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: 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: Gone, Gone, Gone

"Who's the smart one now?"

Bill's idea is bearing fruit; the lack of True Blood is already leading to an increase in vampire attacks on humans. Things are taking an increasingly apocalyptic tone as we approach the end of this rather uneven season.

The most heartbreaking event of the episode is that Hoyt is not only leaving for Alska but gets Jessica to glamour him so that he forgets her-his first love- and Jason- his lifelong best friend. This is the thematic centre of an episode about abrupt endings.

Eric is in deep trouble as the new Authority takes over, setting quotas for new vampires to be turned and menacing a splendidly incandescent Pam. But Bill has an agenda of his own, and it involves Lilith's blood. 

Jason, meanwhile, once again shows himself to be good at police type stuff by finding a mysterious old scroll in Sookie's house. The language seems utterly inscrutable, but this artifact is clearly important. 

Bill is getting increasingly creepy and fanatical, trying to push religion on to Jessica just as her dad did. He's a little less dull this episode because of the good handling of the mystery of his motives, but the character is nonetheless neither likeable or particularly interesting. We're all motivated here by our liking for Jessica.

Ominously, Russell Edgington has a plan to breed fairies so that vampires can "day walk"  Salome disagrees and there's a permanent schism between them; Russell never did have any true allegiance to religion. Interestingly, his accent turns German when he's emotional...

We end with Maurella appearing to Andy, pregnant, and explaining that he's agreed to raise her children. This is quite the bombshell, especially given his flourishing relationship with Holly. And that piece of vellum in Sookie's house turns out to be a contract from 1702 saying that the "first fae-bearing human heir" of one John Stackhouse belongs to someone called Warlow. And that would be Sookie...

Ok. I'm intrigued.

True Blood: And When I Die

"Dude! I'm dead, you're a medium; I'll always be with you."

An ominous finale; we know someone is going to die and by the iron laws of drama it has to be Jesus. Still, his name is an obvious Christ metaphor and it seems, in a sense, he will always be with Lafayette.

Nelsan Ellis is superb playing a Lafayette possessed by Marnie- something foreshadowed by Mavis earlier in the season. Clever. Jason confesses to Hoyt about him and Jessica, thereby destroying their friendship. Terry is visited by his old sergeant from Iraq- something for next season- and Marnie is going to burn Bill and Eric at the stake, which is nice. 

And then, just to make a dramatic finale, the dead rise, including Antonia and, shockingly, Adele. Sookie is, obviously, emotional. More sinisterly, Rene (as Rene, with a Cajun accent) returns to Arlene to warn her of "that man", Terry. More foreshadowing.

Most unexpected is the outcome of Sookie's love triangle; after much tension, she dumps both Bill and Eric. Blimey. It's a downbeat episode, with a seemingly downbeat take on a Buddhist theme that life is suffering and that true death, oblivion, is the only release. Cheerful stuff.

Marnie ultimately dies, as she herself predicts, and we get to wrap up. Jadon has sex with a Jessica dressed like Red Riding Hood, and the cliffhangers end the season: Steve Newlin is at Jason's door- and he's a vampire! Alcide finds out that Russell Edgington is loose again! And, in the final shot, Debbie shoots Tara. It looks as though she's dead...?

True Blood: You Smell Like Dinner

"It's Bon Temps, Sook. Not like I expected the red fucking carpet!"

So Eric bought the house because he wants to protect Sookie, a fairy, from other vampires. He's even made himself a little cubby hole. Hmm. Not stalkerish at all then.

Less creepy is Sam's relationship with fellow shifter Luna, which is developing nicely. And equally intriguing is the flashback to a punk rock Bill(!) in the London of 1982, looking very much like Sid Vicious and being seemingly recruited by Nan Flanagan into an assimilist conspiracy within the Authority. My, that Stephen Moyer does a rather good English accent.

Oh, and Louis Pasteur is a vampire. Cool. So is the way True Blood is like a gradually unpeeling onion of complex vampire political agendas.

Tara, meanwhile, finally comes back to visit Bon Temps, her girlfriend in New Orleans believing her to be another identity entirely. The plot thickens as Bill explains that Marnie's Wiccans are necromancers and therefore a threat which Eric is to neutralise. Unfortunately he loses his memory while doing so. Isn't that a bummer?

