Salon Sez "True Blood" Might Be Pretty Good

Bryan Christian — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:33:00 GMT

Salon's Heather Havrilesky has seen a few episodes of True Blood, HBO and Alan Ball's new Southern fried vampire drama. And she's got good things to say about it. Also, she's apparently been snacking on mescaline while on hold with the phone company.

In other words, AT&T not only hires hot-tempered vampires to handle its phone lines, AT&T not only colludes with companies run by hot-tempered vampires, but AT&T itself is run by hot-tempered vampires -- which explains why the corporate behemoth aided the president in his nefarious eavesdropping activities. But look, don't get rid of your land line, because even though the hot-tempered vampires at the FDA keep assuring us that cellphones are safe, international studies have correlated excessive cellphone use with brain tumors, something we might've known a decade ago, if not for the hot-tempered vampire CEOs of most of our large corporations and the hot-tempered vampire lobbyists who work for them and the hot-tempered vampires taking over the House and the Senate as we speak.

Um, HUUUUUUHHHHH?

But even though the second episode of the season isn't structured very well, with lots of rambling talk about nothing, even though the show lacks the tightness and the natural momentum of "Six Feet Under" (and the weight and the intensity, for that matter), "True Blood" is still odd, unpredictable and off-kilter. And while the same might've been said for the ill-fated, rambling David Milch experiment "John From Cincinnati," the difference is that at the end of each episode of "True Blood," I want to see what happens next. Sookie and Bill are both good characters, and the setting and the story are both original and unfamiliar.

Oh, OK, thanks, Heather. Don't leave the house until you get some sleep.

The Remote Island : AT&T

Salon Sez "True Blood" Might Be Pretty Good