My relationship with True Blood sometimes feels a lot like Sam and Luna’s, at least in this episode.  “You are so fucking annoying!  I love you!” Sam snarls at her to which she replies through gritted teeth “love you, too.”  Every year I swear True Blood off, and every year I come crawling back because it looks like it might finally have redeemed itself and recaptured the magic of its first season.  This current, wildly uneven season has proven that there’s always going to be enough there to keep most viewers coming back, and a lot of it was on show in “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”  There was humor, drama, and some meta acknowledgement of that fact that this is all completely ridiculous.  Most importantly though, we closed at least one storyline while a few others finally started coming together.  Keep your heads down, tits up, and hit the jump for more on “a really stupid plan that’ll probably get you killed” (i.e. “must be Sunday!”)

While at the HBO portion of the TCA Press Tour, President of Programming Michael Lombardo and co-President Richard Plepler took some time to talk about new and returning programming.  During the interview, they spoke about how long Game of Thrones and True Blood could run for, the status of the Entourage movie, their movie deal with Larry David and the affect that could have on future seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, their thoughts on the first season of The Newsroom, the possibility of a fourth season for Treme, and what viewers can expect from the Woody Harrelson/Matthew McConaughey series True Detective.  Check out what they had to say after the jump.

Let’s talk about Bill.  Bill was a centerpiece hero character in the first season or two of the show because he was Sookie’s one true love and all of that, and more importantly, got her all involved in the creature world.  What we came to find later was that Bill was actually sent as a spy, but then claimed he fell in love with Sookie on the side.  He left Lorena’s grasp, took up with Sookie, left Sookie, took up with Eric (not like that), and is now more or less leaving Eric to take up with Salome.  He’s a follower without much spine.  But the root of it all is, Bill as a character has almost no continuity.  His person is always changing because there’s no real sense of who he is or should be.  It looks like it will be covered up with the phrase “I’m evolving,” but Bill will be lead whichever way the wind blows.  When the Sanguists are defeated – and they surely will be, eventually – Bill will try to get back in Eric and Sookie’s good graces and convince them he was just playing along the whole time, or that he was brain washed, or that he was bullied (“I will not be bullied!” he said to Salome, just before she bullied him into doing what she wanted). Hit the jump for more on Bill and the rest of the Bon Temps gang.

Last week I mentioned how True Blood is a show that can convince you, as Holly confirms to Arlene, that a smoke monster could well be the cause of your house fire and not the demon baby “like we thought.”  But this week, after praising the turn True Blood made in the first half of the season towards fun – if still completely illogical – happenings, we came to the sentence “my wife will drink the blood I collect from your brain.”  And that is when I wrote “game over” and put my pen down.  The frantically paced fallacies overwhelmed some of the better stories, yes, but the real problem is that there are simply too many stories.  True Blood refuses to kill anybody off, yet feels compelled to give everyone their own individual and separate journey.  A few minutes here, a few minutes there, and it all adds up to a mess.  Hit the jump for the specifics of the night and to find out why Terry is in no mood for irony.

Before the 2012 Emmy Nominations are officially announced (July 19th), I wanted to jump in and highlight some of what I believe to be some of the best underrated performances on television this year.  Putting aside some of the perennial winners, the following discussion for each of the major categories is likely to mention plenty of names who won’t get Emmy mentions this year, but certainly should (and others who may get a nod, but likely won’t win).  Hit the jump for the (spoiler-free!) list that is not meant to be exhaustive (after all, I do watch an unhealthy amount of TV but I’m not caught up on everything), but hopefully brings at least a few of those dark horses to light with the recognition they deserve.

On the heels of naming a premiere date for its New Orleans-based drama Treme (Sunday, September 23 at 10pm to be exact), HBO has released a new extended trailer for the series’ third season.  “I’m thinking about doing something different this year,” Albert Lambreaux (Clarke Peters) says to his son in the opening seconds.  “I mean really different.”  It could be a reference to series creator David Simon commenting that the new season will focus more on crime. Two new characters – a restaurant investor and a reporter based on A.C. Thompson – will also be joining the cast.  Bottom line, the new trailer (featuring the Preservation Hall Jazz Band performing “Tootie Ma Is A Big Fine Thing”) gets one’s soul stirring for whatever’s in store. For the full trailer as well as a preview of the second half of True Blood‘s current season, hit the jump.

True Blood at its best and at its worst is still entertaining.  Though we may feel compelled to roll our eyes at some of its most ridiculous storylines, humor is never far.  The best True Blood episodes combine workable mythology alongside its innate snark, and this season has given that us in spades.  It’s a show that tricks you into nodding in assent when a character solemnly says, “turns out it was a crazy smoke monster who wanted to kill me, not the demon baby like we thought.” Of course.  Further, it has developed storylines that are interesting, not always immediately telegraphed, and that have resurrected – literally or metaphorically – characters who had previously fallen out of favor or off of our screens.  Though this season still has too many irons in the fire to tell any one story particularly effectively, it grounds itself in the small moments (like Sookie, Arlene and Holly all man hatin’ together in Merlotte’s) and has continued to be down right enjoyable.  For the nitty gritty of the episode and why peace is for pussies, hit the jump.

