True Blood Review

KRISTIN PARKER-STONE:

I admit it.

That show about the liar/murderer/drug-dealer/mob boss/total douche-monkey who is inexplicably likable?

I love that shit. I eat that shit up. I like my male protagonists felonious and cruel, like the escapist version of that asshole boyfriend you know better then to have in real life, even though he's dangerous and manipulative and exciting.

And Alan Ball's True Blood promised a world full of people who by their very nature (undead) are the types your psychiatrist strongly suggests keeping a safe distance from.

So it's really too bad that most of them are unlikable.

True Blood takes place in an alternative version of New Orleans, two years after the world's Vampires have decided to "come out of the coffin" and just start hanging out in bars and shit like it’s no big thing. The action mostly revolves around Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), an unfortunately named waitress who also happens to be telepathic, and the events surrounding her first encounter with a Vampire, Bill Compton (Stephan Moyer, of Fuck, Where Do I Know That Guy From? Fame). The series is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris, and while I respect Alan Ball's intention to remain true to the source material, I respectfully assert that that was a big fucking mistake.

For a few months prior to True Blood's premiere, HBO aired a clever little advertising segment: a fictional broadcast news investigation of the events surrounding the initial emergence of the Vampires into the Human World. And it was a fascinating cross section: a Dana Perino-type Vampire rights lobbyist who remains reasonable, charming, and logic-bound in the face of her monstrous condition, a misguided young woman who expounds on the joys of sex with the undead, as well as the Japanese scientist responsible for accidentally inventing “TruBlood”, the blood replacement beverage responsible for bringing Vampires out of the shadows. And while these personalities were interesting, it was the tone that strung them together cohesively: This is the world we live in. Everything is the same, except that now, we have vampires. The Call Is Coming From Inside the House!

And I strongly believe that would have been the magic formula: give us interesting people from various places within the world we know, and make them potentially horrifically dangerous sometime in the near future. And they were so close.

Instead, none of the characters from this promo are significantly used, if used at all. True to the source material, we are stuck in a bayou world so insular, you wonder which door at the bar where Sookie works might turn out to be one of the sound stage’s exits. Anna Paquin’s accent is about as subtle as being fisted by a panda, and she is one of the better performances. The gay people are really gay. The red necks are racist and ignorant. Even Sookie’s sweet elderly grandmother, Adele, (Lois Smith) while charming in an ‘Oh, Old People!’ kind of way, seems detached from the vampire situation in a way that makes me wonder if she’s doing double duty on the Oxycontin.

As a result, what we have is a very limited and truly inaccessible view of this world. We have mountains of bad character behavior (including one successful murder, and another decent attempt), but it's random and thoughtless; the antagonists have all the depth of a Koopa Trooper. And the clincher is that Vampires are not responsible for ANY of violence that occurs in the pilot.

Despite all this, I’ll give it another shot on Sunday. There’s enough camp here where it makes me think they might just take the plunge and go for the humor, full out Ann Rice style, and True Blood could benefit from not taking itself so seriously. Anna Paquin, despite not being very good as Sookie, is strangely interesting playing herself. And despite dialogue that makes me close my eyes in embarrassment at points, I’m very interested to see where they take Stephen Moyer’s vampire, who is, despite a very crowded cast, the only vampire we have yet to meet. Albeit underused, he’s darkly charming in a way that makes me not want to blame him for the source material just yet. 

And also, it’s Alan Ball. There’s something to be said for brand loyalty, even if it means sitting through vampires randomly moving in double-time for no apparent reason.

Provisional Grade: C

True Blood airs on HBO on Sunday at 9/8 CST, and re-run throughout the week. Did not premiere as well as John from Cincinnati, and we all know how that went, so catch it now while you can.