How to Save True Blood (Bonus True Blood Drinking Game)

True Blood logo

Back in April of 2010 I wrote a review of how badass the first season of True Blood was. And it was good. Really good. With all the blood, tits, and foul language it was easily the television highlight of the year. Since that time I watched season two and season three, although the latter was difficult due to the loud-talkers in the room. Now, season four is currently airing, and I regret to say that compared to the highs of the first season, the fourth season is a sack of shit. So where did they go wrong?

The reason that the first season worked so well (besides the sex and violence) was that the story was simple and straightforward. It centered on the relationship between Sookie and Bill, and the other characters were more or less peripheral. Eric, Jason, Lafayette, etc were all involved to some extent, but they played smaller roles in the central storyline. Really, though, there was just one story, told from Sookie’s perspective, and it worked.

Season two was a little more divided as it had two main stories: one involving Sookie, Bill, Jason, and Eric; and the other involving everybody else. Storyline A with Sookie and the vampires was interesting and held my attention. Storyline B was a non-stop sex orgy which at first seemed awesome, but when it dragged on for 12 episodes with nothing else happening, it started to wear on me. The secondary characters were fleshed out a bit more, which seemed fine. Overall, Storyline A worked really well and Storyline B not as much. But it was still a good season.

Moving on to Season Three, things became problematic. There was still the main storyline with Sookie, Bill, Eric, and vampire king Russell. Simultaneously, they introduced a number of stories involving a shitload of secondary characters. Almost everyone had their own storyline. Sheriff Andy had one, Jason and Crystal had one, Arlene had one, Sam had one, Hoyt and Jessica had one, Lafayette had one, and Tara had one. It was too much. Tara annoys the fuck out of me, and since she cries her eyes out in every scene, I could hardly stomach her own subplot. Arlene is annoying too, and she is not interesting enough to deserve her own plotline. Sam’s family was stupid. Hoyt and Jessica were idiotic. Jason continued to be a dumbass. While the main storyline with Sookie was strong enough to carry the season, the quality of the series was dragged down with all the other unimportant crap that was going on.

Which brings us to the current season, number four. Gone are the days when Sookie was the main character. True Blood has now become an ensemble show. Every character is given almost equal amounts of screen time whether it’s heroine Sookie, or shrill, annoying Arlene.

We have storylines featuring Sookie and her faerie godmother, Eric losing his memory, Bill becoming vampire king of Louisiana, Sheriff Andy as a drug addict, Jason as “ghost daddy” getting raped non-stop by werepanthers (LOL WTF), Tara suddenly becoming a lesbian, Lafayette as a witch, Lafayette’s boyfriend Jesus as a witch, Jesus’ grandfather as a witch, Lafayette and Jesus joining a witches’ coven (I’m detecting a pattern), Arlene’s baby has evil devil powers, Sam is in love with some shapeshifter lady, Tommy becomes Hoyt’s mom’s surrogate son, Tommy plans to rip-off his surrogate mom, Tommy kills his biological parents, Hoyt and Jessica continue their turbulent relationship, Pam gets her face melted off and wants revenge, and Alcide gets into trouble with a new local werewolf pack leader. And that’s by the end of episode five, not even halfway through the season.

Get the picture? There is way too much shit happening. Nobody cares about Lafayette, Jesus, Tara, Hoyt, Jessica, Tommy, Arlene, Sam, or Andy. There is absolutely no need to dedicate equal screen time to each of them. Really, the only people they should focus on are Sookie, Eric, and Bill, and to a lesser extent Jason and Alcide. Those are the only characters that should be get storylines. Characters like Sam, Pam, or Andy can make appearances, but should only show up occasionally, have a few lines, and then be on their way.

The first season worked so well because it was simple and had purpose. It dealt with Sookie’s introduction to the world of vampires, and her relationship with said vampires. The second season was still decent because it only had two storylines, and not a lot of other nonsense to clutter it up. The third season had too much extraneous nonsense, and it got bogged down by the excess weight. The fourth season is a schizophrenic clusterfuck with so much shit going on it has become bloated and messy.

But all is not lost. There is a way to salvage True Blood. So, HBO executives, if you are reading this, take careful notes.

