The fourth season of True Blood has concluded, and it with its conclusion it drove home the season’s main thesis: the human (alive or undead) condition and its predilection for addiction and the rather impressive amount of destruction that addiction causes. Throughout the season the addiction manifested itself in a variety of forms: addictions to people, locations, power, and in the case of Jovial Crackhead Andy, vampire blood.
‘Soul of Fire’ wasn’t a bad episode of True Blood by any means. In fact it was the most entertained I was in a good while in this season. It had everything I want in a True Blood episode. Almost no Sookie (let’s not get greedy), brooding bro-dude vampire posturing over barely hidden homosexual tension, Jessica, and rocket launchers. Chyeah boy! It had it all. If this episode didn’t entertain me, chances are I was never going to be.
Just wait until you see the last scene, my friend Adam told me. True Blood, he said, is a truly awful show. Momentous words coming from the only dude in my group of friends who still watches this show besides me. One by one the buddies of mine have ducked out. Everyone else has been felled by the trite themes, the clichéd characters, and the spread-thin storylines.
Just wait until you see the last scene.
And saw I did.
It’s impressive how out of touch the writers of True Blood are with their own subtexts. Nothing could have solid their obliviousness better than the puke-inducing monologue that Slutty Sookie delivered to her two panting, devolved meat-sac lovers who wanted nothing more than to explode their cock-missiles all over her stratosphere.
A sultry Sookie drabbed in red lingerie stood center frame. She spoke to the two man, flanked on either side both emotionally and physically by the two other lines in their insufferable love triangle. Then somehow within the confines of a wet dream, Sookie clad in nothing but suggestions of cloth decided to launch into some absurd (in the context) feminist diatribe.
My friend is gnarling his gnarly teeth on an enormous chicken leg. I’m reclining, staring at the television and thinking about a plethora of pithy pittances. The homework I have to do. The shit I have to take. The porn I’m inevitably going to indulge in. Once or twice. Friend gnashing across flesh. Me, spinning inward into the cosmos of my own inner monologue.
On screen, what was once a Viking Lord and a Gap Toothed Horror are indulging in their thirtieth conversation of this season in which they proclaim that they want nothing but to lie in one another’s arms. They’re floating about a magical frosty fornication forest, replete with snow. As they babble, and babble, and babble, I can’t help but zone out and imagine a time when Eric wasn’t some blathering bitch. Some quivering pile of Nordic Handsomeness reduced to a babbling bonerjam, whose only purpose on the show is to give Sookie yet another cheap momentary bliss. Only to be wrenched away, causing oh the tears to flow, oh the sadness to swallow.
I usually have a True Blood support group. Every Sunday I watch the show over a friend’s house. I recline into his comfy leather sofa and I prepare myself for what I’m about to watch. I didn’t suffer such a benefit this week. The friend spend the weekend in North Carolina, and the only interaction I had with him was picking him up from the airport.
This was bad news bears. Without my friend, my sponsor if you will, I was adrift. It was up to me to watch it. I have a wandering attention span on the best of days. Without my friend-sponsor-reprimanding influence, I am liable to refresh Facebook and ponder if I want to eat Cheez-Its or take a shower while Billy and Sookie and Viking Guy are prattling on.
It was tough to get through this week’s episode. Real tough.
Last night’s episode of True Blood was an obvious homage to Shakespearean notions of the Forest. A world filled without rules, which character depart into to exercise their darkest desires. Without the constraints of society, in the comforting sanctity of trees and creaks and shit, vampires and faeries can fuck to their heart’s content. Balls-swinging, butt-bumpin’ mossy bark grindin’ fucking.
If the goal of a television show is to keep you watching, then this week’s episode of True Blood succeeded. It had that sort of “son of a bitch it’s over?” cliffhanger ending that makes you regret your inability to pierce time and space with your Dong of Atemporality. If only I can run fast enough, piercing the thin skein that keeps us transcending space and time.
When we last left True Blood, Eric was a brainless twink dream, Jason was getting raped by a pack of werepanthers, Sookie was probably doing something, and Bill was sentencing dudes to death in-between knocking boots with that lawyer. Whatever could come next! Let’s find out, shall we?
Alright, this is what I’m talking about. I dug last night’s True Blood more than I had any episode in recent memory. On a relative scale, nothing really happened. Everything was par the True Blood course. Couples fought. Vampires fucked. Melodrama was as melodrama is. However by slowing down the episode and giving characters time to interact on a personal level, the show hit with a funny, charming episode.
|
|
|
