Viewers in search of quick tears should not miss “The Locator” (8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., today, WE). Troy Dunn has made a career of reconnecting families torn apart by bad divorces and noncommunication. In an episode made available for review, he helps a family find a brother taken from them more than 35 years earlier after a bad breakup.

Nearly every scene featuring Dunn shows him driving, flying or working a laptop or mobile phone. And every interview with family members ends with hugs and getting misty. This collusion of tear ducts and technology culminates in a heart-warming reunion fraught with recriminations about the lost years and the might-have-beens. But it’s ultimately sad to see genuine human feelings manipulated in an effort that seems so forced and formulaic.

They don’t call this genre emotional pornography for nothing. And one of its most notorious practitioners is John Edward, whose “Cross Country” (9 p.m., WE) enters its third season of “communicating” with the dead family members of people in a studio audience.

¢ After his smart, nuanced funeral-parlor comedy “Six Feet Under,” you had to wonder what creator Alan Ball would do next and worry that whatever he came up with would be a disappointment. Our fears have been confirmed. Ball’s new series “True Blood” (8 p.m., Sunday, HBO) is a ghastly mess.

A mutation of “Twin Peaks” and Dracula, deep fried in the rancid lard of Southern Gothic overkill, “Blood” layers one strange contrivance over another. In “Blood,” vampires still can come out only at night and seem strangely afflicted by the right application of silver jewelry. But recently, the undead have been liberated from their deadly lust by the invention (in Japan, of all places) of synthetic blood, called True Blood. Vampires now demand to be treated like everybody else, a political movement documented here with frequent glances at cable-news talk shows.

Anna Paquin (“The Piano”) stars as Sookie, a waitress in a dive restaurant in a ramshackle town. She’s not a vampire, but she can read minds. So, when the handsome vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) arrives in town, it’s love at first nonbite. He’s a long undead resident whose mortal life ended during the Civil War. Sookie can’t seem to read his thoughts, so in her crowded mind, Bill counts as the strong, silent type.

Sookie’s mortal companions are a mess. Her brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), considers himself the Don Juan of the bayou. His sexual antics embroil him with some loose women who may or may not be linked to vampires. Apparently, the undead need no Viagra.

Filled with extreme violence and graphic sex, “True Blood” never misses a chance to go over the top. Its themes of bigotry and fear of the unknown are also less than subtle. And for all of the hanky panky, “True Blood” often drags. Perhaps vampires don’t mind. They have all the time in the world.

¢ “Ice Road Truckers” (8 p.m., Sunday, History) wraps up its second season, followed by the premiere of the new series “Sandhogs” (9 p.m., History), about the men who build and maintain New York’s rail, gas and water tunnels.

Tight knit and highly unionized, it’s not unusual to have three generations working on the same site on a project that may not be completed for several decades.