It began last year, when the show started to descend into a completely over-the-top, cliched Pagan worship subplot that took over and led us to a completely cheesy, melodramatic finale. However, I have seen Alan Ball dip in the middle of his series before (there were some rough spots during Six Feet Under, but it came back around and it’s definitely on my “show my kids someday” list), so I came into this season with high hopes.
I hoped that the team took the time during the hiatus to return to the strong characters and fine balance between contemporary society and the supernatural that made the show great in the first place. Sure, it’s always been a bit of a prime time soap opera, but I was willing to endure that for the talented ensemble cast and the intellectual merit of using vampires and other supernatural beings as a metaphor for minorities and other sub-communities of society.
Unfortunately, this season seems to be taking it yet further into the cliches of werewolf, vampire and other works in the monster and horror genre. It has been more violent, arguably to excess, and the plot-lines are becoming more and more contrived and shallow. It’s bad enough that Sookie seemingly has sexual tension with every man/creature she meets (she’s not THAT hot, really), but the heartbroken, puppy-dog eyed, hunky werewolf was beyond nauseating. In addition, the show now has such a multitude of parallel plot-lines that it seems completely unfocused; more like they’re hedging their bets that the audience will get on board with most of them, rather than that they’re creating a complex web of subplots that will ultimately unify in a carefully constructed climax.
The real kicker, and the inspiration for this post, though, was the final scene of the episode, where we see the most overused of all sexual tension cliches – vicious hatred leading to fierce, violent sex. Again, I probably would have forgiven Bill and Lorena’s hate sex (essentially a rape fantasy played out on screen), especially because of the reversed gender roles here – even though Bill is seemingly physically dominating, we know that Lorena is controlling his mind, so she’s actually raping him. However, the way that this actually played out on screen was, well, ridiculous. What should have been an intense, emotional moment between two favorite rivals in the series, became a caricature; a hackneyed reduction of this world into a stunt for shock value. Specifically, as Bill pounds Lorena, he twists her head around 180 degrees, she says she still loves him and he screams. What is this, Twilight? A National Lampoon movie? I’m not sure whether I should have laughed or vomited.
If Ball wanted to generate buzz with this scene, he accomplished that, as the blogosphere is atwitter, but most of what I’ve seen has been negative. As someone who has been a big fan of his, as well as vampire flicks and the first season and a half of this series, I hope they bring it around and pleasantly surprise me. But, if I wanted to see this type of unoriginal, asinine entertainment, I’d watch Scary Movie.
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