'True Blood' sinks its teeth into a second season

Chicago Times

One word—a name, actually—makes it hard to take “True Blood” (8 p.m. Central Sunday, HBO; three stars) seriously.

That name is pronounced “Suhkhee.” Or “Soohkee.” The actual moniker belongs to Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), the true love of Bill Compton, a courtly vampire who, when human, fought in the Civil War.

Compton is played by an Englishman, Stephen Moyer, and the way Moyer tries to say the name with a Southern accent is faintly—OK, more than faintly—ridiculous. Yet that verbal mangling also provides a certain amount of enjoyment in the Watcher household—the competition to say "Sookie" in a Bill-like way that makes other laugh is by now a summer ritual.

That’s not to say Moyer is a bad actor—far from it. He gives Bill an air of quiet pathos and steely intelligence. Two seasons in, however, I’m still not sure what he sees in “Suhkhee”—sorry, Sookie—a psychic waitress whose main activity in Season 1 seemed to be flouncing angrily out of rooms, houses and bars. Give this woman a location, and she will find a way to stomp away from it in a foul mood

read