True Blood

Monday, Nov 24, 2008 6:48 PM UTC

Finale wrap-up: “True Blood”

The first season of HBO's "True Blood" ends with fried vampires, Bible thumpers and -- of course! -- even more unsolved mysteries.

By Heather Havrilesky

more
- All Share Services

Now at least we know what happens to a vampire when he ventures out into broad daylight: He starts to fry like bacon! His head turns red and black and oozes and smokes! But could Bill (Stephen Moyer) end up disfigured forever, thanks to his efforts to save Sookie (Anna Paquin) from that vampire-hater Rene (Michael Raymond James)? Would Sookie merely pity poor charred Bill, then set her sights on Sam (Sam Trammell) — who actually saved her life, after all, instead of falling to the ground, a smoking, crispy shadow of his former self?

Personally, if I had to choose between a nice guy who owns a bar and can turn himself into a really cute dog, and a guy who sucks my blood, talks in a creepy accent, has no sense of humor whatsoever, and looks pale and sickly most of the time, I think I’d stick to the dog-man.

But then, if we learned one thing by Sunday night’s finale of HBO’s vampire series “True Blood,” it’s that no one knows Sookie Stackhouse’s mind except for Sookie Stackhouse herself. So when Bill returned from the grave yet again looking just like his usual ghoulish self, it was no surprise that Sookie embraced him and left poor Sam to lick his wounds — literally and figuratively.

Put yourself in her shoes, though. If you could read the minds of mortals, like Sookie can, an immortal with a taste for human blood and no annoying thoughts in his head might just look like your dream man, fangs or no fangs.

And while we’re at it, if you were a bitter, homeless, drunk woman who’s alienated her mom, her best friend and her lover like Tara has, you’d happily take shelter in a rich lady’s house, snack on her fresh fruits, wear her pretty outfits and suspend your disbelief over her strange “I just like to help people” story.

The question is, what is newcomer Maryann’s (Michelle Forbes) real story? Where did she come from, and why does Sam seem to know her already? Is she some other variety of magical being, a new species that’s neither vampire nor shapeshifter?

And what does Sam plan to do with all that cash from his safe? Who attacked Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) and are those his painted toenails in Andy Bellefleur’s (Chris Bauer) car?

Yes, Sunday night’s finale ended with just as many cliffhangers as there were resolutions to season-long mysteries. But what else would you expect from a series that’s based on Charlaine Harris’ “Southern Vampire” series of page turners? If the answers to the big questions felt a little predictable by the show’s final episode, that was quickly solved by introducing a whole new set of questions.

Alan Ball’s perverse, off-kilter series has leaned heavily on this formula from the start. Just when one plot point seemed exhausted, a new wrinkle arises, whether it’s seemingly nice Sam sniffing a dead girl’s sheets or Sookie’s grandmother showing up dead on her kitchen floor. Sure, there’s something a little dissatisfying about the mystery-around-every-corner format, but whatever “True Blood” lacks in substance, it makes up for in flair. From Jason Stackhouse’s nefarious hippie girlfriend to Lafayette’s colorful assortment of clients to Bill’s good Christian girl turned impatient, bloodthirsty vampire-slut, “True Blood” has paved its own, sometimes rocky path as one part vampire mystery, two parts campy, foolish fun.

The only upcoming twist that looks a little less than promising is Jason Stackhouse’s apparent transformation into a born-again Christian intent on snuffing out the evils of vampires from the face of the earth. Enduring the terrible Southern accents on this show is bad enough, without a clichéd herd of Bible-thumping fundamentalists to drag us through every worn-out stereotype in the book. The nice thing about Sookie and Sam and Tara and Bill, after all, is that they’re new to us. We’re not sure what drives them or what they’re capable of just yet. In contrast, those old familiar saccharine smiles and cries of “Praise Jesus!” are just a few clicks away on TBN at all times. To most of us in this country, evangelical Christian shenanigans are old news. When it comes to the second season of this sultry, suspenseful vampire tale, let’s hope Alan Ball sticks to some fresh blood.

Heather Havrilesky is Salon's TV critic and author of the rabbit blog. Her memoir, "Disaster Preparedness," published in 2010. More Heather Havrilesky.

Sunday, Nov 2, 2008 11:20 AM UTC

I Like to Watch

The sexy vampires of HBO's "True Blood" charm our mortal pants off, while the churlish motorcycle thugs of "Sons of Anarchy" stoop to a new low. Is the new fall TV season just a filthy tease?

