Sookie Stackhouse is not on water skis. She is not soaring through the air over an aquatic nightmare’s dorsal fin. Nope. Sookie is already on the dock, drying off after sticking the landing.
“True Blood” is over the shark.
Just three episodes into the show’s fourth season, it’s pretty apparent there will be no redemption for a series that began brilliantly, stumbled through season two and collapsed last summer. The folks in fictional Bon Temps, Louisiana, aren’t getting up and dusting themselves off. More often than not, they’re morphing from a likeable cast of incongruous friends and fellow citizens into poorly drawn caricatures of stock characters from a half-dozen different television dramas.
Blame Alan Ball, the producer and creative force behind bringing Charlaine Harris’s “Southern Vampire” books to HBO. The farther he veers from the source material, inserting his own vision, interpretations and even storylines into the show, the farther “True Blood” misses its narrative and emotional target.
When “True Blood” was in its first season, Ball’s creative divergences from the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Until Dark, were brilliant. He wrote Lafayette—a throwaway character (literally)—into a strong presence and deftly cast Nelsan Ellis in the role. But Lafayette was supposed to die at the end of Season One—in the books, his body was the one found in the parking lot at Merlott’s—and keeping him alive has been a Pet Sematary proposition. The character of Lafayette hasn’t been the same since the second season. Ellis still puts on a game show, but Lafayette’s scenes are almost painful to watch.
Ditto Tara (Rutina Wesley). A minor character in the early books, Tara was transformed by Ball into what can only be described as the Greek Chorus of Season One. Since then, the character has been a train wreck of poor directorial, writing and acting choices. It would help if Wesley had more than two emotional modes: raging bitch and trembling craven.
Ball is hailed as a creative genius, and American Beauty is one of the better movies of the last 15 years, but writing and producing a movie versus writing and producing an ongoing television series is as different as writing short stories is from writing novels. Not everyone with the skill for one task is equipped to take on the other. Ball, who managed to develop his own vision well with “Six Feet Under,” is failing miserably to trust his source material for “True Blood.” (To be honest, fans of “Six feet” often complained that show, too, went off the rails in later seasons.)
I had held out some hope that “True Blood” might get back toward the Harris novels. The wife has read all ten and still devours each new one that comes out. But the last two seasons of “True Blood” have barely kept her interest at all after she re-watched every episode of Season One over and over.
The big problems with “True Blood” are basic, which is what make them so tragic.
1) The characters are erratic and stray far from their literary grounding.
Not just the most interesting character left in "True Blood," but she shares a name with my wife and she's almost as sexy.
Forget about Lafayette (dead in the books) and Tara. Sheriff Andy, Jason and any number of other characters are either completely bipolar or being written by scribes with mood stabilization difficulties. Bill Compton is a simp for three season and suddenly we are supposed to believe he is a powerful and trusted vampire king? No thanks. And although Anna Paquin is doing everything she can to keep Sookie fresh and spunky, the character is coming off more and more as a whining bitch.
The only three characters that are still fascinating are (in order of my personal fascination): Jessica, Eric and Pam. All vampires. Jessica is a great portrait of a human girl becoming immortal while struggling with her humanity. Eric is simply superbly acted (by Alexander Skarsgård) and Pam has been a stalwart static character in a landscape where every other character seems to undergo massive shifts in motivation and personality with every plot twist.
2) Increasingly disinterested art direction.
Season One and two both had a distinctive look. Bright, oppressive whites and yellows in daylight scenes and brooding blues and black at night. Merlotts and the Stackhouse home felt warm and inviting, Jason’s apartment and Fangtasia left a miasma on viewers after scenes there were done. The color palate, blocking and the little touches that subtly helped Seasons One and Two feel real are gone. Unlike the characters, the art direction has not been about bold choices, or even wrong ones. It’s been about mediocrity.
3) Ball seems to be losing the actors.
Performances are beginning to look flat on “true Blood.” Jason (Ryan Kwanten) doesn’t have the same manic energy. Wesley as Tara looks painted into a corner, Sam (Sam Trammell) is performing almost in monotone. Even Mrs. Thorntonberry (Dale Raoul), a beautiful piece of window dressing in Season One and a real treat in Season Two, is phoning it in.
“True Blood” will continue to be a Sunday night fixture at the Institute, but unless there is some sort of unforeseeable turnaround in the quality of the storytelling, presentation and acting this season, a return to “must see” status is unlikely for Sookie and her shark-jumping friends in Season Five.
You spelled Charlaine Harris’ name wrong.
Corrected. Thanks.