Spellbound? More Like Sexbound: True Blood S4, S8

Great round table!  I love it!
 
Where oh where do I begin?
 
First of whoever writes Sookie’s character for this show has made her unsympathetic and she can’t be redeemed.  No, they aren’t going to kill her off, unfortunately.  However those digs that Tommy the skinwalker keeps getting in about Sookie and how he fired her, show that some of the writer’s find Sookie annoying….which she is.  OMG, she’s so annoying!  *jumps up, screams and sits back down*

They also wrote Tara’s character as dumb and a glutton for punishment.  She needs to bounce!  Tara leave Bon Temps and find new friends….Sookie is NOT a friend.  Sookie only cares about getting laid and being the center of the universe.
Tara needs to move to Canada to some peaceful community and see a therapist.  Writers, give her a break!

The sex scenes between Eric and Sookie grossed me out.  Seriously, I had to fast forward through most of their scenes.  They were NOT amazing.  Baby Eric is nauseating and couple that with Mommy Sookie and I barf up my dinner.

I love Debbie Pelt!  I could actually see her snap!  Crazy Debbie is back!!!!!   Alcide you are a retard for rescuing Sookie.  Let the girl take a bullet, it will help her develop some character. 
I hope Debbie shifts into a wolf and eats Sookie’s feet! 

I love the line from Debbie to Alcide,  “I made some new friends today, I met some real nice bitches.”  Hilarious and over at the io9.com site, they made of fun of that….’cause your a wolf, duh.’

Yeah, who knew that Marcus would have some common sense.  But Sam could take him into a fight, Sam could shift into Velociraptor or a T-Rex or King Kong if he went to the wax museum and saw one to emulate. 
I would like to see Sam shift into something other than a dog, fly, horse, or a rhino when he killed the Maenad.

Why aren’t they doing more with Luna’s character??? You guys said it at the last roundtable.  Why is Luna a plot device?

I agree with Laffy’s reaction to the ghost! 
Are the Bellfleur’s related to that ghost lady?   Is the ghost lady going to have anything to do with stopping Antonia?Are they going to really explore the ugly history in the South of White men keeping Black women as mistresses and treating them cruelly and what they did to the children?  Is True Blood really going to go there?

Ok did Bill save Tara because he should have from last season….OR….did he save her cause she’s Sookie’s friend? Someone explain this to me.

I actually like the fact that Hoyt stood up for himself and he wasn’t needy like Jess had envisioned in her dream.  He was the opposite and kicked her to the curb.

Jason= Bros before Hos, I guess.  The saying is wrong on so many levels and sexist but in this case, it kind of fits.

Ok here’s my idea for the show.  I saw that the writers kill Sookie, Eric, Bill, Arlene, and Tommy.  Just kill them off.

Start a spin off series with Pam, Tara, Laffy, Jesus, Debbie, Jess, Hoyt, Jason, Andy, Terry, Keenya, Maxine Fortenberry, and keep Alcide cause he’s hot.  I would watch that show!  That could be a 1 hour supernatural comedy, like Community, but set in Louisiana.  Just Pam, Tara, Laffy, and Debbie alone would make it worthwhile.

And finally, finally what happened to Crystal Norris and the inbred Werepanther community?  Hello!  Where are they?

Actually I would like to see Crystal and Debbie shift into Weres and chew Sookie’s legs off.

A question, I’ve heard the Werepanthers are stronger and faster that Werewolves….is this true?  Someone please tell me, because if that’s the case, inbred or not, Werepanthers could be running Bon Temps.

I love the TB roundtable so much! 

Two points to add from this French- and bastard-Latin-literate reader:

1. The lullabye I recognize from French class, so it’s not just Creole. “Faire dodo, bebe mon petit” which is “go night-night, baby my little one.”

2. The bit Antonia was saying to Erik was at least in some spots “servus” and “meus” so it seemed pretty clearly a “you will serve me now” kind of spell.

The previous V-trips were cool but Sookie’s just had me laughing.

Apparently, Bill is willing to help Tara when it involves not a bit of effort or cost.

The ‘big fight’ in the end highlighted one of the weaknesses of show: it can’t handle action. You’d think with this being the second most popular HBO show ever, they’d be able to budget in a fight choreographer and some stunt doubles.

Very true about Bill helping Tara. He clearly had authority over Pam. I mean, it’s easy to help others when you can threaten subjects with the “true death.” Regarding why Bill helped her most people believed it was b/c she was Sookie’s friend. But it could be a little of that as well as an answer to his inaction last season when Tara asked for his help in a very dire situation. It really doesn’t make up for him leaving her with Franklin.

What is the most popular show on HBO? And I agree, I would expect more in terms of action.

The Sopranos is the highest rated show HBO has ever had. It peaked at 13.4 million (S 04 E 01) while True Blood’s most watched episode managed 5.4 million (S 03 E 11).

True Blood is HBO’s most popular current show though.

I didn’t even realize I fast forwarded through pretty much all Sookie/Eric scenes for this episode until I read the round up. I don’t know if it’s me but the dialogue between Sookie and Eric is just cheesy and overdone.  And the sex scenes range from boring to bizarre. But definetely too many regardless.

I have a feeling Tommy will be the one to bite it this season. Either that or be written off. I really don’t know how much more his character can offer.

Even though I don’t care for her True Blood character anymore than Debbie Pelt in the book, I did sympathize with TBV Deb somewhat.

I think Tara finally caught the stupid from Sookie. And I don’t know if Bill saved Tara because he threw her under the bus last season or because Sookie would get her feelings hurt and cry. Again. It really doesn’t make a difference why he saved her. Like a couple of others have pointed out, it came at pretty much no cost to him whatsoever. Threaten Pam and lend a helping hand??

