True Blood: Thank You

"I wouldn't let you go down on me for a billion dollars!"

So we reach the final episode, and the main story between Sookie and Bill finishes predictably, with no surprises, but beautifully written and shot, as over a large proportion of screen time they come to an understanding and Sookie ends up lovingly killing him- although not, in the end, giving up her fairy powers. This leaves limited room for everyone else, yes, and some very important characters (Lafayette, Sam) are reduced to cameos, but it's the right decision.

Bill also gets to give Jessica away in a hurriedly arranged marriage to Hoyt, a beautiful extended sequence even if there is the niggling sense of an awful lot of unchallenged patriarchal assumptions going on there. Also, Eric kills Gus, and he and Pam end up as the billionaire owners of New Blood and the King and queen of vampiredom, which is nice. And Sarah ends up with a miserable but more-or-less deserved fate, pretty much as the prostitute Pam always intended her to be.

It's also nice to see Sookie advising Jason to actually sleep with Bridgette and get together with her, and the slow rekindling of the friendship between Jason and Hoyt. And it's especially lovely that Andy, who will inherit Bill's estate, agrees to perpetually rent the house to Jessica and Hoyt for a peppercorn rent.

We fast forward at the end to a few years later, and a happy community. Jason and Bridgette have children and Sookie is pregnant by a man whose face we don't see- that's the point; he isn't special. It's the perfect ending to an unexpectedly perfect final season.

True Blood: Love Is to Die

"I'm choosing the true death."

Bill is choosing to die because Sookie will never be able to move on while he's alive, as she could never quite manage to with Alcide. Hmm. Not sure I buy that either from the character or as a plausible motivation from a more diegetic point of view, but it's written well enough that you can't see the joins so I'll let it pass. Development of this takes up much of the episode.

Elsewhere Sam leaves for a new life in Chicago with Nicole and the bump, and Jessica starts to properly reconnect with Hoyt, telling him "the story of us" while Jason seems to be getting on rather well with Brigette, who's just dumped Hoyt. He's resisting the temptation to shag her, though... and this is Jason.

This is fascinating to watch, knowing as we do from our privileged position outside the text that this is the penultimate episode of True Blood ever. Big things happen, such as Bill releasing Jessica and Eric finally giving Ginger the fucking of her life after fifteen odd years of frustrated celibacy for her. But the Yakuza are after Sookie, which will provide a bit of conflict for the final episode.

But this episode, quite rightly, is fairly short on incident and long on letting all the characters be themselves for one last time. I've no idea where all the pieces will land in the finale- will Bill die? Will Sookie use that exploding ball power and lose her specialness? Will Jessica and Hout get back together? I have no idea; im sure there are some twists and turns to come. But I'm also sure the finale will be fast and furious, so it's wonderful to have a slow episode like this. Sublime, again.

True Blood: Radioactive

"You guys are the worst fucking makers ever!"

It didn't look like there was a lot for a season finale to do. There was, in the end, but it's nice to have a finale with room to breathe and not needing to move at too fast a pace.

The main point here, of course, is that Warlow is an entitled and abusive man and always was if you were paying attention; his superficial charm is textbook abuser. So he needs to get his comeuppance. It's also interesting to see the contrast offered between the essentially BDSM relationship between Violet and Jason: she "owns" him, and makes him pleasure her daily while denying him release, but it's consensual. Ish. Warlow is just an abusive twat.

Also, we hear the welcome tones of the Breeders' "Cannonball", Bill is back to normal and, ironically, Adilyn is needed to transport everyone to faerie and defeat Warlow. There is much fighting and, at a fairly early point, the goodies win, Warlow is killed and the episode can now do other stuff.

There is a fascinating arrangement proposed for Bon Temps, proposed by Sam, to "pair" each resident with a vampire for protection in return for feeding. It's moving to see Jessica offering to protect Adilyn for nothing. It's also moving to see Tara's no good mother offering to feed her.

We end a surprisingly reflective episode, in a season that started rather rubbishy but ended up ok overall, with Sookie and Bill still estranged and, naturally, marauding vampires...

