true blood, get at me

I may actually SKIP the Tony Awards to watch the season Premiere of True Blood. There's such a tone. Such nice work-- both humorous & compelling. I love that Alan Ball just took his sweet ass time and let season one be a campy joke -- a so bad it's amazing pleasure that veered in season two into something really special. I'm super super excited that Season 3 is going to be alllll about my favorite character, Eric. (I think Alex Skarsgaard is the world's most perfect man [except Robert Redford, of course. More on him later]).

But Jason is easily my second favorite character. For being all over the map, Ryan Kwanten always manages to bring it to this amazing place which is always funny and depressing and lovable. Case in point. Watch where this minisode goes in the course of two and half minutes.

Minisode: Jason

Not surprisingly at all, Alan Ball says he gets a lot of his inspiration for True Blood from my dear old cousin, Tennessee Williams. He's spoken about it in many interviews, including this one in Slate:

If Tennessee Williams had to write a lurid soap opera for cable television, this is the kind of inspired nonsense he would have come up with. Alan Ball has called the playwright—whose frustrated writer in The Glass Menagerie tells his mother that when he hears her exclaim "rise and shine" in the morning, he thinks how "lucky dead people are"—an inspiration. His influence shows up everywhere from the most repeated dialogue ("May I call on you sometime?") to small details (this episode we learn of a man named Stanley).