“Start a spin off series with Pam, Tara, Laffy, Jesus, Debbie, Jess,
Hoyt, Jason, Andy, Terry, Keenya, Maxine Fortenberry, and keep Alcide
cause he’s hot.  I would watch that show!  That could be a 1 hour
supernatural comedy, like Community, but set in Louisiana.  Just Pam,
Tara, Laffy, and Debbie alone would make it worthwhile.”

I like how you think. THAT would be an awesome show. I swear, these roundtables are better than the show itself. These Sookie/Eric scenes are freaking ridiculous. I was staring at my computer mumbling “What The Fuck??” every couple of minutes when they were tripping off each other’s blood. (And Latoya, you ain’t right for that 2 Become 1 vid. HA!

So…I’m still waiting for this Laffy is a medium storyline to pay off. Because right now I’m getting impatient and wondering what the point of that excursion to Mexico was. And how the ghost storyline is going to play out.

Also, did anyone else crack up at Luna’s ex when he was getting brolic with Sam? I’m going to need him to calm down, especially because he was the only person making sense in the first half of this episode.

I’m also annoyed as hell at every man on this show being like, contractually obligated to fall in love with Sookie. She’s so stuck up her own ass it’s not even funny. I’m annoyed at Alcide’s obsession with her, like every other straight male’s obsession with her. Can’t Alcide hook up with Tara? Or pay attention to his own damn girlfriend?

Uh…I need to end on a positive note. Um…Bill’s wardrobe has improved greatly this season. Not being with SUCKEH has done wonders for him.

I thought Alcide had much more chemistry with Tara in that little scene of helping them escape the plantation last season. I’ve read most of the books and book Sookie is so much more level-headed than TV Sookie.

>I hate to say it, but the woman who plays Mavis isn’t very convincing.  
Her reaction to her missing/dead child was weak.  And I’m sick of her
singing.

I thought the same – If I trusted the writers more (or rather, if the writing crew were more consistent), I’d say that Mavis is the epitome of the unreliable narrator. I mean, she seems benign, but she’s skulking around, she definitely isn’t trying to get Lala on her side initially, and she only gives her backstory to Lala in a dream to essentially soften him up for possession, it looked like. So either her muted reaction (I was expecting typical TV (and real life)  hysteria of trying to get into the house, etc.) is an effect of being translated into a human’s dream state (the way things that should really affect us sometimes don’t in dreams), or because SHE”S NOT TELLING THE TRUTH.

And since fire seems to be a theme with her (burnt baby doll, burning matches), I’m wondering whether there’s some Desiree’s Baby type murder/suicide shenanigans. But only if I trusted the writers. Which I usually don’t on TB.

“The thing is, a White man with a Black woman in the South is not the same as
an Anglo man and a dark-skinned Creole woman in Louisiana. Creoles are white or
mixed race. It’s very possible that Ghost Lady has a blood relative who is as
white as Baby-Killer Man. While I’m at it, I don’t think a Creole woman 
of that time period would refer to herself as a ‘negress.’  ”

Very true. Creoles pretty much call/called themselves Creoles. “Negress” was
a term applied  to pureblooded or nearly pureblooded Black women in Louisiana. I
also wonder where they are going to go with this storyline.
 

I was thinking of last season with Alcide and Tara. I thought for sure they were going to hook up and then…nada. Hmph. I haven’t read the books so I do wonder why the TV writers have made  Sookie so annoying. True, HBO has a long history of creating protagonists that aren’t very sympathetic but at some level, you still root for them. I’m not really rooting for Sookie at this point.

 So less sexual assault but now baby murder? Jesus Christ. And no Bill, using your authority to save her doesn’t make up for leaving Tara to be raped and confined.

Two things: 

1.  Apart from the stereotype of the imperiled blonde whose trampoline is the entire male gender and whose role default’s always always protag, people might wonder why it’s a problem that Sookie’s an oblivious character:  Why should the value of a story come down to the likability of the characters?  A: Because she’s intended to be “good,” just as Carrie was in that putrid love poem to the superego, Sex in the City.  Because she’s bad in uninteresting ways.  Because she says more about the writers’ unexamined values than the joy of smarter writers’ moral ambiguity.

2.  I understand that vampire stories are susceptible to bad bad taste as well as good bad taste, and that part of the audience wants romance novel clichés.  But why would the most banal members of a vampire fan base want endless harmless sex from ep to ep?  Active fangs are an S&M prop, not flowers strewn on a white sheet.  Why is this fanservice when vampire fans tend to expect their sex to be rough?

In the last paragraph, I meant to write, “The series would not be so loved if Sookie were as awful in the BOOKS as she is on the screen.” 

Laurell K Hamilton said she’s friends with Charlaine Harris. Maybe Charlaine took a cue from the Anita Blake series which was nauseatingly familiar in that every man and even a few women must fall in love (lust) with the female protagonist.

Hoyt calling her dead etc reminds of me how when some non-whites date white people, they’re bracing for the day their loved one calls them a racial slur during a really bad fight.

“With Eric having lost his memories, she’s really just having sex with his body. . . .”  That point is valid even apart from moral objections regarding true consent.  Nuanced sex scenes can toy with alarming forms of transgression, but sex with an absent partner is objectification in the stupidest sense — particularly when the tone isn’t intended to be disturbing/ironic.  When she’s with Blow-to-the-Head Eric, Sookie’s a parody of fans who dream of imposing their fantasies on her zombie-compliant carcass or, alternately,  the female version of Dennis Nillsen making romance novel comments to the cadaver he’s anointing with oils and strewing with rose petals.

Either way, the effect makes you yawn or wince.