Well this, in theory should be hard to choose but one couple outshone all the others this season. We had very little of the Eric/Pam dynamic but the scenes we had were so moving on many levels. The Flashbacks helped to explain more of their closeness and obvious love for each other and the release scene had me in tears. I was overjoyed when they were reunited in the finale, no matter how brief it was.
Sam and Luna were also a good team, ass kicking where it matters and protecting Emma as well as dealing with the Hate group.
Tara and Pam, another couple worthy of a mention as what started out as a conflict filled relationship between 2 very strong and determined women, thawed as the season drew on and they learned more about each other and ended in a delicious way. I want to see more of these ladies in season 6!
BUT Russell and Steve are by far and away the best couple this season. In this relationship, we saw 2 characters that we thought we knew, show another side to themselves. Russell was still charming as ever but he softened. In the past when he was with Talbot, he ignored him a lot and was busy being a man of power and status. With Steve though, he wants to make him happy, nothing is too much trouble, not to mention at the start he flirts like the devil. When they are all high in New Orleans, you can just see him engage the silver tongue to woo Steve. He gets Steve a puppy cause he had never had a pet and he takes him out for dinner, things we never saw him do with Talbot. Steve also becomes really sweet and bashful as it is obvious that he is attracted to Russell. He was confident and cocky when Roman was around, trying to act like he was invincible, like babyvamps would but when Roman dies and Russell is staking claim for Alpha male, Steve is more than happy to submit to him.
Their relationship was brief, but it was cute, funny and sweet. it had so many layers and the interactions between the 2 characters were endearing. This is why they are my favourite couple.
via Fangathon Day 2 favourite couple
August 31, 2012 | Categories: Fangover, Day 2 | Tags: Favorite Couple, Russell Edgington, Steve Newlin, True Blood | Leave a comment
Admit it: You were yelling some “Do it! DO IT! SHOOT HIM” at the tv too.
As I discuss about Lafayette later, Arlene especially proved to be better in the small roles (her and Lala commenting on the faery birth was hysterical) but alas, the writers put her into the spotlight again this season. Borrowing the schtick from the Faery elder, I will present my argument thusly:
For: the storyline with Patrick was one of the tightest scripted and paced storylines of the season with a very clear beginning, middle and end. It was also far better crafted than the ridiculous and trite plot of the season before with baby Mikey and Mavis.
Against: everything else. As much as I disliked their storyline from last season, I hated this even more. While the framework itself was solid – a routine mission going horribly awry – it needed and deserved a more serious vehicle to be handled properly (think Generation Kill) and it didn’t need a supernatural element. Terry’s PTSD issues have always been kind of danced around, and occasionally made fun of (c.f. Arlene’s “Did you take your meds?” comments) but never properly dealt with. It still hasn’t been. What could have been a great storyline was ultimately cheapened by the addition of Ifrit.
Worse, at times the plot gave Arlene the stupid pill. At the end of Season 4 Rene clearly warned against Patrick. When the ghost of your serial killer ex-fiancee makes it a point to visit you and tell you someone is bad news, you think you’d give him a little more credence instead of blindly trusting the guy.
All and all, the storyline was a miss.
Best moment: Terry and Arlene’s quiet side.
Although the wedding video scene went on too long, it was great seeing it (I think a better way to have handled it would have been to show less, but then include the whole thing separately either as an interactive feature or a bonus for the S5 box set). I also liked seeing Terry/Arlene together in “Sunset” when Andy was asking them for advice.
Terry and Arlene are at their best when they aren’t dealing with the supernatural, but just being human and dealing with the kind of problems that regular human couples have. Like Lafayette, a little bit of them can go a long way, but if you use properly, they really do round out the show in a good way.
Worst moment: “Suicide is for Muslims.”
It was a powerful, shocking line. But True Blood still not the right show for it.
I do want to point out to the writers that *this* is how you craft a shocking line. Last season there was much ado about Pam calling Sookie a “gash in a sundress.” It was an awful comment, but it was also coming from a character that during Season 4 the writers used to try and one-up each other with the next “shocking” one-liner. Because that was Pam’s purpose, as hateful as the line was, it wasn’t really shocking.
On the other hand, Patrick’s line came from a place of pure hatred and spite – it wasn’t just the words, it was the context and the emotion used to deliver them that gave them power.
via Fangover: Day 2 – Terry and Arlene.
August 31, 2012 | Categories: Day 2, Fangover | Tags: Arlene Fowler-Bellefleur, Patrick Devins, Rene Lenier, Terry Bellefleur, True Blood | Leave a comment
It’s official. Lafayette is back, bitches.
