Sweethearts Candy Blog's

Last year, “True Blood” featured a fey vampire king toting the distressingly sloshy remains of his lover around in a crystal compote jar and relieving a news anchor of his spine on live television, not to mention a rendezvous between former lovers that gave new meaning to the phrase “angry sex.” (Ever wonder what a porn “Exorcist” would look like? Wait, I just Googled it -- of course there is one.)
Everyone’s favorite supernatural Southern Gothic Grand Guignol soap opera returns tonight (HBO, 9 p.m.). So how will creator Alan Ball top the bloody third season?
Let’s hope he doesn’t.
It’s not like we expect a show about a telepathic waitress and her cohort of supernatural pals in rural Louisiana to be, say, plausible, but shock for shock’s sake shakes us out of the creepy, kinky and curiously charming world created by Ball and Charlaine Harris, the novelist on whose Southern Vampire books “True Blood” is based.
My other main beef with the third season of “True Blood” was that, for long stretches, there seemed to be no main beef — that is, Ball had each character embroiled in their own sordid dramas, independent of everyone else. (And often independent of basic common sense.)
The good news about the fourth season is that, judging from the early episodes, Ball appears to have found a way to integrate many of these characters into one major arc, centering on new baddie Marnie (brilliant Irish actress Fiona Shaw), a Wiccan who runs the local coven and is interested in the stretching the limits of necromancy, which understandably gives the undead the heebie-jeebies.
At the end of the third season, our heroine Sookie (Anna Paquin), vampire boyfriend Bill (Stephen Moyer) and vamp bigwig Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) had dispatched, Hoffa-style, Russell Edgington, the Mississippi vampire regent who was proving to be a bit of a public relations nightmare for the pro-mainstreaming American Vampire League.
And speaking of spines, Bill certainly displayed one when he tried to bury Eric as well in that vat of cement, ostensibly because Eric knew Sookie’s secret: She’s part fairy, which makes her irresistible to vamps. But moments after Bill declared his eternal love for Sookie on her front porch, a concrete-matted Eric appeared and spilled the beans on Bill. He didn’t show up at Merlotte’s because he heard the waitresses were easy. He came to Bon Temps on the orders of vampire queen Sophie-Anne Leclerq to “procure” the gifted Sookie, and let a skeevy couple viciously beat her up so he could heal her with his blood, forging a bond between them.
Meanwhile, self-destructive barmaid Tara, despairing over the death of boyfriend Eggs in season two, was kidnapped by a delightfully unhinged vampire — delightful to us viewers, if not to Tara — but escaped and was last spotted heading off for points unknown.
Fabulous short order cook Lafayette found love with the supernaturally-inclined Jesus — “You’re a witch who’s a nurse who’s a dude?” — and began to unlock his own untapped magical powers.
Soft-hearted Sam tracked down his parents, who abandoned him as a baby, but quickly realized they were con artists who forced his shapeshifter brother Tommy to compete in dog fights. He exiled his parents but tried to be a good brother to Tommy, but he turned out rotten too. Waitress Arlene and boyfriend Terry were expecting a baby, only Arlene found it was actually her serial killer boyfriend who impregnated her shortly before his death.