Sookie's single, Marnie's gone, and someone amazing has returned!

Alice (Joe Manganiello) comes to an unfortunate realization in "And When I Die," the fourth season finale of True Blood. Photo courtesy of washingtonpost.com.

(There are going to be all sorts of SPOILERS here, so for the love of God, if you haven't yet watched "And When I Die," stop reading.)

Russell Motherfucking Edgington is BACK!

I realize that lots and lots of other stuff happened in the fourth season finale of True Blood, but the single most exciting development (and the only real reason I have to tune in next summer) is the return of Denis O'Hare's batshit, psychotic, blood-crazed villain. Russell's on-air rant in season three was the high point of the show so far, and O'Hare's delightfully insane performance is sure to add a welcome dose of balls-out crazy to season five. The only thing that would have been better would have been Russell's actual, physical presence in the episode, but I guess you can't have everything, and in the case of the wildly uneven finale, it's best to just take what you can get.

As promising as Russell's return is, it doesn't make up for the boredom that pervaded much of the season finale. For every really good scene there were two or three snoozers that provided only the most predictable, perfunctory resolution without bothering to inject any suspense into the proceedings. With the exception of the fantastically tense scene between Lafayette-as-Marnie and Jesus in Lafayette's kitchen, the final resolution to the witch storyline was every kind of dull; even the kitchen scene was only really interesting because of the great performances by Nelsan Ellis and Kevin Alejandro. The final resolution was mostly about various other spirits, including Adele Stackhouse and Antonia, convincing Marnie that it was her time to move on. This is not The Ghost Whisperer, people! This is a show about vampires having sex and killing people, not about ghosts convincing other ghosts to "go gentle into that good night." True Blood is not cut out for subtlety.

The follow-up to that scene was even worse. The scene - in which Sookie breaks up with both Bill and Eric because she has finally realized that, just maybe, it's okay to be single for five seconds - seems interminably long, and does no favors to Stephen Moyer and Alexander Skarsgard. Both vampires have spent inordinate amounts of time this season (and in other seasons) mooning over Sookie, and it is not flattering for either man. Here's hoping this break-up reminds them that they are strong, sexy, dangerous vampires, not lovesick teenagers. In the words of the fantastic Pam, "I am so over Sookie and her precious fairy vagina and her unbelievably stupid name. Fuck Sookie!" I have never agreed more with a character on this show than I did with Pam at that moment.

On the bright side, the episode's final act provided viewers with some excellent Bill and Eric action. When Nan Flanagan showed up in order to convince them to side with her in a mutiny against the AVL and the Authority, they responded to her taunts by removing her bodyguards' heads (Eric) and staking Nan herself (Bill). The scene was even topped off by some classic Eric snark, as he looks at the heap of gore that was formerly Nan and smirks, "What a bitch." This is the Bill and Eric I want to see next season. It would be even more awesome if they teamed up with Russell to take down the Authority.

Another promising development - Tara is dead! It's not that I necessarily dislike the character, it's that the writers have turned her into such a victimized, pathetic, angry, and completely one-dimensional basket case over the course of the series that her absence will be welcome. It reflects badly on the writing staff that the death of a character is less offensive than her continued existence. Let's hope Rutina Wesley can find herself a better job in the future. And if she could get one for Britt Morgan, whose trashy Debbie Pelt died after shooting Tara, so much the better.

In other news, Jessica and Jason are now sex buddies, which is great because... sorry, I got distracted for a second thinking about naked Jason and Jessica in her slutty Little Red Riding Hood costume. I'm just assuming there will be more of this hotness forthcoming next season, and I think I can live with that.

In other cliffhanger news: ghost Rene turns up to warn Arlene that Terry is dangerous, which is presumably related to the appearance of his old army buddy Scott Foley (Scrubs' Sean and Felicity's Noel); Sam is being menaced by a werewolf; Holly and Andy are maybe going to hook up; and Steve Newlin is back! As a vampire! That last one is actually pretty cool, and I can really see it going somewhere. If Bill and Eric don't team up with Russell, maybe Steve will.

