All right, we’ve sort of danced around it till now and tried to keep negativity about the seventh and final season of True Blood to a minimum (unless you’ve read any of Mrs. Horror Boom’s comments on the A.V. Club/Disquis, where all tact goes out the window and there’s as much cursing as a Tarantino movie).   In particular, our venom is spewed in the direction of new showrunner Brian “Bucky” Buckner,* whom even one of the most hot gracious, professional regular cast members have vented about (citing great character arcs, plotlines, and missing scenes that were cut as a casualty of the change in showrunners). However, let’s not get too detailed about that right now. We’re just explaining why the ten ways to kill time till the series finale airing tonight on HBO have the tone that they do. We do feel this way, but take it with a grain of salt as we included this post as comic relief,

Naturally, spoilers abound, so beware!

 

1.  Wonder what seasons six and seven would have been like if Alan Ball hadn’t retired as showrunner after season five (“I don’t even have the words to tell you how much I love this show, but I’m just too old and tired and beat-up to keep up after five seasons,” he explained honestly and apologetically during the panel at SDCC 2012) and handed the reins over to “Bucky”.

2. Decide there’s no way in hell they could have been worse if Ball had stayed on; brood about characters he probably wouldn’t have killed off

3.  Remember how there used to be True Blood finale parties up (until season 6 got going), held in friendly local bars and clubs; recall how sparse you found out they are for the series finale after you looked it up just for the hell of it.

4. Strongly resent the way Tara’s character (and the wonderful Rutina Wesley) was casually discarded in the pre-credit sequence on the premiere, killed off-screen. Remember how you were positive she wasn’t dead, then at least pretty positive there was going to be a great –of at least satisfying– pay-off down the line during the season to justify killing her off, with it only really seeming to bother Tara’s mother.

5. Remember what actually happened to Tara’s character instead to “resolve” the plotline, recall how the writer of the episode (in the EW.com ‘post-mortem’ to the episode where it was finally explained) actually sounded apologetic and couldn’t muster up much pride when asked to explain the resolution of the storyline. Start getting all pissed off again.

6.  Start imagining how, if you ever ran into “Bucky”, you would probably assault him on sight. Remember that this is a felony and you shouldn’t even joke about it on your blog. Instead, imagine what you would say to his face (that would not get you into any legal trouble) and seeing that smug look wiped off.

7.  Miss Joe Manganiello, remind yourself he’s still going to be around, then really miss his character Alcide. Wish they hadn’t killed him off so fast. Wish they hadn’t had to kill him off at all. Remember all the times Joe Manganiello said playing Alcide was a dream come true, but how he got frustrated towards the end because “the showrunner switch” took away a ton of planned scenes explaining his complicated back-story with his father and turned his character with one of the biggest hearts on the show into someone who was a total asshole, hit women, and didn’t have any more decent sex scenes.

8. Remember the good old days (well, years) when you eagerly anticipated every episode and the episodes delivered every time: at least A. one shocking thing, B. something that made you gasp or curse in shock C. something really dirty D. something really gory, and E. several good laughs. Then the episode would end with a cliff-hanger and half the time, a rockin’ song.

9. Strongly resent Brian Buckner some more. Get pissed off all over again, lower the bar further for your series finale expectations. Remind yourself this is not constructive and take a deep breath. Pray Pam and Eric will both survive the finale.

10. Despite all of the above, wonder if there’s somewhere you can go out and buy a bottle of “TruBlood” (yup, the show was so popular that by the end of S2, you could actually buy the stuff) in time to drink while you watch the series finale.

BONUS ACTIVITIES:

1.  Hope desperately that (insert name of character you lust for the most) will get a nude scene/sex scene in the finale.

2. Wonder if you’ll ever meet (insert name of actor who plays character/s you lust after most here) and if so, if you’d be able to keep it together enough to even have a rudimentary conversation with them. Hope that if you do meet them, they aren’t even hotter in person to the point where you just snap and end up having to be dragged off them by security.

3. Remember when you defended True Blood to people who slammed the show, wonder exactly when it was you started having trouble defending it quite so strongly. Feel sorry for yourself.

4. Think that if nothing else, at least Buckner didn’t fuck up the awesome theme song, which you practically sprained your fingers in your haste to order from iTunes once you got the title and singer. If you ever got so excited you got up and danced to it when an episode aired, smile (even if you’ll never admit you did it).

5. Be happy and proud of yourself when remembering that when the show was great, you never once took it for granted, and made sure you took in every detail and soaked up every bit of fun. And goddamn, when True Blood was fun, it was REALLY fun. It truly was.