Get Your Vampire On with HBO’s TRUE BLOOD

Between the current Twilight craze, Tim Burton’s planned Dark Shadows remake, that Vampires app on Facebook, and the catchy pop sound of Vampire Weekend, now seems to be a pretty good time to be a vampire. Okay, so it didn’t work out so well for CBS’ Moonlight, but at least the show had a loyal (albeit small) fanbase. And now HBO is hoping it can do better with its latest scripted series, True Blood, premiering tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Right out of the gate, True Blood has a better pedigree than Moonlight, since it’s based on Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries book series, adapted by Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), and starring Anna Paquin (X-Men). And because it’s on HBO, you know there’s going to be lots of gratuitous vampire sex and not a little gratuitous blood and violence, which is bound to be appealing to someone.

Despite its premise–vampires have recently come out of the closet, so to speak, thanks to synthetic blood–True Blood treads no new territory in the vampire mythos. Ball says he’s never seen Buffy or read any of the Anne Rice books, which is clearly a mistake–it’s always best to know when you’re retreading old ground rather than blithely assuming you’re some kind of vampire genre pathfinder. The vampires-as-allegory-for-gays theme is about as subtle as a freight train and the series is packed with cliches. And not just vampire cliches–the rural Louisiana town that serves as True Blood‘s setting is more than a little reminiscent of Deliverance.

Still, the series has a lot going for it. It’s populated by a fairly interesting cast of characters played by an appealing ensemble of actors who get some better-than-average lines thanks to Ball. It’s sometimes scary and sometimes silly (though whether that silliness is always intentional I couldn’t necessarily tell), and there’s enough mystery in the air that it left me wanting to know more.

So while it’s certainly no Buffy, True Blood is still more fun than that stupid Facebook app. And hey, at least it’s somwthing to help pass the time until the Twilight movie comes out.

Bacon Bits: THE CLOSER Spin-off, the BSG movie and More

• Spin-offs are in the air: Showtime is spinning off The L Word‘s Alice (Leisha Hailey) and TNT is plotting a spin-off of The Closer, although it’s unknown whether that one will focus on an existing character or a new one.

• Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz is developing a new comedy for CBS about a family that “loves too much.” I’m already excited, although I can’t quite imagine how it’ll fit into CBS’ current comedy lineup.

• The Cylon-centric Battlestar Galactica movie starts shooting Monday, with familiar faces Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama), Michael Trucco (Sam Anders), Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol) and Dean Stockwell (Cavil), Tricia Helfer (Six), Grace Park (Boomer/Athena), Rick Worthy (Simon), Matthew Bennett (Doral) and Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben).

• Anthony Edwards will be resurrecting Dr. Mark Green in a flashback for the Nov. 13 episode of E.R.

• Fox has announced they’re working on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer massively multiplayer online game. Don’t tease a gamer girl now, ya’ll.

• Greg Berlanti continues his reign as hardest-working man in television–now he’s developing a sci-fi pilot for ABC with Rene Echevarria (The 4400, Dark Angel).

• More 30 Rock stunting casting: Gossip Girls Leighton Meester and Blake Lively are in talks to play Liz Lemon’s high school buddies in a flashback sequence.

PSYCH Pineapple Watch: “Talk Derby to Me”

Color me pouty. Gus on the back burner and no apparent pineapple (“there wasn’t one” is one of the options in the pineapple sweepstakes–if you saw a hidden fruit, please do comment!). If it weren’t for the mannequins, the roller derby names–Seven Deadly Sinsderella, Miss Anthropy–and Shawn cooking (without pineapples), I’m not sure there would be much to report.

In fairness, having been born without the shipper gene, I may not be the target audience for the Shawn-Jules couples skate. Focusing on other relationships just highlights the One True Pairing of this show: Shawn and Gus. Thank goodness Gus got some crabcakes after all (even if they were three days old). Next week’s episode appears to be Gus-centric, so here’s hoping more pineapple won’t be far behind.

BONES and 90210: Are Two Episodes Better Than One?

On Tuesday night, I was scuttling around packing canned meat and candles into a backpack and racing for a fenced wilderness fortress. Not because yet more hurricanes are headed for the coast, but because the seventh sign of the apocalypse had appeared.

I was enjoying the new 90210.

