Now that the entire TVL season is out I can talk about my gripes with it as well as the things I liked.
The main problem I have with it, especially in the early episodes, is that
1. It lacks love and passion. That's the thing that stands out most. Let me explain.
You see, the thing that gave the show love and passion was that it was originally, back in seasons 1 and 2-remember those?- a gothic love story. The entirety of seasons 1 and 2 breathed Louis' love for Lestat and Lestat's love for Louis. There's so much love, passion, yearning and compassion in Louis' storytelling. I'm convinced I would have absolutely hated Lestat's guts in seasons 1 and 2 if Louis didn't love him so much. I've always always said that I loved Lestat because Louis loved Lestat. Because no matter what was happening, even when Louis absolutely hated Lestat's guts, he couldn't help but love him. And that came through. Louis told his own entire life story through his love for Lestat and in doing that he endeared both himself and Lestat to the audience. The thing about these vampires is that they hate their own guts so this was an excellent workaround that.
The biggest mistake the show made was not telling Lestat's life story the same way, through his love for Louis. They could have easily done this by having Lestat make telling his story about telling it to Louis, for Louis, because of Louis. it would have given Lestat a legitimate reason to open up freely, intimately, honestly. Instead Lestat tells his story from his solitary point of view, only he hates himself and is actively trying to spite Louis and convince himself and the audience that he either hates Louis or has never heard of loving him. He's not really interested in telling his story beyond that, just in proving Louis wrong. Which doesn't work. At all. In my opinion. They could have done all this, the spite, the anger, the hate, while still having a underlying thread of love run through everything. Instead the love and yearning and compassion and desperation that their love was built on for the entirety of the early seasons was largely missing for most of this one, only there in microscopic bursts in early episodes.
The other huge problem with that is that often Louis and Lestat become their best selves when they are actively, honestly, clearly, in love with each other. Lestat practically actively striking all that from the record meant I liked Lestat a lot less this season, his season, than in the previous seasons that weren't his season. Because in trying to prove Louis wrong, he proved Louis wrong about the wrong things like actively countering Louis' effectively getting across in his version of events that Lestat was loving and lovable. Instead Lestat acted performative and unaffected by almost everything, including his own life story. Which is part of Lestat's defense mechanism, I know. Still, I think it formed a problem in getting the story across which shouldn't have been the case. I also liked Louis less but that's because there was so much less of him. When Louis wasn't present, most of the time he just wasn't present. He wasn't haunting the narrative every second of every day the way Lestat did in Louis' seasons. Which is why episode 1 happened the way it did. Lestat was actively trying to spite Louis' apparently incorrect views according to him on vampire sex and vampire bodily functions or something. I don't know.
And I know, there was the sexual abuse by his mother which fostered self-hate in Lestat. But the thing is they could have done that without omitting Lestat's loving Louis and who he himself is when he is with Louis and in love with Louis. Because that's what draws these characters to each other indefinitely, they love each other and mostly love who they are when they're with each other. Also, Louis is amazing and there's never enough of him on this show separately from as well as together with Lestat. They make each other shine brighter and should get more chances to do so.
2. The sexual abuse Lestat endures at his mother's hands. There was too much of it shown and what there was of it wasn't handled seriously and sensitively enough in my opinion. I fully and completely comprehended by the end of episode 1 that Lestat was being sexually assaulted by his mother. That it was not consensual. I did not need to be beaten over the head with it a trillion more times the way this show insisted. By the end of episode 3 I had seen enough of that. The message was clear, I promise. I promise I have deductive reasoning skills and so do most of the people who watch this show. I know they're not great at handling sensitive material sensitively, that was true back in season 1, so I'll just leave it at this.
But also, Lestat's assault by Magnus could have done with...more. I think more close-ups instead of full body shots, given both Lestat and Magnus are fully clothed in the full body shots even though Lestat's supposed to be sexually assaulted by Magnus. They didn't need to get Lestat naked or do much more with the acting because all that was excellent, just more close-ups of Lestat's face and his hands scratching over the wooden floor or something I think would have done the trick to get the rape fully across. Also, invest in setting the scene and making the scene and corpses truly unsettling and terrifying. Have the bodies on the floor near and in the shot where Lestat is kept and assaulted. Sit with that scene quietly, giving a feel of the passage of time. Have Lestat at the very least practically crawl over the bloated dead bodies of at least one or two lookalikes trying to get away from Magnus. is this gothic horror or is this gothic horror? The scene then also wouldn't have had to rely so heavily on that explicit a description of the sexual assault of his black daughter trapped in a 14 year old's body to get his rape across.