In other bombshells, Jessica is starting to cheat on Foyt- is monogamy for her?- while Felton and Crystal are back. It seems that Felton, with all that inbreeding, has nothing in the tank and he thus wants Jason to inpregnate his sister-wife. True Blood certainly knows how to do a good twist..!

This is shaping up to be good season. I'm addicted as ever...

True Blood: Everything Is Broken

"I wanted to meet the sick fuck who ordered the veggie burger with bacon."

No wonder Eric and Pam are panicking; Russell Edgington is going to be very angry. But it gets worse as Nan Flanagan arrives to investigate the dealing in V. It's a sensitive time politically, with just two more states needing to ratify the Vampire Rights Amendment. Heaven forbid that something should go wrong.

Sookie and Bill meanwhile are getting all erotic with each other, even sooner than I predicted. Bill admits he's been keeping a file on Sookie and her relatives with similar powers- he has to know what she is, but she seems fine with that.

An apparently far more solid couple are Lafayette and Jesus, who continue to be sweet together. Rather more disturbing are Jason and Crystal, especially when Felton comes for her once again.

Eric puts in a good performance at his trial, but he's still in deep trouble until, unexpectedly and not entirely convincingly, he gets off for political reasons. Tara and Holly connect at a rape survivor meeting, and it turns out that Sookie's son has her powers too- I'm sure this will become significant later. So many plot threads, yet it's all coherent, and the characters are developed beautifully. True Blood is indeed magnificent.

Terry reacts wonderfully to Arlene's confession that the baby isn't hers, which means that the baby itself, not him, is going to be the source of trouble. Another Damien? 

There's hope for Hoyt and Jessica as they have a nice and potentially healing chat. There's fear and despair for Tara as the disgusting Frannklin turns up, alive and well and as entitled as ever. Crystal again chooses her abusive, inbred family over Jason.

But the climax is rather dramatic, as Russell Edgington dramatically kills a newsreader live on air and makes a rather dramatic speech ensuring that, for Nan Flanagan and her supporters, everything is indeed broken...

True Blood: Trouble

"The only power he has over us is the power we give him."

The Machiavellian King continues with his complex skulduggery, playing chess with the lives of people and vampires. His solution to the various claims and counter claims on who was or was not dealing V is simply to get rid of the Magister, on open defiance of the vampire tradition to which he surely owes his own position. Can he really keep all these plates spinning? Television drama tends not to be forgiving of hubris.

In other plot threads, Jason continues in his increasingly farcical attempts to get Andy to employ him as a cop, while Franklin's abuse of Tara becomes more and more distressing as he expects her to "love" him.

It's happier news for Lafayette as his mum'snurse, Jesus, asks him out, and the two of them begin a rather sweet romance, and Jason is attracted to Crystal, a mysterious girl from the wrong side of town. Secrets are hinted at, naturally. Eric, meanwhile, finds his father's crown among Edgington's stuff, meaning that it was he who killed Eric's family...

But the episode is focused on the true horror of Tara's situation, with her captor proposing to "turn" her, making her his for eternity. This is very, very dark stuff. 

We end with Sookie, backed into a corner, once more using her light powers, in an episode about secrets, revelations and, yes, male violence against women. It all very good, if very dark.

True Blood: Beautifully Broken

"You drank from my guest!"

It seems the werewolves are all underlings of the mysterious and charismatic Russell Edgington, the King of Mississippi- do all fifty states have a vampire monarch, and are all of them as odd as the two we've seen? The King has an agenda, a fractious relationship with his boyfriend Russell and a troubling willingness to consort with werewolves, which is Simply Not Done among aristocratic vampires. On the other hand, I'd imagine that owning a bed once possessed by Elizabeth Bathory is de rigeur.

Sookie sets off a flashback to Augsburg during the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 when she tells Eric of the werewolf connection, where he and Godric are looking for werewolves.

Tara is utterly distraught at the death of her one true love but Lafayette, a wise and good person beneath it all, is wonderful in looking after her. Poor Jessica wants Hoyt back but "it's too late". Sam learns that his "real" family are poor, feckless and not much to write home about. Not many people are happy, but at least Sookie's there to do an impression of Bill and cheer us all up. (Btw, a thought- both Bill and Angel from Angel- Liam- are called William. A little nod?)

