As a result, this season splits into three different storylines: one following the citizens of Bon Temps, one following Sookie as she hunts down Bill's abductors and one following Bill as he is given an interesting job opportunity by another territories' king.
While in the care of the King of Mississippi, Bill has to choose between betraying his Queen and changing allegiances or allowing Sookie to come to harm at the hands of Lorena (Mariana Klaveno), Bill's maker. With this setup and the introduction of werewolves to the series, this season gets a little too close to Twilight for my taste, at least a couple of times.
Meanwhile, back at Bon Temps, Tara (Rutina Wesley) is coping with the death of Eggs (Mehcad Brooks). At the end of Season Two, Eggs asked Sookie to help him remember what he had done under Maryann's control. While approaching Andy Bellefleur (Chris Bauer) confessing, and holding a knife, Jason shot and killed Eggs feeling that Andy's life was in danger. In order to protect Jason, Andy took the blame and credit for killing Eggs, explaining that the dead man was confessing to murders and threatening Andy's life.
What results is Andy's rise in popularity, but Jason starts having a few problems dealing with killing Eggs and finds that he can't talk to anyone about it. Eventually, he gets it in his head that he should become a cop, much to Andy's chagrin.
Meanwhile, Tara's downward spiral gets worse and her cousin Lafayette (Nelson Ellis) has to intervene. When she has a one-night-stand with a vampire, Franklin (James Frain, The Tudors), he considers it to be much more and the mentally-off-balanced vampire kidnaps Tara only to bring her to an unexpected location that helps to tie together at least a couple of the divergent storylines.
This season, we also get storylines that reveal some of Eric's (Alexander Skarsgard) history, as well as one where Sam (Sam Trammell) looks for his birth family and finds something he wasn't expecting. Meanwhile, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) and Hoyt (Jim Parrack) try to deal with their recently failed relationship. Also going on in Bon Temps is an unexpected surprise in the progressing relationship of Arlene (Carrie Preston) and Terry (Todd Lowe), but when Darlene finds that the bun-in-the-oven was from before she started seeing Terry, she realizes that it can only be Renee's (Michael Raymond-James), the killer from Season One. Needless to say, there's a lot of drama all around.
Probably the biggest reveal this season is the realization of what exactly Sookie is and why she is the way that she is. This, of course, has been one of the show's biggest mysteries since the beginning, but with this revelation comes a few more that throw relationships into even more turmoil.
This Blu-ray collection comes with a few features that are worth going through if you are a big fan of the series, but can be skipped by the more casual followers. Each episode contains the True Blood standard "Enhance Viewing" mode as well as post mortems. There are also commentaries on some of the season's bigger episodes. Outside of that, there is a lengthy series of shorts where the different characters (not the actors) get interviewed a la reality television about the events of each episode. The characters interviewed include Jessica, Andy, Tommy (Marshall Allman) and Alcide (Joe Manganiello). This, while amusing, is extremely long and most viewers will probably lose interest before even making it through a single character's line.
The special feature True Blood Lines is interesting; it takes all of the known, major characters, and classifies them by their race. There are humans, vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, Sookie's race and even a category for maenad. Each character's screen also shows their relationship to other characters, letting you spiderweb your way through all of the different characters.
While I don't think this season was as good as the first two, it does take the characters in some interesting directions and fans of the show should at least rent it. The Blu-ray version sells the dark, brooding feel of the show and with it also comes with Seamless Play. Similar to the ABC's Season Play feature found on Lost Blu-rays, this allows you to watch the entire season without having to go back to the menus between discs.
