True Blood Finally Reaches Its End: “Thank You!”

The Good: Decent-enough acting
The Bad: Dull plot, Light on character, Entirely contrived
The Basics: “Thank You” sees the end of True Blood and the conclusion does not keep the focus on Bill and Sookie enough to be a truly satisfying end for fans.


This is a big week for television! With the Emmys come and gone (was I the only one who didn’t know it was last night until the event passed?!), my focus is turning to the ends and the beginnings that are the highlights of this week in television. Chief among the endings (for me and other genre fans) is the series finale of True Blood. True Blood has had a rough seventh season and the shortened ten-episode season saw its end with “Thank You.” It is worth noting that because True Blood is a heavily serialized show and “Thank You” is its series finale, that some spoilers might be contained within this review, if for no other reason than that all that comes before led to “Thank You.”

Given the rocky nature of the seventh season of True Blood, I was not heartened by the trending topic relating to “Thank You” was that True Blood ended with a “wacky” finale. “Wacky” is not a word I would use to describe the sometimes-erotic, sometimes nauseatingly-gory supernatural soap opera. So, with lowered expectations, I rewatched “Love Is To Die” (reviewed here!) before tuning into “Thank You.” And

With Bill Compton having refused treatment for his Hep-V, he tries to explain his decision to Sookie. Having felt more alive since meeting Sookie, Bill does not want to live beyond Sookie, so he asks her to use her fairy light on him to bring him the true death. Faced with the choice of outliving Bill and having vampires interested in her and her fairy blood, Sookie seriously considers giving up her fairy light to kill Bill. Back at Fangtasia, Eric decides to betray Gus Jr. by setting Sarah Newlin free, stealing Gus Jr.’s New Blood (cure for Hep-V) and eradicating the human and his goons. Sarah begs Pam to vamp her and while Pam refuses, she does use the human for a Hep-V vaccination.

With Bill indelicately pushing the issue between Hoyt and Jessica, all of Bon Temps leaps to make arrangements for the abrupt wedding of the human and vampire. Those arrangements take the form of the predictable – Hoyt asks Jason to be his best man, Jessica scrambles to get a wedding dress – and the painfully mundane (Bill sits Andy down and asks him to “rent” his mansion to Hoyt and Jessica after his death because Bill cannot will the property to Jessica). During the wedding, Sookie is surprised that she can hear Bill’s thoughts. As Sookie debates putting Bill out of his misery, she talks to Jason, Reverend Daniels and Bill himself. After Sookie and Bill get closure, the episode flashes forward to show some resolution on how Eric and Pam’s business venture into New Blood went and then how everyone in Bon Temps is doing years later.

Starting “Thank You” out heavy with Bill Compton, Sookie, Eric and Pam sets the finale up for a satisfying conclusion. With the main – and most popular – enduring characters of the show getting the spotlight, fans are given some hope that the show might end on a high note. For as much as I might love the weird love story of Jessica and Hoyt, when “Thank You” shifts focus to them and the relationship between Jessica and Bill and then flashbacks with Sookie, Gran, and Tara, the episode takes a turn for the plodding and melodramatic. When “Thank You” seems like it might become an abrupt and somewhat ridiculous wedding episode, it seems like True Blood’s finale was going to be one of the least satisfying endings of television history. And it is, largely, unremarkable and unsatisfying.

In addition to completely contrived character moments – Hoyt has no memories of his friendship with Jason, so that he leaps to asking him to be his best man seems more satisfying for the viewers than honestly an organic plot/character development – “Thank You” is mired in trying to service the large cast (which is a pretty consistent problem the show has faced as it has gone on). Arlene and Holly being a part of the wedding is not entirely inorganic, but it does seem forced the way Arlene runs around prior to the wedding.

The idea of ending with a wedding is a pretty ridiculous one for a story that has been much more action-based and gory than it has been a relationship story in its later years. More than that, by focusing on Jessica and Hoyt, “Thank You” is mired in preaching to the choir. True Blood fans are by and large, smart and liberal. From the first episode, True Blood made a strong allegory between vampirism and homosexuality. So, the concept that the marriage of Hoyt and Jessica might not be legal, but it is loving and sanctified by god, seems to be beating the metaphor home for the people who already get the point.

