True Blood, 6x08 -- "Dead Meat"

This has been by far the best season of True Blood in three or four years, though by tonight’s episode, you’d hardly know it.

The biggest problem True Blood has had for the past few years is all the pointless characters it juggles between twenty different story threads each week. The show wants us to care about so many people and so many things, but it can never seem to actually back any of it up. Ever. The writers have failed time and time again to make every storyline interesting, so half of them become so dull that they’re almost unbearable to watch. Alcide’s wolf pack plot remains the most pointless part of the show. Sam is stumbling around with nothing really to do at all (but more on this later). Terry died two weeks ago, and we’re still in the planning stages of his funeral. That’s how slowly the narrative on this show moves.

But then there’s the prison, the saving grace True Blood needed more than ever this year. Pam, Jessica, Tara, Jason, and the Newlins are all stuck in a vampire prison/research facility that has allowed this show to unleash all bat-shit insanity it can pull off so well. We barely spend any time here tonight, but what we do see is just as crazy as ever. Jason is now Violet’s play toy, and even though Violet is a problem as a character -- she’s too cartoony and cliché and, frankly, I can’t think of a damn reason why she was introduced in the first place -- it’s just so weird that it actually sort of works. Meanwhile, Sarah Newlin realizes some of the vampires are on to her schemes with the TruBlood and herds them all into the infamous Sun Chamber we know from Bill’s vision. Then she goes and kills and Asian woman with a high-heeled shoe. “Thank you, Jesus,” is the first thing she says. God, Sarah Newlin is just so much fun. Anna Camp makes a wonderful villain, doesn’t she?

It’s too bad we spend so little time at the prison this week, because the rest the show has to offer is so tired and boring. Alcide’s stories have always fallen by the wayside for me, and at this point I barely even pay attention anymore. Although, now it seems he’s done with the pack life, so maybe that’s a silver lining? Then we come to Sam Merlotte, who has long outlived his usefulness on this show and is desperate for a decent story this year. We get a lot of lovey-dovey crap between him and the blandest-of-the-bland Nicole because she is now pregnant with Sam’s child, and they profess their love for each other in the biggest “who cares?” moment of the entire episode. It really just falls flat because, seriously, who gives a damn about Nicole at all? But the biggest Sam problem of them all comes from Sookie, who, well...

Sookie must be the most clueless main character on television. She’s weeks behind on everything else going on, and she’s so wrapped up in her confusing Warlow/Bill war that she’s once again little more than just a pawn in everyone else’s games. This has become an expected precedent on this show, and it becomes worse year after year. And then the scene that comes completely out of left field: she tells Sam that she’s always imagined they’d end up together, because apparently they’re romance is still a thing that’s happening on True Blood. Here’s the thing: this is probably their first significant scene together in years. Any possible romantic tension between the two that had been set up in season one has long since disappeared. Why are we digging up this old dead story? Presumably because Sam is still supposed to be important, but let’s face it -- he’s not. We are certainly supposed to be taking this as a very serious character moment for Sookie, but it doesn’t hold up in the slightest. If they wanted us to care, this should have been slowly reintroduced to us throughout the season. Just dropping it on us like this felt extraordinarily forced and contrived, and it did not work one bit.

Good news: judging by the promo for next week, there’s a lot of crazy prison fun to be had in the coming final two episodes of the season. Let’s just all pray this show can pull it off.

Notes:

• Alexander Skarsgard is the best. His opening scene with Bill is everything that this show should always be, yet so seldom is.
• Sigh. More fairy baby drama. Again, who cares?
• Sarah interrogated Steve Newlin while forcing him to sprint in a hamster wheel. “It is scientifically impossible for you to be this fucking slow!” I love Sarah Newlin so very much.

My Grade: B-