While the other cool kids writing fancy, smart words on the Internet are probably out there rapping with their friends about geopolitics or the new hippity-hop album from Funkmaster Frank and the Coolio Tang Clan, I’m pretty content with these weekly jam sessions on HBO’s most disappointing final season since Dream On was canceled in 1996. In fact, I don’t know what I’m going to do when True Blood airs its final episode two weeks from tonight, because no other series on TV is going to keep me as entertained by being so unimaginably un-entertaining. The remaining 32 of us who have stuck with Sookie and the people of Bon Temps through these last few awful seasons, all the way up to tonight’s episode, “Almost Home,” have either just been trying to see it through to the end for the sake of closure or we’re just really sick in the head.
That’s where this week’s reader question from someone I just made up comes in, as “Fang Banger 420” from AnyBong, USA asks: “Hey Burnsy, huge fan here, if HBO had come to you and asked you to write the final season of True Blood, what would it have looked like?” What an awesome question, made up person. Well, I’m obviously just a dude who refused to give up on this paint-by-numbers soap opera when everyone else jumped ship, but if I had written Season 7? I suppose it would have been a little like this:
Everybody f*cking kills the sh*t out of everybody else, and in the end, the only characters still alive are Eric and Pam, because they’re going to spend the rest of eternity traveling the world together and being awesome. The end. Emmy, please.
With three episodes left, I have finally accepted that this series does not have even 60 minutes of intense, entertaining and fulfilling action and storytelling remaining in it. It’s time that we shift our focus from “pathetic hope” to “whatever” and just laugh as this series wraps itself up. And maybe, just maybe, if there’s a higher power somewhere looking out for us, a boulder will fall on Lettie Mae’s head. Until that moment, let’s check out “Almost Home.”
True or False: Yay, Eric’s cured! Let’s do something awesome now, right?
You would think that as soon as Eric is cured and back to full health, which happened remarkably fast considering how long he had been infected and all, he would have broken his word to Mr. Gus and slaughtered the Yakuza beginning with him. But that would be too much fun and make too much sense, so naturally he’s going to keep the deal, perhaps because he’s getting billions out of it. However, he should also know that Gus would turn on him as soon as he had Sarah Newlin back at the pharmaceutical company headquarters, so again… why the f*ck didn’t Eric destroy all of them and use NewMe for his own choosing? Also, why the hell did they even need to keep Sarah hidden in the basement of Fangtasia? Oh, because it’s boring and convenient to a boring plot. Gotcha. Moving right along.
True or False: Nothing Lettie Mae says can make up for her destroying someone’s lawn.
I loved how Lettie Mae and Lafayette were just tearing up that poor family’s lawn, all while looking like they were cracked out of their minds. Because that wouldn’t have earned them bullets or shovels to the face in any other circumstance. I guess we can all just appreciate the fact that they found the most apathetic family on Earth. They must have been renters, because no homeowner would let that kind of vandalism go down.
True or False: Violet is the most interesting character this show ever had… HAD.
Holy sh*t, you guys. This episode was the total “F*ck you” to all of us. Not only did they really make it seem like Violet was going to have her way and torture the hell out of the four helpless people/creatures chained up in her sex dungeon, but that would have been awesome! Some real, honest-to-Lilith excitement and concern for at least one character that mattered (Jessica) and three others that, let’s face it, would be a lot more interesting dead (Adilyn, Jason and… Hank? I can’t remember and I don’t honestly care anymore).
Hahahaha, well, f*ck us, because Violet might have just topped Alcide in terms of the worst death for a character this season. It’s a good thing that Hoyt Fortenberry was able to follow Jason and Bridget so closely without them noticing, find his way into the vampire’s mansion to track them down, and then fire a bullet directly into the heart of one of history’s most powerful vampires to save them all. At face value, that sounds a lot cooler than Alcide’s death, but two thoughts about Violet’s death that make it so incredibly stupid:
1) They teased it like it was going to be a huge plot in these final episodes, and Violet was shot in the episode’s first half this week.
2) Andy didn’t even get a chance to show up and grumble and wince at her like a bald Reno Clint Eastwood impersonator.
I still think Alcide got it worse, since he was there since the beginning and he just got capped by two shmucks in some bushes, but Violet had just started building herself up as this amazing character with her story about having sex with Cleopatra and Catherine the Great, and then BANG! She’s f*cking dead. Unreal.
True or False: There’s NO WAY in hell that gun was still buried in the front yard.
