Project-Blu ‘True Blood: The Complete First Season’ Review, by Nate Boss and Guest Contributor Samantha Boss

True Blood: The Complete First Season

By: Nate Boss and Guest Contributor Samantha Boss, 5.28.2009

The Movie Itself:
 Note: the movie/show portion of this review is a joint review, and does some back and forth between the two writers. The introduction and synopsis has been written by Nate, while the back and forth portions are clearly defined as to who is the writer.

"I wanna do bad things with you."

I don't know when the entire vampire scene turned to romance. I mean, it kinda makes sense, as women love the dark and mysterious type (which is my excuse as to why I don't get as many straying eyes....kinda hard to be dark and mysterious when you're pale and loud), the act of vampirism involves some kinky biting, that seems to be more a turn on these days, while tales of forbidden love always drive the females wild (what love is more forbidden than that of one who can and will kill you?). Uber-hack Stephanie Meyer is the most recent, and sadly, most famous to capitalize on this audience, with her ridiculous bastardization of the ancient legend, while Charlaine Harris has made quite a cult following of her own with her Sookie Stackhouse books, that inspired the HBO series True Blood.

True Blood is a twisting tale set in an alternate universe, in Louisiana. Vampires have been known to the public for 2 years now, their rights being a serious political and religious issue that has raised more than a few eyebrows. But vampires aren't the only thing different, as Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a waitress at a diner (Merlotte's) in Bon Temps, has the "curse" of hearing the thoughts of those around her, with one exception: Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), the local celebrity, due to his being open about his vampirism. Sookie and Bill form a relationship, but there are severe dangers, from romantic competition from Sookie's boss, Sam (Sam Trammell), to the public views on human-vampire relations, to a killer that has been targeting vampire-friendly females in Bon Temps.

Uniqueness/innovation of the show
Nate: I have to admit, the world presented in True Blood is a case of inspired writing. The entire world is fleshed out, with countless bits of unique terminology that show the prejudices and beliefs of the show. I couldn't help but find the terms "fangbanger," "coming out of the coffin," or "v juice" intriguing. The show puts a funny twist on vampirism, in that the undead are not only hunted by those who hate them (basically, bigots), but are also mined for their blood, that humans use as a semi-psychotropic drug, that enhances their senses. Blade, the comic adaptation movie, found a good way to mainstream vampirism, with blood banks being fronts, and such is not an issue in True Blood, as a drink (Tru Blood) is marketed at the vampires, a synthetic nutrition, flavored for the varying blood types (A positive, O negative, etc). The way the story is presented becomes full with all these little silly details, that create a believable tale, and a fun twist on the genre rules of vampires.

Samantha: I found the story lines to be a bit predictable and cliche. There is the obligatory "sweet little girl falls in love with vampire (and vise versa) the second they lay eyes on each other" idea, that has been used up. Also, the setting. Anyone whose read vampire novels set in America, excluding of course Twilight, knows for some reason the epicenter of American vampirism takes place in Louisiana. The trifecta of "saw that one coming" is complete when when a close friend of our heroine, Sookie, turns out to be yet another supernatural creature. Despite these things, there were some unique new add-ons to the old vampire romance story, such as the vampires being, as they would say, "out of the coffin." As Nate already brought up, there's an entire dialogue of slang created for the series, my particular favorite being "fang banger."

"Hidden" meanings
Nate: Much like the X-Men comics and films, there are numerous analogies in True Blood, that are far from veiled. The entire show is about diversity and acceptance, in a way. Bigots are afraid of what they don't know, blaming the wrongs of the world on the vampires they fear. Religious groups form, declaring vampirism to be a tool of the devil, which is a take that is beyond believable considering the massive amount of hate and intolerance being spewed from a few "religions" these days. The opening song found on each episode has the funniest gag of all concerning this, a church with a sign stating "God Hates Fangs," an obvious turn on a phrase a few so called Christian churches have been rallying behind, that has an entire new meaning just with the addition of the letter "n." The funny thing is, for all this hate, it is never racial hatred. White and black co-mingles through the show with nary the bat of an eye, in a show set in the SOUTH of all places, while both races have a common ground concerning vampires. Some characters show signs of reverse racism (especially Tara (Rutina Wesley), Sookie's loud mouthed best friend), but there is never an instance of hate between races. There are so many parallels to that, it'd be impossible to delve into, as it's easiest to say the phrase "unite against a common enemy" best fits this mentality. Even homosexuality isn't a concern, as Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) is as flaming as they get, yet, only a trio of hardcore rednecks ever give him difficulty. Lastly, Hepatitis D (called FD in the show) is a nice homage to the early views on AIDS, much like the X-Men legacy virus, that can be carried by one race, yet affects another, much like how bigots felt HIV and AIDS were the problems of racial minorities and homosexuals. I got quite a kick out of that little homage.

