| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Other |
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.
