Season four of “True Blood” has come and gone and the show continues to be a big hit for HBO. The show has already been picked up for a fifth season, but is the show as good as it used to be or has it gone too far off the deep end?
Tom Kuipers: You’re a big fan of “True Blood” — why do you like the show so much?
Jocelyn Gee: Violence, beautiful vampires, sex, drugs, murder and basically any other mythological creature in one show? It's a dream come true for fantasy enthusiasts. The show gets your imagination running wild while still entertaining you with the gruesome scenes people enjoy watching. “True Blood” has sex appeal, and as long as we are all human, the show will continue to be a hit.
TK: All of that stuff does sound awesome, but I think the show is failing on something really important: its plot. The first season of “True Blood” was great. It combined all those things you mentioned, but it also had a really cool "whodunit" murder mystery theme going on. Once that was over, the show has been just spinning its wheels.
JG: I actually do agree with that. The first season was the best, mostly because of the suspense of the plot. But how often can they continue a murder mystery plot? The writers had to get more creative the second, third and fourth time around. Each season has twists and jaw-dropping moments, but they’re done in a different way each time. Each season ends with a spectacular cliffhanger, this season it was Tara's death. Will someone come save her? Or will Sookie cultivate her ever-so-cheesy fairy powers and resurrect her dying friend?
TK: This season’s cliffhanger definitely has me wanting to know what’s next, but only because Tara really needed to leave the show. You also mentioned my least favorite part of the show: the fairy powers. Really? Fairy powers? “True Blood” started with the premise of vampires coming out and living in the real world. Now, the show has gone crazy this last season with witches, crazy light shields, mediums, and ghosts — and don't even get me started on the werepanther sex. I can deal with some nonsensical stuff, but “True Blood” really brings it to a new level.
JG: OK, the werepanthers do genuinely bother me as well, but let's get real here. Jason Stackhouse is such an unfortunate character — something ridiculous had to happen to him. The werepanthers were useless, and honestly, who has ever even heard of such a thing? I do think it was time for Tara to die. With all the ridiculous changes to Tara’s character since the beginning of the show, discovering that she had become a lesbian was bordering on irrelevancy. Another character I can't stand is Andy Bellefleur. In one of the episodes, he made love to a fairy, and that was a whole storyline I wish they never got into.
TK: Agreed — that's my main issue with the show. It constantly runs its plot in directions I don't care about and never moves anything important forward.
JG: Yes, but that's what you have to do in television in this day and age. You have a character sleep with a mythological creature and bam: it’s entertainment. However, what truly carries the show is the love triangle between Sookie, Eric and Bill. Both attractive and powerful vampires succumb to her beauty and the sweet smell of her fairy blood. That storyline could go in circles for a thousand more seasons, and I would still be enthralled.
TK: I think this brings us to the gender divide. The second any show crosses into love triangle territory, I'm out. The show has always bordered on soap opera but with episodes that had a couple lying in bed the whole time it is a full on soap opera. Even still, the last few episodes took a few big steps forward for the show. They got rid of some characters that didn't need to be around anymore and hopefully wrapped up a few of the worse storylines. “True Blood” started out as the anti-“Twilight” and I would love to see it go back to that.
JG: It totally must be a gender thing, because I enjoy a nice, complicated love triangle that I can live vicariously through. But all in all, I think “True Blood” is simply good, mindless entertainment. People love to watch crazy things happen to other people. In the case of “True Blood,” it's watching Sookie shoot light from her hands or seeing Lafayette become possessed by an insecure, power-hungry witch — bring it on, season five!
Reach the reporters at tkuipers@asu.edu, jocelyn.gee@asu.edu Click here to subscribe to the daily State Press newsletter.