True Blood: In the Evening

"Well, this is a first- waking up with a man in broad daylight."

The vampires we know are to be told about the Hep V, courtesy of Eric, but no one else, which is nice. Meanwhile, Bill refuses to save Nora as it goes against her dying wish; this doesn't exactly please Eric. And Sarah plans to officially cover up Truman's death and take charge.

There's a sense of the endgame being in sight from all this, in this shorter season of ten episodes, with most vampires conveniently located in the heart of the beast and the Nazi metaphor quietly betrayed in spite of the many Dr. Mengeles. It's a nice touch that the senator helping Sarah is doing so to hide the fact that he, a social conservative, is in fact gay; indeed, he was fucking Lafayette a few seasons ago.

Sookie is a good friend to the devastated Arlene. But at least, it seems, Arlene won't be poor, with Terry's life insurance to be paid out. Jessica finds James, warns him and (of course) fucks him. Butcher end with Bill telling all to Sookie and demanding Warlow, whose blood he needs to save the day. Bill as a character is simply not at all played or written to be likeable at this point, an interesting choice.

Another good episode. Perhaps the second half of the season will after all redeem it?

True Blood: You'll Be the Death of Me

"So... collecting stray black people, that some kind of hobby of hers?"

This is the exciting finale we were all expecting- we know it's Rene from the start, so what we get is a thriller where he tries to kill Sookie before he catches her, a showdown in a cemetery where Sam shows himself to be brave and resourceful and Bill nearly suffers death by sunlight in his desperate attempt to save Sookie, therefore earning himself enough brownie points to set against a number of sins. He'll need them.

Tara's life seems to be looking up- her new surroundings with Maryann are rather pleasant, and she seems to get on rather well with Eggs, a young man whom Maryann has also taken in. But who is Maryann? And how does she know Sam? Questions are artfully posed for the following season.

Andy Bellefleur, having gone after Jason so strongly, may have buggered up his career. What a pity; it's disturbing that someone like him managed to become a detective in the first place. No wonder he turns to the bottle. But Jason's time in prison seems to have brought him disturbingly under the wing of the anti-vampire- and fundamentalist- Fellowship of the Sun. This probably won't end well.

We end with Bill experiencing the problems of "fatherhood" and the discovery of a body on a car... could it be the recently attacked Lafayette? Fortunately, those of us with box sets don't have long to wait.

True Blood: To Love Is to Bury

"You are the worst maker ever!"

The penultimate episode, and (SPOILERS)... the last shot confirms it's Rene who's the killer. I wasn't exactly sure it was him, but he was heading up my suspect list by this point. 

But so much else also happens this episode. The increasingly disturbing relationship between Jason and Amy continues up until it's violent and unexpected end, but she was always a wrong 'un; there's a very clever moment when Amy states that "What we have- it's beautiful" as the camera lingers on the bloody mess that is what's left of poor Eddie.

Tara seems to reach rock bottom here, arrested for drink driving. Sookie, meanwhile, is distracted from Bill's seemingly permanent absence by investigating all the murders and using Sam as her Watson, something which she finds oddly and endearingly enjoyable. It's a very interesting love triangle, and one with three very well-developed corners.

Lafayette gets a moment of awesomeness as he gets to skewer the state senator he's been sleeping with for his crude homophobic and anti-vampire electioneering- but it's interesting how the series seems to simultaneously show that the normal state of affairs for vampires is to be evil, yet to oppose them is to be prejudiced and socially conservative. I'm not sure that this binary opposition quite works.

Jessica turns out to be unexpectedly awesome; far from the appalled, Christian, innocent little girl she seems to be, she's overjoyed at being a vampire and the prospect of glorious revenge for her life of abuse. Go Jessica.

The worst thing to happen in this most eventful of episodes, though, is Lettie Mae. Never mind the number of times her daughter has bailed her out, she refuses to do the same for her daughter out of sheer arrogant hypocrisy, all as part of her performance at being a devout Christian- and performance it is. I hope she gets her comeuppance. She's the worst person in this series. Poor Tara. She's homeless and abandoned... but, when all seems lost, she's saved and taken in by the mysterioysMaryann. Who is she? What does she want? This is nicely done: as one season ends, the seeds of the next are sewn.

