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Did you guys watch the premiere of True Blood last night? It’s the new gay-metaphor-meets-cautionary-tale-about-energy-drinks project from Alan Ball, who is best known for writing American Beauty and also creating Six Feet Under. The basic storyline is that vampires have always lived among us in secret but now they’ve “come out of the coffin” (seriously, they said that) thanks to a Japanese soft drink called True Blood that synthesizes the elecrolytes vampire bodies crave or something. The show is set in Louisiana (NATURALLY), and focuses on Sookie (Anna Paquin), a waitress at a dive bar who falls in love with a vampire named Bill. But also she’s psychic and maybe telekinetic.
Sure, my only question is: um, what?
Now, the show is based on a series of books by Charlaine Harris that I have admittedly not read. So I don’t know if it’s in the book that Sookie has a horrible southern accent or if that was just something Anna Paquin brought to the part. But based on this one episode I can say at the very least that Alan Ball continues to be one of the most over-rated writers in entertainment. American Beauty was, as one friend described it, “an ‘edgy’ movie for boring people,” and as unpopular as I know this is going to be: Six Feet Under was not very good. YIKES. Sorry, guys, it’s just that when I watch a TV show I like to have at least one, just one character that I can root for. Everyone on that show was so gloomy and disgusting, EVEN DAVID, SORRY. I think the reason the series finale was so popular was because we finally got to see every last one of those dopey creeps go to hell.
It would appear with True Blood that Alan Ball has torn another page from his Urban Outfitters bathroom book on “how to be quirky.” I support “alternative narratives” and shows that are brave and ambitious, but TAKE A CHILL PILL on the overly-complex conceits (telekenese nuts) and the brow-beating metaphors, this show. Who do you think you are, Carnivale? I could be wrong. I would be happy to be wrong. Maybe this show will surprise us and turn out to not be a 15-year-old goth girl’s idea of the most beautifully fucked up thing she can think of.
We will see.
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It was watchable, but it was also full of REALLY horrible acting.
The accents were terrible, people spoke too close to each other’s faces, too many men (two of them) looked like Ken dolls, and the exposition-giving (“Sookie, you’ve been my best friend since second grade, even through the times when your parents died, and even though I always insult people and I lose my jobs because of it, you know what? I don’t have a crush on your brother”) was ridiculous.
AND YET I spent almost all of last night half awake staring at the door of the bedroom afraid that a vampire was going to come through it to kill me, and I am an adult.
My only question is how shows like these get made? I mean, really.
My only question is, how doe shows like this get made? I mean, really.
My only question is, how does shows like this get made? I mean, really.
There.
When you make a gay metaphor, shouldn’t the counterparts not be amoral murderers?
No, they really shouldn’t be. Seriously, what the hell? That has to be the biggest fuck-up that’s ever happened to a metaphor in metaphor history.
ok yea…. the first episode sucked pretty severely.
but the material has the potential to be good…. i don’t know what to think yet.
I think that people who think that vampires are still a valid and interesting metaphor for anything and me is one of the more obscure and yet vitally important fronts of the culture war.
I just finished watching Six Feet Under a week ago and I absolutely loved it. Maybe that means I’m just as narcissistic as they are, but I accept that. I had an ex girlfriend who thought Brenda was just misunderstood which was a pretty much the most obvious foreshadowing possible to knowing someone is crazy. She was.
All that being said, True Blood was awful and not in the compared to something good way. In the just fucking awful way. At least this time around I know that if I meet someone who thinks this Alan Ball show looks good that they’ll turn out to be an idiot.
Carnivale? Really? Carnivale was the worst.
if mutant superheroes can be a “valid and interesting metaphor for anything”… then so can southern vampires.
i’m just sayin’
If drinking a mixture of crumpled up staples and house paint can “cure pancreatic cancer” … then so can biting off and collecting your fingernails in a jar labeled ‘Hope’.
I’m just sayin’ that you are spouting goobledy-gook.
Six Feet Under was bad? That was a funny statement.
