True Blood....

So I have been thinking (a dangerous past time, I know) and I need others opinion on my most recent observation.

So recently, I just started watching the HBO series True Blood, wanting to check out the hype. And there is something going on besides vampires being "outted" in the world. Going in my list of things I am just getting tired of seeing. Maybe it just me but I am tired of seeing negative images of my people as fodder for making the wheels run on series. How can we be satisfied with "well at least they have some black characters on the show" and "well that's pretty realistic." The hell if it is. I am not satisfied with the fact that there are three black main characters on this show and all of them are massively jacked up. Even the extras that appear on the show in Season 1 are jacked up. Since there is only one black man on the show, lets start there.

Lafeyette (played by the super fine Nelsan Ellis - can anybody get a sister his number?) is a gay drug dealer and short order cook. Are we serious? Someone would see the gay part as a huge big deal but if that was just it I actually wouldn't care. He's also a drug dealer. You mean the only image you could come up with for him is drug dealer. How original HBO. On the show, you can clearly tell that he is more intelligent and insightful than most other characters, but this is all downplayed by his sometimes queeny and b*tchy behavior.

The women are a mess and its hard to even cut through all the negativity to see any good. Tara, the main character's best friend, is an emotional wreck. Set up with a drunk mother (another black female on the show) who abuses her, she carries the emotional albatross so that she is incapable of being emotionally stable so spews out all kinds of nastiness to everyone around her. Of course, she is tragically in love with a white man she can never have and doesn't happen to mind being a little promiscuous w/ her boss because she is so lonely. The only other black woman to appear on the show so far since I have been watching has been an extra vampire who is clearly promiscuous and has a nasty attitude as well. And this is portrayed as "oh they are strong and intelligent, but clearly underneath they are vulnerable and feel pain." Well I am a little sick of it.

Don't tell me its because the story is set in backwoods Louisiana. Don't tell me that's how it is. When you are selling a fantasy show about vampires being out in the world, how real do you really need to keep it? Why couldn't the lead character have been a black girl who falls in love with the vampire? Why can't I at least get one positive image of a black woman on the show? Is it too much to ask for a black woman who is pleasant? Only the white girl can be sugar and spice and everything nice... ah tv writers, you have got to do me more justice than that. When are these stereotypes going to get old.....