It's been clear for the last few weeks, but last night's finale drove it home: The third season of True Blood really should have ended with that episode where Russell makes his literally spine-tingling news appearance and provokes a full-out human/vampire war. Instead, the show's follow-ups have mostly sidestepped that promising development, and all of the season's plotlines either ran out of steam or were hurriedly shuffled away for abrupt character reboots that felt like an overeager jump on season four. The season began strong and laid out a lot of promising ideas, but that finale...well, let's see how it fared via the Sex and Violence Meter, shall we?
· The last episode ended with Eric springing handcuffs on Russell while both were vulnerable in the sun, so you'd expect some fireworks, right? Instead, they're both kinda chilling out on the pavement, resigned to their fates and getting a little toasty-faced. Oh, and Eric's having visions. "Forgive him in the time you have left," Godric implores. "Preserve Denis O'Hare so that he may make Season 4 guest appearances." (Violence: +4)
· After her vivid dream about a chandelier UFO concludes, Sookie runs outside and fairy-blasts the handcuffs tying Eric to Russell, then blasts a back-talking Russell across the parking lot for good measure, warning "Watch your f**king language." You all know how much I love Anna Paquin and profanity, but this show hardly needs more self-parodying lines. (Violence: +2)
· It's morning-after time at Mr. Merlotte's, as Tara and Sam process their intense humping from the night before. Dark Sam is making Tara some pancakes, and I silently brace myself for the moment he stares intently into the pancake batter, triggering a flashback about the long con he once pulled at IHOP. After Tara and Sam have a conversation about bacon grease (and it soon becomes clear that this plotline is the one thing bacon cannot make better), Sam tells her that he's a shape-shifter, and Tara reprises Sookie's "shut the f**k up" reaction, then sighs. "I wish I could reboot," Tara says. Basically, every line of dialogue Tara has in this episode is intensely meta. (Sex: +1, Questionable Finale Inclusion: +5)
· Inside Fangtasia, Bill bites Sookie at her behest, and she feeds Eric her delicious plasma to help him recover. How much blood does this poor girl have now? Eventually, Sookie runs out to the parking lot to pointlessly save crispy cryptkeeper-face Russell, whose right fang falls out. Somehow, the show resists a tooth fairy joke pinned to Sookie's mysterious heritage. (Violence: +5)
· Jason is trying very hard to call off the Hotshot raid, and coming right on the heels of the previous scene where Sookie decided to save her arch-enemy Russell from certain death, there's a little too much of characters suddenly trying to thwart the plot point they themselves had been advancing for episodes. It's so the Lost season five finale where Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet were all "Sure, Jack, we'll help you blow up this bomb, even though we only came here to stop you and, like, we'll probably die because it's a bomb." Call it off! Shut it down! (Questionable Finale Inclusion: +5)
· Hoyt wears his vampire hickey to work, which is notably inconvenient for many reasons, not least of which the presence of his mom and Summer. (Violence: +1, Questionable Finale Inclusion: +5)
· Lafayette is still having a bad trip from all that V he took with Jesus, and hallucinates a vision of Sam with bloody hands. Not as weird as our collective hallucination of Alfre Woodard on this show. (Violence: +2)
· A good scene! Russell is tied up and smoky at Fangtasia, and he tries to convince Sookie to free him. Instead, she maces him with silver spray and sends Talbot's innards down the Fangtasia garbage disposal. These two really should have had more to do with each other this year. (Violence: +7)
· We're in Hotshot. Ugh, Crystal. Her brother shoots her dad, or maybe vice versa. Everyone kinda stands around until Crystal appoints Jason the kind of the rednecks (man, Jason will never get a storyline with any of the other regulars, will he?), and then he has a halfhearted Last of the Mohicans "I will find you" moment. Goodbye, Crystal. Your whole werepanther thing didn't really amount to much, did it? (Violence: +5)
· After being gripped by a series of terrible, violent flashbacks, Tara catches her mom sexing the reverend. The only real sex in the season finale comes from the Tara subplot. Make of that what you will. (Violence: +2, Sex: +2)
MIDWAY POINT: Violence is way out ahead of Sex, 28 points to 3. Also a contender: the sheer frustration that the finale is spending time on filler scenes and plots that just kind of drift to an end, which has accrued 15 points.
