Monday, July 15, 2013

True Blood's Warlow is the most interesting vampire to come along since Eric Northman and yes, I only watch True Blood for the PLOT!

Okay True Blood, as of last night's episode, I'm totally engrossed in you. But there are days when I feel we are in a Bad Romance....
That's Warlow on top. And that's Sookie's "slay any vampire" power she's
holding to his head. If that isn't the best way to kill a vampire, I don't know
what is. And it's one of many reasons I like Warlow so much.
This season of True Blood started out with me doing much head shaking. I didn't see the need for the "Billith cam" (where we got introduced to the way Billith sees the world) unless it was for priceless gifs like Sookie Stackhouse saying the word "Fuuucck" in slow motion. Last season wasn't that great either, so my expectations were maybe a wee bit low. We had the oldest fairy in the world who loved Ke$ha, we had five hundred characters, we had Sam and Luna running around naked in every episode, and there was hardly any Lafayette (and I love me some Lafayette), but this season has somehow pulled itself up by the bootstraps and given us some real interesting characters.
Okay, this gif really is amazing. You should download it to your phone and
text it to anyone that messages you. It's funny as hell to get their reaction.
Now I'm freely admitting that I was deeply skeptical when I heard of Warlow. For those of you who don't know who Warlow is because you aren't watching the show (well I have no idea why you're even reading this if you aren't watching the show) but just to explain: Warlow is the vampire that killed Sookie's parents, and he's supposed to be very old and very powerful.
He killed Sookie's parents! But doesn't he have a nice smile? I guess if he
had a good reason to kill Sookie's parents it can't be all bad, right?
Warlow's the reason why Jason Stackhouse completely lost it and said "Knowing my parents were killed by a vampire is the worst thing that's ever happened to me." And that's a pretty big statement since in one season of True Blood, a pard of were-panthers spent at least six episodes gang raping him over and over. So either Jason has a gift for ignoring anything that has to do with sex, is stupid, or he just really didn't like hearing that his parents had been killed by a vampire. I'm actually not sure which of those three applies, but it's True Blood so it's not like any of their problems get so bad that they just can't hump their way through them, right?
In a world filled with super-powered freaks, Jason Stackhouse's super-power
is the ability to hump his way through any problem that arises. Damn. I think
I'm jealous of that.
Anyway, with regard to Warlow, I thought they were going for another kind of Russel Edgington-type character and I thought, "how unoriginal." But they aren't. Warlow is way more complex, and I love where this is going. And they're employing the same kinds of techniques that make Bill, Eric, and Pam interesting vampires, i.e. the flashback.

Now I know I just heard all you writers out there groaning, but the flashback really works in television (maybe not so much in writing). Last season with Eric, we flashed back to the time where he made Pam (think gas lamps and Victorian England and you've got the time perfectly). And with Bill, it's not been so much flashbacks as it's been surreal conversations with Lilith (the vampire goddess and perhaps the first vampire?) while being surrounded by bloody naked women strutting vagina first into the sun. And well...if you've got a nice body and are a feminist, I honestly can't blame you for strutting vagina first into the sun. It just might be the greatest meme ever.
Censorship courtesy of io9 :) Ladies, do you feel empowered yet?
So we get introduced to Warlow who is a fairy that's crossed with a vampire and who's basically almost as old as Lilith. She made him in fact (and we're talking about prehistoric times here). The first flashback we got from Warlow read "3500 years ago..." That's pretty damn impressive. But it also turns out, he's not really a bad guy. He was a good husband that got turned into a vampire by Lilith while putting water in a jug by the river for his family. And now 3500 years later, he's come to marry Sookie Stackhouse, and it turns out he loves her and actually saved her from her parents who tried to kill her. Yeah...in a seance with Lafayette, Sookie found out her "loving parents" really didn't love her all that much. They feared her, thought she was weird, and pretty much just wanted to get rid of her. Warlow stopped all that.
In another season, Lafayette said, "I am not gmail for all you dead bitches." But for Sookie,
he IS gmail...and for the record, I love the way Lafayette says "bitch." It's more entertaining
than when Jesse Pinkman says "bitch!" and that means a lot. Don't believe me? Here are
my scientific findings to back up my hypothesis:
Verdict: Lafayette wins!
Warlow can walk in daylight, saved her brother, and sure...he's done some bad things like destroy an entire nightclub of fairies that worked as strippers and then stuck Sookie's grandfather "the King of the fairies" into the dimension he had to live in and survive for a long time, but Sookie's grandfather was weird anyway.

