Challenge 9

[outoftime]

CHALLENGE 9
FINALE REVIEW

Challenge: For this challenge, I want you to write an at least 400 word review on the season finale of "True Blood" - any of them are fine, so if you haven't had a chance to see "Evil is Going On" yet you can also do "You'll be the Death of Me" or "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'". Your review must be full sentences, no lists.

Comments

Re: TEAM MERLOTTE'S

[igoformerlot]

True Blood's much-anticipated Season 3 finale, “Evil Is Going On”, has aired, ending a season that has garnered mixed reviews from fans and professional critics alike. This episode is likely to do the same, as it features the same elements that have drawn criticism all season. There is the same large cast of characters and their many disparate story lines, which can be difficult to follow all at once and give short shrift to the viewers' favorites. (Whose story, exactly, is being short-shrifted depends upon the viewer.) This episode also features some well-known characters acting so out of, well, character, even given the extreme situations they find themselves in, that it distracts from the plot. (Sookie may be many things, but she's not sadistic. Yet there can be no other word for how much pleasure she takes in destroying Talbot's remains in front of Russell.)

There are also some cheesy special effects that will doubtless make some fans cringe. (Such as Scotty--er, Sookie--being “beamed up” by alien light in the final scene, or Bill and Queen Sophie-Anne facing off with mid-air Matrix-style moves that were clichéd ten years ago.

Despite all this, there is some darned good storytelling going on underneath the surface, even if it takes a few viewings to find it.

The aforementioned disparate story lines may not be so disparate after all, at least when it comes to where they have left their characters at the end of this episode. Take the stories of Sookie, Jason, Tara, and Sam, for example.

To recap, each character has been off doing their own thing this season, only occasionally crossing paths. Sookie has been bouncing back and forth between Bill, Eric and Alcide like a ping-pong ball. Jason realized that he can have the guts (literally) and the glory by becoming a cop, but get involves with a troubled woman whose family is a threat to him and his budding career. Tara is kidnapped by a psycho vampire and once free has to deal with her grief for Eggs as well as the trauma of what she just went through. Sam discovers his birth family and devolves into a very dark place.

In the finale, Sookie renounces Bill, Eric, and every other vampire, accepts Claudine the Fairy's invitation to go away with her, and is “beamed up” (there really is no other word for it) by what we are lead to believe is an alien ship bound for some sort of Fairyland. Despite being slightly ridiculous, this is a dramatic departure for a main character.

Jason, too, finds himself in circumstances that are a complete departure from his life up until this point. Having warned the citizens of Hotshot about an impending drug raid, he finds himself charged with taking care of them, indefinitely, by his departing love Crystal, a charge he takes on willingly. Quite a change for the guy who could barely take care of himself when the show started!

Tara and Sam, having hooked up in the episode prior to this one, have a meaningful discussion about departures, which sets the tone for this entire episode. Tara express a desire to “reboot and live a completely new life.” Sam points out that it's really not that hard, and every time your past threatens your new life, you just move on again. Tara takes this advice to heart and the last we see of her is the back of her car, leaving Bon Temps.

And Sam? His departure is less literal, but no less dramatic. In an agonizing cliffhanger, it appears that Sam has shot his brother Tommy in cold blood--perhaps the final nail in the coffin (as it were) of Sam Merlotte, beloved, mild-mannered owner of Merlotte's. If he's really done this thing, can an actual departure, as we have learned is his habit, be far behind?

This theme of life-changing departures is one of the things that unites these various story lines that on the surface have little to do with each other. It gives hope that the show's creator has not lost has way, as some critics have charged.

Season Four will tell.