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Signed, sealed, delivered: True Blood, make me wanna do bad things to you
True Blood. Where to begin. Where to begin when in the beginning, you had me addicted, broadcasting my love for you, sinking my metaphorical fangs into every episode. Where to begin when, after I had declared your first season to be the greatest thing ever on television, ever, your second season had me frustrated, bored with the plot line, disgusted, and, worst of all, ROOTING FOR A BLOND MAN.
Where did we - well, you - go wrong?
Season 1 was so good. After scoffing at my family for watching a vampire show, I spent winter break of freshman year in my room, eyes glued to my laptop screen. This was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was so smart, so sexy, so DIFFERENT. And the characters. Oh, you had character, True. Sookie, the leading lady? So sassy. And Bill, the vamp champ? So classy.
And then. Then you let the awards, the acclaim go to your head. You weren’t the show I used to watch. It was like you were trying to out weird yourself. Like you had been so different, and then you had to be different than you were. Like how the first movie in the “Pirates” trilogy was just this little sleeper gem, and then the second one was just Johnny Depp doing increasingly weird things, and thus utter crap.
But okay. You added a strange shape shifter woman who clawed people’s backs and vibrated a lot. And you sent Bill and Sookie on some completely unnecessary trip to Houston (honestly, I still want those four weeks or whatever of my life back). But we all do weird things sometimes. But provided we’re still true to who we are, that’s alright. Like, if I had a friend who started dying her hair strange colors and not coming home at night, I might be concerned, but I wouldn’t write her off as a person, provided she was still TRUE TO HER CHARACTER. Do you see where I’m going with this? No? Really?
OK. The worst part of last season was not that it was just a ridiculous, annoying, simultaneously boring and disturbing plot line. No. It was that you took the characters, who I stupidly really cared for, and drained the life out of them (…see what I did there?). Sookie, who had been this spunky ball of sass in female form, just got herself into problems while running around, whining, making everyone fall in love with her. And Bill? Who I literally thought was the most perfect man, living or dead, in Season 1? He didn’t just suck blood; he just sucked. Where was the classy, dignified gent I’d grown to love? He was just so pathetic and uptight and annoying. And this is where we really start to have a problem. Because I never root for the bad boy. And I certainly never root for the bad boy WITH BLOND HAIR. Draco Malfoy? Nope. Spike from Buffy? Nope. The Prince in Beauty and the Beast? Yes, but he would have been better if he hadn’t had blond hair. I just don’t do it. So when Eric became more appealing than Bill, because at least he occasionally cracks jokes and oh, I don’t know, does something about a situation with some semblance of character, I have a real problem with myself. And that means I have a problem with you.
Season 3 begins tomorrow. Do I hold out much hope? No. Fortunately, you killed off the vibrating vixen. But apparently there are werewolves. If I wanted to watch “Twilight” and be thirteen, I would. But I don’t. So I turn to you. But please. Go back to the show you were. With a central plot line and characters I cared about. Be true to yourself, True Blood. Because if you don’t, we’re done. Which is a shame. Because there was a time when, as your theme song suggested, I didn’t know what you did to me but before the night was through, I’d have done bad things to you.
