The return of HBO’s male eye candylicious series True Blood is just two weeks away so it’s time for my annual pre-season salute to TV’s home to its hottest hunks. Season 5 looks to be shaping up to be a season of returns, some of which are good, some of which are eh, and some of which I could really live without. But then as long as Joe Manganiello’s gorgeous naked ass makes its return to the small screen too, I’ll put up with the rest.

Surprisingly – because I prefer my men to be tall, dark, and hot rather than tall, blonde, and Nordic – the return I’m looking forward to the most is Eric as the smoldering stud with major attitude that he previously was. I’ve been watching reruns from Season 4 and had not realized how much skin Eric has been showing off. That’s largely in part because of the large parts of flesh Joe was flashing, but also because last season they had Eric doing the little lost boy with puppy dog eyes thingy and his sex appeal fell faster than Oprah going down on the last slice of chocolate cake. I can only hope that along with the smouldering Eric they bring back his naked ass ‘cuz even if he is a blonde he’s beginning to grow on me. Or maybe that’s parts of me are beginning to grow when his hot buff body gets its rightful screen time.

The return that is getting a lot of the press however is that of Tara. The fan-sites (i.e., bloggers who have no life and take this shit seriously) are all a buzz about whether she lives or stays dead forgetting that half the cast of characters are dead. Hello? Most have come to terms with her return, – though let’s be honest, Ball could have shaved Lafayette’s eyebrows off and we’d never know the difference – assume she was turned (into a vampire which I guess I have to clarify since they turned her into a lesbian last season), and are now in deep debate about which vampire did the nasty. Granted, I don’t want to think about fish on fish action either, but Pam is the one who got her finger stuck in the dyke. Um, someone remind me I need to remember to post a Spoiler Alert at the start of this article.

Tara was a very minor character in the books, inserted primarily because the series is written by a fat white woman from the South who needed to demonstrate she wasn’t the little racist her parents raised her to be. So she wrote the Tara character, an acquaintance of Sookie’s, who runs a small shop in Bon Temps where she can serve the town’s white people main characters. As misguided, Alan Ball – the producer of the show – thought that since the series is set in the South, Sookie needed a black sidekick to properly represent that area of the country when a toothless piece of white trash with conservative values would have been a more realistic way to go. Besides the black sidekick thingy is old hat and as a plotline is as worn out as a cucumber in a convent.

So now the sleepy little southern burg has one more vampire in it just when it was looking good for having one less fish. I just hope that whatever form Tara comes back in it includes eyebrows this time ‘cuz the scariest thing in the series so far has been her eyebrowless face trying to show surprise or horror which instead leaves her looking as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market.

But with Pam’s involvement in rising a bit player from the dead to the undead, the plot allows fleshing out Pam’s character a bit too. Which has a nice karma ring to it since last season bits of her flesh were going AWOL for most of the season. Ball has been lauded by the gay community for not only being inclusive, but for providing a metaphor for being gay with his community of fangers. That’s cool, but as usual those of us who frequent the wilds of Bangkok for our pound of flesh, find ourselves still under-represented. Until now.

It turns out Pam’s backstory is that when Eric turned Pam she was working as a mamasan in a San Francisco brothel (not bath house because that would just have been too gay). It’s about time they brought prostitution into the storyline ‘cuz ya know if fangers really did come out of the coffin they’d be turning tricks more than they’d be turning bit player black fish into vampires.

We’re never gonna see a television series focus on the love between a farang and a Thai bar boy, even on HBO, so enjoy ‘cuz this one is as close as you’re ever gonna get. But the similarities are there. The older, rich farang from a foreign country hits town, goes out for a night of entertainment, and ends up in a love affair that lasts eons with one of the city’s sex workers. The plus here is that since it is not one of Ann Rice’s maudlin vampires, the fangers are characters that are alive and vibrant and free of angst. They don’t do angst, they do sex. Which even with vampires is far more realistic ‘cuz if you are getting plenty – even if you are paying for it – you don’t run around moping all the time. Unless you are a cheap bastard living in Pattaya.

Anyway, our farang cum vampire Eric stays in his new country, opens a bar catering to a fringe element, while the new love of his life caters to his every need while he ensures she has all of the materialistic things she craves. And if that’s not love I don’t know what is. Though those of you who have been reading this blog for some time now probably already think when it comes to love I’m a bit screwed up anyway. Well, fuck you, and sorry but those of us in a man on man relationship don’t exactly have centuries of history to follow as an example so we make this shit up as we go along. Speaking of which . . .

