True Blood is Goofy

This show is stupid.  I'll open with that.

You might be thinking that's a little harsh.  "Oh look, Blue is hating on 'True Blood' because its a show about vampires.  How short-sighted is he."  Well no, I'm not saying this show is stupid because of the vampires.  Its stupid because its stupid.  I cannot believe how bad this show got in just a single season.  It went from awesome high-tension action where the fate of just about every character was in jeopardy to boring nonsense in only a single year.  I don't know what happened with the writing staff, but they went insane.  Whatever happened, I'm not going to be there next year, and I suggest you don't watch it either.  There are other things on TV.

Let's start with why I even was watching this show at all this season.  I started up really only because I saw the last few episodes of the last season, where a demon named Mary-Ann completely took over the Louisiana town where this show takes place.  Pretty much the entirity of the secondary-cast had their minds controlled and became lunatic partiers out to kill the main cast.  That was intense.  At that point, pretty much the entire fabric of that society was destroyed for a time.  And I loved that.  It was still silly, but at least the silliness didn't overwhelm the drama.  So when I came into this season, I was expecting something of at least equal intensity, if not more.  I couldn't imagine how they could have topped Season 2.

What didn't occur to me was in hindsight the most oblivious way Season 3 would go:  it wouldn't top the last one, it would just fail.  And fail it did.

I'm really not one of those guys who are overally critical of every single show they watch.  I'm never there saying "man this season sucks" unless it truly is the worst season of the entire show.  I don't go on forums and rant about how last night's episode sucked and how I hate this character or whatever.  All I want to do is watch.  I'm very uncritical of TV shows, that's why you don't see many posts about them here.  This could be the last TV show review I ever do, who knows?  Even when I don't enjoy an episode, I accept it and hope that the next one will be better.  So when I come here saying that "True Blood"'s last season was some of the worst I've ever seen out of that show, and HBO in general, I mean it.  Wow.

Let's take a step back and look at what "True Blood", as a show, is.  "True Blood" is a show about vampires appearing in our modern world and trying to assimilate with our culture.  So Bill Compten, a vampire, comes to a Louisana town where Sookie Stakehouse lives.  Sookie can read minds, but she can't read Bill's, because he's a vampire.  They fall in love and then wind up getting into all kinds of weird adventures.  Bill has a rival for Sookie's affections in Eric Northman, the "darker" love interest of this harlequinn romance.  Then there are about six dozen secondary characters who also live in the town with Sookie and they all have to deal with this vampire assimiliation somehow.  And that's all fine, its pretty much just a metaphor for homosexuality rights or the Civil Rights movement, or any other disliked minority that my country happens to have (and we have a ton of them) as a backdrop for what is basically a silly romance story.  I can live with that - it all done far better than a certain other vampire romance "saga" (puke).  It might not be the best show ever, but it should be entertaining enough.  I like vampires, I enjoy romance if its done properly, whatever.

But this season... it seems to have missed the point.  The general plot of this season is that another big bad appears that Sookie and Bill have to deal with, but while this is happening, Sookie discovers that beyond just mind-reading she also has special powers that vampires want.  She further discovers that Bill, who seemed to just be her Knight in Shining Armor may not be quite so goodie-two-shoes as he first appears.  As a matter of fact, by the end of this season Bill comes off as a much more petty smaller character who cannot be trusted at all, thus setting up for their eventual make-up in Season 4 I guess.  And really if it had been that, this season would have been so much better.  This plot thread is there, but its only one of about nine billion other plot threads.

Another thing I found was that I lost all sympathy for the vampires here.  This show for seasons has been trying to make them seem sympathetic and just like us, but in showing some of the darker sides of vampires, they've gone too far.  I've abandoned the opinion that vampires have a place in human society in this show, and now I think they probably should be exterminated for the good of humanity, or at least defeated soundly.  For a show trying to make a minority metaphor, they shot themselves in the foot.  Vampires aren't like us, they're monsters, they need to go.  Well done, "True Blood".  But this isn't even my main complaint.

You see, last season the entire town was close to destruction... now everything seems so tame in comparison.  Everything is so normal, so safe, so dull.  You can't threaten the very structure of a storyline and then think I'm going to simply accept that everything goes back to normal.  And that isn't even my main complaint.