As with Terry and Patrick, Season 5 has reminded us Lafayette is such an amazing supporting character: the guy can seriously steal a scene with as little as a single line. The return to form has only reminded how much Jesus “softened” him but honestly I think a lot of fans will be glad to see this Lafayette return.
As for his story, it was necessary but severely flawed. I don’t think the Jesus stuff amounted to much and I think it didn’t deal enough with the guilt that comes from being at least partially responsible for Jesus’ death. The stronger part of the season was definitely the last quarter after he got his groove back. I rather take a minute of a scene-stealing Lafayette than seven of a neutered one.
Best moment: Lala gets his grove back.
Right after returning from Mexico and Arlene asks him to play the medium. It was that moment when you could see Lafayette had come to terms with what had happened and the old Lafayette snapped into place. It was great scene, wonderfully played, and you couldn’t even argue with his logic. Well played, sir. Well played.
Worst moment: Revenge of the demon mask
We get it. It was a metaphor for the turmoil of emotions he was feeling blah blah blah. Thing is, Nelsan is probably one of the strongest actors on the show. The writers didn’t need such an overt and ham-fisted way of showing it. Let’s hope the mask stays away, shall we?
via Fangover – Day 2: Lafayette.
August 31, 2012 | Categories: Day 2, Fangover | Tags: Arlene Fowler-Bellefleur, Lafayette Reynolds, Nelsan Ellis | Leave a comment
PAM AND TARA KISSED!!!!
Maker and Child made out! I know it may sound a bit convoluted but vampires have relations all of the time. How else are you supposed to spend eternity together? And it’s not like they’re “blood related.” HA! 😉
UNF!!!! GET IT GIRLS!
One of the reasons I enjoy True Blood so much is how LBGT friendly they are. Love is love and it doesn’t matter your species or sexuality. A show after my own heart! No labels just sexy time loving. ♥
I’m actually really fucking loving Tara as a vampire!!! Best decision the writers ever made and I only wished they did it sooner!
What a difference a Maker makes. Tara has some bitching new outfits thanks to Pam! She really knows how to dress her girls. Tara to me, has always dressed the most drab out of the ladies but now, she has one the best wardrobes.
Before: MEH! Boring….
After: HELL YEAH! WEERRRK!
Yes, Tara could be beyond annoying as a human, but now she can use her spitfire of a tongue and literally rip people a new one!:DDDDDDD
I hope Vampire Tara stays around for a long time and S6 explores more of this love/hate maker/child relationship between Pam and her.
via Pam and Tara Sitting In a Coffin K.I.S.S.I.N.G! – Day 2
August 31, 2012 | Categories: Day 2, Fangover | Tags: Pam Swynford de Beaufort, Tara Thornton, True Blood | Leave a comment
My all-time favorite baby-vamp has had a bad couple of years.
I loved how this uber-Christian girl embraced her inner vampire with gusto, flummoxing her maker Bill, as well as Eric and Pam with her teenage angst.
When Bill finally becomes a father figure different from her intolerant human father, she settles happily into immortal life.
I truly enjoyed watching Jessica and Hoyt find first love together, even though she discovered sex was going to hurt eternally if she kept regenerating one particular part. Hoyt didn’t care. He simply loved his flame-haired little vixen.
Other than how Jessica solved the hymen-problem, I have no problem with her growing in to a sexual vampire. I was dismayed, but not surprised that she fell for Jason. Seriously, every girl in Bon Temps that isn’t related to him has fallen for Jason one way or another.
Last season, my heart ached for Jessica when both Hoyt and Jason threw her out of their lives in the same episode, if not night. She had tasted forbidden fruit, loved it, and “Whammo!” both guys ditch her, thinking they’re doing the right thing.
The problem there was: Jason could handle it. Hoyt could not. But enough about him for now. We’ll deal with him in a later post.
I thought Jessica looked especially toothsome in her Halloween costume. Little Red Riding Hood suited her perfectly, and Jason was happy to succumb to her charms.
Things looked pretty rosy for Jessica and Jason until he got an attack of maturity and at the same time the shit kicked out of him by Hoyt.
Jason tried to man up, but losing his friends wasn’t as easy as he hoped.
Add to that, Jessica decided to try out the local college scene, where she was readily accepted. I mean really, wouldn’t you hang with a girl whose guardian is mysteriously absent, who can provide endless booze, has rocking parties and that vampire charm to boot?
Jason was at an impasse. He loved Jessica, but she was ready to start sowing the very wild oats Jason had just finished. What is a deputy sheriff to do?
While his first experience with the Fae left him dreaming about his long dead parents, the massive head injury inflicted by Russell Edgington had them hanging out with him and Sookie, hearing them trash vampire after vampire.
I think at this time he is damaged, and all he can think of is protecting his only living family, Sookie, from all the “dead boys” she likes.
