Can you fang bangers believe it? Only two episodes remaining in this long, magical journey they call True Blood. To only call it long is an understatement, because even at seven seasons, this series feels like it has lasted an eternity, which would be a good thing if that wasn’t merely because this final season alone has been agonizing in terms of how little storytelling has been done. Still, sitting on the cusp of the final episode and the end of this televised look at life and death in Bon Temps, Louisiana, I can’t help but feel a little sad that it’s all going away and leaving us with, well, whatever is next.
In the meantime, let’s head into the action of this week’s episode, “Love is to Die,” and try to ignore the fact that Violet joined Alcide in the “Really? That’s how you’re tying off that storyline?” category last week, as we move on with the only questions that are really left – Will Bill allow his friends to cure his Hep-V and which female character will Jason Stackhouse fall asleep in inside of when this long, ridiculous game of horny roulette finally ends? At this point, it could be Sookie and I’d say, “Yeah, that’s about right.”
Let’s bite on True Blood‘s “Love is to Die,” shall we?
True or False: Pam has a significantly different expectation of a “compelling character drama” than we do.
Of all of Pam’s lines ever spoken in this series, the “compelling character drama” quip had me laughing the hardest, because you could almost see the writers holding their middle fingers in the air. Whether intentional or not, that’s the kind of irony that makes this stupid ending all the more worthwhile.
True or False: Bill has accepted his fate.
As we already knew from the end of last week’s episode, Bill wants his True Death, and obviously Jessica and Sookie aren’t taking that very well. Jessica asked for her release and Bill granted it to her in a semi-sweet scene that could have been a little more heartwarming had Anna Paquin’s acting not been involved in it. Nevertheless, it says everything that needs to be said that the only thing I thought by the time that this scene wrapped up was whether or not Jessica was inheriting Bill’s wealth and manor, because that makes her all the more eligible as a free vampire. She’s like the Elin Nordegren of bloodsucking.
True or False: Anna Paquin won an award for acting once.
An Academy Award at that. And yet the best she can give us for the second-to-last episode of this series that she always claims to be so proud of is the dramatic spinning head to a man’s chest that was perfected in silent romance films.
True or False: Of course Sookie went running for Sam, because Sam’s dumb door is always open.
Too bad he wasn’t home. For a second, I really thought that Sam would be sitting on his big, dumb couch with his big, dumb mopey face staring at a wall, wondering why he let his pregnant girlfriend leave town without him, but thank Lilith he took off, too. Of course, it is Sam, so he could do something stupid in the car ride out of Bon Temps, like moping so much that Nicole leaps from the moving vehicle, because she knows that it’s better than spending another day with Sam’s emo ass, and that would ultimately lead him back to Sookie, but for now it seems like he’s gone, and just letting him ride out without saying goodbye to anyone is equal parts hilariously shitty for Sam Trammell and his time on the show and awesome for the sake of just getting things wrapped up.
Also, Sam vanishing at least gave me lukewarm hope that Sookie and Jessica would end up together.
True or False: The rest of the remaining two episodes is completely pointless if Bill wants to die.
This final season has been basically nothing but a long, drawn out orgy of goodbyes with as minimal action and excitement sprinkled in as possible. For Bill to just be accepting death, even as we all know this can’t be it, is a complete waste of time, because for all that this character has been through, he should be aiming to achieve glory in his True Death. THE GUY WAS A VAMPIRE GOD ONE SEASON AGO!!! How the hell is he suddenly just letting himself die when he can at least help save Sarah Newlin from the Yakuza with Eric and turn her loose to the sick vampire population as his last act as a leader of all vampires?
Wouldn’t that be significantly more interesting than 10 episodes of meaningless flashbacks and entire scenes wasted with him being super bummed to come to the realization that he doesn’t actually love Sookie? I feel like these kinds of ideas were never even approached in the pre-season writers meetings. Hell, they should have just gone the Modern Family route and spent half the season sending everyone on exotic vacations if they were going to accept laziness from episode one.
True or False: What this show needed more than anything was Hoyt Fortenberry’s relationship drama.
Instead of listening to Hoyt and Brigette argue about not having a kid, why can’t Hoyt and Jason just pull off their amicable swap and end this crap already? Better yet, why didn’t Jessica just glam Brigette and call it a series? Instead, we had to suffer through Brigette (played by Ashley Hinshaw, who, despite having a boy’s name, is very lovely and I would like to see her star in many more roles that have her wearing a boy’s gym shorts, please and thank you) saying, “I don’t want to listen to it,” while she just stood there so she’d have to listen to it. Would it have been too difficult to write an action note in the script like, “She walks away”? I guess so.
