TrueBloodNet.com takes on TVDoneWright and it’s WAR!

OK, maybe not war exactly. We were a bit over excited by the attack on the witch shop last episode! Our buddy over at TVDoneWright.com has a critique of the season and while we here at TrueBloodNet.com agree with some of his points, we disagree with others so we thought it would be fun to respond point to point (although we won’t reprint his whole article here and you should head over to TVDoneWright.com to catch all his well thought out, if slightly flawed, reasoning.) We say this in a friendly way… we think TVDoneWright rocks!

Lose the witches

The season of the Witch has been a flop. We can’t blame Fiona Shaw who played Marnie, with three different accents at that. The story was just bad. It was so bad, it made me think “I sure miss Maryanne from Season 2”.

TrueBloodNet.com replies:

We agree for the most part. Frankly, the flashbacks were time-sucking megaboring events that slowed the story down so much that, on top of live-tweeting the show, we managed to surf the net looking for pictures of #TrueBlood #HotBottoms. It is bad enough Marnie is returning in the finale (and Fiona Shaw has been great in the role, no doubts about that) but we’d hate to see her lingering into next season. That said, we don’t want to see all the witches killed off, just break up the coven. In fact, we can imagine scenarios where the witches can be helpful here and there without being the center of attention.

TVDoneWright said:

The Fairies – Are they in or out?

At the beginning of the season, Sookie was in Fairy land. Then Eric kills the fairy-godmother, and then we forget about them. That’s until last week when another fairy randomly has sex with Andy.

Here we don’t agree. We liked the fairies and are fine with them popping in and out. They are like any other Supe and we don’t need to focus on them all the time for fairies to have a big part from time to time. The whole, “I was in fairyland for a year and that’s why everyone has aged” thing was a bit trite, but we here at TrueBloodNet.com are loving the new and responsible, if still boyish, foolish, and not-too-smart Jason and King Bill. With his heart, courage and new role as a policeman, Jason’s been rockin’ the show in Season 4 of True Blood. The first few seasons, Ryan did a good job acting but his story lines were lame — although we loved his interaction with Eddie. This season, he really blossomed. We just love Jason and hot, young vampiress Jessica — played by the talented Deborah Ann Woll — together and the difficulties it’s sure to cause with Hoyt. We hope True Blood doesn’t end up back in Hotshot next season though. The serial rape thing was just disgusting and went a bit too far. We’re all for pushing boundaries, but X-rated scenes with children are off-limits. We never rewatched that episode after the first night because of the EW! factor.

At the end of last season, we at TrueBloodNet.com were very concerned that Bill would fade into the background or mope around pining for Sookie. King Bill has been awesome giving the brilliant Stephen Moyer the chance to showcase his acting chops. Not to mention, he’s been vampire sexy and his character Bill, like Jason, has moved forward through the series. And it has allowed for some great Sookie-Eric scenes and it was great that the Sookie-Eric Shippers got their moments. Alexander Skarsgård is very easy on the eyes and is delivering in the acting department.

TVDoneWright.com said:

Werewolves – Give them something better

Season 3 introduced the werewolves to True Blood. When this happened, they painted themselves in a corner. You see they added another mythology creature, but they never really managed to do anything interesting with them. That was especially the case with Season 4, which saw Alcide pretty much in the background the whole time.

To which we at TrueBloodNet.com reply: AAaaaAWOOOOoooO!!! For more reasons than one, we’d like to see more of Alcide next season, preferably as the new Alpha —  with lots of #HotBottom moments! While we appreciate that Alcide likes to be the lone wolf, we’d long to see the Werewolves evolve into a chaotic-good force. There are plenty of complex and challenging forces that can torture the poor wolf once he accepts the leader’s mane and has to temper his loner desires with his deeper understanding of the amount of good he can do by leading a wolf pack with true honor and fairness. On the other side of The Camera, Joe Manganiello — hot hot hot! — gave up Superman to play Alcide — he sure as heck deserves a meatier role than he’s gotten so far.

