A crummy old plastic bag floating in the wind above a dirty sidewalk. It’s not an image that one might immediately think of as beautiful, or moving, or important. But it is perhaps the most beautiful moment in this year’s most beautiful film — “American Beauty” — a moment that sums up the lyrical grace of the film, and embodies the idea that fate does what it wants with us, and even if we are going around in circles on a dirty street, ultimately, if seen from the outside, there is a beauty in our little dance.
I went to a script-writing seminar a few weeks back that was attended by six of the year’s best screenwriters, three of them Oscar contenders — Charlie Kaufman, who wrote “Being John Malkovich,” Eric Roth, who co-wrote “The Insider” and Alan Ball, who wrote “American Beauty.” Much of the attention in the seminar, both from the audience and from the other members of the panel, focused on Ball, for obvious reasons. Not only is he the front-runner for the Oscar, and not only will “American Beauty” most likely win best picture, but there is a kind of newness to the tone of “American Beauty” that makes it almost seem like a landmark film, a kind of paradigm shift in the portrayal of the pain and despair of everyday life in ways that recognize both its comedic and tragic aspects and make it seem, ultimately, all worth it.
Ball was asked about the plastic bag scene, but not by one of the audience members. It was illuminating, actually, that the question came from another writer, David O. Russell, who wrote another of 1999′s most innovative films, “Three Kings.” Russell leaned forward into the mike, looked Ball right in the eye, and asked, as if he were asking a telepath how he had managed to bend a spoon, “How did you come up with the plastic bag scene?”
For those who have not seen the film, the scene is simple — a white plastic bag is caught in the wind in front of the kind of graffittied metal doors that come down at night in front of liquor stores in tough neighborhoods. The scene is shot in slow motion. The bag goes up and down and left and right and around and around. It could be a bird, or a butterfly, or a cloud. But it’s not. It’s a piece of litter on a dirty street. And as such it’s a metaphor that even in the toughest place, and perhaps most often in tough places, beauty happens.
Ball answered the question directly, with no emotion. He said that he wanted a scene of grace to balance out the heaviness of the other scenes, to provide a quiet moment. “I tried to think of the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,” he said. For him, it wasn’t some schmaltzy sunset in Hawaii. He remembered walking past the World Trade Center at a time in his life when he was working as the art director at a magazine, and writing plays at night for a theater company that was disintegrating. Most of the people in the theater company were hitting their mid-30s and moving on. He felt a little stuck. A plastic bag was caught on the wind and it seemed to float around him, as if it were a specter, as if it were alive and talking to him. There was something so profound in the simple beauty of the moment, he said, that it brought him to tears.
I called Ball after the script seminar to talk to him in more detail about the plastic bag moment. “It was in the early ’90s, towards the end of winter, the beginning of spring,” he said. “It was kind of cold and overcast but it wasn’t raining. It was a Sunday. So the whole financial district was deserted. But it was kind of one of those days that after months of it being freezing, it was warm enough to walk. And so I just decided to walk from midtown down to the World Trade Center to catch the train back to Brooklyn. I was in front of the World Trade Center, and I noticed this plastic bag in the wind, this white plastic bag. And it circled me, and it literally circled me, like, 10 or 15 times. And after about the third or fourth time I felt very, um, I started to feel weird. And then, I don’t know, there was something striking about the experience, and I really did feel like I was in the presence of something.”
Ball used to be a television writer, a job he loathed. Just like Lester, the “American Beauty” character played by Kevin Spacey, he yearned to change his life, to escape from the trap he had found himself in. And the way he changed his life was by writing “American Beauty.” “That script was fueled by anger,” he said — anger at having to write television characters over and over who did nothing more than “trade insults.” Just as Lester was essentially freed, in a way, in the movie, Ball freed himself by writing it. In what could be considered a minor miracle in today’s bloated Hollywood script development world, his script sold eight days after he put it on the market, and it was in the theaters 18 months after that. Along the way, director Sam Mendes allowed him to be on the set every day, and to help shepherd his script through the filming process, which is another impossible dream for a writer. Although Ball is still fulfilling some television contracts, when that is completed, he will most likely never again have to write dialogue about people trading insults.
