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True Blood – Let’s Get Out of Here

The road to redemption for True Blood this season is going to be a long one. After a strange but somewhat promising start, the show fell victim to indecision and was plagued by the fact that the source material for the show, at least in the case of “Dead to the World,” absolutely sucks. I haven’t read it, and I know that artistic license has obviously been taken, but Charlaine Harris simply bit off more than she could chew when it came to introducing witches into the story. The Antonia plot is not terrible, in fact it has the potential to be far from it, but trying to have it be so stupidly “authentic” (if it could even really be called that) is just making it ridiculous. Based on a very quick Google search, Fiona Shaw is a good actress, but if you’re going to have the main antagonist of the show speak in a Spanish accent for most of the season, don’t cast an Irish woman! Try as she might she just sounds stupid and it sucks any sliver of seriousness or gravitas out of her character. 

Furthermore her revenge plot is nonsensical. If she really has the power to make the vampires walk into the sun (which she does), just cast the spell forever until eventually she wins. She is a spirit possessing a woman, she doesn’t need to sleep and isn’t really under any threat given her power, so why bother even trying to form a coven if you’re just going to stop using them anyway? Why on Earth she needs to specifically stay in a tiny town in Louisiana is also beyond me. She has no personal connection to the place at all, save for the fact that Marnie was attacked by Erik (which was entirely her own fault) and she could very easily succeed with her plan by going absolutely anywhere else in the world! No one besides the people already involved actually knows that she exists or has the power that she has, so why she hasn’t just hopped a red eye to the middle of New York City and killed thousands of vampires is just an unanswerable question due to sheer lack of common sense in the writing.

Ignoring the blazingly obvious and horrendous errors in the story line, it, for what it is, did at least get somewhere this week. After Bill and Antonia’s meeting turned into a mini war that got Sookie shot and Erik firmly under the necromancer’s control, her new plan following the failure of Operation Sunlight, came into the spotlight. She isn’t just really into tall Swedish men, she wants to use Erik to destroy Bill and the AVL’s work in vampire-human relations: having Erik assassinate Bill at the tolerance meeting in front of national news as well as slaying several humans. Amazingly the plan, let’s call it Kill Bill, is about the most sensible thing that the witch has done since she came to town. Trying to turn all humans against the vampires as well as causing a general state of fear throughout the world will undoubtedly get her further than babbling whilst she floats above a circle of people holding hands. Of course, things aren’t too likely to go the way that she plans them, as at the very end of the episode when things hit the fan, Sookie arrives.

Having survived her gunshot by drinking Bill’s blood, the faerie spent most of the episode dreaming about having a threesome with the king and his sheriff, but once she came to, she got to action. Working out where Erik was and trying to save him didn’t work, but it did lead to a very strange set of circumstances with Alcide’s girlfriend Debbie. Having witnessed Alcide risk himself to save Sookie, Debbie seemed to want revenge, then, in what seemed like a trick she offered to help Sookie with whatever she needed i.e saving Erik. Then, revealing that it actually was a trick she tried to turn over Sookie to Antonia, but only kind of. In the end she helped Sookie get to the meeting to warn Bill, but I really don’t know whether she hates Sookie or not. She tried to turn her over but then immediately helped her with something extremely important to her...anyone else confused? 


Furthering the werewolves’ involvement in the Bon Temps world, pack leader Marcus continued his beef with Sam over their mutual desire of the same woman. With Sam winning on all fronts of the battle, Marcus took to intimidation to try and scare him off, getting the “about 6’6 and wider than a door” Alcide to stand with him. Things didn’t quite go down the way that they were supposed to however, when Tommy took on his brother’s form and tried to settle the score himself. Getting himself well and truly beaten down in the process, it is now somewhat unclear where the story stands, as Tommy admitted to having slept with Marcus’ wife whilst in Sam’s form, but Sam has also slept with her. Will the brothers now unite in a mini war against Marcus, or will little else come of it?  I really couldn’t say, but based on the way True Blood is going at the moment, it wouldn’t surprise me if they introduce an entirely new supernatural creature just to complicate matters and make you forget that they didn’t have a clue where they were going with the story.

There were a couple of other things going on around town in “Let’s Get Out of Here”, most significantly in terms of screen time, but least significantly in terms of actual importance: Lafayette had gotten himself possessed and had stolen Terry and Arlene’s baby. What ensued was the most ridiculous thing that has happened in the show to date (and that is saying something), with the possessed Lafayette in a standoff with Jason and Andy at Hoyt’s house until Jesus showed up and realized the truth of the situation. Making the spirit understand that she was actually dead, he saved the baby from harm in exchange for reuniting the spirit with her murdered child. The grave being right outside, the guys got to digging and when the two were brought together one last time, Jesus did his thing and sent the spirit packing. The problem was that it was just about the most ridiculous looking thing that has ever happened. I really can’t describe it, you simply have to see it to believe. 

 
After the situation was resolved, Jason took Jessica’s things to Bill’s house at Hoyt’s request and they (Jessica and Jason, not Jason and Hoyt) finally had sex. Why on Earth Taylor Swift was the soundtrack to their aggressive sex I will never know - but that’s a minor issue relative to the show’s problems. As I said before, the road to redemption for the show is going to be Route 66 on steroids, the whole thing right now is ridiculous, half of the characters are pointless and annoying, and the other half are invovled in plots that aren't nearly as interesting as they should be. True Blood will not likely recover before the season is through, with only three episodes left under its belt, but at very least there appears to be some genuine drama on the horizon that doesn’t make one want to cringe. 

Rating
6.5

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