My Babysitter’s a Vampire – season 2

Director: Various

First aired: 2012

Contains spoilers

We looked at season 1 of My Babysitter’s a Vampire here and it was a cute enough kid’s programme that never really seemed to straddle the child/adult line enough to make it too interesting for an adult audience. But, you know what, that’s fine as it aimed squarely for its own market.

In season 2 we get much of the same, and I have decided it does have a definite endearing charm that pushes at the boundaries but doesn’t quite dare to step over them.

Vanessa Morgan as Sarah

At the end of the last season fledgling vampire (and babysitter) Sarah (Vanessa Morgan) was faced with a dilemma when central protagonist to the show, her friend and seer Ethan (Matthew Knight) is bitten by a vampire. The venom will transform him into a vampire but Sarah saves him from that by sucking the venom out. That means, however, that she sucks his blood and transforms into a full vampire.

Addison Holley as Anastasia

As this season starts something is killing vampires and the vampire council suspect Ethan, though the killer seems to be a green mist. Benny (Atticus Dean Mitchell), Ethan’s spellcasting best friend, and their vampire pal Rory (Cameron Kennedy) have to help Ethan find a way to stop the mist or the child elder Anastasia (Addison Holley) will assume guilt and have Ethan killed. The mist is summoned by powerful magic and so a powerful enemy of the vampires must be around.

sparkly vampire

This enemy then vanishes off the radar until the final few episodes but we get a fair share of unusual vampire references through the stand alone episodes. Dusk is the show’s universe’s equivalent of Twilight, with its own brooding, sparkly vampire. The fake film is mentioned a few times in passing but we actually get to meet a sparkly vampire when Ethan dresses up as him for Halloween in an episode that sees everyone turned into their costumes.

Vampire Sasquatch

That aside we get another fake show reference when we discover Rory has a plush toy of Vampire Sasquatch – a series sadly cancelled after 9 seasons… you know, I actually think that might work! Rory and Erica (Kate Todd) are feeding live but there doesn’t seem to be a proliferation of vampires, how the venom turning someone after one bite has been circumvented is never tackled. Another under-explored element occurred when Erica saw her reflection because someone’s soul was trapped in the mirror – this inferred that vampires have no souls and yet the three vampires in the school all seem more moral than amoral.

vampire car feeds

One unusual appearance was a vampire car, or a car possessed with the spirit of a vampire… One could ask about the distinction between a spirit and a soul and if a vampire can become one does it not prove the existence of the other but, let’s face it, a kid’s show isn’t going to dwell on existential issues. So instead let us revel in the appearance of one of the rarer vampire types (the vampire automobile). This one has a vendetta against a certain family, can regenerate body work (and flat tires) and has to be staked. In another episode we discover that if a vampire drinks from the dead they can contract disease.

dead Sarah

A view of Sarah dead was, I thought, going to be a true vampiric form but it was a spell to make Ethan fear everything (anyone he met looked dead). And that (bar the finale, which I won’t spoil) is that. As I said, the show has its own charm and the leads are fun. It still fails to bridge that divide but – as I said at the head – does it matter when it reaches its target audience perfectly well. The change to the catchy theme tune, for the last two episodes, grated however. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.