How Do We Watch True Blood In 2013?

When it premiered way back in that blood-spattered spring of 2008, True Blood had gravitas. With Alan Ball at the helm, it was littered with none-too-subtle but intriguing parallels between the politics of vampirism and homosexuality, and balanced the mild camp and splattering gore with snappy dialogue and a rich, swampy Lousiana atmosphere you can practically smell through the screen. It was Southern-fried Buffy with an HBO budget and dirty sex that made Buff and Riley’s cursed jungle-sex scenes look like iCarly.

But now there are werewolves, witches, meth-cooking werepanthers, Mexican mystics, maenads, and fairies. Eric cut his hair off and went all schmoopy-pants for Sookie, which was not the resolution we wanted to their initial antagonistic, mind-gamey, forbidden-fruit, I-wanna-eat-you-while-fucking-you vibe. Bill died and was reborn as the incarnation of vampire deity Lilith (yes, they retconned the Bible), and is now the villain. Tara’s a vampire and has some lesbian thing with Pam, which is a fun way to split the difference by pairing the absolute worst character on the show with the best. And, as Sookie whimpers in the brand new trailer, season six looks like “total chaos”.

The main plot of this upcoming season seems to be the State of Louisiana declaring war against the vampires (according to Nora), and blowing everything up. The post-coffin political landscape has been deteriorating rapidly since Russell Edgington’s little news bulletin. (The show feinted towards some interesting parallels between Russell and, say, Islamic extremists, who do not represent all Muslims any more than the erstwhile King spoke for all vampires — and then gave up on political commentary altogether in favour of vampire SWAT teams and Joe Mangianello taking his shirt off more than he did in Magic Mike.)

If it’s solely the state declaring war rather than the federal government, that suggests that the conflict is isolated in Louisiana and focused on Lilith-Bill (Billith?) and his religious extremists, not all vampires; but it seems that public opinion is turning against them, and all the various supernatural characters are feeling (or are) persecuted. There’s also the mystery of the vampire who killed Sookie and Jason’s parents over a used bandaid, but it seems that’s going to be overshadowed by Evil Bill and feels and explosions.

There is no sign of Hoyt, and while Jim Parrack is a wonderful actor with a sweet, sweet face you just want to caress adoringly, his storyline last season was a terrible combination of heart-crushing (his performance) and bizarre (everything else), and he deserves better than what this show in its current form can do for him. Only a flicker of Sam as well, but the last thing they got him to do was to kill a vampire by flying into her mouth as a housefly and then changing back into a human thereby blowing her up, which I still had to look up on Wikipedia because I had no memory of it because he is just that boring.

Sookie makes out with a blonde guy too short to be Eric and learns to control her fairy power; she’s also seen wearing leather pants. Also, apparently it’s written into Deborah Ann Woll’s contract that Jessica dresses like an extra from Sucker Punch at least once a season.

Nobody lives forever, the trailer tells us. Ball hasn’t done a Matt Weiner and set an endpoint for the show yet, but it sure sounds like some main cast members might be heading off after this year to pursue jobs that don’t involve being covered in corn syrup for days on end. Those of us who are still sucked into this swirling maelstrom of scenery-chewing, butts, snark, and lazy plotting will have to find still more excuses for why we give an hour of our week over to this absurd grindhouse soap – excuses that don’t end in “–arsgard”.

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Caitlin Welsh is a freelance writer. She has written for The BRAG, Mess + Noise, FasterLouder, Cosmopolitan, TheVine, Beat, dB, X-Press, and Moshcam. Find her on twitter.