In a similar way, Sookie turning to Reverend Daniels makes for a weird scene that makes very little sense for the character. Given the telepathic nature of Sookie Stackhouse, a crowded church seems like it would have hardly been a place of refuge for young Sookie. Turning to Daniels this late in the story seems forced and like Sookie is just taking advice from anybody in the world, regardless of their perspective and personal relationship with her. In fact, in the supernatural realm in which True Blood and Sookie Stackhouse exist, “Thank You” would have been the ideal time to bring in angels as a final supernatural creature, but the show does not. Instead, viewers are asked to believe that Sookie would turn to Daniels.

On the positive side, Anna Paquin’s performance of the episode’s pivotal scene sells the emotional depth of the moment. Whether this is great acting or not is debatable as Paquin having to contemplate a mercy killing for her real-life husband Stephen Moyer seems like it would be a wrenching experience. Paquin plays the scene with all of the intensity one expects from such a moment.

But fans of True Blood are rightfully unsatisfied and part of the reason has to be the final scene of “Thank You.” While some might wonder who the man Sookie is with is or why she is pregnant (if there had been no man at the head of the table, fans could easily have made the leap that Sookie was acting as a surrogate for Jessica and Hoyt, an idea that would have made their otherwise pointless wedding in the episode far more compelling), the real kick in the nads to fans is the conceptual shift that the final scene implies. Fans of True Blood have sat through seven seasons of partner-swapping, complex relationships mixed in with supernatural entities and monsters. Four years after the wedding of Hoyt and Jessica, EVERYBODY is still together with the partner they were with at the time.

Really?!

“Thank You” makes that assertion. So, between Sarah Newlin getting the penultimate scene, in a moment entirely reminiscent of how Alias concluded the Sloane/Rambaldi arc and a contrived happy ending where monogamy and traditional family values wins out, “Thank You” closes True Blood on a downbeat and leaves us uninterested in rewatching the season, much less the series.

For other notable series finales, please visit my reviews of:
“Goodbyeee” - Blackadder Goes Forth
“What You Leave Behind” - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into True Blood - The Complete Sevent Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of the supernatural show here!
Thanks!]

3/10

For other television episode and movie reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Best Of The True Blood Graphic Novels? True Blood: Tainted Love Might Well Be It!

The Good: Accurately references key moments of True Blood and foreshadows well, Good character development
The Bad: Mediocre artwork
The Basics: True Blood: Tainted Love smartly develops a story involving contaminated Tru Blood years before the television series did it!


As True Blood winds down, I am finding that I am more eagerly filling in the gaps with the True Blood franchise by catching up on some of the graphic novels I had missed. Interestingly enough, I was working at a comic book shop when True Blood: Tainted Love began, but I never managed to take the time to read it until now. For the last few years, the six individual issues of Tainted Love have been compiled as a single graphic novel, Volume 2 in the True Blood graphic novel series. Unlike some of the other True Blood graphic novels I have read, True Blood: Tainted Love lives up to its potential and the expectations of fans of the franchise in that it tells a decent story and does so quite well.

Having not read any of the Sookie Stackhouse novels upon which True Blood is based, my perception of the franchise is based entirely upon the television series and their accompanying graphic novels. True Blood: Tainted Love capitalizes on the relationships from the television show, while still telling an engaging story with a compelling villain. Perhaps one of the best aspects of True Blood: Tainted Love is that it does not directly contradict True Blood . . . at least not at the time the book was written. In fact, True Blood: Tainted Love essentially foreshadows events of the final season of the show by creating a scenario with tainted Tru Blood making vampire life much more difficult.

