Series finales are a tricky, almost always unforgiving and thankless pitfall of the television industry. Rarely do you hear fans compliment the final episodes of their favorite shows, unless it’s a long way down the road and they’re only saying it after years of the contrary (looking at us, fellow Seinfeld fans). Even some of my friends who loved 30 Rock, the greatest show in TV history, as much as I did (and still do, as we pretend that it’s only taking the longest break ever between seasons) thought that the second to last episode would have been better as the finale, and the actual final episode was just overkill (even though they’re wrong and the ending was perfect). Hell, I still remember sitting with two friends who worshipped The Sopranos and watching in fear as I thought they were going to set the television on fire when the screen cut to black.
Fortunately, those of us who have come this far know what we’re getting from the final episode of True Blood, “Thank You,” as nothing short of a series of musical numbers would shock us at this point. The story of Bon Temps, Louisiana is coming to an end, and with it seven seasons of fans asking themselves and each other, “This is a f*cking joke, right?” But I come here today not to throw wooden stakes at the heart of this series one last time. Instead, I’m here to bury this coffin once and for all, and to tell the cast and crew of HBO’s very slightly-less-than-average supernatural soap opera, as they always told us through thick and thin that they loved making this series, thank you. More specifically, thank you for making us laugh so much in complete irony, especially these last two seasons, because if we couldn’t at least make jokes about how lazy and pointless 90% of these episodes had been, we’d have had nothing at all.
A final episode should always be looked at in a positive light, even if we’ve been begging for it to just be over already for the last nine weeks, so as we dip into this recap for “Thank You,” the 80th and very last episode of True Blood that we will ever roll our eyes at, I encourage all of you to think back on it fondly, because there’s no way in hell this finale was ever going to be anything short of hilariously terrible.
True or False: Before we get into “Thank You,” we should check on that ScreenBid True Blood props and costumes auction.
I didn’t think this was worth another post on its own, but Eric Northman’s throne from Fangtasia is currently fetching $7,600 on ScreenBid. Meanwhile, I joked at one point that I’d love to get my hands on Sam’s vintage Bronco when the series ends, and sure enough it soon ended up on Screen Bid. Even more incredible is the fact that it’s only up to $5,100 so far, so I actually started thinking about the possibility of selling a kidney and buying (one of) my dream car(s). Before I went and sold my current dream car, though, I read the fine print. For starters:
THIS IS A PROP CAR. NO GUARANTEE IS MADE THAT IT CURRENTLY RUNS OR THAT IT WILL EVER RUN.
Oh?
All winning bids will have a 24% buyer’s premium added after closing.
Hahahahahahaha, okay. Anything else?
Winning bidders are welcome to determine their own method of shipping.
Even in selling off its props and costumes, True Blood has zero respect for its fans.
True or False: We could have had an exciting ending, but there was never a point in that.
For nine episodes, we were teased with a vague idea of Sarah Newlin’s demise. During that same time, we also all knew that Eric and Pam would turn on Gus as soon as the time was right, and they would get their revenge on the Yakuza and its pharmaceutical company for threatening and trying to kill them so many times. Little did we know that both of those ideas – the only remaining interesting and remotely suspenseful plot points in this final season – would be wrapped up in a matter of seconds. And to make matters even worse and more offensive to those of us who really wanted to see Eric and Pam f*ck some people up on their way out the door, Gus’s death was downright pathetic. Just because Eric and Pam can move 1,000 times faster than a human, it doesn’t mean they should do it for the sake of getting them off the screen.
If Pam is truly with Eric until the end, then I hope that the next adventure they embark on is one that involves finding writers who respect them as characters. Because the ending that they got was beyond disappointing compared to the amount of time that was spent on Bill and Sookie, Hoyt and Jessica, and even Jason and Brigitte. For all of them, the moral was forgive and forget. For Eric and Pam, it was just forget.
True or False: Bill would rather die than end up with Sookie.
I’ve said it several times this season, but it bears repeating for the sake of clarity – we’re one season removed from Bill being a new breed of vampire god. Now, he’s just an immortal dude who wants to die so he can rest beside his wife and kid. We’re even one episode removed from Bill convincing Eric that neither of them ever loved Sookie, but there he was standing in front of Sookie, telling her that he loves her. Maybe I missed a point to Bill being a hypocrite, or maybe he was just trying to save Eric the pain, so that he could be written off in the first minutes of “Thank You” and they could go about having a wedding for Jessica and a guy who doesn’t know a thing about Jessica other than she’s pretty hot and they GOT. IT. ON.
