tvthatdoesntsuck

REVIEW FOR

TRUE BLOOD
Episode Three
“Mine”
Written by Alan Ball 

Wow.  Alan Ball is really putting that work in.  He wrote and directed the pilot, and wrote the next two as well.  That is a lot of writing.  While the quality hasn’t been as high as the stuff the man has cranked out in the past, these episodes were certainly not bad.  The only thing is that there isn’t much different about them either.

This episode–and I’m sorry for being a week late–is very much the same as the other two.  It furthers the story, has interesting developments for the characters, and sets up some minorly interesting ideas about vampires and how they can function in human society.  However, it still isn’t going anywhere further than it’s already been.  This past episode confirmed the theory I came up with after watching the first two episodes.  This is a good show, with the potential to remain quite good for a long time–but now I’m pretty convinced that it just doesn’t have the right stuff to ever be great.  And that’s okay.  It’s still a lot better than anything else you’ll see throughout the week… but I did expect slightly more from Alan Ball.

 Even if it’s not great television, it certainly doesn’t suck.  It’s quite entertaining.  Anna Paquin continues to rock, Stephen Moyer (Bill) continues to be unimpressive, but Paquin is good enough to sell their love story.  The vampires as a whole range from frightening to frighteningly cheesy, but those kinks could/should be worked out down the line.  To balance out some of the awkward vampire nest scenes in this episode is Rutina Wesley (Tara) who really pulled a rabbit out of a hat in this episode.  She was sort of annoying in the previous two, but I thought she gave a very effective performance here.  Very layered.  Everyone else, other than the previously mentioned Moyer, was competent.

If I had one major complaint about the show so far–particularly this episode–would be that there is way too much sex.  I get it.  It’s a sexy show.  But in television, especially television with supernatural elements, they should try to maintain a level of believability, and some of this stuff is a supreme stretch.  Sex happens.  But it happened to nearly ever member of the cast within this hour, and I’m afraid they’re using that as a device to a) draw in the vampire-luster-afters who made the travesty of Moonlight seem like a masterpiece because of the wooden Alex Loughlin’s abs and b) use it as the device to forward the plot.  A plot device is fine, but don’t hinge your show on sex with you have strong enough characters to hinge it on them.

7/10

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