Truly, Bloody Bad!

I wanted to like True Blood. I really did!

I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that Anna Paquin was shooting an Alan Ball pilot about the integration of Vampires into society with the help of a Japanese company creating synthetic blood.
I remember thinking THIS WILL BE GOOD.

When I was in New York last summer, I remember seeing a ton of ads all over the place featuring colorful red-blood bottles simply marked TRU BLOOD. I again thought THIS IS GOING TO BE EPIC.

I bought the TRUE BLOOD season 1 DVDs the day they were released and over the past month I have diligently watched the 12 episodes of season 1.

Oh True Blood how you have let me down. You were so much better in theory than you ever were in actuality. You looked so edgy and avant garde and you were actually, just surprisingly lame.

How did this happen? How did Alan Ball fuck up so much? Why is True Blood the place where subtlety goes to die?

My overall problem with the show is that I feel like no concept or device is fully realized. The show is rife with unbelievable inconsistencies. These are the things that just don't gel with me:


THE VAMPIRE INTEGRATION INTO SOCIETY.

Are we really supposed believe that vampires based on the behaviors they possess in True Blood (you know, murdering people, threatening people, and moving in extreme fast motion.) have been so easily accepted into society? I know that it is the central conflict of the show and that it is one big metaphor but come on Alan Ball, couldn't the vampires be a little more subtle in their vampire-like behavior? Don't they want to blend in to a human world?

Sookie's Mind Reading.

This is a seriously inconsistent device. Sookie seems to be able to read minds maybe once or twice an episode but never when it really seems to count narrative-wise.

LaFayette

LaFayette is truly a cluster fuck of a character. He is a short order cook/drug dealer/construction crew worker/male escort and a GAY who kicks the shit out of anyone who dares call his hamburger an AIDSbuger. Now, I am all for created a truly unique character but a I don't believe in a million years this character would really exist. And why does he have so many jobs?

Vampire's Scene is Goth... really???

Why do the vampires' local haunt Fangtasia look like a scene from Saturday Night Live's Goth Talk? Couldn't they have edgier style than a late 90's Marilyn Manson video. Honestly the goth scene at my high school wasn't as lame as this vampire scene.

The season finale (SPOILER ALERT)

It was a bad, bad, bad horror movie. Okay so we got that Rene was the killer when his picture as Drew Marshall was faxed to the police department. Why was there a need to beat us over the head with a caveman club that HE WAS THE KILLER? Was it necessary to have to show us the Cajun Dialect Cassette Tape Rene purchased so he could fool everyone into believing he was Cajun? We understood he was the killer Alan Ball. It's not like you have to have Dora the Explorer blatantly ask us "Do you understand that Rene is the killer? Well do you?"

Why does no one seem to be bothered that their entire town is dying?

No one seems to truly be bothered by all the death. Sam Merlotte has lost half his staff and doesn't seem to really care, Sookie and Jason seem completely kosher with the idea of their grandmother being dead, and Detective Bellfleur seems completely fine with talking about the murder investigation at Merlotte's in front of friends and family of all the victims. I know that if 4 people were killed in my home town or in anyone's home town it would be a lot different, just sayin'!

V
If a tiny drop of vampire blood can make a person go into a full body, hours long hallucinatory high, how is it possible that drinking an entire vile only makes someone get a crazy hard on with no mental effects? I may be playing logistic police but this drug's properties do not make sense.

Metaphors

Alan Ball these metaphors about homosexuality and gay marriage in this post prop 8 world are a little heavy handed no?

Okay so I have rambled on and on about the unbelievable inconsistencies of True Blood, but I had to because it drives me crazy. And yet the craziest thing of all is that I will probably continue to watch as season 2 just began and I have the first four episodes on DVD. I am intrigued by the shape shifter plot. I need to know who killed Miss Jeanette and what happened to Lafayette.

True Blood is not at the level of "it's so bad, it's good." It's not Snakes on a Plane where it embraces it's own ridiculousness and becomes surprisingly watchable. There are moments that elevate it into the upper echelon of other brilliant HBO shows (Six Feet Under, The Sopranos,etc.). However it is a completely unrealized show that really tests its audience in having to put up with a lot of plot, character and logistic holes.

As an audience member I am only willing to put up with so much.

I'll give it another season.