Ball is a lanky guy who still wears beat-up old Dr. Martens and has a classic writer’s face — somewhat withdrawn, world-weary, bags under the eyes. You can see that he’s been through it. He’s no slick, amped-up script machine like Ron Bass. The character of Lester, he said, had been “floating around in the back of my mind for years.” Of course, so had that plastic bag. When you watch “American Beauty,” the plastic bag scene comes when Lester’s daughter asks to see her boyfriend’s video footage. The boyfriend lives in an emotionally dangerous world inhabited by his psychologically incapacitated mother and his violent, repressed father. The boyfriend shows the girl his footage of the plastic bag going round and round. Mendes lets the audience watch it for a long time. The longer you watch, the more mesmerized you become until the bag begins to speak to you the same way it did to Ball. A friend of mine in New York, a hardened entertainment journalist, cried at this scene, and so did I.
“As children we come into the world with eyes that are wide open and we can see beauty in the most surprising places and the miraculous in the mundane, and that gets sort of conditioned out of us as we are socialized,” Ball said. “But there was something about the poetry of that bag in the wind. The lyricalness of it was incredibly overwhelming to me on that particular day. I think there is a part of us that longs for that way of seeing the world. I think that’s what people talk about really when they talk about the loss of innocence. So just to be reminded of that, and that it still exists within all of us is very moving to people. Because it’s so easy to be so cynical.”
And so, on Sunday, when Ball walks up to receive his best screenplay Oscar, you can know he will be doing so in part because he told the truth about the most beautiful moment in his life. The plastic bag scene works, as does the entire movie, because Ball was so pushed to the edge by the circumstances of his life that he found the courage to make a little pearl and to share it with the world. And in a world of contrived scripts and cobbled together Hollywood schlock, it is refreshing and encouraging that Ball’s “American Beauty” will be the big winner. It’s real. It’s about time.
Russ Spencer is a Southern California freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Outside, Book, Icon, the Los Angeles Times and online magazines New Media, Shift and IFILM.
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Before we start with this review, can I just say I’m worried about Jessica! Not just because she has fallen under Antonia/Marnie’s spell and is about to walk out into the daylight to burn up into a pile of goo — which is very worrisome, to be sure — but I’m also concerned about her emotional well-being. Like she doesn’t love Hoyt anymore, and she thinks it’s because she has a vampire heart, but if there is one thing we’ve learned from “True Blood,” “Twilight” and “Buffy,” it’s that the female gaze of modern tweens has turned vampires into loving, non-bloodsucking emo kids with souls and great hair. Not only does this show revolve around how much love vampires have for certain humans, but Jessica fell in love with her square-headed boyfriend when she was a vampire, so obviously she is capable of feeling things. Stop using the fact that you are a vampire as an excuse to cheat on your boyfriend with Jason Stackhouse, Jessica! That’s more a product of your being 18 years old than it is about being a supernatural creature who craves human blood as sustenance.
Usually “True Blood” is pretty consistent with its broad, ham-fisted metaphors of “humanity,” but Jessica was being straight-up literal this week. Luckily, King Bill was there to set her straight with all these analogies about fascism and genocide. Did you know that vampires can engage in holocausts? (Example: The Inquisition, the actual Holocaust.) Did you know witches want to destroy entire races of beings? (Example: The vampires, currently.) Did you know humans are also very good at mass murder? (Example: Everything else in history, until Alan Ball decides to change it around again.) Next season on “True Blood,” we will find out Stalin was actually a shape-shifter and 9/11 was orchestrated by a bunch of werebears.
Let’s rewind, though, and get to what everyone cares about: Sookie and Eric are still having sex. It’s still the night of the full moon, and they are just banging it out hard. Despite what every other fake-history book tells us, werecreatures don’t have to turn during a full moon if they don’t feel like it, as evidenced by Alcide and Debbie stomping off from their pack because Alcide is “worried” about Sookie. To her credit, for once Debbie isn’t slow to take the hint, especially when they stumble upon the endurance marathon that Sookie and Eric are currently engaged in. Alcide looks angry enough to turn into a wolf. (But he doesn’t. Werelogic!) Later on, Debbie can’t even have sex with Alcide before she breaks down in werewolfwomen tears and asks if Alcide really loves the magic fairy dream girl. What’s a wereguy supposed to say to that? Alcide unconvincingly convinces Debbie that he only has eyes for her. Now back to the good part.
