Vampire-related things I've enjoyed:
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. Its spin-off series Angel
3. The Stephen King novel Salem's Lot, and its short-story sequel, "One For the Road," which is one of the creepiest things he's written
4. The Count, from Sesame Street
5. The original Nintendo system's Castlevania games (actually, in retrospect, the second one was pretty tedious.)
6. Let the Right One In
Some day, I may add True Blood to this list. But for now, I'm still not sure how I feel about the show. Three episodes into the third season, here are some of my likes and dislikes:
- Denis O'Hare as the vampire king (pictured above, on the left) and British actor James Frain (as some sort of vamp private detective: both great additions to the cast.
- The downside to introducing compelling new characters: the older ones have less to do. Nothing with Lafayette, Tara or Jason seems all that interesting.
- The show's take on werewolves is pretty neat. From what I can tell, none of that turning on the full moon, I'm-cursed stuff. I'd rather have working class werewolves than the tortured variety. Actually, there aren't a lot of tortured True Blood characters, except maybe Bill, who's kind of dull.
- Which is problematic: the show's two lead characters are its least interesting ones. Giving Bill the chance to have head-twisting hate sex with his maker this week might've prompted a day or two of OMGs on-line, but it did little to make me more interested in him, or how he feels about Sookie.
- I was interested last season to find out where Sam came from, and hugely disappointed to learn that it was from a family of cartoonish rednecks. Seriously, they might as well be wearing straw hats and bib-overalls.
All in all, the show is fast-paced, freaky and funny enough for me to keep watching, and I'm glad it keeps expanding its universe. I just hope that by the end of the season, a lot of this stuff will gel.
Tom Coombe
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