This week’s Tablet column was supposed to be about how True Blood needed some Jews. It was a funny throwaway about how Bon Temps was too goyish — using Eric’s “Ike Applebaum” secret identity as a jumping-off point — and hey, since vampire stereotypes and Jewish stereotypes dovetail nicely, I suggested they throw some Hebes into the vamp/werewolf/shapeshifter/witch/brujo/necromancer mix. I recommended they go with Lilith. The last line of the first draft was: “Come on, a demonic man-seed-stealing succubus? How has that not already happened on this show?”
AND NOW IT HAS. Between the time I filed the column (Friday) and the new episode appearing (Sunday), the show filled with Lilith all up the Vampire Authority wazoo. As soon as that creepy Dieter starts explaining to about-to-be-tortured Bill that Lilith predated Adam and Eve and blah blah blah, I start to whimper, knowing I’m in for a long night of rewriting. (I could say I’m also sorry for my editor Wayne, who’d put this thing to bed already, but I would be lying; it is all about my suffering.) And then Chris Meloni starts jabbering in Hebrew-ish and I start screaming at the TV because OMG they’re doing blood-drinking rituals and saying Hebrew-inflected prayers in a room decorated with two-tablet symbols and eight-pointed-Jewy-star-ish symbols and this is basically the embodiment of Christian paranoia about Jews using Christian blood in their rituals that led to blood libels throughout history and I KNOW I have to start the whole column over because now it can’t be too flippant because they’re fucking with a really messed-up, hate-filled longterm part of Jewish history. But my point, and I do have one: Apparently my writing a column about how True Blood needs Lilith made it happen.