In Which True Blood Rolls On Through Its Second Season

The Secret History of Blood

by ALEX CARNEVALE

True Blood

creator Alan Ball

Yes, the vagaries of the underworld, once they come to your doorstep, can be exciting. But pretty soon that party's getting out of hand. And there's one thing that Tara's cousin Lafayette can tell you after being unbearably tortured at the hands of the Sheriff of Louisiana Eric Northman.

Calling your cousin 'hooker' is common parlance in the salty town of Bon Temps where a half-bull, half-human claws people half to death, more spiritual creatures egg on the party spirit with three-clawed hoofs, and a young vampire can just order a tasty human treat to her door. Most likely, though, you'll end up like Tara:

For awhile, it's good. It's great. The appearance of normalcy can give purpose to any situation. Best friends shack up with each other and life seems on the upswing. A vampire 'maker' calls his ward his 'progeny.' If you have the right word for something, you could potentially turn things around. Even for a moody, tortured vamp life's not all bad.

Molly gets her kicks from comparing True Blood to Buffy. While I grant you that Buffy was tremendous for its time, it was for kids. This is serious business, so serious that Anna Paquin can't be bothered to act beyond filling out her latest outfit. As one qualified ONTD critic put it, "The fact that Anna Paquin won a Golden Globe for acting proves that anything is possible." It's now an axiomatic proof, True Blood doesn't care about the finer points.

In fact, as shit collapses around her ("I almost died...again!"), Sookie's remarkably calm...for some reason. "I know Bill wouldn't want me to do this," she says before she does something she knows will earn his disapproval. My golden retriever Rosie learns quicker. "God dang it if I didn't love the taste of your blood so much Sookie!" Bill will likely respond to another Sookie mishap in a future episode. These two are either on their honeymoon or they're Honeymooners.

I'd rather be a fly on the wall for the cutest couple in six counties — the 1,000 year old vampire known as Eric Northman and his favorite homosexual pet. I can't wait for this parasitic pair to go to their house in the country. For christ's sake, Hollywood has been begging for an interracial Withnail & I for longer than I care to remember.

did she happen to see Jack or Hurley on that flight?Eric and Lafayette are now bound to each other by virtue of sharing blood. Remember how Bill was so able to come to Sookie's scream in the airplane hanger? It's because he tasted her sweet necktar before. Now Lafayette has a dangerous monster at his beck and call. Oh right, he's not in a partying mood.

working theory is that she is what has been powering al gore

Michelle Forbes' one-note performance as the party animal is starting to grate on me, though. Each episode will she reveal some new superpower? Not even Al Pacino in Scarface was this distracted from the business at hand. I don't want to see her literal claws, I'd prefer her metaphorical ones and maybe an upskirt for shits and giggles. Every creature of power has a plan, or else how did they get their power?

Perhaps it came to them when they were young, before they were truly ready for it. The Center for Disease Control reports that one-third of all young vampires are staked before getting to sample hotel-provided B-positive ass. In the books Sookie and Bill visited a human hotel modified to cope with vampires; here vampires are afforded separate but far better treatment. Bill, Sookie and their ginger ward have come to Dallas to find the vampire Godric, fearing he may be imprisoned by the Fellowship of the Light.

The sexy group of vampire haters has employed Jason Stackhouse in their quest to rid the world of everything disgusting and alien, preserving the all-American sexuality we have come to expect from God-fearing sprites of the world. Jason has become the unwitting protagonist of this series. Sometimes you plan for someone to be the main character of your show and it turns out to be another person's story. In this case, the afflicted is the sibling of the main characters, and with a full 55 minutes to fill every week, they need all the backstory they can get. A slow burn heats best.

you don't really eat sarah's ribs, it's more like you take a bath in themWould I disavow all my previous beliefs and the welfare of my sister's bf to get with a Southern woman who was once a vegetarian and knows how to cook ribs? The answer is yes.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here. You can find his review of the first few episodes of Season Two here.

"No Fun" - Vitalic (mp3)

"My Friend Dario" - Vitalic (mp3)

"The Past" - Vitalic (mp3)

In Which In A Manner of Speaking I Just Want To Bleed

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

by ALEX CARNEVALE

There are about seven different words that mean gratitude in Japanese, and about half of them figure the word 'resentment' into their definitions. These are the same people that brought the world that most splendid of energy drinks for the young vampire, TruBlood. Do yourself a favor and mix a little O negative in with that broth you're cooking. It's a change you won't regret.

But yes, thanking someone for real ended when the Old West did; shortly thereafter it turned itself into an insult except for a brief period during the Jimmy Carter administration when it was a pun. No good deed goes unpunished, and few creatures of this world can appreciate that.

