Welcome to Sucker Punch, the only blog post that ranks the gaudiest moments on this week’s episode of True Blood.
Um… remember last week, when I worried the show was slowing down? Well, “Heard-Hearted Hannah” has settled my hash. There are so many sucker-punchy scenes in this installment that I could get carpal tunnel syndrome writing about them all.
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10 responses so far ↓
1 Kat // Jul 27, 2009 at 2:04 am
The gaudiest moment of this week’s episode was Bill and Lorena’s slaughter/ sexfest….really? Ewwww…I just didn’t need to see that but, it did foreshadow what a hunky dory person she is.
2 Michael // Jul 27, 2009 at 1:29 pm
It was a SPECTACULARLY constructed episode; it was raining peripeteia, as we always say in the dramaturg biz. But I still maintain that, compared with last season, this season’s about plot and shock–manipulated suspense and eye-popping events, sans character development (which was the distinction in Season One). Admittedly, Jessica we’ve seen more dimensions of. And others here’n'there. But Tara’s relationship with her mother last season was Proust compared to this, and her mother’s exorcism got to psychological truth. That, it seems to me, is gone. Maryann is a dishonest soap cliche in my book (make orgiastic sex evil, but show lots and lots of abs). And Alan Ball (and company) can’t imagine the mind of a conservative–obviously, the Church of the Sun is a parody of gay-baiting ministries, and there’s a cathartic function to full-out mockery of your enemies, I suppose, but this smug cartooniness seems juvenile to me. The actors are spectacular; the aesthetic goals have slipped.
3 Laura Mc. // Jul 27, 2009 at 3:34 pm
What’s gonna happen to Sookie and Sam?! Very on edge regarding their impending traumas..
@ Michael: You really think Ball et al miss the satirical mark with the sun people? How could they improve? I guess I struggle with that question as well, suggesting there is not as much of a foundation as with other plot lines..
I miss Tara’s mother. Is it just me, or was she like beyond excellent? I occassionally mistake melodramatic for crafted, so I am interested to hear thoughts.
And a little moment, which was excellent and makes me glad some actors have trained quite well for their careers: LOVED when Daphne’s face and voice changed with her evil reveal. “Not this time, Sam.” <>
4 Laura Mc. // Jul 27, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Coding issues.. I ended that post with the word SHIVERS surrounded by these:
5 Michael // Jul 27, 2009 at 6:56 pm
@Laura Mc: My only point about the treatment of the “sun people” (or whatever they call themselves) is that it’s a pileup of lefty cliches about conservative Christians: they’re all dumb, superficially polished hicks, smiling for the telethon, but either idiotically sincere and led by the nose by vicious pastors ,or secretly hostile, gun-loving, and stupidly slutty. Since–let’s get real here–Ball, a gay boy from Marietta, is getting back at big-media-church homophobia, he’s touching on real issues, and, while I understand the fun of mercilessly caricaturing your opponents, it’s, to my mind, shallow and cheap stereotyping. We all know these jokes.
6 Mark Blankenship // Jul 27, 2009 at 7:17 pm
I can’t wholly disagree with you about the Fellowship of the Sun characters, Michael, though I do think Sarah, with her vampiric past and conflicted sexual desires is more than a cliche.
But elsewhere in the season, I feel like there are several instances of nuanced character development. The Jessica-Bill relationship, for instance, has the texture of real child-parent conflict: Bill made Jessica, obsessively guards her, worries that she’ll hurt herself and others, and slowly accepts her burgeoning identity. Meanwhile, Jessica is moving into post-adolescent freedom and responsibility with a compelling mixture of hesitancy and excitement.
Also, and a reader pointed some of this out to me in a private e-mail, there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening with Lafayette, who has spent this season being forced to recalibrate his entire personality. It’s too early in the season to know where that will lead us, but he’s already grappling with demons that are rooted in much more than flashy plot developments. Essentially, he developed his pround-and-fierce gay persona to make himself bulletproof in a small southern town, and now that persona is the very thing that has hurt him. What’s he supposed to do now?
7 Michael // Jul 28, 2009 at 9:04 am
Mark: To temper the extremity that comes with trying to say it all in one screen–Jessica’s story is the exception to my sweeping condemnation (I think the actress is a sensational find), and the growth of another character or two around her follows on. And this last episode did suggest (for the first time, for me) that Lafayette’s psychic wounds from being tortured are going to be taken seriously–and it also opened the character of whatsisname the PTSD short-order cook for a moment. And they’re suggesting some inner struggles in Eric, although they haven’t delivered much yet.
But I do maintain that these are momentary diversions in a season whose primary energies are manifestly elsewhere. Tara in particular has lost so much dimension that she’s just another pretty soap-opera heroine (nominally spunky division) in an ominous situation, and Sookie (essentially a happy newlywed) is simply boring me.
As for Sarah–I’m sorry, I don’t see it; I think they’re making fun of her every step of the way. (You say sexually conflicted? Where’s the inner conflict, except in her situation, to which she responds with wide-eyed hypocrisy? She evidences no guilt–she pouts about how her husband is treating her, follows her hormones, and hasn’t uttered a syllable about the moral inconsistency of being an adulterous Christian leader, or bulldozing over Jason’s objections, endangering his soul and hers. (Again, I don’t think Ball-et-al have a clue , or give a rap, about how sincere Christians, especially conflicted ones, might actually think.) I think, if I may say it, that the kindness of your empathetic response to her is more about you (and positive, of course) than about how she’s being written. You may care about Sarah; I don’t think the writers do at all.
8 InfoMofo // Jul 28, 2009 at 10:15 am
Ah I have stopped analyzing this show and apologizing to my friends for watching it and now I just sit agape at my TV, occasionally stopping to howl with laughter.
Things that elicited howls:
1) “sex with a vampire dude! That would be the cream dey la cream!”
2) Almost anything that the preacher dude says. He’s great.
3) Vampire Bill’s french accent is about as convincing as his southern accent.
4) Hoyt. SIIIIGHH.
5) The use of “hard-hearted hannah”, both in the awesomely cheesy parlor scene, and over the end credits. This show is right up there with weeds for old-timey credit music use. Plus the song has a “vamp” pun in it. And I’ve liked that song ever since Nikki McKibbin sang it in Season One of AI. C’mon you loved it too.
6) Bill puts the necklace on his girlfriend! Squee!
You have to love a show if the most boring moment is a giant drum circle orgy in a field (just kidding, of course the most boring scene was the awful pool table pillow talk, ugh).
9 Erin // Jul 29, 2009 at 8:32 am
I’ll have you know that every week as the credits roll on True Blood I can’t help but think “oh man, what will this week’s Sucker Punch be?”…thanks for adding entertainment value to this already thrilling show!
10 Michael // Jul 29, 2009 at 11:18 am
Interesting to note: Checked in with my ex (my do-to gal on Charlayne Harris novels, which she says are formulaic but go down easy): apparently in the novels, Sookie does go undercover among the sun church people and get caught–and that’s the MAIN story regarding them. In the novels, Jason doesn’t convert or get involved with them in any way, and Sarah is a leader of the group but has no scenes and is not explored as a character. For me, this supports my guess that the exploration of the inner workings of the faithful in the TV series is Alan Ball’s take on the issues.
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