Looking ahead to True Blood season 2

HBO's begun to promote the sophomore season of True Blood, their television adaptation of Charlaine Harris' series of vampire/supernatural/mystery novels. In spite of the strongly mixed nature of my feelings towards this show, I must admit I felt a little shiver of excitement when I saw these stills. So I guess I'll be tuning in June 14th for the premiere of season 2. Let's take a look, shall we?

Let's see... We've got Bill and Sookie, the two luvy-dove birds, being all sweet together. Here's hoping for lots of wrenches to be thrown into that relationship in season two. Personally, I enjoyed the books a heck of a lot more after she ditched him and stood on her own for a while. Next up we've got Eric (yay, my favorite character), along with subbordinates Pam and Chow all putting their game faces on, so to speak. Below that is a picture of what I can only assume is a new waitress at Merlotte's. In the books, the bar's staff has a pretty quick turnover (with a few exceptions of course), but I guess this girl has a pretty significant role in season two judging from this photo. And then we come to my favorite still, featuring Eric's shorter hair! This is taken from the promotional video, not from an actual episode, but I heart it so there.

Starting from the top of the right column, we've got Jason finding (mis)guidance from the fanatical, cultish religious group known as the Fellowship of the Sun. I think he's still got a lot of lingering guilt from everything that went down in season one, but of course, being Jason Stackhouse, he's going to deal with it in the most boneheaded way possible. Below that we've got some kind of shindig happening at Merlotte's, and Michelle Forbes' character on the dance floor with none other than detective Andy Bellefleur. And finally, we have Sookie with Tara and Sam all gazing pretty intently offscreen at something that just went down. Because in Bon Temps, there's always something that's just gone down.

If a picture's worth a thousand words, how about a video? Here's the recently released promo for season two:

Let's see... Wierdness? check. Blood? check. Sex? check. Yup, looks like True Blood's back in business. This show walks a pretty fine line between kitsch and cool. Sometimes I find myself bemoaning the blatant proliferation of hackneyed genre stereotypes, while other times I find the show's innovative use of those same steryotypes to be very compelling. And then the rest of the time I'm just plain grossed out by the graphic imagery that constantly reminds me I'm watching an HBO production. In any case, the show is very different from the novels. They took a lot of the same characters and storylines, but they managed to give birth to en entirely new breed. Which is, I guess, what an adaptation should be. So, yeah, I'll give season two a shot.