True Blood

It seems that vampires are hot these days, but I think they've probably always been hot, ever since Dracula was published over a hundred years ago. Since they are almost always a metaphor for forbidden sexuality, tales of blood lust seem a safer and more acceptable way for us to satisfy our urges for erotica, rather than watching soft-core porn.

The most popular vampire stuff these days are the Twilight books and the subsequent movies, but those have a limited audience of teenage girls. The antidote to the chaste insipidness of Twilight is the HBO series, True Blood, based on books by Charlaine Harris. I just got finished watching the DVDs for season one, and though I found fault with some of it I'm hooked. The second season just began, but since I don't have HBO I'll have to wait for the DVD release (and besides, it's more satisfying to watch a season in one big gulp).

True Blood, created by Alan Ball, posits a world where vampires have "come out of the coffin" and revealed themselves to be real. A synthetic blood has been invented that satisfies their nutrional needs, so they have no need to suck the blood of humans, so they lobby to be given rights and say they want to live in harmony with everyone else. This is a pretty heavy-handed parallel to the gay rights movement, with people taking sides and predictably religious groups taking a decided "anti-vampire" stance.

In northern Louisiana, a vampire named Bill Compton returns to his ancestral home, eager to "mainstream." He meets our heroine, Sookie Stackhouse, who is a waitress in a small-town bar and grill who has never really dated much--she has the unfortunate talent of being able to read people's minds. When she meets Bill, though, she finds that she can't read his thoughts, and this is a big plus for her.

As Sookie and Bill (she teases him that he has a rather dull name for a vampire--it should be Antoine or Basil) get close, she suffers scorn from her friends that she is a "fangbanger," but she is resolute and their relationship goes through it's up and downs (since he can't come out in the day, she realizes they'll never have breakfast together).

The spine of season one is a series of killings of women who have had relationships with vampires, and Sookie becomes a target. Her brother, a rock-headed stud named Jason, is suspected by police of being the killer, since he was with the victims only hours before their deaths. By the end of the season we know who the killer is and why, and are left with a cliffhanger for season two.

The serial killer storyline isn't the attraction of this show--it's kind of standard stuff. What makes this show special is the atmosphere it creates. Instead of setting it in New Orleans, which is well-traveled vampire territory, True Blood is set in the rural north of the state. The brilliant opening-credit sequence, set to the Jace Everett song "Bad Things" (which I have trouble getting out of my head--I even ordered the soundtrack of the show so I could have a copy) is a montage of images that captures the essence of the place--sacred (baptisms, black churches), carnal (strippers) and natural (a snake, a dead possum, a catfish). After watching twelve episodes of this show over the course of a week I felt like I knew this place.

The actors are a good bunch, too. Anna Paquin is Sookie, and she does well with a tough character. She's supposed to be a "good girl," devoted to her grandmother, but she has to also be convincing as a tough-minded heroine who defies the morals of the area by indulging in forbidden love. Stephen Moyer is Bill, and though he's a good-looking fellow, there's also something creepy about him--he kind of resembles Paul Rudd with a really bad hangover. Special marks also go to Ryan Kwanten as the testosterone-driven Jason, and Rutina Wesley as Sookie's friend Tara. This was a really difficult role, because at first I thought it was another sassy black best friend part, but over the arc of the season she is made to deal with the contrariness that makes her so sassy. At the end of the season we're set up for the next one as she falls under the spell of a self-help guru who seems to good to be true.

This show definitely has some off-beat elements. One character is revealed to be a shape-shifter who likes to turn into a dog, and we see a spooky scene in which a backwoods woman performs an exorcism. I liked the stuff involving the vampires who have no interest in living with humans--they only want to feed on them.

True Blood is an example of how long-form television is an art in its own form, distinct from cinema. A two-hour film can't give you the growth of character and richness of detail that twelve hours can. And since this is HBO, there are no obvious commercial breaks and plenty of adult content. I'm particular thankful for several nude scenes involving actress Lizzy Caplan.