Hah-hah!  Made you look!

2×3, “Scratches”

This episode is the best of the first three for the season … which is a good sign for how this season is going to go.  No sophomore slump in evidence, that’s for sure.

The episode starts off with a standard bit of Sookie/Bill contentiousness, in which Sookie gets mad at Bill and storms off.  This time, though, she gets mauled by a werebull, or a minotaur, or some such beastie.  What the hell is that thing?  Other than creepy, I mean.

Roll credits, and can I take this moment to mention that this show’s opening credits sequence NEVER gets old?  Because it NEVER gets old.  The credits sequence seems to be something HBO puts a bit of emphasis on as a general rule; many of their shows have awesome credits (such as The Sopranos, and Deadwood, and Six Feet Under, Carnivale, Big Love, Rome, and so forth), and that’s something that seems to be a bit of a dying art-form over on the networks.

Sookie gets taken back to Fangtasia, where a healer of some sort is called in to treat her.  Her life is saved, but apparently not by much.  There is an interesting shot in which she starts screaming in pain, and we cut to Jason, bolting upright out of his sleep and screaming.  This is revealed to be a dream sequence, but I still can’t help but wonder if the editing there is significant.  Can Jason somehow sense when Sookie is in pain?  It’d make a sort of sense; they are siblings, after all, and since she’s got some extraordinary abilities, there’s nothing that says he can’t, too.

Speaking of Jason, well, Ryan Kwanten continues to be one of this show’s most V of MVPs; the dude steals every scene he’s in.  This week, he’s got a great one at a Fangbangers Anonymous meeting, or whatever that support group is.  Jason is such a moronic, imbecilic character … but what he lacks in book smarts and common sense, he makes up for with a kind of emotional honesty and an (apparently) innate, if underused, sense of goodness.  He’s not above fucking up in those areas, of course, but he’s got enough niceness about him that he can barely tolerate these meetings within the context of the Light of Day message of intolerance toward vampires.  Seeing Jason defend Bill — whom he himself once hated — as being an apparently good match for his siter is just touching; and he is right on the money morally when he points out that his best friend, a human, did things as bad as or worse than the things these people are accusing all vampires of representing.

What makes this a great scene is that it’s not played overbearingly.  Like many of Jason’s scenes, it’s played for broad comedy, and that allows subtle drama to emerge from it.  So far, it’s a beautifully conceived and executed storyline, and I’ll be honest: if that’s all the show was, I’d still happily tune in every week.

Sookie’s overnight convalescene at Fangtasia leads to her learning that Lafayette is chained up in the basement, and this leads to Eric manipulating her into agreeing to go to Texas in search of Godric, the missing vampire … in exchange, of course, for his setting Lafayette free.  I’ll confess that I’m a little disappointed that that’s how Lafayette managed to get out of the basement, but I’m more than willing to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, and see where this all ends up going.

My favorite scenes of the episode — Jason Stackhouse and his holy-rollin’ homies notwithstanding — were the scenes involving Jessica and Hoyt.  I’ll just admit this right up front: if it meant I got to put her to the penis, I’d be happy to let Jessica drain off a bit of my blood with her teeth.  No prob, babe, ouch, ouch, ouch, cool, now sit on this for a few minutes.

Wow.  I almost offended myself there.

Putting her bonerliciousness aside for a moment, Jessica really is a wonderful character, and Deobrah Ann Woll is just great in the role.  I don’t know what Jessica’s intention are when she strolls into Merlotte’s — does she just want to be out of the house, or is she on the prowl and looking to draw some real blood? — but it’s clear that she’s utterly charmed by Hoyt’s feeble-yet-gently-persistent pursuit of her.  She’s never been allowed to be chased by a boy, and she’s clearly knocked out by the thrill of it the very first time it happens.

This episode was written by co-producer Raelle Tucker, and I’d be curious to know how much of the Jessica/Hoyt storyline is hers.  Compare the scene between the two once they take the party back to Bill’s house — “I’ve always wanted to see where Vampire Bill lives,” Hoyt says, with that goofy sincerity he’s always got — to any scene in Twilight between Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and tell me True Blood doesn’t do a better job of portraying the burgeoning romance between two young people.  Go on, do it, so I can call you names and accuse you of having had a rhesus monkey for a father.