But yeah this vampire show looks lame.
6 Feet Under was only one of thee best shows ever!
True Blood, I’m going to continue to watch. I try not to completly judge a show by the 1st episode. They’re too busy trying to introduce everyone & I think that makes it hard on the script & other things. I think they shouldn’t have chose Anna Paquin though. She can not carry the accent & I’m not getting her as a femme fatal or anything remotely close to that.
But, I love vampires & I’m hoping this turns out to be a great show. So I’m going to continue to watch.
Gabe, I always love your WMOAT posts, but a statement like, “Six Feet Under was not very good,” makes you sound like an idiot. Maybe you just didn’t watch Six Feet Under, or perhaps you just caught a few random episodes and couldn’t get into it? But to say that one of the best television programs of all time “was not very good” doesn’t suggest the greatest of critical viewpoints.
If you’re going to bash Ball – stick to the Vampires, or go after Towelhead. I hear that’s a huge mess.
To be fair, your liking the show neither makes me sound like an idiot nor does it make it one of the best television programs of all time. You can’t really criticize me for not having a solid critical viewpoint by simply stating the barest of opposites.
Because the thing is, I watched every episode of Six Feet Under. And I was mildly into it, but I genuinely think that the show took a lot of work to actually get into and enjoy. I think that because it felt like work. And it wasn’t work because the show was that complex, it was work because the show was dull and thick and full of mostly miserable characters operating on raw selfishness and two-dimensional interpersonal family conflicts. It’s hard to like characters when they don’t even like each other or themselves, and I should point out that that wouldn’t be a criticism if the show had anything interesting to say about familial dysfunction or self-hatred, but it didn’t. It just sort of chugged along with turgid unpleasantness. And the truth is that you can get into anything if you invest enough time into it because at a certain point you refuse to admit that maybe you were wrong.
I know that Six Feet Under is popular, and I don’t begrudge anyone for liking it. We like what we like, that’s the Videogum motto. But I’m not going to pretend like something’s good just because it’s on a premium cable channel and it’s beloved by people who liked the same books as me in college.
Fair enough. Perhaps “idiot” was too harsh. I guess I’m surprised that after watching the entire series, you see all the characters existing so two-dimensionally.
Like that last paragraph by the way. It would be silly to pretend that you enjoyed the show. Even though Six Feet Under is pretty amazing.
Anna Paquin has trouble speaking in general. I think it was 25th Hour specifically when her accent kept changing. And she wasn’t supposed to have one in that movie.
i think it’s partially her lisp, partially her awful accent, partially her “me? men? sex? NEVER” attitude/thing she keeps saying that makes me want to punch her in the face. that being said – i laughed out loud a LOT during the show. it’s a comedy, right? because if it is, i really liked it. ninjavideo.net plus some torrent sites got a preair of next week’s episode, i’m looking forward to it. i think the show has lots of potential as long as it doesn’t revolve around that retarded vampire that she just met “bell.” you know a name’s retarded when people in the dialogue make fun of it. “bell” & “shookie.” or sookie. isn’t that an asian porn star’s name?
anyway, i give the show a b+ / chance to become better.
My personal opinion of Six Feet Under: Its a show that takes a while for you to realize how much you hate it. I thought I liked it for the first season, then I started to get annoyed with it second season, but I strived on, because it provided cool moments like when the Fishers have the Radiohead-blaring bonfire (god I’m a hipster). Then season 4 and the “That’s My Dog” episode. Uuuuugggghhhh. That was the episode that got me to just turn the damn thing off.
Also, I think it subscribes to the Donnie Darko “the more confusing our show is, the more complex it is” school of thought.
I have never heard anyone say Six Feet Under was hard to watch or at all confusing until now. Really? I’m not going to ask you for specifics because that’s annoying but I don’t get that at all. It took place mainly in one house and one business..in that same house. Also, that it had nothing to say. I think the family conflict that mostly settled around death and incredibly different people within the same family was fairly amazing writing. The finale sucked but the series was phenomenal.