Who
could have guessed that this season wouldn’t end with a bang or a whimper, but
with the gross gurgling sound of a zombie vampire? Because that’s what we’re
basically getting into next season, right? Zombie vampires. Because the new
showrunner of True Blood, Brian Buckner, hates us.
Didn’t everyone feel that way by the end of
last night’s season six finale? It felt, quite overall, like a fake-out. Like
we got a too-easy resolution of the Warlow story and then a flash-forward
because the writers or whoever didn’t want to deal with any more character
development, they just wanted to set up the action for next season already.
Because why would anyone want to see Sam Merlotte campaigning for mayor or
Alcide finally deciding to date Sookie after she threw up on him the last time
they almost had sex? I don’t know, guys. Everything about this finale felt more
frustrating, more cheap, and more inconsistent than normal.
I suppose there were good things to be had in
last night’s episode, but the tone felt off. The storytelling felt off. And as
much as I mock True Blood for generally being a mess, I really am not looking
forward to an era that will maybe be taking its cues from The Walking Dead.
Not. Into. It. (And this is coming from someone who loves The Walking Dead
comics, but thinks the TV show is the worst fucking thing.)
So what did I think worked in “Radioactive”?
Some stuff. Mainly Eric’s penis. That’s basically it.
1. So Warlow is gone. OK! After making a
maypole for their wedding ceremony (where did Warlow get the ribbons and
flowers for that? Ugh, whatever), Warlow basically flips a shit when Sookie
tells him that things have changed and she doesn’t want to marry him
anymore—instead, can’t they just date, and can’t he be a part of her community?
Yeah, no. I legitimately gasped when Warlow slapped Sookie across the face,
finally breaking his Edward Cullen act,
but then when Sookie punked out and didn’t use her ball of faerie light to
blast him into nothingness? Lame as fuck. Instead we saw Sookie get saved again
by some men: her faerie grandfather Niall, back from the black hole or whatever
that Warlow sent him to, and the one and only Bill Compton, now just a regular
vampire and guilty over how he treated his former love, and Jason Stackhouse,
who stabbed Warlow with a stake infected with Hep V. Look, I love Jason, and I
like when he does things right, and I don’t mind Niall, because Rutger Hauer
really should have had more to do this season, and I even have a soft spot in
my heart for Bill, that pale Southern motherfucker. But I just wish, for once,
that Sookie wasn’t so fucking boring; she gets faux-empowered lines like “I do
not complete you,” but does she ever follow up with actions? Warlow calls
Sookie a “danger whore” again this episode, but is she really into danger? Or
is she into being saved? Either way, I am not into it.
2. Speaking of Bill Compton, he is now a
best-selling author! Let’s back up: So after saving everyone from Vamp Camp,
Bill can no longer feel Lilith, and is having major guilt over basically
trading Sookie’s life for Warlow’s blood. At Jessica’s urging (“You said that I
had to protect your humanity. Please do not make a failure out of me”), he
decides to save Sookie from Warlow—I wasn’t clear, though, if he knew Warlow
was going to turn out to be an asshole? Or if he just didn’t want Sookie to end
up as a vampire?—by soliciting Jason and his vamp Violet to help get them on
the faerie plane, which means that Andy and daughter Adilyn had to come
along, too. Although he fights Warlow, Bill is unable to enter Sookie’s house,
and so he can’t totally save her—and six months later, it doesn’t seem like
they’ve had much contact at all. But Bill looks so fancy on TV, promoting his
book “And God Bled: A Story of Death and Redemption,” and he’s become a leader
in the movement to deal with Hep V and the infected vamps (1/8th of
their population). But I guess we’ll be seeing him and Sookie again together
next season, with the heavy foreshadowing: “You need a vampire in your life,
Sookie.” Although she says “I could never really trust you,” I would honestly
be shocked if this show ended without the two of them together. And I’m
guessing that the seventh season will be the last, because I cannot deal with
this zombie vamp crap. Can. Not.
3. Speaking of those zombie vamps, I guess they’re going to
be Sam’s problem next season? Now that he’s mayor of Bon Temps and all. I
resent the flash-forward choice for a number of reasons, mainly because we don’t
get to see why Sam decided to run for office, why he decided to sell Merlotte’s
(maybe because Sookie never fucking showed up for work?), how he ran his campaign,
and how he and Nicole are still together after only having about three
conversations before she got pregnant. Plus, how is Sam so tolerant of the
vamps? Has he told people he’s a shifter? Is he still shifting? Does he really
believe that “if we separate church and state, we are 100 percent fucked”? This
political side of Sam is one we’ve never seen before, and I really don’t buy
any of this—him working with Bill, the two of them thinking the “monogamous
feeding relationship with a healthy vampire in exchange for that healthy
vampire’s protection for you and your family” will be successful—as feasible in
the long term. And if they’re both smart enough to come up with this plan, why
can’t they set up a perimeter around their cookout celebration so the zombie
vamps they’re so worried about DON’T GET INTO TOWN? Because that cliffhanger at
the end of the episode was just the worst. Plus, a world where Sam Merlotte
wears suits and not slim-fit jeans and ruins his sexily tousled old-man hair by
combing it IS NOT A WORLD IN WHICH I WANT TO LIVE.
