Today's Column: True Blood has died the True Death

Overdue by a few days (by no fault of mine, I upheld my deadline as always), but here's my latest online column:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/157062/column_de_ware_dood_van_true_blood

Boy, am I glad that is over and done with. And not because it was so dismally bad as some would have you believe, though the finale did leave a lot to be desired. But so did the rest of the season, so at least there is some inner consistency. There's a lot to be said against this last season in terms of story, but there were still several plot lines and especially characters I continued to enjoy and appreciate. And in that case, True Blood at least can boast a genuine ending, unlike most other shows that suffer increasing deteriorating ratings and heavy fan critique. The greatest thing about this finale is that it does indeed feel quite final and the show was permitted a decent send-off in that regard, rather than face cancellation and leave us all in the dark as happened to so many shows (and a lot of them deserved better). We can now all close the Sookie Stackhouse chapter of our lives peacefully, as to my mind any show should be ended. Of course, there were a few story threads that didn't feel wholly resolved and more of those that I felt should have been handled entirely different, but there's few shows that even get to this point without screwing a thing or two up. Only two recent examples of shows that were granted a final farewell sprung to mind, Breaking Bad and Spartacus. Admittedly, both of those ended on a superior note, but they were much more coherent in their quality throughout their run, while True Blood from the get-go tended to meander between well executed plot threads and those less so, featuring both wonderfully charismatic characters and their barely watchable counterparts. We'll have to make do without both, from now on. No more Maenad orgies, conniving witch covens and endless droning about who Sookie will jump into bed with this time, but also no more shrewd vampire politics, stupendously supernatural situations and Eric Northman. Not every blood type variety of Tru-Blood proved as delectable, but I still regret having to return to strictly human beverages again after seven years.