The general agreement among professional reviewers, such as Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker, is that True Blood did not hit full stride until midseason. In his initial review he gave the show a C, “Ball has never seen a comic-dramatic premise he can't flatten with leaden metaphors. (September 7, 2008).” The turning point seems to have been episode 5, Sparks Fly Out, where Sookie comes home and finds her grandmother lying dead in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
I loved it from the beginning. My girlfriend and I had it DVRed, but caught it most Sunday nights. And we are not black lipstick sharing Goths wearing out Cure CDs. Nor are we Twihards. In fact I would say that True Blood is far superior to Twillight. I’d rather bang with the Fangers than pine and swoon over the 1-calorie, 1-note Vampires of Forks, Washington. I do love Interview With The Vampire. That book is literature. Queen of the Damned kind of got away from her, but Anne Rice did reboot the Vampire with Louis and Lestat’s debut in 1976. Suck on that Bella!
True Blood is appointment television up there with Lost, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, Dexter, etc. Being an owner of True Blood on DVD I’ve taken up the project of watching the series episode by episode and blogging about it. If I blog an episode a week I’d be done by the start of the third season, which is supposedly next June.
T&A.
I’m afraid I’m superficial, easily distracted by a generous serving of T & A. Because after rewatching the first episode I did notice numerous plot holes and WTF moments that I must have gave a pass the first time around. But the eye candy! Sweet Jesus, all that flesh! Like Maudette Picken’s tits and Jason Stackhouse’s ass! All three of them shiny and sprayed down.
The wait staff at Merlotte’s is smokin’. Cut their sleeves and tighten the shorts, and Merlotte’s becomes Hooters. Sookie is hot. Dawn is hot. Arlene (“Peaches and Cream! Peaches and Cream!”) might not be as hot as Dawn and Sookie, but we would all tap that.
In Bon Temp for every 4 like Andy Bellefleur, you have two 9s or 10s like Tara and Lafayette. I’m not saying I’d tap Lafayette, but a lot of dudes that would. A lot of dudes would probably tap Liam, the bald vampire who was giving Maudette the rough stuff in her sex tape. He had the tattoos, the rolling eyes, and the temporary scoliosis. FYI, Graham Shiels, the actor who plays Liam, is Yale School of Drama alum, Class of 1999.
It must have been Alan Ball’s strategy to fill the screen up with stacked halter tops and camel-toed daisy dukes and manscaped pecs to get past that pretty weak sequence with the Rattrays.
I have to call True Blood out on this. I rewatched the episode and I keep asking myself al lot of questions. For one, why did Bill go out into the parking lot with the Rattrays. Was it because Denise Rattray got him all hot and bothered? I’d do Karina Logue, but in the context of the show and Bon Temps universe, Denise Rattray is a skank and a ho. And Bill is supposed to be this southern gentleman. He’s supposed to be reclaiming his humanity, trying to be the man he was before he was turned. I just wonder why he left Merlotte’s especially after Sookie told him, “Don’t go anywhere.” It is alluded that Denise was going to let him bite her. But was Bill really going to bite her…in front of Mack? Wouldn’t that have been kind of awkward, or does he roll like that? Was he going to have a three way with Mack and Denise? Is Bill a man slut, I mean vamp slut?
If I accept that Bill decided to leave the bar and accompany the Rattrays to the darkest corner of Merlotte’s parking lot, and did so with his brains intact, then how do I accept that the Rattrays got the drop on him with a thin chain of silver. Really, Bill? That’s kind of pussy. Amy used her extra-large, silver chain mail mask to take down Eddie. And that’s with stud puppy Jason distracting him in the doorway. Also, Eddie was a born loser. Bill, your supposed to be a bad ass. Eric would have fucked those guys up. You know that, right?
And why did Sam let Sookie go into the parking lot alone? I know the show has to introduce the dog in the show. And I know that’s how it is in the book. (It’s just as big as a plot hole there as it is the show.) But it doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I didn’t like it. I can’t see how Sam would let Sookie go after the Rattrays alone. I don’t see how he would let her go after a vampire alone.
And then there’s the end. When the Rattrays are putting the beat down on Sookie. We need Bill to come save her and establish the Protector/Girl-In-Peril dyad, but I still don’t know why Sam can’t hear her grunting and getting kicked in the head, especially since he so badly wants to look after her. What happened? Did he go in his trailer and fall asleep instantly? Maybe he’s in the shower. It’s a question left out there.
These plot holes, and the ones I omitted, don’t change the fact that I love this show. I even love this episode. But if some of the episodes are 9s or 10s, others are a 4s. I give this show 2 and ½ True Bloods.
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