True Blood: Season 7 ~ Review

True Blood's seventh and final season came to a whimpering finish this week. It reminded me of visits with old high school friends you haven't seen in years: a little awkward, not much in common any more, and an eagerness to relieve the glory days as a way to connect. It wasn't so much a self-standing season but rather an extension of season 6, and it mostly focused on denouement. The big bad this season was the lingering HEP-V from last season and a wandering horde of ravenous, mad vampires which are quickly taken care of. Then came the tedious Mr. Gus and we are expected to believe that Eric Northman would put up with his Texas-twang silliness. One interesting turn was Jason's rejected Violet who captures several of our heroes and describes the painful torture she will inflict on them using arcane torture devices. But before one drop of blood is spilled, this too is quickly resolved.

The rest of the season shifted to the many relationships of our main characters and they pair up, or not. Straight from the standard series finale checklist there was: [1] a surprise wedding, [2] surprisingly everyone coupled up and had at least one beautiful children, [3] a surprise pregnancy, and, [4] there was a (non) surprise death. I hoping this was a tongue-in-cheek decision to follow the playbook and not intentionally ordinary. I assumed Mr. Alan Ball would never stand for that.

And then comes the climax of the entire series with Sookie and Bill: will they or won't they? It doesn't matter. It was so uncathartic and pointless (no pun intended), and felt oddly out of tone with the rest of the show with it's meandering, slow, and inevitable trudge towards the end.

There's no good way to end a series, and fans will be left un/satisfied either way. This wasn't a terrible finale, but it wasn't a great one. Much of the what made the show so fun to watch was the gory rawness, bawdy relations, and relentless darkness coupled with unexpected humor. True Blood should have ended how it started and left us breathless. Instead, it just sort of sputtered out in a blithe Lifetime movie-of-the-week soft focus fade out.

HBO released this featurette called After The Finale (which also features the last few seconds of the finale):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLLo8K9oWXY