As Sookie finds herself somewhat distressed over fantasizing over both Eric Northman and Bill Compton, Hoyt Fortenberry realizes his relationship with Jessica is a lot more complicated than he initially thought it was. When Jessica sees that Bon Temps is having its prom, she misses the normal growing up moments she never had. Flashing back to her conservative, homeschooled upbringing and the near-misses she had as a young adult with teenage rebellion and sexuality, Jessica gets more and more upset. Hoyt decides to take her to the prom and as Jessica gets excited for the event, she consumes a batch of Tru Blood that makes vampires feral killers.

Under the guise of being tainted to free vampires from the shackles of civility, vampires near Bon Temps begin to go psychotic after consuming the Tru Blood and the hunt begins for the perpetrators. While Jason and Hoyt hunt for Jessica, Bill and Eric desperately search for the vampires involved with spiking the Tru Blood and the cure for the additives that corrupted the batch. But Tara helps point the gang in the right direction; that Steve Newlin’s Light Of Day Institute (the Church of the Sun) might be behind the corrupted Tru Blood and that time is running out for Jessica and the other infected vampires!

True Blood: Tainted Love is smart and well-assembled. Instead of bothering to try to include the full cast of True Blood, True Blood: Tainted Love tells a more focused story. Given the immense popularity of Jessica, she becomes a great subject for a graphic novel and writers Marc Andreyko and Michael McMillian seem to realize that. Sookie Stackhouse, who is the protagonist of the novels upon which True Blood is based, is basically a supporting character in True Blood: Tainted Love. Sookie, Bill and Eric work to save Jessica and expose the plot-based elements introduced in the book, but most of the actual character development is centered around Jessica.

The writers of True Blood: Tainted Love smartly recall the origins of Jessica, which is something the writers of the HBO series seem to have lost. Jessica was a sheltered, home-schooled, ultra-conservative girl before Bill Compton turned her. In True Blood: Tainted Love, her origins are explored in greater depth, which enriches her character. The prom story is a great concept for her character and the way the story turns into a feral Jessica revenge story is pieced together well as the king of the prom is a boy who once maligned her in her pre-vampire days.

One of the nice aspects of True Blood: Tainted Love is that all of the important aspects of Jessica’s s character are included in the graphic novel. Anyone can pick up True Blood: Tainted Love and get everything essential to the story within the pages. Sure, fans of True Blood will catch more allusions than those who are not fans, but anyone can read and enjoy the graphic novel as a self-contained “episode” with a decent character arc.

The artwork in True Blood: Tainted Love is muted in its colors and sloppy in its lines. The characters look only vaguely like the characters from the series. Panel to panel, the book features renditions of the characters that frequently look like anyone but Anna Paquin, Alexander Skarsgaard, Stephen Moyer. Only Jessica, Hoyt and Jason Stackhouse are truly accurately rendered consistently. True Blood: Tainted Love is a bit unsatisfying on the art front and fans of the series are likely to be a little disappointed or at the very least underwhelmed by the book.

Even so, True Blood: Tainted Love is well worth picking up and worth reading for anyone who likes a good supernatural love story and mystery.

For other True Blood graphic novels, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Volume 1, All Together Now
Where Were You?
Volume 5, The French Quarter

7/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Season Of Stumbles: True Blood - Season Six Reveals An Underwhelming Adversary.

The Good: Moments of character, Moments of performance, Moments of menace
The Bad: Entirely bloated cast, Unimpressive villain, Short, Underdeveloped plots
The Basics: The sixth season of True Blood illustrates the problem of continuing a show with an expanding cast as it loses resonance and presents a much built-up enemy in a lackluster way.


I like long stories when it comes to television shows. I like long arcs and character development that takes its time reaching an organic position that shows real growth. In the case of True Blood, the show has had some long arcs, but has largely been plot-based with storylines jerking characters all around the map. Instead of being moved forward by the main characters, far too often, the villains throw up roadblocks or create the movement that pulls the protagonists toward action. In the fifth season of True Blood (reviewed here!), it was the rise of the Authority and a fundamentalist sect within it that pulled Eric and Bill into a conflict that they struggled to escape from.