Things return to the status quo by the end, as Bill returns and Jadon is attested yet again. But only we are privy to the killwr's identity. Will he strike again? This is the best and most masterfully crafted chapter yet. Season finale here we come...

True Blood: I Don't Wanna Know

I'm "I used to scratch your butt in the parking lot at the bar!!!"

A theory: are all the episode titles the names of songs we hear during the episode?

Anyway, we begin with what could be described as an awkward conversation between Sam and Sookie. He's a "shape-shifter", apparently. Werewolves exist too. They're bad. He's really sorry for not telling her sooner etc. And, of course, Tara doesn't know. Awkward.

Meanwhile Tara goes through her expensive and horrible, horrible exorcism and Amy explains to Jason that her psychopathic tendencies towards vampires are perfectly fine because "I am an organic vegan, and my carbon footprint is minuscule. So that's all right then.

Things get worse for Tara: she discovers that, yep, the "exorcism" was indeed all a scam, but the placebo effect appears to be working for her mother. What to do? It's a realistic reaction from a multi-layered and very relatable character. I love Tara.

Bill's "sentence", it now seems, is to kill and turn a teenage girl called Jessica- and she's played by none other than Deborah Ann Woll, she who plays Karen Page in Daredevil. Another superb instalment.

True Blood: Plaisir d'Amour

"There's vampire in your cleavage..."

Apparently Bill is in trouble with Eric, "sheriff of area 5", for killing Longshadow while saving Sookie, which means he has to go on trial and stuff. This is dodgy. Why are vampires on the cusp of legality and civil rights of they presume to operate an entirely parallel legal system? If I were Sookie then I would simply tell Eric that, if he has a problem, he should simply call the police- and, if he doesn't, call them herself. Simples.

Ok, perhaps realistically that wouldn't help now, I grant you, but the State simply can't tolerate this in the long term.

Meanwhile, Amy and her himbo bitch Jason are keeping Eddie in the basement, milking him for blood like a cow while they have trippy hippy sex. Tara is being treated little better, beating charged $800 for some deeply unpleasant quack "exorcism". Oh, and someone has killed Sookie's cat when she gets home. So, you know, all sweetness and light.

But, as the series is nearing its end, things inevitably get worse. Tara dumps Sam out of nothing but self-loathing. Eddie tells Jason his life story, and it's a tragic one: it's clear that vampires, as a minority, can be a metaphor for sexual orientation rather than race and, tragically, Eddie stillhasn't embraced his true self as a vampire. And now it's too late.

We end with a big reveal- that dog that's been hanging around the bar is in fact Sam. Wow. Wasn't expecting that. This sublime series has such a capacity to shock and surprise.

True Blood: The Fourth Man in the Fire

"I don't think my boyfriend likes silver!"

Yeah, this is another good episode, let's just say that straight up. A lot of it consists of Amy's and Jason's trippy relationship, full of good sex, good drugs and bad vibes, especially when Amy gets Jason to help her kidnap Eddie, the rather docile vampiric source of Lafayett's supply, so they can presumably use him as a V-Juice cow until he dies. Lovely.

Bill isn't dead. Quelle surprise. And he makes quite an entrance. Cue lots of sex and a happy Sookie. Poor Tara isn't so happy, with her mother having swapped hardcore addiction to drink with a hardcore addition to religion, which she is pushing on to her daughter with appalling aggression. Poor Tara isn't having an easy time of it, and manages to mess up her ambiguously sexual relationship with Sam. Poor Tara.

We end with Sookie being summoned to (groan) "Fangtasia by the mysterious boss-man Eric, "sheriff of Area Five", who uses her to find out who's been embezzling money off him. She finds out who, but only at the cost of a perilous cliffhanger...

Oh, and a prediction: one of either Arlene or Rene will die before the wedding.

True Blood: Burning House of Love

"I don't know how to be with somebody."