3. The show wasn't beautiful enough. And by beautiful I also mean horrifying. unsettling. nauseating. And I mean that in relation to the cinematography and set dressing. Seasons 1 and and 2 were freaking gorgeous to look at. Always. Season 3 is...not...as much so. My eyes have been spoiled and now I can't go back. I know there were budget issues and I am in heavy mourning about those issues. And if there was another brilliant person or people who walked away from this show that made the cinematography and set dressing into what it was, please get them back if at all possible.
4. The racism among other callous and careless insensitivity. There was always racism on this show but it made more sense for the time period then I feel. Now we're supposedly in enlightened 2025, Obama has been president several times over, so what are we doing. Are we an enlightened show that has insightful social commentary or are we solely bigots ourselves? Which is it? I mean these are all vampires from the land before time and Daniel is an old asshole of a white man so some insensitivity is to be expected but still. Some. You know something is wrong if even your white viewers are complaining about the insensitivity.
5. Smut. Specifically queer smut. This is a vampire show that did not shy away from showing their queer vampires going at it with each other in their first season, specifically the main characters of Louis and Lestat. This is still a show about queer vampires in love but for some reason the show seems to have forgotten itself. If you're talking about two queer people or queer vampires who love each other, however toxic that love, queer sex and blood sharing are and should be an inevitable extensive part of that. I'm talking Louis/Lestat, Daniel/Armand, Lestat/Nicki. Like, don't be shy. If you're gonna talk the talk you gotta walk the walk.
6. The songs and song performances and the rock and roll of it all took up too much real estate and I imagine budget of the show.
1.At no moment does the sexual abuse Lestat endures from either his mother or Magnus look consensual even when Lestat insists it is. I appreciate that. Again, they didn't need that many scenes. But I appreciate that even with that many secens they took great care to never make it look consensual. If anything each subsequent assault looked less consensual, even if not needed.
2. The Loustat we did get was excellent. 10/10, no notes. Okay, maybe some notes but they have more to do with Loustat still being toxic even while also being romantic. But oh well, what can you do? That's just them. I've already mentioned that my main gripe with Loustat is that there wasn't enough of it in the sense that Louis isn't there enough with Lestat when he's not there. But babyyy, when he's there? Scrumptious.
3. My baby Claudia. Aside from Loustat her tag teaming with Merrick was the highlight of the season in my opinion. So much so that, again in my opinion, she stole that Loustat episode right out from under them. Her tirade was long overdue and well done, however racist.
4. Armand. I don't mind Armand as the gremlin. Assad does a really excellent job of playing Armand and they should really give him more to do, both separately and with Daniel. I wanna say they didn't utilize Daniel enough, but the truth is it worked for the story, given that Daniel fell off the wagon hard which made him worse at his job. It does mean that his interview of Lestat was less brilliant than it could have been which is sad as mentioned earlier.
5. I genuinely enjoyed some of the songs and am glad they were included.
6. I loved the Headless Loustat story line and the Life Before Her Eyes-esque story line Lestat got specifically within that. I thought that was brilliant. I go back and forth on whether Claudia should have been there. But I know it wasn't everyone's cup of tea. I was less enthused about Armand torturing Louis alone however well-acted that scene was by both the actors of Louis and Armand. If it had turned out Lestat had been beheaded for the entirety of the season up until the last episode where it was hinted at this throughout the season and revealed in episode 6 and that was the reason for the chaos of the entire season, instead of the voiceover being a separate entity it being within Lestat's soul-searching at the long table, I think I would have forgiven most of the chaos of this season. Having more moments like Magnus and others of Lestat's conjuring's cryptically mentioning the long table or Lestat randomly feeling faint or random "Could be's" Lestat can't place. Having Lestat falling down during that one concert being the most obvious hint to it mimicking the fall of his head off his body. Having his beheading be the reason for his fracturing. Yes. Even using his beheading to tell Louis his soul-baring story since at this point "Could be" has happened and Loustat are back on good terms. What greater motivation could Lestat have to tell Louis, Louis who has told him he wants a future with him, well, everything than the fact that he subconsciously knows he's dying and before he does he would like Louis to know him completely. Hell, have Armand do his experiment on both Louis and Lestat while he has somehow connected Louis' and Lestat's minds to each other so Louis is really there at the long table, listening to Lestat tell his story. Create compelling circumstances for Lestat to honestly tell his story to Louis. Alas, that was not the case.
7. Akasha. That is all. Her scene showcased all of my hopes and dreams for the feel and execution of this entire season.
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