Bill still makes her red eyed and weepyLet the Season 4 premiere of HBO's hit series True Blood be a lesson to all future showrunners. This is what happens when your show has introduced non-integrated plotlines for each and every member of a huge ensemble cast. This is what happens when you try a time jump so popular post Battlestar Galactica and don't trust the audience to just reconfigure the pieces on their own. This is what happens when you back yourself into storylines that maybe weren't good ideas to begin with. I speak of Jason Stackhouse becoming the paterfamilia (of sorts) for a whole den of barely human hilbillies and a certain reveal about our heroine. To quote Sookie (Anna Paquin) herself with the same annoyed/surprised/this-is-stupid inflection from the Season 3 climax...
I'm a fairy?
And what is it that's happened, exactly?
The show's premiere episode "She's Not There" proved to be a random disjointed mess, forced to spend the entire hour on reintroductions to every character since we've missed a whole year of their lives (as has Sookie). I can't speak for television ratings but if True Blood hadn't already peaked in terms of the number of fangbangers gathered for each episode, this premiere had garlic all over it. Wouldn't it automatically repel new viewers?
Fairy-Land
"She's Not There" kicks off with a weirdly dull and anachronistic (for this show) opening. Sookie is trapped (though she doesn't yet know it) in an alternate fairy dimension which looks like a gaudy Maxfield Parrish knock-off painting with no-budget set dressing. Sookie doesn't eat the glowing fruit which turns out to be a good idea -- the side effects are both nasty and uglifying.
Once Sookie realizes that the fairies are kinda evil, there's much CGI mayhem involving glittery ball projectile weapons, crumbling dimensional portals, and long lost granddaddies. Returning home, Sookie thinks she's been gone from Bon Temps Louisiana for only 10-15 minutes. Stupid Sookie. It turns out to have been a year, which is exactly how long that opening fairy-land sequence felt.
Episode Peak: Jessica flirts with Matt . In a very smart reaction shot, Hoyt is oblivious while Pam sees all.
Back in Bon Temps we learn that Jason has adjusted to being a cop but Deputy Andy is now addicted to V (someone always is on this show), Bill is now the Boss of Eric somehow though Sookie is still the boss of their hearts (zzz), Sookie's house was sold to a mystery buyer, Tara is now a lesbian cage fighter (um, what?), Sam has new shapeshifter friends, Hoyt & Jessica are way bored and frequently fighting after only a year of cohabitation, Hoyt's mom has taken in Sam's brother (what?), Jason is still having trouble caring for that little village of werepanther kids (don't ask), Lafayette and Jesus have been together for a whole year but you wouldn't know it because they're still having the exact same "I don't know about this witchcraft" arguments from the end of the last season. The only character that hasn't changed one bit is fierce funny (un)deadpan Pam (Kristin Bauer). Why mess with perfection?
The most promising thing about the episode is certainly the coven of witches, who are being set up as the season's Big Bad (or at least Big Catalyst) and both scenes with Marnie (Fiona Shaw) whether she's channelling dead gay vampire voices or attempting to resurrect her dead familiar (a bird named "Minerva") are nicely handled. The least promising thing is the now seasons-long repetitive Bill & Eric rivalry over Sookie. The first reminder of this now boring through-line is a clever instant split second cutaway to both of them waking underground when Sookie arrives back on Earth... but we've been here a million times before. Later in the episode they have crosscut speeches trying to reestablish vamp cred with the newly-scared human population after last season's on-air murder. Eric's smarmy camera smiles are amusingly creepy but Bill makes a dull politician. This round goes to Eric.
We're always happy to serve humans here at Fangtasia. And I don't mean for dinner.
Eric, ever popular with fans, looks to be getting closer to his goal of shagging Sookie since he closes the episode surprising a nude Sookie and revealing that he now owns her house so she can't uninvite him.
You're mine."
Cue: fangs then end title card.
I was as thrilled as anyone to have True Blood back but the season premiere was little more than a series of stitched together expository scenes, all set up and no payoff. Series television thrives on long form stories, it's true, but you have to have a little something in each episode that feels contained and complete. Every time this episode threatened to really start it stalled again; the sight of Minerva the dead bird flapping its wings back to life only to die with a falling thud all over again was this episode in a nutshell.
Draining It Dry...
"Mamma loves you so so much but you have got to understand that killing is wrong."Body Count: 3 (one fairy grandaddy and Minerva the bird who died twice, poor thing); Sex Scene Tally: 1 (Tara's lesbian tryst, twice interrupted); Fresh Meat: Randy Wayne as "Matt". Jessica thinks he looks delicious. So do we; Funniest Moment: (runner up) Pam's faux-concern about Jessica in the bathroom "not really". (winner) That floor full of decapitated Barbie dolls which sets Arlene (the great Carrie Preston) off. She's still scared that her baby is the devil. Trashiest Moment: a feral child bites into a sack of raw meat from the grocery bags. I'm certain that John Waters was laughing his ass off; Best Sookie Moment: To her fairy godmother in the opening scene:
If your job is to look after me, can I just say you suck?"
Episode MVP: Introducing "Marnie" Fiona Shaw's always trance-distracted witch woman. Episode Grade: C