Ah, is he gone in TV canon now? Damn.
It's a tad unclear, although it certainly looks that way. I keep hoping they don't waste a character that good. (Haven't read the books, so I have no idea how that correlates. As I understand it, Lafayette is barely nonexistant in the books, so anything's possible, I suppose. Also, while I admit his karma was probably a bit of a minefield, he deserves a bit better than he apparently got.)
It looks like my prediction is coming true. Sookie and Bill get back together and little miss young vampire shows up and starts trouble.
Not sure how I feel about that. She has the potential to be annoying, but right now she's VERY amusing.
but right now she's VERY amusing.
yeah, I'm not experiencing her as very amusing right now.
Perhaps it's just that Bill wears the look of exasperation and despair so well.
As I understand it, Lafayette is barely nonexistant in the books, so anything's possible, I suppose.
Big honkin' book spoiler:
In the books, he's very briefly mentioned, described as black and gay (and gay = wears makeup and minces) DESPITE WHICH dear sweet Sookie likes him perfectly well and thinks of him as a real person because she's just so broad minded. But he promptly dies, so as not to clutter up the text with his blackness or gayness, and we soon discover that his death is a result of his being involved in kinky orgies (because that's what gay people do). This was the point at which I stopped reading the books, although curiosity about this show has brought me back to work my way through the rest of them.
I really like the church sign in theh openining sequence that reads: GOD HATES FANGS. I think the show does a better job than the books of underlining the various kinds of bigotry, and drawing various parallels (without having vamp
be
an actual stand-in for gay or black).
Having now watched the rest of the series, I continue to be very pleasantly surprised.
Sookie - well, I have no particular fondness for her, and at times she makes my eyes roll out of my head, but I don't mind her being the central character (and I think Paquin does a perfectly good job with her). But I actively enjoy the hell out of the rest of the ensemble, I really do. Particularly Tara and her mama (I think Adina Porter was FABULOUS), but all of them are well rendered and far better rounded and believable, I think, than in the books. Jason in particular I've enjoyed enormously - that whole Amy and Eddie plotline was very good, I thought, in an OMG kind of way. Amy just made me wince and wince and wince with her professions of what a good vegan organic-eating bleeding heart hippy liberal she was, with her miniscule carbon footprint, as she tortured her pathetic vampire prisoner.
I'm liking Pam and Eric tremendously, and I found Bill's Annoying Vampire Daughter unexpectedly hilarious (although I don't know how long that will last). I also like all the little glimpses they give us of pop culture - newspapers with headlines reading 'Angelina Adopts Vamp Baby', the FangPhiles network on TV etc etc. Nice.
Man, I was gutted it was Rene! Defiitely didn't see that one coming! It did seem like a bit of an asspull, but not to worry.
I rather like hot witchy Circe Marianne woman, and approve of her giving Tara a good time, even though I am fairly sure it's all going to go very Gwendoline Post on my poor girl. (Michelle Forbes - bringing the toppy hotness to fangirls and fanboys for years and years, bless her.) At least Tara's got crisp white Egyptian sheets and hot guitar-playing boys and yummy food for a bit. Also lovely purple eyeshadow. But I'm still hoping she and Sam can make a go of it somehow, those crazy mixed-up kids...
Also, I heart Hoit Fortenberry.
Yay Fay with the fang love.
I'm definitely looking forward to whatever the next season will bring.
I've got the pettiest of nits to pick with Paquin. She's competent enough, I suppose, but she does this thing in every. single. role. where she forces herself to swallow in a way that is supposed to project fear/uncertainty/rage/delight/bafflement...it's a onesize fits all physiological response to heightened emotion. Every time I see it, I immediately think, huh, there she is doing her gaggy thing again. ACTING!
Throws me right out of the story.
I'm really looking forward to some of the other characters being more fully realized. Pam and Eric are excellent fun. Can't wait to see more of them.
The Season Premier of FotC is online, (for U.S. residents only).
I've been crowing about this all over the Internet.
My friend Tom Block was the origin of the idea, but I think I was the first on the Internet to make the argument that The Wire was incorporating many overt direct references to The Wild Bunch, especially in Season 2.
I awoke this morning to David Simon confirming this on NPR.
Here's the earliest mention of the two that I can find on the Internet. That's me in the comments. My friends and I had been kicking the point around for a few years by this time, but I can't find an earlier mention of it on the google.
Note that Alan Sepinwall catches my snap in the comments. In early 2008, he made a similar argument in his column, but he lessens the impact by mentioning that the writers were influenced by Westerns "like The Wild Bunch." In this case, he was wrong. It wasn't Westerns "like" the Wild Bunch, it was The freakin' Wild Bunch that they were paying homage to.
Later, on the House Next Door, I called most of the particulars of Omar's death a few weeks prior to the episode because of parallels between Omar and Pike. I was wrong about one of the specifics: I thought it would be Dookie instead of Kenard. Matt Zoller Seitz still sent me a snow globe for being so damn right. It's right next to me now.
