Viewers who did not properly acquaint themselves with True Blood‘s fifth season finale will pay the price to kick off the sixth, which starts with a fury of blood, chaos and death.  By the end of the hour though, “Who Are You, Really?” settled down and created some decent possibilities moving forward for its main characters, and ones that — hopefully — stay closer to home and life in Bon Temps than the realm of the Vampire Authority.  Late in the episode, Eric says to Sookie that she will always be “the girl in the white dress who walked into my bar.”  Sookie expresses that she does genuinely want to go back to being that girl, which would be a refreshing change of pace for viewers, too.  Hit the jump for why “I hate the beach. Fish piss and sand in your cooch.”

A year?  We have to wait a year to find out the result of that-thing-that-happened?  What am I supposed to do until then?  If you have been following these reviews this season you’ll know my stance on the show, particularly last year’s unfortunate offerings.  I wanted to give True Blood up for dead, but then it drew me – and all of us – back into its sticky sweet gooey web of vamp mush and here we all are, once again at the end of another season.  But this time the feelings are sure to be different.  Best True Blood finale ever?  Best True Blood episode ever?  Or did JD slip me some V.  Hit the jump for more on why all roads must lead back to fucking Sookie.

An episode like “Sunset” leaves me with a chuckle, a sigh and several shakes of my head.  But ultimately, as we close in on the end of the season, I think overall it can be deemed successful.  True Blood is never going to go down in the canon of great television, but it has an ever-growing audience of devoted (if wary) fans who get sucked back every year because the series is pure, addictive summer candy.  It’s silly but it has heart, it’s illogical but full of laughs (some intended, some not), and one thing that has already elevated it from prior seasons (particular last year’s mess) is that with one episode left, it looks like not everything is going to end neatly tied up, with major season-long villains killed off conveniently at the last minute, or alliances made clear.  The battle is only beginning, and for once I’m sad to see things come to a close.  For more on this penultimate episode and why you should never bullshit a bullshitter, hit the jump.

Slow clap for True Blood, which after a few very rocky episodes has righted the ship.  One of the best things about “Gone, Gone Gone” was how some of the boring stories are finally, indeed, gone!  At least for now.  Away into the wind is the Ifrit, I guess – who cares?  No Alcide this week either, which, though his story regarding werewolf politics was mildly interesting, was not something I even noticed or missed until compiling my notes for review.  Sam and Luna even mercifully limited themselves to a cameo in which they were both naked (Sam got a little more time earlier on clothed as well, but still) or in mouse form.  The cutting down and combining of plots was a great relief to the episode, which may be one of the best of the season.  We also said Happy Trails to a character who got quite a fitting ending.  For more on that and why Tara said she don’t know nothing about birthin’ no vampire babies, hit the jump.

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!”)

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.

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.

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!

Already, in just the second episode this season, True Blood has successfully rerouted the drama (and let’s be honest, mess) of last season into new and promising directions. In probably the strongest narrative for the season ahead, Eric and Bill are teaming up to destroy Russell Edgington, taking their chances on meeting the true death fighting him rather than at the hands of the Authority.

That’s one big problem with True Blood – the stakes (no pun intended) are very low. Not only is there absolutely no chance that any major character is going to die, but the show has even kept alive some characters that the original book series killed off. Even though we knew that neither Bill or Eric would be meeting the true death any time soon, it is interesting enough to have them set to go up against Russell and potentially return to the Authority’s good graces (after all, as this week’s title tells us, the Authority Always Wins). Other new subplots were not so successful – hit the jump for more on them, and how to raise a baby vampire (hint: True Blood is not appreciated).

True Blood‘s opening act for Season Five was a reminder not only of how chaotic the show has gotten, but also how fun – in the right moments – it remains. Despite the fact that the nonsense level is high (and reaching new heights with every passing year), it’s the little moments in the show – Pam in a Walmart kitten-decal sweatshirt, Bill and Eric’s Excellent Adventures, Lafayette’s visceral mourning, Sookie kicking a tooth under the fridge – that keep us coming back. “Turn! Turn! Turn!” gave us plenty of them in between a whirlwind attempt to wrap up a few of last season’s cliffhangers while opening up a host of new problems for Sookie & Co. to deal with. To explore the twists and turns of this new season’s inaugural episode, hit the jump.

With the conclusion of tonight’s penultimate episode, we’ve reached the end of season three.  Of course, True Blood will take next Sunday off for Labor Day weekend, which means we won’t get the finale until September 12th.  It’s worth noting the first run of last week’s episode was the highest rated the show has ever seen (5.39 million, 3.0 in 18-49).  So for all the problems I’ve had with this season, it seems I’m in the minority.

Hit the jump for a review of “Fresh Blood,” the eleventh episode of season three.

I have looked at the list of  True Blood episode titles weekly since starting these reviews.  The one that always stuck out was “I Smell a Rat.”  Not that there’s any correlation between the excellence of an episode and its title, but there’s a part of me that has anticipated this, the tenth episode of season three, for a couple months now.  That said, hit the jump for a review.

I’ve been of the opinion that True Blood has suffered from the mid-season doldrums in recent episodes, where the shocking and exciting trademarks of the show were too infrequently spread out among a scattershot season arc.  “Everything is Broken” — the ninth episode of season three — didn’t fully break the pattern, but featured a higher ratio of hits to misses, plus a few promises that episodes 10-12 will be vintage True Blood. Hit the jump for a review.

Tonight’s episode of True Blood was directed by Lesli Linka Glatter.  She’s new to HBO’s vampire soap, but Glatter has spent a good portion of the last several years helming six episodes of the similarly lush (if not dramatically congruous) Mad Men, including the Emmy-nominated season three installment “Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency.”

So in theory, we were in very good hands with “Night on the Sun,” the eighth episode of season three of True Blood; hit the jump for a review.

With tonight’s episode of True Blood, we officially entered into the second half of season three.  We should be well on our way to whatever crazy climax the writers have in store, though I have no well-formed possibilities in mind.  No matter — True Blood is often more about the genre-tastic journey than any logical destination.

With that in mind, hit the jump for a review of “Hitting the Ground,” the seventh episode of season three of True Blood.