3 seasons of True Blood

It took a lot of thought to come up with my first full length post.  True Blood is back on Sunday, so I decided to do a recap of the first three seasons.  Without actually re-watching any of them.  True Blood is my favorite summer show, and I have no illusions about the series.  I know it isn't quality television; I know it is absolute trash, but what beautiful, sinful, decadent trash.  So here follows my synopsis of True Blood to date.  Memory lapses are mine, plot holes are all courtesy of Alan Ball.

 Warning: If you are the type of person who gets upset about spoilers, do not read any further.  I will spoil the hell out of each season.  You have been warned.

Season 1

Let's start by meeting the citizens of Bon Tempes Louisiana.

First, there's Sookie Stackhouse.  A blond telepathic waitress, who is oh so sweet and innocent and blah blah blah.  Anna Paquin plays Sookie with the worst accent I have ever heard.  First time I heard it I literally said WTF.  I'm no dialect coach, but hers has to be the worst on the show.  Anyway, Sookie is the person around which the whole world revolves, apparently.

Then there's Bill Compton, the dark mysterious new-in-town stranger.  No secret here, he's a vampire.  I chose this pic because whenever Bill gets all vampy he looks like this.  It's supposed to be all dark and dangerous and sexy, but he just looks like he had some bad Mexican (blood) and it's caused him gastrointestinal distress.

Jason Stackhouse, Sookie's dumb as a box of rocks brother.  Jason's main purpose on the show is to stand around looking hot and saying dumb things.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

  

Tara, Sookie's sassy, black BFF since kindergarten.  In the first season she spends her days going around telling people how it is, doing the "Oh-no-you-di'nt" neck roll. In following seasons she gets turned into the writers' punching bag.  More on that later.

Lafayette, Tara's cousin and the cook at Merlottes, the bar that Sookie works at.  Lafayette is a gay black man in a small town in Louisiana so he's not quite living the high life.  In addition to being a cook he also sells a variety of illicit substances, including V which is vampire blood.  V apparently acts like heroin in small doses and meth in higher doses. Lafayette is Awesome with a capital A and to find out why, see the video.

Sam Merlotte, Sookie's boss.  Sam is a shape shifter, just getting that out of the way now.  I don't like Sam.  He's boring.  I really can't say much more than that.

And the final character in the True Blood roll call: Eric Northman.  Eric is a 1,000 year old vampire who owns a bar in Shreveport.  He is also the Sheriff of Area 5.  I don't understand the vampire hierarchy, and I'm too lazy to read up on it in Wikipedia, so we'll just assume that's a big thing.  He doesn't do much in season 1, but gets a lot more play later. 

So, Season 1 Synopsis.  Sookie meets Bill in a bar.  Bill, despite being a vampire manages to be caught by two rednecks who want to bleed him so they can sell his blood.  Sookie somehow manages to save him and then somehow she nearly gets killed and he has to save her.  Sookie falls hard for Bill after drinking his blood.  Spoiler for season 2: drinking vampire blood causes you to have an extreme attachment to the vampire.

Jason is a horndog who is banging every woman in town.  Mysteriously, all the women he's been with recently have turned up dead.  Suspicion immediately falls on the poor dullard.

Tara's mom is a drunken, abusive brute.  For some reason she (mom not Tara) gets it in her head that she needs an exorcism.  Tara's pretty sure it's a load of crap, but mom insists.

Meanwhile, Jason is cleared of the murder charges and for some reason, wants to try V.  Lafayette sells some to him, but cautions it should only be taken in minuscule doses.  Jason doesn't listen and ODs on it.  Hilarity ensues.

Bill and Sookie do some lovey-dovey stuff.  It becomes a thing to spell and pronounce Sookie as "Sookeh" and Bill as "Beel" due to the atrocious accents.

Jason is on the prowl for more V. He ends up at Fangtasia, the vamp bar in Shreveport.  While there he meets some hippie chick, also looking to score V.  They hook up and get high together, and I go get a snack during their hallucinations, because it really doesn't go anywhere.  Until they kidnap a vampire to drain his blood.

At some point Sookie is attacked by a vampire at Fangtasia and Bill kills the assailant in front of multiple vampy witnesses.  This results in Bill having to see the Magistrate (I don't know where this guy fits into the hierarchy, he's higher than Eric, lower than the Kings and Queens, but seems to exist outside their reach).  Bill's punishment for permanently deading a fellow undead is to create a new blood sucker.  In enters Jessica, who will be addressed in season 2.

Tara and Sam hook up.  Tara gets all commitment-phobic and Sam's all "What's up with you?"  

Sookie finds out there's such a thing as shapeshifters when the loveable pooch that hangs around Merlotte's falls asleep at the foot of her bed and wakes up as a naked not-bad-to-look-at Sam.

Meanwhile, Jason's GF - and soul mate for life despite just having just met her yesterday - kills the vampire they've been hiding in the basement.  Jason feels bad about this, because Eddie was a nice guy and really a poor excuse for a vampire.  This sets him up for his adventures next season.

I kind of forget any other details.

Oh, and Rene turns out to be the killer.  Who's Rene you ask? Yeah, I know.

Next up: A swiss cheese recap of True Blood Season Two: Sookeh Does Dallas.