True Blood: Radioactive

Posted by: Andrew Burns  •  August 19, 2013 @ 12:00am

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

Another summer, another season. Fans of the blood trusty sex romping supernatural series, that is True Blood, got their last taste of Sunday night scares tonight. True Blood's shortened sixth season came to a close this evening, but not without some classic cryptic cliff-hangers.

Enough alteration from me, now on to the finale.

If you are a fan of the series you know by now True Blood ends each year by splitting up the finale into two parts. The first half being the wrapping up of season long story-lines, and the ladder half of the finale is left for introducing stories for the following year. "Radioactive" was no different than previous seasons. The episode's first half quickly dealt with the day walking vampires, the aftereffects of Bill's sacrifice, and Warlow's fate. The second is a little fuzzy still so why don't I go over the first half a little bit more and I'll work my way to the end.

I had already knew from the beginning of the year that this sixth season would be shorter than all the others (being 10 not 12 episodes) but I wasn't expecting them to speed through the main story the way they did. It seemed like it only took the first few scenes to sum everything up that happen during this season and conclude it. The opening scenes had Bill back to normal, while his new liberated day-walking vampires had a sexual liberation on his front lawn. Shortly after the daytime vamp-orgy the final fight against Warlow begins and then ends.

For the amount of lead up to this big villain, Warlow, I think the series tried to have their cake and eat it to. They built up the character to essentially eclipse all the other supernatural beings in terms of sheer power, while at the same time try and make him mysterious/likable. Qualities that could has meshed together eventually but the show spent too much time masking Warlow's true intentions from episode to episode it all felt flat when it mattered the most during the finale. As much as I thought this character would be good for the series down the road the viewer in me is glad that they dispatched of him in the way they did, just so he doesn't come popping back up next year if they run out of things to do.

The last half of the episode is set six months after Warlow's death and his light leaves all of the vampires that fed on Bill. This fast-forward story technic is usually reserved for show's season premiere but True Blood likes to do thinks a little differently. When I previously said this second half of the episode was kind of fuzzy in wasn't a knock on the quality of that part of the finale. Just the fact that it leaves the future of the show uncertain and six months of interesting back-story to catch up on when season seven comes around. Bill goes on a confessional book tour, Sookie and Alcide become an item, Sam becomes major, and the whole vampire situation changes after the Hep-V virus starts to spread. How exactly this Hep-V virus will effect the show is unclear right now, but judging by the crazy vampire/human buddy system they set up at the end of the episode a lot changes in those six months.

The image of the Hep-V infected, zombie like, vampires about to storm Bellefleur Bar & Grill (formally Merlotte's) is the cliff-hanger the show leaves viewers with but not the moment fans will be talking about come Monday morning. Judging by outrage on Twitter more fans are blown away by the 'death' of Eric. First of all the image of him buck nude, on the top of a mountain top, lying on a beach chair, while reading a book was probably the funniest thing of the whole season. Even though they show Eric go pretty much full fledge barbeque I think the Twitterverse is jumping the gun saying he is dead. If its true and he died naked sun tanning I think I'd be ok with it because it suits the character and its pretty damn memorable. However Alexander Skarsgard is one of the shows biggest stars so I can't see exiting just yet.

I thought about what the True Blood quote of the week for the finale should be for a while and then I realized nothing could top Eric sun tanning in the Alps. So enjoy this review's image at the top and I'll see all you fang-bangin' Truebies next summer for season seven.

Follow Andrew on Twitter.

Tags: True Blood, Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Alexander Skarsgard, Sam Trammell, Ryan Kwanten, Rutina Wesley, Kristin Bauer van Straten, Nelsan Ellis, Rutger Hauer

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Andrew Burns loves film and comics, and can be found writing about when those worlds converge. You can follow him on Twitter at @myAndrewBurns.

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