1886 - True Blood: season six

This show is another of my guilty pleasures - although I have to say that this was one of the show's strongest seasons over-all.  Typically True Blood has a lot of stray plot threads and don't come together till mid-season but the unifying theme of Humans Vs. Vampires was super strong and effective in really bringing everything together.  All of the characters were interesting and important, and we got rid of some who have over stayed their welcome a bit (although SPOILER ALERT... I loved Terry and the actor who plays him).
I liked the Warlow storyline a lot and how it shifted and you didn't really know where it was going to go good or bad.  What I love about this show at this point is that every single character rides the line between hero of villain depending what their current motivation is and it works really well for the most part.  I have to say that, like a lot of fans of the show, the ending of the series left something to be desired and it'll be interesting what they do with next season given what they've set up - the idea of humans and vampires needing to pair up.  Could be very interesting to see how those pairings go.
It was sad to lose Alan Ball after last season, but I think the shake-up has been a good thing for the show - which doesn't seem to have an end date at this point.  As long as this season wasn't the last we've seen of Erik I'll be happy.  I have no problem with killing off major characters, but if that was the way they took him out it would be pretty disappointing.
So there it is - another season down - if you haven't started yet I'm not sure where a good entry point is, outside of the start... to get the full experience you kind of have to go all the way back... enjoy!

1759 - True Blood: season five

This could very well be a record low for me in terms of this blog.  As most of you regular readers know I've spent this summer making my second feature film Sex After Kids, and so with that my evenings and weekends essentially disappeared - and now that I'm in post-production it's not much better.  I expect that later this fall I'll be catching up on my viewing in a major way so stay tuned for that!
In the mean time, True Blood!  True Blood is a messy show, and it's not just because of all the sexy gore.  It's pretty famous for starting seasons with a bunch of seemingly random and pointless storylines, and then finding a (usually pretty neat) way of getting them all together by the end.  But sometimes they just have terrible storylines like Terry and his war-ghost thing.  If this show was a hamburger, that would have been the bread crumbs you put in when you just don't have enough of the good stuff to make it a proper meal. 
I'm going to get into some SPOILERS, so avoid the rest of this if you're not caught up on this season.  This season was more-or-less about the looking war between humans and... everyone else, I suppose.  They showed it in a nice small way with a hate-monger group, and that was a good indication about how there were probably groups of people like this all around.  We got re-introduced to a newly vamped Rev. Steve Newland (awesome), as well as big-bad Russel (who went out in about as anti-climatic a way as possible).  The surprising highlight of this season for me was Tara as a vampire.  I never thought Tara would become one of the most interesting characters on this show, but they did a phenomenal turn-around with her.  And the decision to have the slow-play between her and Pam was just pure wonderful.  Can't wait to see more of them.  Eric is probably my real favorite character - he's the most complex - not a villain, not a hero, but he's got a good heart beneath it all.  He gives a shit when it counts, but he's not afraid to get his hands dirty.
Another one of the stronger character moves was slowing turning Bill from this pansy vampire that we first met into... well, I can only assume that he's going to be almost pure villain when we return next season.  It would have been a complete shock to have killed him all together - but the choice they've made here, if done properly, is pretty damn delightful.
I don't love this show, but it's absolutely a guilty pleasure of mine.  If you want to see a wonderfully campy soap opera about vampires, werewolves, and other creatures in the deep south - it doesn't get much more fun than this.