Hey, remember all that a few weeks back about how we were wondering why HBO didn't just adapt a comic from their sister company DC Comics into a pulpy adult treat? Turns out they had one in the works, after all; they just based it on some pulpy novels instead!
That's right, y'all: HBO got a little of their mojo last night with the premiere of their new vampire show True Blood, which was by turns funny, foxy, frightening, um, freaky, and, ffffffff.... uh... um... let's just get to the astonishingly overlong recap -- but first, a peek at the opening credits -- which we think are just as good those for True Blood creator Alan Ball's other show, Six Feet Under.
We begin with a horny drunk couple, driving down the road and -- mid-handjob -- spying a convenience store that serves Tru Blood, which HBO hopes you already know is that crazy new Japanese synthetic blood drink that comes in six packs. (Guess Pocari Sweat wasn't weird enough for them.) Anyway, if you're not throughly familiar with the whole "vampires come in fro the cold" scenario, they've got Bill Maher on the telly to clue us in a little. (Synergastic!) Anyway, the drunk kids come in and ask if, since they got True Blood, they get a lot of vampires in the place. In a deep Transylvanian accent, the cashier says they do and menaces them omniously -- and then laughs and -- in a Redneckian accent -- telling them it was all a goof. Well, the bear-type in the back doesn't think it's so funny a joke, particuarly after the drunk guys asks the cashier if he knows anyway they can get some vampire blood, which is apparently like a narcotic, so with his gimme cap on and his sixer of Tru Blood in his hand and a couple of switchblade canines set to "erect," he scares the kids out of the place and warns the cashier if he ever does it again, he'll kill him. You could kinda see the joke coming, right, but still -- pretty good cold open.
And bam, the credits. Nice, right? One of our favorite parts was when they mentioned both William Sanderson and Chris Bauer! Hooray for HBO and their phenomenal retention policy!
Back to the action. And here she is: Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin), a pixieish waitress for the Bon Temps, Louisiana diner called Merlotte's that's having a hard time keeping her mind on her job. This is largely because she's got other people's minds to deal with -- she's psychic, and has a hard time hearing people's orders over all their pervy, banal thoughts flooding her own. If you've seen Wings of Desire, it's sort of like th angels listening to humans, except grody.
Meanwhile, in a SuperSavaBunch (which let's be honest, isn't as good a name for a WalMart knockoff as MegaLoMart; let's step it up, people!) Tara, a sassy gal who we're soon to learn is Sookie's best and oldest friend (who we are currently learning doesn't have a very good handle on her Southern accent) is quitting her job in a huff. Nothing vampy here; she just insults a customer, bails, and tells Sookie she's on her way to Merlotte's for a drink. So, you know, she's SASSY!!! and stuff.
Back at Merlotte's, Sookie's waiting on a skeevy couple of junkie types, the Rattrays. She wants onion rings, he wants a bj. Sookie puts in the order -- and we meet the first character we love -- Lafayette, the chef at Merlotte's, who's also SASSY!!! but he's SASSY!!! and GAY!!! and so maybe he's got more to work with than Tara. (Oh, they're also the two African-American characters, which we'd talk about but, um, we don't know what to say about it except we hope that Benson doesn't show up. Moving on.) In the two scenes that Lafayette's in in this episode, the rhythms of the dialogue devolve into weird, overlapping Altman-esque exchanges, and we eat it up. This convo's all about sex, and by the end, he's got them all in a big sexy SASSY fit, and us too, so boy crush all around everyone!
Cut to a guy and a gal getting it on. This guy, it turns out, is Sookie's brother Jason. You don't know that now, but we'll spoil it for you since, well, we're in the spoiler zone now. Anyways, while he's going down on her, he notices a couple of puncture marks on her thighs. The girl -- who it turns out is named Maudette; more on her later -- tells him about this time she had sex with a vampire (after going to a vampire park at night -- nice touch), and how once was enough even if she got a thousand bucks for it. And they're both turned on talking about it, which gets even worse when she mentions that she's got the whole thing on tape. It's a testament to how with this show we are that we totally wanna see too!
So, back at Merlotte's Sookie's starting to be bummed about her night and she confides in Sam, the owner, who's young and kind of hunky and obviously has a thing for her. And then a hunk vampire comes in, and Sookie turns to watch him and it's like just the two of them in the world. So if you were wondering whether you could expect a love triangle on this show, well, wonder no more. Sookie goes over to him and he asks for some Tru Blood. Sookie apologizes for their not having any buy saying "You're our first!" Which is funny, because just as in the opening scene, we felt a little sorry for the vamp whose having his own blood sold for thrills in front of him, we're feeling sorry for this vampire -- named Bill, incidentally -- for being so much an outsider. Sweetly, and intensely, Bill asks for a glass of red wine "so I got a reason to be here." Suddenly the creepy couple from before burst into the conversation, clearly intrigued by having a vampire sitting next to them.
Back to the sex -- the tape is way weird, with her cuffed up and a tattooed vampire rutting on her from behind, his bones and body shifting and sliding into weird configurations, his demeanor getting angrier. Jason's a little freaked out by it, but clearly turned on; also, he's getting what appears to be the blowjob of his life.
Tara's at the bar by now, which we might have forgotten to mention, and she's trying to tell Sookie to stay away from the vampire out there. Sam agrees, but Sookie won't have any of it, and goes to serve him his wine -- when she overhears the Rattray's thoughts: they're gonna bleed him for the narcotic effect. Sookie tries to figure out what to do, but they disappear before she can help in anyway.
