True Blood 4.1: "She's Not There"
Monday, June 27, 2011 at 6:23PM 
Bill still makes her red eyed and weepyLet the Season 4 premiere of HBO's hit series True Blood be a lesson to all future showrunners. This is what happens when your show has introduced non-integrated plotlines for each and every member of a huge ensemble cast. This is what happens when you try a time jump so popular post Battlestar Galactica and don't trust the audience to just reconfigure the pieces on their own. This is what happens when you back yourself into storylines that maybe weren't good ideas to begin with. I speak of Jason Stackhouse becoming the paterfamilia (of sorts) for a whole den of barely human hilbillies and a certain reveal about our heroine. To quote Sookie (Anna Paquin) herself with the same annoyed/surprised/this-is-stupid inflection from the Season 3 climax...
I'm a fairy?
And what is it that's happened, exactly?
The show's premiere episode "She's Not There" proved to be a random disjointed mess, forced to spend the entire hour on reintroductions to every character since we've missed a whole year of their lives (as has Sookie). I can't speak for television ratings but if True Blood hadn't already peaked in terms of the number of fangbangers gathered for each episode, this premiere had garlic all over it. Wouldn't it automatically repel new viewers?
Fairy-Land
"She's Not There" kicks off with a weirdly dull and anachronistic (for this show) opening. Sookie is trapped (though she doesn't yet know it) in an alternate fairy dimension which looks like a gaudy Maxfield Parrish knock-off painting with no-budget set dressing. Sookie doesn't eat the glowing fruit which turns out to be a good idea -- the side effects are both nasty and uglifying.
Once Sookie realizes that the fairies are kinda evil, there's much CGI mayhem involving glittery ball projectile weapons, crumbling dimensional portals, and long lost granddaddies. Returning home, Sookie thinks she's been gone from Bon Temps Louisiana for only 10-15 minutes. Stupid Sookie. It turns out to have been a year, which is exactly how long that opening fairy-land sequence felt.
Episode Peak: Jessica flirts with Matt . In a very smart reaction shot, Hoyt is oblivious while Pam sees all.
Back in Bon Temps we learn that Jason has adjusted to being a cop but Deputy Andy is now addicted to V (someone always is on this show), Bill is now the Boss of Eric somehow though Sookie is still the boss of their hearts (zzz), Sookie's house was sold to a mystery buyer, Tara is now a lesbian cage fighter (um, what?), Sam has new shapeshifter friends, Hoyt & Jessica are way bored and frequently fighting after only a year of cohabitation, Hoyt's mom has taken in Sam's brother (what?), Jason is still having trouble caring for that little village of werepanther kids (don't ask), Lafayette and Jesus have been together for a whole year but you wouldn't know it because they're still having the exact same "I don't know about this witchcraft" arguments from the end of the last season. The only character that hasn't changed one bit is fierce funny (un)deadpan Pam (Kristin Bauer). Why mess with perfection?
The most promising thing about the episode is certainly the coven of witches, who are being set up as the season's Big Bad (or at least Big Catalyst) and both scenes with Marnie (Fiona Shaw) whether she's channelling dead gay vampire voices or attempting to resurrect her dead familiar (a bird named "Minerva") are nicely handled. The least promising thing is the now seasons-long repetitive Bill & Eric rivalry over Sookie. The first reminder of this now boring through-line is a clever instant split second cutaway to both of them waking underground when Sookie arrives back on Earth... but we've been here a million times before. Later in the episode they have crosscut speeches trying to reestablish vamp cred with the newly-scared human population after last season's on-air murder. Eric's smarmy camera smiles are amusingly creepy but Bill makes a dull politician. This round goes to Eric.
We're always happy to serve humans here at Fangtasia. And I don't mean for dinner.
Eric, ever popular with fans, looks to be getting closer to his goal of shagging Sookie since he closes the episode surprising a nude Sookie and revealing that he now owns her house so she can't uninvite him.
You're mine."
Cue: fangs then end title card.
I was as thrilled as anyone to have True Blood back but the season premiere was little more than a series of stitched together expository scenes, all set up and no payoff. Series television thrives on long form stories, it's true, but you have to have a little something in each episode that feels contained and complete. Every time this episode threatened to really start it stalled again; the sight of Minerva the dead bird flapping its wings back to life only to die with a falling thud all over again was this episode in a nutshell.
Draining It Dry...
