Review: ‘True Blood’ Season 7, Episode 10, ‘Thank You’ Is All About Bill
Well, here we are, folks. The end of all things. I certainly didn’t come into this season with a grudge against this show. Heck, I thought Season 6 was pretty good! Plus I was overly generous in my review of the season premiere, since I was hoping for the best. But woof, this final season turned into a slog by Episode 2 and never really recovered. The nicest thing I can say about “Thank You” is that while it’s still very silly, it’s not nearly the trainwreck most of the rest of the season has been. Hooray?
One thing I will say: the “True Blood” opening credits have always been and will always be totally awesome. I will miss you, “True Blood” credits! Keep on doin’ bad things in Opening Credits Heaven!
The big focus of the finale is Sookie and Bill, which is really how it should be, considering they’re the main characters of the show (even though they haven’t been the most interesting part of the show for ages.) The weird thing is that while this season tried to rehabilitate Bill’s character to make him worthy of Sookie again, this episode is almost solely dedicated to making Bill seem like a manipulative dick.
Bill wants to die the true death so that Sookie can have a normal family life with babies and all that. Okay, sure. Sookie reasonably wonders why Bill couldn’t just break up with her, but he says he would never be able to leave her alone because he loves her so much. Well Bill, that sounds like your personal problem!
But he doesn’t stop there. He also wants Sookie to be the one to kill him using her one-time-only fairy blast, so that she’ll be free of both Bill and vampires in general. You could read it as Bill wanting Sookie free of vampires, or you could also read it as Bill wanting Sookie free of any vampires who aren’t him. Also, couldn’t Sookie just shoot her light ball into the air or something? Does she really have to murder her boyfriend with it? Well, that’s what Bill wants! What a dick!
Meanwhile, Eric and Pam decide to just kill Gus and the Yakuza and steal New Blood for themselves. “I’ve tried trusting, I’ve tried sharing, and it’s just not fucking working for me,” Eric says. Hey, I don’t know why you tried those things in the first place, Eric, but more power to you. Eric and Pam dispatch the Yakuza so easily I’m once again baffled about how the Yakuza managed to silver Pam all those times. Eric and Pam’s bits in this episode harken back to when the show was a fun mess, instead of just a mess. I’ll miss those guys.
Bill, not content with just manipulating Sookie, decides to guilt Jessica as well, asking point-blank if she and Hoyt plan to marry someday, since he never got to see any of his human children get married. What a dick! After Jessica gets in a bit of reasonable protestation, she changes her mind and we get a crash wedding! A time-honored television tradition!
With everyone swapping partners and finding their true loves at the last minute this season, it’s all vaguely reminiscent of a Shakespeare comedy, although I doubt “He asked me to kill him with my light ball” will replace “If music be the food of love, play on” in the English canon any time soon.
Finally, Sookie meets Bill at the cemetery to do the deed. Paquin and Moyer do their best with their big climactic scene, but it’s tough to feel bad for Bill at this point. At least Sookie decides not to give up her fairy powers, since they’re an integral part of herself. But Bill still wants to die, so instead of just staking himself, Bill waits for Sookie to climb down into the grave with him, drive the stake through his heart, and soak herself in his blood slop. What a dick! This episode wants to paint Bill’s death as a noble sacrifice so that Sookie can move on and have a real family, but it comes off more like she’ll be better off without this asshole. The best thing I can say is that at least they went through with Bill’s death. If they had chickened out on that this review would have just been a string of profanity (uh, moreso).
Finally, we get a flashforward: Eric and Pam are rich off of New Blood, but still hang out at Fangtasia for some reason. They’ve also got Sarah Newlin locked in their dungeon and are letting vampires drink her blood to the tune of $100,000 per minute. Well gee, I guess they showed her! You know, Sarah Newlin is a bad person, and certainly deserves some sort of comeuppance, but the final distinct lines of dialogue in the entire series are words of despair from a woman chained in a dungeon. It sort of taints the entire happy barbecue panorama that follows it, honestly.
The final scenes in Bon Temps do little more than to confirm that nothing much has changed in the intervening time. Everyone’s still with whomever they wound up with by the end of the season, I guess because they all got tired of switching sex partners after that one crazy week four years ago. And Sookie winds up with some guy whose face we never see, because that’s not weird or distracting at all. Maybe some nights she tells her new beau embarrassing stories about that jerk vampire she used to date.
Grade: C
