First Taste can be considered the first main episode of the series. At this point, the plot begins to move forward and now we are seeing all the main characters’ stories starting to either take form or intertwine within each other. The basic story is in a world where Vampires live among humans beings as normal citizens, there is a town called Bon Temps which has a vampire move in as a new residence, meets a local waitress on the very same night a murder occurs in the sleepy town.
Last we saw of Sookie, she was badly beaten from the Rattrays who had come for revenge for the previous night. While she is beaten, this scene has a lot of mystery to it since the camera works in a fast pace where the audience is seeing the events through Sookie’s hazy vision of a dog following a shadowy wind coming to her aid. Later on the mystery behind this scene is fully revealed but even while watching and then knowing the truth behind, the audience still has a feeling that the moment where Sookie is being beaten then saved by Bill continues to have more questions than answers that may never be fully revealed.
Elsewhere, Jason is at the police station re-watching the tape of him and Maudette the night before where the final scene appears revealing that Jason had not choked Maudette at all but in fact was a carefully orchestrated prank. If I were Jason, I would have sued the Bon Temps police department because they not only did not read him his Miranda Rights he was under the impression of being arrested so had he confessed; his confession was going to be proven inadmissible in court since his 5th Amendment Rights was violated. The benefit of this discovery immediately results in Jason’s release where he continues his sexual escapades this time with one of Sookie’s co-workers resulting in an interesting match. Meanwhile, Sookie wakes up seeing Bill licking her head clean in order to heal her after she had been slowly healing from the effects of his blood being administered to her.
Throughout the time she is healing, Both Bill and Sookie began form a connection as to explain why they are both so attracted to each other in which Sookie reveals to Bill her condition of telepathy and the limitation of her powers which prevent her from obtaining a normal social life in the rural South. This scene not only is an importance in the story but is quite a visual experience where very little flashbacks and even dialogue are given. Just by the expressions these two characters show towards each other as the night sky and lake reflect on them, shows that they each themselves in the other character or what they hope to become. When Sookie becomes fully healed, we then learn that Bill is in fact 173 years old where he was turned into a vampire at the human age of 30 shortly after the American Civil War. At this point, Sookie then explains her favor to Bill that her grandmother would like to speak to him about his experiences during the war which is not a subject Bill feels comfortable talking about but will do his best in order to make Sookie happy.
The next day, Sookie and her grandmother are preparing the house in order for Bill’s arrival where Sookie begins to notice strange occurrences such as she is able to have heightened senses from her surroundings all while trying to completely normal of the fact a vampire will come to see her family while those around her constantly warn her of the dangers. Bill comes over that night as promised revealing another vampire secret that he can only come into a human’s home with an invitation extended.
The first meeting of Jason, Tara and Adele towards Bill varies differently with Jason still suspecting Bill being dangerous solely because he is a vampire causing a challenge of masculine authority (at least in Jason’s eyes). Whereas with Tara, there is a challenge in her eyes not with gender but with race. The first question Tara asks of Bill is whether he owned slaves although despite bill stating he did not own any slaves; to Tara, Bill as a living representation of the Old South which was still Romanized as the ideal way of life were someone like Tara fits in this life as belonging to another human being. With Adele, she is not threatened by Bill but charmed by him because he represented everything a true Southern gentleman appeared and behaved that it did not matter whether or not he was a vampire.
As the night drags on, Sookie and Bill go out for a stroll where they continue to become better acquainted in which more secrets are revealed the first was that while Sookie had been healing, Bill had killed the Rattrays but draining them and covering up the murders by making it look like a natural disaster had occurred. The second secret comes where because Sookie was so badly beaten, she drank a lot of Bill’s blood causing the mysterious sensations from earlier that can allow Bill to always sense Sookie, her senses will heighten and her libido will become more active. Sookie while asking Bill the full extent of his powers, reveals when she first became a telepath where they both state each have lost important loved ones. As they both head towards Bill’s house, Bill begins to clearly see Sookie for the first time where when asking her to take off her hairclip, reminiscing memories ensue where Sookie’s sun smell exactly like sunlight. This scene gets more romantic where perhaps it was because of the blood or from Sookie’s own attraction to the vampire, she passionately kisses but their moment ceases as Bill’s fangs extended revealing to both Sookie and to the audience, as much as Bill can pretend to be a human, he is still very much a vampire.
The rest of the episode focuses on the vampire politics outside of Bon Temps where the conservative elite instruct the public vampires are dangerous while vampire politicians continue their propaganda of being completely harmless due to the synthetic blood. The vampire politics along with the lives of the Bon Temps residences are not completely important but are shown through television segments as theoretically putting the ideals of American Vampire League in practice. Another part of the episode though briefly gave attention to Tara’s home life where despite being a no-nonsense woman, she cannot enjoy life where it can drag depression onto those around her. At Merlotte’s, Sookie continues to get harassed mainly because she is a woman in a redneck bar as well as Sam asking about the state of her telepathy whenever she is with Bill. The final scene arrives where Sookie goes into Bill’s house; she meets not Bill but three vampires who are ready to kill her at any given moment.
The first half of this episode was well paced and developed an idea from the pilot into one of the main points of the story. Going into episode two, this show is already a love story between Sookie and Bill at the same time also Sookie tries to adjust with the new changes in her life while still struggling with her telepathy. The courtship between them is a combination of satire and gothic romance where Bill who is naturally seductive towards women becomes slightly nervous whenever he is around Sookie by the questions about his powers even revealing the extent of his blood. Sookie is the one who initiates their first kiss where Bill stops because of his fangs. The gothic romance portion comes from the moments that do try to be serious in their courtship from the beginning as Bill heals her and while they are walking along Bon Temps cemetery. These are two people who should be associated with each other yet they are both drawn to one another that helped the attraction become stronger when they each first tasted the other’s blood.
Another new point in this episode was we got to see more the impact of vampires have on a society such as Bon Temps. The whole town knows about their new neighbor to even suspecting him of a being a murderer, there was even more focus of the vampire politics outside of the television segments with Jason and Bill stating about the Vampire Rights Amendment being the ultimate form of equality among vampires and humans, Dawn is revealed to have also been intimate with vampires and the end of the episode shows three new vampires who are not seductive or harmless but rather the stereotypical behavior of vampires from the Hammerfilms Studios.
The latter half of the episode was more filler where it does not really help the plot of this episode but sets up the events for the next episode and for the rest of the season in general. When seeing First Taste in itself, the latter half can be either boring or unimportant to the events that are going on. One theory is because these events occur in the daytime, the vampires are not shown therefore the focus on humans in a small town will be explored which can lead to problems if the characters were not explored correctly but this episode’s latter half focused still on the problems of their lives as now realizing that vampires now live among them was executed rather well. Although when seeing the season as whole, parts that were at times unimportant or completely random show significance in regards to character development and story arcs.
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