IF you watched HBO’s life-after-life vampire saga, “True Blood,” last season only for the true explicit sex, rather than for the thrill of watching humans get ripped to bits, you may be less than smitten and bitten this season. There’s more true blood and less explicit sex.
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Me? I like the fact that they’ve backed off on the sex (and if you watch the show, no, that was not a pun), because I don’t watch vampire flicks to see vampire chicks getting it in ways in which their mothers would never approve — nor do I want to see vampires buying their fake blood at Larry’s Convenience Mart instead of getting the real thing the old fashioned way — by ripping into human veins.
So, after four episodes last season, I dropped out. I mean, watching all that explicit vampire sex in the open newsroom (it’s my job!) could have caused HR to come down on my head.
Anyway, I’m happy to report that this season, there’s More Blood! More Torture! More Killing! and More Intrigue! than last season which seemed to be more about Sookie’s (Anna Paquin) dim-witted, well-endowed if not always well-intentioned brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), having sex than it was about vampires killing people.
Don’t get me wrong, Sunday night’s premiere is hardly devoid of sex. That is especially evident in the explicit sex scenes between mind-reader Sookie and her 173-year-old vampire boyfriend, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who happens to be her true life lover in real life.
Anyway, the premiere begins exactly where the series left off last season with the murdered body in Merlotte’s roadhouse parking lot.
Meantime, Tara (Rutina Wesley) starts a relationship with Eggs Benedict, (a man, not a brunch dish) played by Mehcad Brooks, whom she meets at the house of mysterious love goddess’ Maryann (Michelle Forbes), under whose spell she has fallen completely. And you’ll be happy to know that said mysterious love goddess has come back to claim, well, something, from Sookie’s boss, Sam (Sam Trammel) whom she ravaged when he was just a young pup — literally.
Because you can take the vampire out of Transylvania but you can’t take the Transylvania out of a vampire, the vamps have a torture chamber for human vampire killers in which some familiar characters are tied to a torment wheel worthy of Torquemada. Tragically, one of the prisoners gets ripped to shreds by a massive male vampire who happens to be getting his hair highlighted at the time — which only goes to prove that if you tick off a vamp getting a dye job, you will be the next die job.
“True Blood” Sunday night at 9 on HBO
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