Good to the last drop...

Because I simply don't have enough television to watch, I recently started watching season 1 of True Blood on DVD (thanks, Kate!). I had heard from scads of people that it was excellent, but I was still a little afraid that I'd be all vamped out. Much to my delight, I needn't have worried. While True Blood has a lot of the same elements as other vampire fiction of late, it has a much more interesting, uncommon approach to the situation which manages to take a suddenly very popular construct and make it fresh and original.

While most of the vampire books, movies, and TV shows out there show vampires living in hiding and terrorizing humanity in secretive and mysterious ways, True Blood takes everything we know about vampires and instead makes them just another misunderstood minority group that's pushing for political rights and societal equality. True Blood operates in a world where synthetic blood has been developed to such a degree that vampires can live off of it alone. Without the need to drain actual people anymore, some members of the vamp community feel that they should be recognized as ordinary citizens who can live in society as any other group might.

It's a very clever way to present a story about vampires and allows for fantasy elements that are interlaced with biting social commentary (heh--"biting," get it?). The right wing and the religious nuts tow the usual party line and refuse to recognize this new minority group just as they do with certain religions, the gay community, certain racial minorities, leftists, socialists, hell, even environmentalists and scientists. The vamps are often discriminated against, largely born of fear (which is so often the case). The fact that the show is set in the deep south adds even more layers of complexity as it's an area with a long history of discrimination and prejudice. So, while we have pretty much your standard vampires (can't go out in the sun, DON'T sparkle (Twilight has an open invitation to bite me), need permission to enter a residence, mind tricks, etc.) the dynamics between the vamps, the humans, and everything else are much more unique and engaging than your typical vampire farce. The social, moral, and political atmosphere kind of reminded me of certain X-Men storylines. As much fun as it is having secret groups and clandestine objectives and whatnot, having it all out in the open takes things in a lot of new directions and has consequences that are unexpected. Alan Ball (writer and showrunner) and the original author of the True Blood novels have approached the supernatural in the most pragmatic and bald-faced of ways and totally managed to make it work.

Although these vampires exist in the real world and have "come out of the coffin," as it were, they certainly haven't been defanged. The show is dark and coarse and gritty and ribald, taking a barrelful of conceits and motifs and blending them together in an incredibly tantalizing way. The story centers around Sookie Stackhouse, a human with the ability to read minds (human minds, that is) and her new infatuation with Bill, the town's first vampire. While most of the town is wary of the newcomer, Sookie sees him as quite a novelty and a kindred freak. Their burgeoning relationship could have been your typical mortal/immortal tug-of-war, but with True Blood it comes across in a very different and quirky way. This show isn't for everyone, believe me (it's not PG in any sense of the word--you've been warned), but I think it would hold appeal for a lot of people who never dreamed they'd watch such a show. The show is well-paced, even, and surprisingly stable, given all the crazy that happens from scene to scene. The more serious elements are blended with a delightful dark humor that keeps the show from getting bogged down, the tawdry elements are cut with real emotion, the show contrasts the oldest vampire conceptions with a modern, meta context, and sets the preternatural within a context of down-to-earth reality that manages to keep even the craziest of elements grounded. It's a difficult and delicate balance to maintain, but so far, they've succeeded with flying colors.

Add to all the enthralling elements it has going for it so far an incredible knack for ending each episode on a cliffhanger and you've got a marathon just waiting to happen. I only started watching the series late last night and somehow ended up watching till the wee hours of the morning... I'm rather delighted with True Blood, so if you've been sitting on the fence trying to decide if you should give it a shot, rest assured it lives up to the hype. It's a hell of a lot of fun and has me completely sucked in (I'm sorry, but it's a post about a vampire show, people, I couldn't not use a pun like that--I could have said it was "bloody good," but I restrained myself). I certainly wouldn't recommend this one to everyone (it has more objectionable material than Dexter, if you'd like to use that as a measure), but I'd definitely recommend it in general.

Quite frankly, just the way Bill says "Sookie" so that it rhymes with "cookie" is enough to have me coming back for more...