True Blood

I have been a bit reluctant to review this series because it tends to have a bad reputation. Most people who are not already watching it, tend to think it is Twilight for rednecks. While this is not entirely true, it is also not completely false. The show did appear on the air during (and probably because of) the Twilight popularity explosion, and it happens to take place in deep south, and it does feature a relationship between a human girl and a brooding vampire. Normally this would be more than enough to deter me from watching it. But… I’m happy I gave it a chance, because it is not half bad. Seeing how the Season 3 concluded last week, I figured it might be a good time to write about it.

The main premise of the series is the concept that scientists have developed a synthetic substitute for human blood which in turn allowed vampires to find an alternative food source. Because of this, vampires decided to come out of hiding and rejoin the mainstream society. Consequently, Bill (Stephen Moyer), an old Civil War era vampire returns to a tiny southern town reclaiming his old family house, and tries to re-assimilate himself into human society. To that end he tries to befriend the locals, gives a rousing patriotic speech at a church gathering and starts dating a local waitress (Anna Paquin). Of course, South being South this proves to be no easy task. Then people around Bill start dying in unexplained circumstances. Soon enough his old secret life as a vampire catches up to him, and his new girlfriend and friends become implicated in complex vampire politics, power struggles and conflicts.

And that’s really where the series shines. They do vampires very, very well. Its all fairly standard you have an underground society that is byzantine, and feudal. You have ancient laws that forbid vampires from killing each other, and puts restrictions on creating new ones. You have old vampires who skirt around those laws because of grudges that go back centuries. You have power struggles, political posturing, pacts, alliances, violent confrontations. There is also the standard existential angst, and the internal struggle each all vampires fight each day, the slow process of dehumanization they all experience unless they make an effort to cling to their humanity. It is all done very well and with a southern flare which is not something you often associate with this kind of setting.

The series creators however didn’t seem to want to limit themselves to only vampires going by the rule of “well, if vampires are real so why not werewolves?”. For three seasons now they have been steadily adding other supernatural beings to the universe – so they are now up to all kinds of shape shifters, fairies and even ancient gods. This sort of dilutes the focus of the series but… Well, it somehow inexplicably fits in. To me it’s almost as if the creators were reading through the old World of Darkness source-books from White Wolf and transplanting whatever cool bits they find into their own setting. And half the time it works.

Other times you end up sitting through the wacky hi-jinks of the human characters waiting for more of the good stuff, because you know it’s coming. The weakest subplots so far have been those associated with the characters of Jason, Tara and the bumbling cop Andy Bellefleur. But even during the least interesting moments the writing is good, the dialogs are snappy, the acting is great and the story moves along rather smoothly.

All the characters are nuanced, layered and conflicted. Those who are not haunted by their past are routinely put through and emotional wringer up to a breaking point. It is sort of a rule that every new character introduced into the show will either have a dark secret, will become involved with one of the regulars and then get tragically killed, or will soon go through some traumatic experience which will allow him/her to graduate into regular cast. As you can imagine there is a great deal of character development going on. Probably the best example of this is Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) who starts as a menacing background character in Season 1 and ends up being one of the more complex and interesting vampires in the whole series almost overshadowing Moyer’s leading role.

Like most HBO series, this one does not shy away from sex, violence and gore. The show really does earn it’s R rating and while that might be a deterrent to some it is not the only thing it has to offer. It is a well written, character driven series with interesting characters and many offbeat ideas. The same creative freedom that allows them to have gratuitous nudity and gore, also allows them to pursue ideas and plot lines that probably wouldn’t get approved on a network TV show. It is worth checking out – even if you are not a particular fan of either rednecks or vampires.