1. Kill Tara.
2. Kill Lafayette.
3. Kill Jesus.
4. Kill Tommy.
5. Kill Hoyt.
6. Kill Jessica.
7. Kill Sam.
8. Kill Arlene.
9. Kill Andy.
10. Kill Crystal.
11. Kill Terry.
12. Kill Debbie.
13. Kill anyone who started out as a secondary character.
14. Keep Pam alive, she’s cool.
15. Bring Franklin back to life, he was a crazy motherfucker.

That’s pretty much it. If they go ahead and wipe out all those people in a giant vampire massacre, the show could be saved.

True Blood doesn’t need a shitload of characters to be good. The book series it is based on has fewer characters than the show, and it is told in the first-person, from Sookie’s perspective. Naturally, being first-person, you are only aware of what is happening to Sookie, and 90% of the books are all about Sookie. The mess of multiple, concurrent storylines isn’t there. Not surprisingly, the book series was a hit prior to True Blood, and it didn’t have to rely on subplots involving evil devil babies and gay witches.

There is no good reason why every character needs to have their own storyline. Perhaps the popularity of the show has given all the actors bloated egos and a trumped-up sense of self-importance so high that they feel the need to be included more often? Yeah, that’s probably it. At any rate, True Blood is dying a slow death. I suspect this won’t be remedied by the end of season four, and will likely continue on to season five. Eventually the weight of all this shit will cause the show to collapse, create an even more convoluted mess than we have now, and bring the series to cancellation. It could still be saved, but if it keeps on its current trajectory, more likely than not, it will end up in the shitpile with the rest of the crap that’s on TV.

Verdicts:

Season Two – Good

Season Three – Average

Season Four – Eh…

Bonus: True Blood Drinking Game

Drink every time:

• Bill says “Sookie” in his weird husky voice.
• Sookie uses her magical powers.
• Sookie gets mad at someone.
• Jason is shirtless.
• There is graphic sex.
• There is graphic violence.
• A vampire drinks human blood.
• A human drinks vampire blood.
• Pam says something sarcastic.
• Eric acts menacing.
• Tara cries.
• Tara overreacts.
• Sam shape-shifts.
• Alcide turns into a wolf.
• Andy gets annoyed with someone/something.
• A vampire glamours someone.
• Lafayette calls someone “bitch”, “hooker”, or “motherfucker.”
• Someone says, “The True Death.”
• Arlene is the only employee working at Merlotte’s.
• There is a dream sequence.
• The episode ends on a cliffhanger.

Awesomest/Shittiest Things of 2010

It seems like every year brings nothing but 365 days of non-stop shit. Awesome things are much harder to come by. It would have been a piece of cake to write a top 10, top 20, or top 500 list of shitty things that happened in 2010. Choosing just a few was quite a challenge. An even greater challenge was finding an equal number of awesome things from this year. With a little bit of scrounging, I realized that there were some cool things that happened in 2010, after all. This list is the best and worst things of the year, as I see it, which means it is 100% right. If you disagree with any of them, you’re 100% wrong. So here you have it, a list of the awesomest and shittiest things of 2010.

