You, madam, are no Buffy.
Warning: I am going to carry on about True Blood. I will spoil season one a bit. If you don't want to know anything about it, this is your cue to leave. Also, if you adore Sookie Stackhouse and your heart beats faster at the thought of her, you seriously, seriously don't want to read on.
I cannot stand Sookie Stackhouse.
I don't mind that she's innocent. Ish. I don't mind her being someone who is a bit of a fuddy duddy. I don't even mind her being prissy. Well, I wouldn't, if it were real. I guess that's the trouble with Sookie. I don't buy her at all. And yet every time I sit down to watch the show, I feel like I'm being given a glass of kool-aid. "This girl is nice. This girl is good. This girl is a nice good girl. You should like her." Well, I don't. Nice, good girls are boring. We're supposed to believe she's strong and noble and pure-hearted. What she is, actually, is very fickle, incredibly judgmental, flighty as all fuck, and has a stick so far up her ass I'm amazed she can walk at all. I do not like Sookie, and I'll be damned if I know why Bill the Broody is willing to walk into sunlight for her. I don't much like Bill, either--he's okay, kind of mopey and very out of touch with pretty much the whole planet, and inconsistent whenever there are other vampires are around, but whatever. But SOOKIE. Jesus, somebody stake her already.
What's driving me most nuts, though, is that they're just rewriting Buffy all over again, except they're doing it with flat characters and no Spike. Broody vampire, set apart, doomed, sad, idiotically loyal. Blonde cutie with special ability and a tragic arc. Hey, they even killed her mother figure! Mutant Enemy, though, knew how to finish a goddamned episode, and their seasonsed arced, not flopped around helplessly like a fish on the bank. But the more I think about it, the more I see Buffy cloning in Sookie, and the worse my mouth tastes. Buffy was real because she had a superiority complex, though for an actual reason. Buffy had the whole world on her shoulders in a very real way. Sookie? I don't know. I wanted to like her at the beginning, and I kind of did. And then she just started flaking, harder and harder, and then she started running hot and cold. I don't give a damn about her now. Whatever, just get the Sookie scenes over with so I can get to the Sam and Tara and Lafayette, except I think they just killed him THE FUCKING BASTARDS. I sure as hell hope they didn't kill him, because he was the biggest reason I was watching. I was hoping someday, after all the straight nudity and fucking around, we might get to see him in action. Kind of funny, for a show making such a screaming comparison to vampires and gays, which, actually, I'm not yet sure I like.
I want to watch season two, but I have to say, they broke me hard tonight. First of all, they wasted the whole hour on the dumb-ass "suspense" of "Would Renee kill Sookie?" Obviously, NOT. How could he, when the whole damn cast would come running to save Sookie? At least in the end they actually had her save herself. Of course, she did stand there blubbering helplessly while Sam covered up Bill, who lived out the Brooding Vampire trope to the flaming end. Of course, it wasn't tragic at all because of course he was going to come back. But then he did, and what did Sookie say? I have to paraphrase because I didn't write it down, but the gist was what bothered me anyway. Essentially she said this: I was mad at you before because you ran off and didn't protect me even though I'm always insisting I can protect myself, but now that you nearly killed yourself trying to save me when I actually was in trouble, even though you didn't succeed, I forgive you, because it's your willingness to sacrifice for me that matters. My god, what a pathetic, horrible bitch. What an incredibly naive, infantile "love." What a princess attitude. Never mind that Bill put himself in danger to protect you from the vampires and broke his own principles to get back to you. Never mind that you run so hot and cold we should install taps. Honestly, they're both pathetic. This isn't love. This is junior high.
Contrast this to Buffy Season Two. Buffy and Angel's affair starts out as naive love, grows a bit, then gets turned sideways on its head by a horrible curse, and then once it's fixed, Buffy has no choice but to damn him for the good of the whole world. Basically, they get three or four good seconds of real, honest, amazing love. And those three seconds are better than pretty much the collective season one of Sookie Stackhouse's character. The only thing that comes close is when she eats her grandmother's pie.
I like the setting. I like the concept. I like Sam, and I actually really like Jason. I adore Lafayette. I like the blond vampire sheriff. Sookie Stackhouse and her broody boyfriend can go back to character camp and come home when they can do more than play bad riffs on characters who actually amounted to something. Well, Angel only sort of amounted. But Buffy. Sookie, you don't deserve that blond hair.