By Heather Havrilesky

more
- All Share Services

I’m over this fall TV season. Like a dull girl who hides her below-average intelligence by cultivating a mysterious vibe — mostly by keeping her mouth shut and refusing to put out — the fall TV season somehow teased us into submission. She flashed a little thigh in mid-June, made one half-assed joke at the television critics’ tour in late July, claimed not to believe in sex before marriage throughout September (while sleeping around like a filthy whore behind our backs), then she threw herself on us in October, sticking a rough, sluggy tongue down our throats and pledging her undying love forever and ever while we reeled in agony.

We’re supposed to believe that the pseudo-scientific ass-hattery of “Fringe” is a cult hit? No amount of Kool-Aid can make me watch a show about a tangle of idiotic conspiracies, a kooky mad scientist, and an eeeevil corporate entity run by a one-handed Cruella de Vil. We’re supposed to be excited to watch two guys fiddling with bamboo pea-shooters on NBC’s “Crusoe”? NBC’s “Knight Rider” is a big hit? Who do they think they’re kidding?

And that’s not to mention HBO’s “Life and Times of Tim” and CBS’s “Worst Week,” two positively awful, irredeemable messes that it’s hard to believe made it onto the air in the first place

Narmed to the teeth

But then that sleazy halfwit girlfriend of ours sidles up with a few glasses of Cabernet and an elaborate seafood lasagna and reminds us about HBO’s “Summer Heights High” and ABC’s “Life on Mars.” She recalls how CBS’s “Gary Unmarried” made us laugh last week, and reminds us that we watched another episode of “The Mentalist” and sort of enjoyed it.

No matter what that slut says, the only new show I never miss is “True Blood” (9 p.m. Sundays on HBO). Admittedly, Alan Ball’s kooky vampire mystery baffled me at first. I guess I half-expected those small-town vampires to seduce the mortals in their midst with vitriolic psychoanalysis and ultra-witty complaints about the pretensions of art school, then adopt scrappy, adorable foster children, indulge in illicit affairs with relative strangers, and finally, fall down dead from scary brain infections out of the blue. (Narm!)

Instead, Ball offered up a kitschy town full of oddballs and misfits with seriously fake Southern accents. For someone who grew up in the South, these exaggerated drawls couldn’t be more chafing. Imagine a British guy attending a production of “Hamlet” put on by a bunch of 8th graders in Texas, and you get the idea. Tara (Rutina Wesley) is particularly awful at the Southern drawl, and seriously needs to tone it down. That’s the trick, see? You take your idea of a Southern accent (hopefully not derived from watching “Gone With the Wind” because, uh, those accents were fake, too) and then you cut it in half. Otherwise, you sound like a space alien.

But there’s something so tasty and irresistible about “True Blood.” Even when the dialogue is a little predictable, even when there are lots of ignorant rednecks milling about, gossiping to each other (How many times have we seen the same stereotypical Southern nosy neighbors and sugarcoated snakes before?), even when the vampires other than Bill (Stephen Moyer) really do seem like the scary perverts most of the townsfolk take them to be, I’m always anxious for the next chapter in this story.

Why? Somehow I want to know how Sookie (Anna Paquin) and Bill fare as a couple. He’s brooding and intense, she’s picky and untouchable: It’s the ultimate high-maintenance girl’s fantasy of a passionate affair with a libidinous artistic type. He’s a little bit depressed and slightly creepy, she’s a little bit prudish and stubborn, plus she’s a tease. They’re made for each other.

And I need to know what’s going on with the creepy bartender, Sam (Sam Trammel). He was easy to dislike even before he started sniffing dead women’s dirty sheets and dashing through the swamp naked as the day he was born. (Didn’t a character on the show actually use those words? See how this Southern crap writes itself?) But wouldn’t it be too obvious if Sam were the killer?

Obviously it couldn’t be Sookie’s hapless whore of a brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), either. But I did love the addition of the totally understanding, drug-wieldin’ new-age-hippie girlfriend, Amy. That character is pure Alan Ball. She’s the open-minded, affectionate, idealistic, gorgeous, utterly perfect lover — until she’s not getting exactly what she wants, and then she manipulates and twists the knife until she does. Amy proves once again that Ball has a serious knack for modern archetypes. Think Lisa, Lilli Taylor’s character on “Six Feet Under,” one of the most loathsome, irritating humans ever to be depicted on the small screen. Ball drags Lisa into Nate’s life, turns him into a sniveling, soft-pedaling wuss in front of our eyes, and then — surprise! — she’s secretly rotten to the core. For all of his very enlightened perspectives on life and death, Ball is clearly a man who finds many, many people wildly distasteful — and that makes him a great writer.