When Jessica, finally free, runs up to Jason, throws her arms around him proclaiming her love for him at last, she did not expect him to stare at her like she was something diseased and tell her he could never, ever, love a vampire.
You could hear her heart crack into pieces as the news soaked in.
I think right now she is either in complete shock or taking it in stride, because she has to smell his blood and know he has a bad head wound.
We’ll have to wait until next June to discover if the damage is permanent or if he can learn to love our ginger-haired girl again.
via Fangover: Day 2: Jessica the broken-hearted
August 31, 2012 | Categories: Day 2, Fangover | Tags: Hoyt Fortenberry, Jason Stackhouse, Jessica Hamby, Sookie Stackhouse | Leave a comment
True Blood fans bid good bye to many characters in the season five finale on Sunday. Russell Edgington met the final death at the hands of Eric Northman. It was long coming but a bit sad none the less. Denis spoke with Vulture.com and the interview is below:
Those who’ve not yet seen the season finale of True Blood should turn back now, for there be spoilers ahead: Several of the show’s vampires have met their true death, and one vampire might have become something else altogether. For now, let’s focus on the demise of the 3,000-year-old vamp Russell Edgington, who may have provoked an all-out war by feeding on a bunch of frat boys (the massacre was caught on video), then met his own end when he drank from a fairy and opened himself up to a sneak attack by Eric. Denis O’Hare, who’s played the deliciously evil Russell, chatted with Vulture about bringing his story line to a close, making out with Steve Newlin, and why it’s probably best he’s gone.
When did you first find out Russell was going to die?
I didn’t find out definitively for a while, but there was some controversy about how to do it. We always knew in the end it would be Eric, but the question was how. Given that Russell’s so powerful, how could Eric surprise him? So the plausible answer is that he was drunk on fairy blood lust, and he isn’t watching his back, and Eric takes advantage before he can respond. There’s a nice moment when Russell begins to glow, like, Oh, maybe the fairy blood has made him immune, maybe it’s not going to happen. And then the glow withdraws — oh no! [Laughs.]
And at that moment, he only has one thing to say: “F#ck.”
That was Alan Ball’s rewrite, and when I saw that, I thought, Oh my God, that’s perfect. I mean, what else is Russell going to say? I love that his attitude is more like, Ah, well, not a sense of resistance or a last flash of anger, pity, or pathos. I think you get that sense in Interview With the Vampire that vampires get bored after they stay alive a long time, and it’s hard to keep forming new attachments. When Russell lost Talbot [in season three], he also lost some of the meaning in his life, and that’s why he grabs on to Steve Newlin. He needs a reason to enjoy life, because at this point, the pursuit of power isn’t enough. He might as well die; who is there left to meet — Mitt Romney?
Russell Edgington and Steve Newlin were such a cute couple, though. They would have made a great spinoff.
That would be nice, right? Once you got us in a room, we were gangbusters — and Mike McMillian is just brilliant. We would improv stuff on set all the time, some of it got cut, but some of it was great material. When we met Jason on the porch, we were having so much fun with that scene. I decided to do an old-fashioned hypnotism thing with my fingers, and Ryan [Kwanten] was cracking up. When we walk Jason to the patrol car, Steve and I tussled over who got to sit in front: “Shotgun!” And when we got to the field, Steve was stuck in the back seat going, “Baby, let me out!” Or when we had the scene where we killed the frat boys and we were dancing? We were more than dancing — we were making out. They decided not to keep the shot of us kissing, but we definitely went for it.
What do you think Bill’s become, after he’s risen from the blood? Is he Lilith made flesh? Is he now a vampire deity?
Even in season three, they were stepping away from the books, but now? We’re in uncharted territory. Bill was always the moral center, and to unmoor him like this? How will he find his way back to “humanity”? Would he have to die for Sookie? I don’t know.
Do you think Russell could return as a flashback or hallucination for his progeny the way Godric does for Eric? Or did Russell not have any others besides Talbot?
We have not met his other progeny. He could be a guy who never made any others. There was a lovely scene in season three where Russell and Eric had an intense moment, where Eric accepts his authority, and kneels before him, and you discover how Russell never had a son and he adopts Eric. That scene was cut, but there is an echo of that when Eric kneeled before him again this season. And for Eric to take Russell’s life, it was appropriate, and Russell knew that and he welcomed it. This was the only person he’s ever accepted as a son.
Sounds like a lot of moments were cut. Ever figure out who Russell’s maker was?
You know, I had my own back story for Russell. Alan Ball and those guys let me run with it, and at one point they asked me for this info: “Can you send it to us?” We never officially talked about this on the show, but Russell’s real name was Korun, which is ancient Celtic and means “Raven.” And I know who his maker is, but whoever it was, he killed him. Again, this is all back story I made up, and HBO hasn’t approved it, but I’ve been playing with it for years. My theory was Russell was a slave for most of his life, and after he was made a vampire, he killed all the slave masters and in that same hateful rage, he killed his maker.
