When I learned about the possible reboot of True Blood, HBO’s sexy vampire show, I rolled my eyes.
Don’t get me wrong. While I enjoyed True Blood… it’s not like this show is a classic. At best, it was campy, sexy trash that got blood and semen all over Twilight’s glittering memory. At its worst, its over the top, bombastic storylines went nowhere and made me regret ever watching Sex & the City and and giving HBO the misplaced confidence that it can— and should— make shows about sex.
I get that Hollywood reboots everything— and sometimes it works. I love me some Star Trek Discovery. But, True Blood was its own worst enemy.
Not only did this show slowly sink under its own weight, it was clear the writers and producers had no idea why the show worked. We wanted more Bill and Sookie, or Sookie and Eric, or just have the show be a three way with all them.
But I also think that this reboot is about cashing in on nostalgia, and that’s why it won’t work. The show was at it’s best when there were fangs and bodily fluids everywhere.
And can anyone replicate the chemistry that this show had? Sookie and Bill smouldered onscreen… because the actors in real life became romantically involved while shooting the show. The sparks between Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer are real.
It wasn’t just them— Eric and Pam were amazing: dark, sassy, sexy as well. And Lafayette was fire. Moment of silence for Nelsan Ellis.
But in the end, True Blood just couldn’t sustain itself. Too many characters. We wanted suspense and sex.
Not a lame love interest named Egg. Or a subplot about vampire Nazis. Or the necromancer witches from Season 4. Or that time Detective Bellefluer knocked up a fairy who gave birth to like four daughters at once, because that’s just what the show needed: more characters than Game of Thrones. But no one cared about all these extra people. None of these characters were gonna be the Vampire King of Mississippi, or would ever be as hot as Eric.
Bilith was fun, but the show lost it’s magic, getting bogged down in werewolf pack infighting and vampire politics. Too much exposition, not enough sex and mystery.
The show got too tangled, and ended up just being men simping for Sookie.
Time’s have changed. Snoop Dogg is an old man who complains about Cardi B’s WAP— because men singing about women’s bodies is ok, but when women sing about their own bodies, that’s just wrong.
Leave the past in the past. Don’t try to replicate the spark the first few seasons of True Blood had. And honestly? This theme of using queer sexuality as a parallel for vampires is getting a little… old.
Between the 1983 film the Hunger, which stared a love triangle and had several lovely sapphic scenes, to Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire’s sly winks at queer coding, to True Blood blatantly having vampires’ struggle for civil rights a stand in for gays… I’m over the metaphor. God hates fangs? Wow, how… edgy.
I mean, if you’re going to do yet another show using queer people as some kind of metaphor… actually just skip the damn metaphor and just have a show about queer people and / or discrimination instead? Throw in some sex and supernatural to keep it interesting? Because a show about ethical polyamory, open relationships and sexy magical lesbians, enbys, gay men, drag kings and queens would be something I would watch the fuck out of.
I’m really done with comparing queers and vampires. LGBT people aren’t demons, or predators. And if you’re going to pick a metaphor for gays, maybe pick one that doesn’t involve transmitting a deadly disease through physical contact?
A friend also told me about in the BBC 3 show “Being Human,” where the running joke is that people thought a characters secret was the he was gay, but he he was actually a vampire.
I haven’t watched it, but then I also didn’t watch the last season of True Blood. Because vampire fairies. To quote Pam:
There have got to be better stories about the supernatural and queers than a rehash of a show that wasn’t that great in the first place.
Detroiter in Poland 
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