OK, so “True Blood” isn’t exactly a brilliant, layered narrative, heavy with insights and thoughtful moments and weighty images. I almost wish Ball would fly free of Charlaine Harris’ “Sookie Stackhouse” series of novels more often, and follow his own, seemingly less stereotypical instincts.

But I’m still hooked on this TV version of a page turner, with its quick fix of goofy interactions, sexy vampire lovemaking and backwoods nastiness. It may not be groundbreaking television, but I really do look forward to it each week — which is much more than I can say for most of the new shows to air this fall.

Love is murder

Speaking of sex and death, did anyone else catch the episode of “Sons of Anarchy” from the week before last, where Tara (Maggie Schiff), the cute doctor lady, and Jax (Charlie Hunnam), the hot Brad Pitt-ian motorcycle thug, finally do the deed after weeks of growing sexual tension?

Whether or not you watch this show or care, hunker down and listen up, because this was an episode for the TV history books. Here’s what happened: Tara was being stalked by her obsessive exboyfriend, ATF agent Scott Kohn, who was, disconcertingly enough, played by Jay Karnes, the same actor who plays Dutch on “The Shield.” While I applaud the move not to cast some smoldering tough guy in this role, it’s about as hard to imagine Dutch stalking someone as it is to picture Don Draper running a prostitution ring or Nate Fisher beating his mom senseless. And really, would Tara date someone who looked like Dutch, when her high school boyfriend looked like this? Mmmm, I don’t think so.

So anyway, having decided that Jax is his main rival, Dutch (aka the ATF boyfriend) breaks into his house and pees on his floor. As a result, Dutch is brutally beaten by Jax, charged with assault, and driven out of town forever and ever. Even after all of that, Dutch still shows up in Tara’s house a few nights later and gets all lovelorn and violent and weird. Tara is clearly freaking out — Maggie Siff does a great job showing us a mix of panic and desperate scheming to get out of this situation alive — and she finally resolves to make out with Dutch to calm him down. She strips, crawls on top of him, then grabs his gun from the night table. It accidentally goes off! Dutch is hit! He yells at her to call an ambulance! Instead, she calls Jax, who comes to her house, blows Dutch’s head off, and then makes sweet love to her, a few feet away from her ex-boyfriend’s still-warm dead body!

Now look, I want to like this show, I really do. The cast is great, the writing isn’t half bad, the whole premise is interesting and fairly original — you know, all of the basics are in place. But this absurd scene sums up exactly what’s wrong with the show: It has no self-restraint. A few stupidly sensationalistic choices damn it to mediocrity week after week. Everyone is absurdly corrupt and skeezy on this show, and as I’ve written before, it’s far worse than it ever was on show creator Kurt Sutter’s inspiration, “The Sopranos.” Even the reasonably ethical characters do terrible, unbelievable things. Gemma and Clay scheme to keep Jax doing their bidding, while trying to hide all of the bad stuff they’ve done in the past (which obviously involves Jax’s dead father in some way). Clay sleeps with a young prospective club member’s crush just to demonstrate that he’s the top dog, then Gemma breaks the poor girl’s nose with a skateboard in a jealous rage. Rival gang members and innocent bystanders are killed left and right without remorse. It gets to the point where you feel sorry for anyone who’s forced to associate with these bastards.

And how about the episode where a rival gang and the Sons of Anarchy open fire on each other from a few yards away, and half of them don’t even attempt to take cover the entire time? Who knew that motorcycle gangs favored the trench warfare of World War I — except without the trenches? I know these guys are supposed to be violent thugs, but could they really be that stupid?

Of course, the second that I write this show off, they go and air a really good episode: Tara and Jax struggle with their crime, Gemma struggles with the sight of Tara, and Clay (Ron Perlman) strikes an unexpected deal with the Mayans. It’s remarkable how strong the dialogue is on this show, given how annoying and unrealistic the story lines can be. I guess I’ll have to climb on board this crazy train and ride it for another week. It’s not like there’s anything else on.