The sixth season of True Blood returns the focus of the show to Sookie, but it has two fundamental problems with keeping the Sookie storyline engaging and truly compelling. The first is that, as the fifth season heavily alluded to his coming, the murderer of the Stackhouse parents, Warlow, rears his head . . . and it is anything but ugly or murderous. After exceptional build-up as an ethereal, creepy, badass, Warlow pops up as a too-cute romantic interest for Sookie and his arc in the season is nauseating.

The other fundamental issue with the sixth season of True Blood is that at this point there are so many diverging storylines going on that almost none of them are actually developed well. Given that the sixth season of True Blood has only ten episodes, the plotlines spreading the characters out in multiple different directions does not allow any of them to get the attention they deserve. The season moves fast, but at this point, True Blood is mostly pulp and it lacks the resonance of the deeper themes from the earlier seasons.

The sixth season picks up immediately where the fifth season ended as Eric Northman and Sookie Stackhouse run out of the Authority headquarters. They are pursued by Bill, who has been possessed by the spirit of Lilith. As the bloodbath follows the pair, Bill begins to regain control. As he retreats to his estate, where Jessica ministers to him, Bill has a vision of a white room in which most of the vampires he knows will see the sun and be destroyed. To prevent that calamity, he kidnaps the inventor of TruBlood in an attempt to make a fairy blood equivalent of TruBlood that will protect his friends. The white room Bill saw in his vision is quickly revealed as Eric, Pam, and Tara are captured by the Governor, who has set up a vampire concentration camp where his people perform perverse experiments on vampires.

While the Governor is imposing his curfew and setting up a biological plague that will wipe out the vampire population, Sookie is on the outside . . . with Warlow. After the appearance of her fairy grandfather, Sookie falls in with Warlow, who romances her and explains his complicated existence as a vampire fairy to her. In attempting to aid Bill, Jessica inadvertently slaughters three of Sheriff Bellefleur’s half-fairy daughters before she, too, is captured by the Governor’s forces. Struggling with the way he saved Arlene’s life in the prior season, Terry once more becomes twitchy and he organizes a way to free himself from the pain of wrestling with the consequences of his actions. Outside Bon Temps, Sam falls for a young woman who wants to help the supernatural creatures who have not made their existence known to the world when she is attacked by werewolves in Alcide’s pack. Alcide, for his part, shows up to take over his pack and learn pretty quickly that being pack master is not what he truly wants.

After all of the hype and prophecy surrounding Warlow, his revelation in the sixth season as a man who can come to claim Sookie is underwhelming when Warlow appears and starts to romance Sookie. The romance in the season is thin and cheap; starting with Sookie picking up a wounded stranger at the side of the road, the revelation that he is Warlow comes quick. The thin ploy mirrors the simplistic romance that follows and Warlow lacks the gravitas that he was rumored to have before appearing.

In fact, it is not until late in the season, when Warlow resists the idea of dating Sookie that there is any real menace. But that’s the problem with so much in this penultimate season of True Blood; the positive developments for the season come too late and the payoffs are disappointing. From prophecies that strangely do not include the methods needed to make them come true (Bill is absent from his own vision so that when the events in the white room come to a head, they do not match his vision at all) to an overall plot that troublingly mirrors the prior season (the Governor is dispatched and replaced at virtually the same position in the season as the head of the Authority was last season!), the sixth season of True Blood feels much more formulaic than fresh.

On the performance front, True Blood Season Six is a mediocre use of decent talent. Anna Paquin and her new co-star, Robert Kazinsky (Warlow), have absolutely no on-screen chemistry, which guts the viability of their relationship. While Robert Patrick is added to the main cast as Jackson Herveaux, Jackson barely appears in the season and does not have a truly substantive role until the final episode where he predictably acts as an accessory to Joe Manganiello’s Alcide.

Some of the season’s best moments come from the second string performers. Anna Camp illustrates a truly incredible ability to play the villain as Sarah Newlin takes charge of the enemies of the vampires. Todd Lowe shows yet again just how powerful he can play loss and confusion as Terry Bellefleur. Similarly, Carrie Preston is given the chance to play grief as Arlene in a remarkable way that she has not been given the opportunity to previously.

