True Blood is the new series on HBO about a telepathic girl named Sookie Stackhouse who lives in a small Louisiana town called Bon Temps. The twist is that vampires have recently come out of the closet, and insinuated themselves into every day life.
Honestly, writing it out like that, it's a pretty weak concept. I have had to watch, though, out of sheer loyalty, because I've been a fan of the book series for years now.
The show True Blood is actually based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series, and I was excited to watch the show because I figured it would be loosely based on the book. It's been a while since a Sookie book has come out, and I'd be interested in seeing some new slant or twist to the series.
Unfortunately, however, it wasn't loosely based on the series. It's exactly based on the series. To a tee. And honestly, it's really frustrating me. I'm watching this show, knowing EXACTLY what's about to happen. They haven't spiced it up, and the changes they've made to the original aren't even that interesting. The Tara character, in the show, has known Sookie since kindergarten, is in love with Sookie's brother, and works at the bar as a bartender, whereas in the book, they've only known each other for a few years, and she owns her own, successful, clothing store called Tara's Togs.
See, the differences aren't that important.
I just keep watching in the hopes that something new and surprising will happen. I know there have only been two episodes thus far, and we haven't even made it half way through the first novel, and there are currently seven novels, so it'll be a long while before anything new happens, but I can't help but hold out hope that they'll stray from the original story line to give Sookie readers something new and juicy to latch on to.
Furthermore, taking an outside perspective, the episodes are so slow-going that I can't imagine anyone NOT a loyal Sookie reader being able to keep up enough interest to tune in week after week.
Maybe I'm being too harsh. It reminds me of a teenager who has to write a book summary, and instead of writing it in their own words, they just copy the back of the book word-for-word. It's like the script writers couldn't come up with anything good, so they just went page by page and copied down everything there. There's absolutely no originality whatsoever.
What ever. I know I'll keep watching, and I know I'll keep being annoyed. What else is new?