Next week: “Friday Night Lights” flounders in obscurity (again!) on DirecTV, while CW’s loan shark drama “Easy Money” straddles an uneasy line between dark and zany.

Continue Reading Close

Heather Havrilesky is Salon's TV critic and author of the rabbit blog. Her memoir, "Disaster Preparedness," published in 2010. More Heather Havrilesky.

Thursday, Sep 11, 2008 10:47 AM UTC

Arab-American beauty

En route from "Six Feet Under" to "True Blood," TV genius Alan Ball snuck in "Towelhead," an earnest drama about race and sexual awakening in '90s suburbia.

By Andrew O'Hehir

more
- All Share Services

Warner Independent Pictures

Peter Macdissi and Summer Bishil in “Towelhead.”

I first wrote about “Towelhead,” the film-directing debut of “Six Feet Under” impresario Alan Ball, last January at Sundance, before it became clear that Ball’s energies were focused on a new prime-time HBO series featuring hot young vampires. Now that “True Blood” has reached Ball’s core upper-middle HD-cable audience, “Towelhead” looks even more like a noble but ultimately minor detour — the agreeable but overly formulaic young-adult novel tossed off by an author of epic-scale melodramas.

“Towelhead” is of course adapted from a novel, a quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age narrative by Alicia Erian, who, like her heroine Jasira Maroun (played in the film by the appealing Summer Bishil), was once a biracial Arab-American teen in suburban Texas, circa 1991. It’s a fascinating social setting, no question, and one in which I think Ball sees our current polycultural society — the Palin vs. Obama society, you could say — in embryo. With President George H.W. Bush about to launch the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime, Jasira and her father, Rifat (Peter Macdissi, in the film’s standout performance), face an atmosphere of intense anti-Arab bigotry. But Rifat hardly fits the stereotype; he’s an aristocratic Lebanese Christian who never seems to go anywhere without a suit, and is certainly more politically conservative and morally puritanical than Travis (Aaron Eckhart), the xenophobic Army reservist next door.

Jasira dates an African-American kid from her high school, much to her father’s displeasure, and is gradually drawn into a creepy, manipulative relationship with Travis, who both turns her on and makes her immensely uncomfortable. Ball certainly tries to handle all this with subtlety and dignity; the sex scenes are shocking without being explicit, and the characters’ motivations are complicated. There’s no question that Travis takes advantage of Jasira’s innocent desires, but she feels them nonetheless. Like molesters in the real world, Travis is internally conflicted: He feels genuine affection for Jasira, and does not pretend that having sex with her is healthy or acceptable. He simply can’t stop himself, or at any rate he doesn’t.

Throw in the nosy hippie-mom neighbor (Toni Collette) who becomes Jasira’s self-appointed defender against both her father and Travis, and it sure sounds like an Alan Ball soap-opera plot. But much as I applaud Ball’s desire to escape from the angst-ridden, middle-class world of “Six Feet Under,” there’s something drab, dogmatic and earnest about the world of “Towelhead.” By focusing on a straightforward, linear narrative with a young and unsophisticated central character, Ball is almost deliberately avoiding his strengths. He’s a creator of ensemble drama and a spelunker into the soul of the privileged classes, who never feels remotely at ease with this story of female sexual awakening in the insta-sprawl of the ’90s.

When Collette’s character finally manages to cram most of the film’s characters into her Rice Dream-and-herbal tea household for a series of collisions that will determine Jasira’s future, Ball is finally in his element. He’s a dramatic supercollider: Give him a gay leather boy and a right-wing Christian (or, better still, a Christian leather boy and a right-wing homo) and he’ll have them sharing a doobie, a round of folk songs and a platter of fresh-baked tollhouse cookies inside 15 minutes. This third-act redemption raises “Towelhead” several notches, but it still ends up feeling like a well-acted and well-intentioned after-school special, a long way from the vividness and texture of Ball’s television work.

“Towelhead” opens Sept. 12 in most major cities, with wider release to follow.

Continue Reading Close

More Andrew O'Hehir.

Wednesday, Sep 3, 2008 11:00 AM UTC

Vampires that don’t suck

Alan Ball explains that the undead in his new HBO series don't just embody our deepest sexual yearnings -- they represent both gays and the Bush administration.