Somehow Sookie and Eric manage to continue making sweet, sweet love all the way back from the woods into her bed without coming up for air. The only explanation I can come up with is that Sookie rode first-class on Air Eric all the way home, assuming the vampire remembers he can fly.
The two lovers lie in bed awhile and discuss whether or not Sookie would like him if he regained his memory. Wait, they love each other already? (Take note, Jessica.) Sookie’s answer is “Maybe.” Fair enough. Regular Eric was a jerk, albeit one with fewer self-esteem issues and more quippy one-liners. The question that “True Blood” is very subtly (not very subtly) asking is whether our “selves” are merely the sum total of our memories/experiences. Inhuman nature versus inhuman nurture, one could argue, if they were so inclined. Never failing on the symbolism, this show.
Meanwhile, Marnie, possessed by the spirit of the ancient witch Antonia, has escaped from her Ikea-prison and is planning on necromancing all the vampires into the sunlight again. She enlists Tara on this mission, who is more than eager to help after a scary Pam made her girlfriend go away. Well, Pam, and Tara’s unrelenting intimacy issues. If Tara went back to New Orleans with her girlfriend it doesn’t seem like anybody would miss her, although you could see why, after her incident with Eggs and her rapey vampire fiancé Franklin, she’s pretty damaged. Somehow, “True Blood” has managed to make Tara’s reactions to people seem logical, but let’s all remember that this character was kind of the worst even before she saw her last two boyfriends splattered all over Merlotte’s parking lot.
Sorry, did I say “logical”? Tara’s decision to join up with the witch coven actually seems like a totally rash and stupid decision, considering that the last time she punched in her membership to any sort of group, the leader turned out to be a maenad. Weird that she’s so trusting of a 16th-century ghost living inside a middle-aged hippie’s body, but that’s just good old Tara for you! She convinces a bunch of other women-spelled-with-a-y to take up arms with the spirit inhabiting Marnie to re-create the “resurrection,” which is that thing where all vampires suddenly thirst for the sunlight so bad that they leave their coffins during the day and explode. (That part isn’t a metaphor.)
King Bill is onto this plan, though, and demands that all vampire sheriffs — which include a lady, a kid who looks like Michael Cera, and a buff, black guy (because HBO ain’t nothing if it’s not diversified) — silver all the vampires in their coffins so they can’t go into the sun. Which is actually a good plan! Except that Bill doesn’t chain Jessica up quite as tightly as he does himself, because he has a weak vampire-heart for his progeny. Leading to Jessica being able to escape when the witches’ incantation brings about the resurrection, and here we are, back to the beginning of the end.
Oh, and Lafayette is a medium now. He can see Arlene’s ghost-nanny. And Sam throws Tommy out of the house again for shape-shifting into him and sleeping with his (Sam’s) girlfriend, who is also a shapeshifter. You guys!
I can’t tell you how long I have waited for this moment. Not even a minute into the show, and “Dazed and Confused” Vampire Eric refers to Sookie as “Snooki.” It’s amazing. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about how these two annoying pop culture caricatures have incredibly similar-sounding names! Finally, one of the writers on the show has recognized this, which also means that “True Blood” is now in-universe with “Jersey Shore.” (Fingers crossed on Bon Temps being the surprise location for the sixth season of MTV’s reality show.)
Hopefully this joke, tossed as a casual aside after Sookie punches Eric in the nose (like a shark!) for trying to eat her, is a harbinger of the return to “True Blood’s” better writing days. King Bill’s whole scene where he lays out that any vampire caught feeding on YouTube will meet “the true death” is pretty baller, if only because it reminds us (and not in a bonk-you-on-the-head kind of way) that these characters live in a world where viral videos, along with “Jersey Shore,” exist. The concept of the Internet having a place in the world of “True Blood” is 20 times more interesting than ghost were-panthers. Let’s 2.0 this bitch up! Give Eric back his cellphone for texting!
Speaking of the shirtless Nordic vampire, Eric still has no memory of who he is after Marnie invoked the spirit of a generically hot brunette to cast a spell on him. Well, he knows what he is, which is a vampire. And he knows that he loves Snooki/Sookie… or at least he figures it out after he tries to eat her. He also knows, as we’ve determined, what a Snooki is. But not much else. He’s lost his mojo, and Sookie agrees to help him out, because this new Eric persona is less sexually threatening. We’ll just conveniently forget the fact that last week Sookie was pleading with her ex to essentially take a hit out on him; now she’s going to invite him into her house. Though it’s technically his house. (Sookie doesn’t tell him that part.)
