[SPOILERS] Better than the premiere, if only by virtue of the fact there was more to latch onto after last week's set-up, "Beautifully Broken" was still something of a jumble. The good news is that with so many characters and subplots swirling around, if something's proving tedious you only need wait three minutes before the plot jumps to something more entertaining or distracting. I'm actually not expecting the season to grip me yet, knowing only too well this show takes awhile for things to coalesce into something interesting beyond the superficial thrills, but I wish it didn't feel so scattergun...
Picking up from "Bad Blood", Bill (Stephen Moyer) tore into the pack of werewolves that had encircled him, only to see them called off by their master Russell Edgington (Denis O'Hare), the Vampire King of Mississippi, who invited Bill back to his palatial home and offered him a promotion to Sheriff; Sookie (Anna Paquin) convinced Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) to help her find Bill, if only as a favour to her; Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) saved Tara (Rutina Wesley) from suicide and took her to see his deranged mother Ruby (Alfre Woodard) as a wake-up call; Jessica (Deborah Ann Moll) wondered how to dispose of the trucker she killed, only to later find his corpse has disappeared; Sam (Sam Trammell) found his real parents who gave him up for adoption, before getting to know his shape-shifting brother Tommy (Marshall Allman); and Jason (Ryan Kwanten) accompanied Andy (Chris Bauer) to a local disturbance with some drug dealers, where he noticed a strange blonde woman leaving the scene...Nothing really has my undivided attention. There's just an assortment of fairly entertaining subplots, most of which don't have any crossover or weight. It's also hard to feel any of Sookie's concern for Bill, because we know he's safe. And I really don't care about Sam discovering his roots, because that's never felt like a major concern the character had previously, and right now it just feels like a way to get Sam mingling with shape-shifters. I daresay he'll be taught various tricks by brother Tommy when their relationship defrosts, similar to how Jessica's now latched onto Pam (Kristin Bauer) as a potential mentor in vampirism. Surprisingly, Jessica's limp storyline is somehow palatable, perhaps because of my crush on Deborah Ann Woll (who does funny, sexy and sympathetic better than anyone else), but also because her turmoil with boyfriend Hoyt (Jim Parrack) is actually the most believable relationship on the show. This is a girl who's beginning to realize how difficult it is to control her primal urges and doesn't want to accidentally slaughter her boyfriend in the throes of passion.
As usual, Tara continues to be the least interesting and most dislikeable character on the show because of her sour attitude and whining, and it didn't convince me that she'd need to visit Lafayette's crazy mother to snap out of it. Doesn't she have her own nutty mother to act as a warning? It's also a worry that Lafayette's so tied to Tara's character, because Nelsan Ellis is one of the more charismatic actors and deserves better than to be shadowing her. Fortunately, there was a sign that Tara's going to get a vampire boyfriend in English bloodsucker Franklin Mott (James Frain), who turned up at Merlotte's and helped her beat-up two racist patrons disrespecting Eggs' memory.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this week's episode was simply meeting another member of vampire royalty in Russell Edgington. It seems that each state has a king and queen, and Edgington plans to marry Sophie-Anne, the Queen of Louisiana. I like the idea of political maneuvering in this way, harkening back to how things were achieved with European royal weddings, and O'Hare already feels like he'll be a great addition to the cast. Also fun to see the return of Bill's maker Lorena (Mariana Klaveno), whose surprise appearance in the dining room he greeted by igniting her with a thrown gas lamp.
Overall, I'm never bored by True Blood and have faith the subplots will develop and merge nicely as the season progresses, but right now things are chaotic and raw. I don't feel any particular investment with anything going on, and the reveal of who kidnapped Bill, and why, has been a big disappointment already. Boisterous werewolves working for a vampire royal who just wanted to have a chat with Bill over blood bisque?Two weeks in and I'm still waiting for True Blood's third season to seize my imagination, develop a mystery I want to see explored, and take the characters into interesting new territory. It's far from a disastrous start, having introduced a lot of intriguing new ideas and characters so quickly, but it needs to start doing something with them to make me care now.
Asides
- A newspaper clipping revealed that a young Sookie won her school's spelling bee. I wonder how she pulled that off, being a mind reader...
- I do hope Sam doesn't share his father's taste in urine-stained underwear.
- You may recognize Marshall Allman from Prison Break, where he played L.J Burrows. He seems to have put on some weight.
- Is anyone else very disappointed the werewolf transformations are Twilight-esque "morphs" that happen at lightning speed, transforming a human into a literal wolf? I was hoping a show like True Blood would take a more painful, plausible direction. Being Human's still the only TV series doing decent wolf-outs, with a fraction of True Blood's budget. The werewolves in True Blood are just shape-shifters with only one trick.
- It was fun when Sookie did her impression of Bill saying "Sookeh". Clearly the writers have picked up on fans giggling at how Stephen Moyer pronounces her name.
WRITER: Raelle Tucker
DIRECTOR: Scott Winant
GUEST CAST: Marshall Allman, Alfre Woodard, Denis O'Hare, Adina Porter, Lindsay Pulsipher, Bryan Becker, Mariana Klaveno, William Sanderson, Grant Bowler, Brad Carter, James Frain, John Hillard, Cooper Huckabee, Allan Hyde & John Rezig
AIRDATE/CHANNEL: 20 JUNE 2010 - HBO, 9PM
