True blood season 3 dvd release
The ones we're made privy to all bow under the command of a deliciously fiendish old Mississippi vampire named Russell (Denis O'Hare) - the king of his area in the same way Sophie-Anne (Evan Rachel Wood) lords over the Bon Temps region - whose smarmy charm as he "politely" invites Bill to a multi-course blood dinner will spark grin-inducing chills, both in the dishes served and the manipulative web of words he spins. It introduces the presence of werewolves in Sookie Stackhouse's world - no, not shape-shifters like Sam, but simple-minded, bloodthirsty werewolves that do the bidding of vampires for the chance to drink their blood. There's a more tightly-realized presence of danger in this run, a sense of immediacy that the previous season lacked. The gravity pulling them together and repelling them apart pushes the envelope with the credence the show can muster, instead of cranking the melodramatic gears in a juvenile fashion. Moreover, the writers have dialed down the ease of Bill and Sookie's romantic connection and, without giving too much away, made it so it's not a downpour of halfhearted breakup-makeup tension.
In fact, forcing Sookie to swiftly use her resources in the human-vampire cohabitating community - this includes the blood connection between vampires and the ones they've fed on - reinvigorates the starry-eyed tension that the second season beleaguered. One of this arc's paramount assets comes in separating Sookie and Bill for a prolonged period of time, allowing the sour taste left after Bill's egregious, raspy "Sookie" whispers to fade into the romanticized rush generated in seeking him out (the writers even poke fun at the meme with a cutely-delivered line between Sookie and her brother, Jason). And then there's Sam (Sam Trammell), the shape-shifting owner of Merlotte's bar, who discovers an urge to find his birth parents to see if they share the same "curse".Īlthough the preceding two runs of True Blood rushed along at a brisk pace, the third season kicks it up a notch with few lapses in time occurring off-screen, thrusting the pulpy fang-banging along with an addictive momentum. As Sookie searches for her beau, Tara's (Rutina Wesley) struggling with the mental instability caused by her time with the mischievous Dionysus-following maenad Maryann, along with her recently-murdered boyfriend Eggs, while newly-fanged vampiress Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) tries to figure out what to do with a body she's drained on her master Bill's doorstep. The crux to a large portion of this season comes in Sookie's hunt for her vampire lover, flocking to area sheriff Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) to aid in turning him up, while in tandem we catch glimpses of where Bill's being taken to by silver-packing hooligans that plucked him from his chair. The show picks up immediately after last season's cliffhanger, with a frazzled, sharp-dressed Sookie wondering where Bill disappeared to while she contemplated his marriage proposal in a restaurant bathroom - following what appears to be a struggle at their table, potentially a kidnapping. Doing so breathes new life into True Blood, groping it back into place with a fiendishly gratifying mix of harlequin soap and idiosyncratic horror. In short, some of its distinctiveness dissipated in lieu of easier gasps and swooning thankfully, creator Alan Ball and his crew caught wind of the show's overblown misdirects and, instead of just nudging in the right direction, aggressively sink their teeth into exploring its identity - and the identities of its population. However, it veered from the equilibrium of thrills and trashiness that made its premiere season a runaway success, transfixed more with the soap-opera monster lurking amid Bon Temps while, in the process, losing focus on its darker intrigues for heavier blood-tinged melodrama and overtly-mythological whims. HBO's hit guilty pleasure True Blood remained sprightly enough in its second season to sate its following, while exploring a neo-religious vampire-hating cult, Grecian mythology in the modern era, Eric's Norse roots, and egregious back-and-forth between doe-eyed Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and her thick-voiced beau Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer).