Watching True Blood self-immolate is both a cultural exercise in what can go wrong with a once-promising TV drama and a psychological case study of how much even the most obsessive fan will tolerate before realizing that what they loved so much is not what it once was.
Lucy Griffiths, left, with Alexander Skarsgard in True Blood.
As True Blood prepares to unveil its sixth season Sunday, with an episode perhaps unfortunately titled Radioactive, even True stalwarts Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer appear to be visibly tiring of the increasingly absurd, nonsensical parade of mayhem. Paquin in particular seems to have lost the energy that, in True Blood’s leaner, earlier years, earned her a best actress Emmy nomination.
Anna Paquin in True Blood.
In last week’s episode, Life Matters, which one online fan site recapped under the heading, “What the hell is going on with True Blood?,” a revenge-driven Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsagärd) broke the prison population out of a so-called “vamp camp,” then encouraged the newly released vampires to chow down on their oppressors.
Bloody scenes of torture and cannibalism were intercut with a sombre funeral ceremony in the bayou town of Bon Temps where, one by one, the townsfolk broke down and blubbered over the grave of a dearly departed friend and loved one.
Alexander Skarsgard, left, with Michael McMillian in True Blood.
Meanwhile, hard-luck Sookie (Paquin, looking increasingly spent from what, in True Blood’s early years, was Emmy-nomination material) struggled to keep Bill (Moyer) on the straight and narrow, while Bill himself felt the pull of Lilith’s (Jessica Clark) sirens.
True Blood
In Sunday’s finale, Bill will learn that salvation comes with a price — no! — while Sookie mulls over her future with the handsome Warlow (Rob Kazinsky).
Anna Paquin in True Blood.
In Sunday’s finale, Bill will learn that salvation comes with a price — no! — while Sookie mulls over her future with the handsome Warlow (Rob Kazinsky).
Bon Temps braces itself for a new crisis — the premise, no doubt, for True Blood’s seventh season — that threatens humans and vampires alike, and Sookie’s idiot brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten) finds himself once again attracted to vampire temptations.
True Blood continues to confound expectations in the ratings, especially among younger viewers, and HBO confirmed a seventh season last month.
Stephen Moyer, left, with Deborah Ann Woll in True Blood.
Ratings, and longevity, don’t equate with quality, however. And the sad truth is that True Blood lost its way long before original creator Alan Ball quit the show last summer, at the end of the fifth season.
As originally designed, True Blood offered an intoxicating mix of romance, suspense, mystery and dark humour, with a densely layered story about a hard-luck waitress, part faerie and occasional mind-reader in an idealized world where vampires have come out of the closet — or coffin if you prefer — and coexist uneasily with the human population, sustained in part by a synthesized blood product called Tru-Blood.
Those early seasons were a thinly disguised allegory about pride, prejudice, racism and religious oppression, dressed up as a fast-paced, rip-roaring thriller. True Blood still draws a crowd, but it’s lost its sense of fun, wit and dramatic incisiveness. It’s time to give it a rest. (Sunday, HBO, 9 ET/MT, 8 PT)
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The old joke that TV often seems as if it was created by a five-year-old has taken on added meaning in recent weeks, with the odd success of Axe Cop, a new, late-night ’toon about an axe-wielding police officer who metes out justice the old-fashioned way, at night and with the aid of his trusty fire axe.
Axe Cop
Axe Cop is doled out in quick, easy-to-digest 15-minute bites, as part of the Fox network’s summer experiment, Animation Domination, an hour-long showcase of adult animation tentatively scheduled to air on Saturday nights throughout the summer.
If Animation Domination succeeds in finding an audience — and there are signs it’s doing just that — it may replace the now-retired MADtv as a late-night alternative to Saturday Night Live, which returns this fall for a hard-to-believe 39th season.
Axe Cop was originally conceived in 2009 as a webcomic by brothers Ethan Malachai, who was 29 at the time, and Malachai Nicolle, who was five, as in — literally — five years old.
From the start, Malachai was the brains of the outfit: He came up with the stories and ideas, while Ethan did the grunt work of turning those ideas into comics.
Malachai is now nine and, one would like to think, jaded and cynical from the Hollywood fame.
The TV version is certainly surreal.
Axe Cop
In last week’s outing, to be repeated this week — each Animation Domination hour features a new Axe Cop and a repeat of the previous week’s instalment — sidekick Flute Cop (Ken Marino) talked Axe Cop (Nick Offerman) into babysitting for him, so he could run off to Hawaii for a whirlwind vacation with the missus (guest voice Megan Mullally).
Naturally, Axe turned a simple babysitting assignment into mayhem, thanks in part to bad advice from his pals, Dr. Rang (guest voice Patton Oswalt) and Chubby Doll (Axe Cop co-creator Ethan Nicolle, in a tongue-in-cheek cameo voice appearance).
The new episode finds Axe Cop celebrating his birthday by accidentally killing a group of mermaids — this was dreamt up by a five-year-old, remember — while Flute Cop and Dr. Rang conspire to find him the perfect birthday gift. (The less said about that, the better.)
Later, Axe Cop vows to travel to the South Pole to find Bad Santa — a five-year-old, remember — and bring him back to justice. It’s not often one encounters a TV promo with the teaser, “Axe Cop avenges his dead parents with the power of Christmas,” at any time of year, let alone August.
Don’t worry. Axe Cop is not about to replace The Simpsons any time soon.
“It’s one of the more exciting things we’ve done around here in a while,” Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly told out-of-town writers earlier this month in Los Angeles.
“We wanted to create an incubator for fast-moving animation done on a digital budget. We have 100 animators there, and I love what’s come out.
“Axe Cop, I think, is a cult favourite right out of the gate. The talent they have there, the shorts that are coming out — there’s something really going on there.
“They’re not ready to displace The Simpsons, though. That’s going to be a long-term thing. But we’re committed to this, and I anticipate that we’ll grow some prime-time shows out of this time period.”
There you have it, then. Axe Cop may be about to usher in a brave new TV world — TV mayhem as a five-year-old imagined it. (Saturday, Fox, 11 ET/PT)
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