I recall being promised that by the season finale, our various characters' plot lines would come back together. They did not. Sam (Sam Trammell) and his issues with his brother, Tommy (Marshall Allman), as well as his issues with his past, which appeared for no discernible reason near the end of the season, had nothing whatsoever to do with Arlene (Carrie Preston) and her pregnancy or Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) and Jesus (Kevin Alejandro)'s witch powers. And Jason (Ryan Kwanten)'s involvement with the weres was also completely unrelated.
Now, I will give you that in a small town, there are so many things happening to all the different people who live in them, but Season 3 of True Blood was like Season 3 of Dexter. There was too much going on. We had too many different things happening, and it lost so much of its energy and intensity because of that. Hopefully, for Season 4, we will not only get some resolutions to this Season but we will also get back to having only one or two solid and involved stories.
Plus, I was really disappointed with what happened with Russell Edgington (Denis O'Hare), Eric (Alexander Skarsgard), Bill (Stephen Moyer), and Sookie. What started out as a beautiful sacrifice from Eric turned into a somewhat odd mafia-concrete burial. Not a particularly fitting end for a vampire so wonderfully villainous as Russell. Plus, to have his loss overshadowed by Bill's attempts to get rid of Eric...well, all I can say is that I hope Russell busts out of his prison in sooner than 100 years so that we can fight him off again.
So here we are, still not sure of what's going to come next, knowing that at least Sookie is getting together with her fairy kin to figure some of her own identity out, and the only thing I am really pleased, happy, and satisfied about is that Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) and Hoyt (Jim Parrack) are finally back together.
Were you disappointed by the finale?
Yes, generally for the reasons you described, though I felt that setting in a few episodes ago. I wasn't aware that any convergence of the threads was promised, though, so I didn't have any expectations to dash there.
ReplyDeleteThis season looks to me like a season of a more conventional episodic series, except all the episodes have been parallelized into a continuous 12-part narrative. In a network show structure, we'd have gotten individual filler episodes focusing on Sam's past, Arlene's baby, Lafayette and Jesus, etc., with the seasons "highlight" episodes being all the stuff going on with Sookie/Bill/Eric/Russell/etc. And really, I think if this was a network show, that would make for a fantastic season. But this is HBO, and the parallel storytelling is tiresome when they don't really intertwine -- especially when many of the individual stories have that mid-season filler feel. (Jason's story this season in particular gave me that feeling.)
This show clearly loves its characters, and it does a very good job of making us love them too, but in trying to avoid the trap of having to shoehorn them into a broad story that has no place for them, they've become distractions. Who knows, maybe season 4 can bring everyone back into the fold, and maybe season 3 is necessary to make that happen. But True Blood has way more characters to juggle than Dexter, and I'm not convinced it will happen.
Yes, it does have many many characters to juggle. Last season, however, they did do a great job of interweaving all the different characters and their lives and supernatural stories.
ReplyDeleteThere were moments when the characters did come together this season, but it just didn't seem to be a priority.
I'm not convinced it will happen next season, but certainly it could happen. And I hope it will happen because I don't need superfluous stories about Jason and some were-girl, or the solid beginnings of plot and character development that isn't going to go anywhere until half-way through next season.