True Blood – Season 1, Episode 2

March 26, 2009 at 12:25 am | Posted in TV Review | Leave a comment
Tags: Adele Stackhouse, Anna Paquin, Bill Compton, Jason Stackhouse, Listner, Lois Smith, Rutina Wesley, Ryan Kwanten, Sookie Stackhouse, Stephen Moyer, Tara Thornton, Vampire

Episode 2 of True Blood air-ed in New Zealand – on Prime last night; I saw it in the Listner’s TV programmes listing and managed to schedule my evening to watch it. Warning: plot revealed.

March 25, 2009 by Show_Hanger

2009 True Blood Episode 2 (season 1).

Another great lead-in: we see our heroine – Sookie – getting the heck kicked out of her – continuing the beating she got at the end of Episode 1. But even in the midst of terrible adversity, Sookie is able to spare some effort into stopping a dog from getting shot. Bill – the hero ? and vampire – eventually steps, as expected, and dispatches the baddies and restores Sookie to full health – by getting her to drink his blood.

The series appears to be exploring intermacy – and by drinking a vampire’s blood the drinker creates a form of intermacy. Bill will always be able to find Sookie – quickly; perhaps setting up a plot device to be used later. Sookie has her senses hightened – she finds a crumb when her grandmother is vacuuming.

There seems to be lots of sex when vampires are around, and the producers are not afraid to show the audience. Really not a programme for the not-so-old ones.

Episode 2 is early days in the Sookie-Bon-Temps universe. Some of the inhabitants of Bon Temps, that were introduced get a bit more flesh put on the bone: Adele Stackhouse (played by Lois Smith) is Sookie’s grandmother – a women who raised sookie, and who has a great interest in the history of Bon Temps; Jason Stackhouse (played by Ryan Kwanten) is Sookie’s brother – a rather simple young man, who lets his libido do all of his thinking; and Tara Thornton (played by Rutina Wesley) who appears to be Sookie’s childhood friend of colour, and who has a chip on her shoulder so large that it is amazing that she does not walk on a permanent slant.

Jason’s current plot role is to allow the audience to see, close up, attractive young women: all so that we can see the odd vampire bite on their otherwise unblemished skin. Jason is horrified; no doubt, post coitus, he fears what Sookie might be up to.

We are also introduced to the nature of the relationship between humans and vampires: they must be invited into you house, otherwise they cannot come in; they can exert a mental control on humans (has no affect on Sookie); they are very very strong; they can move very fast; there is a wider political aspect of them ‘coming out of the coffin’.

Sookie is attracted to Bill because she can’t hear his thoughts and can relax and let her mental guards down. He has a certain ruggedness and an old world set of manners – which sets him well above the young men of Jason’s generation.

At the end Sookie encounters three very unmannered vampires. For now the trend of leave-the-heroine-in-a-bad-situation ending is touchingly quaint.

0.3