Vampires may kill you, but the real danger in The Vampire Diaries is of a more mortal nature: a toxic strain of goopy adolescent angst that had me instantly rooting for the undead. In particular, a diabolically menacing vamp named Damon (played with devilish zeal by early Lost victim Ian Somerhalder), who waits way too long to make his blood-lusty entrance in tonight’s pilot episode.

But once he arrives, the show comes fiendishly alive, and all of a sudden it doesn’t matter so much that it’s all so groaningly and painfully derivative. Arriving mere days before HBO’s True Blood wraps its phenomenally successful and insanely entertaining second season, and a few months before Twilight sequel New Moon hits screens amid a fever pitch of hype, the timing couldn’t be better for the CW to test how willingly the vamp-crazed masses will bite at something that so desperately panders to the hot trend of the moment without adding an iota of originality to the formula. (For the record, this show is based on a series of books published long before the Twilight phenom began, and yet it still feels like a shameless rip-off.)

Welcome to Mystic Falls, where fog rolls in at midday and hardly anyone notices, maybe because they’re too busy ducking all those portentous Hitchcockian birds. And you thought the CW had given up on comedy.

The heroes of this swoony teen romance, as the title suggests, tend to spill their guts into their diaries while treating us to helpful if turgid voice-over exposition. Stefan (Paul Wesley) is the sullen, broody immortal who frets, “I shouldn’t have come home,” but re-enlists in high school because “I have to know her.” Her being Elena (Nina Dobrev), the spitting image of someone from Stefan’s 19th-century past who woefully describes her poor self as “the girl who [recently] lost her parents”—yes, this is another of those CW shows where parents are virtually invisible (and not because they’re all ghosts). Elena’s psychic best friend, who may be a descendant of Salem witches, predicts “all the sad and dark times are over.” Um, try again.

Stefan and Elena are the most soulful of soulmates who, by next week, are talking gibberish like, “We met and we talked and it was epic, but then the sun came up and reality set in.” Not that the sun bothers Stefan all that much (for reasons you can learn for yourself), but epic? Really? As it turns out, the only thing that really gets under Stefan’s pale skin is his bad-boy brother Damon. And Damon is no-longer-living proof that, as often happens in projects like this, the villain has all the fun and gets all the best lines. Damon is (to use an ancient prime-time soap analogy) the J.R. Ewing of this piece, and Somerhalder relishes every sardonic moment, smirking and flirting, flashing his evil vamp features and goading his trying-to-be-virtuous brother (who really does recall Bobby Ewing in his doe-eyed blandness).

In next week’s episode, the brothers face off over the unwitting Elena in matching black T-shirts, and after she leaves in confusion, Damon informs his less interesting sibling, “The closest you’ll ever get to humanity is when you rip it open and feed on it.” If it would shut some of the dreary supporting cast up (including Elena’s drug-dealing mope of a brother and her equally mopey jock ex-boyfriend), I’m all for a vamp smorgasbord.

It’s not that The Vampire Diaries is a truly terrible show. It’s just so insipid and uninspired (which, come to think of it, sounds pretty awful). Kevin Williamson, who helped put the much-missed WB on the map with Dawson’s Creek, clearly has affection for these characters and the milieu of shocks and scares he milked for years with the Scream franchise. I just wish this had made me scream a bit more. Maybe I’m desensitized a bit, still giddy from this summer’s orgiastic thrill ride of True Blood. (I can’t believe L.J. Smith’s source material is nearly as much fun as Charlaine Harris’ Southern-fried Sookie chronicles.) By necessity, Diaries is made of tamer stuff, although the first two episodes open on scenes of savagery almost as spooky as a teaser reel in a Supernatural episode.

Maybe that’s where the comparison really comes up short. Having spent the last few months burning through the last few seasons of the gripping Supernatural, I can’t help but look at this Twi-lite as a letdown in both imagination and charisma. Still, given the pop-cultural appeal of all things vampire, this could provide a powerful lead-in to Supernatural’s pivotal fifth season, which also starts tonight. And who would complain about that? In fact, sign me up for the blood drive now.

The Vampire Diaries premieres tonight at 8/7c on the CW.