We are also really loving the Bromance between Sam Merlotte and Alcide. They are like the Starsky and Hutch of True Blood, only they can act twice as well and are thrice as yummy.  Sam’s whole story line this season has been very riveting. We love that he’s got a shifter girlfriend, has grown and become more complex. His journey of self-discovery has been compelling and, as always with Alan Ball’s story lines, shows us the dark side of an adoptee’s journey to find his birth family. Sam Trammell is easily one of the best looking men on the planet and he just oozes kindness, which makes the changes in Merlotte’s character even more remarkable. His portrayal of Sam, as Tommy playing Sam, was astounding — and hilarious! Great acting chops there!

Speaking of the ill-fated and often annoying little brother Tommy — deftly portrayed by another #HotBottom Marshall Allman — anyone who didn’t tear up during his death scene needs to ask the wizard for a heart. We know Tommy was annoying, but he never had a chance; the deck was always stacked against him. We realize that Alan Ball may have been setting up the Alcide-Sam partnership, but somehow, allowing Tommy to die felt like a writer failure. Sure, it yanked at our heartstrings but what a dismal message to send to adoptees. Tommy’s death also took away a powerful tool — skin walking — that could have been used very infrequently, due to the high toll it took on Tommy. He could have infiltrated The Church of the Sun, for instance, as Steve Newlin. Hopefully, we’ll have some flashback scenes next year with some humorous memories of Tommy or a few good brother minutes we didn’t get to see in the year Sookie was in Fairyland.

And, of course, the stop and start again romance between Sam and the fiery shapeshifter Luna, adeptly portrayed by series newcomer Janina Gavankar, has been very well received by the fans, we at TrueBloodNet.com look forward to that storyline continuing to develop next year.

The Quadrangle — Eric, Sookie, Bill and Pam

TVDoneWright.com said:

Sookie – Pick one and move on

There are two scenes that annoyed me to no end this season.

The first was the dream-sequences where Sookie told Bill and Eric that they could both have her…in bed.

The second scene that annoyed me was last week when Eric and Bill were ready to kill themselves to save Sookie. Wait…what?

Here we at TrueBloodNet.com strongly disagree with the main premise but agree with one of the ‘WTFranklin‘ moments.

We like seeing Sookie torn between Eric and Bill, in fact, we’d like to add Alcide to the mix and see what happens. Personally, we don’t need to see a four-or five-way, but we sure do like it when all the Alpha males start… you know, looking for a ruler. We love the triad if for no other reason than the dialog writers, during these scenes, often have us laughing, just when we didn’t think we could stand the pathos of an episode. A welcome break. We can see where, from a male standpoint, this might not be the greatest story arc. But instead of changing Sookie and forcing her to choose, we’d suggest bringing on a real femme fatale next season for the menfolk’s pleasure — oh wait, True Blood already has one, Pam. Perhaps Alan could just let Pam and Sookie get into a mud fight… in a shared dream. And while we’re talking about Sookie, Anna Paquin‘s acting this season has been great! We just wish they wouldn’t write Sookie like a ditzy blonde…

While everyone keeps talking about this as a triad, we at TrueBloodNet.com strongly feel this is actually a quartet. Pam, played by the beautiful and talented artist, activist and actress Kristin Bauer van Straten, oozed jealousy during the season’s penultimate show last Sunday. Clearly, vampire Pam is not happy to see that, despite the curse being broken, Eric and Sookie are still a thing and no doubt that colors her later decision to fire a rocket launcher in Sookie’s general direction. We got to see a bit behind Pam’s stone wall exterior in Season 4 of True Blood, and we really felt her face-melting pain but we crave more background on Pam. Could it be in Season 5 we’ll discover how Eric chose to turn Pam and what her first reactions were to being immortal? At any rate, Pam’s lines, sharply to the point and dripping with sarcasm and disgust, are just our cuppa joe.

Which brings us to the point where TrueBloodNet.com totally agrees with TVDoneWright. When Bill and then Eric both agree to die the true death for Sookie, it was the stupidest moment on True Blood. First, if they did it, the show would be over — so what viewer believed it, even in the moment? But secondly, who would protect Sookie if they were both dead? Who would protect the other vampires? Marnie had already proven that she wasn’t trustworthy… it was just lame. If Bill was planning to kill Eric to get rid of him, stop Pam from killing him and find another way to save Sookie — only excuse for this idiotic behavior — True Blood sure didn’t do a good job of clueing in the audience.  Next time you’re thinking of doing that —  just say no.

