Last fall I started watching True Blood simply because I had a free month subscription to HBO. Every Sunday night I was accompanied by my 5 roommates as we were all oddly drawn into this ridiculous show. “Sookie is mine!” became a popular phrase in this apartment. Sadly, as the weeks progressed the roomies started abandoning the couch until only two of us were left. For most, True Blood seemed to be losing it’s initial appeal. Bill was way too creepy to take seriously. Sookie and Jason were far too stupid to take seriously. The obsession with vampires in and of itself could not be taken seriously. But then something amazing happened…upon recently re-watching the series I realized that the show actually doesn’t want to be taken seriously. This may seem obvious but it’s really a necessary observation if you ever want to truly enjoy the show.

Season 2, which started airing last week, pokes even more fun at itself than season one. And I freaking love it. Last night’s “Keep This Party Going” was hands down the best episode yet. The writing has taken a much needed refresher course and it’s both wittier and more dramatic than it’s freshman season. There are four characters who were introduced last season that have made a reappearance and are really adding to the quality of the show: Jessica, Eric, Pam, and Maryann. Jessica is the recently sired vampire who essentially is Bill’s irresponsible adolescent daughter. Deborah Ann Woll does a tremendous job of acting both eerily evil and annoyingly immature. She brings a much needed laughter to the series which would definitely be lacking without her. The most recent episode found Jessica mourning the separation from her family and using her emotions to manipulate Sookie into bringing her home. There were a tremendous amount of touching moments between Sookie and Jessica in which Sookie compared Jessica’s separation from her family to her own aunt’s death. Not surprisingly, the man who brought us Six Feet Under once again dealt with loss in an honest and heartbreaking manner.

Maryann is the mysterious life-couch-esque woman who is helping Tara change her life around. All we know about this character is that she once had sex with Sam, she beats her butler/servant, and she vibrates. Last night we also learned that she has some sort of power over others as the entire bar broke into a while orgy and dance party. My guess would be Maryann is a kind of goddess or new mystical creature we have yet to be introduced to in the world of True Blood.

My absolute favorite part of the new season is Eric. He was introduced as the vampire sheriff in Louisiana and was the closest thing to the big bad of season 1 (other than the human serial killer of course). This season Eric is coming to the forefront a bit more. He kidnapped Lafayette in order to find out some information about V dealing in Dallas, tore a man to shreds, and got a sexy new makeover. We still haven’t seen much from his sidekick Pam but every time the two are on screen together you can expect pure entertainment. They are in almost every respect True Blood‘s equivalent of Spike and Drusilla…and damn it works. Watching them devour Lafayette at the end of the episode was kind of amazing. I only hope that they listen to their victim’s pleas to turn him into a vampire. Now that would be the most bad ass threesome ever.

While all the other story lines are intriguing as well, what stands out the most this season is the amount of blood and gore. True Blood has the advantage of airing on HBO and because of that the audience can actually see the brutal deaths that plague the characters. Unless I’m watching a surgical drama, I never turn my head away in disgust, but last night I most certainly did. It was bad enough to watch Eric rip out a man’s organs and eat him, but then you had to watch Lafeyatte rifle through those organs to begin his escape. Hands down the nastiest thing I have ever seen on television…but as a fan of horror, it was a homeroom. Way to live up to the title.

If these last two episode’s are a taste of things to come, then pour me some more True Blood.