· Alcide! He enters Fangtasia, super excited: "Guys, I'm a series regular next season!" There is a tremendous amount of eye-f**king in this scene, as Alcide gives Sookie his puppy-dog stare and Bill his angry-dog laser eyes. Sadly, Alcide eye-f**king Bill disproves my theory that Bill is only interesting when he's kinda gay. Perhaps they should have rubbed their pecs together as I'm sure they do in Sam's fantasies. (Sex: +1)
· At Merlotte's, Sam finds the safe stolen, gets angry, and pulls out a gun. His pancake buzz is so harshed right now. (Violence: +1)
· Lafayette is still hallucinating, and after he sees a vision of Rene strangling Arlene, Jesus comes to reveal to Lafayette that he's "a witch who's a nurse who's a dude." Aaand that's a season three wrap for these characters. It really built to a climax! (Violence: +1, Questionable Finale Inclusion: +5)
· At home, Tara picks up scissors and gets a little suicidey (sex with Sam is so often fatal!) until deciding to simply give herself a kicky new hairdo. "I just needed to make a change," she tells Sookie downstairs, adding, "I feel like it's been forever since we've hung out." Somehow, the increasingly on-the-nose and apologetic Tara barely resists saying, "Sometimes, I want to groan when I do things that are boring," and "Do you ever feel like you're being controlled by invisible writers who got kind of tired of you?" (Questionable Finale Inclusion: +5)
· Eric and Bill decide to bury Russell in cement, in case Alan Ball needs him next year. Bill tries to wrest the episode away from Eric by knocking him into the cement, then putting a hit out on Pam. Well OK! Now things are kinda moving. (Violence: +4)
· FINALLY, a Jessica scene. Debits all around for making us wait this long and for giving Deborah Ann Woll almost nothing to do all year. It looks like Jessica and Hoyt may marry and have domestic bliss ahead of them, except for the fact that Hoyt's mom is buying a gun. But don't worry about a confrontation, because that's a season three wrap for these characters! Really, that's it. (Violence: -15, Sex: -15, Questionable Finale Inclusion: -15)
· The newly energized Bill tells Sookie that he'll kill everyone that has tasted her fairy blood. Wow, a good Bill plot....and it's immediately defused when Eric casually strolls up, having escaped the cement offscreen (that certainly would not have been a dramatic, action-packed scene to watch -- thank God they kept it from us!). Sookie is just so pissed by the revelation that Bill was sent to date her by Sophie-Anne, and she rescinds her invitation to both vampires, which she had kind of done at Merlotte's earlier, but now Anna Paquin is nose-crying, which is commitment. (Violence: +2)
· Tommy? Oh hey. Sam runs him down and chases him, causing Tommy to cry out "I'm illiterate." REVEAL! Sam fires his gun at an offscreen point near Tommy to be determined during the season four premiere. (Violence: +2, Questionable Finale Inclusion: +5)
· Sophie-Anne swans into Bill's wearing the winning gown from Project Runway's very sad funeral challenge. He tells her that only one of them will be leaving the house alive. Vampire Matrix fight! (Violence: +1)
· Sookie runs to the graveyard (Things Anna Paquin can do well: cry, cuss. Things Anna Paquin should not do: run) and sees her fairy cousin there. The music is very Ocarina of Time. She decides to escape to the Fairy World of Midday Drinking and Casual Nudity, and apparently that's what we'll get in season four, because those scenes went so well the first time around! (Questionable Finale Inclusion: +10)
FINAL TALLY: Befitting this bloody season, Violence positively massacred Sex, earning 24 points to Sex's negative 11. Still, the finale's winner (with 25 points) is the weird feeling that every other episode this season felt more like a cliffhanger-packed finale than this one.
So, did season three bite? Or did it start strong and end in dire need of a blood transfusion? Let's hear it.