And as Bon Temps turns… Jason is still tied up, probably dying from were-panther wounds. If this season ends with Sookie’s brother kicking the bucket in some farmhouse due to the lack of penicillin, I might be OK with that. Crystal, Jason’s ex who is trying to make him into a panther (don’t ask) makes him take Viagra so he can mate with her and all her sisters/cousins/whatever. It’s a testament to how sick I am of Ryan Kwanten’s bewildered, doofy face that I start to zone out during any scene that he’s in — even when it involves male rape, incest and references to a “ghost daddy” during intercourse.
Lafayette and Tara are still all shook up about Eric Northman trying to eat them, but Marnie is excited! She’s a real witch now, she knows it! Later on, crazy lady tries to invoke the spirit again and ends up slicing her wrist open instead. But then the brunette spirit is actually there, so I guess cutting yourselves is really the way to commune with the dead, just like that documentary “The Craft” said. This can only end well.
Lafayette has a different idea when it comes to dealing with Eric: He’s going to go over to Fangtasia and beg for forgiveness for being in a coven, with the hope that the vampire won’t torture him in his dungeon below the bar again. As Lafayette is one of the smarter characters on the show, this was a surprisingly stupid move: Tara and Jesus figure out his plan just in time to save him from Pam, who is unsurprisingly torturing Lafayette in the dungeon to find out what happened to her master. In “True Blood,” all roads lead back to Eric’s BDSM basement.
This ostensibly life-threatening confrontation ends with everyone deciding to work together to find Eric, because when you stop and think about it, all the major characters on the show grudgingly have each other’s back. Maybe that’s why they have to keep introducing new, evil residents to the town: At this point, it’s not conceivable that even Pam would hurt Lafayette… not really. Nor would Eric harm Sookie’s best friend, as he looked like he was going to do last episode.
And again, this is where “True Blood” seems to be getting back on the right track, because despite what I said last episode about it being impossible for Bill’s character not to be as morally uptight as Ned Stark, he is developing some interesting traits. He’s unapologetic about having his bodyguards kill off the YouTube vamp (he almost seems a little smirky), and after a quick lecture to his sire Jessica about why she needs to tell Hoyt that she drank some other guy’s blood (OK, dad), it’s posited that maybe Bill did send Eric into the coven in order to get killed. Hey, it’s not like he hasn’t tried it before.
Now that he’s king, Bill is dangerous precisely because he’s so self-righteous: All that doubt and guilt that plagued him from the show’s beginning (and made him basically a surrogate Angel character from “Buffy”) has been replaced with an arrogant confidence in his ability to dole out justice. The thought that those years of Bill’s nagging and exasperated “Soookehs!” might have just been lead up to his becoming a power-crazed ruler makes me very excited. Let’s hope it’s not just a red herring.
Oh yeah, back to Jessica and Hoyt: she bit another guy, which is supposed to be a metaphor for cheating, since everything is a VAMPIRE ANALOGY on this show. Then she glamours him to make him forget it ever happened, which is a metaphor for drunk makeup sex, I guess.
Hoyt’s mom is sitting on a natural gas goldmine, and Sam’s brother plans to exploit it for the dollars. Sam is busy being in love with a shape-shifter who can turn into her mom. (Kinky.) Arlene still kind of wants to kill her baby. And at the very end of the show, we see the return of Claudine, Sookie’s fairy godmother, who demands that she come back to their glowing kingdom. Before Sookie can get in her full 10 minutes of lecturing on how she is a grown-up and will do what she likes, Eric whizzes by and eats Sookie’s fairy godmother. To be fair, afterward he seems very apologetic about it. New Eric is great!
The second episode of “True Blood” starts where last week ended. Do you remember how last week ended? I mean, for each of the 10-1,200 characters that we the audience are supposed to have an emotional stake (ha!) in? No? OK, here it goes …
Jason Stackhouse wakes up tied to a bed in the “Hills Have Eyes” community that he has been entrusted with after his V-addicted girlfriend Crystal went away to have sex with her brother. (Side note: How can something that is so hot on “Game of Thrones” be so disgusting on “True Blood”? Incest, she is a fickle turn-on.) Turns out Stackhouse has been conned by these young rednecks who eat raw meat and lick his head wounds, because he is just that dumb. Crystal and her half-brother Felton are back, and they want Jason to spawn little werepanther babies and continue their totally non-defected, inbred gene pool. But first Jason has to become a werepanther himself, in a ritual that looks a lot like the vampire’s turning process: draining (or in this case, clawing) a person till they are almost dead, then waiting for the next full moon. I think they are a missing a step where Jason needs to drink (claw) their blood? So now he’s all infected and gross. Man, Stackhouse, if only you were smart enough to outthink a family whose cumulative IQ adds up to less than Forrest Gump’s. Alas.
