True Blood: Travesty

When you have seasons of television available, do the seasons get titles? Individual episodes do, but when you see these on shelves, it's always boring "season six" or "volume two." They should get on that.

The third season of True Blood has wrapped up and, being generally "excited" for each episode, I watched them on a weekly basis. I was only a few in when I first wrote about the third season, but now that the whole debacle is over, I can easily say this was a massive disappointment. There are a number of things wrong with this season, but the most offensive is how characters have entire story arcs that go nowhere and don't cross paths with other stories. Even in season two things came together, but here, you have a situation where, for example, Sam's story is completely irrelevant to the interests of the series. Not once does his new found family of shifters and dog-fighting matches cross paths with Sookie, Jason, or any bit characters. The whole arc is there just to fill time.

So that sort of thing goes on, then there is the terribleness of the characters themselves: Jason goes from absolute idiot to courageous protector randomly and unevenly. There are too many meta-humans? The werewolves are presented as weak, stupid and trailer trash. It's unfortunate such a magnificent beast is treated like garbage, although we should keep in mind the show's headliner are still vampires. And now they are introducing witches and wizards? Fairies? Spoiler: they should have left "what is Sookie" alone.

About the only good thing, looking back, is Eric. Just give this guy his own show. Skaarsgard is fantastic and I'm keen to see more of what he's done [watch Generation Kill] and will be doing. You know he's the star: at the very end of the last episode, he is buried alive, but instead of making us wait a year hanging onto the cliff, we wait about two minutes before he shows up again.

Many of these shows make it hard to wait for the next season, but I am definitely not awaiting the next now.