True Blood is driving me crazy
I am up to season 1, episode 7, and so far I am not impressed. Yet I keep watching out of some insane hope that it will somehow redeem itself. So I know that it’s not supposed to be the most brilliant thing on TV (or DVD) but most people either think that the show is at least watchable.
Now, I am usually the person defending bad TV because of some small quality that no-one else seems to get - hell, I even watched Charmed for years past it’s Use By date!
The premise of True Blood seems interesting enough: vampire’s have ‘outed’ themselves to mainstream society thanks to the invention of a synthetic blood substitute. The show is set in the Louisiana, and already you’re getting the images that Anne Rice loved so much about that setting - the heat, the humidity, a society steeped in tradition and religion, where modernity is held in place at the jugular by the tides of history.
So what is it about True Blood that irks me so?
Firstly, the characters. What an annoying bunch! The main female lead is Sookie, a character almost poetically named except for the fact that the show is set in Louisiana, and not in Australia (where a sook is a person who mopes around and cries about everything). She’s a banal mix of youthful naivete and a hopeless idealist.
The male lead, and vampire protagonist, is a poor-man’s version of Louis de Pointe du Lac from Interview With The Vampire and Angel from Buffy. Bill the vampire (Yes, Bill.) is trying to ‘go mainstream’ by living among the humans as if he were human. Bill also has a romantic interest in Sookie but spends every minute he’s with her either scaring the crap out of the poor girl, or letting his vamp buddies terrorise her. Angel wouldn’t stand for such ungentlemanly behavior.
The only black characters in the show are gay, drug dealers or alcoholic. In fact the best character in the show, Tara, is no stereotype breaking strong black female, but instead learns everything she knows from daytime TV, and will do anything for the pretty white boy, Jason.
Jason himself, played by Australia’s own Ryan Kwanten, is only there as comic relief, and for gratuitous shots of his abs and butt (I assume nudity draws a crowd).
In fact, gratuitous is the operative word so far for True Blood. The story is so slow to develop that tits and ass is pretty much all the show is about.
The vampire lore is all over the place. The vampires seem science based and not magical. But then they can stand in front of a holy cross, but need to be invited into a house. There are shapeshifters (who haven’t shown up yet), a dog that lurks the shadows (who hasn’t been explained yet) and a tavern owner who is either a red herring or a psycho, or Dexter.
Every episode ends on a ‘shocking’ cliff-hanger note, but since you’re not getting any resolution and only more inconsistency from the plot you get the feeling you’re been stringed along. The only thing you can count on is that next episode, Ryan Kwanten is going to get his kit off.
I can suspend disbelief, but I don’t have to drink the kool-aid. So am I wrong? Am I expecting too much? Am I cynical beyond my years? Am I too lost in the well developed worlds of Joss Whedon and Anne Rice? Am I just wasting my time and should I move on? Am I missing something? Is it worth sticking out?