I cannot stand Sookie Stackhouse.
I don't mind that she's innocent. Ish. I don't mind her being someone who is a bit of a fuddy duddy. I don't even mind her being prissy. Well, I wouldn't, if it were real. I guess that's the trouble with Sookie. I don't buy her at all. And yet every time I sit down to watch the show, I feel like I'm being given a glass of kool-aid. "This girl is nice. This girl is good. This girl is a nice good girl. You should like her." Well, I don't. Nice, good girls are boring. We're supposed to believe she's strong and noble and pure-hearted. What she is, actually, is very fickle, incredibly judgmental, flighty as all fuck, and has a stick so far up her ass I'm amazed she can walk at all. I do not like Sookie, and I'll be damned if I know why Bill the Broody is willing to walk into sunlight for her. I don't much like Bill, either--he's okay, kind of mopey and very out of touch with pretty much the whole planet, and inconsistent whenever there are other vampires are around, but whatever. But SOOKIE. Jesus, somebody stake her already.
What's driving me most nuts, though, is that they're just rewriting Buffy all over again, except they're doing it with flat characters and no Spike. Broody vampire, set apart, doomed, sad, idiotically loyal. Blonde cutie with special ability and a tragic arc. Hey, they even killed her mother figure! Mutant Enemy, though, knew how to finish a goddamned episode, and their seasonsed arced, not flopped around helplessly like a fish on the bank. But the more I think about it, the more I see Buffy cloning in Sookie, and the worse my mouth tastes. Buffy was real because she had a superiority complex, though for an actual reason. Buffy had the whole world on her shoulders in a very real way. Sookie? I don't know. I wanted to like her at the beginning, and I kind of did. And then she just started flaking, harder and harder, and then she started running hot and cold. I don't give a damn about her now. Whatever, just get the Sookie scenes over with so I can get to the Sam and Tara and Lafayette, except I think they just killed him THE FUCKING BASTARDS. I sure as hell hope they didn't kill him, because he was the biggest reason I was watching. I was hoping someday, after all the straight nudity and fucking around, we might get to see him in action. Kind of funny, for a show making such a screaming comparison to vampires and gays, which, actually, I'm not yet sure I like.
I want to watch season two, but I have to say, they broke me hard tonight. First of all, they wasted the whole hour on the dumb-ass "suspense" of "Would Renee kill Sookie?" Obviously, NOT. How could he, when the whole damn cast would come running to save Sookie? At least in the end they actually had her save herself. Of course, she did stand there blubbering helplessly while Sam covered up Bill, who lived out the Brooding Vampire trope to the flaming end. Of course, it wasn't tragic at all because of course he was going to come back. But then he did, and what did Sookie say? I have to paraphrase because I didn't write it down, but the gist was what bothered me anyway. Essentially she said this: I was mad at you before because you ran off and didn't protect me even though I'm always insisting I can protect myself, but now that you nearly killed yourself trying to save me when I actually was in trouble, even though you didn't succeed, I forgive you, because it's your willingness to sacrifice for me that matters. My god, what a pathetic, horrible bitch. What an incredibly naive, infantile "love." What a princess attitude. Never mind that Bill put himself in danger to protect you from the vampires and broke his own principles to get back to you. Never mind that you run so hot and cold we should install taps. Honestly, they're both pathetic. This isn't love. This is junior high.
Contrast this to Buffy Season Two. Buffy and Angel's affair starts out as naive love, grows a bit, then gets turned sideways on its head by a horrible curse, and then once it's fixed, Buffy has no choice but to damn him for the good of the whole world. Basically, they get three or four good seconds of real, honest, amazing love. And those three seconds are better than pretty much the collective season one of Sookie Stackhouse's character. The only thing that comes close is when she eats her grandmother's pie.
I like the setting. I like the concept. I like Sam, and I actually really like Jason. I adore Lafayette. I like the blond vampire sheriff. Sookie Stackhouse and her broody boyfriend can go back to character camp and come home when they can do more than play bad riffs on characters who actually amounted to something. Well, Angel only sort of amounted. But Buffy. Sookie, you don't deserve that blond hair.