She Is No Tony Soprano

True Blood is back! Just like everyone else I was super excited for the premiere of season three. A sloppy sophomore effort that spun way out in the second half is a distant memory easily pushed aside.

Without too much detail the new season started off fairly well. The much ballyhooed werewolves look a million times less silly than their Twilight counterparts. The secret? Using real wolves. What a shocker. Real vs CGI wins again, just like it has every single time someone has used CGI in a scene that could have been completed without it.

I do, however, have one rather large problem with this show. I can't stand Sookie Stackhouse. She makes me grind my teeth. I haven't seen enough of Anna Paquin's work to tell if she is a bad actress or if her character is poorly written. Considering that most of the female characters in True Blood seem one dimensional I'm inclined to give her a bit of a pass. Although I found her similarly irritating as Rogue in the X-Men movies.

She is HOT though

Sookie is played as a naive and sheltered southern girl, times ten. After a while it gets really tiresome. I think I'm supposed to be excited that this waif of a girl is so precocious and unimpressed by the powerful supernatural beings around her. But week after week of her babe in the woods routine getting her into trouble only to be bailed out by Bill Compton gets a little ridiculous. How about she shows the ability to think? That seems like a nice bit of character development to me at least.

I don't recall ever enjoying a show in which I disliked the main character. In fact I am not sure most of my favorite shows would have been worth watching had they killed off the main character. The Shield minus Vic Mackey equals me changing the channel. And the Sopranos? Forgetaboutit. So in a way, that's a pretty big endorsement for the rest of the show.

With or without Sookie, I will continue to watch. The show is quite enjoyable, even when it's not necessarily good television I still find it to be fun television. But if they killed off Sookie Stackhouse next week? I would dance a jig and mentally bump True Blood up my list of favorite shows several notches.