The measure of a good show is that no matter how much time passes between the final episode of one season and the first episode of another, people remember exactly where it left off. Sons of Anarchy is a pretty good example for me, because it always feels like years pass between each season, but I never have to hit the books to get caught up on everything that happened, at least not before FX plays the “Here’s what happened last season…” montage. True Blood, though, is a different monster, because I don’t know many viewers who remembered anything about where Season 6 left us. Hell, I had to pull up my own recap for a reminder.
But here we are, on the doorstep of the seventh and final season of HBO’s once-hit supernatural soap opera, True Blood. When Season 6 ended with “Radioactive,” a horde of vampires was about to crash a Bon Temps party that was uniting the town’s vampires with clean human feeders in order to avoid the Hepatitis-V outbreak. The disease was orchestrated by the Governor of Louisiana, who isn’t with us anymore since Bill Compton ripped his f*cking head off. But there is no avoiding the Hep-V strain, as the infected have arrived, and they’re wasting no time bringing us a war. Finally.
True or False: When this show wants to be good, it can be f*cking good.
Oh True Blood, we spent the entire sixth season waiting for you to deliver us a war between the vampires and humans. What we got was a relatively entertaining raid on the vampire testing facilities, but we were left with a big, ol’ case of “true balls,” which is my new trademarked catch phrase for when this show builds up to something only to zip up and walk out the front door. But the start of the seventh and final season’s first episode, “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” was pretty great.
Of course, we did get screwed out of all the action, as there were a few leaps in the blood and violence, but the plot for the final season was rolled out nicely before us – the Hep-V vampires are not f*cking around, and they will destroy every uninfected vampire, werewolf and faerie in their paths in order to feed on every last human. It seems that the virus makes them even hungrier than they already are, so the goal of raiding the party was to take some snacks home with them. That is, until a mysterious individual whistled and the raid was over. All in all, the episode was good, but that strong opening was a great way to make up for the slow, drawn out and disappointing ending of Season 6.
True or False: I was way, way off about Tara’s mom. But I was oh so right about Tara.
I totally whiffed on the closure between Tara and her mom, because I was so dumbfounded about the leap forward to Mayor Sam Merlotte’s term that I didn’t understand that it was actually a strangely special moment… that had a mom offering to be food for her vampire daughter. I’m sorry for being redundant, it’s just strange, okay? Regardless, when it was leaked that someone “big” was going to die in “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” I just knew it was Tara, because where else was she going? Still, I’ll pose this question – is she actually dead? We didn’t see a body, just her mom covered in blood and crying.
I’m all for happy endings, so I’ll predict that Tara shows up again and is infected with Hep-V, and they somehow cure her, so she can go on living with her mom… and feeding from her. Seriously, so weird.
True or False: Holy sh*t, everybody in Bon Temps hates Sookie with every ounce of slaughtered human and vampire blood.
Nothing good has happened to Bon Temps since Sookie Stackhouse showed up all those years ago. The burden of a faerie with telepathic powers is that she can hear every word that everyone is thinking about her, and the verdict is in – Sookie, you ain’t gots to go home, but you gots to get the hell out of Bon Temps. To make things even worse, Sookie caught Alcide saying mean things about her. If these people and werewolves aren’t careful, they’re going to give this poor girl a complex, and then she’ll end up rebelling by sleeping with every man in town.
Sorry, I’m legally obligated to make that comment every time I write or talk about True Blood. At least Sookie realized that she was being mean to Alcide and remedied that by sleeping with him, before she stood up to everyone at the end of the episode. But we’ll get to the idiot humans of Bon Temp in a moment.
True or False: Sam is the worst mayor ever.
Technically, it’s not Sam’s fault that his party to bring the humans together with vampires for the sake of turning them into food was ruined by psychotic vampires infected with a horrifying disease that is slowly making them melt. But I’m not sure why Sam was even qualified to become mayor in the first place. Honestly, I’d like to see some of his campaign material to find out what his qualifications were, and I’m probably going to want to issue a recall as soon as the townspeople aren’t terrified of leaving their homes.
True or False: The guy he beat is even worse. There is nothing less intimidating than his band of concerned citizens.
Vincent might be my new least favorite character on True Blood. That’s a huge accomplishment. We quickly learned that Vincent lost to Sam in the Bon Temps mayoral election, so there’s bad blood between them. Fortunately, Vincent was looking out the window at just the right time when Sam returned from looking for Arlene and Holly (who have both been kidnapped by the horde) and he turned from a wolf back into a naked human.
Side note: Nothing makes me laugh harder than Sam’s shapeshifting. Like howling laughter. (I’ll update this with a GIF as soon as I can.)
Anyway, Vincent is now the leader of a band of pissed off humans who walk around Bon Temps with wooden stakes and a shotgun, like they are going to do anything to the vampires. In fact, let’s use that as our segue into the next plot point…
True or False: Andy is never ever going to be friends with Bill Compton.
