DVD Review – True Blood Season 6 Box Set

As we approach season 7 of the show, I look back at the last season, and with its new format of only 10 episodes, is there a notable difference in style or substance? Or is it just the same but shorter? Well if I am honest it’s a good thing that it’s shorter I suppose, but not integral as they could have had a lot less storylines like they have done, usually there would be about 5-6 different storylines going on this season there was mainly 3 that were concentrated on.

While the show has gone on for coming up 7 seasons, it hasn’t done so unscathed, mainly due to lack of character arc growth of any character throughout the years, most have stayed exactly the same, and season 6 was no different, most characters just handled their stories in their usual manner even with new characters wondering on screen with our usual characters having their usual responses of how insane their lives are or that they cannot remember the last time things weren’t crazy, the show’s way of defending their chaos in place of direction.

While we mention character arc’s one that has been constantly pushed down our throats over the past two seasons is Terry, and to be quite frank, it was just not necessary, he isn’t a big cast member, people don’t care enough about him or his story to be invested for him to have two major storylines, and so much screen time given to him, he was a supporting cast member which meant for some reason True Blood needed to make him integral, just because they didn’t kill Lafayette when he’d been killed off in the first book, now I think about it the only character that showed any arc improvement was Alcide, but even that was just him coming full circle back to the guy he was before he was pack leader, so was that not a little pointless anyway? And the fact that they still had so much story bouncing from characters in place of their development is extremely annoying, the two main culprits being Lafayette and Jason, Jessica and Tara had a very bland season also.

While I was mentioning Terry I don’t want it to be thought that I didn’t like him or anything I just thought it was very unnecessary storylines and it goes to prove that the show just has too many characters in which they try and spend too much time on, this might be a reason why they have had such lacklustre arc type development, to make matters worse, they spent 3 episodes including half of the penultimate episode, dealing with his death, the episode with his funeral in was a good episode if I am honest, well it would have been if it wasn’t for the funeral scenes themselves….I was bored, it just didn’t work, and they basically used it as some sort of use the sentiment to juxtapose the outlandish violence being carried out by Eric and Bill at the prison.

Some have even said that the funeral scene itself was about Sookie anyway, saying her goodbyes to everyone before starting her new life as the bride of Warlow, so her meaningful talks and visiting her grandmother’s grave were for naught essentially since she didn’t even go through with being his bride, so again, is it not a little pointless?

There was a nice little story going on with the vampires, Governor Burrell had developed a scene to poison vampires with tainted True Blood, the Hep V virus will continue to run into season 7 (you’d surely imagine) even with his co-villain Sarah Newlin escaping to try another day perhaps? Now to Bill and Eric who have reverted again back to being the heroes of the story even though at the end of season 5 we saw bill being all menacing and flashing his fangs about, in season 6 he is almost prophet like with all of his visions of things to come, I didn’t really understand why Lilith was showing him these visions and was so concerned about protecting the 12 vampires that end up being saved in the sun room. Her character was more than confusing to a viewer in my view, as Nora (who died from the Hep V) spent a few episodes wanting to kill Lilith and then saying that it was only Warlow that could do this, but the Warlow and Lilith never crossed paths in the modern day, so that whole thing got dropped.

We are aware of how much this show flip flops and changes its mind about who is bad who is good, and that good people can do bad things and vice versa, but it’s a little unstable, for instance two people said to Sookie early on “You’re dead to me” only to forget about it a few episodes later, Bill and Eric were good in this season though, Bill’s apology to Andy about the murder of his fairy daughters was good, as was Eric’s going undercover as an animal rights nerd then turning Willa into a vampire, and then to his amusing fire burst in the Swedish arctic.

Warlow was very confusing too, in the sense that he was a random stranger who just appeared, to the surprise of nobody that he was Warlow, he was all menacing and scary, then turning into a love interest for Sookie, then in the finale he turned back into being vicious, his infatuation with Sookie was bland at best, a little cliché that he had a centuries long case of I’m obsessed with intangible ethereal quality and not your personality, in this case it was her scent.

I feel I am doing the show a little disservice, it’s not bad it’s just scattered and a little aimless at times, I feel they need to remove some characters to allow for them to build on ones they keep, like Tara and Jessica, and as I said they had some good episodes and good scenes but I think that the bad has definitely outweighed the good this time around, at the end of the show, there had been a leap forward in time, which showed zombie-esc weakened vampires attacking towns looking for blood. This could be a great way to kill off some characters for me and develop the show for the final season to go out strong.

[rating=3]
Gavin Tones

Genre:
Horror, Vampire, Thriller
TV Channel/Distributor:
Fox UK/Warner Home Video
Rating: 18
DVD/BD Release Date:
2nd June 2014 (UK)
Creator:
Alan Ball
Cast:
Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Sam Trammell, Alexander Skarsgård, Ryan Kwanten
Buy: True Blood – Season 6 [DVD] [2014],
[Blu-ray] [2014] [Region Free]