I’m no Twilight hater, like so many are, but I think the movie is almost entirely lacking in subtlety and charm when it comes to its romance.  Compare that to here, when Jessica breaks out, reluctantly, in a smile when Hoyt tells her to not be ashamed of what she is.  That Hoyt, man, he’s kinda smooth once he gets going.  He’s played by Jim Parrack, whose career thus far has mostly consisted of being a day player on various television episodes.  As Hoyt, he’s been doing quiet but excellent work since the first season, and I’m happy to see him get some juicy material.  I’m sure that means he’ll get killed at some point, but perhaps he’ll at least get to verify the drapes’ shading prior to expiring.

Speaking of Maryann’s place, not that we were, what the hell is that in Carl’s soup?  I’ve got a bad feeling about what that is and where it might have come from.  Why do I get the feeling that Carl occasionally grows horns outen his head, and lopes through the woods in search of blondes wearing Daisy Dukes?

Back in Texas, Jason gets invited to join the Newlins for dinner, and Steve, upon hearing what Sarah has cooked for dessert, tells him that Sarah must think he’s pretty special.  “Really?” Jason replies, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him.  “Well,” Steve says, without an apparent hint of knowledge of the word “entendre,” “Sarah doesn’t whip out her pudding for just anybody.”  Ah, now that’s a delicious scene.

Speaking of delicious scenes, Tara finds herself smack dab in the middle of a near-orgy at Maryann’s, and she’s not too happy about it.  I continue to be more or less uninterested in this plotline, except when Michelle Forbes is on the screen; then, I’m very interested.

The episode ends with Sam, who is about to leave town, getting sidetracked by a run through the woods with his doggy friend, which ends in some skinny-dipping.  He’s surprised by Daphne, who is also apparently looking for some in-the-water cavorting.  She takes her shirt off, and we see that she’s got scars on her back that are the same as the cuts Sookie got from the werebull.

OOOOHHHHHHHHH!!!!  Pretty good end to a good episode.

2×4, “Shake and Fingerpop”

I’m sure that title must mean something, but I’ll be durn if I know what it is.

The episode beginds with a great scene in which Jason, returning to his dorm from dinner with the Newlins, gets punked by Luke, who has the other campers on the ground covered in ketchup, pretending to be vamp victims.  Jason, unamused, takes umbrage, and then takes the educational high road, preaching to the other campers about how vampires are not a joke, but are very dangerous creatures.  He’s accompanied by some amusing faux-martial score by Nathan Barr.  He gets to sock Luke in the nose, which is funny, and gets to angrily whip off his clip-on tie, which is hilarious.

This episode was written by series developer Alan Ball, who hasn’t personally written an episode since 1×3 last year.  Good to see him in the captain’s seat again.  He’s got some great dialogue between Jason and Luke later in the episode.  We come in in the middle of the conversation, and hear Jason, who is stuffing a waffle into his mouth, say, “I don’t know who Lazarus was, but he sure as hell was not the first vampire … everybody knows it was Dracula.”

Later in the conversation, Luke warns Jason, menacingly, “One thing you can be sure of: God will make sure evil gets punished.”  Jason, nonplussed, jaw-droppingly replies, “Oh yeah?  Well, explain Europe to me.”  Luke, unsurprisingly, can’t, and Jason leaves secure in the knowledge that another round has gone to him.

At some point during all of this, he also gives Luke his definition of evil: “Evil,” he says, “is makin’ the premedicated choice to be a dick.”  Never has a “c” taken the place of a “t” to such comic effect.  I’d be willing to bet that all across Hollywood, writers go to bed at night wishing they could get paid to write dialogue for Jason Stackhouse.