"Mamma loves you so so much but you have got to understand that killing is wrong."Body Count: 3 (one fairy grandaddy and Minerva the bird who died twice, poor thing); Sex Scene Tally: 1 (Tara's lesbian tryst, twice interrupted); Fresh Meat: Randy Wayne as "Matt". Jessica thinks he looks delicious. So do we; Funniest Moment: (runner up) Pam's faux-concern about Jessica in the bathroom "not really". (winner) That floor full of decapitated Barbie dolls which sets Arlene (the great Carrie Preston) off. She's still scared that her baby is the devil. Trashiest Moment: a feral child bites into a sack of raw meat from the grocery bags. I'm certain that John Waters was laughing his ass off; Best Sookie Moment: To her fairy godmother in the opening scene:
If your job is to look after me, can I just say you suck?"
Episode MVP: Introducing "Marnie" Fiona Shaw's always trance-distracted witch woman. Episode Grade: C
Fiona Shaw, Reviews, TV, True Blood, vampires, witches
Reader Comments (21)
Hmm I find it amusing that you were the only one among the great critics who didn't like the premiere very much; it got glowing reviews from everywhere. Although I can't seem to fathom why.
I agree with your assessment; the episode seemed all the time it was making a recap on the situation of the entire cast never moving the action at all - except for the Marnie bit.
I love the show but I am consistenly growing tired of some character traits - like Tara's, Bill's or even Sookie's. Tara in particular - Lesbian? Cage Fighter? Say what?! Oy.
At least my Pam is untouchable. Bliss.
Jorge -- i haven't read any reviews. i am stunned to hear that they're glowing. but i shall look around now that i've gotten all that out.
I've first noticed it here - http://www.goldderby.com/emmys/news/1652/true-blood-draws-rave-reviews-for-season-4-premiere.html ;)
I'm glad I'm not the only one who disliked the premiere episode. It was so repetitive with all of the catching up and re-introductions and BLAH BLAH BLAH. Most of all, it was just dull! I mean the minute I read that a character was going to go gay and that it would be someone unexpected I immediately thought of Tara. Sigh...I'm not quitting on the show, but I need the next episode to be waaaay better.
I was too deliriously happy to have my favorite delightfully stupid show back to notice any flaws. I'll give them a pass because they wrote themselves into several corners with some of these story lines. I hope that they will eventually intersect because there is so much going on and so much that they have to cover. But Tara/Tony's lesbian MMA fighter makes me laugh my ass off, because seriously, what the F?
I'm soooooo behind Bill as the new King of Louisiana though. It's about time Bill gets something to do other than being a boring ol' stiff.
Plus, i'd kill to have a few drinks (or in her case, True Blood) with Pam. She's so great, i just can't stand it.
Are you doing this for every episode? If so...I approve!!
I liked all the catching-up as I did not remembered for everyone how the last season ended - and don't know what happend the year inbetween. It was like the outline of a chess game, now I know the general situation and where all the players are standing (at least the obvious). Now the game can begin!
And I don''t mind non-integrated plotlines of a big cast, I actually think it's more reallistic instead of having them bump into each other all the time (even in a small Lousiana town).
The Fairy-Land looked awful and I was relieved when Sookie returned to Earth.
Jonathon -- that's the plan. But i might bail if there isn't enough reader interest. It's kinda time consuming :) but it was especially fun to do the episode breakdown at the end. so hopefully, yeah.
I agree with everyone saying that the first episode back wasn't up to usual True Blood standards, but having seen the second episode I can see why they made the first episode the way they did.
It was sort of like "we have to get all of this out of the way so we can get to the fun stuff next time" episode.
Nathaniel - gotcha. Well, you can expect my interest. TB is one of my favorite shows.
Terence - isn't every season premiere of every tv show a catch-up game?
There are just too many characters on this show...or rather, too many characters that just HAVE to have something going on, and unfortunately most of those goings on are pretty uneventful...Sam, Tara, Hoyt and Jessica have been wandering in an abyss of boredom since Season 3 (honestly, Tara has been awful since the beginning), and this meth addict/were-panther thing is just awful. It's like the writers have to keep finding some other new problem for Jason to have...and Alcide hasn't come back yet....oh boy! More characters!
The show just needs to refocus on a select few, and then keep the rest on the side-lines. The one thing I would absolutely support though, is somehow a return of Rene (ghost form or whatever)...Michael Raymond-James was like a master class in acting compared to some of the people he gets surrounded with on this show.
I loved the season premiere. Woof.
I'm with you, Nat. This season premiere was lacklustre, and gets a C+ rating from me. It was disjointed, and the opening 10 minutes felt like a bizarre spin off of Lord of the Rings.
"There are just too many characters on this show...or rather, too many characters that just HAVE to have something going on, and unfortunately most of those goings on are pretty uneventful...Sam, Tara, Hoyt and Jessica have been wandering in an abyss of boredom since Season 3 (honestly, Tara has been awful since the beginning), and this meth addict/were-panther thing is just awful. It's like the writers have to keep finding some other new problem for Jason to have...and Alcide hasn't come back yet....oh boy! More characters!"