Still, the moments of decency are not enough to outweigh the plodding plot and lack of payoff for the season’s few big moments. Beloved characters (like Lafayette and even Sam) are largely neglected, previously added cast members, like Lauren Bowles as Holly, are not given the chance to grow and develop and the season is a poor payout to those who have invested a lot in the show leading up to it.

For more information on the specific episodes contained in the sixth season of True Blood, be sure to check out my reviews of each of the episodes in the boxed set. They are:
"Who Are You, Really?"
"The Sun"
"You're No Good"
"At Last"
"Fuck The Pain Away"
"Don't You Feel Me"
"In The Evening"
"Dead Meat"
"Life Matters"
"Radioactive"

3.5/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Dividing The Camp Between Those Who Are “Dead Meat” And Those Who Might Survive!

The Good: Decent plot progression, Good character development, Moments of performance
The Bad: Still a little crowded at the expense of coherency.
The Basics: “Dead Meat” continues to progress the True Blood story, enhancing the supernatural plotline with some starkly realistic moments!


One of the consequences of creating heavily-serialized television is that episode by episode, a season might be weaker than the season as a whole. The current season of True Blood has been one of its most erratic, though it is not a bad season. It is, however, virtually impossible to discuss the episodes without revealing some of the details of prior episodes. By the time “Dead Meat” comes up, the show is hip deep in casualties and the season has been leading toward a vampire cataclysm foreseen by Bill in the first episode of the season. Following on the heels of “In The Evening” (reviewed here!), “Dead Meat” brings the viewer closer to the inevitable without leaving the viewer without reason to tune in the next week. In other words, the hand is not tipped yet.

That said, “Dead Meat” effectively moves the plot of True Blood forward and puts the characters where they need to be to either be slaughtered or survive. Given that, the episode smartly redirects the season from conspiracy theories and supernatural moments to present a surprisingly grounded and effective episode.

Following the death of his sister, Eric and Bill verbally duke it out over how Bill failed to save Nora. While Bill implores Eric to join him in trying to save the rest of the vampires still at the Governor’s camp, Eric goads Bill about his failure to bring Warlow to him to save Nora, ostensibly because Sookie was involved. Alcide, having been exposed as a liar, is forced to fight to keep control of the pack and save the life of Nicole. In the Governor’s camp, Jason finds himself as the property of an aggressive medieval Catholic vampire. Sookie rejoins Warlow in the fairy realm where she tries to negotiate with him to help Bill save her friends. Returning to the mortal world, Eric discovers that he can break the spell that has masked Warlow. Jessica and James are recaptured and returned to the general population, where Pam is brought in as well. When True Blood is distributed to the vampires, James saves Steve Newlin’s life.

Alcide decides pack life is not for him and returns Nicole and her mother to Sam. As Violet feeds on Jason, Willa, Pam, Tara, and Jessica work to get him free so they might feed. After Arlene learns the truth about Terry’s death, Adilyn reads her mind and realizes why he might have arranged to be killed. Seeing some of the prisoners are not drinking the TruBlood, Sarah milks Steve Newlin for information and begins rounding up the uninfected vampires in the white room! Back at Merlotte’s, Sookie finally reveals to Sam her fairy power.

“Dead Meat” finally advances the Sam and Alcide plotline in a productive manner. Alcide never seemed like a tool and finally he stands up to the pack and decides he doesn’t want their way of life and that is a refreshing, if predictable, character twist for him. Moreover, San sniffing Nicole when they reunite finally confirms what viewers have reasonably begun to suspect since she was bit; that True Blood is going to finally reveal how werewolves can be created in this universe. The quiet scene between Alcide and Sam as they share a drink is a delightful confirmation that the werewolves and shifters have more in common than divides them. The idea that Sam has gotten Nicole pregnant is an interesting one that foreshadows (if past episodes are any precedent) future potential tragedies.

