True Blood: A Leading Lady Conundrum, Er, Tradition

I've been following the Skin & Scares coverage of True Blood on Slate and the article about this season's 2nd episode, "Why does everyone love Sookie?," makes a point that the main heroine of the show is a fairly annoying and dull character. And I agree. Lately, Sookie has just gotten to be an irritating and shrill interruption to the rest of the show's sultry action, running around worried about the direction of her relationship with Bill-Is he mad at me? Should I marry him? Where did he go?! Blah blah blah. Sookie may look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but her jokes don't kill nearly as well.

The truth of the matter is Sookie is an intrinsic part of the classic horror framework. She fulfills the part of the virtuous and innocent heroine, consistently in need of saving from (insert masculine hero here, e.g. Eric, Bill, Sam, Johnathan Harker, etc.). In effect, Sookie is today's version of Bram Stoker's Mina in "Dracula." Comparably, Tara is fulfilling the role of the more sensuous and rebellious Lucy Westenra fairly well. Hopefully she doesn't get her head chopped off at some point, though the new True Blood plot twist isn't looking that fantastic for her so far. Sookie satisfies the old Victorian trope of praise for the simple damsel-in-distress. She isn't threatening or intimidating, she's just a girl devoted to her man. This point may be the only place where Twilight and True Blood can draw parallels; Bella Swan is a relative stick-in-the-mud who has inexplicably enthralled all her male co-stars as well.

Perhaps the new twist, Bill's feigned rejection of Sookie, will place her character on a more nontraditional path. As of yet, she remains the bastion of purity for the show (you know, in True Blood standards, that is).