True Blood: Season Four - What A Witch

True Blood: Season Four - What A Witch

Posted on Thursday May 10, 2012, 17:18 by Helen O'Hara in Small Screen

So how are we feeling about True Blood these days? I have to admit, season four was something of a letdown for me. I mean, it's still entertaining, particularly when Lafayette was involved in anything, or Jessica. But so few of the rest of the cast seemed to be having fun, and many of them seemed to be forced to play against their strengths, and what with the show hitting DVD so that you can all have a look, let's consider what's been going on. Season Four spoilers, incidentally, follow throughout.

Take, for example, Alexander Skarsgard's Eric, struck with amnesia and rediscovering life alongside Sookie. In the books, it worked rather well for the big fierce manipulator to be suddenly reduced to powerlessness and then to finally get into Sookie's pants by dint of not endlessly contriving at same. Somehow here, however - not helped by Skarsgard's horrendously parted "innocent" hair - he just seemed a bit silly. Which has the knock-on effect of rendering Sookie's inability to resist him a little baffling. GIRL! He was about a thousand times hotter and more interesting when he wasn't trying to look like Just William. At the very least ruffle up that hair; did we learn nothing about the importance of proper coiffage from Zoolander's Meekus?

Then there's Bill, now King of Louisiana and pining for Sookie only when it seems convenient to the plot. His scenes with vamp daughter Jessica generally spark, but he doesn't have much else to do beyond doling out exposition and dithering about witches. Jessica, a character not in the books, is left as the series' most entertaining bloodsucker, trying to balance her good girl morality with her newly vampire nature. And it's a good thing we have someone vamping it up, because with Bill's typical restraint, Eric's sudden idiocy and even Pam losing her good looks to a rotting curse, the undead were kinda living up to the second part of their name rather than the first.

So could the shapeshifters fill the gap? Well, eh. Sam developed a nice little romance with another shifter, only for family problems to get in the way. His brother Tommy develops new human-shifting powers that are not much exploited beyond a one-episode escapade (all ramifications of which have more-or-less vanished within two more shows) and is killed off just as he was getting interesting. And the werewolves, who almost never change form (due to the fact that even HBO has budgetary limits, I suppose) basically hang out and behave like they're on Sons Of Anarchy. The Alcide / Debbie Pelt story develops differently and more slowly than in the books, which is no bad thing, but ends up in the same place. Perhaps Alcide will be given a bit more to do in consequence next season: it's hard to imagine that he'll have much less.

Which leaves the magic users. Fiona Shaw's really terrific as Marnie, all outward meekness and inner steel, as well as her alter-ego Antonia when she's possessed. It feels like the cleverest choices in the season largely concerned her character, a multi-layered and pleasantly complex human being amid a crowd of sometimes one-note leads. Contrast Marnie to Tara, for instance: we see Tara early in the series swearing that she'll never be a victim again, all tough and fired up and determined to defend herself - only for none of that to amount to anything once she's back in Bon Temps. Lamest character development ever. And don't even get me started on the final episode developments for Tara. Marnie, however, got to travel from victim to avenging angel to villain and back again (and again), getting more meat in one season than Tara has managed in four. Lafayette and Jesus also get a little love, even if their entire storyline feels, in retrospect, like set-up for next season rather than this, and the Bellefleurs mostly offer comic relief.

So overall, this felt like treading water to me, setting up more exciting developments for next season. Oh sure, the shagging levels were still high, and there was enough of Alcide's leather jacket / Jessica's Little Red Riding Hood costume to keep those of any sexual inclination titillated, but it wasn't quite vintage for me. It might be time to pull the action out of Bon Temps and explore the vampire world a bit more (aren't we overdue a convention somewhere?) and it's certainly time to pick up the pace to something a little more Vampire Diaries, as this series' final episode did.

But what do you think? Time to step it up a gear, or are you still happy just admiring the pretty bloodsuckers?