Advertising is already covering phone booths throughout the city to promote the second season of HBO’s True Blood, but after just watching nearly all of the first 12 episodes on demand, I am left wondering what the appeal is here and how there is call for seconds. As far as I can tell, the basic ideas driving the show are twofold: 1) SEX! and 2) Neck-biting! And also: Sex and neck-biting…at the same time!
The story mostly revolves around Anna Paquin’s character Sookie Stackhouse as she befriends and boyfriends vampire Bill (played by Stephen Moyer). Also getting tons of screen time (including most of the naked romp scenes) is Sookie’s sex- and drug-addicted brother Jason Stackhouse, of the “so pretty but so dumb” male variety. All sorts of craziness starts happening in this small southern town after the world’s vampires decide to come out of the casket since the Japanese have invented TruBlood, a form of synthetic blood that theoretically can replace real blood as sustenance for the vamps.
Now I’ve never read the books, but this is a pretty wild premise for me to casually accept as a television viewer. But let’s not stop there: Sookie can read minds, her bartender boss is a shape-shifter (preferred form: dog), and who knows what else may hit the sceen next.
This is just asking me to suspend too much disbelief! I refuse. I am no rat in a cage. Check out Billy Corgan and the rest of these guys rocking the vampire aesthetic way back in ’96!
Smashing Pumpkins – Zero:
-Drew
East Village to Brooklyn 