I’m pretty sure I predicted Jessica and Hoyt ending up together, but I don’t feel like going back to look, because I also, more importantly, predicted that this would be a final season in which everyone would give his and her best efforts, and we’d all feel validated for sticking around this long. Whoops.
True or False: Brigette should have killed Jessica out of nowhere.
We all love Jessica, obviously, so much that I laugh every time I tag a post with “Deborah Ann Woll” and I see “Deborah Ann Burns” pop up, but I would have given my TV a standing ovation and offered this season at least a C+ if Brigette had popped out from around the corner and put a bullet in Jessica’s heart, causing her to explode into a pile of goo. That would have been the worst ending possible for Jessica, and I would have loved it so much.
True or False: Bill wants to die because if he and Sookie had a baby, it would be Death.
So Bill, in his attempt to suddenly convince Eric that neither of them ever actually loved Sookie, shared with us that the bundle that Sookie was holding in his last Hep-V-induced fever dream was Death. That is actually a very cool thought and I would not mind seeing that happen. Why was there not a vote on this? Sookie ending Season 6 pregnant only to give birth to the destroyer of all men in the beginning of this season would have been very interesting to say the least. But hey, at least Lafayette found love in the back of an SUV.
True or False: The only salvation for the final episode of this series is to make it 55 minutes of Sarah Newlin suffering.
All I’ve wanted from this entire final season is to see Sarah Newlin suffer all the way up to the moment that Eric ends her. I think that we’re supposed to think that she’s suffering in the Yakuza’s captivity, but when she’s not chained to a pipe in the basement of Fangtasia (and again, for some reason she’s not locked away in the Yakuza’s pharmaceutical corporation’s building in Dallas or anywhere else) Pam’s giving her a makeover. That said, thank Lilith for Pam.
True or False: Pam should just carry this show home.
And her latest Quote of the Episode honor goes to: “Listen up, twatlips.” For the record, Pam’s speech about how Sarah is going to become the highest-selling whore of all-time was the most threatened that Sarah has been since she finally showed up in the third or fourth episode of this season (again, I don’t even feel like going back to check anymore). She’s barely even been slapped around a little. At least give me Pam poking her in the eye like a Stooge.
True or False: “Hey, this show’s getting interesting again, we’d better switch back to Jason getting laid.”
Were you enjoying watching Pam scare the hell out of Sarah with threats of being fed to every sick vampire on Earth? Too bad, let’s cut to Jason trying to have sex with Brigette. All this time and so much stupid sex for Jason, and he just now realizes that he’s a colossal douchebag. All it took was Brigette offering to not have sex with him, because she’s a good, normal girl who thinks she can make the typically bad guy into a better person. Groundbreaking stuff happening with this character resolution.
True or False: Good for Ginger, getting the ending she deserved and that none of us gave a crap about.
I’ll admit that it was great to get a little intentional comic relief in Ginger finally getting the chance to have sex with Eric, only for her to be overwhelmed and fall asleep before anything happened. I assume that’s how most women would be with Alexander Skarsgard or me, so it was definitely a very funny way for a meaningless but fun character to exit the show. And if Andy Dwyer singing, “SEX HAIR!” suddenly popped into your brains at this point, then you and I might be very good friends:
I also didn’t really expect for Eric to head down into the basement to find Pam “in danger” of “being killed” by Gus, who somehow thinks that threatening a completely cured and healthy Eric is a smart move. For a moment, I was really worried about Pam and even Sookie, until the preview for the next episode played.
People who get mad at us over spoilers have clearly never watched True Blood’s episode previews. Suspense is a zero-letter word to these people.
On Next Week’s Episode of True Blood, the Last One We’ll Ever See…
Well, we were left thinking that Gus was about to kill Pam, only to change his focus to killing Sookie, but the preview for the series finale revealed that Pam is fine, Sarah escapes and Bill has a choice to make. Also, we saw very brief shots of Jason and Andy with their respective women, so $10 says the final episode is 30 minutes of Jason asking Brigitte to stay, 10 minutes of Andy becoming mayor of Bon Temps and then 15 minutes of actual resolution. We deserve more, obviously, but why start now?