An episode about relationships here as, in an interesting contrast with Buffy losing her virginity to Angel, Sookie's post-deflowering relationship with Bill continues to develop realistically and nicely, to Sam's increasing annoyance. Well, until Bill's apparent death, that is. Meanwhile, Jason gets together with the superficially nice and hippyish Amy, whose tendency to quote Crowley and desire for a good-looking but thick partner she can manipulate set alarm bells ringing.

Sookie spends much of the episode on Cloud Nine until Bill's apparent death (much as we, the viewers, know damn well he's not really dead), so much so that she's happy for him to, we, feed on her every day. There's a dark side to this, though; Bill has no qualms in simply killing Sookie's paedo uncle. It's clear that vampires have no respect for established legal structures.

The exorcism is weird, creepy and, if not being carried out by a black person, would constitute a vaguely racist mockery of West African Animist customs. But I suppose that's the point; the descendants of slaves are so alienated from their own Bantu cultural heritage that vaguely racist stereotypes are all they have. Poor Tara has to foot the bill for this nonsense and you just feel more and more sorry for her. And then the quack in question starts aiming a particularly nasty hard sell at Tara, whose wise scepticism is sadly undercut by her lack of self-esteem. Poor Tara.

There are only so many ways of saying, episode after episode, that this is brilliant television. But it is.

True Blood: Cold Ground

"You is a stupid bitch, Jason Stackhouse."

This extraordinary episode is, at its core, an examination of how a murder is so deeply wounding both to a family and to an entire community. All sorts of things are horribly uprooted and Sookie, being telepathic, is overwhelmingly bombarded with people's horrible, casually bigoted, indecently nosy thoughts. The fact that such a determined non-sweater drops the f-bomb at a funeral speech is a dramatic example of this, doubly effective coming from her. Bereavement is both deeply alienating- how can other people understand, and how can we tolerate the sheer absurdity of trying to express our complex feelings via platitudes? The performance of how we're "supposed" to feel is deeply, appallingly, overwhelmingly onerous, and only with Bill- her relationship with whom has caused so many harsh judgements) does she find solace.

Jason finds out in the worst possible way, and an awful rift develops between the siblings. Tara is a true friend but, as other people always do, has problems of her own, not least her awful, abusive mother trying to blame her alcoholism on a "demon" and get Tara to pay for an expensive exorcism.

On a more prosaic note, is Bill right to suggest the murderer is going after the lovers of vampires? Was Sookie the intended victim? Jason dives deeper into addiction to V-Juice in spite of his experiences. It seems fitting, though, that as Jason blahs his way through reverse cowgirl with some randomer, Sookie is gently and meaningfully deflowered by Bill, her true soulmate. And he bites her...

This is the most extraordinary episode yet. Wow.

True Blood: Sparks Fly Out

"Excuse me, who ordered the hamburger with AIDS?"

Bill has weird musical tastes, which makes sense. The older you get, the more open-minded you become, and the less tolerant of MOR chart fodder crap. I like him more and more. The highlight of another excellent episode, however, is Jason demonstrating to Lafayette exactly what happened to his penis without anaesthetic by means of a sausage. Er, nice. At least, for balance, Lafayette gets a scene later on where he deals magnificently with a homophobe.

This episode focuses on the talk given by Bill, a former Confederate soldiers, to a disturbingly large number of people who seem to think that supporting said cause is in some way not blatantly racist. No wonder Tara feels so uncomfortable. And no, I still don't understand why Americans don't treat people like this as traitors but, well, it's their country, not mine. Bill gives a good speech, anyway.

Interesting to see some myths dispelled, too: vampires can enter churches, touch crosses, appear in mirrors- this is a much stripped down and secularised take on the vampire myth. But the bigger revelation is how Bill was turned into a vampire, against his will and because of the very integrity that drives him today. His tale is truly tragic: his forced separation from his wife and children is simply unimaginable.

Poor Tara continues to suffer from her unfortunate crush on Jason, an absolute slut who, V-Juice or not, inevitably betrays her with the first girl he comes across. Tara is a deeply sympathetic character, but so are so many others. 

