I will warn you now, I have not enjoyed HBO’s True Blood in three seasons. This will not be a happy go lucky fluffy “oh yay it was lovely!” review/complaint on the series finale. Think of this as a really one sided multi-year relationship that starts off with great sex, making you laugh all the time, but ends while crouching in your lover’s blood while wondering where it all went wrong.
As a fan of the books, I have to say I stopped caring about this show at the end of the second season. I didn’t mind the deviations from the source material, some of the characters DESERVED to have augmented stories, like Lafayette. And Michelle Forbes as the devious maenad Maryann, I’m sorry, but as a HUGE Battlestar Galactica fan and someone named Mary Anne, I WAS ALL ABOUT THIS CHOICE.
Somewhere in the beginning of the third season however, everything changed. By this I mean all of the actors and actresses lost their trademark accents. Seriously, go watch any episode from the first season, and then one of the first three from the third season. There is a serious lack of drawl, and with it, any sense of continuity. And they also pulled an X Files and did their best to hide Anna Paquin’s pregnancy (TWINS even) by shot setups and less than normal action for the heroine of the show. I will use one of Charlaine Harris (author of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, better known as the Sookie Stackhouse books) quotes from a DragonCon past about the severe changes from the books to the screen:
“Y’all know how my books go already, so what’s the fun in that?”
Needless to say, that quote has been rattling around in my brain these past three seasons, while I desperately try to understand the completely nutty directions the stories, characters, and show in general headed. My biggest complaint was actually Queen Sophie-Anne and the entire storyline around the Pyramid and the Vampire Summit. I wanted this to happen, I wanted to see the explosions and the carnage, but I totally get financially it wasn’t something HBO could do *cough BATTLE OF THE BLACK WATER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED IN THE DAYTIME cough*. But for serious you guys, the Queen of Louisiana is supposed to be a French 15 year old girl with an accent and black BLACK hair, not Evan Rachel Wood. Yes, she looked amazing, but she wasn’t what I was expecting to see when the story went her direction. Also, where the hell has Quinn the weretiger been this entire time? I KNOW I’m not the only one asking that.
Even Rutger Hauer couldn’t save the fae travesty, and HE’S seen things you people wouldn’t believe. But again, the moment Andy Bellefleur’s fairy girlfriend gave birth to triplets on the Merlot’s pool table? I. Just. Can’t.
Ok, back to the finale. I can only imagine how the various suicide prevention folks are up in arms about Vampire Bill begging Sookie to kill him (should we call her Sookie Kevorkian now?). While I did always suspect the ending of the series would have one or both of the main couples dead, either the eternal or the final, I wasn’t expecting what happened in Bill’s coffin. The entire sequence felt forced and awkward. No, I’ve never staked my boyfriend while sitting on top of him in a coffin so my opinion probably doesn’t matter, but I wanted something more for the finality. I did laugh hysterically for Eric’s awesome head-boppin’ moment after killing the Yakuza guys which is almost as good as the Eric/Jason dream sequence. Jessica and Hoyt get married, which is all fine and good, but what happens when he REMEMBERS everything? Jason runs off with another blond lady who he’s just met (he must be from Arendale), and Eric and Pam take over the world one infomercial at a time. Our last shot of everyone in the show is a dinner scene on Sookie’s lawn where everyone has kids, INCLUDING A PREGNANT SOOKIE. She glides to the table, and kisses a bearded man we never learn the identity of. THE. END. Like the most unfulfilling hour long coitus session you can only night terror about.
There was this adorable moment for Pam and Eric. Here are Pam’s (Kristin Bauer van Straten) thoughts on the series finale. I have to say, when I saw Pam’s outfit in her final scene on Sunday night I guffawed because it looked so much like my friend Lauren of Castle Corsetry’s “#sparkletits” ensemble.
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I didn’t hate it nearly as much as everyone else did, but that’s probably because I’ve held the show at arms length for so long.
But I can be content in a finale that leaves the idea of Bill and Sookie together dead and buried in a coffin. I also didn’t mind the jumps forward, or that we don’t know who Sookie’s new beau was. The only thing that I didn’t particularly click with was the infomercial, because it seemed so Un-Eric/Pam (Thank goodness for the final coda at Fangtasia which was much more in character IMHO).