An area where we at TrueBloodNet.com do agree with TVDoneWright is that there are just too many individual story lines. It’s not so much that there are too many characters, although there is some of that and we would argue that the show certainly doesn’t need any more, but that they all have so much going on it’s hard to spend enough time to fully develop some storylines. We wouldn’t advocate killing off a main character however. Rather, we’d like to see them bring back Steve Newlin and King Russell next season, give us flashbacks with Godric, Tommy and bring in Dr. Ludwig, instead of bringing in any ‘new’ main bad guys — and certainly not a whole coven of them.

Of course, True Blood, another way you could make the story flow a bit better is by giving us back those 30 minutes you cut out of this season by ending the show early on three separate occasions to air HBO commercials (Hey! HBO! We pay for your service already — a real burden for many in this economy. We don’t need an advertising miniseries to chew up True Blood’s time slot! — very bad move.) And please, dump any flashbacks with folks we really don’t care about. Then you’d have more time to spend on the story lines about the characters we love.

Focusing on the (Mostly) Positives

Scuttlebutt has it that we’re going to learn more about Terry Bellefleur, compellingly portrayed by Todd Lowe, next season. It could easily be argued that Terry is the beating heart of True Blood. Always forgiving, always understanding, brave as a lion, crazy as a bed bug… Andy’s addiction storyline has left a bit to be desired but not those scenes between Terry and Andy (we also like Andy’s burgeoning relationship with Holly — someone needs to give Andy some respect!), they’ve been great.

Terry has not only helped his cuz down from the V addiction, he’s also been good for Arlene, maybe now that baby Mikey is safe from the spirit of his serial-killer daddy, Arlene can find more time to get fired up about vampires, or werewolves or rabid armadillos — no offense, Felix. Carrie Preston is flat-out gorgeous and it would be great to see her dressing up now and again. We think it bears mentioning that Chris Bauer has stepped up his game nicely, selling the roller coaster ride of addiction, and making us cringe in sympathy. We’re looking forward to his antics as comic relief next year… you know Andy rockin’ it with the fairy isn’t going to end well.

 

No analysis of season 4 would be complete without a discussion of Lafayette, Jesus and cousin Tara. We have to say, while we were glad that Tara, well-played by Rutina Wesley, is no longer a door mat, her storyline was too random to be impressive. Suddenly she’s a pit fighter? Really? Sorry, but this is a profession that takes years to develop. We doubt Tara’s extensive book reading turned her into Louisiana’s Jeanne Claude Van Damme in a mere year. We at TrueBloodNet.com don’t know where they are going to go with Tara next year, but we hope it is better thought out than this year. A lot of the season felt like they put a bunch of names and occupations in a hat and pulled out two or three at a time and just went with it. Rutina is too sexy and talented to be wasted like that.

Lafayette and Jesus have just been dynamite this season. Nelsan Ellis did an incredible job with all these different personalities inhabiting his body; he and Jesus, portrayed by Kevin Alejandro, have been so piquant together. Jesus has really blossomed into a fascinating character and we’ve been allowed to glimpse his big heart –and the Bruho within. We hope that True Blood continues to grow that relationship next year —  no matter what happens in the season finale. The scene with Jesus and possessed Lala in Hoyt’s house brings a tear to the eye with every watching. Very powerful stuff.

One last request: As a sympathy retcher, we sincerely hope that True Blood got vomiting out of their system this year. There was more upchucking than #HotBottoms in some episodes. Enough already; thankfully, we don’t have smellovision yet.

The Finale Predictions

OK final ‘guess’ on what ‘familiar faces’ we will see today in the finale:

Gran: Protective spirit

Tommy: Zombie

We don’t expect it but in the ‘wouldn’t it be fun’ category:

Rene: Everyone else has taken a shot at taking over Lafayette’s body, why not Rene?

Dawn: Zombie after Jason

Jessica’s Truck driver: Zombie after Jessica

Daphne: Ghost haunting Sam

Eddie: Protector for Jason

Godric: Protector of Eric

Eggs: Zombie after Tara

Leave your comments below and then head on over to TVDoneWright and tell them what you think too.

Credit: TVDoneWright

Photo Credit: HBO