TRUE BLOOD: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON (2009, Blu-ray released May 25, 2010 – MSRP $79.98)
With a cast of great characters and compelling b-movie storylines, True Blood is just as silly, soap operatic and supernatural in its second season as it was in its first. Perhaps even more so! And that fun transfers in whole to this exceptional Complete Second Season Blu-ray set!
As I mentioned earlier in the week in our Top 5 Blu-ray disc column, I’ve only just started watching this series. My girlfriend and I burned through both the first and second seasons of True Blood in a matter of days. I can’t say for certain that the experience hasn’t clouded my judgment of the second series as a stand-alone set but I’ll do my best here to single these 12 episodes out of the bunch.
True Blood: The Complete Second Season gets off to a running start, picking up directly from the season one cliffhanger, and never looks back. There’s a new murder mystery in Bon Temps and telepath Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and her 150-year old vampire lover, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) are caught in the middle of it. Before they can escape the madness and have some time to foster their blossoming relationship, they come up against an army of God-loving vampire killers, a cult of frolicking Dionysian lust-worshipers and the eccentric, Yahtzee-loving Queen of vampires. It’s not easy for the couple to sneak in a few moments alone amongst the weirdo’s, rednecks and shape-shifters of Bon Temps! Especially with Bill’s new, young vampire ward, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) tailing him around, making trouble at every turn and his powerful vampire Sheriff, Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) desperate to claim Sookie for his own at any cost.
The second season works fairly well, adding a genuine and original threat to the mix and further developing a lot of our favourite characters. Sadly, some interesting characters and plot-threads are introduced and left to twist in the wind (Eric’s 2000-year old “maker” comes and goes before you know it) while other personalities from season one either fail to make an appearance (the vampire magistrate!) or test your patience with a stream of unending (poorly written) shifts in attitude and loyalty (I don’t believe anyone in the real world would act as Tara (Rutina Wesley), Sookie’s best friend, did through this season.) All told though, the series is a light bit of fun. Like a modern day Dark Shadows - a supernatural vampire soap opera with fang planted firmly in cheek!
Much like everything HBO releases on Blu-ray (via Warner Home Video, of course) True Blood: The Complete Second Season looks absolutely stunning! A healthy, naturalistic veneer of film grain compliments a great deal of detail and wonderful contrast here. This is a fantastic looking set of transfers with an equally stunning and enveloping DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack.
True Blood: The Complete Second Season features a fairly plentiful yet mixed bag of extras, the best of which are the seven audio commentary tracks. They vary in quality depending on participants but are, generally speaking, the highlight of the set. I would, however, happily trade any or all of them in favour of a nice “making-of” documentary, the likes of which is nowhere to be found here. Instead, we’re offered several episodes with an “Enhanced Viewing Experience” – a picture-in-picture pop-up track that offers up the occasional trivia, detail or factoid and allows direct access to a couple of hours of “Character perspectives” and other content, most of which can be viewed outside of the “experience”. I didn’t like any of it. It’s all in-character conversations monologues, fake infomercials and news broadcasts which, to me, is so much less valuable than seeing behind the scenes of the production. Perhaps fans of the original Southern Vampire Mysteries books will appreciate this additional extended-universe content more than I did.
[...] my review of the boxed [...]
[...] it already been a year since I reviewed the second season box set of HBO‘s True Blood series? Well, not quite, but we’re close enough to the anniversary that Warner has announced [...]