TVSquad

(S02E03) "He can do it. I'm wearin' my favorite pumps." - Pam to Eric, when he asked her and Chow to go troll the woods for the bull-creature

I could hear Lou Grant in my head during this episode of True Blood, saying "Sookie, you've got spunk." Only instead of hating Sookie's spunk, I'm loving it. I'd like to have just half the spunk Sookie's got. Last season, she not only buried her grandma and cleaned up all that blood in her kitchen, but she has no problem getting out of a car after fighting with Bill and stomping off into the night, knowing there are weird creatures out there. Ok, maybe not the smartest move on her part, but it did lead to good results for Lafayette.

Those were some serious scratches Sookie had after the bull creature attacked her. I hope True Blood gets an Emmy nod for makeup, because they really do a good job with the blood and guts, not to mention mouth-foaming on Sookie's part in this episode.

Well, eeewwww! I hope nobody was eating dinner during this episode, because there were some real gross-out scenes. The opener with a chained-in-the-basement Lafayette being hit by a severed arm and watching Erik drool large amounts of blood was bad enough. But later when Lafayette foraged through the guy's severed leg to find a piece of metal (at least, I think it was metal) to jimmy his chain lock open ... well, I was seriously cringing.

I'm really trying not to reveal spoilers on the front page, but there's not a whole lot about True Blood that isn't a spoiler. I guess I could talk about Bill and Sookie having makeup sex and post-sex pillow talk, and how interesting it was to Bill ... nah, that's just not interesting enough on its own for pre-jump text.

(S02E01) "I think I've seen enough dead bodies to last me a lifetime." - Sookie to Sam

Have I mentioned how excited I am to have True Blood back? Yeah, I think so. At least 43 times around the Web. And tonight's season two premiere did not disappoint. It was everything Stephen Moyer said it would be when I talked to him last week -- dark, sexy, mysterious and bloody good.

For those of you who need time to catch up with your Tivo, I'll keep this front part unspoiled. But I won't be giving anything away by saying that they tied seasons one and two together very nicely. Some of the questions we had from season one are answered. Some are not.

Vampires, shapeshifters, and a barmaid who can read peoples' minds ... HBO's True Blood returns on June 14, 9 PM.

I've been impatiently waiting for the white-hot series to come back since the toenail-painted black foot slumped out of Andy's car door at the end of season one. Is it Lafayette's foot? I asked Stephen Moyer, who plays vampire Bill Compton, but of course, he wouldn't tell me. No matter. I'll be glued to my TV next Sunday night.

Read on and find out what Moyer has to say about the new season, what it's like playing a 173-year-old vampire, and whether the love triangle between Sookie, Bill and Sam will continue. And I managed to keep my head, even as Moyer called me "Love" and "Darling" in his delightful British accent.

The Golden Globes really is one of the more interesting award shows. Oscar has mostly movie people, Grammy has mostly music people, and Emmy has mostly TV people. It's rather fun and a different dynamic to have the movie and TV people all mixing together on one place. That's how we can have an E! red carpet scene like The Dark Knight's Aaron Eckhart asking Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria if she's been drinking. TV-wise, it was also great to see Miley Cyrus come up to talk to Ryan Seacrest right after that Jonas kid and see them not talk to each other. Funny to see dad Billy Ray talk to him though. I think he said "stay away from my daughter."

The awards show is over. I'm sure the drinking and eating and dancing and fornicating is still going on as I type this, but the show itself is now history. Here's a list of the major TV winners, some notes on who got snubbed, as well as a few observations on what went down tonight.

In a time when networks are so quick to pull the plug on new series, it is absolutely stunning that two of this season's newest cable series have already been picked up for a second season. What's even more surprising is that one renewed show is Stephen Bochco's terrible Raising the Bar. After setting a record for a series debut on basic cable with 7.7 million viewers, 2.2 million people asked themselves what the hell they were watching, and the series settled into an average of 5.5 mil. But it's only been three weeks?

Surely, more of its viewers will realize that the show is absolutely terrible? From Gosselaar's bleeding heart crying to the bitching between his friends and Jane Kaczmarek's crazy judge, there's more leaps in logic and good sense than in Prison Break. The show makes Boston Legal look like a courtroom documentary. TNT also picked up Holly Hunter's Saving Grace after a respectable summer run.

