Vampire mystery 'True Blood' feels drained of fun
TELEVISION REVIEW
THE BEST thing about Alan Ball's new vampire series “True Blood,” which premieres on HBO Sunday, is the opening credits. The jittery compilation of unnerving images -- prayer meetings and road kill, ghostly children and swamp scenery -- is creepy, evocative and tantalizing. Unfortunately, it is also utterly unconnected to the show that follows.
For reasons known only to himself, Ball decided to take Charlaine Harris’ light, fun series of Southern Vampire Mysteries and turn it into a heavy-handed political fable with vampires, recently rendered "safe" by the creation of the synthetic Tru Blood as stand-ins for the disenfranchised.
At least that's what it looks like he's doing, since early in the first episode, Nan Flanagan, a pretty blond vampire spokeswoman, explains this to Bill Maher with verbiage reminiscent of past civil liberties conversations, most recently those about gay marriage.
As fun as it may seem in these post-Buffy days, it's still dangerous to use vampires as proxy figures for any group other than, say, serial killers, since vampires, by their very nature, desire to suck the living blood out of humans. Even if they are learning to control it.
But vampires are the least of "True Blood's" worries. Borrowing heavily from many genres, "True Blood" aspires to transcend them all but instead quickly deposits the viewer waist-deep in a literal and figurative swamp.
Vampire fantasy, murder mystery, star-crossed love story, political satire, "True Blood" is all and none of the above. Not quite funny, not quite scary, not quite thought-provoking, the show's attempt to question the roots of prejudice is continually undermined by its own stereotyping.
Seriously, isn't it time to stop portraying every small town below the Mason-Dixon line as populated by drunken, racist, testosterone-charged lunkheads? Apparently not. In Bon Temps, the tiny Louisiana town where "True Blood" opens, all the men seem obsessed with booze and sexual assault while their wives quietly devour fried foods and despise them.
We know this because the main character of "True Blood" is Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a telepathic waitress; when she walks through the dining room of her place of employment, she "hears" the mental equivalent of hell on earth. (Is no one in Bon Temps just wondering how they're going to get their kids to stop fighting?)
