Disengage your brain for 'True Blood's' finale
We're used to top TV dramas evoking elegant meals, six-course affairs full of rich textures and witty constructions. We know we'll usually need time to intellectually digest these savory feasts.
No such time is needed for "True Blood" (which, after a Labor Day weekend break, airs its Season 2 finale 8 p.m. Sept. 13 on HBO). "True Blood" isn't a carefully assembled feast. It's a jam-packed, all-you-can-eat buffet served with a side of crazy.
That recipe -- which creator Alan Ball has effectively tweaked since the show debuted last year -- has turned the populist vampire drama into a huge hit: The Aug. 23 episode of "True Blood" attracted 5.3 million viewers, a figure that doubles when repeats are added in. Those are smoking-hot numbers for a premium cable channel.
Halfway through the show's increasingly addictive second season, I realized the mistake I was making with "True Blood." I'm not trying to insult the show by saying it's no "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "Angel," but it isn't. There's no deeper meaning here. Metaphor, schmetaphor.
Sure, most of the vamps on the show, most notably the devilishly charismatic Eric (Alexander Skarsgard), are sexy, hot rebels doing whatever they want with whomever they want. There's no denying the appeal of those hedonistic appetites in these stressful times.
But "True Blood's" attempts at more obvious metaphors -- the depictions of the vamps as an oppressed minority and the portrait of their opponents as repressed hypocrites -- have generally been clunky and unsuccessful.
The show excels as a "Perils of Pauline serial, but one with lots of sex and crazy shenanigans in the woods. "True Blood" works best as a suspenseful beach read come to vivid, Southern Gothic life.
The show mostly defies analysis, intellectual probing and the search for subtext. As Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten) put it, "The time for thinking is over." Exactly.
Every Sunday night, it's a chance to turn off your brain and enjoy a show that jams four or five episodes' worth of incident, plot and jaw-dropping moments into 50 minutes.
Part of the reason "True Blood" is such a mass hit is that its characters are easily recognizable types: Newbie vamp Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is the awkward yet fetching ingenue, Eric is the sexy stranger with a dangerous streak, Maryann (Michelle Forbes) is the crazy aunt, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) is the tart-tongued cousin and Bill is the slightly befuddled father figure. The recently introduced vampire queen Sophie-Anne ( Evan Rachel Wood) is the kind of mischievous diva you can find in any number of Bette Davis films.
How will the season end? Will the finale be a train wreck full of dangling story threads and plot holes? Sure, why not?
I don't expect elegant resolution from "True Blood." I expect an exhilarating, messy spectacle.
And you can count on one thing: There will be blood.
moryan@tribune.com
Chicago Tribune.com
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