This episode of True Blood seemed to have more mixed reviews than any other of Season 2.
Although Eric’s leering reference to children as “teacup humans” may have been one of the most memorable lines of the season, in the dozens of comments on a number of sites (like EW, for example) the vast majority of True Blood fans had very strong opinions about Evan Rachel Wood’s Sophie-Anne, Vampire Queen of Louisiana.
I’m a fan of Evan’s. She’s still very young and I think she’ll continue to really shine if cast in the right roles. Unfortunately, I don’t think Alan Ball, who wrote episode 11 was objective enough about her ability to pull off the task of portraying the Queen in a convincing fashion. It seemed like stunt casting with ERW neither scary, nor amusing, which whether or not you read the Sookie Stackhouse book from whence she sprang, you would still expect an ancient Vampire Queen to be (amusing, because True Blood is tongue-in-cheek). She was just…annoying. It felt to me like they plopped her down in the middle of the story and we had no build-up, no frame of reference for her or to her and disappointingly, it just did not work at all.
The failure of the scenes with Sophie-Anne and Vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) really dragged down the episode as a whole and without Alexander Skarsgård in a dress and Pam (Kristin Bauer) doing her best deadpan about how thankful she was that she never had kids, we’d be left only with more Sam (Sam Trammell) on the run, more Andy Bellefleur (Chris Bauer) trying to reclaim his rightful place (in his mind, anyway) as a guardian of the law, more crazy, blacked-out-eyed orgiastic Bon Temps residents and Lafayette having another bout of PTSD. Jason (Ryan Kwanten) got off a couple of good lines, though the conversation between him and Andy seemed like it was kind of shoe-horned in just so they could “bond” before going into battle.
It’s a tall order for a show that is hyped as much as True Blood is to always measure up. “Frenzy” fell really short of great, landing somewhere in the vicinity of “meh.”
I still love the show–I’m not that fickle–but I don’t think Alan Ball is the best choice to write the show. His strengths truly lie in guiding it and I hope he continues in that role–and stays out of the writer’s room. Ball is a big reason True Blood is worthy of all the hype so as we close out Season 2 let’s hope he and his team blow our minds like we know they can!
