Papa’s Basement 7-3-10-The Battle of Taco Bell
There comes a time in every man’s life when, pushed too far by the tyranny of evil oppression, he must stand and fight back. Nat Turner knew it. David Lee […]
Twilight. The Vampire Diaries. The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. Team Edward. Team Jacob. Team Coco. If you’re anything like me, you, too, are having a hard time keeping track of all the weird, vampire-centric shit that’s hit the market the past few years. I’m here today to make the case that you give one of these what-does-it-say-about-me-that-women-fantasize-about-getting-the-blood-sucked-out-of-them-by-Robert-Pattinson-yet-I-can’t-get-one-to-agree-to-a-run-of-the-mill-threesome shows a try, though: HBO’s True Blood.
I wanted to be above True Blood. God, how I wanted that. An ex of mine was way into the show, to the point of dressing as its protagonist, Sookie Stackhouse (played by the gap-toothed and generally weird-faced Anna Paquin), for Halloween. There’s nothing I relish more than despising, or at least being ignorant of, the things that people close to me love most, and getting to post “Who are you supposed to be, again?” under each picture of her in costume on Facebook is a memory I will treasure forever. Months passed. The relationship eventually ended (thus freeing me to watch the show) and, about the same time, a friend, who had downloaded True Blood illega…er, purchased the show’s first two seasons on DVD from the good, Christian folk over at HBO.com gave them to me to view. By the end of the first, episode, I was hooked.
True Blood‘s premise is intriguing: The Japanese have invented a synthetic blood they brand “True Blood,” which frees vampires from relying on humans for sustenance, allowing them to “come out of the closet,” so to speak. Now openly living in society, vampires serve as a metaphor for several minority groups, ranging from blacks (vamps are considered dynamite in bed, though those that sleep with them are stigmatized as “fang bangers”) to gays (there are dedicated vampire bars and the right for vampires to marry humans is a hotly debated issue) to…well, okay, they pretty much parallel the blacks and the gays. I mean no one accuses them of stealing our jobs, eating cats or having big noses and controlling the entertainment industry.
Thankfully, the show doesn’t get by on a cute premise alone: The writing, character development and pacing are all top-notch. Oh, and there’s non-stop fucking, too. Unfortunately, a lot of said fucking involves Anna Paquin, but if you squint hard enough, you can imagine the face of one of the show’s more attractive actresses on her decent body (like Deborah Ann Woll, the redhead on your left).
“So John,” you might be asking, “the show’s third season (edit: now fourth season. Time flies) is currently on HBO. Should I immediately subscribe in order to get in on the action because I emulate you on every conceivable level?” Not so fast, sparky. Remember when I mentioned things like “character development” and “top-notch writing and pacing” that characterized the shows first two seasons? Yeah, not so much this time around. It’s like they replaced the writing staff with a bunch of second-graders who rattled off a list of things they’d thought would look cool on a tv show and built around that. “So, you want the vampires to eat blood ice cream and drink blood soda? Check. And you want werewolves added to the show, and the vampires fight the werewolves? And add 10 new characters, but don’t focus on any of them for more than 20 seconds because things would get boring? Sounds good!”
If you want to give True Blood a shot, check out the show’s first season and move on from there. I suppose I could also tell you to read the books the show is based on (The Southern Vampire Mysteries) but: 1. I haven’t read them 2. They have shitty cover art according to what I just saw on Wikipedia and 3. Telling someone to read a book feels as modern to me as advising them to cure a fever by getting some leeches to “suck out the devils that inhabit their bloodstream.” Maybe this season of True Blood will right itself and end up awesome. I give it the same odds as me finally getting that threesome.
reallyprofound on July 9, 2010
Good reading, suckface. I might give it a crack.