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True Blood: Season Five (1 Viewer)

Stan

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Gave up on this a year or two ago, found it creepy and uncomfortable to watch. But added HBO last month, so will give it a chance again.
 

mattCR

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It's just drifted so radically far from the books; which isn't necessarily bad - if the direction it was taking was clearly better then the books or was designed to set something up; but it kind of went super directionless in the last two seasons and hasn't been very enjoyable. *shrug* I'll give it a go again, but the previews have me shaking my head.
 

joshEH

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True Blood is stranger, dumber, more accidentally deeply-interesting than it ever intends to be, which is why you can't trust all the deep things it's totally not trying to say.
It's a show people will be jealous you got to see the first time around, and everyone who's dissing on now will be bragging about seeing the first time. It's pure camp that's also something else that pays no attention to tiresome things like making sense and having good taste.
That said, the season premiere was great, carrying on a lot of the threads from last season and ramping them up. Not a single boring subplot, for the first time in about two years. Though I am pissed that they decided to bring Tara back as a vampire. I was kinda hoping she'd stay dead.
(Also, was Alan Ball jealous of Game of Thrones? What's with all the "sister"-fucking?)
 

TravisR

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joshEH said:
True Blood is stranger, dumber, more accidentally deeply-interesting than it ever intends to be, which is why you can't trust all the deep things it's totally not trying to say.
It's a show people will be jealous you got to see the first time around, and everyone who's dissing on now will be bragging about seeing the first time. It's pure camp that's also something else that pays no attention to tiresome things like making sense and having good taste.
I like that summation. I (and I'm sure many others) have always said that it's B-grade material done by A-level talent. It's not meant to be anything more than crazy, sexy, weird and violent entertainment and it succeeds completely on that level.
Not a single boring subplot, for the first time in about two years. Though I am pissed that they decided to bring Tara back as a vampire. I was kinda hoping she'd stay dead.
I always felt that the writers could never find a great plot for Tara/Rutina Wesley but making her what she hates might be a good one. Oddly, I think I was most interested in Jason and Terry's stories. I'm guessing that Terry is pyrokinetic and it's cool to see Jason grow a little and be bothered by not getting the girl. Also, Steve Newlin saying "I loovveee yyyooouuuuu!" as he was ejected from Jason's house made me laugh.
(Also, was Alan Ball jealous of Game of Thrones? What's with all the "sister"-fucking?)
"We fight like siblings and we fuck like champions."
 

Stan

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Loved "Six Feet Under", for that reason only I'll be giving this a chance again. Alan Ball does great with sick, twisted things, so maybe this is worth a second look.
Luckily the opening credits take exactly two clicks on my Dish remote, where the "Six Feet Under" credits were a work of art and always fun to watch, these are mercifully easy to pass by.
I guess the hillbilly, backwoods, country bumpkin aura always bothered me, but like I said, it's worth a second chance.
I'm not bashing the show by sounding so negative, but just trying to become a fan again. If I don't care for it, I won't post on this topic again.
 

Matt Hough

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Me, too. I really don't know what they could have been thinking doing this.

So MANY storylines in this series now.
 

joshEH

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I'm just happy Lafayette shaved that thing off his head.
Looking forward to having Russell Edgington back in the mix. He was a good villain, and it looks like it'll be between him and The Authority as this season's big bads. Which could mean a vampire civil-war is brewing, which could be awesome.
 

Jeremiah

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This show should just play to their strengths and not try and bring too many new characters in.
No Tara, less Lafayette, bring Eric and Pam back to form, keep Jason a comedic fluff.
I liked the start of the season but no matter what they do with Tara, I will still hate everything about her. She is too far gone for me.
 

Will_B

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MarkMel said:
"Waaaa, why did you turn me? You should've left me dead. Waaaa"
Maybe because that is what everyone is expecting, they'll do something different.
Just kidding. Of course it will be more of the same from Tara.
 

Matt Hough

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Originally Posted by Will_B /t/321409/true-blood-season-five#post_3939560
Maybe because that is what everyone is expecting, they'll do something different.
Just kidding. Of course it will be more of the same from Tara.

It certainly seemed that way last night, and I really grew tired of all the scenes involving Tara. All of the other stories (there are a lot of them) held my interest, but Tara's does not.
 

joshEH

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Jeremiah said:
This show should just play to their strengths and not try and bring too many new characters in.
No Tara, less Lafayette, bring Eric and Pam back to form, keep Jason a comedic fluff.
I love that this show pays absolutely no mind to boring shit like making any fucking sense beyond crazy-ass "True Blood" sense; of being remotely realistic, because what could be more boring when you can be colorfully psychotic; of being the only show willing to just GO THERE with a crazy-hot Vampire Queen who plays Yahtzee, exploding vampires, white-trash werepanthers, a cannibalistic Burning Man of evil, fist-fucking hearts out of chests, and you know this is just endless.
It's 60 minutes of sexed-up, neo-Hammer lunacy that will never tell any of us how "important" it is. This series justified its existence a long time ago with Stephen Root's arc in Season 1, and the line, "Bullshit. God has horns."
(It's a lot like Passions meets Dark Shadows. If Passions had vampires ripping out peoples' spinal cords on live TV, I've might actually considered watching it. Plus, Spike from Buffy loved Passions, and who can argue with that bleached bastard?)
 

Will_B

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So her delay in whining was probably her brain growing back, right? And once her brain was grown back, she was ready with the same ol' same ol'?
 

mattCR

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A few years ago, this thread would be cooking. The state of the show at this point is part of why a thread like this languishes. Some of us have argued that it's harder to swallow as it gets farther away from Harris' books. But, putting that aside, the bigger problem isn't just that it's different then the books, it's that it's considerably worse in almost every way. I think everyone would acknowledge the books are campy and at times pulp, and if Alan Ball wanted to play with the characters and do something different, it's fine. But in the end, this is a show that is just a muddied up mess. There is almost no coherent storyline at all.
This season rotates around a character we don't care about and several of the other characters seem to bounce in and out to the level that we have no idea what's going on.

Just an absolute mess.
 

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