celebrity gossip, academic style

Readers, we have an issue. And that issue is the badness of True Blood — and our persistence in watching it. Now, don’t get me wrong — I do think that True Blood has flashes of genius, most of them directly linked to Russell Edgerton, Layfayette, and Pam. But the show as a whole is somewhat of an abomination, and I’m wondering how so many of us got so deep, so fast….and now can’t work our way out of the serial viewership hole.

So first things first: is True Blood actually bad? I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and I think we might need to agree that while the show has interesting, compelling, campy, and extremely entertaining parts, as a whole, it’s a disaster. There are too many plot lines, none of which seem to coalesce into any realistic whole. The tone is too mixed, with some parts — I’m thinking of Sookie in the fairy land at the beginning of this season, or the winter wonderland love scene about half way through — that are so barefaced cheesy that I’m embarrassed to watch. As in the BF walks in the room and I have to turn off the television. There’s cheesy that’s funny, and then there’s cheesy that makes you wince and kinda hate yourself, and TB is coming down on the side of the latter far too often.

So there are some good plot lines around good characters. Jason Stackhouse with the evangelicals, for example, or Eric’s backstory with his maker Godric. But there are far more bad characters with prolonged and tortuous plot lines: everything involving Tara; everything involving Sam; everything involving Hoyt’s mom. I could obviously go on (and on and on) about how the show fails on a semi-regular basis, but I think we can agree on the simple fact that it oscillates between the plainly ridiculous and the truly, painfully bad.

So why do we keep watching? Over the course of its four seasons, True Blood has transformed from Alan Ball’s newest project, limping along with a small following, to HBO’s primetime flagship. Part of its popularity stems from our generalized cultural vampire moment — I, for one, wasn’t into vampires, but then I got sucked into stupid Twilight, which led me to True Blood, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Part of the popularity stems from people watching it for camp, which it obviously supplies, and many, many people watch it simply for the eye candy (HELLLLLLO, ERIC; hello Sookie’s boobs) and explicit sex scenes that would be at home on late night Skinamax.

But that shouldn’t be enough to keep so many people watching. If it were just a trainwreck, most people would lose interest after a season or two, but True Blood‘s viewership only continues to grow. Same for the eye candy and the sex; same for the vampire-ness, which, as the show’s guiding narrative metaphor, has only become increasingly muddled and confused.

Which leaves us with two heavily-linked options for True Blood‘s enduring popularity: seriality and romance.

Seriality, in brief, is the way that the show makes you want to see what happens with the narrative and the characters that inhabit it. ”Series” television is the type of show that you can enter at any moment and know what’s going on — most sitcoms, for example, or Law and Order - while “serial” television demands watching from the beginning to the end. Most “quality” television on the air today is serial television, most network/”mainstream” television is series television. (Many programs are hybrids, which chance viewers to enter in at any point, but also provide loyal viewers with serialized story lines that add nuance and context to individual episodes).

Soap operas are quintessentially serial television, and True Blood is, let’s be honest, a primetime soap opera with high production values. Through its use of narrative arcs — whether arcs that have lasted all four seasons (what will happen between Sookie and Bill?), arcs that structure a single season (how will Jason escape the Christians? Will Marianne take over all mystical creatures?) — we are pulled to watch the next episode even when we are disgusted with what we have just seen. Viewer curiosity — seeing the narrative through to its end — trumps viewer frustration.

This happens with many series — I know that I followed Gossip Girl (another primetime soap opera) far past the point of actual interest simply because I wanted to see what happened with Chuck and Blair. Lots of shows have similar pull, but few have been so successful in being bad and pulling people along. In fact, most shows start strong — see, for example, The O.C. — and then peter out, with fewer and fewer viewers feeling compelled enough to tune in despite badness. With True Blood, however, the characters just keep getting hotter, and there’s just enough comic relief, just enough flashes of quasi-brilliance and turns of phrase to trump the narrative lulls and moments of absurdity when most people would throw up their hands and abandon the show. While True Blood‘s good parts may not make a cohesive whole, those parts, on their own, provide enough pleasure and entertainment to foil viewer’s best attempts to abandon the show and its serial pull.

And then there’s the romance. Romance is often a main (or only) serial hook — we continue reading or watching a piece of media simply because we want to know if the romance that has been put into motion at the beginning of the text will come to its obvious conclusion. Serial romance usually takes one of two paths:

1.) Will the obvious male protagonist and female protagonist get together, despite situational and attitudinal struggles? (See TB Season One).

2.) Now that the male protagonist and female protagonist have gotten together and satisfied audiences, what will happen now that one half of the couple has become an obvious drag and there’s another person, perhaps tall, Nordic, and f-ing BUILT, waiting in the wings? (See every season of TB after Season One).

What’s somewhat weird True Blood is that Sookie obviously sucks. Her character is annoying, her voice is annoying, she’s so inconsistent with her actions and choices, but the question of whether or not she will have very naked and very graphic sex with a.) Bill; b.) Eric; or c.) Alcide, complete with appropriately baroque soundtrack, again trumps the fact that her sole redeeming quality is her extensive sundress collection. But the likability of the all three of her love interests keeps audiences interested in who she’ll pick, even if we don’t necessarily like her. Or maybe we’re just willing her to pick who’d we pick? Which was so obviously Eric until he lost his memories and became so lame I cover my ears when he speaks? I feel the same way around memory-less Eric as I do around the letters from my college boyfriends, which is really saying something. (Don’t worry; college boyfriends don’t read this blog, they’re all too busy fly-fishing and writing poetry and being earnest).

So there you have it. You (and I) keep watching True Blood because Layfayette keeps saying “hooker please,” Alcide keeps taking off his shirt, and Sookie keeps hooking up with people and then changing her mind. I’m still somewhat embarrassed by how little it takes to keep me glued to a show that is otherwise so truly bad.