True Blood

True Blood (2008) B+

True Blood is a supernatural drama which airs on HBO. When I first heard of this show I was very skeptical. Being a fan of vampire stories, the Twilight phenomenon had soured me on Hollywood depictions and I did not give the show a second thought. A year later, since the show is still going with a large following, I decided to give it a shot. It’s no Twilight, and that’s just the way I like it.

The show is set in a world where vampires have recently “come out of the coffin” and announced their presence to the human world. The driving force behind this decision was the invention of a synthetic blood (Tru Blood) that can keep vampires alive without having to feed on humans (Whether they all want to live on it is a whole other issue). The show revolves around a young woman named Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) who works as a waitress at a bar in a small town called Bon Temps. Sookie has latent telepathic abilities, and she must concentrate hard in order to block out the thoughts of others. Over the first two seasons Sookie begins to realize that her strange abilities make her something other than human and she must come to grips with that fact. Sookie’s introduction was one of the many things in the first episode that really caught me, they perfectly displayed Sookie’s power in a way you could understand without using a single line of dialogue, it was very well done. The sleepy Louisiana town gets its first vampire since they revealed themselves, a civil war vet named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) who has come to claim his family’s ancestral home. Sookie is instantly drawn to him because he is the first person she has ever met whose thoughts she can’t read. The bar Sookie works in is owned by a man named Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammel), who has a strange secret. Sookie’s best friend Tara (Rutina Wesley) comes to work at the bar with her as well, they grew up together and are as close as sisters. Sookie’s other coworkers are a colorful bunch- their various soap opera-esque interactions are best left to be explained by the show itself. Various supernatural beings make appearances in this sleepy little town, and I am excited to see where they take this series.

(Beware the spoilers!)


True Blood delivers the blood and sex on expects from a good vampire story. The storylines throughout the first and second season were a lot of fun. Lafayette being kidnapped for selling vampire blood, Rene is really the killer, Eric becoming obsessed with Sookie and tricking her into drinking his blood, Bill’s fledgling (the absolutely gorgeous Deborah Ann Woll), Eric’s sire Godric ending his life, and many more. This is a very involved show, so anyone who balks at the idea of watching every single episode to be filled in all of the interwoven storylines may be turned off.

It’s worth noting that though the character development throughout the second season is prime, the finale was quite a let down. The corny dance scene with Bill and Sookie was a bit too much. Killing off characters is just lazy writing, plain and simple. Also, the entire town just lets it go that they have forgotten the past couple of days and came to half naked next to a meat-tree thing? No one asks what happened to Maryann? The season 2 finale could have been much, much better. I wonder how closely the seasons follow the book series, could that explain the lame ending? While I do intend to continue following the series when it returns from hiatus, they better step up the storylines or they may lose me.