True Blood Doesn’t Do Much For Nikki Finke… But She’s An Idiot

HBO’s True Blood has been given the go ahead on a second season after only airing two episodes (well, it’s aired three now). This is, perhaps, a fairly interesting development, but in today’s world shows are cancelled after less than five episodes with great regularity. It’s not all that surprising that something might be given the green light after only two. Plus, it’s not that bad.

The idea gave Nikki Finke, the self-important harpy of entertainment news at LA Weekly, cause to lash out, however, and I have to take a moment to look at her raving. She lets us in to the fact that she is apparently shocked that HBO would commit to continuing the show so quickly –

“even though reviews were generally marginal, vampires are a tired premise, and the show is nothing more than a contemporary version of Interview With The Vampire with rough sex and dopey romance thrown in.”

Now, I’ll give you marginal reviews. It’s actually not saying very much about a show, but I’ll give you that True Blood was not being absolutely raved about by a great number of critics. Apart from that, however, we’re just sloshing around nonsense here.

Vampires are a tired premise? What can that mean? I suppose the legends have been around since the 18th century, and if you don’t require the word “vampire,” they’ve actually been around for as long as people have, but that complaint renders anything at all with a vampire tired, doesn’t it? I suppose she could be referring to the fact that there are several popular authors writing about them. True Blood comes from the books of one, and the Twilight series is flying off the shelves. There have been, if we take the last few years, a goodly number of vampire films. I think what we might actually be after here is that vampires are a popular premise.

I almost hate to get started on the idea that this show is just a contemporary version of Interview With The Vampire. Let’s be clear.

First, there is nothing particularly original, or unique about Interview With The Vampire. It’s just a vampire story.

Second, there is nothing even remotely similar about the two stories, beyond that they both have vampires.

I’m going to leave it to the reader to put together the many ways in which these two facts make the statement worse than meaningless. It is hard to gloss over the idea that Ms. Finke ridicules the intelligence of those at HBO within her article, while at the same time putting forward statements like the above, which she clearly does not even comprehend.

Though she may act shocked that HBO has decided to renew True Blood, she goes on to tell us that she knows the real reason they did it. According to her article, it is simply that HBO is desperate. She details HBO’s ratings on Sundays over the past few years as evidence of this fact. She doesn’t mention that HBO is not actually as concerned with ratings as non-cable stations, nor the fact that an HBO show’s ratings at the time of first air are only a small factor in the total decision process.

The thing is on half a dozen times throughout the week, on more than one channel of HBO, and I know several people who watched every episode of The Sopranos without once catching it at its initial delivery. On top of that, especially where HBO is concerned, buzz is of major importance in itself. On a regular network buzz might lead to increases in ratings, but HBO isn’t selling ads at a higher rate because a show is getting ratings, its selling the show. It might be looking forward to the DVD, or it might just be downloads at Amazon; either way, HBO cannot take ratings as the golden measure like other networks.

Now, without even looking at those issues, Finke goes on to tell us how True Blood did in the ratings for those first two airings. The first episode managed 899,000 viewers, and the second episode jumped up to 1.2 million. I know a lot of shows pulling in those kinds of viewers that somehow don’t lead me to label their network desperate. As she points out herself, HBO only has 32% penetration nationwide. What ratings are we waiting for?

Despite mentioning that the show has “pisspoor writing,” and that audiences have been fooled by HBO’s marketing into thinking the show is good, she doesn’t actually have much to say in any specific sense. She does say she, “…felt like a dumbass for watching all four advance episodes expecting some kind of intelligent life to emerge on the small screen,” but she also thinks “craptastic” is a word (and further that it has a definition).

Worse, she thinks that saying things like, “pisspoor writing,” and, “craptastic,” a lot somehow eventually molds itself into making a cogent, meaningful statement about a show.

I actually can’t help but smile at the fact that she quotes Alan Ball, the series creator, telling us that he sold the show pre-launch as, “popcorn TV for smart people.”

I think that pretty much nails it actually. Look, it’s not a great show. When the creator gives us that quote, it’s easy to see that it’s not even trying to be a great show. It is, however, an interesting show. It has an odd amount of (and frankly an odd caliber of) sex in it, but it has it in a way that shouldn’t be immediately dismissed. Like Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under, it may say things that are weird and unsettling, and it will probably say them using at least uncomfortable methods. And, also like Six Feet Under, we may ultimately dismiss a lot of what it says as being really a bit stupid and/or “stunty,” but that is not the same as not saying anything in the first place.

I have to admit that I really don’t love this show. I like it to some non-zero degree, but that’s about all I can say after three shows. I’m not hooked. I think it may end up being one of the plethora of shows i
n the last four or five years that really should have just been movies.

Even with my lukewarm reaction, I’m not shocked HBO is already willing to give it another season. Actually, I applaud them. The buzz may die off any day, and before long this show may tank completely, but HBO is going to take a shot. There is, in my opinion, a lot of great television that doesn’t exist because shows were cancelled after less than five episodes, and it’s about time that first episode ratings were given a more realistic amount of weight in the grand scheme of things.

Big thanks to Media Morgue as being the first to alert me to Finke’s article.

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