Wednesday, September 14, 2011

In one ear....and out the other.

This post contains massive spoilers for the True Blood season finale (sorry Whitney). So don't read if you don't want to know what happened!

In a surprise to no one in the universe, the True Blood finale has been controversial. All the elements of a great season finale were there, but some people found that the emotional scenes didn't really ring true (specifically the "Sookie breaks up with Bill and Eric" scene) and there has been some anger about the treatment of certain characters (the deaths of Jesus and Tara).

Let me take an aside here and just say that, in my opinion, Tara is dead. In this interview, Rutina Wesley (Tara) repeatedly states that after the gunshot blast in the finale, half of Tara's head is gone. I'm going to take her word on that and go out on a limb and state that while vampire blood can work miracles, even if one of Sookie's vamp friends gets there soon, vamp blood is not going to regrow half of Tara's skull and brain. I'm not saying Tara is out of the show (the actress is signed on for Season 5), but I am pretty sure she is dead as a doornail.

Ok, so back to some criticisms. I basically find that the points people have raised are valid, but the awesomeness of True Blood overcomes them. In short the pros outweigh the cons and I loved the finale.

Problem #1: some of the emotional scenes didn't have enough oomph. The scene where Sookie choo choo chooses to be with herself just felt...kind of lame. I don't know if it was because of the faces Alexander Skarsgard was pulling (not hot, dude), but the whole thing just made me roll my eyes. Another problem was that Alcide had basically offered himself to Sookie on a platter earlier in the episode and she turned him down. GIRL, ARE YOU DUMB? You do not turn down the Alcide. That whole thing rang false to me because who in their right mind would turn down Alcide?

Problem #2: once again, Tara gets the bad end of the stick. Or in this case, the boom stick. Because she totally got half her head blown off by Debbie and her shotgun! While I appreciated the shock of the moment (I love a good twist, more on that later), it just seemed like another instance of Tara getting shit on. I don't think the writers have really understood what to do with Tara since Season 1 other than just making her the plot punching bag, and this seemed like just another example of that. Back when season 4 began one of the things I hoped the show would fix was the Tara getting dumped on. Alas, it was not to be.

While these two things definitely were problematic, let's be honest. It's True Blood, overthinking it isn't a good thing. It's a hot mess, but it's SUPPOSED to be a hot mess! That's the fun! Since the finale fulfilled my basic criteria for an awesome True Blood episode I am calling it a win. You had ridiculous amounts of gore, surprising character deaths (several in fact), hot sex scenes, plot twists, and great lines (Sookie has a fairy vagina!). It also did a lot of hinting for things to come next season, another criteria of an excellent finale. Done and done.

So farewell for now True Blood! We'll see you next year when hopefully Russell will be ripping out more spine for funsies (my theory is that Pam is the one who freed him) and Sookie will finally smarten up and take every opportunity to hump Alcide.


I mean, COME ON.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

well written...and as i said i can watch...it just takes a couple days to get online :)