The highly watched HBO Vampire drama True blood was based on the 14 book series aptly named; the Stackhouse Series. Despite a strong beginning, True Blood seriously declined in quality and viewership over its 7 seasons. There is no denying the difficulty in consistently creating realistic and engaging storylines for a show centered around the existence of Vampires and other supernatural creatures in the blatantly racist deep south, but the show had a clear issue from day one.
5 Ways Sookie Stackhouse Ruined True Blood
Aka Why Sookie Sux
Today, Scarlett Media presents a master class on the top 5 examples how Sookie Stackhouse Ruined True Blood. Don’t forget to suck the life out of the like button if you agree or bleed to death on the dislike button if you disagree and don’t mind being wrong.
Spoilers Ahead
5. Sookie Was A Fairy
Revealing Sookie’s royal Fey bloodline may have been a fun attempt to explore a seldom used supernatural being but more likely, it was just a lazy way for writers to keep the story moving. Need to tell who is lying about being a serial killer or need to establish that the whole town is racist? No Problem! Sookie can read minds. Need a reason for a vampire to fall in love with Sookie? Conveniently, Fairy blood smells extra yummy to them. Need to kill a 5000 year old vampire? It’s your lucky day! Sookie has a light based nuke she can manifest from her hands. “But wait!” the viewer might say, “Vampires can glamour people into doing whatever they want!” Wouldn’t you know it; not Sookie. Vampire mind control does not work on the fey.
Thankfully, the show introduced some charismatic actors to breathe life into the baddies throughout the seasons, but with all of Sookie’s miraculous powers, the writers seem to have forgotten that when good guys are too overpowered, the villain of the week never feels like a real threat. Sure, maybe it’s not fair to blame Sookie for the writers not being bothered to define her powers, but every time she manifested a new power or her fairy god father taught her how to create the ultimate vampire killing weapon from thin air, viewers were left scratching their heads, writing off the villain’s demise as a forgone conclusion.
4. Sookie Wasn’t Racist
Ok. Stick with us for a second on this one. One of the best outcomes, though sometimes awkwardly executed, was the show runner’s clear desire to make a statement about the negative impacts of racism, homophobia and other prejudice. The show’s main premise revolved around the impacts of Vampires coming out of the coffin as a heavy handed metaphor for the LGBTQ community coming out of the closet and into the mainstream in the early 2000s. Then, the writers got super excited and decided to trash the metaphor all together and opted to show life in the deep American south where apparently EVERYONE is racist. Except blondie.
One of our heroes, Sam “Good Boy” Merlotte, started off super prejudiced towards vampires, despite being supernatural himself. He may not have hated them, but he didn’t exactly stick his neck out either.
Arlene, the redheaded firecracker waitress who just wanted someone to love her and her kids, had vampire hating thoughts every time Sookie took a listen.
Non white characters like Tara were featured prominently as strong, independent and interesting people, and vampire racists.
Our favorite dummy and serial womanizer Jason hooked up with a metric ton of vampire hotties but started off hating them and condemning Sookie for wanting to help them.
Even the vampires were racist seeing humans as cattle. The Vampire bible even said so!
Then in walks our pretty little Sookie: a blonde haired, white, straight, young female who never left her small town. An Aryan dream. Maybe “unlikely wokeness” is part of her supernatural powers because her identity as an immediate defender of minorities does not make sense. True, she is slightly supernatural herself and we do see that her grandmother raised her with an open mind, but come on, this is the slack jawed yokel, likely inbred, vampire hating south! Instead, we got a veritable Southern Belle who didn’t hesitate to jump into bed with vampires despite obvious hesitations from those around her. We love a main character who fights against prejudice, whether it’s the real kind or the fictional vampire-centric kind, but the reality is that Sookie would likely have been at least a little racist.
3.Sookie’s Real Problem Was Sookie
Sure, Sookie had her problems from ancient stalkers to her childish Don Jaun-like brother to vampires craving her tasty, cotton candy with sunlight flavoured fairy blood and to the dozens of people dying around her, more on that later. Through all that. Sookie was handed easy solutions creating most of her own drama. Yeah, her grandmother died. Yeah, that sucks. But she left her mortgage free house to Sookie. How many millennials can say they are a homeowner? What did Sookie do? Invite every vampire within the county to come visit for sweet tea.
At this point, there are likely people thinking, “hey, Sookie’s parents died when she was young. How was THAT not a problem?”. Sure it’s traumatic that her loving father tried to kill her when she was a kid. One again, what does Sookie do? She begs Lafayette to summon the ghost of daddy dearest who, obviously possesses Lafyette and, yup, tries to murder her again.