Current showrunner and True Blood series adapter Alan Ball came on stage in Ballroom 20 to introduce a new trailer for the ongoing fifth season.  The panel for the popular HBO show inspired by the Charlaine Harris novels also featured cast members Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Alexander Skarsgard, Ryan Kwanten, Rutina Wesley, Deborah Ann Woll, Sam Trammell, Joe Manganiello and Kristin Bauer van Straten. The lively and hilarious panel not only teased events in the next season, but also touched on the new relationships that will be forged and acted as a memorial to Ball’s work on the series before he departs as showrunner at the end of the season.  Hit the jump for my panel recap and click here for our continuing Comic-Con coverage.

With Comic-Con about to begin, many of the studios have already plastered posters over buses, walls, and inside hotel elevators to try and promote their upcoming wares.  While the majority of what’s coming will be set up tomorrow, after the jump you can get a sneak peak of what’s already on display including Game of Thrones, Syfy’s Defiance, Black Dynamite, Frankenweenie, Grimm, Looper, the remake of Robocop, Total Recall, Wreck-it-Ralph, True Blood, and more.

However, while all the marketing materials are cool, my favorite image has nothing to with your favorite movie or TV show.  Instead it’s a piece of street art telling us not to believe the hype.  It’s very well done and definitely worth checking out.

On Season 5 of HBO’s True Blood, actor Giles Matthey plays Claude, a mysterious fairy who has caught the eye of vamp Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll).  Distantly related to Sookie (Anna Paquin), he will be mentoring her in the ways of all things fairy, later on in the season.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, Giles Matthey talked about his crazy audition for the hit TV show and how he had no idea what role he was actually auditioning for, how he caught up on the previous four seasons and became an obsessive fan himself once he was cast, that he loves meeting fans of the show that are as excited about it as he is, how he sees Claude as loyal and protective, and how much fun his introduction into the story was.  He also talked about what attracts him to a specific project and what inspired him to try his hand at acting, in the first place.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Whoever gave the True Blood writers some V or whatever it was to suddenly make this season pretty darn brilliant, praise your light.  There was surely no title more apt for an episode than this week, where in all of the story lines (though still fractured) some serious shit went down.  Few dramas hit their stride as late as a fifth season, but True Blood has come into its own – finally – this year.  Yes there have been missteps along the way, but for the most part this mere 50 minutes of television (followed by a “let’s discuss what the heck is going on in Bon Temps right now” video) felt longer and denser than seemed possible. Hit the jump for details on the latest weirdness, and why Hoyt needs to go back home to his mama.

One show just aired the second episode of its freshman season while the other is a little further ahead on its fifth, but today HBO treated them as equals by announcing The Newsroom and True Blood will each get another season.

The Aaron Sorkin scripted cable news drama reeled in 2.1 million total viewers, which is just shy of the numbers for the series premiere of Game of Thrones, and that was enough to impress the cable network. On the content side of things, the second episode which just aired last night was a vast improvement on the already promising pilot, especially with series regular Alison Pill making a huge stride in one of the episodes’ more prominent plot points, and further development on the relationship between Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer. Overall, the series felt like it had found more solid footing after delivering a lot of what people already expected from Sorkin anyway. Either way, it’s good to hear The Newsroom will at least last one more season longer than Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a show that would’ve done much better on HBO and with better comedic sketch writing.

Details on the renewal of True Blood after the jump.

Tonight’s episode was largely about makers and progeny, and it helped serve as some needed world-building for a show that, for awhile, seemed to just be making things up as it went along (and greatly ignoring its source material). The theme this week seems to fit better with last week’s title – “Whatever I Am, You Made Me,” and the relationships explored were sensible, emotional and some of the better stuff True Blood has done. Hit the jump to get the details, and why the guy who wrote The Vampire Bible was definitely high the whole time.

In my preview post for the season, I mentioned that the show is at its best when it returns to Merlotte’s, the heart of the True Blood universe.  It grounds the story, integrates a number of different narrative arcs (which, in this season is certainly necessary), and builds character development.  It makes Sam slightly more interesting and Sookie likable.  What more could one ask for?

Consider me turned – I am truly enjoying this season of True Blood.  There was a meme I saw this week that said “if you take away the love triangle, The Hunger Games is essentially a televised fight to the death … and Twilight is about a girl who moves somewhere it rains a lot.”  In True Blood, take away the Bill-Sookie-Eric love triangle and you get … a much better show.  So far.  Keeping the supernatural action to a minimum (and refocusing on vampires rather than every possible creature imaginable) has been a welcomed change in tone from the chaos of last season.  Additionally, keeping Bill and Eric’s Excellent Adventures separate from Sookie has been to the benefit of all involved.  Even though tonight’s episode was quieter than most, it set up some interesting things to come. Hit the jump to find out why you should never negotiate with apostates!

On Season 5 of True Blood, British actress Lucy Griffiths (known for her role as Marian on the BBC series Robin Hood) will be stirring up some trouble as Nora, a Chancellor of the Vampire Authority. She’s fiery, fierce and loyal to Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard), with whom she shares a vampire maker.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, Lucy Griffiths talked about auditioning for the show, catching up on episodes once she’d been cast, how she typically doesn’t watch much television because she doesn’t have a TV, that she found talking with the fangs relatively easy, how she views her character and the relationship she has with her “brother,” having to forget your inhibitions to work on a show like this, what she’s most enjoyed about playing this character, and what she looks for in a project. Check out what she had to say after the jump.