By Joy Press

more
- All Share Services

In “Six Feet Under,” Alan Ball created a show about death that was exuberantly full of life. His characters were maddeningly self-absorbed, over-expressive and haunted by loss; they were also unforgettable. One of the best TV series of the last decade, “Six Feet” set mundane elements of life — eating breakfast, bickering with a parent, taking out the trash — against the creepy backdrop of a funeral parlor. Ball proved that he could weave morbid extremes into subtle drama: Whole conversations sometimes took place over corpses splayed on marble blocks, or with mourners sobbing just around the corner.

The family saga was widely celebrated for reaching places that few series even contemplated, which is why the stakes are so high for Ball’s next foray into television. But instead of probing further into the territory he opened up with “Six Feet Under,” Ball has chosen a more whimsical TV project: the oddball genre drama “True Blood,” premiering on HBO Sept. 7. Based on Charlaine Harris’ “Southern Vampire” books, the new show blends sly humor and gory violence, politics and the supernatural. This is a world where the living drink vampire blood to amp up their libidos, and vamps try to stay out of trouble by drinking synthetic blood (which might already be familiar to you from the show’s hilariously ubiquitous viral ad campaign, found here, here and here ); where civic-minded bloodsuckers campaign for undead rights (“we pay taxes, we deserve basic civil rights just like everyone else,” one activist tells Bill Maher) while their more brutal brethren stalk the streets of Louisiana in search of their next fix.

“True Blood” heroine Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin) is a virgin clad in nymphet’s clothing. A telepathic waitress in small-town Louisiana, Sookie spends much of her mental energy blocking out the base, awful thoughts of everyone around her. While her horndog brother is stumbling into the dangerous world of fangbangers (mortals who chase the exotic experience of screwing the undead), Sookie meets Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who happens to be the most genteel, courtly vamp since Angel, or maybe “Twilight’s” Edward. “I’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since they came out of the coffin two years ago,” Sookie burbles, referring to the political changes that have allowed vampires to become part of mainstream society. But Bill is not the perfect boyfriend: He comes with a century’s worth of emotional baggage. And through him, Sookie is thrust into an underworld riddled with sensuality and peril. It’s a fantastical universe, and yet in some ways it’s not so different from the one inhabited by the central character of “Towelhead,” Ball’s perturbing forthcoming movie about a teenage girl learning to cope with her burgeoning sexuality, and with others’ interest in it.

Ball spoke to Salon by phone from Los Angeles about the appeal of fanged sex, vampirism as a political metaphor and how to have fun with death. As one of the characters remarks, “If we can’t kill people, what’s the point of being a vampire?” (Listen to the interview here.)

You’ve spent all those years on a show about undertakers and now you’ve moved on to a show about dead people — or, that is, undead. Are you a secret goth?

I’m not! I just chanced upon these books by accident almost. I was wandering through the bookstore and I saw this book and the tag line was, “Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn’t such a good idea.” I thought that was funny. They were so incredibly entertaining that I got really pulled into the world of the books.

The series is an interesting mix of light and dark. Clearly, there are funny elements, and yet it is literally ghoulish subject matter.

Oh, absolutely. It’s incredibly violent, and there’s a huge body count. At the same time, it’s vampires, so you can’t take it too seriously. There’s something so fun about the pulpiness — the genreness. It kept me so entertained and at the same time I thought there were really great, deeper themes. I ended up really caring about these characters.

Did you sit down and map out the mythology of this particular world?

Actually, no. Charlaine had done that. Instead of the supernatural being something that exists outside of nature, I wanted it to be something that was almost like a deeper manifestation of nature. Deeper and more primeval. Something that maybe humans, with our brain structures that we’ve created as a way to filter reality, can’t comprehend or sometimes even perceive.

If you actually look at a lot of the more recent vampire movies and TV shows, that mythology is pretty fluid. We decided a lot of the myths about vampires were misinformation that the vampires themselves willfully disseminated so that they could pass. Like in the 15th century, if everybody believed a vampire couldn’t be seen in a mirror, then, here I am, you can see me in a mirror, and so I couldn’t possibly be a vampire.

So the vamps have just been scamming us all these years?

Pretty much.

In the opening episode you introduce us to “fangbangers” — regular people who want to sleep with vampires. So I’m guessing that vampire sex is pretty intense. Is that part of vampires’ appeal?

Well, they’ve had a lot of years to perfect their techniques, to learn things, and also as creatures who are more deeply connected to nature. Definitely within the books and within our world, usually vampires are pretty good sexual partners.