This is it:  Season 3 is so stuffed with sideplots and character arcs amongst the secondary characters that I don't think I could ever list them all.  I can try, it isn't easy.  Also you'll note a few very silly phrases in this, I'll get to that later.  Let's review:  Lafayette gets a shaman boyfriend, the waitress gets pregnant with a serial killer's baby, Tara is sad because her boyfreind is dead, Tara gets kidnapped by an evil British vampire, Tara almost gets with Sam, Sam finds his family and goes crazy, Jason tries to become a cop, Sam falls in love with a red neck were-panther(?) chick, Hoyt gets back together with Jessica, a werewolf guy deals with getting dumped, and etc. etc. etc.  And these aren't issues that only a single episode deals with - every episode has these plots moving forward... very.... sloooowlllyyy.  So every episode you watch, every one of these plots gets about three scenes, and the vast majority of them have nothing to do with each other.  It gets exhausting.  These plots don't tie together, its characters loosly connected going on separate adventures.

All I want to do is see what's happening with the main plot, the big bad guy.  These sideplots aren't interesting by and large.  Let's take Lafayette's thing.  I like Lafayette - he's one of my favorite characters here.  So he falls in love with a nurse witch guy and ultimately I don't care.  The nurse witch guy is a new character, I don't know him, I'm not interested.  They share excrusiatingly long love scenes.  I don't know about you guys, but watching two men together does nothing for me.  I'm not being homophobic, its just boring.  If these were two characters who I had known for years and am completely shocked to see together, that would be interesting.  If had any worry that these two characters would not get together, that would be interesting.  These love scenes are not good.  Just the fact that its two men doesn't make it titilating.  And this is only one plot, there are about a dozen others that happen all over the place.  If you want to know what's going on, you have to keep track of them all.

There is a villain here (one of about sixteen characters added this season to a show that already had a cast that was too big) but he isn't scary.  The guy is a joke.  Just his title makes me cringe:  Vampire King of Mississippi.  Say that with me.  "Vampire King of Mississippi".  Is that not the stupidiest thing you have ever heard in your life?  So this guy, King Russel, comes along, claims to be the most powerful vampire on Earth, and then doesn't really do anything.  He has werewolf minions, but they aren't threatening.  Vampires can defeat werewolves, easy.  Russel talks big, acts big, but doesn't do anything big.  He's actually kind of an idiot.  I'm glad to see him gone, hopefully he never returns.

But even if Russel isn't a threat, he's still more intereting than anything else happening here.  At the very least he fits into the show's previously established rules:  the older the vampire, the more powerful.  The other new supernatural creatures like Faeries, Werewolves, Were-Panthers (not making that up), witches, whatever, they come out of nowhere.  You can't just drop a term like "Were-Panther" on me without warning and expect me to take this seiruosly.  And none these things are real threats.  Russel is only real credible threat to the main heroes, and he's a fool!  In the first half of the season he is almost a threat, then in the second half his husband gets murdered and he carries around the guy's entrails in a jar (see above).  ...He carries around his vampire husband's entrails in a jar.  Jesus Christ.  Come the fuck on, please.

I like stupid things, I can admit that.  I watch "Godzilla", I play RPGs, I watch anime, horror movies, I write this blog, these are all really stupid.  But I accept their studipity.  On some level, I love them because they're stupid.  I watch a show where a Japanese teenager becomes a grim reaper and fights demons with a katana.  You have to go pretty far for me to react not with "that is awesome" but instead "what the Hell?"  Were-Panthers are getting there.  Vampire Kings of US States are getting there.  But then you throw in a witch-man, and a Faerie.  Essentially at this point "True Blood" can add anything it wants, no matter what the situation, it has an unlimited supply of weird monsters to throw at us.  Its ridiculous.

The Hell of it is that this show is aware of how stupid it is.  When it gets really stupid (like a Vampire SWAT team) it gives you a wink like "we know its stupid, haha, our show is stupid".  That doesn't make me feel better.  You guys could make a show that takes itself seriously, but instead we have this nonsense.  I'm not saying pour the melodrama on like its syrup for your pancakes, have a sense of humor, but at least take the core storyline seriously.  At one point a character finds out that she's a Faerie.  This one of the stupidest plot twists I've ever heard.  And its the stupidest plot twist this character has heard!  She reacts with "that's so lame".  Come on, writers.  Pretend that what you're doing makes sense to you.  At least be sincere - make the best story you possibly can!  Don't waste my time with something you admit is dumb as shit.

But ultimately I don't care anymore.  I was watching the last episode last night, things were happening, but I was so dulled out that I couldn't even do it.  There were jokes, funny ones even, but I couldn't laugh.  Things happened to characters, but I didn't care.  Sookie disappeared, I don't know where, I don't want to know.  Its so over for me.  Usually I just fade out of a show, and move on, but I've never been kicked out.

I need Hellsing and beer, stat.