Regardless, there was an underlying point to Bill pushing the wedding, as we learned when Sookie read his thoughts, and he really wanted his faery love to kill him with her light so that she can free herself while providing him with his True Death. Dragging out the breakup of Bill and Sookie, while peppering in moments of Jason trying to keep his pecker pocket zipped up around Brigitte’s short skirt and mighty nice cleavage, has clearly been the point of this final season, so I guess we should all just give a round of applause to the writers of True Blood for figuring out how to occupy 80% of 10 episodes of television with roughly 20 minutes of actual material.
True or False: Sarah Newlin’s final chapter was a roller coaster ride that was somewhat satisfying but still maddening.
Sarah was, at her very core, a survivalist. She proved time and again that she would do whatever it takes and side with whomever could help her in not only staying alive, but always being in a position of power. That’s why it was fitting that the woman who contributed to the creation of Hep-V, and very appropriately represented the cure for it, spent her presumed final moments trying to barter her eternal services with a new “god.” Only two episodes ago, NewMe thought she was ready to become the new version of Jesus. At some point she apparently realized that this wasn’t her fate, and she would instead need to either accept that she’d be traveling food for the highest-paying diseased vampires or she’d need to get really creative in any attempt for an alternative.
Trying to convince Pam to turn her was a pleasant surprise. The thought of Sarah being Pam’s eternal vampire servant was a compelling one, because we all know that if anyone is capable of being a heartless punisher for the next 10, 100 or 1 million years, it’s Pam. Still, Sarah’s entire existence in Season 7 had one point, though – SHE HAD TO SUFFER. I would have cackled with glee as a horde of diseased vampires tore her to pieces as Eric pocketed the vial of her blood that could be mass produced and make him wealthier than he’d ever imagined. I would have even smiled and nodded as Eric removed her heart from her chest with his bare hand so she could watch it stop beating.
Sarah Newlin’s actual end was everything we could have hoped for in creativity on the part of Pam, but it was fittingly shoehorned into the episode’s closing because we needed to have extended sequences of Sookie staring at a mirror or people reacting to a wedding that should have lasted three minutes. Sarah gets to spend the rest of her life as food for vampires in the basement of Fangtasia while Eric makes billions on New Blood. That’s fantastic and all, but giving it less than 10 minutes of the episode is really only the perfect torture for us, because that kind of humor combined with Eric’s general awesomeness only ever reminds us of what should have been.
True or False: Then again, Steve Newlin’s a hell of a touch.
For as much as I’ve complained about how Alcide got a raw deal, seeing Steve Newlin get a perfect spot in the finale was very satisfying.
True or False: All Sookie ever wanted was a normal life.
Bill’s death, like everything else – except for that whole Hep-V thing that was supposed to be the focus of the season – was dragged out for the sake of dramatic regurgitation, but we should at least appreciate that Sookie decided to do it the right way, with a stake through her lover’s heart, so we could get one final puddle of strawberry jelly. In the end, it was the release that both Bill and Sookie needed to move on to where they were supposed to be. Bill will spend eternity in the afterlife, finally reunited with his wife and child, fulfilling his oath to love only them, while also saving the rest of humanity from that bundle of apocalypse that Sookie would have shot out of her womb if they’d stuck it out. (That really is the most spectacular aspect of True Blood’s ending to me, that Bill died to stop from creating a monster that represented death, and that idea was only given a minute’s worth of attention, because it was easier to make Bill and Sookie pretend to be philosophers of their own self-worth and destinies.)
Sookie’s fate was to simply find happiness in a so-called normal life that didn’t have vampires fighting for her affection or threatening her for her delicious fae blood. It might have been nice if her final scene had her meeting a random guy and taking a stroll, or maybe even accepting his requests to call upon her, but instead she was just jacked up and pregnant as all hell with some guy’s baby. At least make him a centaur, you dicks.
Happiness, it turns out, is Thanksgiving dinner with her closest friends and the loves that they’ve found and shared, as well as the implication that when Jason and Brigitte finally did have sex, it was often and with as little protection as possible. If some of the characters could have walked off into the sunset, I’m sure they would have because it would have been as poignant as a kick to the nuts, but instead they all found love in the only place they’ve ever known, and it was all as terribly convenient and unoriginal as we could have expected.
Heading into “Thank You,” I thought for sure that we were about to see a series finale that would be talked about forever as the worst of its kind. However, I have to admit that the writers and crew of True Blood actually pulled off quite a twist. Instead, they gave us a finale so bland and pointless that I don’t think anyone will ever talk about it, because by the time the sun rises tomorrow or the day after, we’ll have forgot it ever happened.
Goodbye, True Blood. Don’t let it hit you where the good lord bit you.