Sookie’s biggest problem was that there were too many lovestruck men, well, vampires, fairies and werewolves, willing to lay down their lives for her. Aside from making single people everywhere scream ‘If the most nothing character in the history of television has a managerie of sexy supers vying for their adoration, what the hell is wrong with me?’, her too love filled life didn’t exactly make anyone sympathetic to her struggles. (Play clip with sound)
With all this affection available to her, Sookie created her own drama, constantly going back and forth between who she loved the most. It should have been Eric, but I digress; Sookie was a drama queen.
2. Sookie Is A Stupid Name
First off, sorry to anyone named Sookie, but considering it’s not in the baby name book, you don’t exist, so we’re okay.
For those who don’t want to check wikipedia for yourself; Sookie is a variant of the name Susan and somehow means both Rose and Lilly. Because reasons. Though other fictional characters have also shared this unusual label, such as Sookie from Gilmore Girls, True Blood’s Sookie stands out for one important reason. English actor Stephen Moyer, who played Bill, Billiam, Compton, one of her many romantic interests, had a very unique way of pronouncing this very unique name. (Play clip with sound)
Everytime he growled SOOKIE, he made the name SOOKIE, sound more stupid than the last time he said SOOKIE.
Even Eric thought SOOKIE was a stupid name. Susan would have been way less distracting.
Before we share the top reason why it’s so easy to blame Sookie for the decline of what is otherwise a watchable show, don’t forget to glamour the subscribe button. We will be putting out more videos about who or what ruined or saved some of our favorite movies and shows every week.
1. Sookie Got Everyone Killed
It is no surprise that a series based around vampires and fantasy would include a lot of death. Over the 7 seasons, we were introduced to many formidable baddies who had their fair share of blood and death on their hands. But there is no one character more responsible for the carnage around them as Sookie. Here is an incomplete list of some of the most notable deaths we can blame on our hero;
Let’s get the fairy genocide out of the way first and then we can get into the specifics. Many, many fairies were killed by simple Sookie association but the true blood bath came when Sookie gave Warlow, the hungry vampire, the secret location of the Fairy club. He walked right in and ate them all. Yum
Rene – A baddie from season one who gets killed by a shovel wielding Sookie
Franklin – A vamp baddie from season three was shot by Jason. Jason was saving Tara who would not have been in that mess had it not been for Eric and his affiliation with Sookie
Lorena – Maybe a deserving death but Sookie stabs Billiam’s maker in season three
Marnie – Season four’s witchy foe shot by lover boy Billiam freeing Sookie and friends from another mess Sookie made.
Bud – Sure, he was basically a member of the KKK but just one more victim of Sookie when Andy kills him, saving Sookie in season five. See the trend yet?
Russell – One of the oldest and best written vamps gets killed by Eric in Season 5. Since it was Eric, let’s go ahead and blame Sookie for this one too.
Warlow – Season six’s 5000 year old Sookie stalker met his end at Jason’s hand. Protecting his sister. Again.
Steve Newlin – The Reverend Newlin met his squishy end in season six while proclaiming his love for Jason. You can blame Jason for this one, but you would be wrong. It was Sookie.
And that’s just the bad guys. Sookie’s impressive morbid batting average doesn’t stop there. She spends a lot of time picking a whole bouquet of WhoopsieDaisies killing off good guys, too?
Gran Stackhouse – Died by association with vamps. Who introduced her to this world? Sookie.
Claudine – Sookie’s fairy godmother gets drained by Eric while Sookie is caring for him and his amnesia
Debbie – This shewolf got her brains rearranged by a shot-gun wielding Sookie showing a shocking lack of remorse
Andy’s Daughters – Andy had 4 fairy daughters in season six, which is too weird to be explained in this video. Long story short, three of them are killed by Jessica who would not be a vampire if Billiam had not made her a vamp in season 1 as punishment for killing another vamp. Want to guess why he did that? To save Sookie. In a way, anyone Jessica killed could be listed here but that is a long list and we have other shows to hate watch.
Tara – Insert something about why Sookie was the reason Tara turned vampire which led to her gooification
Alcide – Saving Sookie in the last season. After all he survived, this poor muscley wareidiot deserved a better end. If for no other reason, to keep the fangirls happy
Bill – Billiam is staked by Sookie at the end of the series. Not exactly the best character and his strange reasoning for wanting the true death is still a little hazy but he made it till the end of the series and died to save Sookie. SHOCKER Just a note on this one; Billiam was actually staked twice by Sookie. The first being after he was resurrected as the vampire god Billith.
Did we forget anything? Does Sookie have any redeeming qualities we clearly could not think of? Who do you blame for the destruction of your favorite show? Comment below. (Play clip and sound)
#Ruined #ScarlettMedia #TrueBlood
Credits:
Writer: AB Scarlett
Editor: Arielle Andreano
Voice: Scott Tunnix
Video: Dhananjay Singh & Angel Gustanski
Scarlett.Media productions are for commentary, criticism and parody. All media samples are for transformative and fair use.
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