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lunabee34We just finished watching season one of True Blood and I have things to say.
Let me begin, though, by directing you to a vid that the daughter of a colleague of mine made. She pretty succintly sums up my thoughts about the show by impersonating both Bill and Sookie. Day 5: Bill and Sookie
I read the Charlaine Harris novels in the wayback, maybe 2006, and I enjoyed the hell out of the first one. I enjoyed each subsequent novel less and less until finally I was turning the pages in Anita Blake-esque disgust. See, that first book contains some masterful worldbuilding. That *is* the South, y'all--the South I grew up in, the people I know, the way things work in a tiny little town like that. Picture freaking perfect. Add in a completely compelling supernatural plotline, and I'm hooked. But then, by the time Sookie's turning the head of every were!rat and wildebeest in all the land, I am rolling my eyes and yawning. At least she doesn't have to screw to save the world or keep herself alive or whatever reason it is that Ms. Blake has sex with all creatures great and small.
I was prepared to dislike this show in the extreme, but I find myself loving it despite Bill and Sookie's best efforts because this show is about a billion times better than anything Charlaine Harris ever dreamed of.
I don't like show!Sookie very much for the following reasons: Anna Paquin always sounds like she's reading her lines. Always. I never ever believe that she is experiencing any emotions. She is a terrible, terrible, terrible actor. Oh god oh god my eyes. Oh god oh god my ears. I also find the character as she is drawn to be utterly annoying. I understand that she is supposed to be emotionally stunted and poorly socialized because her telepathic gift has kept her ostracized. But I have enough problem dealing in real life with grown up people who are just now getting around to developing the emotional and relationship skills the rest of us acquired in high school to enjoy watching that scenario play out on television. It irritates me profoundly in a way that probably isn't fair to the show, but there you have it. I can deal with screw ups. I can deal with self sabotagers. I can deal with people who make the same relationship mistakes over and over again. I apparently cannot deal with grown people who act like middle schoolers passing notes at recess and screaming hysterically at each other in the throes of puberty.
I like show!Bill forty seven million times more than book!Bill. At the end of the first book, I was done with Bill. He. Is. Boring. Show!Bill is much more sympathetic, interesting, and naked than book!Bill, all of which work in his favor. In fact, I might actually be on my way to liking show!Bill despite the faint aroma of ridiculousness which surrounds him at all times.
I do love this show, though, love love love love, and this is why: the secondary characters are amazingly well drawn, compelling, engaging, interesting, vital, well-rounded, explored. Forget Sookie and Bill. I want Tara and Sam and Arlene and Pam and Eric and Jason and Amy and Rene and Jessica and OMG the whole freaking town.
I also love the world builing in the show just as much as in that first book. The South is so masterfully drawn here in terms of all the big issues--race, sexism, religion, class, homophobia--but even more so in terms of the smaller ones, the day to day ones, the little grace notes that make Bon Temps so much like every tiny Southern town I've lived in: the way everybody dresses and talks and gets up in everybody's business, the guy who graduates high school and stays stuck in his senior year for the rest of his life, the people who orbit around the local businesses and never manage to make it that far outside the city limits, the way the cops used to be your schoolmates or even your lovers, everything about the way Gran's funeral is depicted, the reverence for and nostalgia for a past I'm not sure even existed, the way religion and tradition and superstition get all balled up into this one big crazy and unavoidable entity, the way you never get to be anything but what you were the day you born in a town like that. It blows me away.
Can't wait to start season two!
Let me begin, though, by directing you to a vid that the daughter of a colleague of mine made. She pretty succintly sums up my thoughts about the show by impersonating both Bill and Sookie. Day 5: Bill and Sookie
I read the Charlaine Harris novels in the wayback, maybe 2006, and I enjoyed the hell out of the first one. I enjoyed each subsequent novel less and less until finally I was turning the pages in Anita Blake-esque disgust. See, that first book contains some masterful worldbuilding. That *is* the South, y'all--the South I grew up in, the people I know, the way things work in a tiny little town like that. Picture freaking perfect. Add in a completely compelling supernatural plotline, and I'm hooked. But then, by the time Sookie's turning the head of every were!rat and wildebeest in all the land, I am rolling my eyes and yawning. At least she doesn't have to screw to save the world or keep herself alive or whatever reason it is that Ms. Blake has sex with all creatures great and small.
I was prepared to dislike this show in the extreme, but I find myself loving it despite Bill and Sookie's best efforts because this show is about a billion times better than anything Charlaine Harris ever dreamed of.
