True Blood season 4 review - If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?

It's that time of the week again where I load up the new episode of True Blood and give my blow by blow account of my reactions to the episode as I watch it.  So far the season has not shaped up as good as season 3 was, however, it's still got plenty of time to redeem itself and if worst comes to worst I have the new episode of Leverage lined up to watch afterwards.

This review will contain spoilers for the episode and for the entire book series if something in the episode is relevant to the plot.

It begins...

• Previously on True Blood, various forgotten plot threads...
• I don't want to get excited, but I am.
• Oh for fuck's sake.  Don't screw this up, Alan Ball.  It's very, very, very simple.  Sookie takes Eric in and they fall in love, Eric regains his memory, but forgets his time spent with Sookie, tragically leaving her with the memory of the Eric who loved her and would give up everything for her.  Eric does not fucking attack Sookie!
• Aw.....  Eric is so funny.
• You broke my nose!
• Why does Eric remember things?  Eric does not remember things!  Goddammit!
• LaFayette speaking sense, everyone else ignoring him.  Fucking idiots.
• Fucking Tara, can we be rid of her yet?
• Poor Jason, all tied up and bitten.
• Old Yokel guy telling a story about the Panthers and how they came to be, kinda of interesting I suppose.
• I think this is really where the series is going to suffer for going in this direction.  By making Calvin Norris into a bad guy and then killing him off, we don't get the conflict between Jason and Crystal's marriage and her wanting to be part of the community and be away from it at the same time.  We don't get the tragic pregnant Crystal being murdered and crucified outside of Merlotts by the crazy bartender, but then they seem to have dropped the crazy bartender angle all together by not changing them up all the time.
• Aw damn, this means no vampire pirate Charles.  Bloody hell.
• Felton, I won't kill him till he knocks you up, nice.  
• Crap-King Bill killing a vamp for getting caught on youtube.  Ugh.
• Poor Jessica, being stuck with asking Crap-King Bill for relationship advice, because his track record is so stellar.  I really wish they'd explored the father daughter relationship between the two of them more.
• Lol, Sookie playing Eric.  Ooooh are we going to get the foot washing scene.  I don't like feet particularly but Eric is so vulnerable in that scene.
• Aw, we're not.  Boo.
• Oh Yay, we are!  Woo!
• "WHOTHEFUCKSSHE?!!!?!"  LMFAO *dies*
• Yay Pam!
• This scene is pretty funny.  Oooh interesting, Sookie protecting Eric from Crap-King Bill.  Of Course in the books he was in Peru because he's a shit character and was being written out of the series but at least they've found a use for him here.  It would be good if they made him a full on bad guy.
• Clueless Eric is funny, but the scene is so unlike the book it's a bit annoying, the dialogue is clearly trying to get them out of the hole they'd written themselves into.
• Why is Hoyt hugging the creepy doll when he hates dolls?
• Steve Newlin is missing?  Couldn't get the actor back or building to something?
• Oooh, the doll was in the lake, then the dump then appeared again, I don't think Bernadette would go diving for a doll, so magic?
• Is the doll causing the arguments?
• Jesscia eye-raping Hoyt is so wrong.
• lol, Sookie having to take Eric to bed because he's scared.
• Would you like to be mine?  It actually seemed like he was asking, bless him.
• LaFayette talking more sense and people still ignoring him, fucking idiots.
• Tara needs to die.
• Seriously she just exists to cause trouble for the decent characters.
• Why is Andy freaking out like a butt munch just because he's on vamp blood, that's typically not the reaction, though I suppose people generally react the way the writers want them to.
• ALCIDE!
• Sookie wants Alcide to babysit Eric...    
• Oh.... my....  god.....  
• OH...  MY... GOD....
• DEBBIE FUCKING PELT!  Why is she doing a Martha Stewart impression?  She's supposed to die in this book.
• Though I suppose if they can make Crystal fucking insane, they can make Debbie sane.  Role reversal.
• Wow...  they managed to make her sympathetic, something she never was in the books.
• Tommy!  In-universe troll!  Bless him, he's learning to read.  I actually think he's well paired with Hoyt's mother.
• Crystal, I don't think mud is the best thing to spread on open wounds.
• Tara please die.
• Crap-King Bill on a date with Portia.  I wonder if they are related in the show.
• Since he's her Great, great, great great Grandfather in the books.
• Yay, Arlene and Terry and Baby serial killer, it's nice Arlene is getting on with Jess.
• Could they not have the Tommy Sam banter instead of the bitching.  
• Ew....  Bill fucking his own Granddaughter, creepy, creepy, creepy.
• I HATE Tara.  Officially want her to die her in a horrible painful death.
• Oh Aunt Petunia, hope she's going to do something crazy.
• So she's channelling someone and that someone is using her as a conduit.  I wonder who it is.
• Some random woman.  hmm.
• Oh God, they're raping Jason!  They are raping him!
• Well, Crystal is at least.
• Oh wait there's a who queue of girls behind her.  
• LMAO!  Sookie reading a Charlaine Harris book, this warrants a pause and screencap.

•  Looks like Grave Sight.  I hope the rumours about Ridley Scott making the Harper Connolly books into a series is true cos that would be awesome.
• Flash of light....  fairy goblins?
• Yup.  Claudine.
• One ruined character.
• Oh pilot revisited.
• Don't go with the goblin ruined character Sookie.
• Oh yay, Eric's going to eat her.  That would be better than letting her live as a ruined character.
• Oh wow...  he did actually kill Claudine...  Bloody hell, they are going in a different direction with this aren't they.  Sigh.  No Claude and Uncle living with Sookie.  No Claudine at the battle of the Fey.  No Battle of Fey.  No fairy strip club.  No leaving Sookie quite a lot of money.  I am mourning the loss of storylines here.
• "You just killed my fairy Godmother!"  Sookie.  "Sorry" Eric looking Sheepish...  lol.
• episode over.

Summary:

Ok, better than previous two episodes so far.  It's weird for me as a book fanatic having to see all these changes.  Some of the changes they made up until this point had been understandable changes, but the ones this series so far have just been annoying and shit.  We're three episodes in at this point and again it just seems like we're jumping around characters so much because they fucked with the plot to the point where there's little plot left for them to play with.

Ok, good stuff, bad stuff.

Good Stuff.

• Eric being all sheepish is funny.
• Eric killing Claudine.  I'd actually rather have her die than leave her as this goblin nonsense and fuck around with that.
• Arlene and Terry, though they needed more of that.
• Tommy and Maxine.
• The new Debbie, IF they stick with it.  If they stick with it then it's an interesting role reversal and a chance to explore that character.  If they don't it's a spectacular waste of time.

Bad stuff.

• Tara.  It's been a while since I hated a character this much who is supposed to be a protagonist.  Not since Kennedy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  She had a lot of potential in the first season, but the writers kept laying so much stuff on her character she's just a big mess now and she pisses me off every time she's on screen.  
• Crap-King Bill having sec with his own granddaughter.  Ew.
• Hoyt and Jessica arguing, unless it is because of the possibly magic doll, Jessica eye-raping Hoyt was pretty bad.
• Andy on V.  Pointless.
• Sam and Tommy bitching, is this all we're going to have this season?  Again?
• Killing off about 2 dozen potential plot lines with the fairy goblin shit.