But Marianne (the delicious Michelle Forbes) can. Her inner monologues go on and on in Latin, and she's a Dionysian one for sure. She brought ne'erdowells of color into her well-apportioned home, and she can make shapeshifters shit diarrhea when they're busted back to their canine form. Be thankful! What exactly is so bad about accepting your host's graciousness? Guest rights were common when Marianne first burst on the scene. Now if you plan ahead to stay with your relatives they wait for your after-dinner walk to sample the sherbet you so desperately crave.

To prevent his store from being looted in the wake of the Lakers' championship, a shopkeeper had an unusual idea. Put a sign up that said, "Free! Going Out of Business!" and you wouldn't even have to put a guard at the door. People hate being offered things, and they certainly can't accept kindness, whether it comes from a human, or whatever Marianne is, exactly.

The first season of True Blood was provincial, this season the show can really start to spread its wings. Gosh, we haven't met a single wolf yet, although for my money Tara's ex-con seductor looks like he might bite. Everyone is just so beautiful in this backwards town that Anna Paquin is starting to look piqued under her eyes and tits.

Last week's premiere ended in make-up sex, and it's where last night's episode picked up. Sookie and Bill are having major problems, huge problems, problems accepting that each other's problems are problems. Vampire-human love will never work, there's too much going against it. You can hit the same artery multiple times and it'll come back, but veins are tougher, and it's only a matter of time before Sookie loses the ability to create scar tissue on her neck and bleeds out for good.

why aren't you watching this show again?Yes, Bill will soon be parted from Sookie's ample bosom. In the books there was no teenage vampire Jessica that Bill had to care for to step between them - she's a fiction of the show, which needed a reason to separate the happy couple short of Bill's research. (Bill attempts to put together a vampire Who's Who in Charlaine Harris' series. As a dramatic action it's somewhat lacking.)

Meanwhile, the consumers of vampire blood are struggling through rehab. Lafayette is about to undergo a serious transformation, and it is true he would make one stellar vampire. But poor Tara! Deprived of her cousin's once-questionable humanity, is she the only non-supe in Bon Temps?

Jason Stackhouse is doing his part to help Tara out. Off at vampire hate camp, he captured the flag, along with the erotic intentions of his host. It's just good to be Jason Stackhouse. He loves everyone, whether it's Stephen Root, the chick from Cloverfield, or the wife of a preacher. Bro is just full of it. You have to wonder how far Alan Ball is prepared to push the church camp satire. As of now, he probably has some viewers thinking they accidentally stumbled on EWTN.

The new Eric Northman should come as no surprise. If he really has his eye on Sookie (and let's be honest, the only reason to dress like Sporty Spice is for ass), he's going to have to stop chowing down on her friends.

As of this very moment, however, he might have an opportunity. Sookie's a fragile creature right now. When you could always read minds, and suddenly can't because you're stepmother to a teen vamp - you can be talked into some pretty crazy things. I suggest the show's producers consider a Vampire Jessica world tour, dragging the evil ginger who plays her around the world to flash her fangs at opponent of homosexual marriage and cry red. When best utilized, fear can do us all some good.

"Don't you dare threaten me," Marianne tells Sam Merlotte. She's not going to let anyone ruin her good time, whether it's her devoted servant who stopped Tara from banging whatever it is that black drug dealer actually is, or the good rodeo-loving people of Bon Temps. Trouble at home and abroad - this is show is life.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls it all here.

"Out of the Wilderness" - God is a Whale (mp3)

"Maybe You're Right" - God is a Whale (mp3)

"Birds and Pears" - God is a Whale (mp3)

 

In Which We Just Want A Little Bite

Back to the Blood

by SARAH C. ROBERTS

Sookie Stackhouse, True Blood's blonde-haired, wide-eyed heroine, is telepathic. And naturally, since she can hear their lovely thoughts, she's not a huge fan of human men. Sookie's gift is just one supernatural element viewers are asked to accept as normal in this intense and dark dramedy. Alan Ball's True Blood is a move away from his last foray into the premium channel playground where anything goes, Six Feet Under, but his mix of heavy and light, death and love, fantastical and gritty is still present in True Blood.

Ball has an ability to strike a balance of humorous dialogue and scenarios with the darkest of situations and themes. True Blood is certainly no different, taking seriously the idea that vampires are now out in the open and will be treated like minorities are in this country, especially in the South - not too well.

Here, vampires exist and are immortal. Never a Harry Potter or fantasy/supernatural genre fan, I found the whole concept hard to get past. When I watch movies/shows I want to feel as though the story playing before me could actually take place.

The Japanese have created synthetic blood that fulfills all vampires' nutritional needs. It's called TruBlood and sold in 4-packs like gourmet beers. It looks disgusting. Now that vampires do not need to feed on humans, they have "come out of the coffin"; we had better get used to it. They have a Vampire Rights Act, a Vampire Rights agenda, and an American Vampire League to push it.

