True Blood (Season 2) is OVER

And I can’t say that I’m sad. Season 1 of True Blood was the only vampire series worth watching since the Buffy-verse closed its doors – yes I know but I’m a Whedonite through and through.

Season1 had the creepy factor, fearsome inhumane vampires, Southern rural culture and an ethereal feel to it that set it apart from other vampire shows, lot’s sex and sexyness and some intense bloody gore. All these were pretty much missing this year – except the sex part of course – and replaced by the opulence of the Hotel setting, that stupid boorish Church story which ended anti-climactically which lead to another sub-story about a suicidal vampire we never got to care about – other than Alexander Skarsgård’s gut wrenchingly brilliant acting.

The main characters spend over 75% of the season away from Bon Temps where the real Big Bad is raising hell… literally and all to have them show up in extremis to save the day battling a God-like beast which is dispatched by the Sam-Bill tag-team

Speaking of which, I love Michelle Forbes (see Battlestar Galactica and Durham County) but her character was getting me down. All we saw until the big showdown was that she was pretty much all-powerful and can get people to do anything. All right we get it.

And what’s with Jason Stackhouse. That dude is dumber than a bag of bricks and he just keeps getting dumber and dumber. I could have gone without the entire Fellowship of the Sun Church arc. I never felt any danger; I never felt that Jason learned anything from this other than to embrace his redneck-ness. I know, having been there more than once, that the south is deeply rooted in religion but I was bored from day one with their youthful preppy members that reminded me of bad 80’s teen movies. Everything in that arc felt extremely contrived and forced. Did anyone ever believe Reverend Steve Newlin to be menacing in any way? And his nagging annoying “hi y’all” wife should have been devoured by the vampires in the non-showdown.

I guess we’ll be seeing the Queen more next season also. The most certainly didn’t build such a complex day room to use it only but a few minutes. But damn, they went the easy way, chick with an obsession on 40’s décor, even reading old Vogue magazine issues of the period. And of course she’s a lesbian and of course she has weird quirks like Yahtzee and she looks like a bored rich housewife. And everything is 40’s themed and yet all her security look like the understudies for Hugo Weaving on the set of The Matrix and just makes everything look out of whack.

But these are details, what bothers me is the lack of interest in the new characters the season generated for me. And since I mentioned the Buffy-verse let’s get to that for a while. Buffy and Angel were both shows set with comedy and more camp than probably any other series but what made the shows powerful was the attachment to the solidly developed characters you cared deeply for and the stories that drove it’s audience to believe there was real danger and kept them on the edge of their seats. If you want to see a great scene please see Not Fade Away from Angel. In it Wesley is dying and Illyria says her goodbye and that was some hard stuff to watch. Because Whedon knew how to get to people. He could take the vilest character and evolve him into a character you love and identify with.

This is something missing from True Blood and especially season 2. I didn’t care for any of them, except Eric because of Alexander Skarsgård fantastic acting. I got nothing against all the nudity and sex in this show – actually I’m kinda miffed we don’t get to see Deborah Ann Woll (Jessica) buck naked because she’s the most beautiful woman on that show and also funny as the clumsy fish-out-of-water new vampire – but I mind when it doesn’t serve the story anymore and serves to keep our attention away from the bad acting and loopy-all-over-the-place story-line.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many southern characters not played by southerners.

• Anna Paquin (Sooooooookie) – Candian born Kiwi
• Stephen Moyer (Vampire Bill) – Limey
• Ryan Kwanten (Jason) – Aussy
• Rutina Wesley (Tara) – Is Nevada considered southern?
• Chris Bauer (Andy Bellefleur) – California
• Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette) – Illinois
• Michelle Forbes (Maryanne) – Ironically from Texas but played someone from New England.
• Stephen Root (Gay Vampire Eddie) – Florida… sorta southern.
• Deborah Ann Woll (Jessica) – Brooklyn, New York (can she get any Yankier?)

Season 2 seems to have departed from it’s Season 1 roots which were small southern town, interesting characters and there’s vampires trying to integrate into society and blew it out of what made it interesting: The Supernatural Orgy in lieu of Fascinating Characters. I still enjoyed season 2 but it was small potatoes compared to season 1. I’ll just wait and see what happens in Season 3.