Thoughts / True Blood

I'm going to start off by saying that I've never seen Twilight, nor do I plan on seeing it. It just isn't for me. I don't particularly like that whole emo teenage girl fascination with vampires thing.

I went into watching True Blood, due to plenty of friends recommendations, thinking it was going to be about a human and a vampire being all lovey dovey, but they can't be together because one's like... dead and stuff. Okay, that's pretty much the central story of True Blood for at least the first half of season 1. I was certainly feeling a little bit of regret when I got finished with the first few episodes, but I had 10 all ready to watch so I wasn't going to stop, might as well see if it gets any better. To my surprise, it did. There are still moments where I cringe at the cheesy-ness, but usually it's overshadowed by a much darker storyline going on elsewhere, sometimes balanced out by involving the other characters in separate story lines.

I fell in love with the characters pretty quick. This is most likely what's kept me going through all of the show so far, awesome support characters. The main characters are Sookie and Bill (Bill's the vampire, seriously) followed by Sookie's southern hotshot brother Jason, their loud and usually obnoxious friend Tara, and the dude that owns the bar Sookie works at, Sam. There are plenty of other great characters in this show, but those are the ones that have been there from the beginning and always have their own stories going on. The individual stories might be hard to follow for some because there is always so much going on. These stories usually come together pretty well by the end of the season though, with Jason's stories leaning towards the comical side at times.

True Blood always seems to expand my idea on what a world with vampires would be like. They introduce the religious implications, racism, the law, as well as the use of Vampire blood as a drug (Simply called V) True Blood goes back to the drug use quite often. Using it as a way to tie V-selling humans together with Vampires quite effectively. They also add new supernatural creatures such as shape-shifters and were-animals, among others. All of this adds to a show that isn't your typical Vampire show. Changing the rules up just enough to keep it staying unique and engaging throughout the series so far. This is one of the few shows that will bring something up early in a season and answer it much later on to great effect. Sookie's slowly evolving psychic powers is a great example of this.

True Blood airs every Sunday on HBO in the United States. Not sure where to watch it live here in Canada though, I'm sure you can surf around your channels on a Sunday and find it on a few stations. If you have any passing interest in Vampires at all there's a good chance you'll enjoy this show, just push through the first 5 episodes of the 1st season. Once Bill and Sookie get past the initial "love at first sight" bits the show gets immensely better. Unless you're into that stuff of course.