I agree with all of your points but it seems to me,then and now that Hudis's reference to the " Bill we all know and love" is highly misleading since by this point most of the viewers no longer loved Bill because they had gotten to know him all too well.
Well, to be fair
no single person connected to the show
ever made less than complimentary remarks about the Bill character. The talking points were so uniform they
had to be scripted. This is why I let Ball off the hook for his often infuriating commentary. When HUDIS said the 'Bill we all know and love' or some such, he was going along with the established conventional wisdom about Bill,* a view of the character which he then promised would be revised. I believe this promise got him fired from his position just as HuffPo insinuated.
*This was the point of Kitch Maynard's character. According to Jason, Kitch was a 'cheating, lying, low down emmeffer' or some such, to which Kitch replied "Tell it to the newspapers!", newspapers who loved reporting on Kitch's gridiron heroics and weren't about to listen to 'facts' that would disrupt the flow of their lucrative 'narrative'. In other words, part of the point of Bill's character was that powerful people who are evil can and will influence their own PR to make themselves out to be something they are not. With Bill, this was happening OFF script, ie in the coverage of TB itself, as well as on.
As for Bill's numerous dirty deeds, yes we did see them with our own eyes but the propaganda remained resolute from within the production itself. Does this mean they all thought Bill's behavior was no big deal? I doubt it, but
nobody from the inside nor mainstream reviewer/recappers ever contradicted the conventional wisdom about Bill and called him what he was,
an evil monster. Many were all about his 'shades of grey' but what about his VICTIMS? The conformist view of his character and the refusal to contradict received opinions about him as opposed to thinking for themselves is as interesting and disturbing as anything the script ever offered.
As for Bucky and Moyer's
collusion in preventing the true nature of Moyer's character to be unveiled, explicitly acknowledged as evil and despicable
within the script, and to subject the character to some form of justice, is by now beyond dispute. Moyer publicly closely identified himself with the character he thought was a hero, so much so that his ego simply would not allow for Bill's downfall. To Moyer's way of thinking Bill's exposure and subsequent punishment would be a
personally humiliating outcome. Therefore, in my opinion only, when he perceived the direction season 5 was taking [a storyline that was intended to end with season 6] I believe he became instrumental in the ouster of Ball in some underhanded way. When Ball's replacement proved less than satisfactory in that he intended to continue Ball's vision of deconstructing the myth making of the Bill character, he went showrunner shopping for somebody who sympathized with his plight. In my opinion, he and Bucky jumped on every mistake Hudis made in his inexperience and made such a big deal out of it with HBO that he was eventually fired, but not before the first 3 episodes of season 6 proved to be markedly superior to the rest of the series. Six should have ended the series with Bill's final destruction but alas it was not to be.
Now we are all left with the impression that Ball and everybody else connected with the show condone Bill's acts of evil sadism. Because Moyer's ego was catered to instead of allowing the story to unfold as it should have with a justice-serving denouement, every single one of them look like amoral, irrational apologists and enablers of evil. [as well as racist and sexist] The
show itself took Bill's side, and the actors/crew who praised Bill, no matter how scripted, were left dangling, so how else do they expect to be perceived!? Only Bill's downfall could have corrected this impression of the people behind the show. Skarsgard is the only one who comes out of this clean, for as much as he never explicitly condemned Bill's character he he always refused to jump on the Bill is great! bandwagon.
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Maggiesview
9 years ago
Good post. Yes,you are correct about the PR machine for TB and the scripted responses for the cast. I had forgotten about those. There was the " Bill we all have come to love" and " Alcide " the were wolf with the heart of gold" and of course,tEric was "the self centered bad one". I thought at the time that these stereotypes were put in place as easy reference points for the cast to remember when talking about them as well as Ball's attempt to use misdirection so he could surprise us when he pulled the masks off of these characters and showed us who they really were at their core, Then,later as it became more and more clear that Bill was the" self centered bad one ", Alcide was just plain " self centered " with a smattering of bad and Eric was the "Eric we have all come to know and love"," we were to see these new roles play out to there logical outcome. This,as we all know ,never happened since the Big Reveal was trashed. Regardless,the record was never set straight and as you pointed out ,at time Hudis made his comment about the " Bill we all knew and loved" that designation was firmly in place as a talking point,so he automatically used it.
I felt like I had entered the Twighlight Zone when I saw the first episode in S6 that Buckner had helmed and later in the season a severe case of Whiplash after Eric burst into flames and the time jump took place towards the end of S6 . A season that was mostly about dropped story arcs,hanging out in faerie marking time while Buckner attempted to turn the Titanic, A failed love match between Sookie and Warlow, whitewashing Bill via Jessica's love and support of him,Bill dithering about and having snarky diologue with Sookie, and of course vamp camp nasties in which Sarah Newlin was set up as the next Big Bad instead of Bill
. After the time jump we see Sookie living with Alcide but making googley eyes at Bill who was on TV talking about his best selling memoir claiming to be telling the truth about everything vampire and most particularly his stint as as a God. Sookie was buying into all of it hook,line and sinker. Eric had disappeared and ,Pam had not been heard from since she took off after him. Not one character talked them or missed them. Everyone had moved on with their lives and shifted their attention to other people and other things. It was very very clear that something major was afoot behind the scenes of TB and that none of it was to the good.
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LadyMarysHat
9 years ago
A season that was mostly about dropped story arcs,hanging out in faerie marking time while Buckner attempted to turn the Titanic, A failed love match between Sookie and Warlow,
I firmly believe 'Warlow' was to have been instrumental in exposing Bill [as well as many other false perceptions] but you are right, he was sent to Fairy to mark time so that existing scripts and outlines involving him and thus the Big Reveal could be revised and 'updated' to reflect the direction of the new regime. This also had the result of artificially prolonging the series, which should have ended at 6.10.
. After the time jump we see Sookie living with Alcide but making googley eyes at Bill who was on TV talking about his best selling memoir claiming to be telling the truth about everything vampire and most particularly his stint as as a God. Sookie was buying into all of it hook,line and sinker.
The time jump was nothing more than a deux ex machina to explain the turnaround in Sookie's attitude towards Bill. Bill and Bucky knew, and they were right to some extent, that however Sookie viewed and felt about Bill the 'newspapers', ie the media coverage of TB, would follow. Moyer hated 'Billith' the evil monster so 'hand wave' Bill was no longer Billith. Bill even had dialogue to that effect, something like "I don't' want to be Billith anymore'. Bill's book and book tour was to signal to people like us that HIS version of the truth would prevail. If only I had listened....
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