Season One: B

When HBO puts a show together about vampires, you know it’s going to be different from all the rest. Based on the book series by Charlaine Harris, True Blood offers vamp fans a plate of shlock with a side of grits and a dose of southern hospitality. Bon Temps, Louisiana becomes the most unlikeliest of show locales, where life crawls by without excitement making it a perfect environment for vampires.

This take on the fanged-night dwellers resorts to the basic elements with slight tweaks to the lore. They can still live forever provided that they’re not impaled with a wooden stick or burned to a crisp. Silver hurts them, and so does the sunlight but not in a spontaneous combustion, it’s more drawn out. They’re super-strong, incredibly fast, and they don’t rely on human’s blood to survive. They can simply sustain on artificial blood, called Tru Blood sold at a convenience store near you. It’s really a path chosen by the minority of vampires as it just doesn’t taste as good as humans. They walk amongst us, at night, and are out in the open. Some of them prefer to keep things old school and plot to become the superior race, while others are fine with diplomatically living with humans, even having relationships with them. This is called, “mainstreaming” and humans known to have sex with vamps are lovingly called, “fangbangers.” It’s so cute. The prize in this universe though is their blood can do incredible things to humans. It can heal, make you high, make you great in bed and in the black market it’s invaluable.

The first season starts off oddly as so many characters are introduced and their profiles take time to set up. For instance, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) is an innocent southern belle who never likes to kiss and tell, is fearless, and compassionate towards vampires living in the same world. She is a telepathic waitress at Merlotte’s, a local bar where the usuals hang out. Outside of Sookie is a tight circle including her dumb and sex-crazed brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten) her shape-shifting boss, Sam (Sam Trammell) who holds a torch for her, her rude and crude best friend Tara (Rutina Wesley) and Tara’s cousin Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), the resident homosexual, who, how do I best put this, is an entrepreneur of all sorts. In the pilot, Sookie saves a mainstreaming vampire, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) from having his blood tapped by a couple of rednecks and thus begins her flirtation with the gothic vampire world. In the close-minded town of Bon Temps, however, thats enough to make you a pariah.

By the season’s midpoint, the changes begin, as the focus shifts towards vampire blood, or V, and everything it provides and why humans seek it out, adding new levels to the drama. The desire for this blood by the humans reaches levels of crack cocaine despite their prejudice towards each other actually creates a co-dependency. Tara deals with her alcoholic mother, Jason captures a vampire, and the eldest Stackhouse is murdered. A hierarchy in the local vampire ranks is revealed where Bill must answer to a district “sheriff” vampire Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and The Magister (Zeljko Ivanek) who rules over all of them. The process of “making” a vampire falls on Bill, and hate-mongers dressed up as a religious faction rallies behind keeping the two races apart (echoing the current climate of gay marriage). And amidst all of this is a serial murderer is on the loose.

I’m not prepared to dub this HBO’s greatest new show. It did take some time for it to grow on me, but I enjoyed the care these characters and the development they were given throughout season one. True Blood creator, Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) delivers another strange entry into prime-time television; a splendid trip into stylistic indulgence, over-the-top sexual distractions, and blood-dripping decadence. The more I saw, the more I wanted. The character arcs for the Stackhouses and Bill Compton grew more compelling with each episode. Tara and Lafayette are two of the most unique characters on television while the quirks of supporting cast and guest spots by Lizzie Caplan, Stephen Root, Michelle Forbes, and Ivanek made what initially looked to be one of HBO’s many forgotten failures into a fun-to-watch diversion that’s set up perfectly for the second season.

Video: B+
Ture Blood comes onto your widescreen TV by a solid 1080p Mpeg-4, AVC-encoded high definition transfer in 1.78:1 ratio. It’s not the most consistent picture. There’s some noticeably grain-heavy spots which may be due to the transfer, or the type of camera that was used, I’m unsure, but it’s noticeable. Sometimes there’s some inconsistencies with the contrast so the blacks are not as deep as they could be particularly when Sookie and Bill “unite.” But the blood is a beautiful dark crimson, and the skintones whether pale or full of life, look darn good. Some of the mixed animated dream sequences when Jason is tripping on V come alive and for a dark, stylistic television show, it’s better than most.