A brilliant episode. But, just when it seems the stakes can't get any higher, Sookie suddenly finds her frandmother's viokentky murdered corpse...

True Blood: Escape from Dragon House

"I got gout of the dick!"

Dawn being dead isn't good for Jason: it seems that the last two women he's slept with have been murdered. Oops. Understandably the local constabulary are raising the odd eyebrow and there is much gossip in Bon Temps, particularly from a rather unpleasantly nosey aunt. Worse, Jason has to swallow all the V-Juice in the back of the police car for fear of being caught with it, and much of the rest of the episode consists of the delightful details of what this does to his cock. Still, at least he and the lovely Tara get to bond a little over his intense genital  pain. Still wouldn't want to be him though, although for the first time in my life I have to praise some wanking acting.

Still, Sookie and Bill are having "fun" at the vampire bar Fangtasia (groan), where we first meet the old any mysterious boss's vampire Eric and his strangely sexy underlying, Pam. There's also an interesting chat between Sookie and Sam which makes explicit the thematic parallels between vampires and black people on this, the Deep South. Race is foregrounded as a theme as Sookie points out that Sam is supporting "separate but equal". Meanwhile, Bill is pulled over in his car by a cop because of his race. We've got plenty of time to see if this theme develops much. We have vampires, black and white characters, the complex legacy of the 1861-65 War of Secession and so many apologists for the slaveholders, like Sookie's grandmother.

We also get flashbacks to Tara's childhood and her abusive, alcoholic mother. Poor Tara. It's a compliment to all involved that I'm getting so attached to these characters.

This is one addictive series; I'm actually on episode nine as I write...

True Blood: Mine

"If we can't kill people, what's the point of being a vampire?"

We begin to meet more vampires, and it's definitely seeming as though Bill is the exception in not being evil and highly menacing: is this what we're intended to think? So far it's far from clear cut that vampires should indeed be treated as a minority deserving of rights, but we'll see how things progress. Bill explains that vampires become evil from living in nests, but that hardly lets them off the hook.

We're told of Hepatitis D, a vampire disease which weakens them and which, by the law of Raymond Chandler's revolver, will eventually threaten Bill's life, I strongly suspect. Sam and Tara (I love her) chat about their respective unattainables, Sookie and Jason and, in a refreshingly honest and unpuritanical scene, end up having some no-strings sex to deal with their mutual drought. Good.

Sookie is still yet to be deflowered, much as her libido is clearly getting intense by now, but she shags Bill only in her dreams. We learn more of Tara's mother issues- she now has to stay with Lafayette which, given the wine and ganja there, seems not to be a bad choice. The episode ends on a pop cultural note as Sam wishes for "Buffy or Blade" to come to Bon Temps. The gripping plot and characters continue to unwind in this already-excellent series.

We finish, again, on a cliffhanger: Sookie's found another body...

True Blood: The First Taste

"Do doctors know that V-Juice can do this?"

"No. We wanna keep it that way."

This series is addictive: I may only be blogging the second episode but I'm up to the fifth, much as I will spend the rest of this blog post behaving as though I hadn't. Suffice to say that it continues to be awesome. I appreciate the way that this is one continuing story; there may be themes for individual episodes but there are no stories of the week.

After the expected rescue, much of this episode consists of Sookie and Bill chatting and getting to know each other; he's just saved her life (so they're even) and given her some mildly superhuman abilities (including increased libido for this virgin!) in the process. We also get to realise just how, er, unintelligent Jazon is as it turns out he couldn't possibly have committed the mirder of which he's accused: it was that bald, tattooed vampire, right?

Bill later chats with Sookie, her Gran, Tara and Jason about how he fought, in the 1861-5 war of secession, for the rights of wealthy white people to "own" other people and, indeed, that his own parents owned slaves. Tara is, unsurprisingly, unimpressed. It's quite shocking to see, as a foreigner, how rural Louisiana can seem so racially integrated and yet so many seem invested in deeply unsavoury causes and symbols. And I can't understand why other Americans don't see this sort of thing as treason. Oh well.

We end with yet another cliffhanger and several huge incentives to keep watching this splendid series.