Stray thoughts:

• I'm not usually a big fan of subplots that go nowhere, but I will be really happy if we never see Hotshot again. Same goes for the fairies.
• Arlene's line about zombies being the new vampires would have been a funny meta joke if it wasn't so obvious the writers were trying to make it a funny meta joke.
• Bill and Eric's matching bathrobes were adorable!
• I didn't get to this in the recap proper, but I am very sad about Jesus' death. Kevin Alejandro, you will be missed.
• I really don't understand why everyone wants to get involved with Sookie. Alcide is the latest addition to the I-love-Sookie bandwagon, and it keeps getting more baffling.
• "I'm Janelle from Teen Mom 2"
• The Vampire Diaries comes back on Thursdays! Who's ready for a show with consistent characters, writers who understand suspense, and excellent pacing?

Apple's five greatest pop-culture moments

The reaction to yesterday's announcement that Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of Apple Inc. has been mixed, to say the least. Some people have heralded this development as a victory for freedom and democracy, while skittish traders' worries about the company's future led a drop in stock prices. Whether you love Jobs or hate him, it can't be denied that Apple would never have become the instantly recognizable, globally dominant brand it is today without Job's perfectionist involvement. So today, let's mark the end of an era by cataloguing Apple Inc.'s greatest moments in pop culture.

"1984"

The ad that started it all, Apple's famous "1984" ad ran during the 1984 (ha!) superbowl and introduced the world to Macintosh personal computers. The Ridley Scott-directed spot featured an atheletic iconoclast (Apple, of course) disrupting her homogenous, dystopian society by throwing a hammer at a figure who looks suspiciously like George Orwell's Big Brother. (The resemblance was not lost on Orwell's estate, who sent Apple a cease-and-desist letter that prevented the commercial from airing again.) Ironically enough, the company that once cast itself as the brave instigator of a rebellion now has it's own army of mindlessly devoted drones.

Legally Blonde

Photo courtesy of net-practice.com.

Sixteen years after "1984," Apple still held only a small percentage of the personal computer market, which was dominated by Microsoft. So, in 2001's Legally Blonde, the bright orange iBook purchased by Reese Witherspoon's Elle stands out among her classmates' uniformly drab laptops. At this point, Apple still represented an individualist spirit even as the company was seeping into the public consciousness due to exposure in other places. For example...

Sex and the City

Photo courtesy of onesforwheeler.blogspot.com.

Over the course of six seasons, Carrie Bradshaw may have changed clothes, shoes, handbags and boyfriends at a dizzying pace, but she was always faithful to her Mac laptop. The models may have changed, but the computer Carrie used to record her musings on life, love and sex alwlays bore a glowing Apple logo. Suddenly, a generation of single, stylish aspiring writers wanted Macs on which to compose the "great American novel" while sipping some complicated Starbucks drink.

"Get a Mac"

The uniquitous Mac/PC commercials that ran from 2006 to 2010 were simple, recognizable, and funny. They continued Apple's portrayal of itself as a young, hip, original alternatuve to stodgy OCs. The problem was that, by this point in time, Apple was experiencing explosive growth due to the iPod (and later the iPhone), and their claims to a unique, underdog status were starting to grate. Plus, anyone who knows anything knows that John Hodgeman is way cooler than Justin Long.

White earbuds

If Eric Northman has them, they must be cool. Photo courtesy of alexskarsgard.org.

The iPod may have revolutionized the way people listen to music, but it was the white earbuds that accompanied the players that became an instantly recognizable symbol. Seeing those bright white buds peeking out of someone's ears meant that person was young, smart and cool enough to be an Apple customer. (They also indicated that their person liked their music to sound tinny and unbalanced, as those of us who actually care about audio quality ditched the white buds in favor of headphones that actually work.) Those earbuds marked Apple's transition from a maker of computers for geeks to a worldwide phenomenon. When Apple Inc. eventually takes over the planet, and everyone has a link to iTunes in their brain, just remember: it was the earbuds that started it.

True Blood: Eric's Vampire Nature

David Tennant as the Doctor in "Human Nature" and Alexander Skarsgard as Eric in "You Smell Like Dinner." Photos courtesy of danowen.blogspot.com and breesays.buzznet.com.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the Doctor Who two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood," and anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that I am enjoying the hell out of Eric's amnesia storyline on True Blood. It wasn't until the most recent episode, "I Wish I Was the Moon," that I realized that these two things were connected. Much of my fascination with the new, memory-wiped Eric Northman has to do with my deep and abiding love for those two Doctor Who episodes.