Audio: A
The 5.1 DTS-HD soundtrack is pretty hyped for a television show. It’s full of atmospheric noises mimic what it sounds like at night in the hot Louisiana help put you in the mood, are balanced nicely with the dialogue. The soundtrack/score blends in when appropriate and never overpowers the other key sound elements. There is one standout sound effect, where a cool swirling effect whenever Sookie is reading people’s minds, especially when she’s working at the bar, it travels around all five channels echoing the thoughts of everyone in the room. It can almost induce a dizzying migraine but really places you in her mind and how these thoughts pass through her head. Also available are a 5.1 French DTS soundtrack and another in 2.0 Spanish DTS. Subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and English for the Dead and Hard of Hearing.

Extras: B-
Before I get into the extras, I wanted to speak of the packaging and presentation of this box set since it’s different than the typically variety of the standard blue cases. A pretty slipcase houses five discs in a fold-out book, that’s right, I said five blu-rays very tightly. It took me nearly ten minutes to get the damn thing out of the case! More breathing room, HBO, please. It will save me digging around for needle-nosed pliers to get out my blu-rays. And five blu-rays? Was it really necessary to take up that many discs for 12 episodes? I understand there are multi-layered specials and commentaries but I thought blu-ray was supposed to minimize the disc count because it can hold so much data. In lieu of that disappointment, the menu design is real slick, nice style and gets you in that dark, gritty mood right away.

Enhanced Viewing HD is on each disc which allows you to watch each episode with factoids on each character that help build up the True Blood universe including Lafayette gossip, animated maps, segments of interviews, “news broadcasts”, commercials, public service announcements, the history of vampires and “documentaries” all mocked up for the show. First, save this until you’ve watched through the entire season un-enhanced. It really breaks up the viewing experience and makes it hard to follow if this is the first time you’re watching the series. Some of this material is really enjoyable. More Lafayette is a good thing, trust me, and the documentary and newscasts are well-written. Part of the experience happens in picture-in-picture, the rest goes full screen and cuts away from the show. The biggest problem though is that it’s an all or nothing experience. For five minutes there’s material and then next to nothing for fifteen minutes. A pullout menu or index specific to the enhanced viewing would have been a nice touch. On average, there’s a slim 10 minutes worth of material for each hour long episode, way too much dead space.

Audio Commentaries – there are six in total, each with a different participant, and the best of the lot are those for episodes one and five.

Episode One – creator/executive producer Alan Ball
Episode Two – Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse) and director Scot Winan
Episode Four – director Michael Lehmann and writer Brian Buckner
Episode Five – Stephen Moyer (Bill Compton) and director Dan Minahan
Episode Seven – director Marcos Siega
Episode Eleven – director/writer Nancy Oliver

Ball fills the time in excellent fashion, with lots of information and background into adapting the books series into television and in the other Moyer and Minahan’s back and forth candor moves through the episode. Beware, there’s a lot of Six Feet Deep talk on all of them.

Lastly are Next On and Previously On TV spots for each each episode.

Fun in Fangbanging – Overall Shock Value: B

True Blood isn’t going to be for everyone. There’s a lot of sex. Scratch that. There’s A LOT OF SEX, which can carry you through some of those early slow episodes, but this show finds its feet about halfway in and becomes a unique vampire story. If you can invest that time into this series it’s well-worth it. It’s a mature take that doesn’t take itself too seriously either. Once the struggles settle in, the vampires show their mean streaks, then picking favorites is as easy as plucking blueberries off a bush. It’s not as campy or exciting as the Whedon Buffy-verse, it’s not as epic as Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire, or as off-the-wall as Six Feet Deep. It’s got a little bit of all of those though and oh yeah, a lot of sex.

Ernie Estrella