“Dead Meat” features some of the best acting of the season. The scene between Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin where they confront one another about Bill’s plan has the two exhibiting absolutely no chemistry. Paquin and Moyer, who are married and have had amazing on-screen chemistry in the past, play the scene as it ought to be played; with absolute loathing. By contrast, when Sookie returns to Merlott’s, Paquin and Trammell have decent chemistry. Paquin’s job in the scene has to add realistic conflict to Trammell’s Sam at a time when Sam is struggling to commit to Nicole. Trammell makes the scene work by appearing reasonably conflicted while still embodying love for Nicole.

Arguably one of the most impressive aspects of “Dead Meat” is the realistic aspect of it. Arlene, Holly, and Andy (with the Bellefleur’s) sit planning the funeral of Terry Bellefleur and the scene would be impressive in any series not affiliated with Alan Ball, who was one of the creators and execs of Six Feet Under (reviewed here!). Despite being familiar to Ball’s fans, the scene which eats up about five minutes of “Dead Meat” presents the realistic complications of surviving a death and it makes the characters of Andy and Arlene even more well-rounded. Amid fairies, werewolves, and vampires, the realistic scene reminds viewers that True Blood is intended to be a realistic drama with a few supernatural elements and it works for that.

That scene helps make Sookie’s subsequent scene, which has Anna Paquin delivering an emotional monologue to the graves of Sookie’s parents, feel realistic and deep instead of whiny and girlish. Paquin delivers a powerful and emotional performance opposite no one else and it reaffirms her talent.

“Dead Meat” affirms that Sarah Newlin is the true villain of the sixth season of True Blood and Anna Camp plays the role with gruesome ferocity. Camp transforms Sarah from a coldblooded, but meek tactician into a desperate zealot who is pushed over the edge. It is Camp who rises to the occasion of taking her character on a journey that is predictable, but the end product of years of hatred Sarah Newlin has embodied. The emotionless way Camp watches as Steve Newlin breaks down in the white room is enough to give enlightened viewers the shivers. Despite the fact that Steve Newlin is a spineless sycophant, as Sarah tortures him and shows no remorse or humanity, Camp accelerates the process by which Sarah becomes one of the most frightening villains True Blood has created and horrifies the viewer.

Ultimately, “Dead Meat” crams a lot of great moments into a short space and leaves the True Blood viewers wanting more!

[For a much better value, check out True Blood Season 6 on Blu-Ray and DVD. The penultimate season is reviewed here! Check it out!]

For other works with Joe Manganiello, please visit my reviews of:
What To Expect When You're Expecting
How I Met Your Mother - Season 2
Spider-man 3
Spider-man

8/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Largely Predictable, “Don’t You Feel Me” Is Still Worth Watching!

The Good: Decent performances, Good special effects, The plot progresses, Moments of character
The Bad: Very predictable, No opportunity for catharsis
The Basics: “Don’t You Feel Me” raises the body count and significantly shifts the direction of True Blood . . . without taking the time to let it resonate.


As the sixth season of True Blood progresses, the show is doing a decent job of making the fantastic world of True Blood seem surprisingly realistic. The show is bending much closer to the scientific, despite being populated by werewolves, fairies, and vampires. So, with the sixth episode, there is a sense that the plot is progressing in a way that will continue that trend – and it does – but for all the good things about True Blood and the surprisingly grounded nature of the show, “Don’t You Feel Me” is painfully predictable. In fact, more than most of the episodes of True Blood, “Don’t You Feel Me” does not leave the viewer guessing or wondering about what is going to happen or where the characters will end up.

Unfortunately, as a standalone episode, talking about “Don’t You Feel Me” is absolutely impossible without mentioning how “Fuck The Pain Away” (reviewed here!), the prior episode, ended. In fact, part of the problem with “Don’t You Feel Me” is not the episode’s fault; the last episode ended up at a point where it was entirely impossible to suspend one’s disbelief for the next episode. This is an issue with both the Sookie and Eric/Pam plots. The savvy television viewer knows long before “Don’t You Feel Me” that Sookie is not going to die (the person with top billing seldom does and True Blood has a poor record of keeping characters dead) and given the popularity of Alex Skarsgard’s character of Eric, if he were to go out, it would be for another reason than simply Pam showing off for the Governor whom she despises. So, just like Pam and Eric finding their way out of their situation, the big death in “Don’t You Feel Me” is seen a mile away and the fact that Jason’s fast-track into the Governor’s camp puts him face to face with Sarah Newlin is similarly predictable.