There must be some duds in there, though?

Oh, absolutely. We haven’t gotten to them yet, but we will.

Also, clearly, the sexual encounters in this world are freighted with danger. That seems to be something that Sookie is drawn to.

I don’t know that she’s drawn to dangerous sexual encounters. I wouldn’t say that. I think she’s drawn to a man that she can relax and be herself around and not have to have this constant defense mechanism, wall, around her consciousness so she doesn’t hear what people are thinking.

Right, because for some mysterious reason he’s the only person whose thoughts she can’t hear.

Absolutely. That is the biggest turn-on of all.

I was thinking about the sexual component because I just saw a screening of your forthcoming movie, “Towelhead.” In the movie, a young woman is discovering sex in a way that feels quite chilling and a little bit out of her control. How does that work when you’re making two projects in fairly close proximity; do the themes bleed into each other at all?

I’m sure that they do. I’m sure they’re obviously themes that I’m attracted to because they have a certain resonance for me personally and psychically. However, “Towelhead” I shot and finished a long time before I even started working on the show. They feel like two very distinctly different worlds. It certainly wasn’t conscious. I’m not that kind of writer anyway, where I sit down and say, I want to explore this theme, because that kind of academic approach is not the way my brain works. It’s a much more unconscious, organic thing.

It also got me thinking about one of the most controversial episodes of “Six Feet Under,” probably one of the most intense hours I’ve ever spent in front of the TV. It’s the famous episode when David is held captive and brutalized by a man he tries to pick up for casual sex. It made me wonder, what do you try to achieve with TV generally, and what do you want to evoke with “True Blood”?

I learned a long time ago that moments when I’m successful are when I try to create television that would engage me as a viewer, or film, or whatever. I’ve certainly tried to do other things — I wrote a bunch of screenplays and I thought, well, this is what will sell, or this is what the market is looking for now. I did a sitcom for ABC 10 years ago and thought, well, this is a nice hybrid of “Friends” and this and this, and maybe it will be really successful.

I think I just find the pop culture landscape so barren in terms of seeing things that excite me on an intellectual, emotional and entertainment level all at the same time. I don’t want to just sit there and let something that is predigested wash over me and not really think about all of the weird, ambiguous and scary parts of life. I think trying to avoid those is ultimately self-destructive and also destructive in a global sense, because as a race we face a lot of really, really terrifying problems, and we live in a violent, irrational world. I like to confront that in symbolic ways through entertainment. I’m interested in things that reach down into your soul and your psyche and force you to confront the monsters that live there.

That’s probably why a show like “Six Feet Under” really made an impact, because we are so used to having TV wash over us.

I also think that predigested washing-over TV just makes us more and more passive as citizens.

Do you feel like you have to keep pushing things further in order to reach people?

No. I think you have to get real. A lot of people accuse me of shocking people just for the sake of shocking people. I don’t believe that. Personally, a lot of the things that people get shocked by I don’t find shocking. I’m shocked in the way that our country is drifting very steadily toward fascism. I find that shocking. I find the fact that criminals have hijacked America and everybody seems to be OK with it, for the most part, I find that incredibly shocking. Seeing blood on TV or something — wow, that’s what people get shocked by?

Is doing a show about vampires an easier way for you to get at some real issues and emotions?

Maybe. I love the way that the vampires are a really fluid metaphor in the show. On the one hand, they’re a metaphor for any misunderstood or feared or hated minority. On the other hand, they’re a metaphor for any sort of organization that has an agenda to amass power and if you get in their way, they’ll get rid of you.

So you can see them as a metaphor for gays and lesbians. Or you can see them as a metaphor for the Bush administration. I think that’s kind of fun. I just like that complexity and at the same time you can’t take it too seriously because … they’re vampires!

I read somewhere that you liked the fact that the vampires were struggling for assimilation. At this point in time, there is certainly more leeway for young people to come out and be comfortable with their sexual identity, but obviously there are still huge issues facing gay men and women.

Yeah, we can’t serve in the military — not that that’s the biggest issue for me. And you can’t get married. If you are in a committed partnership, you don’t have the same financial and legal rights as other citizens. That is institutionalized.

And you’ve found a fun way to play with those serious issues.

If you get all earnest and everything, then it just becomes boring.

Will we see a lot of vampire activism on the show?