The King wants Bill's secrets, and won't let him leave. That's unfortunate, as he had Lorena with him. Tara meets a vampire played by the familiar James Frain, and Sookie and Eric, like Bill before, are attacked by werewolves...

This is the episode where everything shifts into new areas. It isn't clear where things are going yet, but True Blood is as great as ever.

True Blood: I Will Rise Up

"You've killed a man."

"That was for self-defence, not for lunch!"

The Brotherhood of the Sun subplot is all wrapped up... and suddenly one of them (Luke, whom we've come to know) turns out to be a suicide bomber and blows up most of the cast. That's quite an opening.

Fortunately, Sookie survives because of Eric(!( taking the full force of the blast for her, seemingly selflessly. And yet... he uses his own need for healing as a pretext to "own" Sookie as Bill does, being able to sense her in the same way. And, as Bill warns her, she's likely to experience feelings of attraction towards him. But... are we really supposed to be ok with the implication that Bill did this to her too? I suppose he saved her life, but it feels a bit queasily rapey.

Speaking of Bill, he ruthlessly kills all Soldiers of the Sun present, wisely allowing one to live and tell the tale. Elsewhere, Jessica and Hoyr continue to be the sweetest couple ever and Tara and Eggs are increasingly uneasy about Maryann- but are completely under her control, in spite of Lafayette's managing to take Tara away. Maryann's influence has led to half the town being locked up for lewd behaviour; Bon Temps is an increasingly weird place.

Hoyt arranges for Jessica to meet his horrible, controlling mother and ends up having the chat he's needed to have with her for a long time. Good for him. There's a heartwarming chat between Sookie and Jason, and Sookie has a disturbingly erotic dream about Eric...!

The imprisoned townsfolk are all freed by an increasingly confident and increasingly powerful Maryann; the season is clearly gearing up for a big conclusion as an increasingly strange Bon Temps awaits Sookie. It's a masterful build-up.

The most extraordinary part is the end, though, as the old, wise, tired and Christlike Godric chooses to embrace death by sunrise after his twenty long centuries, with only Sookie beside him. He wants to burn, dying happy, serene and surprised at this sight of a human shedding tears for him. It's an utterly beautiful scene.

True Blood: Scratches

"It's always a pleasure doing business with you, Dr. Ludwig."

"Fuck off!"

We begin, after last week's unpleasantness, with a blazing row between Sookie and Bill leading to her running off into the woods... and being attacked and nearly killed by some mysterious creature that's clearly going to loom large this season. She can only be saved by the intervention of Eric; Sookie and Bill now owe him an awful lot, much to Bill's annoyance.

Eric, incidentally, is more than 1,000 years old, and therefore a Viking. He's Swedish, mind, so he can't be in America because of Vinland... what's his background, I wonder?

Maryann, meanwhile, continues to disturb- Sam warns Tara against her, and Karl seems simply to be a slave. She and all around her seem to smoke an awful lot of weed, too. 

Jason is still being steadily indoctrinated by this Fellowship of the Sun cult in spite of his doubts; he's so easy to manipulate, especially by the flirty and attractive Sarah. She also seems more intelligent than her husband; is it she, rather than Steve, who is in charge? 

Behind all this... the Fellowship may be evangelical fanatics full of all sorts of bigotries but, while there are exceptions, the evidence we've seen so far indicates that most vampires are indeed evil. Yes, that's in spite of Bill's big speech about everyone, human and vampire, having agency. Vampires are still, on average, evil.

Sookie and Bill are off to Dallas for Eric, in return for Lafayette's freedom; this is intriguing, and no doubt will show us much more vampire lore in due course. Who is this mysterious, missing Godric?

Jessica and Hoyt getting together is, of course, the sweetest thing ever, and I hope the start of something beautiful. Less nice is Tara's situation with Maryann and her tribe; she's beginning to notice, and be disgusted by, what look to be Bacchanalian excesses.

Meanwhile, Sam and Daphne seem to be getting on well during a midnight swim... but those scratches look awfully like Sookie's. Curiouser and curiouser.

This is already an extraordinarily complex and compelling season, full of contrasts and questions. I suspect, behind it, there are themes; it's going to be a fascinating ride.

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: 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.