That said, “Don’t You Feel Me” is not unenjoyable and the episode moves the plot forward in a meaningful way and sets most of the characters up for Bill’s horrific vision from the season premiere.

“Don’t You Feel Me” picks up with Sookie being drowned by the father-possessed Lafayette. She is saved by, of all people, Warlow, who helps Sookie exorcise Sookie’s father from Lafayette. Sookie then saves Warlow from Bill/Lilith’s summoning and spends the rest of the episode in quiet conversation with Warlow about his past and their future. Back at the Governor’s camp, Eric and Pam face off one another, but they team up to kill the guards before they can be stopped. To torment Eric, Governor Burrell has Eric chained up and he brings in Nora, who is injected with what he calls Hepatitis V. Summoning Willa, Eric is able to break out and he discovers the Governor’s plan for the biotoxin.

Meanwhile, Sam and Alcide reconcile their issues when Jackson tells Alcide where Sam is. Terry Bellefluer sets off a warning bell with Lafayette by bringing the cook a key to a safe deposit box that he Terry kept from Arlene. Arlene and Holly conspire to have Terry glamoured in order to forget all of his personal pain. Sadly, they do this without the forethought to ask Terry what his apparently suicidal plan was, which leads to tragedy. After he has a vision of Lilith, Bill heads to the Governor’s camp where he changes the course of the conflict between the humans and vampires!

The sense of menace that comes out of “Don’t You Feel Me” makes one actually care about vampirekind in a way that works well beyond the metaphorical. The vampires in the camp are suffering and the way that Sarah uses Jessica to keep Jason in check makes her the most visibly evil character in the episode. Jason tries so hard to be the white knight, bluffing his way into the vampire-hating organization run by the Governor, only to be trumped by the politically astute and tactically inclined Sarah. Sarah trumping Jason, while upsetting to watch, only enhances the realism of the situation as, sadly, Jason is a bit of an idiot and he gets so far without any real innate talent. With “Don’t You Feel Me” the horror is not in the bloodsuckers or even in the gore, but in the humans who plan and abet the genocide the Governor has organized.

Like most of the sixth season episodes, “Don’t You Feel Me” is crowded by the sheer number of castmembers the show needs to service. The episode features an obligatory scene with Andy and Holly (and the surviving fey child) and the Alcide/Sam plot continues to be very much in the background.

On the acting front, John Fleck gets a great scene as the sadistic doctor working for the Governor. Fleck is a pretty amazing character actor and in “Don’t You Feel Me” he plays the doctor in a loopy way unlike anything else he has ever been in. From the main cast, it is Todd Lowe who delivers the performance of the episode. From the goofy smile to his last scene, Lowe makes Terry Bellefluer – who is one of the last human characters in the main cast! – the man to watch. His character has had a lot of conflict and in “Don’t You Feel Me” is given the opportunity to play Terry at peace and it is a nice stretch for him.

In the end, “Don’t You Feel Me” is good, but it is another bridging episode. Eric has learned the Governor’s plan and Bill has reasoned that his vision is imminent (a situation that comes from one of the worst scenes in the episode! Note to True Blood writers: how about something different from the god characters you write? You know what a nice change of pace would be for writing the divine? A deity who says in simple, clear terms what is going on, what they want and how they want their followers to achieve their goals! The riddle bullshit is getting tiresome!), but the events are moving so fast that characters like Arlene and Andy, who help root the show in some semblance of reality, are glossed over and not given the time to reflect upon their tragedies and traumas. Ultimately, that makes “Don’t You Feel Me” good, but hardly as good as it could be.

