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Critic Reviews
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The saga of Sookie Stackhouse (the tremulous but sturdy Anna Paquin) and her lovah Bill (slit-eyed Stephen Moyer) gets off to a great, fast start, picking up where last season left off.
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Silly, gross, soapy, mysterious, intriguing, exotic, erotic True Blood is fun. Even more fun this season.
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Sookie remains a compelling plucky heroine, undaunted by the violent strangeness of Bill's nighttime world but still holding fast to her moral center.
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In short, there's a helluva lot going on, and the assorted subplots feel more compelling this season, including the constant sense of menace surrounding both Eric and Maryann.
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What is abundantly clear by this brutal, swift, and exquisitely yucky scene is True Blood is back, doing what it likes to do best, that is, dumping you into yet another crisis with precious little context or buildup.
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It’s really located at that dirty crossroads HBO discovered long ago, smart enough to be uninsulting, but obsessed enough (and graphic enough about) sex and wildness that it is addictively watchable, not so much a guilty pleasure as a binge food. Cable catnip, in other words.
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The curious thing about True Blood is that, even if you’re not that interested in their relationship, there are other things to enjoy, notably the supporting performances and the mostly efficient plotting.
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Fans can read into it whatever they want, but the series' greatest strength is the vampire quality of accepting fate and reveling in it.
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The second season of HBO's True Blood turns up the carnage, the heat and the allegory. If you have a strong stomach and sense of humor, you won't be disappointed.
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Ball has brushed up on his Buffy reruns, opening up the show's universe to far more devilish creatures and ideas, and it seems the further he steps away from the vamps, the closer he gets to the beating heart of the human.
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Indeed, the fleshed-out secondary characters have better material than do Sookie and her vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer), who labor under the burden of replaying for the umpteenth time the forbidden love between the living and the dead, the light and the dark.
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A world that admits vampires probably can't afford to deny entry to shapeshifters and the other so-far unclassified supernatural types who've made their way to Bon Temps, but there's an awful lot going on in True Blood this season, and not all of it is equally interesting.
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Not only do the other stories save True Blood--before you can get sick of Sookie and Bill, Blood shifts its focus to more interesting characters--but the show's persistent humor breaks through with enough frequency to have an impact.
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So once again, just as we're starting to warm up to our deathly pale but diplomatic vampire friends, we're treated to Ball's rather prosaic enjoyment of stock Southern Christian characters who would only seem fresh and original to a Frenchman.
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But mostly, the show improved--in my eyes, anyway--by doing well enough by what was good about it that I could simply ignore the weaker stuff.
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I'm happy to report that this season, there's More Blood! More Torture! More Killing! and More Intrigue! than last season.
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Without a grounding in vampire lore, many viewers won't get a lot of the nuances, including the humor, in True Blood. So as good as Paquin and company play it, this is another quality pay-cable show that does have a secret handshake.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 225 out of 256
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Mixed: 13 out of 256
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Negative: 18 out of 256
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roKempDec 20, 2009Dark, funny, sexy! Forget about Twilight, that's for teenage girls but has nothing to offer. This is IT!
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ChristieLNov 17, 2009One of my favorite shows, I am very excited for season 3
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Nov 9, 2012