And this is coming from someone who absoultely could not stomach the original (and has trouble in general with soap operas about the traumas of the rich and pampered–I could only make it as far as the mint green suit in this week’s Gossip Girl before I gave up in despair). But the dialogue was bouncy and the situations kitschy (drugs in a hollowed-out book! Dum dum duuuuuuum!) and the nods to the original hilariously cheesy. And watching Tristan Wilds, I could squint and almost believe that the saddest kids on The Wire made it out of the slums. It extended past my bedtime, leading me to put off watching the second half until the next day, but I was happily interested in finishing and therefore pretty surprised that the show was almost universally panned the next day.

When I saw the second half–which is really a second episode tacked to the first to create a super-sized premiere–I understood the critical roast. The zest brought by Rob Thomas and Mark Piznarski (the team behind the brilliant Veronica Mars pilot) left the zip code with them, leaving both characters and plot lines thinner than the actresses.

Curiously, the same thing happened during Wednesday’s season premiere of Bones. Setting a lot of the action in the UK livened up a pedestrian mystery (with Torchwood‘s much-killed Suzie, Indira Varma, and Doctor Who‘s lesser medical student, Oliver Morgenstern, in the person of Ben Righton to entertain the BBC junkies among us), and the long-awaited arrival of Angela’s husband provided some intrigue back at the Jeffersonian. The novelty wore off across two hours, however, with the shift to a new mystery feeling very much like a…second episode tacked to the first to create a super-sized premiere.

In both cases, we thought we were getting a treat–extra ice cream for being good kids. But in both cases, slowing down the pacing quickly deflated the excitement. If we’d seen only the first episode of 90210, would the CW have gotten a week of cheese-filled buzz instead of bad reviews? Would Bones fans be talking about whether Brennan’s new flirtation would come between her and Booth rather than the fast and inexplicable breakup between Hodgins and Angela if we’d seen only the first half? On the other hand, we fondly remember the one-two punch of seeing both parts of The West Wing‘s “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen” on the same night. Maybe all that means is that neither 90210 nor Bones (as much as we like it) is as good as The West Wing. But is there anything more to be gleaned here as to when to go for the two-hour premiere and when not to? Because we’d like to think we deserve extra ice cream sometimes.

THE OFFICE Season Four DVD Swag Guide

You can always count on Universal Studios Home Entertainment to release a totally kick-ass set of special edition DVDs for The Office. One of last year’s limited edition season three DVD sets came with a Dundie and a Dwight bobblehead! And the season four DVDs (released yesterday) aren’t too shabby, either, depending on where you shop. The hardest part is deciding which special edition set you want and figuring out where you can get your hands on it.

Fortunately, Office Tally has a handy buying guide to help you figure out which store’s special edition set has the best swag. Personally, my money’s on the Best Buy set, which includes the script for “Dinner Party” and a Michael Scott’s Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run For The Cure wristband, t-shirt and water bottle. Don’t wait around too long, though, because these babies won’t be on the shelves forever.

To give you a taste of what else the season four DVDs have to offer, here’s a peak at a deleted scene from “Money” and a Michael/Dwight blooper clip:

Good Grief… RIP Bill Melendez

Bill Melendez, the only animator Charles M. Schulz would permit to work with his beloved Peanuts characters, died today at the age of 91. Best known for bringing Charlie Brown and his friends to life in classic television specials like A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Melendez earned eight Emmy Awards, 17 Emmy nominations, one Oscar nomination and two Peabody Awards over the course of his career.

Not only did Melendez bring Peanuts to the screen in more than 63 half-hour specials, five one-hour specials, four feature films and more than 372 commercials, he also provided the voices for Snoopy and Woodstock through the years. Besides his work with the Peanuts characters, he animated the TV specials Garfield on the Town, Cathy, Babar Comes to America and The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, among others. In other words, this guy pretty much animated my entire childhood. Good grief, indeed.

Bacon Bits: CONCHORDS, 90210 and More

• Flight of the Conchords may end after the upcoming second season.

• The New York Times (reg req’d) has an oral history of Beverly Hills 90210.

• You might be surprised by some of the shows on this A.V. Club list of American adaptations of British television shows. American TV producers: leaving no British series un-exploited.

• Speaking of exploited British shows, the BBC is sending Top Gear on a 10-city world tour.

• So which is it, does Sarah Palin look more like Tina Fey or Laura Roslin? Either way, I’m with I09–I’d rather have the Airlock for VP.

• Now that the Associated Press is writing about the proliferation of the BSG-invented “frak” in popular culture, I guess it’s time to stop using it. (Boy, I hope the AP doesn’t sue me for referring to their article.)