4. If we're going to talk about sex, we need to talk about Jason Stackhouse, and how he isn’t having any. AGAIN, A
STORYLINE I CANNOT ACCEPT. So somehow Jason is happy with Violet? Happy enough
to build her a really Catholicism- and lavender-heavy basement lair where he
gives her oral sex for 178 nights in a row? I don’t buy that shit for a second.
But this show has always had a problem with Jason being raped and basically
liking it, right? We’ve gotten some throwaway lines about his experience at the
hands of the werepanthers, but somehow Jason has gone from being terrified of
Violet to being completely sexually attracted to her. Everything about this
storyline is wrong. And explaining it with “I’m hers now. Yeah, it’s fucking
weird,” isn’t enough. Still, I’ll take small victories in this episode: Lots of
Jason shirtless, lots of boasting (I loved his “You all may be vampires, but I
am an athlete!” during his volleyball game against James and Jessica), and lots
of incredulous Andy (his “That’s some bullshit!” when Violet said she and Jason
are “strictly monogamous” was gold).
5. And finally, a quick roundup of what’s going on with the
other vampires: Naked Eric (yes, we see what he’s working with) is reading a
book on the sunny Alps and bursts into flames when Warlow dies, but I doubt he’s
dead, because this show isn’t that stupid; Pam leaves Tara to go look for Eric
(Tara: “You guys are the worst fucking makers ever”); and Tara is tasked with
looking after Willa, but is probably infected with Hep V because her mother is
a crazy bitch and begged her to feed off her, and why else would she do that
than to infect and kill the daughter that she resents so much? “Let me feed you”
has never been creepier, right?
+ Finally, some of my favorite lines to close out this
season:
+ “I do just want to fuck you and own you and use you for
your blood. … In 1,000, 2,000 years, you’ll learn to love me,” says Warlow. I
really hated how the Warlow storyline dealt with time. If he is so fucking old,
Hep V could still kill him? Blerghy blergh blergh. Are we really saying human
scientists are that advanced? We can’t cure AIDS or cancer, but we can achieve
this?
+ “I’m like two weeks old!” You know, I ragged on Andy’s
half-faerie daughters in the beginning, but I have really grown to like the
addition of Adilyn. Having a largely innocent but still easily frustrated
teenage girl in the cast is always good, I think, especially since Jessica has
become so vampy over the years.
+ “Who’s making a Target run?” Rest in peace, vampires who
Bill saved from Vamp Camp with Warlow’s blood, only to inevitably kill when
Warlow’s blood ran out. I like how that wasn’t addressed at all in the
six-month flash-forward; Bill has no remorse over those vampires who might have
died while staying out in the sun too long?
+ James has a vampire band now? OK.
+ I loved this exchange between Violet and Jason as they
prepare to go find Sookie; she: “You’ll never be alone again,” he: “Yeah, let’s
roll!” How has she still not had sex with him yet?!
+ In case you needed more examples of Bill being back to his
normal, non-Lilith self, he sets Dr. Takahashi go, glamours him into forgetting
everything Bill put him through, and gives him a suitcase full of money. Yay!
(Also, it totally blew my mind to realize that actor Keone Young is the same
Mr. Wu from Deadwood. I love when HBO casts things within its own family.)
+ Some good Bill lines this week: “Even though we vampires
came out of the coffin, we never really came all the way out” when talking
about his book, and “You can growl all you want, Bright Eyes, but it doesn’t
change the truth” to Alcide when offering Sookie his protection.
+ And, oh, right, Sookie is now with Alcide, even though
they haven’t thought about each other romantically in many, many episodes, and
Sookie just offered herself up to Sam a couple of episodes ago. Sure, I want some
story consistency, but actually, I’ll give that up for shirtless Alcide. Mmm.
Also, their height discrepancy is hilarious to me.
+ “I’m safe. I’m a survivor, too.” Yeah, OK, Sookie. Sure.
+ Finally, did Lafayette have ANY lines this episode? So
rude.
+ However, I will acknowledge the deliciousness of Ryan Kwanten this episode. You know the way to my heart, True Blood. And it's through these dudes' abs.