A quick jump to the sex scene again, which is getting even freakier: Jason's doing Maudette the same way she was getting done before, and taunting her as he pumps. "You let a dead man fuck you?," he asks, his hands edging uneasily for Maudette's neck... Oh, did we mention that it's all being taped as well?
(Yes, the tension does seem to be mounting...)
Out at Merlotte's, the Rattray's have Bill laid out on the ground with thin chains. We were thinking they must have been rosaries at first, but they're just silver. Anyway, they got poor Bill on his back and are draining him. Turns out this unsavory couple are addicts of vampire blood and looking for a fix. Sookie, having burst out of the restaurant to see what was happening, jumps into the scene, grabs a big chain, and tosses it right onto Mac Rattray's neck, choking him. Denise pulls a knife, but after a brief scuffle the fight ends with the Rattrays hustling to their car, bickering all the way.
Sookie bends over Bill and removes the chains, which hiss as they're pulled off of him. Then a dog jumps up and kisses all over her. Apparently he's always hanging around the restaurant, this dog, which is all very weird and totally staged like a postcard, or perhaps a PLOT ELEMENT!!! Which normally we'd be a little annoyed by, but since this is a monster show, and this raises the possibility of WEREWOLVES!!! we are a little excited. "I reckon you're not too happy about being rescued by a woman," notes Sookie, and clutches Bill close to her to try and read his mind. And she can't, which tickles her. Will they kiss? No, apparently not; he tells her his name, which he hadn't yet -- Bill -- and this cracks her up. Which we also love, because it's sort of rude again, bringing up the awkwardness of the scenario. He asks her to not mention his weaknesses, warns her that vampires turn on the ones they like, and extracts from her (without trying) the nugget that she's a virgin(!). EXPOSITION!!!
Inside, Tara gets a job at Merlotte's and Jason -- presumably not-so-fresh from his encounter with Maudette -- bounds into the bar. Tara's hot for him; he's hot for Dawn, the hottest of the Merlotte's waitstaff, with whom he's apparently hooked up a few times. He tries to get a date out of her, much to Tara's chagrin, but she won't bite. He's looking for his sister, but she's already left for home. Apparently, they both live with their grandma, who's very interested to hear about the vampire that came into the restaurant.
Later that evening, Sookie has a dream (this is somewhat obvs) where she thinks she's gonna have sex with Bill, but in fact he's taking off his shirt to tear into her in a more, um, dental fashion. She wakes with a a start -- and it's a pretty predictable scene, yeah, but we love that the very next shot we get is of Sookie sunning herself in her lawn, a subtle reminder of the safety and warmth that daylight would provide in this world. Jason shows up for lunch and they bicker a little about Sookie's night, but Grandma takes them inside to eat. After some playful exchanges, Grandma gets a call -- Maudette's been found murdered. Jason gets a little cagey about it, and about vampires, and hookers, and we learn the first of what we hope are many cool vampire words: fangbanger. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Yay! Anyway, Sookie gets suspicious of her brother and tries to read his mind but gets angry and runs back to work... where after attempting to get another date with Dawn via phone, the cops arrive in the form of Chris Bauer and William Sanderson, and we are ecstatic! They're such great actors -- Bauer in particular, who's doing a little more work we imagine than Sanderson; his Northeastern accent is all kinds of gone. "How would you characterize the sex," he asks, in a great indignant Louisianan drawl. YAY!!! Jason totally flubs the interview and they bring him in for questioning.
Back at Sookie's, Grandma wants to know if Bill would remember the war -- that being the Civil War -- and back at Merlotte's Lafayette and Tara get SASSY!!! again. Lafayette wins this round, tossing asides like they were Mardi Gras beads, knowing half the fun is in seeing who catches them. Lafayette was also working out at the roadwork site, and has to tell Sookie that her brother got pinched. Someone asks if Sookie didn't already know, and she gets apoplectic. "I'm not psychic!" she hollers. Guess this is not a huge secret around here, huh?
And right when Sookie's starting to have a really bad day, Bill shows up again. Sookie goes to him, and instead of getting his order, she sits down with him. "Your hand is cold" she notes, and he apologizes. "What are you," he asks again. "I'm a waitress," she says. "No, you're something more than that," he says; "Something more than human." So THAT'S where the Rob Zombie came from in the promos! THey notice that everyone in the place is looking at them -- and she can even hear most of their concerned/disgusted thoughts -- so it's clear this encounter has to end soon. She asks him to meet her after work -- to ask him to talk about the war with her grandma, of course -- and he goes.
Sam and Tara both take her in the back and freak out on her, telling her she can't get wrapped up with a vamp, and Sookie hears in their thoughts their motivations: Sam, because he likes her, and Tara because she reminds her of his brother, who she has a thing for after years of being ignored by him. The mind reading takes a little while longer than one might expect, leaving Anna Paquin to hang around and act like she's actually hearing words, which looks a little weird. Maybe in a show where the vampires are all sped up, they could speed up the mindreading a little too?.
Closing time, and Sam offers to wait with Sookie until Bill shows up. She says thanks, but no. Sam leaves, and she hears a sound -- it's the Rattray's, and tvery quickly they get her on the ground and beat her senseless. In lots of other shows, this would be the part where Bill jumps in and gets heroic. Here we just get the end credit roll -- and a hunger to see next week's ep.
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