Awesome

1. Large Hadron Collider – It’s the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. From smashing atoms it is expected to help answer some of the universe’s greatest questions from the Big Bang Theory to the Mystery of Oprah’s Fluctuating Weight. It had countless delays but finally got up and running this year. Scientists are already using it in the hopes of analyzing Dark Matter. Doomsday-nutjobs predict that the LHC will atom-smash its way into the complete destruction of the universe. Sweet!
2. Inception – It’s actually pretty rare for Hollywood to make a good movie, let alone a great one. This film had it all. From cast to music to action to directing to plot, this movie shines in every department. It is a rare and wonderful thing when a movie doesn’t dumb itself down to pander to the billions of mouth-breathers who will inevitably watch it. I suppose it’s rare because movie studio execs are mouth-breathers, too. While the story about dream-stealers wasn’t particularly confusing if you actually paid attention (most people didn’t), it was innovative enough to draw you into its world. It was intelligent, with overlapping dream sequences, and fun, with the incredibly entertaining rotating hallway scene. Director Christopher Nolan worked on this for nearly a decade, and his love for it and detail to attention really shines through. Probably the best movie of the year.
3. Goldilocks Planet – Scientists discovered a planet about 20 light years away which, like Earth, has all the right factors to sustain life. Better yet, scientists hypothesize that there are many more planets like it in the universe, meaning there could be a lot of aliens out there. Hopefully, they are all super hot and look exactly like humans except for weird shit on their faces just like in Star Trek. Can someone say alien porno?
4. Russian Spy Ring – Earlier this year the FBI busted a Russian spy ring that was operating in the U.S. Some of them had been spying for Mother Russia since the mid-1990s, while others came on board later. They had spied on various facets of the U.S. government, and had a complex, covert means of communicating with Russia. They were eventually caught, and traded back to Russia in a large-scale prisoner exchange. Best of all, one of them was definitely supermodel material. There’s nothing like a beautiful Russian agent to bring out those James Bond fantasies in all of us.
5. Winter Olympics – It always seems like the Winter Olympics is the ugly half-sister of the super-hot Summer Olympics. This year, however, things were different. People were genuinely excited for the games, and I found myself watching it often. For some reason, everything was captivating from Snowboarding to Speed Skating to Bobsleigh to Country Cross Skiing. Yes, that’s right, even Cross Country Skiing was awesome. I had always remembered it as some boring guys doing a leisurely snow-walk across a flat surface. What I saw this year was a bunch of totally crazy dudes racing full force through a mountain of snow with a couple of skiis attached to their feet. It was hardcore, and they looked like they were putting way more energy into it than any Summer Olympics track star. I will definitely be tuning in to the Winter Olympics in the future. It is the ugly half-sister no longer.
6. Psychic World Cup Octopus – Paul the Octopus lived humbly in Germany. During the 2010 World Cup, he had accurately predicted all of the winners of 8 matches, including the final round. Food (a mussel) was placed in two boxes, each with the flag of a country. Whichever mussel Paul ate first was predicted to win the match. And he never got one wrong. The undefeated octopus was indeed psychic. Now all I need to do is kidnap the little guy and take him on a roadtrip to Vegas.
7. Flight Attendant Quits – Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater quit in a blaze of glory that I certainly hope to live up to someday. When a passenger gave him some attitude, he decided he had enough. He used the intercom to let loose a tirade of four-letter words, grabbed a couple of beers, and commandeered the emergency escape ramp to slide out of the plane. There are very few things more awesome than cursing at someone and downing some booze while you’re at work.
8. Daft Punk – This is by far the most talented electronic music group working today, and probably of all time. This year Disney made a smart move by allowing them to do the entire soundtrack to their movie Tron: Legacy. It only makes sense to have a electronic soundtrack populating a computerized world. It’s rare for such a perfect match to happen these days. Apparently, one of the two robots of Daft Punk stated he was heavily influenced by the visual aesthetic of the original Tron film. I guess that means things have come full circle. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack fucking rocked.
9. Colbert Testifies – For some reason, Congress decided to call Stephen Colbert to testify in front of a House of Representatives subcommittee on illegal immigration. Apparently Congressmen don’t watch TV. Either that or they are completely retarded for thinking that Colbert was going to give earnest testimony. And why would a TV comedian be qualified to testify on such an issue? They wouldn’t, but that gives you an idea of how in-touch with reality U.S. politicians are. Colbert appeared in character and immediately showed anyone who watched it what a farce the whole thing was. He kicked things off early with this line, “As you heard this morning, America’s farms are presently far too dependent upon immigrant labor to pick our fruits and vegetables. Now the obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables. And if you look at the recent obesity statistics, you’ll see that many Americans have already started.” And later, “Because my great grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of  the Atlantic Ocean to see this country overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That’s the rumor, I don’t know if that’s true, I’d like to have that stricken from the record.” And finally, “For one thing, when you’re picking beans, you have to spend all day bending over. It turns out – and I did not know this – most soil is at ground level. If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we make the earth waist-high? Come on, where is the funding?” It takes a lot of balls to walk into Congress, who is 100% serious and 100% stupid, and make fun of them right to their faces.
10. This blog – rules.

