TV Review: True Blood Season 7 – Series Finale

About: True Blood is an American television drama series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in northwestern Louisiana. The series centers on the adventures of Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a telepathic waitress with an otherworldly quality.

I keep writing about the television series ‘True Blood’ and now that the series is completely over, I am a bit melancholy. It had gone downhill, I’m sorry to say.Variety says; People can debate when True Blood’s creative rigor mortis officially set in but suffice it to say this once-significant and hugely lucrative HBO series limps into its seventh and final season looking pretty anemic.

The presumption is that you know the show and characters.

As I’ve said, the metaphors for the vampire are clear: Ideas such as eternal youth, beauty, strength and never ‘dying’ – in the sense of being gone forever are prominent. The vampire embodies the cultural desire for youth [creams, Botox, plastic surgery etc.] and strength [gyms] in addition to other things.

The show explores several contemporary issues, such as the struggle for equal rights, discrimination and violence against minorities and homosexuals, the problems of drug addiction, the power of faith and religion, the control/influence of the media, the quest for identity, and the importance of family.

‘True Blood’ ended weeks ago and I cannot stop thinking about it because I am still so pissed off. Vampire Bill chooses ‘true death’ to let Sookie, his love, have a baby with a hypothetical human person. A friend of mine made the point that Bill was selfish in asking Sookie to kill him and good riddance to him. I can see that but a show that is subversive to begin with should let him ‘live,’ love, and be the prick that he is. If Sookie does not hate him, let her be with him, I say. The International Business Times notes; Sookie’s love life has been a main focus throughout the seven seasons of “True Blood,” and it will continue to be as the final season winds down. To create a fake, noble martyr is worse than death frankly. Let her get in vitro fertilization and be with him. Who even knows if she can conceive a child? Look, sometimes we make questionable choices – I’ve made several – but I would not change them for anything.

Alcide’s death hardly put a dent in Sookie who slept with Bill almost immediately. Nice, eh? They deserve each other, really. TV Line says; Proving that she really didn’t care about Alcide — at least not nearly as much as she claimed — Sookie rushed to Chez Compton, clad in naught but a short nightgown, and ended the episode with a good old-fashioned hump sesh by the fireplace. It was a reunion we all knew was inevitable, and I definitely enjoyed the delicious Season 1 undertones, but I honestly didn’t expect Sookie and Bill to go all in (tee hee!) so quickly. Considering her ex-boyfriend’s body is barely even cold yet, I think a kiss would have been enough to whet the appetites of thirsty Bill-Sookie shippers.

Entertainment Weekly says; Bill tells Sookie that dying of Hep-V has made him feel more human than when he was human, and he wants to be reunited with his family. Staying with her, he’d be denying her children (has he not heard of sperm donors or adoption?), and he finally admits she’s not the only weak one: As long as he’s on the planet, he can’t not be with her either because he loves her too much. The twist is one you feel foolish for not seeing coming: Bill asks Sookie to use her one-time fairy light ball to kill him. By showing him the true death, she’d be setting them both free—she’d just be normal and vampires would no longer be lining up at her door.

In general things were tied up pretty neatly *yawn. * I’m glad Eric chose to live, Jessica and Hoyt celebrate ‘true love’ with marriage, Sam leaves town to be with his baby… Did I want something radical? Probably and at the least I wanted something unique. All these things are lovely but kind of unoriginal. Now things do not necessarily need to be original but a show that most often bends the rules should not suddenly conform to them.

Series finales are often polarizing says Entertainment Weekly, and True Blood’s will likely divide fans between those who are satisfied with a happy ending and those who want an hour of TV that leaves their hearts in their throats and their butts on the edge of their seats. The final season has been about getting back to the characters and letting them have time to actually sit and talk to one another. That’s a lot of what they did this hour, for better or worse.

IGN reports on the ‘blah’ season: Some of the more bemusing elements of Season 7 came from the main roster deaths, where we saw extremely unceremonious exits for Alcide and Tara (who got splattered off-screen within the first few seconds of the premiere). Alcide’s death at the hands of the angry Bon Temps gathering was more or less done to illustrate the point that no one, not even Sookie, cared about him all that much. It was basically an unspoken truth that Sookie and Alcide (who’d never been given much more than “protective” in the character department) were a bore and that she was meant for someone else. Which was possibly meant to inform Bill’s decision to die later in the season, but all it did was demonstrate how unconscionably fickle Sookie was.

I wanted the end of the series to reflect the irreverent attitude it used to have. It metaphorically and literally dealt with racy and controversial issues. It was unique in that regard. I feel that the end was very conventional.