‘True Blood’ Saturdays: Let’s talk about spoilers

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It’s probably time for us to have a chat about spoilers here at the Show Tracker “True Blood” blog.

I know that the series is based on a series of very popular books. I know that many, many of you who are into the TV series have read the books. And I know that it can be very hard to sit there and watch the series string out big revelations from the books when you already know what’s going to happen. But I’m going to ask one thing of you: Please, please don’t spoil the experience for the rest of us.

I haven’t read the books “True Blood” is based on. The show could reveal tomorrow that Eric is actually a man-eating plant of one variation or another, and I wouldn’t bat an eye because I’d have no idea that this revelation was made in Book 7 or whatever. Now, honestly, if you spoil me, I won’t be terribly upset. I don’t have a huge aversion to spoilers, and I’m just going to shrug it off. But many, MANY of your fellow readers and comments section dwellers don’t want to know what’s coming up, even though you do. It’s easier to avoid spoilers for books that have been out for years than it is for popular movies or TV shows, sad as that may sound. So when you say with all certainty just what Sookie Stackhouse is in the books and that she’s likely the same thing in the show, well, it kills a little bit of the fun for a lot of people.

Here’s the thing: The people who approve comments here at Show Tracker don’t always know what’s a spoiler and what’s not a spoiler. So it can’t be on them. It’ll have to be on you guys to police yourselves and be polite. I know the temptation is always there, particularly when it seems like those of us who haven’t read the books are being intentionally dense, but we want reading the Show Tracker blog for “True Blood” to be just as fun an experience as watching the show. So -- and let me bold this for emphasis -- let’s ONLY discuss what’s happened on the show up until the episode that just aired. Speculation is fair game, but if you know spoilers (thanks to reading the books or reading other spoiler sites), please, please keep them to yourselves. If this policy doesn’t work out, I’ll have to figure something else out about deleting comments or making sure spoilers aren’t published.

In the meantime, let’s talk about last week’s episode. There were 34 comments on last week’s article, and I got over a dozen e-mails, so I won’t be able to get to all of your points. Suffice it to say that many, many of you have some interesting things to say about the series. Onward!

Lots of you seem to think I shouldn’t be dismissing the “Sookie is a fairy!” argument out of hand. And I’ll agree that what’s surprising to Eric -- who hasn’t necessarily given this much thought -- may not be surprising to us -- who have given it more thought than it probably deserves -- but I still think the show might want to do something more surprising than the first place my mind went to when I saw the dancing sisters of the Activia commercial. Then again, obvious can be good sometimes, and I’m willing to see how all of this plays out. If it is just a fairy, though, I’m going to feel gypped after all of that research I did for my write-up last week. (I didn’t even know what a naiad WAS until I wrote that.)

Meanwhile, a number of you are saying that Bill being able to walk in sunlight after drinking Sookie’s blood must be a big part of the puzzle. That certainly seems likely, and I feel remiss in not pointing it out in the write-up (I just forgot). How this all ties into the larger mystery of what Sookie is remains to be seen, but I’d imagine it has to do something with the interplay between light and dark in the weird dream world she went to while in her coma. Bill is, after all, the darkness that clouds the light in that world, and Sookie drank from a pool of water that seemed to dissolve in glowing light. I don’t know how all of this fits together, but it does seem an important part of the puzzle.

san frann wanted to know just why they didn’t find Jason to give Sookie blood. So far as I know, they did, and it just took him a while to get to the hospital. That said, though, Jason doesn’t seem to have the same blood as Sookie (who has no discernible type). Whatever happened to bring Sookie into our world, it was vastly different from what brought Jason into our world.

markiejoe begs to differ that this season has been good:

“True Blood has jumped the shark this season. Nothing is interesting. Absolutely no sense of humor about itself. Divergent plot lines where never the twain shall meet. Blood and guts everywhere to no purpose. And the ‘plot’ (such as it is) is incomprehensible.”

I can see where the increased amount of gore this season would be bothersome to some people, but I think the plot, so far, mostly makes sense. We just don’t have all of the pieces in place yet to figure out why, exactly, these things are happening. Once we have the answers to some of the bigger questions of the season at the end of the season, I have to imagine that some of the incomprehensible events markiejoe is complaining about will make much more sense. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. I also certainly wouldn’t accuse the season of not having a sense of humor about itself. There have been moments throughout this season that have been quite funny.

Finally, cinders23 was really bothered by something:

“Heck yeah, this episode was filled with blood & guts. But no one mentions the dogfight. They shot a dog and threw him (her) onto a pile of dead dogs. There was NOTHING campy about this scene. I am still sick to my stomach over this. All the blood has a kind of ‘wink-wink, yeah this is gross’ quality to it. Although I had to cover my eyes with Lorena & the scalpel.) There was a whole undertone in this dogfight scene that no one is addressing. The vamps spewing blood and the werewolves reverting to human when killed is all FICTION. The dog fighting IS NOT FICTION!!! This really bothers me more than trying to answer the question, “What is Sookie?” And I can’t wait to see how Alan Ball answers that one!”

I think we should feel confident in Ball and his writers after this scene, actually. They clearly know that the dog fighting scenes aren’t fictional things they’re making up (well, outside of men shape-shifting into dogs to compete in the fights), and they’re treating them with a certain degree of seriousness. I’d be less worried about the show proving that it’s firmly against dog fighting than I would about the show figuring out a way to tie all of this into the main action of the plot. But I can certainly see where something like this would be disturbing to someone. I’ll just say that “True Blood” has always trafficked in potentially disturbing storylines, and it usually knows when to pull back and when to treat something with a suitable degree of realism.

And that’s all until Sunday night, gang. Remember, you can always get in touch via e-mail and Twitter.

--Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)

Related articles:

‘True Blood’: The mystery that is Sookie Stackhouse

With ‘Game of Thrones,’ HBO is playing for another ‘True Blood’

Complete Show Tracker ‘True Blood’ coverage

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