True Blood IV: You actually made me miss Mary Ann from year 2.

I couldn't come up with a blog post that would properly describe this season of True Blood.  If you watched it you know what I'm talking about.  If you don't watch the show, but are interested in starting, please for the love of all that is sacred and holy DO NOT start with Season 4.

I tried to make this interesting and I don't think I succeeded, just because of sheer volume of stuff thrown at us this year.

Let me just start with a really basic plot synopsis:

Eric loses his memory, Sookie finds him on the side of the road and takes him home, as you do with any vampire who doesn't remember that he shouldn't eat you.  They fall in love, Eric gets all Emo.  Marnie the witch gets possessed by Antonia the dead witch and tries to make all the vampires within a hundred miles meet the sun.  Vampires aren't standing for that, and they set out to kill her, but it takes longer than it really should.  Jessica realizes that she doesn't love Hoyt anymore and they break up (tear) but then Jessica jumps in bed with Jason, who rightly feels guilty at first, but then just does his Jason thing (I'm glad Hoyt kicked his ass.  Not cool Jason, not cool).  In the end Eric gets his memory back, just in time to rip out a guy's heart and suck on it like a juice box (awesome), and Marnie ends up dead, but only long enough to possess Lafayette and kill Jesus (I hate you HBO). 

Now for my rant.

Full disclosure:  I've never read the books.  From what I have heard, Eric losing his mind and falling in love with Sookie is the GREATEST THING EVER about the series. Well, somehow this show somehow made Alexander Skarsgaard unsexy.  How the hell do you even do that?  I mean it started off great, like when he called Sookie "Snookie", that was pretty awesome, and when he drank the fairy godmother and got drunk off of fairy blood, that was cool, but that was the last of any enjoyment to be seen for the next 9 weeks.  We're left with Lafayette one-liners, Pam bitchiness and the surprsingly realistic train wreck of Hoyt and Jessica's relationship to hold us over, and there was not enough of any of that to stop me from hating myself the next morning after watching True Blood. 

There were too many plot lines in this season. Like Arlene's/Terry's/Rene's Devil Baby, who wasn't really a Devil Baby, and his Devil Doll, which really wasn't a Devil Doll, and the French Singing Ghost who possesses Lafayette just to show that he's a medium and gives Jesus a chance to show off his exorcism expertise.

Like Nan who is such an insufferable bitch for 11 episodes that we don't care when she's killed off in the 12th.

Like Jason and the were-tweakers.  I can’t even… I just… Why was that even started?  He didn’t even turn into a werepanther.

Like Tommy killing his asshat parents (yay) and turning into a skinwalker (nay).  Although the image of the guy who plays Sam pretending to be Tommy pretending to be Sam is hilarious.  Even funnier was when Tommy pretended to be Maxine Fortenberry.  But it was unnecessary, except maybe as an excuse to kill off Tommy.  And you didn't have to do that True Blood.  You could have just sent him to a nice farm upstate, where he had plenty of room to run around and all the rabbits he could chase.

Like anything to do with Tara.  Now, I'm not down with the Tara hate that seems to infest the interwebs, but if you're going to have a character around do something with her.  Tara wins the award for Most Underused Character, and Rutina Wesley wins for Actress Most Willing To Cash A Paycheck.

And Alcide and Debbie.  Served no purpose what so ever.

In fact I tried to make a list of plot lines from this season and this is what I came up with:

1. Sookie returns after missing for a year, real-time, and eveyone just goes about their business.
2. Jason is werepanther messiah, and then werepanther rape victim.
3. Witches.
4. King Bill dating his great-great-great-great granddaughter.
5. V addict Sherriff Andy.
6. Devil Baby.
7. Devil Baby's Devil Doll.
8. Pretty French Singing Ghost.
9. Vengeful Spanish Ghost
10. Mediums and Excorcists
11. Fairy war
12. Eric losing his memory.
13. Eric and Sookie hooking up
14. Skinwalkers
15. Alcide and Debbie's domestic bore.
16. Jessica and Hoyt's domestic drama.
17. Vampire/Human relations in a post-Russell "We will eat your children" Edginton world.

I'm sure I missed something, but can you blame me?  This was just one holy mess.

Am I starting to sound bitter?  Ya think?

So what's up for next year?  We all know that Tara isn't dead.  Zombies maybe?  She'll probably just end up being a self loathing vampire.  Looks like Russell's coming back, that will be nice.  And Steve Newlin showed up at Jason's door with a pair of awfully pointy pearly whites, so that may or may not be interesting.  Despite the previous rant, I'll be tuning in next summer because despite the mess of this season I still enjoy seeing Eric naked.  So please, let's have some more of that next year.  Mkay?