Bear in mind that the were panther/meth addict storyline is straight out of the books written by Charlene Harris. A lot of the storylines are taken from the books, or tweaked slightly from the books. Originally, Lafeyette was suppose to be killed in season one (his character was murdered in the novels). However, the actor that portrayed Lafeyette was so good and so liked by cast, crew, and fans, that Alan Ball decide to deviate from the novel. Similarly, in the second episode of this season, a major character in the novels will bite it (i.e. die) in the show.
"The show just needs to refocus on a select few, and then keep the rest on the side-lines. The one thing I would absolutely support though, is somehow a return of Rene (ghost form or whatever)...Michael Raymond-James was like a master class in acting compared to some of the people he gets surrounded with on this show."
Agreed. There are too many characters. Maybe Ball should pull a Stephen King a la The Stand, and kill a bunch off in a shocking penulitimate episode.
Oh,incidentally Carrie Preston is married to Michael Emerson (dude that played Ben Linus on Lost), who is a great character actor. Emerson has publically stated that he wants to work on TB, and even approached Ball about it. If they can nab Emerson, it would certainly be a coup in casting.
Yeah, it was kind of a dull episode, but that's because it was all set-up. So I'm excited for where the season will be headed, which I'm guessing is what the point of the episode was. But yeah, one of the things that bugs me to no end about True Blood is that there are so many goddamn separate storylines - it sometimes feels as though it's actually two or three shows instead of just the one - and this does not appear to be going away this season. Oh well. The more Fiona Shaw the world gets, the better, so at least there's that!
denny & blinking -- yeah, i guess my qualm is not the number of characters but the lack of integration of the storylines. I suppose Lafayette will be intwined with Marnie (which is a plus) but it sometimes feels like the show woudl still be able to handle all of its characters if it only required them to share billing in their stories. :)
I thought the premiere was fine. I was entertained, and it was like seeing old friends again. Fiona Shaw looks like she'll be crazyballs this season, which I love. This whole witches storyline with Lafayette looks like it has the most potential out of the new threads. Bill being King of Louisiana is a head-scratcher, but hopefully they'll explain all of that next week. The opening scene in fairyland with the glitter bombs was truly awful though. That I can't defend. I felt sorry for Gary Cole. And those were-panthers again? Really? Poor Jason. But other than that, I'll ready for season 4! More Eric, Alcide, and Pam plz!
There was only 2 things I really dislike..
1.Tara's gay storyline
and most importantly...
2.THERE WAS JUST TOO MUCH CLOTHES ON THE GUYS!!!
Ok, who dies next episode???
One problem I have with true blood is this whole everybody loves sookie thing. I just dont see her as such a fascinating character and dont get why the whole world is in love with her! It is less complicated in bill's case because at least there was some build up, but I never really got why Éric was so into her! I never saw where his feelings were coming from! There's the whole "fairy blood is addictive to vampires" but its not enough for me! I dwas never caught into eric-sookie because there's no foundation. And yes, the triangle is getting old, repetitive and boring!
Hate the whole meth/were-whatever storyline!
Cant stand tara!
Looooooooooove Jessica, lafayette and above all Pam!
Not every. If you haven't seen The Wire for a long time, you're going to be extremely confused because they don't really play "catch-up." I don't think it's bad (it's awesome), I just don't think it was ever constructed for anything resembling "week-to-week" viewing, unlike something like Mad Men, which, although it seems very good in the "week-to-week" model, the first season really failed for me watching it in a three day run, especially when leveled against it's nearest competition, Heimat by Edgar Reitz. There's better characterization in some comic books (JTHM, I Feel Sick and even, well especially, the well-developed static characters of Nextwave, a series that states outright that they're avoiding character progression), we get little-to-no sense of how this place meshes together exactly (inviting comparisons to the much smarter The Apartment (by saying how it's unrealistic) was a REALLY bad decision, mostly because realistic and intelligent are different things) and, finally, there were too many episodes and way too many cuts needed 3-5 seconds trimmed off. Telling Mad Men season one as eight episodes might have appealed quite a bit. As they decided to tell it: C for season one. Now, tomorrow, I'm going to start watching Treme (Season One) and glare at people who think Mad Men can still claim honestly claim the title of "Best Pure Drama on TV." (True Blood is that dangerous vampire sex-dramedy that fascinates me, even though I haven't seen it.)
I think the high point had to be Pam's attempt at a PSA. "The blood is warm and so is the service."