Shitty

1. Bristol Palin – The evil spawn of Sarah Palin has already had more publicity than any vapid, obese teen mom should. The biggest insult to humanity in 2010 was subjecting us to her antics on TV’s Dancing with the Stars. For the love of god, who would want to watch her ineptly gyrating on stage week after week? And I really do mean week after week, because she lasted until the final episode. Making matters even crazier is that her bitch mom forced her to go on DWTS because she “owed” it to her after she caused her to lose the 2010 election. Yeah Sarah, I’m sure the fact that you quit your first term as Governor, and you can “see Alaska from my house” had nothing to do with it. If you didn’t think it could get worse, well it does because Bristol is also the only contestant on DWTS history to actually gain weight! Yes, all those hours of dancing must have been off-balanced by the extra Big Macs and Twinkies she shoved in her face every night. Finally, her dancing was so awful a Wisconsin man made national headlines when he was so enraged by Bristol’s terrible dancing that he blasted his TV with a shotgun, resulting in a standoff with police. You see, Bristol, look at what you’ve done. I think you “owe” it to us to never appear on TV again.
2. iPhone4/Steve Jobs – The iPhone 4 was supposed to be like the Jesus of telephones. It could perform miracles and come back from the dead. It could do anything… except make phone calls. Apparently they changed the antenna so that when you held the phone a certain way, the calls would get dropped or not go through at all. Fan-fucking-tastic engineering, Apple. Of course when people started complaining, the incredibly humble and consummate everyman Steve Jobs told people, “Just avoid holding it that way.” Thanks, Steve, next time I make a call I’ll try to avoid holding the phone with my hand. Asshole.
3. 3D – Will this trend please, please die already? It worked well enough in Avatar, but only because director James Cameron essentially built a whole new 3D camera rig from the ground up. Of course it still gave me a headache while I was watching it, but it was OK for just that one movie. Unfortunately, now everything is in fucking 3D. Most of it is shitty post-converted 3D, which means it wasn’t filmed that way, so it looks extra terrible like The Last Airbender. It seems like every movie is being made in 3D now, and Hollywood is charging extra for the ticket prices. It’s a shitty gimmick that allows them to continue to get away with weak ass stories and shitty acting. Hey Hollywood, how about this for a gimmick: make good movies for a change.
4. U.S. Republican Party – To quote Obi Wan Kenobi, in Capitol Hill, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Never before have I seen a group of people so adamantly opposed to doing absolutely anything. For the last two years, Republicans have cockblocked every bill brought to Congress by Democrats simply because they were brought to Congress by Democrats. That’s right, they opposed everything simply out of principle. And we aren’t talking heavily partisan politics here, we are talking bills that would do things like help decrease the world’s supply of nuclear weapons. Yeah, we can’t have enough of those. (Eventually they did pass that one, but only after bitching about it for months ahead of time.) Republicans, however, are amazing in their ability to use Jedi Mind Tricks on the American public. They brainwashed everyone into thinking that lowering taxes on the richest citizens (while not giving a fuck about anyone else), and effectively decreasing the flow of revenue into the government, would somehow decrease the giant deficit. Bravo! I am genuinely impressed. Democrats are idiots, too, because they essentially just laid down and allowed this shit to happen to them despite having control of Congress with a super-majority. Nice going, dipshits. I think that the Republicans should attempt to do something in order to get things moving along in the U.S, and Democrats should stop being such pussies. If nobody does anything, then how do they expect anything to change? On the bright side, former Republican Congressman and world-class asshole Tom Delay, was convicted of money laundering in 2010. So at least we have that to smile about.
5. Bieber Fever – It’s not Justin Bieber that I have a problem with. To me, he’s like… eh, whatever. What pisses me off are his ridiculously obsessive, moronic fans. They actually remind me a lot of Twilight fans. While Twilight fans are sickening, obese, middle-aged housewives who fantasize about dreamy guys who don’t have sex, Bieber fans are sickening, obese, pre-teen/teenage girls who fantasize about an androgynous guy who probably hasn’t developed pubic hair yet. His songs aren’t that good, yet they flood the radio. As a teenage generic love-song factory, he was rightly given a multi-episode guest starring role on the TV show CSI. Yeah, that makes sense. His performance was… hilariously amazing. And now Bieber fever has catapaulted him to star in his own movie Never Say Never, which of course is a movie about his life. Ah, I can’t wait to see all the arduous trials, his long slow struggle through his career, and the sage wisdom he accumulate over all of his 16 years.
