SPOILER.
I'm going to walk you through most of the plot (if you can call it that) of the first four seasons. After reading this, hopefully you'll agree with my decision to cut this shitty show from my television diet and you'll do the same.
Here we go.
Background info: True Blood is a brand of synthetic blood, that once patented and released, prompts vampires to come out of hiding and join humanity since their sustainment can now be artificially satified. We're introduced to the world of the vampires through the blossoming relationship of main characters Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic twenty-something, and Bill Compton, a people-loving, gentelman's vampire. And despite Bill's desire to assimilate, we soon learn that he is in the minority of his species. And the other vampires are pretty badass. They fuck and kill as they please and some have lived through some crazy parts of history in their extended undead existence. And it's HBO, so there's lots of blood and sex and hot actors and actresses, and the vampires' blood is basically the a trippiest drug in the universe. Its a wild time in Louisiana. You can get behind this crazy little world. All of a sudden, you dig vampires.
Let's fucking go.
So, now that you know this definitely isn't Twilight and you're sufficiently turned on by one of the Stackhouse siblings, you're ready for some crazy carnage, some serious clashes between vampires and humans, maybe a war, who knows? The possibilities are pretty much endless. Like I said, let's fucking go.
Except it takes quite some time to go. In fact, the whole first season is a slow-moving murder mystery. So we have a world of vampires and human interaction to explore, and the writers choose to make the antagonist some redneck version of a vampire-racist who goes around killing women who are nice to vampires, including Sookie's grandmother (After this tragic event, our protagonist reacts by eating a pie for about five minutes on screen. Exhilarating stuff.). There's only so far a one-dimensional love story and a murder mystery can take you. Halfway through the first season, I am still screaming, "Let's fucking go!" but this time its out of frustration rather than excitement.
But I didn't give up on the show. And thank god, because the second season was awesome. This is where True Blood really hooks its viewers, even if they don't realize it. They are always secretly hoping for another second season, but unfortunately, as you will see, we have come way too far for that to ever happen again.
Season two incorporates a brainwashing church that builds an army to take out the vampires and a maenad (some crazy bitch that worships the Greek god Dionysus) that uses mind control to turn the town into a giant orgy. Plus you get some more information about shapeshifters which are another form of magical creature. The season ends with Sookie shooting lights out of her hands and a main character being kidnapped. Oh shit.
Now you may be concenred about the amount of magical creatures already appearing. Don't worry about it. So far we have vampires, shape-shifters, fairies (although at this point we only know that Sookie is telepathic. Pardon me, while I re-suspend my disbelief), and maenads (just this one, don't worry!). Nonetheless, this is only a fraction of the wild stuff that exists in this universe. And they all seem to hang out in Louisiana.
Then the third season comes about and we're all stoked. True Blood is great right now. It is hitting its stride. And the third season kicks off with a bang. Sookie meets a werewolf and they go out and find Bill at the Vampire King of Mississippi's mansion. Now, we're getting vampire politics. We may even get that war we want. Now we've got werewolves too. They're like the Vampire King's security, except they're all addicted to vampire blood. Okay, you're still with it. I guess we all saw werewolves coming, although we're not thrilled. And now we're a little concerned. There's already a lot of storylines going on, can we really afford more?
In short, no, we can't. At this point, we're following Tara's story as a dumb bitch who is filling the hole in her heart with vampire sex, Sam's story as a shape-shifter who is reunited with his dirtbag family, Alcide's story as a werewolf whose ex is addicted to V, Jason's affair with a girl who hails from a family of trailer-trash Werepanthers (you know, like werewolves, but werepanthers), and Terry and Arlene's possessed child on the way, which keeps the antagonist of the first season on the audience's mind for no reason (the writers have a habit of not being able to drop characters).
Yet none of these stories really have a direct tie to the show's main arc which focuses on the relationship between Bill and Sookie, or maybe the relationship between humans and vampires. Ask any True Blood fan what the main story of the show is at this point and they will be awfully confused. Because these subplots never tie back into the main story. They are essentially plot fodder that serves to sensationalize the universe of True Blood, to condition the audience to accept any and all crazy shit that Alan Ball throws our way.
There is much more that goes on during Season 3, including a long mystery over how Bill came to meet Sookie in the first place. However, only a few of the many story lines are resolved at the end of this season. Everything else is left on a cliff hanger, with Bill left fighting the Vampire Queen, Sookie being transported to Fairy World, and the aforementioned subplots continue into the fourth season.
At this point, I'm getting sick of writing about this show. It is too hard to keep up with all of these characters and supernatural stuff. I'll sum up season 4 and tell you that its more of the same shit from before, but with witches, mediums, ghosts and more love scenes between gay characters. Oh, and the vampires also go SWAT on a witch hide-out because the magic repels their vampire-ness. Therefore, they turn to guns.
I hope this picture of four vampires dressed all in black with rifles and bazookas makes you really think about who is writing this fucking show.
So the writing is bad. The characters are silly and the plot is ridiculous. And a character's life is threatened pretty much every episode although the audience knows that the writers don't have the balls to kill one off (when they actually did kill a main character they just brought her back as a vampire). Not to mention, it would be very difficult for a fan to tell you what the show is about anymore. But I still watched. So what made me stop?
I touched upon it earlier. Minor characters are introduced in this show for a reason, usually to serve a certain plot device in the main story (such as Alcide accompanying Sookie to Mississippi), but for some reason, after they serve their purpose, the camera continues to follow them. For seasons and seasons and seasons.
I'm sorry but I just don't care about all these fucking characters, especially when so little time is devoted to actually developing them. Just because the world is unbelievable, doesn't mean the characters have to be. How would real people act in a world like this? That's what I wonder when I'm watching True Blood, because the characters on screen are just as made-up as the monsters and ghouls in Bon Temps. Instead, over half of an episode is spent "developing" these minor subplots although they have no relevance to the series arc. I don't have the patience.
Great television requires a connection with the human experience. It requires finding truth. But there is none of that left in True Blood. No truth. No human experience, in neither a figurative or literal sense.
