True Blood Is In "Trouble" With Tara's Storyline

True Blood has never been afraid to jump between tones suddenly. Whether its switching from a scene of extreme violence to a scene of extreme sex, or cracking a joke during a serious sequence, tonally, True Blood is all over the place. That’s one of the reasons we like the show.  It seems to not take itself too seriously, while taking itself so deathly serious that it sometimes becomes funny.

That said, I don’t know what to do with the Tara/Franklin storyline.

For those of you who haven’t been watching, Tara had a night of intense passion with a sexy British vampire named Franklin. Then Franklin became obsessed with her, repeatedly hypnotizing her into doing his will. Then he kidnapped her. Then he tied her to a bed, dressed her in a Victorian nightgown, and has become even a little crazier than that.

Here’s the thing: I think these scenes with Franklin are supposed to be terrifying. An all powerful vampire holding a human as his hostage/sex slave. Tara scared out of her mind, about to be turned into a vampire herself, with no one to help her. And when we got the exact same storyline last year with Lafayette, yeah, it was terrifying.

Yet here, every time Franklin says something over the top nutbags, Tara says “You’re right to his face,” and then all but turns to the camera mouthing, “Oh my god.”

It’s Tara’s takes that are making me think this is supposed to all be hilarious.

At the very least, I’m sure the idea is that these scenes jump between funny and scary, while walking the thin line between them. Well, sorry, True Blood, but you’re not walking that line. The scary stuff is funny, and the funny stuff is not-quite-scary.

And given that we, as mentioned, already did this storyline – and Tara even spent the last season hypnotized and beat up – I’m not quite sure why this is all even happening.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I understand the need to bring your characters to other places, to make them grow and change. But you took Tara, who was fun, funny and sarcastic, and reduced her to a constantly tortured, damaged, and raped mass of neuroses, who can barely hold herself together. Maybe the idea is to bring her back to normal once she’s hit her low point, which I guess, is fine. But with the glacial pace that most True Blood plots work at, that’s probably not coming until sometime in season fifteen.

Get to it quicker.

Random Notes:

• My awesome computer deleted all my notes, so I’m doing these from memory – if I missed anything cool or funny, please add it in the comments below.
• I watched the first season – and the first three episodes – without the benefit of the “Previously on True Blood,” so seeing it now is an interesting experience. First of all, the episodes run into each other better, the cliffhanger leading directly into the cold open. Second, holy crap, there’s a lot of people screaming at each other in the "Previously Ons."
• Shirtless Werewolf Watch, Week 2: Still no shirt.
• Alcide: “This is were-business!” Which I assume is half man, half business.
• Sookie powers activate!
• Last week, the theme was obsession. This week, I assume it was responsibility, given the Glee-like amount of times people said it? Or rather, responsibility to your father – real, or metaphorical. It was also a lot looser than last week, which is why this week’s episode wasn’t quite as strong.
• It’s nice to finally, after three seasons, find out who killed Eric’s Father. Who we’ve never heard or known about before. In comics, this is called a retcon, and it is stupid.
• Man, I missed Bill yelling, “Sookie!”