Thursday

Dawn was dead to begin with. Escape From The Dragon House (beautifully titled), was last night's fourth installment of True Blood. Just when we thought we have the stylistic idiosyncracies of the show worked out, we are surprised yet again. Here's why:

For the first few episodes of the show, I felt that the vampires 'coming out of the coffin' was a parallel to the struggles of homosexuals in modern society (bare with me, guys). Slogans such as 'God Hates Fangs', talk of vampire rights, visits to illicit vampire bars all clearly supported this theory. However, last night it also emerged that race was on the True Blood agenda. Tara had two great scenes in this episode: the speech to the policemen about their surprise at a black woman knowing about the law, and her other conversation with Sam about the 'separate but equal' debate. Both provided an interesting parallel to the show's vampire rights angle. On the gay culture front, Sookie and Bill's visit to Fangtasia, the vampire bar, seemed eerily familiar to anyone who has ever spent any amount of time immersed in gay culture. (NOT gay community - I hate the use of this word to describe gays, blacks, jews, Abba fans etc. It seems to suggest that everyone in the world is white, straight and middle class, and that anyone who is perceived as 'other' lives on one single street somewhere they don't need to interact with real people. It must be comforting to some, but not entirely representative, unfortunately.)

Also, the sexual content of the show, and, in particular, Jason Stackhouse, moved up a gear. Now, Jason has spent most of the previous 3 episodes half naked, fully naked, about to have sex, having sex or having just had sex. So, last night, we have Jason engaging in a ridiculous amount of furious masturbation, and resultant penile welts, after drinking an entire vial of vampire blood. This, of course, was provided by Lafayette, who is rapidly becoming on of the show's biggest scene stealing characters. However, such is the genius of this show that this seemingly inconsequential, comic plot thread, actually provided us with an insight into the motivation behind Tara's attachment to Jason - a quick flashback scene revealing to us that, as children, Jason used to protect Tara from her abusive, alcoholic Mother.

And, what en ending - Sam breaking into the room where Dawn was murdered was creepy enough - but to sniff the sheets and roll about in them ecstatically? Great, twisted cliffhanger. 8 more episodes of this season. Fantastic.

I like the fact that both seasons of True Blood are only 12 episodes long. There are very few shows that sustain their quality and originality across a 24 episode season. Even Desperate Housewives gives a 'churning it out' feeling by mid-season. Hence why we get needless and frankly bizarre storylines to fill the time - such as the paedophile in season 3, and practically the whole last 13 episodes of season 5. Which is why the show's greatest season was undoubtedly it's 4th. Cut short by the writer's strike down to a leaner 17 episodes, we still managed to fit in Lynette's cancer, a tornado, the excellent Dana Delany season-long mystery, and even enough screen time to win Kathryn Joosten a second emmy. Quality over quantity.

Similarly, NBC's unwillingless to pay CBS for more than 16 episodes per season of Medium could be viewed as a blessing in disguise - though I will stress that a police procedural has fewer of the season-long mystery and character arcs of a show in more of a soap opera tradition like Housewives. Therefore, the pendulum at times may swing too far in the opposite direction and become repetitive, as I have said before about Medium. But to episode 5, Baby Fever. I think this season may shape up to be one of their strongest - though I may have changed my mind by episode 22. Firstly to Allison and the main plot thread of the episode. The baby kidnap was handled in an unusual and interesting way. I thought we were going to spend a whole episode looking for a baby. But Brice appeared safe and sound pretty swiftly and we were suddenly pulled into a rabbit hole whereby the actual mystery was not what we had originally thought. And it was great to catch up with Lee and Lynn and their trials and tribulations with their brand new baby.

The opening dream sequence deviated from the usual murder plots, which was fun to see, and I loved the way that some of the more interesting crime solving devices from earlier seasons were recycled. One of my favourite dreams, and favourite overall episodes, is the season 2 The Song Remains The Same, wherein Allison wakes up with a song in her head that directs her to a clue which leads to finding a missing girl. In Baby Fever, Allison followed the sounds of baby cries emanating from a photograph to locate the missing child. This was a classic device that, thankfully, hasn't become overused in the show.

However, as is so often the case with Medium, the process was more interesting than the result. Allison's dreams, her almost obsessive attachment to the baby and the way it affected everyone around her was far more engaging than the clunky exposition scene near the end of the episode.

As I mentioned in my last post, the increasing use of the Dubois children in the show is always a delight, and in this episode we got to see some great acting from Maria Lark, and more scenes than usual from Madison and Miranda Carabello. Their's was a strong subplot with a mature, nuanced performance from Maria Lark. Lark has always been a great comic presence on the show and I looked forward to seeing her emerging talent. In Baby Fever, she proved she could nail drama as well. She was absolutely heartbreaking in the scene where she confessed to Joe about what she felt were her inadequacies. This kid could act most adults in television right off the screen. She was genuinely moving.

I look forward to the rest of the season.

More tomorrow.

Peace x