There’s something to be said about a series that can bounce back from a start as bad as True Blood has had with it’s final season. While the glory days of Alan Ball’s genius has been over from quite some time, the series’ current showrunners have shown that there are still a few tricks to the smash hit HBO once waved as their brightest flag.
Not all character development is made equal on a show like True Blood, hence the series has always suffered (greatly) from minor characters being given their own pointless sub-plots; so when they kill one of these characters off (Alcide) there is hope that the writers are beginning to cull the large supporting-cast pot and focus in on the ones they can truly bank on. However, things have been bad-to-average for so long that most development on great characters, like Lafayette and Jason, has been largely undone, and what we are left with is a show that can only rely on the sheer sugar rush it gives viewers during large scale action sequences.
The show has been known to build up arcs and abandon them a few episodes later to keep us guessing what will be the big crisis that takes us out of the season, it’s a formula which has been echoed in the latter seasons of Dexter – and we all know how that turned out. For a moment, it seemed like “zompires” were taking a back seat for awhile and that what we were really edging towards was a town divided amongst itself, and the super lame character of the profoundly annoying Vince would be a big problem in Season 7; for a moment it seemed like a show that gave us brilliant villains like Maryann Forrester and Russell Edgington was going to collapse with a group of nobody rebels. Thankfully, this was put to a quick end in the fourth episode, with Bill casually driving a spike through Vince’s shiny bald head.
But now, what are we really waiting for? Now that Arlene, Jane Boathouse, and Nicole have been rescued, their captors all reduced to red goo, and the rebels all dead, what threat could we spend the final 5 episodes dealing with. Surely True Blood can’t afford to waste it’s time building up another ‘big bad,’ the writer’s have dawdled enough already.
Episode 3, “Fire in the Hole’ seemed to be a sorry letter from the writers to the fans, wrapping up the dullness of the first two episodes, sealed with a bullet in Alcide’s head. Episode 4 “Death is Not the End” was a sort of return to the form, and a spark of redemption for the show. It was the best True Blood episode we’ve seen in a long time, yet it still was held back by some really negligible and pointless time-wasting scenes, like Jessica having an eating disorder just so the writer’s could give Lafayette something to do. Even more pointless was the call-back to good ol’ Kevin and his uneventful write-off with an excessively long visit to his widow. Perhaps it was to show how splintered the town has become, but any show’s final season (especially when it’s that show’s shortest season) should NEVER have filler.
Perhaps one of the highlights of “Death is Not the End” was the very beginning, with Jason and Sookie each making difficult phone calls to report to two big deaths in “Fire in the Hole”. The smaller of the two deaths – loud-mouthed Maxine Fortenberry – was the catalyst for a pretty welcome surprise: the on-screen return of Jim Parrack as Jason’s best bud Hoyt. When Hoyt left Bon Temps for good he had most of his memories glamoured out of him, by choice, and so Jason trying to hold back tears while talking to someone he loves, who doesn’t remember him at all, was effectively heartbreaking; more so since Hoyt has always been one of the most likeable peripheral characters on True Blood. If the writers are looking for something to do with Jason, then bringing Hoyt back to Bon Temps and playing on the dynamic between these two may be something worth exploring.
Another highlight of “Death is not the End” came in the form of comical flashbacks in which we discovered that the ever-traumitised Ginger was actually the brains behind Fangtasia, right up until Pam glamoured the idea out of her so she could claim it was her own. Perhaps if True Blood ever needed a spin off, the interplay between Pam, Eric, and Ginger could make for one very entertaining mini-series.
Now that the ‘threat’ slate has been (sort of) wiped clean, it’s unclear where the final 5 episodes of True Blood will take us, but with “Death is not the End”, the writers have shown us there is still hope that they can finish this series off on a good note. It’s just a shame that, now, pretty much all of the first three episodes has been revealed to just be time-wasting crap.
Review Score: THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Positives:
– Jason x Hoyt
– Eric, Pam, and Ginger flashbacks
– Vince and equally dumb townsfolk killed off
– Alcide killed off
– Violet kills Maxine
– Eric back in town
Negatives
– Alcide killed by a nobody
– Jessica has an eating disorder
– Lettie Mae
Episode M.V.P(s): Bill, Jason, Pam, Eric
True Blood airs on Showcase on Mondays at 3:35pm and is repeated at 5:35pm on Showcase.Two
———-