I don't like show!Sookie very much for the following reasons: Anna Paquin always sounds like she's reading her lines. Always. I never ever believe that she is experiencing any emotions. She is a terrible, terrible, terrible actor. Oh god oh god my eyes. Oh god oh god my ears. I also find the character as she is drawn to be utterly annoying. I understand that she is supposed to be emotionally stunted and poorly socialized because her telepathic gift has kept her ostracized. But I have enough problem dealing in real life with grown up people who are just now getting around to developing the emotional and relationship skills the rest of us acquired in high school to enjoy watching that scenario play out on television. It irritates me profoundly in a way that probably isn't fair to the show, but there you have it. I can deal with screw ups. I can deal with self sabotagers. I can deal with people who make the same relationship mistakes over and over again. I apparently cannot deal with grown people who act like middle schoolers passing notes at recess and screaming hysterically at each other in the throes of puberty.
I like show!Bill forty seven million times more than book!Bill. At the end of the first book, I was done with Bill. He. Is. Boring. Show!Bill is much more sympathetic, interesting, and naked than book!Bill, all of which work in his favor. In fact, I might actually be on my way to liking show!Bill despite the faint aroma of ridiculousness which surrounds him at all times.
I do love this show, though, love love love love, and this is why: the secondary characters are amazingly well drawn, compelling, engaging, interesting, vital, well-rounded, explored. Forget Sookie and Bill. I want Tara and Sam and Arlene and Pam and Eric and Jason and Amy and Rene and Jessica and OMG the whole freaking town.
I also love the world builing in the show just as much as in that first book. The South is so masterfully drawn here in terms of all the big issues--race, sexism, religion, class, homophobia--but even more so in terms of the smaller ones, the day to day ones, the little grace notes that make Bon Temps so much like every tiny Southern town I've lived in: the way everybody dresses and talks and gets up in everybody's business, the guy who graduates high school and stays stuck in his senior year for the rest of his life, the people who orbit around the local businesses and never manage to make it that far outside the city limits, the way the cops used to be your schoolmates or even your lovers, everything about the way Gran's funeral is depicted, the reverence for and nostalgia for a past I'm not sure even existed, the way religion and tradition and superstition get all balled up into this one big crazy and unavoidable entity, the way you never get to be anything but what you were the day you born in a town like that. It blows me away.
Can't wait to start season two!
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Unsurprisingly, in this we are also brain twins
Date: 2010-10-11 01:06 am (UTC)Re: Unsurprisingly, in this we are also brain twins
Date: 2010-10-11 01:16 am (UTC)Lafayette is more awesome than I have words for. I absolutely love when he confronts that politician who's denouncing gays on television after he just got a blow job from a man. (Incidentally, I watched SNL for the first time in yeeeeeaaars last night because Jane Lynch was hosting, and just about the only funny thing on the whole show was Seth Meyers making a joke about the latest conservative politician to denounce homosexuality and how the countdown to him receiving sexual favors from a guy in the bathroom was on LOL)
I also love Jason (in the way that I love Jayne; you know; the way that you love a character but would never want to be in the same room with them.) I have known so many people like him.
Watching this show is like going to my high school reunion (if I'd ever deign to go to one).
Re: Unsurprisingly, in this we are also brain twins
Date: 2010-10-11 01:36 am (UTC)Also, the actor does a MUCH better accent than Anna Paquin (she's from New Zealand, he's from Australia)
Re: Unsurprisingly, in this we are also brain twins
Date: 2010-10-11 01:42 am (UTC)Her accent is that fake one that every actor puts on--the patrician Virginia accent that like four blue blooded Southern people legitimately have--but she combines it with some inbred hill people accent that just makes her sound bizarre.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 01:16 am (UTC)So I started watching the show with a due sense of wariness. But it's awesome! And you know, I think that's at least partly because, although Sookie is still the main character, we don't see absolutely everything from her perspective. It makes the world revolve around her a bit less. I don't even dislike show!Sookie, which is a marked improvement over how I feel about book!Sookie. I'm still far more interested in other characters, like Eric and Lafayette and Jessica and Tara, though.
And hey, I'm interested to see if you get behind my two favorite TB ships (not that I won't still love you even if you don't) in season 2, so you should totally come back and post about it when you've watched more.
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Date: 2010-10-11 01:21 am (UTC)I have seen two isolated season two episodes, so I will guess without seeing the rest.
Jessica/Hoyt, Tara/
Ensign Rothe maenad.But wait! That leaves out Eric!
Eric/Everybody?
LOL
I will most certainly post when I've watched more, the watching of which will hopefully begin tonight after Josh has watched Boardwalk Empire yawn snooze.
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Date: 2010-10-11 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 02:14 am (UTC)Is it Eric/Lorraine? I believe very strongly in that ship.
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Date: 2010-10-11 02:18 am (UTC)But I could see my way clear to Eric/Lorraine as my third TB ship. Because I can deny you nothing!
