We have completely run out of tv shows to watch, except for
The Simpsons and
Doctor Who, which go on forever, so last night we latched onto
True Blood, which ran from 2008 to 2014 on HBO.
This is the stereotypic South of Eudora Welty and Mama's Family, where people named Hoyt Fortenberry shop at the Piggly-Wiggly and drink sweet tea on the veranda, where everyone is related to everybody else's great-grand daddy once removed, and where the War means the Civil War...um, I mean the War of Yankee Aggression.
It starts in media res, two years after vampires have "come out of the coffin," har har -- yep, the connection with LGBT people is just that heavy-handed -- due to the invention of artificial blood, brand name True Blood, which some humans have developed a taste for. Snooty fratboy Brett (Josh Kelly, left), looking for a store that sells it, learns too late that every long-haired, multi-ringed Goth isn't a vampire; and sometimes chubby rednecks are.
We switch to the problems of Tara, who gets fired from or quits every job because she doesn't abide idiots and her best friend Sookie, who can read minds. Sookie and soon Tara work at Merlotte's Bar, where the owner, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell, top photo and left), is in love with her. He won't come out with it, but of course Sookie can read his mind.
The only gay character so far is the bar's swishy cook, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), a stereotyped flamboyant, promiscuous queen who claims he's done most of the men in town, and likes to flirt with racist, homophobic rednecks to get them all scared. He doesn't get a boyfriend until late in the series.
That same evening, the bar's other waitress, Maudette, hooks up with Sookie's brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten). She's a fangbanger, a human who likes sex with vampires, because they get rough. She offers to show him the video, which turns him on so much that he wants to do rough sex, including strangling her...a little too enthusiastically. And she's taping the encounter!
Kwanten butt after the break
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