The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
True Blood, Season Four
So. You may recall that in this, my last remaining vampire guilty-pleasure, I am a season behind. HBO is running Season Five right now and Season Four was released on DVD.
If you are keeping score, True Blood now has vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, fairies and witches.
This is the season of the witches. Eric, the thousand year old viking-prince vampire, has already been set up as the official anti-hero. The twist here is – MINOR SPOILER – the Big Bad Witch casts a spell on him that takes his memory. He still has his crazy-strong vampire powers, but he is lacking all of the personal history that made him..Eric. So that was interesting.
I am pretty sure I told you about how the TV show sketches out much of the main plot of the novels, but it twists and tweaks a bunch of stuff to make for better TV. Generally, I like their choices. The biggest one for me was sparing a supporting character that I love in the TV series that was killed off in an early novel. But I must take issue with the twist at the end of Season Four.
MAJOR SPOILER
In the novel, when the spell is broken, Eric regains his all of his memories except for the last weeks (when he was with Sookie). Or so he says. This allowed Sookie to pretend it never happened (at least for now). The TV series allowed him to keep those memories (or own that he has them) so as to Fast Forward the love triangle with Bill. Bleh.
Another divergence, which was actually rather awesome, is that when Sookie visits the witch, Gran inhabits her and warns Sookie off of Eric, saying, “It’s only temporary.”
New Rule: Always listen to your Dead Grandma.
OK, so remember in Attack of the Clones when Anakin killed the Sand People and told Padme all about it and we were all, “Lady. Run. Now.” ? So right after Eric regains his memory, SPOILER, they are confronting the witches and the lackey stands in front of Big Bad Witch with the “You’ll have to go through me” and with all vampire-speed, Eric runs up, tears out his heart and slurps the blood straight from the aortic valve*. Of course, that was totally funny. But:
“Lady. Run. Now.”
There are several other interesting plot threads going on – I continue to appreciate Jason’s evolution, Jessica is not nearly so annoying and don’t get me started on Alcide – and the finale left us hanging on the proverbial cliff.
So now I can go read the next book.
The Next Dark Age 