But that’s already too much time spent on Jason! Because last week actually ended with Sookie realizing that Eric bought her house, and is now free to roam around it and menacingly flirt with her as he pleases. He even built himself a little underground sleeping bunker in a cabinet! (Weird, doesn’t she already have a basement?) Eric still wants Sookie to be his, which must be because of that damn fairy blood, because it is in no way due to her stellar personality.
Sookie marches over to King Ex-Boyfriend Bill’s house, where he has finished biting and boning a lady from Lafayette and Jesus’ Wiccan support group. After making her Sookie-judgment face, she demands that as king, Bill make Eric leave. Bill makes some vague remarks about Eric having powerful friends, but he’ll still see what he can do. After barging in on Bill having sex, yelling at him to do her a favor, and then berating him for not being able to do it immediately, Sookie stalks out. Class act. By the way, this is usually how I convince my ex-boyfriends to do stuff for me.
But the mention of “powerful friends” makes Bill go all flashback-y: He’s in London in the ’80s, trying on his worst Cockney accent (surprisingly terrible for an actor who is actually British), when he runs into Nan — she of the Vampire League of television pundits — who promises him that one day he will be able to drink non-human blood if she joins up with her growing group of progressive vampires. Apparently True Blood was created by Louis Pasteur, we find out.
“Wait … Louis Pasteur is a vampire?”asks Bill, as my head unconsciously starts reaching for the remote.
The purpose of this whole awkward flashback device is to show that Nan and Bill have been in on it since the beginning of the show: The plan was always to set Bill up as a dummy king, so they could take down the feudal system of vampires that are still attached to the old ways and replace them with peace-loving, True Blood-drinking hippies like Bill. In another flashback, we see Nan’s stealth commando army kill off Queen Sophie Ann during that unresolved “Matrix” fight between her and Bill last season.
OK, so now there’s no more Queen of Louisiana. Why does Bill get to be king? Why not dismantle this whole weird monarchy system (with the sheriffs and the magistrates and such) that the vampires have going on, instead of setting up a fake dictator? Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and vamps …
In tangential character news: Hoyt and Jessica are still having domestic trouble, because she wants to be sexy and bite people other than her boyfriend at Fangtasia. But also those religious zealots are still picketing the bar (“We’re living in a post-Russell Edington world,” says one of the characters, referring to the best scene from last season), and Hoyt gets in a fight with one of the anti-fangbangers. Jessica starts to show her teeth, but one of the guys has a smartphone and threatens to upload the video to YouTube. (Timely!) Jessica could be the next “Do you know how many degrees I have?” subway lady!
Sam is in love with one of his shape-shifting buddies named Luna, and they have an innuendo-laden conversation while completely naked (no worries, they just transformed back from horse form, nothing weird here). For all his hotness, Sam is actually the worst at picking up women: If you are lying down naked in a field with someone and she has to ask if you are trying to hit on her, then your game is kind of off, bro. Apparently not, though, since later on Luna comes to Merlotte’s and makes out with Sam in order to convince him to … come to their weekly Shifter get-together? Doesn’t he do that every week, anyway? These two are perfect for each other.
Another thing is, Luna is definitely something you name a horse, not a person, so I hope the twist this season comes when Sam realizes that his girlfriend is actually a shape-shifting horse that is pretending to be human. Court her with apples, Sam!
Arlene, still on her “Rosemary’s Baby” kick, stares at her newborn so hard she breaks a blood vessel in her eye. Then she blames it on the kid. World’s best mom! Or maybe the baby really is evil, “Pet Semetary”-style.
Lafayette and Jesus’ witch group bring a dead bird back to life for half a second. It’s all very “The Craft.” Bill’s sex buddy in the group brings him the news because she is a sleeper cell Wiccan or something, and he calls on Eric to make the witches stop their necromancing. See, if they can control the dead, they can control the undead. At first I was excited, and thought “Zombies!” but then I realized they were still talking about vampires. Zombies are next season.
