True Blood: Season 5 Premiere

Honestly I have no idea where to begin with this review of the True Blood season five premiere. By this point the show has reached a point in its arc where it doesn’t have to make sense. It’s like a Jackson Pollack painting. There’s just all this motion and blood and people are crying and yelling back to back and you start to even wonder what the hell real life even is anymore. Of course, we all knew we were down the rabbit hole the second Sookie (Anna Paquin) went away to Never Never Land with her fairy godmother.

It’s not even about the sex anymore. I mean, Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) will always have a beautiful ass, but I’m more concerned with whether or not he himself is going to be burnt to a crisp for his rebellion (as opposed to me only worrying about the fact that that luscious ass was going to get toasted).

And making us care about the characters is what True Blood has really done masterfully well. The characters were so firmly established in the first season or two, that now the show runners can do all manner of shenanigans and we’ll still tune in—diehard fans of the show Supernatural will be very familiar with this particular phenomenon.

And of course these shenanigans are leading somewhere, for they always do. But it seems to me like the first episodes of the last couple seasons have existed almost entirely as “inciting incident hurricanes.” These characters, whom we have grown to understand and love despite all of their crazy, are put through a psycho-gauntlet of painful emotions, violence, death, and pleasure. And the whole time we the audience are frantically chanting “shit!” as we squirm with nervous excitement. It’s pretty genius. Can someone séance Aaron Spelling and ask him if I’ve stumbled onto his secret?

But let’s get into the episode. First, there’s a whirlwind clip sequence that brings us back into the story. I don’t know about you, but it feels like years since the last season of True Blood ended. And after the clip sequence ends, it feels like you have traversed eons to enter a world where all this and more happens, where crazy is normal. This clip sequence felt like a drug-fueled, fast-paced version of Disney’s Haunted Mansion elevator. And then we’re in the thick of it all. Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Eric are on the run, because (as the clip sequence reminds us) Sookie dumped both of them and then Bill killed Nan Flanagan (Jessica Tuck), representative for The Authority. Jump to: Sookie and Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) have teamed up to just be human together, dealing with the tragedies of last season. Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten) looks forward to being with his new vampire girlfriend Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) forever, but she is distant, and instead he gets a polo-shirt-wearing, sweatshirt-tied-around-the-shoulders visit from new vampire—and former vampire slaying—Reverend Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian). And Newlin’s got something to say. Meanwhile, Eric “Perfect Ass” Northman bangs his sister Nora (Lucy Griffiths) in a shipping container at some random Louisiana port while Bill tells them to keep it down. Bill and Eric are on the run and it’s like a sexual Abbot and Costello, or Road to Bali movie. And these are just a few choice examples of shenanigans from this season premiere.

So what’s the lesson to be learned from all this craziness? Well, I guess once you’ve established your main premise and characters successfully, it’s okay to throw in everything and the kitchen sink…so long as it still keeps us hoping and fearing for the ones you made us love in the first place.