ROBOT CHICKEN Disturbs Anew Tonight on Cartoon Network

We mean that as a compliment, really. It’s true that we have a soft spot for Robot Chicken as a result of co-creator and sometime director Matthew Senreich once borrowing my phone on a noisy curb at Comic-Con. As a thank you, he offered me a not-yet-released DVD of Sealab 2021 he’d just been given. I couldn’t fathom “charging” someone for borrowing a cell phone and went through what I’m afraid turned into an eyelash-batting pageant of self-denial. What I could not have seen from my back row seats in the Adult Swim panel we’d just left, however, was that this was the same DVD Seth Green had just put down his shirt on stage. Susannah’s still mad at me over that one.

ANYWAY. Even if you haven’t been demure around Matthew Senreich or declined Seth Green’s chest sweat, you can love Robot Chicken‘s sick and wrong melange of pop culture adulation and piss-taking. The genius premise, telling borderline unacceptable jokes using much-loved toys of eras gone by, hasn’t gotten old, and their current Emmy nomination for the brilliant “Robot Chicken: Star Wars” proves it. Season four returns tonight with “Tubba-Bubba’s Now Hubba-Hubba,” including a look at what would happen if Dracula filled Jack Bauer’s shoes. It helps to be as much of a pop culture junkie as the creators are (the repeated Voltron theme music is topped only by a quite wonderful Matrix/Pac-Man mash-up), but you could consider the show a graduate-level introduction to genre joy from the last three decades. Among the revolving door of celebrity voice talent that will appear throughout the season are television creators Joss Whedon, Seth MacFarlane, and Ron Moore. New episodes starting tonight at 11:30pm Eastern and Pacific.

TNT’s RAISING THE BAR Actually Lowers the Bar

Hill Street Blues… L.A. Law… Murder One… NYPD Blue… There was a time when Steven Bochco’s name was synonymous with the best cop and lawyer shows on television (and also Doogie Houser, M.D.). So when I heard that TNT had snagged Raising the Bar–Bochco’s latest lawyer drama with a promising cast that includes the excellent Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm in the Middle), Gloria Reuben (E.R.), J. August Richards (Angel) and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (who’d probably prefer that I remind you of his work on NYPD Blue rather than Saved by the Bell)–I was intrigued. Heck, even the guest stars are interesting–Veronica Mars alum Percy Daggs III (we miss you, Wallace!) and My So-Called Life vet Wilson Cruz (we love you, Rickie!) both show up in episode two.

Alas, there is nothing to intrigue in this terminally mediocre show because Raising the Bar is a standard-issue courtroom drama populated by one-dimensional characters struggling through been-there-done-that plots. While it’s ostensibly about a group of chummy young prosecutors and public defenders who duke it out in the courtroom and then adjourn for a beer in the local bar, it’s actually a study in just how tired the whole genre has become.

Everyone on Raising the Bar is apparently either pure good or pure evil or–dullest of all–professionally disinterested. Kaczmarek is criminally wasted as a hateful, self-serving judge engaged in a squicky (and unfathomable) affair with her obviously gay law clerk (Jonathan Scarfe). Reubens is so uniformly pleasant and bland she might as well not even be there. Richards seems to be playing the exact same generic lawyer he played on the deservedly short-lived Conviction (which was, incidentally, not so different from his character during the last season of Angel). Gosselaar is stuck with a caricature of an idealistic young public defender–complete with the requisite shaggy hair, untucked shirt and messenger bag we’ve come to know as this television trope’s standard uniform– who’s seemingly unable to learn from his own mistakes.

Which leads me to another problem with the series. The characters are so trapped by their clichés that they bump up against one another in exactly the same ways, episode after episode. Watch three episodes and you’ll have seen Gosselaar and Kaczmarek have the same argument three times. Yawn.

If you’re hankering for a lawyer show, do yourself a favor and Netflix some of Bochco’s classics. Even Doogie Houser was better than this tripe.

Bacon Bits: LIFE, 30 ROCK, and More

• NBC is lightening up Life, while ABC is toughening up Private Practice.

• Jennifer Aniston is returning to NBC for a guest spot on 30 Rock.

• And speaking of 30 Rock, Will Arnett will be reprising his Emmy-nominated turn as scheming network exec Devin Banks when he returns to 30 Rock for the season premiere.

• If you love lists like we love lists, you won’t want to miss this list of the 20 Best Seasons of the Last 20 Years.

• The Daily Show correspondents are the real rock stars at the DNC.