen second, except with Klaus. She dates Matt after Elena breaks up with him. She and Tyler manage to fall in love because of or in spite of their passionate tempers. Much later in the series, she and Stefan have a thing, which I’m a huge fan of because they balance each other out so well. But Klaus is the first one to just zero in on Caroline and pursue her relentlessly. It’s charming and creepily sweet, all murder and manipulations aside. Speaking of murder, this show is full of it. There’s death, blood, betrayal, sacrifice, and many many tears.

Oh, the drama.

The fact that Nina Dobrev gets to make fun of her own character by playing her character’s doppelgänger is just really enjoyable. Elena pushes the plot forward, but she sure cries a lot. Katherine, however, is delightfully mean. She’s tough and I admire her self-preservation skills. She seems to do everything with relish, which makes her fun to watch.

But as the originals take over town, fanning the fire of crazy plot twists and murder mayhem… I reached my limit. They took the story from high school to college, finally turned Elena into a vampire, traded Stefan for Damon, made Bonnie go through some seriously crazy stuff, and killed off Caroline’s mom. Also, Caroline’s dad tortures her for being a vampire. Also, werewolves torture Caroline for being a vampire.

Caroline is so picked on.

But I definitely reached that point when I couldn’t keep all the plot twists straight, couldn’t swallow all the crazy drama… I stopped watching The Vampire Diaries.

I did, however, watch The Originals.

But Caroline did not follow Klaus to New Orleans, though Tyler did. What a punk.

Caroline stayed and protected Elena, cleaned up after Damon, and had long smoldering chats with Stefan… so cute.

I still need to finish the series and with the show coming to an end after eight seasons, it’s good to look back. The first half of the show is certainly less complicated, by the second half my ability to believe all things fantastical and crazy fizzled out. But maybe it’ll be easier the second time around.