Samantha: If gay was the new black, then vampire is the new gay. This series is an obvious analogy for any type of hatred, whether it be race related, sexual, or religious. While most of the negativity is directed toward the hot button vampire issue in True Blood's fictional news, you can easily see each topics correlation to real world current and past issues. There's everything from segregated establishments to the fight for vampire/human marriage. The people of Bon Temps are the epitome of bigotry. They fight the issue of vampire rights just as fervently and ignorantly as we see the Southerners of the real world fight against homosexual rights.

Vampire mythology
Nate: As mentioned above, there are some new spins on vampirism, that make the show a bit different. Sunlight doesn't kill these vampires, though prolonged exposure will. Vampires are hunted, as their blood is used as a drug, and these "bleeders," those who trap the vampires and steal their life energy, get a king's ransom for it. V, or v juice, is somewhat a mix of many real life drugs, as it has similar effects to ecstasy and heroin, including the come down, depression, and anxiety without it. Vampires don't "glisten" or shine, like that "other" (read: awful) vampire series. Stakes to the heart can still kill, but crosses do not, and garlic presents more of an irritation. In fact, Bill even asks Sookie not to ingest it, as it would be in her blood stream, a nice little bit of factuality. Vampire blood can be used to heal, as well as fix male impotency. True Blood doesn't toe the rules by any means, rather recreating them to be a bit more believable in the real world, though the process of "turning" a vampire does have a bit of mysticism to it that was a bit of a bummer that should have been fixed to fit the rest of the show.

Samantha: In True Blood we find that many of the vampire rules are simply myths created by vampires themselves to keep hidden. Touche vamps. It makes complete sense. At the same time it could be seen as a cop out on the part of the writers. If crosses and holy water can't harm a vampire, it opens up more possible scenes and locations. Of course, True Blood writers weren't the first to consider letting vamps out in the sun without bursting into flames. However, they did come up with a way to make the vampires sun exposure be more dramatic yet not completely deadly by showing how quickly it can drain their energy. And fortunately for us all, they left all the "sparkling" up to Edward Cullen. It's nice to see we can have a new vampire tale with real world acceptability and still keep the classic idea somewhat intact.

In closing
Nate: This is one of those blind buys that worked out just right, thank goodness. Nothing worse than being stuck watching a season of a show and hating it. Having not seen a single MINUTE of True Blood was a good thing, though, going into this viewing, as I didn't have any spoilers, any things to look out for, or preconceptions. I was able to let the story really grab at me, while the alternate reality it is set in really had me in stitches at points, which was obviously the intention of the show. Darkly comical, though overly melodramatic, True Blood rights the wrongs of many half assed vamp films of recent memory, and gripped me in just the right way to make me lust after Season 2...though not enough to make me subscribe to HBO just to view it.

Samantha: All things considered, whether cliche or not, True Blood kicks ass! As a lover of all things vampire, with the exception of a recent film (ahem, Twilight, ahem), I would definitely recommend this as one to check out. It really lives up to everyone's hype. I did notice some continuity errors, however the main problem could be explained by other parts of the story. If you'll notice, once a human is bit by a vampire, the mark tends to stay put. For Sookie, however, they simply disappeared within a day or so of being received. It could be explained by her ingestion of vampire blood and it's healing faculties. That's the only conclusion I can come up with, but I'd be more inclined to believe it was a lapse of the script supervisor's watch over hair and make-up.
Rating: 7/10

The Presentation:
As my first real "season" project, I was worried about being able to be critical about a series across an entire 12 episode arc, and be able to cover the ins and outs of the audio and video without missing a beat. Fortunately, the episodes of True Blood are quite uniform, with the same strengths and weaknesses.

Presented across five discs (2 BD25, 3 BD50), True Blood is presented in a solid AVC MPEG-4 encode that can be a bit sporadic, just like the first season itself was. Don't take that the wrong way, either. True Blood looks pretty darn good. It is just far from perfect.

