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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Hot-tempered vampires are running amok, from Alan Ball's new HBO drama "True Blood" to CBS's "Big Brother 10" to Bravo's "Flipping Out"!
By Heather Havrilesky
Read more: CBS, HBO, TV, Vampires, Arts & Entertainment, Big Brother, Heather Havrilesky, Bravo, I Like to Watch
Aug. 10, 2008 | The world is filled with hot-tempered vampires, whether they're bearing down on you in their 18-wheelers on the freeway or unleashing their ill-mannered children on yours in daycare. Most recently, reports indicate that hot-tempered vampires are manning the phones at AT&T, which is why, from the dark confines of their blackout-shaded offices, they so viciously refuse to explain the unauthorized charges on your phone bill.
Investigate the charges a little more, and you'll speak to even more hot-tempered vampires who will take great pains to explain to you that all it took was for some hot-tempered vampire teenager to go online and plug in your phone number, and voilà! You're paying $32 a month for someone else's Internet services. "But that isn't our fault!" the bloodthirsty ghouls will tell you, "because a little screen pops up that asks 'Are you 18 years of age?' and 'Are you the legally authorized owner of this phone account?' and since the marauding vampire youths did click through, indicating that they were old enough and were in charge, we are legally permitted to bill you through AT&T. Yes, you are the deluded, crack-smoking imbecile in this picture, so please go back to hitting the pipe and stop wasting our time with your trivial mortal concerns."
Eventually, you'll be redirected to even crazier, more rabid vampires, the sorts who ask you if you have children, then explain that while you personally may not have authorized those mysterious Web services, nine times out of 10 there's some wayward child in the house who went online and signed up without their parents ever knowing about it. The vampires will chuckle at your supreme ignorance of your own children's habits as they tell you this. And when you explain that your kid is 2 years old, the vampires will assure you that someone in your house is being sneaky, as if all households were filled with hot-tempered vampires just like theirs. Then the nasty bloodsuckers will demand to get your mailing address, hissing demonically that if you don't give it to them, they won't be able to reverse the charges and your credit will be ruined!
Now, I ask you, is it really wise to give your street address to a pack of drooling, hungry vampires? No, it is not wise. So after several months of this, you go online and find out that this sort of unauthorized-charge thing happens all the time, thanks to an increase in the vampire population. Not only that, but AT&T refuses, in many cases, to block particular companies from authorizing charges on your bill even when they are repeat offenders, and AT&T reps will often claim that they can't block third-party billing regardless of the fiends involved.
In other words, AT&T not only hires hot-tempered vampires to handle its phone lines, AT&T not only colludes with companies run by hot-tempered vampires, but AT&T itself is run by hot-tempered vampires -- which explains why the corporate behemoth aided the president in his nefarious eavesdropping activities. But look, don't get rid of your land line, because even though the hot-tempered vampires at the FDA keep assuring us that cellphones are safe, international studies have correlated excessive cellphone use with brain tumors, something we might've known a decade ago, if not for the hot-tempered vampire CEOs of most of our large corporations and the hot-tempered vampire lobbyists who work for them and the hot-tempered vampires taking over the House and the Senate as we speak.
See how, once you start noticing how many hot-tempered vampires there are in the world, moving in, whispering, cackling, gnashing their teeth, calling for your blood, people start to think that you're paranoid?
That's how you know they've already won! It's just like the end of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," only replace the pointing, screeching alien pod-people with bloodsucking corporate executives, senators and customer service reps.
Schlocky horror picture showNo wonder she's drawn to the tall, dark, handsome vampire stranger whose mind she can't read when he comes into the roadhouse for a drink. Apparently vampires have recently come out of hiding in a quest to be a part of society and live like normal humans. The Japanese have developed synthetic blood, so vampires no longer have to kill people just to eat. This means that Bill can sit down for a glass of wine (that he doesn't touch) and take in the sights.
Not surprisingly, though, the rest of the townspeople are seriously suspicious of vampires and they don't want Sookie running around with one. Not only does it seem just a wee bit dangerous to attach yourself to a man who must struggle mightily to contain his urge to bite your neck and suck you dry, but also, vampires are weird and different and immoral and other metaphors for being black or gay or foreign or super-creative with a glitter pen.
Of course, people are afraid of most things that are mysterious to them, says the smart-talking, black, gay short-order cook at the roadhouse where Sookie works. "I know every man -- whether straight, gay or George motherfucking Bush -- is terrified of the pussy!"
And what do people crave the most? That which terrifies them, of course. Sookie gushes to her co-workers when she spots Bill in a booth, "I've been waiting for this to happen ever since they [the vampires] came out of the coffin two years ago!"
But Sookie's friend Tara (Rutina Wesley) is suspicious, and warns the somewhat innocent Sookie to watch out. "Do you know how many people are having sex with vampires these days?" Sookie's brother, meanwhile, tells a lady friend, "I read in Hustler that everybody should have sex with a vampire before they die."
Yes, "True Blood" is that odd mix of kitschy, campy, over-the-top ridiculousness and weighty, message-laden social commentary. Alan Ball calls it "popcorn TV for smart people," but the average viewer is likely to find it at once addictive and stupid, intoxicatingly weird and confusing and goofy.
The show has a certain B-movie taint to it, from the scene where Tara tells off a customer at the hardware store where she works, then quits her job, to the scene where Bill the vampire (Stephen Moyer) tells Sookie she smells "like sunshine." Then there are the many cheesy, horror-movie-style sex scenes, plus a lot of really clunky, obvious dialogue.
Personally, I've never really enjoyed vampire books or vampire movies or vampire anything. On top of that, I loved "Six Feet Under" and would really prefer for Alan Ball to write a show that's exactly the same as "Six Feet Under," but with new characters: Smart, heavy, soul-searching TV for smart people, that's what I want. So naturally for the first hour of this show, I felt disappointed. I didn't like the campy weirdness, I didn't like the uneven Southern accents, I didn't like the "Different people are scary!" redneck clichés.
But even though the second episode of the season isn't structured very well, with lots of rambling talk about nothing, even though the show lacks the tightness and the natural momentum of "Six Feet Under" (and the weight and the intensity, for that matter), "True Blood" is still odd, unpredictable and off-kilter. And while the same might've been said for the ill-fated, rambling David Milch experiment "John From Cincinnati," the difference is that at the end of each episode of "True Blood," I want to see what happens next. Sookie and Bill are both good characters, and the setting and the story are both original and unfamiliar.
Maybe that good feeling will turn bloodless after the first few episodes, but for now, I'm ready for more. After creating my favorite show in the history of television, Alan Ball gets a free pass to have some fun. I'll suspend my disbelief for the moment. Bring on the hot-tempered vampires!
Next page: Hotheads that make your blood run cold
An Alan Ball postmortem
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