The show asks the same question as the books -- What if vampires...? -- and then answers it about fifty different extra ways. The books are about Sookie, but the show steps away from Sookie, which means you get to actually see what things are like for people who are not Sookie, so every scene in the entire first episode just keeps asking this question -- What if vampires..., what do you do? -- over and over and over, and every single scene answers it differently. So like, what does unshielded psychic waitress Sookie Stackhouse do? Wait for two years after the vampires' official simulcasted "coming out of the coffin" to see one up close, and spend that time getting more and more adorable. And when she does find one, his mind is closed to her. For a show -- and a trope -- that's all about penetration and interpenetration, whose teeth are where, whose mind's inside whose, that's a powerful aphrodisiac. She's spent her life hearing the beast in every man: why not choose the one monster whose beast she can't see? Plus, he's like soooo übercute.

Continue reading this entry on Television Without Pity.