Well, as we go on with the series, that’s sort of not what the show is about. That’s part of the texture of it. Certainly as we move into next season, the church, which is very anti-vampire and is focused on vampires, becomes a much stronger part of the story.

“True Blood” is appearing on HBO at a transitional time for the network, with so many of its successful shows having come to an end, including “Six Feet Under.” I also think it’s a really weird moment for television in general. There are so many changes in terms of who’s watching, how they’re watching. Have you given any thought how or whether to use the changing medium?

I personally don’t find the notion of webisodes or online games exciting. I’m 51. I would rather spend what little free time I have actually in the world rather than in the virtual world. Having said that, the whole viral marketing campaign for this show has been really fun. It’s served two purposes, in that it’s become a little bit of a destination in and of itself and it’s completely telling all the back story of our show so that once the show starts, the audience is educated. That, I think, is really interesting.

I’ve seen posters for the fake drink brand Tru Blood all over my New York City neighborhood. I’m guessing that some people think it’s a real product, so you’re successfully blurring reality and the show. Did you realize when you started production just how much vampire craziness there was going to be this year, with the movie and books from the “Twilight” series and the upcoming Diablo Cody movie “Jennifer’s Body”? Vampires seem to be everywhere.

No, I had no idea. I don’t think it’s possible to grow up in a media-saturated culture and not be aware of vampires. They’re really a mythic idea of surprising endurance. But I was never one of those people who’s like, Oh, anything vampire, I love. I have since become aware of just how many of those people there are and I hope they love our show.

What do you see as the reason for the vampires’ enduring appeal? Is it just the pure romanticism of it?

One of the real seed issues at the base of a lot of humanity’s psychic suffering is the denial of death. I certainly think the idea of death makes that a little more palatable. It softens it, especially as vampires have evolved into the reluctant vampire, the vampire who has ambivalence, who doesn’t want to be a vampire, who yearns for humanity. Certainly the idea of being immortal has always been attractive to the human psyche. I think we fear oblivion and ending more than anything else. I also think there’s obviously something very erotic about it — the penetration, the merging of bodily fluids, of course it’s a huge metaphor for sex. Also, we’ve all known people who have sucked the life out of us. That’s all part of why it’s such an enduring idea.

Did your ideas about and relationship to death change when you were working on “Six Feet Under”? The finale for the show was so final, as we watched every character we loved or hated grow old and die: Every door was shut.

I had a lot of people die throughout my life starting when I was very young. I’d developed this fear of death, this fear of grief. I think I became more comfortable with grief and the realization that it is part of life. The idea that we should go through life being productive and happy 24 hours a day is, first of all, unachievable and, second of all, limited thinking. I do believe if one is able to fully embrace one’s mortality, it is an incredibly liberating experience and it allows you to really live, because then life is really precious. You do know on a fundamental, on a cellular level, that it is finite, that it is not just a concept.

Right, it should inform everything you do. And part of the contemporary mythology of the vampire is this sadness of having to go on and on.

In a way, being immortal is not a picnic.

You have all that misery that you have to carry around with you endlessly.

Absolutely. Everything that you love and grow attached to leaves, but you don’t.

Continue Reading Close

Joy Press is a former culture editor at Salon. More Joy Press.

Sunday, Aug 10, 2008 11:00 AM UTC

I Like to Watch

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

more
- All Share Services

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 show
Compared to the living, breathing vampire plague we’re dealing with these days, Alan Ball’s new fall drama for HBO, “True Blood” (premieres 9 p.m. Sept. 7) is like a sweet little sexy fairy tale. Based on the vampire series by Charlaine Harris, “True Blood” tells us the story of Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a sweet-natured waitress in Louisiana who just happens to be able to read other people’s minds. Inconveniently enough, Sookie can’t stop reading them: She knows when her best friend thinks she’s being stupid or her boss wants to sleep with her.

No 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!

Hothead headquarters
Sadly, though, unless Alan Ball is in charge, hot-tempered vampires aren’t all that sexy or all that interesting. Just look at “Big Brother 10″ (8 p.m. Sundays and Thursdays, 9 p.m. Tuesdays on CBS), which really deserves to be accompanied by the subtitle “House of Hot-Tempered Vampires.” After an entertaining Season 9 that paired up reasonably weird and slightly crazy people into “couples” and forced them to work together, the producers of this show decided to bail on such relatively subtle strategies, and instead chose to pack the “Big Brother” house with belligerent, short-tempered devils and succubi. And while I can’t confirm that they’re all literally undead demons of the night, I will tell you that they are alarmingly short-tempered and disconcertingly stupid and they do seem to stay up very, very late to scream at each other. I can only assume the cameras cut away when the blood-sucking begins.

