No TV show says summer to us more than True Blood, its Southern Gothic atmosphere and pulpy pleasures providing the perfect complement to sweaty evenings spent drinking mint juleps at home after another exhausting day in the hot sun. But while we love the people — and supernatural creatures — of Bon Temps and want them to never, ever change, we’ve noticed over the years that Sookie, Bill, and co. have a tendency to annoy the crap out of us. So, in the spirit of good-natured complaining about a show that we actually adore, every week this season we’ll be shouting out the three characters who drove us craziest, and also anointing the episode’s single most campily awesome character. Check out who made us groan in the premiere — which showcased at least 15 storylines, most of them involving inappropriate nudity — after the jump.
The Week’s Most Annoying Characters
1. Sookie: Honestly, we’re a bit worried that Sookie is going to win every week, but she really earned the “Most Annoying” title this time. First she got all emo about killing Debbie, who totally deserved it, then she wouldn’t leave poor Lafayette alone when all he wanted to do was mourn the dead love of his life and his possibly dead cousin.
2. Jason: Apparently, being irritating runs in the family, because Jason was all kinds of stupid last night. He began by answering the door naked when Reverend Steve Newlin showed up at his house as a vampire. Even if that guy didn’t have fangs, Jason really should have just turned out all the lights and hid under his bed. Later, we found out that he’s getting played by Jessica and has become, like, totally introspective about their non-relationship. “I love when shit applies.” Ugh. We liked Jason so much better when he was slutty.
3. Eric: If you asked us yesterday morning whether we’d ever have expected to put the excellent Eric Northman on this list, we would have said no. And yet, there is no quicker way for a character to jump the shark than to have what amounts to vampire incest. Yuck to their up-against-the-shipping-crate sex scene (we really felt for poor, sexiled Bill at that moment) and double yuck to, “We fight like siblings, but we fuck like champions.” And here we thought the end of Game of Thrones meant a brief reprieve from incest on HBO.
The Week’s Most Awesome Character
Jessica: She’d already clinched the title when she showed up to save Jason in skimpy lingerie, pulled vampire rank on Reverend Steve, and threatened him with the True Death. But then she put a blue streak in her hair, rocked out on “Cherry Bomb,” and (even though she would later kind of regret it) reminded Jason she wasn’t his girlfriend.
Image credits: Lacey Terrell/HBO