[For a much better value, check out True Blood Season 6 on Blu-Ray and DVD. The penultimate season is reviewed here! Check it out!]

For other works with Arliss Howard or Todd Lowe, please visit my reviews of:
Moneyball
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Gilmore Girls
The Princess Diaries

7/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Lacking Depth, True Blood: Where Were You? Is Just Another Pointless Villain Story.

The Good: Generally good tie-in to the television show, Moments of concept
The Bad: Limits itself on language at the beginning, Vital elements are lost for the pretty dumb b-plot, Light on character, Poor artwork.
The Basics: For fans of True Blood, the graphic novel True Blood: Where Were You? underwhelms because it takes a decent story and puts it on a backburner to a pathetically standard comic book story.


As True Blood’s new season continues - the latest episode “You’re No Good” is reviewed here! - I have been doing my best to keep up and explore some of the other branches of the franchise. To that end, I have returned to reading and reviewing some of the graphic novels. I was actually surprised that I had only previously reviewed All Together Now (reviewed here!). The concept, however, of True Blood: Where Were You? instantly grabbed me. Unfortunately, the idea that True Blood: Where Were You? is sold on is very quickly undermined. Rather ridiculously, the b-plot that distracts from the main plot is not strong enough to carry the book, which leads to one of the most pointless final chapters in graphic novel history.

True Blood: Where Were You? is sold on the idea of providing a series of flashbacks to how people in the True Blood universe reacted to the vampires “coming out of the coffin.” That idea is a great one and had the book stuck to it and had compelling stories, it might have been a great book. Unfortunately, it does not.

Opening with Sookie trying her best to avoid the Coffin Day celebrations that are going on for the anniversary of the night the vampires revealed themselves publicly to the world, Sookie is summoned by Eric to Fangtasia to work for the night. She recalls the night the vampires came out of the coffin and how she was being persecuted by people at Merlotte’s who knew about her ability to read minds. While Sam tries to be nice to her, she is pretty much just shocked when the vampires reveal themselves to the world. Back in the present, she is shocked when a package is delivered to Fangtasia; the remains of one of Eric’s allies, Chow.

The book then bounces between Eric Northman and Bill Compton hunting down the ancient vampire Remus while they reflect back to how, during the days before the Great Revelation, they were involved with hunting Remus and the Sanguinistas on the orders of Nan Flanagan. Remus wants to lay waste to humans and now, on the anniversary of the Great Revelation, it seems like he is ready . . . but he wants to torment Eric first.

True Blood: Where Were You? continues to dilute the story with a somewhat pointless Alcide story that does not truly reflect on the character’s conflict with vampires. It’s just a cheap excuse to have Alcide in the book and tease the idea that there are romantic attachments between Sookie and all three of the book’s main men.

Fundamentally, there are two problems with True Blood: Where Were You?. The first is that Remus is not a terribly interesting villain (despite how authors Michael McMillian and Annie Nocenti try to tie him to the very popular Godrick). Remus is just another run-of-the-mill generic vampire adversary who has nothing distinctive going for him . . . save that he spent the 1980s as a punk rock singer, which is a marginally clever idea.

The other huge problem in True Blood: Where Were You? is the artwork. IDK seems to take a rather lazy approach to making the True Blood comics look good. When panels and pages have Pam and Sookie together, but it is hard to tell which is which or Eric and Nan Flanagan being virtually interchangeable or Alcide and Sam looking alike (only because Alcide wears a shirt in this book), it is annoyingly hard to follow the story. Fans deserve better.

Even though the character designs are sloppy and the book has a very low sense of movement, the coloring in True Blood: Where Were You? is decent. The colors are rich and have decent depth and shading.

It is, however, not nearly enough to make True Blood: Where Were You? worth reading. This is a book that never quite lives up to its original potential.

For other media tie-in graphic novels, please visit my reviews of:
Man Of Steel: The Prequel
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon - Foundation
Serenity: Better Days And Other Stories

3/10

For other book reviews, please visit my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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