(S01E01) True Blood is definitely a show after my own heart. I love any high concept drama that lays out the entire idea in the first five minutes.

In case you didn't get it, here's the short version. Synthetic blood is now available for vampires to buy, therefore they no longer need to kill to survive. So, as a society, they decide to live out in the open and are met with the kind of fear and skepticism that you'd expect.

I attended the TCA Cable Press Tour at the Beverly Hilton yesterday where I learned about the following shows:

Whale Wars on Animal Planet
Secrets of the Dinosaur Mummy on Discovery
Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust on TLC
Ricky Gervais Comedy Special on HBO
Little Britain, USA on HBO
Generation Kill on HBO

And there's more. Believe me, there's more.

Okay, you've got whale pirates, mummies, bikinis, Ricky Gervais, vampires, and Marines. Unfortunately, none of those shows combine all six of those things / people. After the jump, find out about these new shows and the people who make them...

Almost Famous and The Piano actress Anna Paquin has signed on to the lead role in a new series for HBO from Alan Ball. That name should ring a bell for all fans of Six Feet Under (Ball also wrote American Beauty).

This time around, Ball is diving into the world of vampires. His new series, appropriately called True Blood, is based on the "Southern Vampire" series of novels by Charlaine Harris. In the story, vampires don't have to kill humans for their blood because the Japanese were kind enough to invent a synthetic blood that does the trick. Paquin will play a non-vampire waitress who hooks up with a vampire.

Paquin is also appearing in an HBO mini-series about the displacement of Native Americans, called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

This original movie from HBO Films is based on Dee Brown's famous book of the same name, stars Anna Paquin, Aidan Quinn, and Adam Beach, and was executive produced by TV veteran Dick Wolf.

Beach is sort of Hollywood's go-to-guy who portrays a Native American character in everything from John Woo's WIndtalkers to Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers. Now don't get me wrong, I think he's a good actor, but aren't there any other Native American actors out there who can step into roles like this?

The movie, like the book, is about the massacre at Wounded Knee, and the extremely heavy-handed attempt of the U.S. government to assimilate Native Americans and homogenize them, much like the Borg does on Star Trek:TNG.

They did this by moving them onto reservations and giving them "Christian" names, and allowing them to "hunt" for food ... by chasing penned calves around with a rifle. It's a heart-breaking and tragic story, and according to the creative team has ties to the current U.S. situation in Iraq.

Quote of the panel:

• Anna Paquin: "Sadly, stories like this are not unique in the United States." She can act, and she's political. Watch out folks.
• Fred Thompson, former U.S. senator and actor who has is always typecast as a hard-assed senator, admiral, and politician in general plays President Ulysses S. Grant. When aproached by executive producer Dick Wolf and asked if he wanted to play him, Thompson replied: "Not if I have to grow the damn beard."

Anna Paquin will star opposite of Aidan Quinn in the HBO movie, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, about how the Native Americans were displaced as the United States moved westward. Paquin will play Elaine Goodale Eastman, a writer who stood up for Native American rights back in the late 1800s. She opened a school on the Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, where she witnessed the Wounded Knee massacre. Production begins this month in Calgary and, interestingly, the project is being executive produced by Law and Order creator Dick Wolf. No air date is set for the HBO movie.

Anna Paquin won an Oscar at the age of eleven for her role in The Piano, co-starring with Holly Hunter. Of course, she's also in The X-Men movies, and she has a supporting role in one of my all-time favorite movies, Almost Famous.

It was recently announced that the 60th annual Tony Awards will go hostless this June 11, because "the 60th Anniversary show is bigger than just one host". Or maybe no one wanted to step up and take the chance of getting ripped apart by the public if things don't run smoothly. Anyway, instead of following the lone emcee tradition, this year's show at Radio City Music Hall will be carried by 60 different stars, including Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey, Bernadette Peters, and Hank Azaria.

Back in 2004, MTV's Video Music Awards went hostless, and I remember feeling somewhat disoriented while watching it. Whether this was because I was watching MTV or because it was hostless, is still up for debate.