Back in Bon Temps, Vampire Bill — Hoyt calling him that cracks me up every time, because it’s so bizarrely sweet — is barking mad to find what appears to be Jessica feeding on Hoyt.  Turns out she wasn’t, though; they were just making out a little bit.  It’s another winning scene for this little subplot.

At the coroner’s office, in a rare instance of this show putting both William Sanderson and John Billingsley to work (E.B. Farnum Meets Dr. Phlox), we find out that Miss Jeanette’s heart had been removed while she was still alive, and that she has some big ole scratches on her back.  (Why do I get the feeling that I know what was in Carl’s soup last episode?)  One of my occasional frustrations with this show is that it has two fine actors like Sanderson and Billingsley, but doesn’t do much to find good work for them to do … or any work at all, most episodes.  Hopefully, that’ll change at some point.

Another piece of evidence for my Carl-is-the-werebull theory: when Maryann’s group scares Tara at Sookie’s house, she is watching a program about a bull-run gone wrong.  Can’t be an accident.  Probably also not an accident that Carl brings a wedding cake.  Maryann is obviously trying to engineer the relationship between Tara and Eggs; for what reason, beats me, but I’m sure we’ll find out, and probably in some fucked-up fashion.

The Jason/Sarah relationship gets furthered a bit this week.  He has a bit of a reverie about her at one point while she’s cooking ribs, and later, after she and Steve have made Jason a soldier in their “army,” Luke and the rest of the fellas seem amusedly convinced that she’s on the prowl for his dick, and they sound as if that’s not exactly an uncommon occurrence.  Sure enough, we end up getting a scene in which she comes to Jason’s new room in her house, wearing a nighty and looking like she could supply cream for a city’s worth of Starbuckses.  It leads nowhere … not this week, at least.

Thing is, I’m thinking ole Steve wants to taste Jason’s dick almost as bad as Sarah does.  I’m sure we’ll find out one way or another.

The Fellowship of the Sun is into more than stifled adultery, though; it’s apparently also into hiring cast members from Breaking Bad to kidnap humans who assist vampires telepathically.  Or at least that’s what I take away from the scene in which Dean “Hank Schraeder” Norris tries to abduct Sookie.  Vampire Bill comes flying out of his (hilarious) air-travel coffin and puts a stop to all this real quick.  The sight of Jessica’s coffin rolling onto the ground while she’s trying to figure out how to exit it is also hilarious.

The three of them have arrived — via Anubis Air — in Dallas, and stay at a vamp-friendly hotel which shows fanger porn via pay-per-view.  That’s awesome.

Intercourse With the Vampire: The Sexual History of Vampires — awesome. 

His First Fangbang (“Who will he choose?”) — awesome. 

Co-Ed Chowdown (“real fangs,” “hot vamp-on-vamp action”) — awesome.

I’d've titled one Cold Snatch and Hot Beef.  Or Cold Rod and Hot Boxes.  Something like that.  Maybe Bleed On it, Bitch! I’ll stop now.

Room service will bring your hot readheaded vampire ward a human with the bloodtype of her choice.  But oopsie, the room-service waiter, Barry, is apparently just as telepathic as Sookie, and runs off once they both realize it.  God only knows where that will go.

In other developments, Tara finally brews up some coffee for Eggs, by which I mean she lets him fuck.  Rutina Wesley steadfastly refuses to show us her boobs, which I kinda admire, but that’s only the non-perv side of me, so only about twelve percent; the other 88% wants to see ‘em.  Maryann seems to grow more powerful during this, and the guests at her party start smearing pie on their faces and eating dirt, so that’s kinda weird.

At that same party, Sam and Daphne make out a little bit, and Daphne tells him, “I know what you are.”  She takes him by the hand and leads him out of the room, but we don’t find out what any of this means.  I’m starting to like Daphne; Ashley Jones is kinda like a hotter version of Kathy Baker, and Baker was pretty hot to begin with.  There’s that 88% again.  The other twelve says that Daphne needs to develop a bit more as a character before it is going to get too interested, and that’s fair enough.

