Pages tagged “True Blood”

Vampires are real. Shape-shifters are real. Psychics are real. And, so we're told, are werewolves and more creatures than we can imagine. About the only thing that's fake in the True Blood universe are bayou witchdoctors, and the exorcisms they perform. Tara learns this sad truth after encountering her exorcist restocking shelves at a drug store, and just like that her personal demons return.

Next Monday we'll look at the Best TV Theme Songs of All Time. But while we lament the lack of a Cheers or M*A*S*H or Sanford & Son theme song in today's TV landscape, we've picked our 12 favorite theme songs from TV shows that are still in production. In the era of TiVo, the little ditties opening today's shows seem to be littler and dittier than their predecessors (I guess if people are going to fast forward through them anyway, why spend the effort?). But here are 12 that make us put down that remote:

[note: Sesame Street would have made this list until I realized they've pretty much ruined it.]

12. Friday Night Lights - W.G. "Snuffy" Walden
Veteran TV composer W.G. "Snuffy" Walden has scored music for a long list of TV shows, including thirtysomething, The Wonder Years, Roseanne, Ellen, My So-Called Life, Felicity and all three of Aaron Sorkin's masterpieces. For FNL, I just hope the former Windham Hill journeyman is sharing his royalty check with Explosions in the Sky, whose "Your Hand in Mind" featured prominently in the film the show was based on. The style and melody sound like a more accessible version of the Texas post-rockers' atmospheric riffing. Still, it's a great opening to a show that's not just for the booster-club set. [Thanks, Spencer, for the correction. And thanks, subversiveIRONY, for this YouTube mash-up with Coach.]

Vampires are just the beginning. One of the underlying mysteries of the first eight episodes was what Sam was hiding. Circumstantial evidence and a glimpse of his temper with Sookie made him a suspect in the murders around town, but too much else pointed to him being a genuine decent fellow. But his surprise was much more interesting, and I missed all the clues until just before the big reveal at the end of Episode 9.

Either Alan Ball or his source material, Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries series, has had no problem killing off what seemed to be main characters (Sookie's grandmother, one of waitresses at Merlotte's and the three wicked vampires who moved to town). But Bill Compton was certainly off limits—he wasn't the fourth man in the fire. At the end of episode seven we saw the hold other vampires have over Bill, taking him away from his Sookie, but they couldn't keep him inside their den.

Entertainment criticism mecca Metacritic has released its top 10 highest rated new Fall TV shows. Created in 2001, the site combines all the reviews of any given show and rates them on a 0-100 scale to get to the "Metascore." This is considered a weighted average because the site assigns more significance to some critics/publications over others due to the quality of the source.

Death is not unusual on TV, particularly on a show about vampires and serial killers. Already in True Blood, we've lost two waitresses, two petty criminals and a beloved grandmother. The first four passed with hardly a notice beyond the accompanying gossip about who might have caused it and whether or not they'd been sleeping with vampires. But the sixth episode is full of the weight of grieving a loved one, an emotion rarely explored on the small screen.

After an uneven start, True Blood's fifth episode is the best yet. Bill Compton's (Stephen Moyer) talk to a gathering of the Daughters of the Confederacy (along with the rest of the town's most curious citizens) stirs up old memories, and a flashback reveals his vampiric origins. When his Louisiana regiment was broken up during the Civil War, Compton struck through the woods to return to Bon Temps and his wife and two children. But after proving his fidelity in the shack of a beautiful young widow, he's rewarded with a bite to the neck.

HBO's new vampire series True Blood, which was just optioned for a second season despite sluggish viewership, has now confirmed four forthcoming regulars.

Does HBO know something we don't know? Despite mixed reviews and a small viewer base so far, the network has already picked up True Blood for a second season, sticking with the hard-knuckled publicity campaign it has already orchestrated for the series.

In the second episode of True Blood, our hero Sookie (Anna Paquin) was visiting her friend Bill the Vampire’s house at night. The show ended with a trio of vampires greeting her at the door, baring their fangs and looking ready to bite. I was all prepared for Episode Three to open with Sookie holding her ground and the vampires having a good laugh and backing off. In other words, I expected them to be wicked, but much more complicated than just pure evil. I was hoping the story would once again mess with stereotypes and reveal nuance and complexity. No such luck.

The second episode of True Blood is better than the first. As stilted as Stephen Moyer was as Bill Compton in the pilot, he and Sookie’s budding romance seems more grounded this time. Bill is confounded both by Sookie’s innocence and her absence of fear. He lost his wife and children in the 1800s and has returned to Bon Temps to try to build an inconspicuous life, reclaiming the old Compton manor. Sookie has spent her life trying to quiet the voices in her head, but always feeling different. A moral compass and the gutter minds of her horny customers keep her at arm’s length from normal human relationships, but Bill brings Old World manners to a self-respecting girl, asking her when he might “call on her.” She can’t hear Bill’s thoughts, and Bill has no power over her mind. If only the vampire haters don’t come between them. Hey, wait—I signed up for a vampire show. How'd I get inside a romance novel.

Anytime I come across a TV show based in the South, I do so with a little fear and trepidation, always half-expecting the locals to be made into yokels. But what better place to set a vampire series than rural Louisiana? Alan Ball's new HBO series True Blood has an interesting concept—after a Japanese company manufactures a synthetic blood, vampires are finally able to “come out of the coffin” and into public view. Ball introduces this concept right off the bat with a vampire lobbyist on Real Time with Bill Maher.

How the existence of vampires will mesh with Southern religion and a history of racial tension is a theme that Ball also teases immediately with talk about "vampire rights" and telepathic lead Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) reading the thoughts of the locals in the dive bar where she works—“Dear Jesus, help me just enjoy one beer and not desire a second.” But whether Ball is going to explore the mix of mythology and religious belief with a deft touch or a clunky fist hopefully wasn’t answered by the church billboard proclaiming “God hates fangs.” I also hope HBO will one day grow out of interpreting their freedom to be grittier than network TV into a directive that every new show must include a gratuitous sex scene—in this case, once with a sadistic vampire and once with a human trying to emulate one.

With a new fall TV line-up, comes a new hope for quality shows. Call me an optimist if you like. I did have hope that Obama and McCain would offer a higher level of discourse to our political landscape, and we can all see how that's working out. But here are five shows that could maybe, possibly have an off-chance of being good: