TRUE BLOOD - Episode 2 Review:"The First Taste"
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HBO's new vampire series "True Blood" continues with episode two entitled "The First Taste". In this episode, Sookie is rescued by the vampire Bill from a vicious attack at the hands of two locals who as shown at the end of episode 1, "Strange Love"...don't approve of her newfound romance with Bill. Bill quickly disposes of the two hicks, and manages to rescue Sookie. But she's suffered severe injuries from the attack, and has lost partial mobility because of it. Can Bill save her?? And how? The thing to like most about episode two is it moves things ahead fairly quickly in the overall universe of the show. The episode fast-tracks the romance between Bill and Sookie, and creates stronger comparisons between the southern, god-fearing, anglo-saxon-redneck attitude towards vampires, ala those who are different...and their past and still present to an extent...attitudes towards minorities and gays and lesbians.
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The show really captures the divide in the town between humans and vampires, which is further reiterated by a scene showing a bumpersticker which reads..."God Hates Fangs", a take off of the "God Hates Fags" stickers sometimes posted by people who are against gays. This is what really makes this show work, staying on the realistic attitudes in a smalltown towards vampires...and the vampires trying to change those attitudes through dialogue and other means. Similar to the civil right struggles of the olden days. The ad campaign before this show debuted made it obvious that the writing on the show was gonna go in this direction, and it even throws in some interesting wrinkles, such as Sookie's best friend Tara who is black, making sweeping generalizations about vampires...much to Sookie's dismay.
Within all this craziness of the tensions between vampires and humans in town simmering, and a few townspeople meeting grissly, yet mysterious ends via tornadoes and cra accidents...Sookie is hellbent on deepening her relationship with Bill, and even invites him over to her grandmothers house for a visit. A visit which provides many chuckleworthy moments when he's given the third degree by Tara and Sooike's brother Jason. Jason having his own problems in episode two with a recent bedroom partner turning up dead, and his current girlfriend giving him the cold shoulder. But interestingly enough, Jason's lovelife in the episode seems on it's way to becoming more complicated as we are given a glimmer of a possible storyline setup for a romance between him and a major female character in the show.
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Meanwhile Sookie herself seems to be more attracted to the fact that Bill is a vampire, more than she's attracted to Bill himself. This puts Bill kind of on edge considering he doesn't know how to respond to a human who is actually not squemish at or terrified of the fact that he's a bloodsucker. In fact, Sookie even invites Bill to use some of his vampire abilities on her, and also questions him about usual vampire powers such as shape-shifting, flying, etc. All of this creates alot of humorous moments within the collection of scenes between the two considering the dynamic of it all. The vampire has the tables turned on him, and is not exactly sure how to respond to someone who isn't scared of him, not even in the slightest. |
Sookie's issues of her own re-emerge in the episodes conclusion however, where her mind-reading and telepathic abilities cause a few uncomfortable moments at the restaurant, but on the plus side...we do learn something new about Sookies powers, which is that she can control them when she wants or needs to. Although as evidence by one scene in the restuurant, she obviously has not gotten the full hang of supressing her mind-reading abilities when she needs to. But it's something to look forward to seeing play out as the series progresses, and along with that...whether or not her abilities will grow in strength because of an event that takes place early on in episode two. Episode two concludes in cliffhanger fashion, with Sookie finding herself in trouble again, trouble far worse than the bit of trouble she was in at the conclusion of episode 1. Episode 3:"Mine", should definitely up the ante a little bit actionwise.
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