Oh yeah, and Tara comes back. Hi Tara! You seem so happy! Let’s see how long that lasts.
Another coven meeting attended by Lafayette, Tara and Jesus is interrupted by a cocky Eric, who demands they disband. Head witch (and total weirdo) Marnie gets all First Amendment on his ass — because everyone has, like, the right to assemble, man — and Eric decides it’s time for a snack. Then he attacks Tara, and even though Lafayette gets PTSD every time he sees Eric (remember season one?), his desire to protect his cousin leads him to take up a chant that causes the witchy crazy lady to turn into a different witchy crazy lady and suddenly Eric goes from being like this:
To this:
Earth to Meekus!
(Remember how Eric was in “Zoolander”?? Amazing.)
Sookie goes to Fangtasia to demand that Pam do her this favor of getting Eric out, except Pam isn’t so polite about saying no (because she is the best, and apparently the only character who consistently sees through Sookie’s bullshit). Our waitress makes a short pit stop in the bathroom to chide Jessica for necking with another guy in the bathroom, because it’s not a day in Bon Temps if our heroine ain’t up in your business, judging the shit out of you.
On her way home, Sookie finds her new vampire landlord kind of shuffling around without a shirt on. What happened to his shirt, we wonder. He doesn’t know; he’s forgotten everything. Including who Sookie is, and why he shouldn’t just take a delicious bite out of her fairy neck.
Unlike the last episode, this cliffhanger is actually suspenseful; though it’s never been clear why a vampire incapable of “love” like Eric wouldn’t drain Sookie at every opportunity, we suspend our disbelief and swallow the idea about him secretly having feelings for her. But without any memories, Sookie’s sweet-smelling blood makes her nothing but a tasty meatbag to this airheaded vamp.
One of Hollywood’s oddest feuds ended recently when Quentin Tarantino finally settled his lawsuit against neighbor Alan Ball and his screaming, horrifying birds. Who even knew these guys were neighbors? Hollywood!
You see, the “True Blood” creator has (had?) a bunch of exotic macaws that emit “blood-curdling screams,” making it impossible for Tarantino to write his next movie. Because it is very distracting to write scenes where you bash people’s heads in with bats or cut their legs off with samurai swords if it sounds like your neighbor is beating you to the punch.
Ball promised to build a soundproof aviary but back last June, these devil-birds started screeching for their lives again. In March, after being forced to endure “obnoxious pteradactyl-like screams,” Tarantino hired celebrity lawyer Marty Singer to get involved. Two weeks ago, the case was dropped. No mention of how they settled, just a short blip in a New York Times profile about Singer two days ago.
It’s fun to try and imagine what happened here, especially since neither of the directors moved. Did Tarantino cut one of the macaws’ heads off and put it in Ball’s bed? Did Alan Ball promise to write a foul-mouthed vampire character based on Tarantino into the next season of “True Blood?” We’ll never know, as Singer’s only response to the suit was: “That’s been resolved.”
Anna Paquin and Alexander Skarsgard in "True Blood"
“The one time in my entire life I thought I was happy, I was a zombie.” — Tara (Rutina Wesley),”True Blood”
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll wake up from these happy, golden years as a TV critic and say the same thing. But then the third season screeners of “True Blood” (returns 9 p.m. Sunday, June 13) arrive in the mail, and I forget all of that and instead plummet into a world so dark and dirty and hilarious and unnerving that it glamours me into a placid state, then leaves me wanting more.
How does Alan Ball do it? His vampire tale serves up the stickiest, filthiest, most delicious debauchery imaginable with reckless abandon. Whether Bill is throwing a flaming lamp at someone’s head or Eric is biting into a foe and then apologizing to his hostess by saying, bashfully, “I got your rug all wet,” whether Tara is weeping snottily into a bottle of Wild Turkey or slugging some racist rednecks in the face, whether Sam is earnestly discussing his roots with some strangers or ripping off his clothes and running through the woods as a dog, this show is filled with the kinds of curveballs that keep you slightly off-kilter, unsettled and unprepared for what might happen next.