6. Kesha – The fact that this bitch can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t write coherent songs, is drunk 99% of the time, isn’t attractive, and can still be a major music star is the reason why I have shunned popular music. Since she can’t sing she just pseudo-raps or “sing/talks” throughout each track with heavy auto-tuning to make up for her wailing voice, which is akin to the cry of a dying cat. Her songs are horrible, but the music industry wants them to be hits, so they just force radio stations to play them over and over again until they eventually become hits. Between her braindead “music” and Kanye West getting credit for rapping over Daft Punk’s hard work (i.e. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger), the music industry should just burn in hell.
7. BP Oil Rig Leak – This one seems like an obvious choice, I realize that. But it doesn’t make it any less shitty. For months oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. Nobody seemed to give a fuck, and the oil kept coming and coming. And of course it happened to New Orleans, who seems to have still not quite made it out of the Hurricane Katrina clusterfuck. Poor New Orleans seems to be a magnet for bad shit. Pretty soon Bristol Palin will fly down there to dance for them, causing their next natural disaster. At the very least the oil leak seemed to have a decent resolution. Unfortunately, Obama seemed to care about this as much as Bush did about Katrina. It’s not like Obama was going to personally dive underwater and plug up the leak, but he could have at least pretended to give a shit.
8. Full Body Airport Security Scanners – There’s nothing better than having a creepy, bald-headed, nude photograph taken of you at the airport for TSA to drool over and inevitably jerk off to. I’m glad that this is what airport security has come to. Either have a public naked picture taken of you (With bonus radiation zapped through your body!), or get a public groping instead. Decisions, decisions. Benjamin Franklin said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I agree with him, and people who complacently agree to be scanned should go fuck themselves.
9. Jay Leno/Tonight Show Debacle – Last place network NBC made a great move earlier this year by firing Conan O’Brien from his 6-month-long hosting stint at The Tonight Show and replacing him with former host Jay Leno. Conan put up a fight, and NBC went straight to a child-like tantrum by threatening to block Conan from appearing anywhere on TV for the next three years. Leno, of course, was backing NBC’s decision, so he looked like a complete tool. Soon, everything went entirely to shit, and NBC fired Conan. Conan fought back with his last week of shows by spending exorbitant amounts of money, just to stick it to NBC as a final “fuck you.” So now that Leno is back as the host of The Tonight Show, how did it all work out? Well, The Tonight Show has the worst ratings in the series’ history, NBC is still the last place network, NBC’s jackass president resigned, and Conan’s new show on TBS is getting better ratings than The Tonight Show. You see, NBC? That’s what you get for being douchebags.
10. Any blog that isn’t this one – sucks.

Well, the year 2010 has given us plenty of awesome things, but way more shitty things. I suppose every year is like that. Let’s see what happens in 2011. I’m sure there will be no shortage of shit that will piss me off.

True Blood – Season 1

A long time ago, vampires used to kick ass. Spanning centuries of folklore and leading to modern times, vampire stories have always picqued my interest. Old classics like Dracula and Nosferatu as well as newer fare like Blade and Hellsing have given me countless hours of entertainment. Sadly, though, the street rep of the vampire has really been dragged through the mud in recent years. It has become so bad that I have almost completely given up on the vampire genre as a whole.

One trend that pissed me off in particular is the one that showed the vampire looking normal until they reveal their fangs, and then their faces get all scrunched up and evil looking. Probably the worst offender of this was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and its spin-off Angel. Vampires are 10,000% more terrifying when they look like everybody else. I think that is kind of the point of why vampires are scary. The vampire could be anyone. When that aspect is taken away, then part of the fascinating vampire mythos is lost.