Yep. It is all said and done. HBO's adaptation of the tales of the strangest, most sexed up town in Louisiana, originally books by Charlaine Harris has now wrapped up. For seven years, we were regaled with tales of the denizens, living and undead of Bon Temps, lurid, colorful, improbable, shameless, bloody, yet somehow compelling. What started out as the simple tale of a small town bar and grill worker Sookie Stackhouse amdst a sociological sea changed cause by vampires "coming out of the coffin" due to the creation of a synthetic blood substitute, turned into a bodice ripping drama of mayhem and powerplays of various supernatural communities working out their issues, with Bon Temps somehow being the ground zero of much of this.
With all this going on...when you get to the end, you have to decide, was the journey worthwhile? Was it worth it, this stay in Bon Temps for seven years? In deciding that question, one has to contemplate just what kind of show True Blood was. True Blood can be sort of deceptive when attempting to sort this out. Clearly, Sookie Stackhouse was going to be one of the epicenters of this thing, her and her relationship with Bill Compton, a Civil War veteran whose family has deep ties to this community. And for some, that was a bit of a problem from the get go. Their "will they/won't they" relationship and the drama it orbited around could get tiresome. Sookie has interesting qualities but setting her up to be the most desirable woman in the TB universe only works if you buy into that conceit. I didn't. She was attractive and had a moral compass. But her judgemental BS and her penchant towards drama just got annoying. And as noble and interesting a character as Bill Compton was, seeing the puppydog like traits is attraction towards her took on just got too much at times. Yes, things got interesting with some of the moral quandaries he had to deal with, and though his dip towards vampire religion was interesting, I wish it had been set up and developed more.
Which is one of the key criticisms of True Blood. There was a bit of schitzophrenia about what kind of show that it wanted to be. The show touched on various high concept ideas, from the existence of the supernatural and how it affects affairs in the human world, spirituality and the like, but more often than not, it just used the situation for more mayhem and didn't really explore things in any meaningful way.
The main draw for the show was really some of the supporting characters. While some relied mainly on the charisma of the actors (Tara, Alcid, etc) to give them the life they had, as it wasn't clear the writers had any purpose for them beyond bouncing them off the main players, some of the others got some fairly meaty arcs to deal with and had great moments and endings that satisfied at the end. The top of that heap was Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgaard) who started out as an old, powerful vampire who embraced is not-human nature. Except for his also inexplicable draw to Sookie (which they resolved with some dignity, thankfully), with some rather skilled writing as well as portrayal from Mr. Skarsgaard, showed humanity in a monster with out wimping him out. I suppose closest to that would be Lucien Lacroix from the TV series Forever Knight, another mandatory show for vampire fans. He was shown as a decent being under certain circumstances without watering him down or dialing down the fact that he was fundamentally not human. Although, now that I think about it, he would be more like Janette from FK, in that he accepts his nature, but is more matter of fact about it, not quite reveling in it. For revels, you need Pamela Swynford De Beaufort, Bonnie to Eric's Clyde. She embraced the inhuman nature of vampire even more, but, like Eric, held on to enough of her "love", I suppose is the word, to keep her from being a monster. But she very much was an apex predator, a vampire, and did not care much for most of humanity.
Jason Stackhouse is another supporting character who emerged. First shown as a dimwitted himbo horndog, he is later shown to not be actually stupid, just a guy who was used to getting by on sex appeal and athleticism, yet later developments in life made him come face to face with the deficiencies in his character. Rather than just continue to be the user and hedonist he had been for most of his young life, he became determined to become something better, something more. And in this, he succeeded, forging a life of professional responsibility as a police officer and redefining himself in how he dealt with friends, family and even women. They no longer served in a universe of sex/no sex. Not that it became a feminist condemnation of the heterosexual man, it just became a case of a young man maturing and learning more about recognizing the humanity in those he previously had just seen as objects of conquest.
Though that thing with him lusting after Eric Northman was a bit out of left field. It seemed less character development and more about fangirls looking for slashfic fodder.
That is what makes True Blood worth it for the long haul. Yes, it was sexy and visually stunning. But for the long term, with some characters that went in circles and high concepts that ultimately went nowhere, many characters had very satisfying arcs and portrayals and their stories were worth it. It will be interesting to see how it holds up on subsequent viewings, but this first time completing the journey, it was ultimately worth it.
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