True Blood: Season 1, the last three episodes

The last three episodes were filled with great stuff. Strong character developments, changes to dramatic situations on all fronts, the introduction of interesting and despicable new characters. Funny (and moving) in parts, too.

And yet I'm having trouble getting enthused about it. As a TV series, I like True Blood, but I'm not sure I'm that interested in it. It's actually kind of a weird feeling - I think I'm starting to realise I like to get a little obsessed with TV shows. And the qualities that get me obsessed fascinated are intriguing questions and a sense that a series has a bigger picture (a mythology) that each episode is a part of.

True Blood is a really entertaining horror melodrama, that's well-written and performed, with a story that occasionally takes funny and surprising turns.

And I'm not sure that's enough for me. Guess I'll find out for sure when the next season rolls around (preview, here).

On a slight tangent, I do think I've consistently made the mistake of viewing this as a TV series and judging it on an episode by episode basis. While watching the finale, I realised it works better for me to think it as an TV adapation of a novel. I'm not sure I can articulate the difference between than that, yet. I'll think on it.

True Blood 1.9

And just like that, the show's awesome again.

This time, not because it changed up the situation; instead, the episode took its time exploring the subplots, and had some great character development.

• Tara tries to confront her demon
• Amy and Jason's relationship deepens and grows more touching, while gaining a whole crapload more karmic debt to pay back
  
• Vampire Bill gets a subplot.

If I'm being entirely honest, this episode completely won me back inside of 10 seconds. A streaming jet of blood completely covering Anna Paquin has that effect on me.

I even like the cliffhanger - which was a situational cliff, rather than a jeopardy one.

Nice work all around. Probably my second favourite episode of the season, and a timely lesson in not being too judgmental.

True Blood 1.8

OK, I think I've got a problem with the cliffhangers now. It took me about 4 days to work up the enthusiasm to watch this episode - which I attribute solely to the false jeopardy of how the previous ep ended. I tend to feel betrayed when a cliffhanger promises to kill the lead character or threaten the series-defining central relationship.* On rare occasions, I'll keep watching if the cliffhanger makes me ask 'HOW the hell could she possibly get out of this?", but that is a difficult skill to regularly master.

* It's why I stopped watching Alias after 6 episodes and never went back.

Far more successful are the cliffhangers that change the situation utterly.* True Blood has only done this twice so far (1.6 and 1.7), and they were far and away the most intriguing, engaging ends of episodes for me.

* See most episodes of 24.

So, I wasn't predisposed to like this ep, and sure enough I found it a little choppy in its characterisations. Tara and Sookie seemed all over the place emotionally - for good reasons, as both their lives seem to have fundamentally changed, but not in ways that convinced me dramatically. Vampire Bill's characterisation seemed much more settled and relaxed, which I totally didn't buy after what he'd just been through. And there was what seemed like a 10 minute sequence at Merlotte's that just felt like a series of scenes in a dull soap opera.

Maybe it'll all play better if I rewatch the series. I'm prepared to admit that I might be judging it too harshly.

And it did do something neat with the central Bill-Sookie question that kicked off the episode: for a while I felt that were going to drag out the mystery for the entire episode, focusing on Sookie alone, seeing what she did and how she started to live her life. The way they actually revealed what had happened was shocking, dirty, and kinda sexy in a WTF sort-of way.

It also contained a number of nice developments in everyone else's subplots. I'm a particular fan of Jason's new girlfriend, who's drug addict hippie ways make me laugh at nearly everything she says. In a way that feels much cleverer than the equivalent in this movie.

But then the ep ended with another false jeopardy cliffhanger. So, yes: officially starting to get grumpy and worried about this show now.

True Blood 1.7

Less convinced by this episode. Ep 1.6 gripped me because it dealt with the ramifications of a single situation; this one started out looking like it was going to focus heavily on exploring the pros and cons of a vampire-human relationship but it kind of drifted away from that, into a reconnection with (and amping up of) everyone else's subplots.

It also looks like True Blood is moving into that dangerous territory: where it could be less about normal people in a setting with supernatural elements, and more about supernatural people in a supernatural setting.

I don't mind that - in fact there are parts of that (like the possible explanation for Tara's behaviour) that I think could be fun. It just means that the show is starting to remind me of a mature version of the soap opera elements of Buffy, minus the 'Monster of the Week' structure to give episodes a payoff and Joss Whedon's authorial voice.*

* I haven't really detected a distinctive 'voice' to this series yet.

The show's moving faster than I expected though - partly cos' it's meaner to its characters than I expected, and partly because Sookie's telepathy has allowed us to develop a lot of subtext about minor characters within very few episodes.** However, there's also a lack of a compelling over-riding question that's drawing me in to watching the show - the cliffhangers aren't enough for me yet.

** It's a great technique, and one that I'll consider to be extremely lazy if any other show picks up on it.

Great to finally recognise two of the actors though. The guy who plays Detective Andy Belfleur was Frank Sbotka in Season 2 of the Wire, and is almost unrecognisably due to his lighter, goofier body language. And the Iraqi War veteran is played by the same guy who was Zach in Gilmore Girls - again, a very different performance, and one that could assure him a solid career of supporting roles.

True Blood 1.6

This is the first episode of True Blood I've been eager to watch. Following on from the first riveting cliffhanger I feel the show's done, Episode 1.6 dealt with a whole mess of nasty emotions coming to the surface: grief, suspicion, resentment ... while still laying out the possibility for hope.

We've also seen enough of the characters in action so that subtext is starting to come effortlessly to the scenes. And Anna Paquin's scene with her grandmother's pie is the first classic moment of the series for me.

Andrei Tarkovsky wrote about how cinema was the art of 'sculpting in time', and I could see that here. This episode felt cohesive, in comparison to the way that previous episodes have been entertaining but a bit all-over-the-place. It probably has a lot to do with the single event that this episode is based around, and its ramifications for all the characters. (Yes, I'm being vague here. If you haven't seen it, I totally don't want to spoil it.)

And one hell of a cliffhanger to finish off with. This series is totally hitting its stride.

True Blood - The first half of Season One

I'm really enjoying this. The word on the street is true: it does take a little while to warm up. I'd say it doesn't really become a TV series until about 40 minutes into the pilot, when Sookie and Bill the vampire spend a long, long scene together, firmly establishing them as the relationship that's going to be our hook into the show.

Prior to that, all we have is a setting. A small town in the American South, in a world very much like our own except that vampires exist and have recently outed themselves to the world. The show plays that part fairly matter-of-factly; the existence of vampires is pretty much as novel and filled with unknown dangers as the internet was about 10 years ago. What show-runner Alan Ball (and presumably novelist Charlaine Harris) is interested in at a setting level is using vampires to explore ideas of bigotry and integration. Setting the show in the south allows them to create parallels between vampires and African-Americans; the fact that vampires have recently revealed themselves but looking just like everyone else gives the show an opportunity to play around with ideas of being gay.

The show feels very different to Ball's previous series: Six Feet Under. I imagine it's a relief to be able to write episodes that explore a different emotional pallette (which I'd describe as sultry pulp, with a bit of comedy of human weakness thrown in there).

Over the last four episodes, True Blood has gradually deepened the supporting cast - several of them now seem like interesting characters embedded in pretty fascinating situations - and that's helped it go from a fairly functional show to an entertaining one. Very much looking forward to the next episode.