Question: I just watched the first five episodes of True Blood. I loved it. Rich characters, a thoughtful story, and, well, vampires! I suggest you drop everything and do the same. -- Dave
Ausiello: Would you believe I did exactly that over the long holiday weekend? After my hit-and-run slam in last week's AA, I decided I should probably form an opinion based on more than just one out-of-context scene. So I popped in my (heavily encoded) HBO screener and watched the first five episodes. Straight through. Stopping only for bathroom and snack breaks. In other words, damn thing hooked me! Is it perfect? Far from it. Alan Ball drives the vampires-are-like-gay-people parallel home with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. My colleague Ken Tucker put it best in this week's EW when he said, "Ball has never seen a comic-dramatic premise he can't flatten with leaden metaphors." (Truthfully, I have no idea what the heck that means, but it sounds wicked smaht.) But as a purely escapist piece of entertainment fluff? I kind of loved it.