True Blood: Review: Season 6 eps 8-10

HBO, 4-18 August 2013

Bill’s plan to use fairy blood to allow vampires to walk in the sunlight comes to fruition, but not before Eric has had his fill of Warlow and gone on a very bloody rampage at the vampire concentration camp. Sookie agrees to marriage with Warlow, but gets cold feet – much to his annoyance. A last minute rescue is executed, but the future for Bon Temps clearly has some dark times ahead.

Well, that season of True Blood fell completely flat and the final batch of episodes didn’t (and quite frankly couldn’t) do much to redeem it. The vamps enjoyed some sunshine, but it didn’t last long. Bill is seemingly OK again, but he’s still just a whiney old Southern Gothic git. Sookie was saved by grandfather Niall – and much as Rutger Hauer gives Granpa Munster a run for his money, this was still a groan-worthy deus-ex-machina climax. And after Eric’s sister longed for demise, Violet comes to replace her, tormenting Jason and the viewers in equal measure.

Narratively, things have been out of balance all season – characters have lost their personality (Alcide, we’re looking at you, whoever you are this week), the small town milieu is missing, the mismatched and cack-handed cross-cutting between Terry’s funeral and the rampaging vampires – and the final episode showed things are still out of whack.

There are some highs. Alcide gets back to normal (though he also gets a dire haircut), and Lafayette and Andy are still the best things in it (but why oh why did LaLa get nothing to do in the final episode at all). The coda at the end of the season sets up lots of things for season seven (thankfully it’ll also be the final season, as this show has truly run out of steam) and leaves some cliff-hangers. Eric! Noooooooo! Lettie-Mae, you’re not a carrier of HepV are you? But vampire-zombies? Puh-lease! Oh, well.

Verdict: There are enough sharks being jumped here to fill a tornado.

Season 6: 3/10

Brigid Cherry