Wednesday, January 14, 2009

True Blood - Season One

Rating:★★★★
Category:Other
From wikipedia: "True Blood is an American television drama series created by Alan Ball, based on the Sookie Stackhouse book series by Charlaine Harris. The series is produced by HBO in association with Ball's own production company, Your Face Goes Here Entertainment. It premiered on September 7, 2008.

The show details the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional small Louisiana town, after Japanese-made synthetic blood – "TruBlood" – becomes available for purchase. It follows Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a telepathic waitress at a diner, who falls in love with vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer).

On September 17, 2008, HBO announced it renewed True Blood for a second season after airing only two episodes. Production will begin early 2009, with new episodes slated to air during June-August 2009.
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At first I had my apprehensions.
Having been a fan of the vampire mythologies from Vampire the Masquerade, Vampire the Requiem (both from White Wolf Gaming Studios) and from the Anne Rice novels, a new series on vampires worried me. While I don't really mind the melodramatics and the gore, I was worried this would simply be another "Twilight" in the making.

Thankfully, it is the furthest from what Twilight can ever aspire to be, and that is a very very good thing in my book.

True Blood captures the sexy, sultry, dangerous vampire that has long needed to be brought back into television, and it does it with a brashness that is relatively unheard of so far. In the era of censorship and toned-down for the public consumption comes a show that does really give new fangs to sex, blood and drama. And it does it really well.

The show, at times seems temptingly predictable, but loves to catch the viewers off-guard with little twists and an old but never overused cliche device, "the dream sequence." Just as Battlestar Galactica shocked its viewers in its mid-season ender, Revelations, having someone shoot someone pointblank in the bridge, True Blood has its own WTF OMG moments that are nicely later on revealed to be dreams or imagined moments. The analogies of vampirism to homosexuality (coming out of the coffin) and even drug addiction are present, however, the show never ends up having vampires embrace a sensual feminine grace the way Anne Ricean vampires do. Instead, the show gives us the beastial hot masculine predators that vampires can be, and nicely interposes this against both human... and not-so-human elements.

Definitely not for the young, however, considering many of the sexual scenes are pretty much soft-core porn in their own right, True Blood is a damned good shot of vitae into the entertainment industry too blinded by the prettiness of Edward and the witty banters of Buffy. (Oh, that's gonna rile up some fans of those two shows for sure!) While I love Joss Whedon for his Firefly and Dr. Evil antics (not to mention his comics are the bomb) when it comes to showing vampires as the damn deadly desirable undead they are, give me my True Blood.


18 comments:

  1. May DVD copy ka? Hehehe. Pahiram

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  2. Wala. But I have the whole first season in my laptop.

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  3. I love it too! I'm gonna finish the series by this weekend. My current favorite ep, Episode 6, "Cold Ground" is one hell of a "WHAM" episode, yes?

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  4. Hmmm. looks like a little too early for me to judge the show having only seen 2 episodes and I've got more to finish. But how I wish the vampire was better looking and more engaging, if not dashing. I'm ok with Anna having mind-reading capabilities, I just hope the show gets better as I watch further eps. :)

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  5. Don't worry Caz, more traditional Anne Rice-ish smooth and urbane vampires show up later on in the series. They just start out by showing the trashy probinsyano vampires first, just to separate itself from both Twilight and Anne Rice. :P

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  6. True Blood balanced out the mind-raping horror that is Twilight. The opening sequence alone was enough to convince me that this was going to be a good one, and it delivered: visceral and raw.

    Here's to a great second season.

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  7. the show gets better actually. And the cast are awesome. I like amy burley and sam.. I think everyone is great in the show even tara, terry and hoyt. I think its an awesome ensemble.

    I think u cant put buffy and true blood in one category even though they have both vampires on it.. buffy is buffy and true blood is true blood..

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  8. Pahiram ng laptop? Wahehehe

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  9. CAZ, is that you?????? OMG!!!!

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  10. Its a small world after all....

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  11. Trust me. Bill gets more... uh.. engaging soon enough.

    Assuming you like your vampires getting down and dirty, that is.

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  12. I LOVE the one after that.
    :-P

    For more.. primal reasons.

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  13. Again, for me Buffy exemplifies in witty banter and great fun characterization, but True Blood achieves more in showing the nature and the inhumanity of a vampire.

    So hilariously engaging script, Buffy wins hands down.
    But showing vampires as VAMPIRES, sorry, Buffy fails here. Which is understandable cause the show is about a Slayer, not about vampires.

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  14. On later seasons, Buffy viewers would ask themselves, "Where did the vampires go?" XD

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  15. just started watching this show this morning, i've only seen the first 2 episodes...
    anyways, i got hooked... so i searched the net and found out that the series is an adaptation of the Southern Vampire Mysteries Series aka Sookie Stackhouse series (a series of 8 books + 1 to be release this may)
    the season 1 covers the first book so i guess there'll be plenty more episodes to come...
    anyways, just trying to show my appreciation...

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  16. The fact the show is based on the books is a tricky fact. I get so tempted to read the books wanting more doses of "True Blood." However, the fact that the television series is still being prepped for a second season makes me want to NOT read the novels, just so the show retains its surprise! Talk about complicated eh?

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  17. Pero na notice ko after looking up the first book of the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries on the net, malaki ang divergence na ng season 1 from the series. A major character from the book is missing, Lafayette's role was greatly increased, and Tara appears earlier (her first appearance was in a later novel). Pero the basic outline of the plot will still get retained, I think.

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