Like Neon

I have a love/hate relationship with Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire series. I’ve read most of the books (Having skipped a couple for dubious content above and beyond the norm), and while the writing is only marginally better than something like Twilight or a mediocre fan-fic, I can’t deny that the books are kinda like potato chips: You can’t stop reading them even though you know they’re bad for you, and you end up feeling vaguely guilty for enjoying them as much as you did. The plot lines manage to feel contrived even when they’re about bizarre circumstances, and the heroine is the sort of self-righteous Southern stereotype that I (and hundreds of other Southern women) would smack the shit out of in real life.

That said, I didn’t read the books because I’m a masochist: Harris has a knack for creating secondary characters who are easy to love. This made the leap to the television counterpart, True Blood, which is fortunate, because precious Sookie Stackhouse and her old-fashioned vampire boyfriend Bill are becoming more tedious with every episode.

It makes me wonder: What exactly are the writers thinking? How many times do we really need to see an epic Sookie and Bill love scene? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Anna Paquin (Sookie) and Stephen Moyer (Bill) are apparently making their own love scenes in real life, or maybe it’s just a mis-adjustment of priorities, but I don’t understand it, and it’s beginning to seriously harsh my enjoyment of one of my favorite programs. Personal physical preferences aside, doesn’t the idea hold that the more you do something, the less impactful it seems? At the beginning of the first season, I actually found Sookie and Bill’s love scenes sexy; now I just want them the hell off my screen.

All of this seems even more of a waste when you factor in the inordinate amount of delightfully engaging and entertaining secondary characters. Come on, True Blood. Stop wasting my time with Bill’s ridiculous drawl and Sookie’s plastic-plated earnestness and show me people who are actually interesting.