When Andy and Bill teamed up to chase the infected vampires back to their home base, they ran into Vincent’s hilariously worthless gang of humans who couldn’t hurt a vampire if it was made of tissue paper. Andy pretended like he was going to kill Bill in front of them – because Andy hates Bill, you see – but he needed Bill alive for the time being, because Bill is an all-powerful vampire who can fight other vampires. That’s where this week’s Most Ridiculous Thing That Was Too Dumb To Even Laugh At happened, as we were supposed to believe that Bill wouldn’t have thrashed Vincent and his dorks to shreds before they could have lifted their matchsticks in anger.
Whatever, the point is that Andy and Bill have a new dynamic, and it seems like Bill is destined less to be a god among vampires and more a family man seeking redemption for his past discretions.
(Also, I love how Bill admitted that he ripped the governor’s head off on TV, and he’s just going about his life like nobody would have fired a missile at him. Hilarious.)
True or False: We do not approve of Jessica’s boyfriend, the Bam Margera Lookalike Contest Winner. Yet.
Nathan Parsons took over the role of Jessica Hamby’s boyfriend, James Kent, because – and I swear I’m not making this up – Luke Grimes left the role and show after last season because he didn’t like the direction of his character. I would have loved to have been in that meeting with his agent, when he explained that being the Vietnam War draft dodger turned vampire with a peaceful soul just wasn’t good enough for him. Whatever, Grimes’s loss is Parsons’s gain, and now he gets to be the guy in “adult situations” with Deborah Ann Woll each week.
At first I didn’t really care for James in this episode, because he looks exactly like someone gave Bam Margera a makeover so he could star on a daytime soap opera. But it turns out that Parsons isn’t a bad actor and his story isn’t terrible. Again, he was a draft dodger around the time of the Vietnam War, and his friend’s dad beat him to a pulp with a baseball bat, because his friend was killed in the war that he hid from. A local vampire took pity on him and “saved” him. The only problem I have with that is we don’t need new characters and back stories this late in the series. We can only hope that his story is told quickly, and he helps rescue Jessica and protect Adilyn, so Andy doesn’t lose his last daughter.
True or False: JASON STACKHOUSE IS A MAN!!! RAWWWWWWWR!!!
Ryan Kwanten, bless his heart, is not a good actor. Or maybe he’s brilliant and they actually tell him to behave like a cartoon version of a softcore porn actor at all times. Either way, Jason Stackhouse is still entertaining as hell, and in his defense, I did say that I want the writers of True Blood to script some balls on him this season. Sure enough, Jason stood up to Violet for emasculating him in front of Vincent’s gang of vampire food – again, were they going to somehow hurt Violet before she destroyed them? – and his solution was to demand that Violet have sex with him. I know that’s rather PC for how they actually put it, but Google won’t let this show up in searches if I include every last F-bomb.
It seems that Jason has finally found his love interest in Violet, and I think that might be the first piece in the puzzle that will reveal how Sarah Newlin will hilariously die before this is all over. I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s my wishful thinking.
True or False: All of the humans should lure the infected vampires to their homes, so they can not invite them inside and then let them explode into flames at sunrise, right?
So if all of the infected vampires are as dumb as the dude who went after Adilyn and Jessica, then the solution is simple, right? Just use the humans as bait and lead each of the vampires to a sunrise flame death. I mean, I hope it’s not that simple, so maybe the rest of them are smarter than that big dumb fireball.
But more importantly…
True or False: Jessica, you guys.
Swoon.
True or False: It’s a sh*tty week to be a tertiary character.
After Tara kicked the bucket in the opening, it was pretty clear that neither Holly nor Arlene were going to become a feast for the diseased vampires, because they’ll need them for dramatic purposes over the next few episodes. Also, Andy deserves better than to lose his love interest this soon. But that other officer might as well have put on a red Star Trek shirt and started sprinkling Lowry’s seasoned salt all over himself.
As long as I’m making meaningless predictions, I’ll go ahead and throw Arlene’s name on the deceased list at some point this season. She can meet up with Terry in a touching afterlife scene that lasts no more than three seconds.
True or False: Depriving us of Eric Northman and Sarah Newlin will not make us happy.
We don’t know how long Pam’s quest through Morocco and beyond to find Eric Northman is going to last, but I really dig where this is going. Eric’s obviously up to something big and I expect the reveal of how he was saved and where he is now will be pretty awesome. I’m also standing by my prediction that Eric and Pam will find true love together, even though bragging about that prediction is like bragging that you knew the sun would rise. What I don’t know is what this map means, so if I’m missing something obvious, fill me in.
As for Sarah Newlin, why are we stuck dealing with an ignorant, terrified bigot like Vincent, when Sarah has already played that role so well? Get her back to us ASAP, because as much as I hate her, I LOVE hating her. Also, I would like to be strung along with the biggest case of true balls that I’ve ever had, leading up to her wonderful, exhilarating and perfect demise.
What We Can Expect from Season 7
The season preview showed us a montage of chaos in Bon Temps, but I’m assuming that the focus will be Sookie trying to fix the mess that everyone is blaming her for, while Bill attempts to save the city from the infected vampires as if it will bring him redemption for his past sins. Whether or not that’s right will be seen in the coming weeks, but I think that “Jesus Gonna Be Here” was a very good start.
