I love the vampire diaries and the originals. I plan on re-watching both series again, but the originals has its own uniqueness from TVD. The main difference is the plot is not focused on an obsession with one girl. Up until you watch this show, you're meant to think of the original family as villains, but you quickly see their family back story and grow attached to them. My only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 was because I really didn't like the ending. I can understand how too many episodes might lead to a lot of filler that isn't needed, but seasons 4 and 5 had the opposite problem. It really felt rushed and there were not enough episodes to build on the plot in my opinion. Here are my complaints about seasons 4 and 5:
*Spoilers from here!!*
Season 4: Season 3's ending was nothing short of spectacular. I was expecting a lot more tension in that when it carried over to season 4. They could have focused more on finding the cure and the difficulty of doing so. They could have made a bigger deal with Marcel being the potential death of their species. Instead they're cured and back together in the first episode, and Marcel becomes an ally again in only a few episodes. The whole thing with the hollow was rushed and had no build up. Not to say it wasn't good at all, but they could have spent more detail on everything.
Season 5: This season starts out amazing with the tension at first. Hayley gets kidnapped, and there are plagues erupting New Orleans when Klaus comes back to his family. I was so excited to watch the next episodes, but the plot fell extremely flat after Hayley's death. Even if the hollow business in season 4 was rushed, at-least there was a threat to them. The vampire purists who want to rid New Orleans of the the other factions didn't feel like a threat at all. They extract Marcel's venom but that quickly gets destroyed and they all quickly die by Hope. They mentioned the plagues, and they could have made that seem more of an issue, but Hope just quickly absorbs all the magic and the whole idea of the first borns dying gets completely thrown out the trash. The ending still brought tears to my eye though.