DigificWriter

I just finished watching the first two episodes and decided to get my reviews up AQAP (as quickly as possible). In the interest of succinctness, I'm going to be reviewing things bullet-point-style, so here we go.

Pilot (TVD 101)
* Given the vampire theme, I went into the series expecting something akin to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but what I got was more like the 2018 reboot series Roswell, New Mexico, which I was not expecting but that I find to be pretty cool

* It took doing some research for me to figure out who most of the primary characters are, but I really like the cast, and the immediate standouts s, other than Elena and Stefan, were Damon and Jeremy

* Speaking of those four, I found it neat that there's kind of an inverse relationship between them in terms of their individual sibling dynamics, and it'll be interesting to see where things go

* I wasn't entirely expecting Damon to be the Angelus/First Evil analogue of the series, but I did like how they waited until basically the end of the episode to completely introduce him after starting the show out by just teasing his presence while using Stefan as a pseudo-red-herring

* As far as Pilots go, I liked this one a lot, as it did a pretty good job of setting up the central conflict of Stefan v Damon with Elena (and, more broadly, the entire town of Mystic Falls) caught in the middle, and am going to give it a solid 3 out of 5

The Night of the Comet (TVD 102)
* As I noted above, I had to do some research to figure out who most of the major characters were, but Episode 2 gave me more people to care about besides just Elena, Stefan, and Damon, specifically the Donovan siblings and Elena and Jeremy's aunt Jenna, who reminds me of a younger, hipper Joyce Summers (which is kind of fitting since her last name is the similarly-sounding Sommers)

* The Pilot kind of presented Matt as just the stereotypical ex-boyfriend foil character, but the second episode surprised me by making him into more of the archetypal suspicious investigative outsider character, which I like, especially by entwining him with Damon through the latter's stalking and tormenting of Vicki

* The series kind of telegraphed Bonnie actually being a psychic from her very first scene in the Pilot, but I was intrigued by the way that Episode 2 pretty much leaned into that right away with the whole 'touching Elena and Stefan' thing

* I'm not sure what Damon seducing and then biting Caroline (who is kind of a less shallow and less antagonistic version of early Cordelia Chase at this point) is supposed to accomplish or how it's any different than what Damon did with Vicki, but hopefully the next episode will make things clearer

* I was expecting it to take longer for Elena and Stefan to snog each other, but I like that the show went there as quickly as it did because it subverted expectations

* Episode 2 was a nice follow-up to the Pilot, fleshing out some more of the main cast and moving quicker than expected towards officially pairing up Elena and Stefan, and because of those factors, it earns itself .5 increase over the Pilot for a rating of 3.5

Even with only two episodes under my belt, I'm really liking the show so far and can't wait to see where it goes next.