![]() Russell told a non-trusting Sookie that a vampire would one day tear her apart to get at the essence of her. That’s when Sookie disposed of Talbot - after Russell interrupted her reading Star magazine on Eric’s throne to try to negotiate his freedom with $5 million, his Mississippi house, and the promise to kill both Bill and Eric, one of them, or neither of them, her pick. Eric asked Sookie to watch over Russell while he, Bill, and Pam slept. But Russell said it was all he’d ever think about. The other fang dropped as Sookie tightened the chains: ”Don’t even think about it, bitch,” she said. He coughed out one of his fangs - ”humiliating,” Eric said. ![]() It wasn’t so much gruesome as it was… flaky. It was hard to take your eyes off of Russell’s charred face. They thought he was insane, but a reluctant Sookie dragged Russell inside with a silver chain around his neck. We can only hope that Ryan Murphy ( Glee), Terence Winter ( Boardwalk Empire), and Shonda Rhimes ( Grey’s Anatomy) took notes.Back at Fangtasia, Eric recovered and told the others Godric had appeared to him and asked him to save Russell. But if there’s any recent blueprint to follow in closing out a show that should’ve been put to rest a while ago, it’s True Blood. There were missteps in the show’s final season-Bill and Sookie’s forced storyline, the attempt to humanize Eric, the unnecessary Yakuza subplot, I could go on-and last night’s disappointing finale failed to live up to the season that preceded it. Keeping that in mind, True Blood wisely gave fans what they likely expected from the show’s last hurrah, with several scenarios clearly catering to the more fan-fiction-y side of its audience: a dreamt-up love scene between Eric and Sookie’s brother Jason, a much-deserved vampire sex scene for Arlene, a long-awaited sex scene for Lafayette, and even a reunion ( albeit a quick one) for fan-favorite couple Jessica and Hoyt. Such sex scenes have always been a staple of the series, and surely attracted a good portion of its audience. (Somehow, turning her into a vampire made Tara even less interesting.) Tara wasn’t the only character who needed to get the boot sooner rather than later this season: Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), once a semi-intriguing foil for the vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), was drained of any personality or purpose as the seasons dragged on- True Blood finally jettisoned him in its penultimate episode, and I can’t imagine there were many complaints. Because while Tara once made for a welcome (if often racially stereotypical) contrast to the unbearable purity of the show’s protagonist, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), she ran her course long ago-right around the time, back in Season 4, that she briefly moved to New Orleans, changed her name to Toni, started dating a woman, and took up mixed martial arts. But other shows-I’m looking at you, The Newsroom-should follow suit. It’s a risky move most shows wouldn’t have made so early on in the season-imagine if Breaking Bad had (belated spoiler alert) offed Hank in its Season 5 premiere. In the Season 7 opener, Bon Temps becomes Ground Zero for a mass-casualty standoff between infected and healthy vampires, during which True Blood set the tone for its swan song by, for only the second time, killing off a major character, Tara Thorton (Rutina Wesley). The final season picked up-as always-where the previous season left off, with the town under siege by a group of ravenous vampires infected with Hepatitis-V (a deadly virus which, last season, was mixed in with the synthetic blood that vampires try to drink in lieu of human blood). In his second season as showrunner, Brian Buckner envisioned the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana (where most of the “fang-banging” occurs), as a dystopian wasteland that’s lost most of the charm fans have come to expect from the Southern hamlet. But unlike other once-beloved shows that also carried on past their prime ( Gilmore Girls, Dexter, Lost) and then underwhelmed us with their conclusions, True Blood managed to salvage its last days with a final season that surprisingly got it right-right up until the sadly forgettable series finale. ![]()
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