10 Ways True Blood Got Dogfighting Right

I'm a big fan of HBO's True Blood, but I was a little worried last week when it became apparent that the show was going to take on dogfighting. (If you're not caught up on the latest episodes, here's the obligatory Spoiler Alert warning.)

If you don't watch True Blood, here's the background: Sam Merlotte is a shapeshifter who was ditched by his family when he was just a pup. This season, he meets his family for the first time, including a younger brother, Tommy Mickens. In an earlier episode, the brothers go for a run in dog form; Sam picks his favorite breed, a collie, and Tommy shifts into a pit bull. It turns out that Sam's deadbeat dad has been taking both Tommy and their mom into the fighting pit for years. In this past weekend's episode, Sam tracks down the dog fighting ring to save his brother.

In theory, when a popular show decides to address an issue, it can help raise awareness. Or, it can end up diminishing — or even glorifying — the issue, and this is one show that's not exactly known for taking the high road with violence. But here are 10 ways that True Blood got it right this time:

1. You meet the pit bull several episodes before fighting was brought up; he was just another dog who ended up being a victim of people he trusted. Marshall Allman, the actor who plays Tommy, said of his canine actor counterpart, "He's totally sweet and like the nicest dog I've ever met."
2. The dog fighters weren't glorified characters a la Michael Vick, nor were they given any street cred for what they were doing. Sam and Tommy's dad is an abusive alcoholic and all the other guys in the scene were just random small town men there to gamble and watch dogs fight. No one was famous or particularly charismatic.
3. The fights weren't portrayed as lucrative. A lot of money can change hands at dog fights and focusing on the cash can add a kind of Poker World Tour attractiveness to the abuse.
4. It wasn't about animal violence. HBO could've gone for the cheap thrill of animals attacking each other or the adrenaline at the scene. But they skipped most of that and focused on the human relationships and animals as victims.
5. The fight was hard  to find and well-guarded — a good reminder that just because there aren't many high profile cases hitting the news, it doesn't mean fights aren't happening.
6. There are a lot of ways to portray dog fighting on TV, but apparently facing off two pit bulls isn't one of them. Allman said, "They weren't allowed to have two pit bulls in the ring at the same time because of animal protection laws." So, the presence of other breeds in the scene may not have been motivated by the producers' desire to take the heat off pit bulls, but for the viewers, the end result was the same: This wasn't about demonizing pit bulls.
7. Sam freed the dogs from their kennels and they all ran from the scene. None of them went after him or each other, which showed them as prisoners and victims, not wild animals who can't be rehabilitated or are undeserving of a second chance at life.
8. When you first see the fighting pit, you see a dog — presumably the loser — getting shot, and its body unceremoniously dumped on a pile of other bodies. They could've shown some guy celebrating with his bloodied winner, but instead they showed how the dogs are expendable, not beloved pets.
9. By putting a shapeshifter in the ring, it raises the question: Would you do this to a human? Would you put your own child in this situation as the Mickens do?
10. Tommy and his mother's relationship with their father, who is their handler in the pit, is a classic abusive relationship. Loyalty and guilt keep them with him, even though they get hurt. Now transfer that to their dog forms and, again, in puts dogfighting in a new light. Dog men often say that their dogs love to fight, that they wouldn't go in the ring if they didn't. But the shapeshifter angle highlights it as the result of an abusive relationship, not a real choice.

HBO deserves some credit here. Not only did they handle the actual dogfighting scenes well, but the way they introduced it through the human characters added some perspective to the cruelty of facing dogs off against each other. It will be interesting to see how Tommy, like former fighting dogs, goes through the process of learning to trust people again.

Photo credit: Luigioz