Back to Lettie Mae and the quest for whatever the hell Tara can’t just tell her with words – it was a gun that was buried in the front yard. Why was it buried there? No reason, really. It would have made sense if Tara had used it to shoot her dad when he was assaulting Lettie Mae, but instead young Tara just buried it so no one could have it. But she didn’t actually bury it. She put it in a small crater in the dirt and pushed leaves and grass over it, and somehow we were supposed to believe that the gun dug itself further into the ground or something because it was cold.
Regardless of how dumb Lettie Mae’s eight-episode arc of obnoxious yelling may have been, I think it’s finally over. Tara can rest in peace… once we discuss one more thing.
True or False: Hilariously stupid or not, Tara still got a way better death story than Alcide.
Come on!!! How the hell did Alcide get such a raw deal?!?! Tara was snapped in half by a juiced up Hep-V vampire in the first episode and yet her death was carried across 3/4 of the final season, while Alcide was shot in the chest and head through bushes by meaningless characters because it was convenient to breaking him and Sookie up. It’s bullshit, and I don’t know how Joe Manganiello sleeps at night.
Oh wait, yes I do. On top of Sofia Vergara. Well played, Big Dick Richie.
True or False: Sookie doesn’t have a f*cking clue what she’s talking about.
As I wrote last week, nothing about Hep-V has made sense, because we’ve only seen one character actually die from it (that I can recall), and that was Nora, as she melted into a puddle of goo in Eric’s arms. Meanwhile, Eric has had it for months and his only flaw was the he got winded like when I do a pushup, and Bill has a light speed case thanks to Sookie’s blood, but he just sort of whines like I do when I have a cold. So for Sookie to cry to Eric that “I don’t think he has another night” is f*cking hilarious, because she’s about as much of a doctor as Phil.
True or False: The less Gus is on screen the worse this season is.
Maybe it’s because he’s surrounded by a cast of bad characters being portrayed by worse actors, but Will Yun Lee’s Mr. Gus is wonderful. The way he delivers his lines cracks me up, and Gus is still an interesting character as a thug running a multibillion dollar company. So when he said, “Let’s meet this… Sookie Stackhouse,” I had a wildly delightful idea – what if Sookie ended up with Gus? Sure, it would never happen, but that would be so insanely unexpected that it would make all of this worthwhile.
True or False: Hoyt Fortenberry is such a good, sweet boy.
Aside from the whole being in the right place at the right time and shooting the right vampire in the right spot with the right bullet, Hoyt’s really getting a raw deal. I assume that he’ll end up learning the truth again, and then he and Jessica will end up together, with Jason finally settling down with a human girl in Bridget, since he was never meant to be with a vampire anyway. I still think that’s very stupid, because who the f*ck is Bridget anyway and what the hell kind of pervert swinger nonsense is she into? Then again, ten bucks says that she’s a superfreak and she and Jason move into Violet’s mansion together and spend their days exploring her arsenal of sex toys.
True or False: Sookie’s positive, all right. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place. HIYOOOOOOO!!! But seriously, she’s an idiot.
By the time that Eric finally came to Sookie, all of the pieces started coming together to prove that we were pretty much right about how this is going to play out. Naturally, we have to pretend that we didn’t know that this was going to happen, and we sat and watched as Eric told Sookie that he’d come back the next night and Sookie went to Fangtasia anyway. They sure pulled one over on Gus, too, but now we know that he’s going to double cross Eric and Pam, because there was no way that the Yakuza’s drug company was ever going to share profits with some vampire when they could scoop any Hep-V rat off the streets and cure him instead. I mean, come on, they teach this to us on the first day of class in Vampire-Japanese Mafia Business Negotiations 101.
True or False: Bill’s shocking twist couldn’t have been more obvious if we’d been calling it all along. (Like we were.)
Bill wants to die. That is the point of the very obvious flashbacks that have served no purpose other than to remind us that while he’s been violating every hole on Sookie’s body for years, Bill is a southern gentleman with loyalty only to his long dead wife, whom he will obviously join in a white light at some point soon. But hey, let’s keep pretending like it’s not painfully predictable, all the way up until the most shocking twist of all – NewMe lives and rides off into the sunset thinking she’s Jesus.
On Next Week’s Episode of True Blood…
Sookie can’t believe that Bill wants to die and Pam – GASP! – is about to be killed by the Yakuza. But if we’re really lucky, Tara will return to lead Lettie Mae to find an oven mitt that she bury under a blade of grass in some poor family’s backyard.
