True Blood, Season 6

True Blood just wrapped its seventh and final season. I'm one year behind, so I just watched season six, and while I understand the complaints about its deterioration (which seems to happen to all shows over the years) I still enjoyed it.

This year seemed a little scattered, as if the whole year wasn't thought out in advance. We start with the governor of Louisiana (Arliss Howard) cracking down on vampires and secretly creating a "vamp camp," where they are interred and studied like zoo animals. His partner in this is Sarah Newlin (Anna Camp), a religious zealot and one time bed partner of good ol' Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten). As I watched the show I imagined Bobby Jindal as the governor and this gave me pleasure.

Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer( ended last season drinking Lilith's blood (she was the original vampire) and becoming some kind of super vampire. He is impervious to the usual destructive forces, but Lilith gives him enigmatic instructions. He has visions of his friends being released into sunlight, and knows he must do something to stop that.

Meanwhile, our main character, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) finds out that the vampire who killed her parents, Warlow, is both a vampire and a fairy, and really saved her from her father killing her (she is a telepath, and thus abnormal). Warlow is played by hunky Rob Kazinsky, and is over 5,000 years old and is desperately in love with Sookie.

When vampires drink fairy blood, especially one as powerful as Warlow's, they are able to walk in sunlight. This creates all sorts of issues.

There are numerous other plot threads. Eric (Alexander Skarsgaard), the yin to Bill's yang, does battle with the governor, and along the way is forced to hold his sister (Lucy Griffiths) in his arms as she is dying. A few other characters bite the dust, including Terry Bellefleur (Todd Lowe) the PTSD-suffering short-order cook. Also, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) has to extricate himself from a beef with werewolves, including pack leader Alcide (Joe Manganiello).

In truth, True Blood turned into a soap opera featuring supernatural characters, pretty much like Dark Shadows, but not as campy. It's still well aware of itself, and takes a lot of winks at the audience. In a particularly vicious scene, Camp murders another woman in a drag-out fight that ends with a high heel in the other's woman's skull. "Thank you, Jesus!" she cries, victorious.

But I found some parts of it tiresome. A plot line concerning Andy, the dim-witted sheriff (Chris Bauer) being the father to quadruplet fairy girls, who age twenty years in two weeks, a bit hare-brained (one of them survives to be another hot chick, Bailey Noble). We also get another sexy vampire, Karolina Wydra, who decides that Jason belongs to her. Sometimes there are just too many characters.

The characterization of Warlow left something to be desired, too. Is he good, is he bad? Well, a certain amount of complexity is nice, but he seemed to change from week to week, depending on the writer. On the other hand, I found Jason to be particularly entertaining this season, as he went from hating vampires to being their staunchest allies. I also loved Rutger Hauer as an ancient vampire king.

Yes, it is time for True Blood to go, but I have loved it for going on seven years.