I put this together during the last episode, when Eric, captured by Bill and knowing that he was about to face the "true death," told Pam that he didn't want to become the "viking god" Eric again; that he didn't want to know the man who, along with Pam, "killed and fucked" his way through humanity. Sweet, guileless new Eric wanted to remain the man he had become, the man who loved Sookie and would do anything to protect her. Anyone who has seen "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" will see the similarities. In these episodes, David Tennant's Doctor becomes completely and fully human in order to escape from the titular ruthless family. He settles down in England under the name John Smith, teaching at a boy's school and falling in love with Joan Redfern (Jessica Stevenson). He knows nothing of his past as The Doctor.

Eric's line to Pam is heavily reminiscent of John Smith's reaction when he finds out his true identity, and is forced to make a choice: whether to remain John Smith and live happily with Joan, or whether to become the Doctor, the man who is "like night and the storm and the heart of the sun." When told by his companion Martha that the Doctor never gave her instructions on what to do if he should fall in love, he is horrified, fearful of dying in order to become a man to whom it would never occur that he might fall in love. It makes his ultimate decision to turn back into the Doctor and save the world painful and tragic rather than triumphant, and emphasizes the loneliness of the last Time Lord.

The Doctor and Eric are similar characters in many ways, even without their amnesia arcs echoing one another. They are both deeply lonely men, constantly living with the knowledge that they are different and that they cannot have the one thing they want: love, whether it be with Joan Redfern or Sookie Stackhouse. Eric is violent and frightening, but the Doctor is as well, a man whose name in Lorna Bucket's language does not mean "healer," but "warrior." And they are both marked by deep tragedy; Eric by the murders of his family and the death of his maker, the Doctor by the extinction of his own people at his hands. The personas they take on when their memories are lost are their only chance at redemption. Redemption through love.

I know, as (I hope) do the True Blood writers, that Eric can't remain amnesiac forever. The vampires need their Viking God to defeat the witch who wants them all to burn. Bill needs his sheriff. Pam needs her maker. Having seen "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood," I know how Eric's relationship with Sookie must end. As beautiful and hopeful as he is now, he must at some point go back to being his true self, and break her heart in the process. Let's just hope that, like the Doctor, he learns a few things along the way.

True Blood: Is Bill Compton the new Eric Northman?

Alexander Skarsgard's Eric taking orders from Stephen Moyer's Bill, now the King of Louisiana. Photo courtesy of bestfantasystories.com.

After watching the most recent episode of True Blood, "If you love me, why am I dyin'?" I started to rethink my previous appraisal of the show. I didn't drastically rethink it - I still think that the many plots are probably never going to converge, and I still intensely dislike anything having to do with fairies - but I think that there is definitely some interesting character development going on, particularly as pertains to Alexander Skarsgard's Eric Northman and Stephen Moyer's Bill Compton.

Eric has always been my favorite True Blood character, and not just because he is a flawless slab of Nordic beauty (although that certainly helps). The character's appeal always stemmed, at least to me, from his supreme confidence, sharp wit, and the sense of danger that was always palpable in his presence. While I'm not hating amnesiac Eric as much as I thought - "I know I'm a vampire Snooki" was one of the funniest lines I've heard in a while, delivered with the kind of superb inflection only Skarsgard can muster - I suspect that stripping the show's most appealing character of his personality is going to get really old, really fast.

Bill's transformation, however, has brought nothing but good things to the character. The power with which he commands his subordinates is thrilling, as is his new playboy persona. In the last episode, when telling Portia Bellefleur that he could never love her, he veered dangerously close to old, mopey Bill, but he more than made up for that in the scene when he coldly and calmly ordered the execution of a vampire who had the misfortune to be caught feeding on camera. Bill's unruffled exterior when passing this judgement, and the icy detachment with which he proclaimed himself the Authority, was fantastic. It lent his character a dangerous edge that carried through to the next scene, when he sweetly advised Jessica to tell Hoyt about her infidelity.

The character arcs here are interesting, because Bill has essentially become Eric and vice versa. Bill now has the sauve exterior (although let's be real here, there's no comparison), the dangerous side just waiting to be unleashed, and a sweet maker-progeny relationship with Jessica, similar to the one Eric has with Pam (with the caveat that, as much as I love Jessica, she will never be as awesome as Pam). Eric, meanwhile, has all the sweet guilelessness and honesty that (Sookie thought) Bill had when he first arrived on the scene, as well as a willingness to do anything, including turn on a fellow vampire, to protect Sookie even as his very presence puts her in danger. Now all he needs to really embrace the role is a bad haircut, a generally mopey demeanor, and a bizarre pronunciation of "Sookie." (It should also be noted here that, while Bill is certainly not as attractive as Eric, his hair is drastically better this season.)

