True Bloodmay not be remembered as the opening salvo in the great undead fiction resurrection of the late aughts/early 2010s, but it was. It debuted in September 2008, that’s before British zombie miniseriesDead Set(October 2008), vampire blockbusterTwilight(November 2008), teen vampire dramaThe Vampire Diaries(September 2009), nihilist zombie dramaThe Walking Dead(October 2010), and white-walking fantasy powerhouseGame of Thrones(April 2011). Created by Academy Award-winning screenwriterAlan Ball—who gifted HBO one of its post-Sopranoscritical darlings inSix Feet Under, a remarkable dramatic achievement that helped to cement the network’s reputation asthehome for elevated drama—True Bloodwas elevated camp, with a strong metaphorical backbone, but it debuted with a relative whimper.
By the end of its first season, though, it was the highest-rated show on its network, thanks in part byTwilightentering the chat during that season’s run, partly because it was a revelation of talent. It was led by Academy Award-winning actressAnna Paquindoing a career reboot, early-adopting television as the place for actors to be taken seriously. Paquin — weaponized Southern accent locked and loaded—had chemistry with nearly every scene partner the show gave her, and delivered even as the show started to crumble around her. Based on characters from theSouthern Vampire Mysteriesbook series by authorCharlaine Harris, its cast was stacked with talent:Stephen Moyer,Alexander Skarsgård,Rutina Wesley,Nelsan Ellis,Joe Manganiello,Ryan Kwanten,Lizzy Caplan,Denis O’Hare,Kristin Bauer van Straten,Deborah Ann Woll, and loads more.
For a couple of seasons, it was the best party on television. But parties aren’t made to last. Let’s sift through the red cups and confetti to determine which seasons kept the energy going, and which had us wishing we’d stayed in bed.
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7. Season 7
What a way to go. The final season ofTrue Bloodfeels like the storytelling equivalent of frantically packing your bags during a house fire. It is bad. The dearth of quality wouldn’t be so confounding if the prior season hadn’t seen the series take a deep breath and refocus on its world and characters. It’s got about two strongly written episodes, which is a shame because, as is the case with most seasons of the show, the ideas themselves aren’t uninteresting, merely executed poorly and/or rushed. You can practically feel the creative team lining up job interviews right there onscreen. Rutina Wesley deserved better and so did fans of the show.
6. Season 4
This season has the ingredients to be much greater than it is. Nelsan Ellis’s Lafayette Reynolds (a groundbreakingly queer character) gets a sturdy love interest, the show gets blessed by the presence of a whackyAlfre Woodard, Anna Paquin and Alexander Skarsgård get to consummate their obvious chemistry, andHarry PotteralumFiona Shawgets to have an accent party as a relatively effective villain. But Australian dreamboat Ryan Kwanten gets maybe one of the worst, most inert storylines the show has ever produced. Some cool concepts are introduced, but nearly all of them lead to payoffs that do not land.
5. Season 5
The last season with Alan Ball at the helm, it plays like a 12-part bottle episode in some ways, with a lot of action taking place at Vampire Authority HQ, where well-dressed undead are free to squabble and engage in trivial power plays. As such, there are a lot of new vampires, entertaining supernatural action, and the Stackhouse family gets more fantastical lore. It’s an uneven season of television in every conceivable way, but it does feel more like the writers have a grip on the story they are telling, and so it’s the best of the worst seasons.
4. Season 6
So: Alan Ball leaves the show in Season 5 andMark Hudis(an addition to the writing team for its fourth season) was installed as executive producer. But at some point during production Hudisalsostepped down, andBrian Buckner(on the show since the beginning) was set as the show’s EP instead. That’s a lot of behind-the-scenes shuffling for a single season. Adding to that, Anna Paquin’s pregnancy requiring a reduced episode count, the sixth season could’ve easily played out like a rote shrug, satisfying nothing save various contractual obligations. Instead, it is the last creative height of the show’s run. The writers come up with some good reasons to play to their series’ strengths (sex, violence, and metaphor-laden character drama) and a couple pretty good villains in the form of an overpowered Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) and the mysterious vampire Warlow. We get a pre-YellowstoneLuke Grimes, pre-Lovecraft CountryJurnee Smollett,as well as the legendaryRutger Hauer. It’s a mostly-fun season that largely isn’t insulting to anyone’s intelligence, and it’s the last time the show will create such a thing.
3. Season 3
Here is whereTrue Bloodbecomes quite obviously aware of its own reputation. It gains a self-awareness that becomes a wearying part of its DNA going forward, and an almost, dare we say, network television-like approach to character (which is to say, broader and not always consistent, but alwaysconvenient). This season introduces werewolves and werepanthers officially to the mix and fleshes out many storylines planted in season 2, including Eric’s intricate relationship with his sire Godric (Allan Hyde). But the thing it does that leaves a mark on its fanbase, and the universe of the show, is introduce vampire king Russell Edgington, played with impish delight by Denis O’Hare. The man chews scenery even when speaking in a conversational tone, and he presents a splitting of the series from its camp-flavored horror-drama first two seasons and its horror-flavored fantasy-soap last several. There’s a lot of fun to be had, but a lot of characters start getting baffling arcs (Jason and Tara most notably), some of whom will never again get a decent thread. Season 3 is not the last time the show keeps all its motors running smoothly, but it’s definitely the first time its check-engine light comes on, marking the end of a brief, zeitgeist-seizing run with a reasonable sense of quality control.
2. Season 1
We meetTrue Bloodas a humble series that only wants to entertain. It’s got personality to spare but doesn’t want to scare us away by being all of itself all at once. It reintroduces us to Anna Paquin, no longer a sweet brunette playing little sister toHugh Jackman’s Wolverine in Fox’sX-Menfilms, she enters her television era as a blonde bombshell with surplus sass.
Fans coming into this world on the strength of its Alan Ball pedigree were surprised the man could have this much fun.Six Feet Underwas a gas, to be sure, with its acerbic depressives with hearts on their sleeves, lives full of sex, and death all around them; but the sad perfection of its ending put a button on the searching need present in every one of its episodes. All of its characters’ victories were bittersweet. It had funanxiously.True Bloodwas like the sarcastic Debbie Downer coming back from summer break with a gothic, bodice-rocking glow up, and the first season — with its central murder mystery and patient, artful care in setting up its dangerous world and establishing its outsized characters — would prove not just a highlight of the series’ run, but of Ball’s career to date.
1. Season 2
When its first season was a hit,True Bloodshifted from third gear straight to fifth. It moved faster, had more sex, more violence, and bigger metaphorical targets, such as the war on terror and Christian fundamentalism; it had things to say about self-doubt and self-care.
It got scarier and (slightly) less shy about dipping its toes into the post-modern fantasy elements of its source material. It also acquired the best villain it would ever see in Maryann Forrester (played with wicked glee byMichelle Forbes) a social worker who speaks in Alan Ball truth nuggets and whose kindness is too good to be true. She steps into the show like the narrative embodiment of the proverbial pushed envelope; the face of HBO’s license to thrill. She’s a maenad who spends the season transforming the fictional Bon Temps, Louisiana into a hedonistic badland, on top of trying to figure out what, exactly, Anna Paquin’s Sookie Stackhouseis, and making the art of spell chanting sound very cool indeed.
She’s ultimately a chaos demon with no time for BS (other than her own), and her departure from the show after this season is a blow from which the writing never fully recovers. Every villain that comes after is a version of her with cool things to offer, sure, but without the inherent threat of this mind-controlling semi-god who wanted nothing more than to be an excuse for television excess and to kill a few people along the way. When she died, so did this version ofTrue Blood, and, boy, was it missed.
