True Blood: The Complete Second Season

A series you just have to bite into...
I have been a major Sookie Stackhouse fan for years. I began reading Charlaine Harris's series, then called the Southern Vampire Mysteries, since before book four came out, and have read them all in order. I was puzzled when I found out that HBO was going to make a TV adaptation of it. Why this particular series? Why not Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series? (It would have been suitable, what with all of the sex and all.) There were others as well, like Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld and MaryJanice Davidson's Queen Betsy series -- all of which have the erotic tones that HBO would have loved. So why this book series? Now I know why, but more on that later.

I very much enjoyed season one. It was very faithful to Dead Until Dark, except that small characters like Tara and Lafayette were expanded, and you get everyone's point of view, not just Sookie's. Also, Bill has more depth here, and you see things from his point of view, and you understand him...

Great Show but not worth the Insane on-demand policy
I've already watched the two season and was delighted to see I could get it on demand. Willing to put out my hard earned money to own the show but then was puzzled to see it was only a rental and not ownership for On demand. What makes this even more insane is the rental is $3 per/ eps for one 24 hr viewing. That is the same price to OWN 1 eps. in HD for any other show. Then to add to the insanity you can buy the season on Blu-ray for only $42. Ok a little more then $3 per/eps but still they have to make the disc and the box the disc go in and storage for inventory vs on-demand being a little server space. And you OWN the disc and can walk over to anyone house with Blu-ray to play it, no restrictions to deal with. So how in the world does their on-demand policy make sense?

Again it shows why piracy is so common place when companies come up with these insane pricing and ownership schemes. So I guess for now I just won't own True Blood and live with just one time...

Great Show, Bad Policy
I recorded most of True Blood Season 2 last summer on my DVR but I missed two episodes.

I though I would just purchase them from Amazon because I had some credit left from a gift card. Then I found two problems. First, I was disappointed to see that it's $3 per episode, not the $3 I am used to for TV shows. Second, I was even more disappointed to see that it's only a RENTAL, not a purchase. HBO and Amazon expect you to pay $3 an episode to watch the season ONE TIME!?!

That's just crazy. If they want to make them rentals they can't be more than $1 per episode. If I pay more than that I expect to OWN the series and be able to watch them over and over. This is why people download shows illegally, unreasonable policies and ridiculous pricing.

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True Blood: The Complete First Season

Completely addictive. Even if you don't watch television
Rabbit ears on pawn shop televisions are about my speed; needless to say, I don't watch television. However, kind friends mainline this series two or three shows at a time, and they got me hooked: were I to be completely honest, I might have to admit to giving serious thought to obtaining this by less-than-legal-means. It actually might be worth jail time.

Speaking as someone who was born in America's deep South, this series captures everything about Louisiana that is appealing. (Spanish Moss, vampires, latent racism and homophobia, the dichotomy between Christian Southern values and patriarchal, brutality-enforced poverty, sassy Southern women who know how to fight with chains, etc.)

What it makes it really stand out, though, is the casting: there isn't a bad actor in the bunch--and they are all believable as Southern archetypes. Nelsan Ellis as the short order cook/drug dealer Lafayette and Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin as the romantic leads give...

A fun and adventurous take on vampires and the supernatural
I'm not sure that any good series on the supernatural has ever tried as hard to be simply good fun. It isn't the masterpiece that BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER was, but I don't think Alan Ball set his sights that high. While Joss Whedon strove in BUFFY to create an icon and redefine television narrative, Ball just seems to want to tell a compelling story filled with memorable moments.

TRUE BLOOD is, of course, based on the series of novels written by Arkansas writer Charlaine Harris. The series was originally known as the Southern Vampire Mysteries, but has since come to be better known as The Sookie Stackhouse novels. The premise is that a Japanese corporation has successfully created artificial blood, a product so like the real thing that vampires, previously relegated to feeding off humans in the dark, come "out of the coffin" and into society, intent on living off the new fake blood. The series' title comes from the name of the artificial blood marketed and sold in...

Modern Southern Vampires, But Not for the Squeamish
True Blood is the HBO adaptation of the popular Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels. While I have not read the books, my wife has and she says that at least the first episode (Strange Love) is somewhat more graphic sexually and is more violent than she thought it would be. On that note, this show has a lot of nudity (both male and female, but mostly topless women), graphic sex scenes (human and vampire), bondage, occult references, graphic violence (somewhat bloody), homosexual characters, insensitivity to overweight people, and even a murder... so if any of those things are not to your liking you might want to pass on this series.

If you are still reading this, you will want to know that this is also a very clever and well produced series that does seem to work combining the harsher elements with a good bit of humor and surprisingly well developed characters.

Set in Louisiana after vampires have "come out" because they can now get a synthetic blood to curb their...

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