Bill questions Eric a bit about why he’s so attached to the missing Godric, and Eric says that Godric is a powerful, kingly vampire.  Twice as old as he is, is how he puts it.  Now, this interests me a bit.  Eric, if I’m not mistaken, is about 1000 years old.  That would make Godric roughly 2000 years old.  Earlier in the episode, Jason and Luke had some dialogue about the possiblity that, since Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and commanded people to drink his blood, Jesus might have been the first vampire.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Jesus live a bit more than 2000 years ago?

Could be a coincidence, I guess…

Since November 2008, girls every where have been freaking out over vampires, Robert Pattinson, and the next installment of the saga: New Moon.  Although I never saw it in theaters, I finally got around to watching Twilight on DVD.  I love most vampire flicks, but I had my doubts about this one.  The DVD case actually reads “The most epic romance since Titanic”. Yikes!

But since I felt like the only female in the world who had not seen it, I decided to give it a try.  I will say right away that it was better than I expected.  Not a whole lot better, but better.  The one thing I could not help thinking after the movie was over, though – are these really vampires?  So now I’m sitting down to look at just how far from the path of classic lore these vampires stray, and to ask the question, “can they really call themselves vampires?”

The “vampires” of Twilight have their own set of rules.  They are in fact immortals, but they otherwise defy almost every rule that vampires have been working with since they first set undead foot onto the silver screen.  I’ll begin with sunlight.

Vampires have always been unable to go out in sunlight.  It kills them. Kills them dead.  The decision to depart from this fundamental trait is a questionable move.  Being unable to go out in sunlight is a pretty defining thing for vampires.  In Twilight, the vampires “sparkle” in direct sunlight, exposing the fact that they are not human.  You could reason out that “myth” has confused the fact that they should not be in sunlight, with they could not be in sunlight.  Although it is really not the same thing, this line of thinking at least makes it a more forgivable transgression.

Sure, Joss Whedon took liberties with direct sunlight in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, but he didn’t change the principle.  Spike and Angel could dart around under blankets and sit in shadows, but the sun could still kill them.  The finale of “Trueblood” took its own liberties when their lead character Bill was able to ”come back” from being toasted to a crisp.  But the fact still remained that too much sunlight and he lit up like a marshmallow in a camping fire.  These other series are playing with the rules, but not throwing them out all together.

The fact that most vampires can’t go out in sunlight directly relates to their sleeping habits.  They cannot go out in the sun and this in turn sends them to their coffins to sleep the day away.  Then they emerge well rested and ready to prowl.  While I really don’t even want to get started on this whole sleeping thing, I feel like I must.

Yes, there are several animals in the world that get extremely little sleep.  Dolphins that only rest one half of their brain at a time while sleeping.  But these are characteristics found in nature, and we are dealing with mythological creatures.  Creatures of the night, that are established as sleeping during the day.  Sleep is, in part, a period of rest and relaxation, which hunters would need.  Sleep is also a time of repair and growth, which a vampire would probably need to digest blood.  There is really no logical reason for vampires not to sleep.

Vampires are powerful, both physically and mentally.  The Twilight vampires are super strong, just like in most vampire tales (like in the Whedon-verse, where it takes a slayer matched with equal strength to kill them).  So vampires with more strength and speed than humans are widely accepted.  But what about mental powers unique to each vampire?

Vampires have always had hypnotic powers.  This makes sense for a vampire.  It’s a power that comes with the territory.  They need to draw people in and bring them closer.  This is used to attract prey, or seduce a potential new vampire to carry on the line.  It is necessary for survival in every way.  But the Cullens introduce a smorgasbord of mental powers from mind-reading to seeing the future.  And that’s just in the movies.  Jasper Cullen can push feelings on to people, making them feel whatever he wants.  This is definitely outside the realm of necessity and I really don’t see the need to change things up (again).

Let’s focus on one thing Twilight got right: body temp.  In the movie, Edward is described as being cold to the touch.  This is classic vampire.  Vampires are cold to the touch because they are dead.  They would have the temperature, or lack there of, of a corpse.  So congrats to Twilight for getting one of a hundred things right.  I also enjoyed a 2 second clip of the “bad guys” as they walked to the baseball field.  There is a split second were they are “gliding”, which is very reminiscent of the old Christopher Lee days of black and white vampire films, where they “glided” more often than not.  So that was pretty cool.