What did he think gorging on fairy blood would do to him? And why not save a binge for closer to daylight?
There’s no fairy blood handbook. No one has any schematics on how much fairy blood you should take to be in the sun, how long you can survive in the sun on it. Is it good for a year? A day? And Russell is more instinctual versus strategic. I’m not sure he has a plan, so he’s not thinking, I should wait until 7:30.
What are you going to miss the most?
During season three, we had such a great core group — the actors who played Lorena [Mariana Klaveno], Talbot [Theo Alexander], Franklin Mott [James Frain], plus Alex [Skarsgard], Stephen [Moyer], and Anna [Paquin]. We hung out so much on set, because we had a lot of scenes together. I was pretty close to Kristen Bauer, too. I love her. We were such a good group. And there was definitely talk around the set during season five about not killing Russell. One of the cast members was lobbying to keep Russell around, and he went and talked to Alan and the head writers, but they sadly shook their heads, and they said, “For credibility’s sake, he has to go. We can’t let him survive again.”
Who was lobbying on your behalf?
I can’t say. I will say that it’s a very major character. But I totally agree with Alan Ball and the writers. There was no way for Russell to survive. And you would get tired of him if he did.
You’re nominated for an Emmy for American Horror Story. Any chance you’ll pop up on the show’s next season?
I don’t know. There’s always a possibility. If we storm the Emmys, we’ll probably put Jessica [Lange] in front of us and hide behind her, like one big bowling pin, because she’s invulnerable.
She’s sort of the Russell of that show.
She is! I remember thinking that. Even though my character Larry was well received, he wasn’t as wildly popular, because he was pathetic. People like strong characters, who seem definite and have a lot of confidence. Being neurotic is almost never sexy.
SOURCE:
via True Blood’s Denis O’Hare Talks Season Five Finale.
August 31, 2012 | Categories: Day 2, Fangover | Tags: Denis O'Hare, Russell Edgington, True Blood | Leave a comment
Now I know people are going to wondering why I didn’t put Eric, Sookie and Bill as my favorite scene. Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoyed seeing the trio together again. But honestly, with the cliffhanger and so many things left unresolved… I just prefer to see how it pans out next season.
Though I have been less than enthused about the fairy story lines, I must admit that seeing Maurella and her fairy vajayjay’s light show was a bit amusing. It was actually a stronger scene than I would have ever expected.
Why do I feel it was strong?
Trust me, if it weren’t for Arlene and Lafayette, this scene would have been yet another eye rolling moment. Can I just say, it’s nice to see Arlene and Lafayette being normal again? Their commentary and presence just helped with bringing a bit of comedic relief.
Of course, Holly wasn’t entirely amused by the situation. Then again, can you blame her? Her boyfriend walked up to her with a pregnant fairy in tow and she had to put her feelings aside to help deliver the babies.
And Andy… Andy, Andy, Andy, Andy..
Caroline isn’t going to be happy when Andy returns home with not one daughter, but four!
It was nice to see the writers of True Blood capture the essence of Merlotte’s once again and have a bit of normalcy even with all the supernatural light show, orgasmic fairy births going on.
via Favorite Scene from ‘Save Yourself’.
August 31, 2012 | Categories: Day 2, Fangover | Tags: Andy Bellefleur, Arlene Fowler-Bellefleur, Holly Cleary, Lafayette Reynolds, Maurella, True Blood | Leave a comment
Russell Edgington
Once again, can I just state how incredibly well Denis O’Hare plays bat-shit crazy? That takes true talent, for it to come across so flawlessly so believably. Most of the time, you never believe the crazy people. You assume it’s just an act. But he believed in his insanity, and O’Hare was able to pull it off without blinking an eye. Snaps for Denis. You will be missed, you crazy mofo.
On that note, let’s talk about his death. I’ve hear a lot of different opinions. Some people think it was too easy. Others think he deserved more of a grander death. In my humble opinion, I thought it was perfect. It was simple. It was elegant. The fact that his last word, before meeting the true death, was “Fuck,” completely drove it home for me. What else was left for him to say? It was a more than fitting death to an incredible character.
And who’s to say that’s the last we’ll ever see of him?
via Fang-A-Thon: The Fangover: Day Two.
August 29, 2012 | Categories: Day 2, Fangover | Tags: Denis O'Hare, Russell Edgington, True Blood | 1 Comment
Admit it: You were yelling some “Do it! DO IT! SHOOT HIM” at the tv too.
fangathon.wordpress.com 