I've been watching THE VAMPIRE DIARIES since it started airing on the CW, and now I've seen the first two Twilight movies. And for me, VD is the better production, hands down. They're both full of soapy goodness, but honestly, after watching New Moon, if I had to see Kristen Stewart as Bella slogging around all mopey, depressed and moony over losing Edward and Jacob (Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner) for one more second, I'd have jumped into the screen and throttled her. I understand that teenage angst is the driving force behind the Twilight media phenomenon (well, that and Lautner's fabulous abs), but New Moon was so depressive (and overlong) that I was rooting for Edward to take one for the team at the end. At least there would've been something happening!

VD's 40-plus minutes a week, on the other hand, fly by. The cast, to a person, has their roles down, and Ian Somerhalder, in particular, is doing a fine balancing act as his Damon wrestles with the idea of allowing himself to have feelings. I'm also loving Candice Accola's transformation of Caroline from airheaded pom-pom girl to mature otherworlder. The VD plots are complicated enough to sustain interest week to week, yet simple enough to catch up on if you miss an episode or two. And the fact that VD actually has gone deep into vampire, witch and werewolf lore beyond the biting and flesh-tearing — not to mention American history — gives the series more gravity than its movie counterpart. Speaking of lycanthropy, even the werewolves on VD, recently introduced, have greater depth of character and are far more interesting than those in Twilight, who were rightly spoofed in the satire Vampires Suck as a kind of abs-tacular, paranormal Village People. Set your DVR to record VD, and let Twilight go softly into its despondent darkness.