The creation of vampires is a feature that has stayed fairly constant in stories.  As legend goes, a vampire can feed off of your blood until you are dead.  Vamps can also feed off you enough to leave you weak, keeping you as docile nourishment before eventually finishing you off.  There are several different takes on whether or not you can go back about a normal life afterwords. (And by the way, vampires bite you with fangs.  Something that these guys have none of.  Not permanent fangs, not retractable fangs, nothing.)  Lastly, a vampire can drain you mostly of your blood and let you drink from their blood, altering you from a human to a vampire.  Tadah!

A few different but similar variations have emerged here (kudos to “Trueblood” for keeping it classic).  Once again Twilight deviates from vampire canon here.  In Twilight, vampirism is passed more like a virus or poison.  Once bitten, nothing else has to happen for the transformation to take place (unless you are sucked dry).  The only way to avoid the change is to have the toxin sucked back out.  The whole virus/poison take on this is an approach normally reserved for zombies and werewolves.  This difference really bothers me.  However it works for the Twilight saga and not for me for the same reason.

Vampires are sexy, enticing creatures.  The act of making someone a vampire is a huge metaphor for sex.  The biting of the neck, the swapping of fluids and blood is all very sexual in nature.  Instead these vampires have reduced the whole thing down to little more than being bit by a rabid dog.  The reason this works for the movie is because there are a lot of themes about chastity and abstinence.  Edward doesn’t even want to kiss Bella because he’s afraid he will lose control.  The author of the book is Mormon and so the whole waiting-until-you’re-married-thing is part of the deal, even in a book about vampires.  From this perspective, the lack of sexuality in the process of turning someone into a vampire makes sense.  However, I really don’t like a sexless take on vampires.  What’s the point?!  Instead of neutering your vampires, why not pick another genre.

Lastly, how do you kill a vampire?  Why what an easy question!  You drive a stake threw their heart.  Sometimes the stake is silver, sometimes the vampire collapses into dust once staked.  But how do you kill a vampire from the Cullen family?  You tear them apart and burn them…. what!?  So the only way to kill them is to do something that only another vampire has the strength to do.  How convenient.  The movie also doesn’t mention classic vampire repellents such as garlic and holy water.  There was also no mention of having to be invited into someones home to enter it.

So to wrap up the comparison, here’s what the Twilight vampires have in common with the classics:

• Immortality
• Drink blood
• Cold / dead skin

And here’s what they don’t:

• No fangs
• Shine in the sunlight
• Excessive mental powers
• No sleeping
• Zombie/werewolf rules on transmission
• Can only be killed by being torn apart and burned

These new vampires do stray pretty far from accepted vampire lore.  Perhaps it is better to think of them as a new species of vampires.  But like it or not they do retain enough of the most basic vampire framework, that I would have to say that they still count as vampires.

Overall the movie itself was entertaining.  The love story lacked any real foundation (though I am told that the books flesh this part out).  Some of the special effects were laughable but the fight scenes were cool.  Edward Cullen is a self-loathing vampire, seemingly directly inspired by Angel of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the eponymous spin-off.  Neither like feeding off humans or gettin’ busy with their girls.

The family dynamics were interesting and my favorite part of the movie.  It was also well directed and very well acted.  Will I watch it again? Sure.  Is it a good vampire movie? not really.  Is it a tear-jerking hart-pounding romance? No.  Will I see the sequel? Of course – Micheal Sheen is in it.

It is very, very tempting to say that it is not a vampire movie at all.  But like most things in the world of sci-fi and fantasy, different interpretations are part of the territory, if not a time honored tradition at this point.  I would say this is a perfectly enjoyable little film for any open-minded sci-fi/fantasy fan.

Sheen will be playing the role of Aro, an Italian vampire.

Directed by Chris Weitz, New Moon is scheduled to hit theatres on November 20.