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Date: 2010-10-11 02:20 am (UTC)Eric/Lorraine is gonna take the world by storm. I feel it in my bones.
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Date: 2010-10-11 02:57 am (UTC)Eric/Lorraine, the little ship that could!
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Date: 2010-10-11 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 01:56 am (UTC)Your icon makes me smile. :)
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Date: 2010-10-11 01:50 am (UTC)TIMES ELEVENTY BILLION.
I have watched the show from the start. I have never read the books. Everything you say here is TRUE TRUE TRUE. Even after finishing S4. I want Tara and Sam and Arlene and Pam and Eric and Jason and Amy and Rene and Jessica and OMG the whole freaking town. And yes, you will want them and more... and you will be rewarded (mostly).
I am stunned by the whole Anna Paquin bad acting thing. I don't know what it is. She's not a bad actress, on the whole. But this role, for whatever reason - and put her with Bill and double the effect - is really bad. What's good is that I think as things go on, Alan Ball GETS that it's bad, and goes with it. That's my take, anyway.
Can't wait to see you post more about your TB watch!
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Date: 2010-10-11 01:58 am (UTC)I can see how if the show takes the bad acting to the campy what fourth wall place that I might begin to find it endearing.
I wonder if it's the Southern thing that's tripping her up. So many actors screw up the Southern thing. I think they can't help but see us as caricatures of ourselves and thus play us that way. I dunno. It is a mystery.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 04:50 pm (UTC)I watched the *leaked* pilot of True Blood and went 'ew'. Soft-core porn with bad Southern accents, i do not need.
So i never tried again. The more i read about it, the more i don't *want* to try, heh. Yes, i'm stubborn and grudgy.
:)
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Date: 2010-10-12 01:44 am (UTC)I'm having fun with True Blood, but I do not expect Great Things of A.P.
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Date: 2010-10-12 01:46 am (UTC)I adore 'The Piano' - it's so lovely and heartbreaking and then, finally, happy. So very neat.
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Date: 2010-10-12 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 11:10 pm (UTC)I do not know of any comms for icons because I always wanted to make my own.
There are some here: http://alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com/228749.html#cutid1
There are casting spoilers in the sense of you'll say "who is that?" but otherwise nothing to worry about. I didn't include everything I made, now that I look back... I am happy to make you an icon if you like, strictly amateur, naturally. And feel free to snag Lafayette there if you want.
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Date: 2010-10-13 02:18 am (UTC)Do you ever do black and white icons? I don't know why, but that's what I'm tending towards lately.
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Date: 2010-10-15 08:36 pm (UTC)I would love to make you some b/w icons - who do you want? Text?
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Date: 2010-10-16 02:39 am (UTC)I would love one of Godric and one of Hoyt. They are both so precious I want to smish them to bitty bits. No text.
Thank you!!!!!!
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Date: 2010-10-18 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-19 03:16 am (UTC)These are gorgeous. Gorgeous! Beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much.
*giddy*
:)
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Date: 2010-10-19 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 09:51 pm (UTC)Glad you like True Blood. Season 2 is....awesome. There are some incredible performances-wont say which ones as dont want to spoil it for you-and the finale is a blinder.
Season 3 is up and down as regards consistency. It has some stupendous moments, and some that are...meh.
Throughout seasons 2+3 EVERY SECONDARY CHARACTER IS MORE INTERESTING THAN BILL AND SOOKIE.
I don't know how a show can do that. It surely can't be deliberate.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-12 01:47 am (UTC)I'm two episodes into season 2, and I am loving it. The parody of church camp is particularly amusing (and sadly, familiar) to me. Just substitute "homosexual" or "liberal activist judge" for "fanger" and you've got the First Baptist Anywhere I've Ever Been down pat.
I don't think it can be deliberate either. That makes no kinda sense. *shrugs* It is a mystery.
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Date: 2010-10-17 01:51 am (UTC)& I really enjoyed the vid you linked to. Your friend's daughter does a great Sookie/Bill imitation. She says "Sookie" just right...
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Date: 2010-10-17 10:04 pm (UTC)Jason is a magnificent portrait of endearing idiocy. He is so much like my little brother sometimes that it kills me. (My brother is not slutty like that or that stupid, though, LOL) So dumb and sincere and trying so hard you can't help but wanna pinch his cheeks. And those little moments of self awareness he has--like right at the end of season two when he and Sookie have that heart to heart and he tells her that nobody's ever really liked him--they liked that he could play ball and girls like getting off in bed but he knows that's just shallow superficial stuff. Wow. What a moment.
Godric!
*flails*
I'm about to make a post on my season two watching and he will be mentioned. At length.