The most noticeable video quality for this release is the fact that it's not uniform, by any stretch of the imagination. I take that back, it's uniform in it's un-uniformity. The picture goes from average grain, to softer grain, to near no grain, to super dense grain, constantly varying, which makes the picture quality vary from shot to shot, as well, which was fairly annoying. Some shows may do this on purpose, to give some shots a polished look, some rough, but since True Blood was all over the place, for 12 full episodes, I won't say that it seemed like intent.

That said, there are some solid close-ups, and even finer detail visible in mid-range shots, which were actually somewhat impressive. I even caught a scene where you could see Bill's face from the side with stubble pointing out of his head, protruding his profile. Colors can be quite vivid, in daylight scenes, that is. The most striking scene was easily the entire funeral sequence, holy hell did that part of the show look brilliant. At night, most of the show gets a bit more bleak, with the darkness sucking the color right out of the picture.

For any show that is as long as True Blood, eventually you'll find things wrong with it, sporadically. There were some scratches in the source, which was otherwise clean, with no major dirt marks. There are some blue lighting effects that seep into the skin tones, and also envelope the whites of eyes. Some blacks were off, and I caught a few moments that looked like artifacts in the drive home from Fangtasia in episode 4. There were also some very soft shots, but this somewhat matches up to the super dense grain moments. There are far more positives than negatives in this release, regardless of how the above laundry list sounds. Over a full season, there are too many chances for negative elements, and they never outshone the great detail, clarity, and contrast of the entire show.

The best part of this entire release has to be the fantastic sound design, which is presented faithfully with an English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. That's right, haters, Warner did listen to the early complaints. In fact, there is no English lossy option to be found on this release!

The sound design, ah, the sound design. If only all feature length films had this kind of audio quality. Surrounds are used non-stop, with an amazing, rich, engaging barrage of ambiance and discrete effects. There are some solid moments of directionality, where the sound will shift when the camera pans around the scene. The bass level is somewhat subdued, but never underwhelming, as it acts more like an accent than a feature. Thunder has a fantastic lingering bass rumble.

The only negatives I can find in this release are inherent in the source, in a few areas. Some of the ambiance can be horribly annoying, such as the high pitched bug chirps that are impossible to ignore, or nearly any sequence with Sookie doing her mind reading tricks. They are similar to those of Professor Xavier in the X-Men films, but far, far more annoying. There's a high pitched scream accenting these sequences, with an excessive amount of chatter that drowns out what anyone is "thinking." I get it, she can't focus it, and it gets on her nerves, and can rack her brain, but there's no reason my brain need suffer in some weird kind of sympathy pain type situation due to the plight of a fictional character.
Rating: 8/10 ( 7/10- video, 9/10- audio)

The Extras:
Audio Commentary
6 of the 12 episodes contain a cast/crew commentary track.

Enhanced Viewing Mode (HD)
12 of the 12 episodes contain an interactive track. The problem is, some of these extras have to be prompted to play, so you have to keep your remote nearby. That said, the prompts for these extras look cool, like a cable news update marquee/banner. As neat as these tracks may be, I'm still an old fashioned kind of guy, and I prefer standalone features, that can be viewed on their own, accessible easily. I also am not a fan of PIP tracks, as I feel they aim more for the ADD crowd. I enjoyed the character bios that would pop up on vampires, the maps were a bit stupid, and Lafayette's character analysis got a bit annoying, having seen the entire show before going back and viewing this feature. The mock news footage is, by far, the best portion of this disc, and really deserved to be a feature accessible outside of this track.

I personally feel that any release with these kind of tracks should make all of the content available on the menu, as there are some very funny mock features in the PIP track.

Menus
As an HBO release (read: Warner Bros), accessing a season set without a menu prompt at the start of a disc would be a disaster. Thankfully, that isn't an issue.
Rating: 7/10

Overall:
A fantastic mockery of the political fiasco that is America, True Blood tells a fun tale, with plenty of quirks, though, as Samantha points out, is a bit cliche at times, and does drag on a bit longer than necessary. That said, I very much look forward to the release of season 2. This Blu-ray marks my first viewing of the show in any medium, and I'm instantly hooked. The video is a bit random, but still a worthy upgrade from standard def, while the audio benefits from the show's fantastic sound design. If you're a hardcore vampire fan like Samantha, True Blood Season 1 is a must own, as a fantastic introduction to the show. If you're a film fan in general like me (honestly, I loathe most television programming), you still may find something to love.
Rating: 8/10