TRUE BLOOD
Season 1 Episode 4
“Escape From Dragon House”
Written by Brian Buckner
Directed by Michael Lehmann
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

This is gonna sound really bad, but with Dawn winding up dead, one of the things that popped into my head was: hey, we get to see more William Sanderson and Chris Bauer! And The Nine’s John Billingsley too, who debuted a couple of episodes back as the local coroner, Mike Spencer.
Her death also turns into a lookie-loo circus which then serves to showcase the community and its morbid reaction to the most recent death.


Once again, Jason comes under suspicion, and, finding himself in a cop car with a vial of V juice in his possession, he panics, and downs the whole thing (when Lafayette warned him to take a drop or two at the most).
That action then develops into another amusing subplot involving horndog Jason, as he develops a bad case of priapism, which Tara helps him out with.


Meanwhile, Gran asks Sookie to “listen in” on people in an attempt to clear Jason’s name, a request which leads Sookie to the vampire bar in Shreveport, Fangtasia, which Dawn used to frequent.
Sookie asks Bill to escort her there (“this is not a date”), and it’s a nice little sequence which introduces Eric Northman (Generation Kill’s Alexander Skarsgård), apparently one of the oldest vampires in the area.


But the most disturbing scene of the episode has to go to Sam, writhing on Dawn’s bed, smelling the sheets.
Eurrr…
So first, Jason’s the murder suspect, and now, we’re given another character to look at a little more closely.
Whether or not Sam did kill Dawn though, he’s clearly more effed-up than we were first led to believe…

(Images courtesy of fanpop.com.)

TRUE BLOOD
Season 1 Episode 1
“Strange Love”
Written & directed by Alan Ball
(WARNING: SPOILERS)


So there’s a whole lotta lustin’—bar owner Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) carries a torch for mind-reading waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin); Sookie’s best friend Tara Thornton (Rutina Wesley) carries a torch for Sookie’s horndog brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten, whom horrorheads may recall from Dead Silence)—and a whole lotta sexin’—courtesy of the horndog Stackhouse—goin’ on in Alan Ball’s latest HBO offering, True Blood.
There’s also, in case you weren’t aware, vampires here, the show based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris.
Yup. HBO’s giving us vampires.


As a pilot, this first taste of the show is fine, certainly not on the level of Six Feet Under’s debut, but an interesting slice of vampiric pop culture nonetheless.
As with Bryan Singer’s approach to the X-Men, Ball uses vampires as metaphors for those prejudiced against by society, while simultaneously casting them in the darker, kinkier shadows of human sexuality.
Yes, they’re currently being put upon and discriminated against, but boy, are they wicked lays!


Now, despite the glib and the snark, I am having fun with True Blood. It may not have the depth and the profundity of Six Feet Under or American Beauty, but it’s got a down-home charm all its own.
And did I mention the sex?


Funnily enough, though I’m digging some of the supporting cast—particularly Wesley; Lois Smith as Granny Stackhouse; J.F. Sebastian himself, William Sanderson, as Sheriff Dearborne; and Chris Bauer as Andy Bellefleur—it’s the leads, Paquin and Stephen Moyer (as vampire Bill), who’ve yet to win me over.
Particularly Paquin, who got a black mark from me a long time ago when she stole the Best Supporting Actress Oscar away from Winona Ryder…
Maybe it’s time for me to forget that slight.
Now if only Paquin would actually come across as genuine and earnest…

On the plus side though, the opening credits, orchestrated to Jace Everett’s “Bad Things,” are a blast…


(Images courtesy of fanpop.com and variety.com.)