True Blood – “Evil Is Going on” – review

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So…that was underwhelming.  And frustrating.  I retract my prediction that the last few episodes of Season 3 had been scripted after the greenlighting of Season 4; by the amount of bandaids slapped over plot points to give them a semblance of closure here, it’s obvious that this season simply suffered from too many plot points and too little time.  I don’t really even mean too little time in the finale itself; a two-hour episode would not have made things feel less rushed.  I just mean that the compressed timeline of life in Bon Temps is compromising the pacing of the show.  Everything that happened needed to happen over a couple days, not like 4 hours.

First things first, the saving of Eric and Russell.  Um.  Sookie’s lying comatose and near death, and a few sips off of Bill’s wrist is all it takes for her to be able to move Eric, feed him, then go back and move Russell?  Really?  I mean, I know V heals all wounds and shit, but in the three or so minutes they had left before meeting the final death that seemed…well, I had to suspend my disbelief so hard one of the moorings snapped.

I will admit, they pulled a nice switcheroo on me when it came to Eric’s Viking revenge.  When Godric the Angel first appeared and started blathering about how Eric needed to forgive Russell and all, I literally thought What. the. Fuck.  If I wanted a show about forgiveness I’d watching fucking Twilight.  Godric the angel, really?  No.  I totally thought Pam had it right: “Eric, he killed your family.  Now rip off his fucking head.”  Except that Eric is smarter than that, and he listened to Godric.  He realized that just killing Russell would be too easy on him, would give him nothing but peace, and Eric couldn’t have that.  So he chained him in silver and cemented his ass in a hole with his grief.  Ha!  Now THAT was a revenge.  Nice call, Godric, even if Eric did exactly the opposite of what you wanted with the information.  The best laid plans, I swear.  Lol.  Fuck your forgiveness ethic.  Team Northman!

There were a few moments of hilarious goodness in the smaller plotlines.

Hoyt’s mother doing a redneck intervention!  Ha ha.  “If you think I am going to sit back and watch you throw your life away on a red-headed dead girl, you are sorely mistaken!”  Guess she means it, since she went and bought a gun.  Someone needs to make an appearance on Jerry Springer, methinks. 

And I loved Hoyt setting up a house for him and Jessica…although the random dropped baby doll lying in the dust is no doubt meant to be foreshadowing that at some point the specter of No Babies will come into their lives and poison things. 

I like that Jesus is more than just a love interest for Lafayette, that he was the fulcrum for awakening Lafayette’s inherent powers.  Cause, oh, shit, Lafayette’s inner vision is cray-cray!   Blood on Sam’s hands, “you cross me you’re a dead man,” prophetic given that he shot his own brother (!) at the end of the episode.  Evil Rene “I’m inside her even now”—guess they really are Rosemary’s Baby-ing Arlene.  If she gets a pixie cut I’m going to tear up laughing. 

Also, Sam’s behavior made me think the theme of this show is really “No supernatural is also a decent person.”  Cause so far don’t none of them have a clean slate anymore except Alcide, and we all know it’s only a matter of time before he goes off the deep end of character shark-jumping too.  Well, maybe Sam’s inner asshole explains why Sookie never wanted to date him—she knew what he was really like.

Let’s see, what else…oh.  Yeah.  Looks like now Jason’s a savior to the inbred panthers and a Romeo, all at once?  Well, you know what, at least it’s a fucking storyline for him.  So, sure, I can roll with it.

Tara, Tara, Tara…you got skillz, girlfriend, to cut your braids and then get your hair into perfect pin curls within an hour.  Did you still have some of Franklin’s blood to help your hands move double-time?  Here was my thought after she stormed out of Sam’s place longing to forget everything that had happened to her:  Is Tara’s fairy godmother about to show up and grant her wish?  I guess she’s on her way out of town, for once and for all (not really because it’s never really on shows like this—but it was a way to give her some sort of conclusion for now, I guess).  She has either utterly rock-bottomed or grown up at last, to say what she did to her mother instead of getting angry with her.  Maybe a bit of both.

All right, so now we get to the elephant in the room.  Bill and Sookeh.  First of all, I dislike the necessity of making Bill into a villain.  Also, I can’t even believe that he never said anything about Sookie’s delicious blood or seemed even to notice at first, no matter what kind of forewarning he had or what kind of self-control he has.  This kind of turn-about on a character is why I don’t read series that were not planned from the beginning, like Harry Potter was–basically, this inability to present a character in one way and have them just grow from there.  I like Bill.  I like Bill and Sookie.  I dislike that he lied to her, and I don’t blame her for throwing him out of her life for that, but I don’t like that the show did that even if the books did.  It wasn’t a total surprise, because the hints had been there all along, but along with Sookie I wanted to believe the best of him.  So now he’s just on a murdering-vampires rampage to protect her even if he never sees her again, and if he beats Sophie-Anne in the challenge likely to be the sad little king on his sad little hill as the new King of Louisissipi who can’t have the one thing he really wants.  Yawn. 

And Sookie vanishing in the fae realm.  Also yawn.  Clearly she and Tara have the same mentality—run the fuck away from your problems.  Because that always helps. 

I dunno.  I think if I keep watching this show I have to watch it with a smirk.  Maybe the joke’s on me because everyone else was from the beginning.  But I didn’t particularly enjoy the twists presented to carry us to Season 4. 

I’ll sign off for the season with the best quote of the night:  “Now if you two are finished eye fucking each other can we go?”  Amen, Northmen.  We’s gone.

2 Comments

1. 

   Ormshaw

   October 19, 2010 at 5:38 pm

   Haha amazing loved season 1 & 2, 3 nose dived, your summary of the finale, and my own opinion of this episode is uncanny. Far too many loose ends and what the fuck are they doing to Tara?!? How many beatings can someone take?

   Reply
2. 

   Elena Nola

   October 20, 2010 at 9:42 am

   Hi Ormshaw, glad I wasn’t the only one who felt that way! I wish I had more hope that they’d pull it up again in Season 4, but I’m sticking my my decision to go into it with a smirk.

   Reply