While the orgiastic madness of Season 2 might be hard to top, the first three episodes of Season 3 look promising indeed, serving up one juicy twist after another, plus a steady flow of great dialogue, intense conversations, brutality, blackmail, mystery, suspense and, best of all, some wickedly funny moments that are beyond compare. Despite all of the campy, overly obvious commentary on prejudice, bigotry and marginalized subcultures that were always gumming up the works in the first season, “True Blood” had an addictive second season and now the show is reaching a new high. The cast’s Southern accents finally sound reasonably natural, their performances are better than ever, and the storytelling has blown past X having a crush on Y and Z wanting to kill X, and landed in some slippery realm where everyone is trying to get over on everyone else — you know, like “The Shield” except with vampires instead of bad cops and werewolves where the drug cartels should go.
Yes, werewolves. There’s nothing quite like throwing a whole new demonic segment of society into the picture, and then letting the audience piece together what the motivations of this new group might be. Werewolves are scary but apparently conquerable, as long as they don’t have any vampire blood to drink. If they do, their strength grows exponentially, as a few of the key players on “True Blood” soon find out.
But there are other power plays in the mix, including the reemergence of Queen Sophie-Ann (Evan Rachel Wood) plus a new menacing figure who seems to have Bill stuck in a tight spot again. Somehow, though, “True Blood” never feels repetitive, partially because each scene is driven by some palpable conflict or tension. This is exactly what was missing from the show in its first season, a sense of underlying friction and energy, a feeling that every character is moving inexorably toward either self-discovery or self-destruction. Instead of just marking time, the show treats us to a new revelation, a new dynamic, a new problem every few minutes, and every scene has one or two great lines or wickedly nasty jokes. The second and third episodes of the season in particular made me shake my head, cringe, jump a little, chuckle, and laugh out loud several times.
Even when Tara (Rutina Wesley) and Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) are talking about the darkness in their family or Sam (Sam Trammell) is trying to track down his birth parents, there’s always some absurd detail or punch line lingering there. At a vampire dinner party, one of the hosts pours a drink for a guest, saying, “Chilled, carbonated blood. It’s cruelty-free, all willingly donated. Note the citrusy finish. This one ate only tangerines for a week.”
And I love Pam (Kristin Bauer), Eric’s (Alexander Skarsgard) lesbian vampire sidekick, whose tone lands somewhere between madame, enforcer and high-end real estate agent. “Now, why’d you have to go and kill that Maenad?” she asks Sookie (Anna Paquin) upon entering her house. “She’s a terrific decorator.” These are the little touches that bring this series to life, and make you want to run out and buy Charmaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novel series to read in between episodes.
The story itself is richer and more provocative than it’s ever been, and everyone seems to be working at cross purposes. Sookie wants to find Bill (Stephen Moyer). Eric wants to get with Sookie. Eric has a strange alliance with the Queen, and with Lafayette. Lafayette wants to be left alone, but he needs to take care of Tara in the wake of Eggs’ (Mehcad Brooks) death. Arlene (Carrie Preston) has a problem. And Bill? Bill is struggling with a few choices about how to keep Sookie safe.
Everyone is struggling this season, even Jason (Ryan Kwanten), who feels terrible guilt in the wake of killing Eggs. “I’m not sure what normal is anymore,” he tells Andy (Chris Bauer). Andy’s response? “For now, you gotta be the Jason Stackhouse everybody knows, so conscience off, dick on, and everything’s gonna be all right.” Soon Jason discovers a higher calling, though — as is his habit — but will he ever really escape his essential “conscience off, dick on” animalism?
Newly minted vampire Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is wondering the same thing about herself: Can she get the upper hand on her urges, or is she doomed to follow her hungers and desires straight to hell? “We can fight our natures together!” her optimistic true love Hoyt (Jim Parrack) tells her, but is that even possible? Can anyone really overcome their nature? That seems to be the underlying theme this season, and mostly what we see at the outset are characters who feel powerless against their own fatal flaws.
If you’ve been bored by most of the dramas on TV this spring (I know I have),”True Blood” is here to refresh your palate with something truly delightful, absurd, riveting, and above all, depraved. If that doesn’t sound tempting, well, as Eric would say, “With all due respect, I fear you’re not considering all the angles.”
This week on "True Blood": vampires vs. witches! 
Anna Paquin in "True Blood" 
Tarantino vs. Ball. 
Anna Paquin and Alexander Skarsgard in "True Blood" 