One of the hottest straight homos of all time from the world of television makes his return this season too. Keller from Oz joins the cast of hunks on True Blood as an ancient vampire who IS the Vampire Authority. And even though he is getting a bit long in the fang, Keller still brings out the daddy complex in me. His willingness to drop trou for HBO in the past means we might finally see a bit of vampire dick in the new season, though if I remember correctly from Oz ‘a little bit’ is an understatement. And since Eric is so into male rivalry and Alexander from all reports is quite comfortable with swinging in the wind maybe we’ll get to see a bit of Norse godhood too.

Now I know some of you are going, “Oh, you mean the guy from Law And Order: Why Women Are Just Asking To Be Raped Unit,” but you’re just gonna have to live with the fact that True Blood is a gay show and when they cast a character involved in any form with rape it’s gonna be the guy-on-guy type which, unless Ball really screws the pooch, opens the way for Beecher to make a guest appearance so that we can watch those two hotties trade blow jobs one more time.

HBO already brought the Governor from Oz onto True Blood’s set (and thank the gods they kept him clothed) and I think one of the prison’s white supremacist dickheads made a cameo too, but then it’s hard to tell a Nazi from a werewolf. Unless the werewolf is Italian. And then you can only hope for a bit of guy-on-guy rape again. It’d be great if they gave Schillinger a bit of screen time too, because his new career as an insurance agent just isn’t cutting it, but that’s probably too much to ask. Ball could certainly do worse in casting Season 5’s villain. Um, which he did.

True Blood has done great with casting hunky main male characters who show off as much skin as possible. With its protagonist each season, not so much. That Mother Earth whatever the hell she was suppose to be from a few seasons ago just never quite hit, but then the show was still new enough and they’d still been holding out on a lot of the promised male nakedness so it didn’t really matter because your eyes were peeled for the aforementioned male flesh and not whatever silly antics that bitch was up to. And if you did start to pay her undeserved attention, Mehcad took his shirt off and all was right with the world again.

I had high hopes last season when it was announced the witches were coming to town that a devilish villain would finally make it to Bon Temps, but instead they gave us Marnie, who if she was really all that powerful of a witch would certainly have done a bit of hocus pocus plastic surgery and turned herself into something that didn’t look like something that cat would have refused to drag in. Like Pamela Anderson maybe. Because then that would have been only one degree of separation from seeing Jason Momoa’s gorgeous ass on the screen again. And that sucker has grown into a thing of beauty; it’s so massive it’s like opening the backdoor and fucking the night.

Sigh.

Recognizing their failure to come up with a good bad guy they’re giving up for Season 5 and bringing Russell Edgington back for another run. I’m all for finding suitable roles for out of work gay actors, but ya know? I hear Jeff Stryker is looking for work. And if you can raise Russell from a concrete grave, you can pull Talbot out of the garbage disposal too, because the hot-stud-to-I-wouldn’t-touch-him-with-your-dick ratio really must be retained. Besides, Talbot was an excuse for some anal sex last time around and any excuse for anal sex is fine by me.

So Russell is the bad guy for Season 5, but Keller is the bad guy too except he’s a good bad guy, and Bill and Eric are both a bad guy or good guy depending on which of them you want to end up with Sookie, which depending on where you stand could be a good thing or a bad thing, though most of us are hoping the two end up doing the bad thing with each other which would be a good thing for everybody involved. Except for the fish. The relationships are all entwined this season, as we can hope their limbs will be, and all the main characters (which would be the men) have got their fingers in more pies than a leper in a cooking class.

Rev. Steve Newlin returns from Season 3 too, this time as a vampire. His character was over and done with but then Rick Santorum came along and breathed new life into the holy roller with the morals of a leech character and now we’ll have to put up with his shit for an entire season. Coulda been worse though, Ricky might have done better in the polls and then we’d be putting up with his shit until Obama got around to driving a stake through his godless heart. And seriously, if Ball is looking for a villain for Season 6, Newt’s looking for work these days.

Heterosexuality returns to Season 5 too, which is a shame but I guess it helps pay the bills. Sam stays hooked up with Luna, so male shifter nudity can be expected, and Alcide hooks up with Sookie, so male werewolf nudity can be expected; Jason hooks up with someone’s mom, so hot little Aussie nudity can be expected, and Jessica gets into a three-some or four-some with a group of college boys, so frat boy nudity can be expected too. Don’t ya just hate heterosexuality being portrayed on TV?

But the best part of the new season is that it gives me a reason for posting this article, which in return gives me an excuse to update it frequently with screen caps of some of the finest male ass HBO had ever seen fit to display. So stay tuned . . . Joe’s been keeping mum about his nudity this season but since he’s scheduled to take it all off in Magic Mike, there’s a serious void that needs to be filled. And seriously, Joe can fill my void any time he wants to.

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