Now, I know that doesn’t sound all that out of the ordinary, but please, stay with me, because you really can’t imagine just how quick-tempered and demonic these houseguests are. They explode into shouting matches every few seconds. It’s not even possible for the show’s editors to piece together a regular, coherent narrative, because all of the houseguests run around like chickens with their heads cut off, screaming at each other, around the clock.

At first, you might try to take sides. Jessie is a self-centered bodybuilder who picks a fight with middle-aged Renny, and calls her old and lame. But then Renny loses her temper and starts shrieking, old former Marine Jerry blows up, bartender Memphis screams at Jerry, mom Libra and Jerry yell at each other, and Keesha freaks out and announces to everyone in the house that she “can’t fucking stand” her close ally, April.

Throughout all of this, each houseguest warns the other houseguests almost constantly that he or she is “about to go off.” They talk about losing their tempers as if it’s some sign of toughness, as if it doesn’t take much more strength not to lose your temper when you’re surrounded by angry idiots. When one houseguest yells, some other houseguest yells even louder, to demonstrate that they’re even angrier and crazier than the first, and then a houseguest who’s not even in the loop walks in and starts screeching and waving their hands around.

All of which might be amusing, if they weren’t such wretched, dimwitted ghouls. These are people who can’t control themselves, who’ve obviously gained power in their lives by yelling the loudest, making everyone tiptoe around them for fear that their necks will soon be pierced by razor-sharp teeth.

That said, two of the houseguests, Ollie and Dan, may not be vampires at all. How will they escape with their necks?

Bloodletting vs. subletting
One last word about the “Flipping Out” season finale: Wow! How does a design-based reality show where major plot points typically revolve around heated cellphone calls and mistaken faxes to real estate agents become a soap opera overnight?

The last few episodes and the second season finale packed a serious punch. Jenni unexpectedly split with her underachieving slacker husband, Chris. Jeff Lewis broke up with crazy rich lady Courtney and her big, scary, gothic mansion renovation. (Who but a vampire would live in that place?) Chris Keslar, frustrated with not being promoted after his epic three-month stint as Jeff’s houseboy, quit his job, did a little “Oh, what a feeling!” leap like he was high at a Toyotathon, and drove off into the sunset.

And Jeff Lewis, the King of Comedy himself, decided to move out to Malibu to start flipping houses there, since, while the rest of the world is in serious cash-poor, upside-down-mortgage shape, Malibu is filled with fabulously wealthy bloodsucking demons who can afford to pay too much for Jeff’s precious, shiny, anal-retentive hothouses, particularly if he starts throwing in blackout shades and scary carved-wood canopy beds and deep purple velvet curtains free of charge. Instead of putting soft classical music on the sound system during open houses, Jeff can switch to Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson and Mozart’s “Dies Irae.”

Regardless of his new, desperate marketing schemes, Jeff remains a comic genius. He’s getting damn good at delivering his “No, I really am crazy” punch lines, too, isn’t he? I loved it when he was surveying his new rental property and then declared to Jenni, “Good news! Everyone who lives here is attractive.”

Or how about later, when he returned to his new business partner’s apartment while she was on vacation, and started throwing stuff out and rearranging the furniture. “I don’t think it’s inappropriate to go into someone’s house without asking,” he said, his eyes wide and innocent. “Especially if you have good intentions.”

See how deluded hot-tempered vampires can be? Whether they’re cutting you off in traffic or rummaging through your stuff without asking or allowing their children to double-dip in the community salsa bowl, they always have a rationalization for it. “I was in a hurry!” “Who needs this old stuff, anyway?” “What can you do, tell your kid not to double-dip? That might hurt his feelings!”

The world is filling up with vampires, though, so we’d all better change our attitudes and tolerate their differences. Remember, just because they’re rude, arrogant, self-involved, irresponsible, incapable of RSVPing, sloppy, thoughtless, temperamental and avoidant, that doesn’t mean we should discriminate against them. Just smile and nod along — but cover your necks!

Continue Reading Close

Heather Havrilesky is Salon's TV critic and author of the rabbit blog. Her memoir, "Disaster Preparedness," published in 2010. More Heather Havrilesky.