I'm interested to hear what you think. Do you agree with my observations, or do you think I'm completely misinterpreting the character arcs? Can Bill ever be as awesome as Eric? (He can't, in case you were wondering.) And how many episodes can this innocent-Eric thing last before it stopbs being cute and becomes incredibly irritating?

Review: "True Blood" Season 4

A very shirtless Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) in "You Smell Like Dinner," the second episode of True Blood's fourth season. Photo courtesy of nydailynews.com.

I've been entirely too spoiled by The Vampire Diaries' breakneck pacing, consistent characters and snappy writing to think of True Blood as anything but an inferior knockoff (despite the fact that the HBO series premiered before TVD). I'm still watching the fourth season, largely because it is summer and there is nothing else on, but I'm treating it as a soapy, sexy diversion rather than an actual TV show with believable characters, coherent storylines, or dramatic stakes. This is not only making it much easier to watch - it also keeps me from spiraling into depression when I remember that, a mere three weeks ago, this time slot was occupied by the far superior Game of Thrones.

Since I no longer have any emotional investment in any of the characters, I will evaluate the storylines based on their potential for interesting character development (not much) and hot guys getting naked (lots and lots). As such, the opening scene of the season premiere - in which Sookie made it to Fairyland, only to discover that it was actually an illusion that covered up a nasty, goblin-ridden desert in which you could be trapped by eating glowing fruit - did almost nothing for me. It's been quite a while since I cared even a little bit about Sookie's problems, and this bizarre moment did not make me care about them more. Even the death of her grandfather, Earl Stackhouse, from light fruit-related causes was underwhelming, largely because it is now a given that, if Sookie cares about someone, a shitstorm of trouble is about to come their way. The extremely obvious Persephone overtones that went with the scene did not make it any better.

One storyline, however, that does have potential is Bill's ascension to the title of Vampire King of Louisiana. I've never hated Bill as much as some people do, but I did find his constant moping over Sookie, not to mention his complete lack of understanding of just why she might not trust him, extremely irritating. However, based on the first two episodes King Bill is a vast improvement; not only does he have a much better house, he's powerful, sleeping with various hot ladies, and can order Eric around. I'm hoping that he has actually moved on from Sookie, and that we're not going to find out that he's really just hiding from his love for her or some other buzzkill like that.

Now that Bill has seemingly moved on, Sookie is finally free to get together with Eric. Now, I knew that Eric's (SPOILER ALERT) memory loss was coming, but I'm still not happy about it. I liked the idea of Sookie playing games with Eric, who now owns her house and wants to own her as well. I love Eric just the way he is, in all his deadly, sarcastic glory; I don't need another, lamer version of Eric, no matter how much time he might spend with his shirt off. I want Sookie to learn to love the real Eric, flaws and all, and while Pam and Bill dealing with this new turn of events might be fun for an episode or two, I have no doubt that the writers will drag it out until no one can stand it any longer.

Regular readers of this blog will no doubt remember that my absolute least favorite element of the show is the continued victimization of Tara. Those people might think that I would be pleased about Tara's transformation into a badass cage fighter in a (seemingly) healthy relationship with lovely girl named Naomi. I'm glad to see that Tara is, at least for a couple episodes, free of the constant terrible experiences that plagued her life in Bon Temps (although that will probably last for all of ten seconds), but I'm a bit uneasy about her newfound lesbian relationship. This show has a tendency to divide its women into damsels-in-distress, who are generally straight, and tough women who can take care of themselves, who are generally lesbians and often vampires. Tara's turn to lesbianism reinforces the show's underlying truth, that women who are attracted to men are also dependent on men. Tara could easily have been in a healthy relationship with a man, but on this show healthy relationships between a man and a woman are an impossibility.

There are lots of other plots going on, and based on previous evidence none of them will come together in a coherent fashion. That means that, as much as I want to care about Lafayette joining a coven, Jason being turned into a werepanther, and Jessica and Hoyt's marital problems, but I know that none of these subplots will have any bearing on the season's main arc, so I don't. (And as far as Sam's relationship with Navajo shapeshifter/skinwalker Luna, I don't even want to care about that.) I'm really just in this for the naked Eric and the possibilities that arise with Bill as King of Louisiana; anything else along the way is just a bump in the road.