That's fine and good but some Joe six-pack Americans aren't all that open to the vampire agenda and think they're evil, sick and a blatant affront to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Sound familiar? This is where the larger - albeit obvious - metaphor begins to take shape, and that wink, wink I-get-what-you're-putting-down Ball feeling makes the supernatural element easier to swallow.

True Blood is set in Bon Temps, a fictional small town in northwest Louisiana. The swampland of Louisiana as a setting lends itself to the supernatural (and to the horrible accents that populate the show) but it also sets up a portrayal of the Deep South that is relatively accurate.

As a young girl I lived in Shreveport, which is in northwest Louisiana and is referenced on the show, and my family is from a small town very similar to Bon Temps, Logansport, La. and as I watched a familiarity washed over me reminding me of the times I spent in my grandmother's house on the Red River.

What True Blood does very well is show a fairly realistic small Southern town: race relations imperfect but  improved, the gossip news network, the slower pace of life in the stifling heat.

The worst element of the show for me is the accents. They are bad-bad, not so bad it pains to watch, but laughably inaccurate at times. Non-Southerners waxing Southern is always especially amusing for me, and even though some of the hackneyed elements of the set design and clothing choices, among other things, are laid on a bit too thick for my taste, it could always be worse.

In small towns, evangelicals tend to set the standards of living and vampires are wholly unacceptable in a "family values rule!" society. The vampire lifestyle is unnatural and a sin, they will convert your children, they are sexually perverse, and on and on.

Ball's portrayal of the majority of vampires as these poor, unfortunate souls who golly-gee just want rights like all the rest of us law-abiding, tax-paying Americans is a bit much at times, but fortunately that is not the only plot point of note.

As with real-life issues the level of acceptance for vampires and vampire culture is on a continuum for the non-blood drinking characters on the show and most are not quite as accepting as Sookie. The mystery of Sookie Stackhouse series of books by Charlaine Harris is centered between these two spheres. Are the vampires murdering the young, nubile women of Bon Temps or is it something more sinister? (It turned out to be the latter.)

The drama is about the humans (perhaps more than human in Sookie's case) and how they react to and are affected by the vampire infestation. Bill Compton, Bon Temps first vampire and Sookie's love interest, is "mainstreaming." He lives among human and he doesn't bite people. He is generally a stand-up vampire as he courts Sookie Stackhouse, which does not please his fellow vampires. He's too normal! He's domesticated and boring!

The other competition for Sookie's love was Sam Merlotte, the creepy proprietor of Merlotte's Tavern. His love for Sookie is desperate and more than a little awkward. Now seemingly mild-mannered Sam is a shape-shifter (not a werewolf as I previously assumed) and Sookie just can't wait to learn more about her boss. It is hard to dislike someone whose parents just took off and left him to fend for himself when he was a young teen.

So sure, the shape-shifting is weird and a little off-putting but Sam and Sookie's BFF Tara as a couple? Weirder and majorly off-putting. I delicately hid my eyes every time they were shown in flagrante.

As Sam's plight is becoming more and more understandable, Tara pushed the audience and everyone around her further and further away. The pairing of the two just didn't work and hopefully, that ship may have officially sailed with the arrival of Michelle Forbes' character, Sam's apparently former love interest, to create friction between them.

Jason Stackhouse, Sookie's brother, may be very pretty and a little dumb, but he means well. (In another case of major family issues as a source of bad behavior, Jason is convinced that his irresponsible behavior as a boy caused his parents' untimely death.) Tara's late cousin Lafayette's schoolin' has impressed upon the chill young man that his recent actions have had and will continue to have some major consequences, as will his entry into the Children of the Light.

Bill made a mistake defending Sookie's honor, and now all he wants is to mainstream and be with Sookie and hang out in Bon Temps. He'd rather not take part in vampire politics, yet he has no choice. With creative punishment from the tribunal, Bill became a maker for the first time and he does not appear to be a fan of the process or the new, bratty young vamp. I mainly feel sympathy because even when he missteps with Sookie, it seems he's just trying to do right by her, as chauvinistic as what he thinks is best might be.

He doesn't fit in with her modern world and she'll never understand the complexities and requirements of the vampiric life. This conflict between the two will surely cause an even bigger rift between their two worlds as a battle for the moral majority looms on the horizon.

Sarah C. Roberts is the senior contributor to This Recording. She lives in Georgia, and her tumblr is here.

"The Conversation" - The Lodger (mp3) highly recommended

"Falling Down" - The Lodger (mp3)

"A Hero's Welcomes" - The Lodger (mp3)