There's that word again..."weird" and I've used it multiple times here. Is "weird" really something that I should use to describe True Blood? Don't answer that, or the universe may possibly explode. Maybe my whole point to this utterly pointless post is this: Warlow is hawt, and I'm weird because I watch True Blood.

So yeah, I think True Blood's Warlow is the most interesting vampire to come along since Eric Northman. Anyone else agree?

24 comments:

  1. It sure is a captivating show.

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  2. Ha ha, Michael. I really enjoyed this post! Funny! All the pictures didn't load, so I'll have to refresh and hope...

    I love this show and your recaps. Oh...and the Warlow (I thought they were saying "Morlow") flashback actually said, "3500 BC," so he's 5500 years old.

    Wonderful post.

    M.L. Swift, Writer

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  3. Hey,

    I've not seen the show, either, but wanted to ask you about The Walking Dead.. are you a fan?

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  4. DAMN! I missed the first episode? Hope I can catch a rerun. And hmm? Someone sexier than Eric? Not! Really love this post.

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  5. I've been watching this season. I like things twisty, I don't like the flashback stuff, and I thought Jason got back to his naked self a lot more in this show.

    I'm still an Eric fan so I enjoy his scenes.

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  6. Great recap Michael! I was a huge fan of C. Harris's books, so watching True Blood and how Alan Ball butchered her story to bits, used to piss me off pretty bad... BUT, when I'm staring at a shirtless Alcide, I definitely forget to be mad :)

    Lafeyette is one of my fav characters on that show and I have to say in that instance, I was glad they changed things up, because in the series he dies in book one.

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  7. I think I watched one or two episodes so obviously I'm way behind on this.

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  8. I don't watch because I think Paquin is the worst actress ever, but I did hear last week that the new season will have Ryan Kwanten's character having a hot gay sex with some hot new hunk :)

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  9. @Alex: You should watch it. I'm sure you'd agree their portrayal of southerners is entirely accurate ;)

    @Dezmond: If that info is from the Hollywood Spy it must be accurate. However, I re-iterate that I watch this show ONLY for the plot.

    You get that people?

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  10. Your funny review is 100x more entertaining than the show itself!

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  11. Nope, never seen it. But I'm at my eighty year old mom's house on her computer right now, and she walked in just as your post came up. Interesting look on her face when she looked at the computer screen. LOL.

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  12. We're 3 episodes behind on TB and we had a talk last night and kind of realized that we could take or leave the show. It's just not pulling us in like it used to. So i don't know if we'll catch up or finish this season

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  13. My husband and I were laughing when he had to get her half-naked before she went Fairy on him.

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  14. I expected PacRim today, and I have no response to True Blood.

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  15. Since I don't get HBO I don't watch the show, but I enjoy the books, which have at most three pages of sex out of about 330 pages total and not much violence. From what you've written here, Michael, I don't even recognize the books from the show. But then the show sounds like it's only "inspired" by the books.

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  16. I've never watched the show, but I do plan to in the future.

    www.modernworld4.blogspot.com

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  17. I most definitely won't care about the plot by watching this, but I'm all for watching that dude walk around with his shirt off. :)

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  18. It's quite possible I'm not mature enough for this post. But I intend to check it out twice.

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  19. I watched the 1st season of it way back when, but when Jason Stackhouse's girlfriend died because that man from the restaurant strangled her, I was done. I really liked that character, and felt cheated when she died. While watching it, I didn’t really find too much kinship with Sookie or her vampire lovers, but I sorta liked the shape shifting dog guy, for a while at least.
    What really made me interested in the show was the modern day setting for horror and the paranormal. I liked playing the World of Darkness games, and I thought it might have elements of that within the show. After I stopped watching, I heard there were love triangles and that Sookie is a fairy or something like that, and I grew more and more disinterested in watching it again. Does the plot get better after the 2nd season but then taper off towards last year? I don’t think the show is for me, now at its current state anyway. :)

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  20. @Michael: To be honest, the show is pure cheese.

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  21. I love Warlow! I never thought I would like a character on this show as much as Eric, but now I actually like this one more than him. I think Eric made a huge judgement call failure when he turned the governor's daughter. However, I was really looking forward to seeing a newly made vampire this season, so in that sense I am happy. Ultimately, I can't wait to see what happens with Warlow.

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  22. Warlow is hot but no one can compare to Eric Northman.
    Love that Sookie gif LOL.

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