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TRUE BLOOD |
Sookie Stackhouse - Anna Paquin Bill Compton- Stephen Moyer Jason Stackhouse- Ryan Kwanten Tara Thornton - Rutina Wesley Sam Merlotte - Sam Trammell 
OTHER TRUE BLOOD SEASONS Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 OTHER VAMPIRE SHOWS Buffy The Vampire Slayer Angel Ultraviolet Blood Ties Being Human Moonlight Vampire Diaries 
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Turn! Turn! Turn!Sookie and Lafayette attempt to save Tara by turning her into a vampire. Jason finds trouble from both vampire girlfriends and old enemies. Sam Merlotte is in trouble with the pack whose leader he killed. Bill and Eric are on the run from the vampire Authority. TRUE BLOOD is back and in one single episode it throws continuations at so many plotlines that you wonder why they bothered tying them up in the last season. For all of that, not much actually seems to happen. Even so, it holds the attention whilst never actually inspiring the imagination. It's certainly a long way from the heady days of the first season. Fortunately, it's not all doom and gloom with Jason, the show's main comedy mainstay, getting a couple of fun scenes in amongst all the misery. TopAuthority Always WinsBill and Eric find out what the Authority's torture is like whilst Sookie and Lafayette try to calm down a feral Tara. The two main plots running in the show at the moment are so far apart it's difficult to see how they are ever going to come together. The view of the Vampire Authority and its methods is the more interesting as the Tara plot strand just sees Tara ripping the house apart. Minor characters all have their own minor plots running, but it's really hard to care about them at all. TopWhatever I Am, You Made MeBill and Eric negotiate a way out of the Authority's prison. Tara takes shelter at Merlotte's. Jason meets an old teacher. Virtually nothing happens throughout the length of this episode. No single plot is advanced and time is taken up with vampire flashbacks of Pam, a lesser character. Sookie and Lafayette spend the whole episode waiting for Tara to wake up and Jason sleeps with a woman from his past only to dump her and refuse to sleep with a vampire from his present. Were any of this informing about the characters then it would be worth it, but they don't seem to be evolving at all. TopWe'll Meet AgainSookie is worried when the parents of the woman she killed come to town looking for the truth. Pam reflects on her past with Eric. And we get another episode in which practically nothing happens to advance any of the stories. The grieving relatives is the main story and a sideline that goes nowhere. We get flashbacks to Eric and Pam, flashbacks to Iraqi war crimes and a thoroughly pointless visit to the land of faery masquerading as a casino club. And for what? The plots aren't twisting because they are not moving. Most of the threads are uninteresting and the whole episode screams filler at the top of its lungs. TRUE BLOOD has never been more at risk of disappearing up its own rear end. TopLet's Boot And RallyEric and Bill need Sookie to track Russell Edgington before they are killed. Tara starts tasting life as a vampire and Sam gets attacked. Finally things start moving again. The slow burn of the search through a damaged building for the 3000 year old killing machine of Edgington keeps things moving just enough through Tara's first steps as a vampire (yes, we did it all with Jessica, but Tara's a more interesting character) and the arrival of a fire monster known as an Afrit. Things are still too diffuse with too many plotlines going off all at their own tangents, but the last couple of minutes promise some action and some plot developments rather than the treading water we've had to put up with. And the Afrit is pretty impressive. TopHopelessRussell Edgington is once again captured and sentenced to death. Sookie is banished from Bill. Terry is running from the Afrit and Sam is out for revenge on the men who shot him. TRUE BLOOD continues to fire off in all sorts of directions with plotlines running away from each other without rhyme or reason, as has been the case in previous seasons. This means that the effect of each plot is watered down and it is truly hard to care about what happens to any of them. The background of the Authority is the through line of all this, even if it gets the least screen time, but that story is starting to get a bit predictable. The big cliffhanger was an obvious development. TopIn The BeginningThe Authority, now in the hands of religious zealots, drink the blood of their god and go on a rampage. Sookie learns that she can rid herself of her fairy powers and Hoyt falls in with a hate gang. Once upon a time TRUE BLOOD had a focus and that focus was Bill and Sookie. Now it is a mess that meanders all over the place with no destination in mind and the hope that audience affection for the characters will keep them watching no matter how tedious and pointless the plots are becoming. The blood rampage of vampires on drugs might have a point somewhere, but it's drowned out by all the mad religious symbolism. Tara is disowned by her mother in a big 'who cares?' moment and the whole Jessica/Jason/Hoyt triangle just gets worse and worse. TRUE BLOOD has descended into a soap opera that is dull, mad (not in a good way) and patience-straining. TopSomebody That I Used To KnowBill suggests destroying the True Blood supply in order to make vampires feed on humans. Hoyt has the chance to kill Jessica and free himself. Terry learns the price of getting rid of the Afrit. It has become so hard to care what is happening in this show as the melodrama swamps everything. Fortunately, Hoyt being given killing Jessica as a test of his loyalty to the hate gang is a strong moment, but the rest is just tedious. Sookie learns a bit more about the vampire that killed her parents and Terry finds that life comes with death as a price tag, but neither of these matters a damn. This is filler material pure and simple and displays just how far the show has fallen. TopEverybody Wants To Rule The WorldSookie is taken by the hate gang just as everyone else starts to move in on them. Eric makes a move to escape the Authority. Terry faces the Afrit at last. It has been so long since anything interesting happened in TRUE BLOOD that this episode actually comes as a breath of fresh air. The hate gang storyline ramps up and comes to a conclusion and even proves to be the main storyline. The wholly irrelevant Afrit plot is also finally put to rest. On top of this, the werewolf pack story gets linked in with the main story that at least shows there was some thought in getting to a finale that ties things together. We might get a decent canter to the end of the season now, but it's doubtful that the impression of been bored to death can be completely wiped away. Top |
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