Rotten Tomatoes
SEASON INFO
HBO's hit drama series created by Alan Ball ('Six Feet Under') and based on the best-selling Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris about a perky telepathic waitress (Anna Paquin) in a near-future in which vampires live among us.
At what point did True Blood lose its way for you? I'm curious. What should have been the jumping off point? Was it the witches in Season 4? Could have been the witches, right? Though many fans out there sure loved Sookie shacking up with amnesiac Eric.
How about Season 5's Vampire Authority? Should the series have ended when King Russell bit the fairy dust? Season 6 brought us Governor Burrell and the plague, along with "Vampire God" Bill. I'm asking because I don't really have a clear answer myself. I just know that the consensus now is that seven seasons was too much. Especially considering the way this final season handled itself.
Now I won't let myself get too wrapped up here in the terrible decision Bill made during the final two episodes of the season, where, after contracting a fast-moving case of Hep V from Sookie (no one came after him for murdering that human estate lawyer?), he decided to just die for no true, investable reason. Despite the fact that there was a very simple cure-all.
He said over and over that it was so Sookie could be free to live a happy life (as it was just somehow naturally assumed that she'd always want Bill more than anyone else), but who's to say that her desire for Bill would vanish after he died? Who's to say that, when we saw Sookie in the final moments of the finale with the anonymous bearded dude that she just wasn't settling again? Bill no longer being around doesn't mean that Sookie won't somehow still love every other man she meets less than she loved him. She just has kids now. Who will probable grow up with a distracted mother who constantly pines for her great, lost love.
Some of the more bemusing elements of Season 7 came from the main roster deaths, where we saw extremely unceremonious exits for Alcide and Tara (who got splattered off-screen within the first few seconds of the premiere). Alcide's death at the hands of the angry Bon Temps mobgathering was more or less done to illustrate the point that no one, not even Sookie, cared about him all that much. It was basically an unspoken truth that Sookie and Alcide (who'd never been given much more than "protective" in the character department) were a bore and that she was meant for someone else. Which was possibly meant to inform Bill's decision to die later in the season, but all it did was demonstrate how unconscionably fickle Sookie was.
Likewise, Tara had been a character who the show had been actively trying to redeem in most fans' eyes since the very first season. So the show that'd been accused of being overly-precious with its huge roster of characters (even though only a small few of them were interesting and/or likable) decided to give us a bit of anti-closure. It was a complete 180 from the three-episode "Terry Mourning" arc from Season 6 that took a semi-lovable, peripheral dope and turned him into the show's most important character. If someone who'd never watched True Blood had watched those episodes they would have assumed the show had just lost a marquee player.
So "something in between" was needed here. Something that didn't super-romanticize those who were okay-not-great, but also didn't treat them like chum. Even a little bit more would have helped. Tara taking out a ton of vamps before dying. Protecting Sookie, Jason, and others in the process. Alcide too. He could have died leaping in front of Sookie to block a bullet. But then, I suppose, that would have made Sookie even more irksome when she hopped in the sack with Bill two nights later.
Jim Parrack returning as Hoyt was a nice surprise, and the resolution between him, Jess, and Jason actually did tie off their story from long ago. Was it wholly satisfying? No, but it'll do. Hoyt returned to Bon Temps a different man. Sure, he'd just lost his mother, but he came into the mix already arguing with his perfectly sweet and gorgeous girlfriend, Bridget.
And since it was all a way just to split them up so Hoyt could be with Jess and Jason could nab Bridget, they had Hoyt biting her head off after she innocently mentioned having kids. Which made Hoyt kind of a tool and not the Hoyt who we all enjoyed seeing with Jess. No, this was the "time jump to when Hoyt and Jess were arguing all the time" Hoyt. And that's no fun.
Speaking of returns, I liked seeing Sarah re-enter the picture once again - this time as a hot mess on the run from vampires and the yakuza. And her fate, come story's end, was fitting. Eric and Pam were also fun to watch (especially their video store flashbacks with Ginger) though I had a hard time getting a handle on the seasonal "villains" as Eric seemed to go back and forth between being their prisoner and being easily able to massacre them in the blink of an eye. Were they formidable or not? In the end, they just became "whatever the show needed them to be in the moment." Which is how True Blood, for the most part, operates.
Most other characters found love before the end, like Sam, Lafayette, and Arlene. Though so little was known about their significant others that all the pairings wound up meaning about the same to the viewer. Sam and Nicole meant about as much as Arlene and Keith, though I'd suggest that Arlene's pairing actually completed a seven season-long anti-vampire arc for her. They tried to make a big deal out of James moving from Jess to Lafayette, but it was far too late in the game to make us care about James (who was played by a different actor than in Season 6). And somehow Jess wound up the bad guy when the dust settled because she never asked James about his past. Which, when you think about it, was a weird thing for her not to have ever done.
Oh, and then there was Jess' "eating disorder" (which was both introduced to us and solved with in five minutes), the house party where two couples decided to cheat on their significant others (both couples getting caught), the exhausting amount of scenes involving Reverend Daniels, Niall returning to basically tell Sookie "I got nothin'," and Bill's never-ending disjointed stream of flashbacks (that were intended to help "humanize" him, though I foolishly believed they were leading somewhere plot-wise).
Frull Season on Xmovie8
No comments:
Post a Comment