True Blood: Uh... What?

True Blood made an impact in my life far before I started watching it. It seemed to spurt up from the veins of society as a cultural phenomenon directly related to the ongoing vampire craze of the time, one that seemed to have reached its peak upon True Blood's beginnings. Hell, True Blood debuted on September 7, 2008 with the oh so infamous Twilight movie premiering two months later in what seemed a clusterfuck of shitty vampire melodramas.

There was hope, however! True Blood's first season got absolutely rave reviews, I mean fuck, it won a Golden Globe and an Emmy! Maybe I was wrong about this whole vampire thing being a smorgasbord of shit and blood. So when an opportunity to explore the show came up at a local science fiction and fantasy conference, I checked it out, got a full first season review and even had some fairly enlightening conversations about how the nature of the show could be related to issues of social justice.

This shit was everywhere. Photos by tmc - design haus.

That was not quite enough however, at same said conference I also got to meet Marc Okrand, the inventor of the Klingon language, and trust me, that was WAY cooler. Like, seriously guys, he invented the Klingon language, and I was suppose to get into the whole vampire thing after getting to meet with him? Fuck. That. I watched Star Trek reruns for about three months straight.

So here we are, the fourth season of True Blood burgeoning upon us, and I found myself in a household with HBO on demand, the premiere was sitting there right on the menu waiting for me, so I gave it a click. Now some of you might criticize me for starting at season four, but I could give a shit less, if the enjoyment of watching a show is relative to however much of a fanboy you make yourself, the only shows we would have time for would be sci-fi and fantasy.

Now perhaps I'll go back and watch the first seasons some day, because what I found upon viewing the first two episodes of the fourth season was utterly disturbing. Utterly disturbing in that so many people thought they were above the vampire fuckfest of the last few years by watching this show, when really they were right in the shit of it.

This show is awful. The summary of the third season was absolutely laughable, but I'll even give that a pass, maybe some piss poor intern at HBO got stuck with putting that hilarious roll of film together. But the two episodes I saw, now that was pure shit. Let me start with what should be the be-all end-all of television: the acting is downright fucking awful. This is HBO for christ's sake, not some fucking UPN Vampire Diaries shit (and I know its "The CW" or whatever now, it's still the same old shitty UPN to me), and who the fuck wants Anna Paquin in a lead? She couldn't act her way out of a Shakespeare summer camp. Every time I look at her I can only be reminded of what a shitty Rogue she is and how thank God she's in just about nothing else recognizable.

Really, America? Really? Photo by Melody J Sandoval.

And, to get to the nitty gritty, she's ugly as hell. I'm sorry but when the darkly abyss you call your two front teeth is distracting me from the vaguely wistful lines you are spitting out in what I can only describe as the worst Louisiana accent I have ever heard (I got family from there and I feel insulted for them), that is just fucking pathetic. She is not a lead, she will never be one, I don't even want her in a supporting role but if Hollywood is infatuated with her, so be it. Just don't make her say a good forty percent of the lines in the episode, because she sounds fucking stupid. Seriously, just straight up dumb as a rock. I don't know why girls aren't more upset at her for setting women back, but her character is just the dumbest bitch I think I have ever seen on TV, and Paquin doesn't make her any more endearing with her sniveling, whiny approach to a role. And what kind of person is the name Sookie appropriate for outside of a Thai whorehouse, anyways?

This brings me to another important issue in my analysis of this show: it's fucking bullshit rainbow of colors cast. True Blood tries to seem all socially relevant and whatnot with its cacophony of the kind of actors you would see on the front of a University brochure: the gay guy, the black guy, the gay girl, the gay black girl, the gay black guy. Hell, all they're missing is some dude in a wheelchair. What is evident upon viewing, however, is the basic pandering this sort of character design exhibits, particularly towards females, I'm guessing the 16-30 bracket. The gay black guy is just that, a gay black guy, I saw no resonance of emotion in him besides a base level of sassiness and obscure gay wisdom he provides his girlfriends. I mean fuck, they even had his boyfriend try to get him to be a witch, a witch. Fuck, I think they just invented a stereotype: the gay black Louisiana hoodoo witch.

And the rest of the characters aren't any less cookie cutter. The girls are all emotionally powerless and require the dashing Pattinson-esque vampires to rescue and/or molest them at various points throughout the show. The Pattinson clones have near zero acting skills and are there to take up screen time with shirtlessness. I couldn't find one God damn character in the whole show that was refreshing. A cop secretly addicted to drugs? No way! That's never been done before! And it's not drugs, it's just vampire blood that fills exactly the same role in the plot! How kewl!

Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh, I have done my research and evidently the only worthwhile characters seemed to be killed off in the third season. Maybe the first few seasons do bear some repeating, but currently I'm finding nothing in this show that even remotely tickles my sci-fi/fantasy scrotum. For the hype this show has gotten and the near universal support I had recognized before viewing, I am extremely disappointed. This is just one more big ole bloody vampire stool, left in the toilet of blood-sucking mediocrity that will, hopefully, soon pass.

What's after this, a hobbit revival? Oh, wait, Game of Thrones... Fuck!