Monday, September 14, 2009

Exclusive: 'True Blood' finale postmortem with Alan Bal


Though last night’s True Blood finale tied up a bunch of loose ends, it also untied a bunch more! For instance (spoiler alert): Who kidnapped Bill? Why was Eric mostly MIA? Will the Queen return? Are Jessica and Hoyt over? What is Sookie? And that’s for starters. Luckily, series creator Alan Ball agreed to a little post-episode Q&A to finish us off.

Some folks were surprised by the structure of the finale and your decision to wrap up the Maryann story in the first 30 minutes.
ALAN BALL:
I try to look at the show as basically almost like it’s a novel, and each episode is a chapter. I guess I’m influenced by the fact that when I watch TV shows, I watch the [DVD] boxed sets. Ultimately, it’s just organically the way it worked out. And the season finale last year was very similar.

Why wasn’t there more Eric in the finale?
BALL:
There is a reason for not seeing Eric in the last part of the episode, but if I explain it, I’ll be [giving away] too much.

read on

3 comments:

Rita said...

This was a very interesting interview
i always thought that since there
would be so many books that AB would
have to either combine or to bring
things sooner as we all know that
the actors don't stay the same as
when the series started.Then that is
why the actors have signed 7 year
contracts right now,makes since.

Sharon said...

When asked why the MaryAnn arc dragged out for so long, he blamed it on MaryAnn. AB, she's fictional and her storyline in the books was much shorter. The writers dragged it out for some unknown reason.

When asked why Eric was hardly in the finale (or eps 10 and 11, my question), he said he couldn't tell us because it had something to do with season 3. I don't know what the real reason was, but its hard to justify to me Eric's almost absence from eps 10, 11 and 12. Many of the fans have been crying for more Eric since season 1, even though he only got maybe 30 minutes of screen time. Wanting more of Eric and the vampires should not have been a mystery to anyone making TB.

And whoever is blaming ERW for the Queen should consider that the writers wrote her as ridiculous. She just did what she was directed to do. And she was well over a 1,000 years old, not 400. How would that make her queen over Eric who is 1,000 years old?

I know some of this sounds a bit like sour grapes, but the Godric arc was so compelling, and I'm still having trouble with the fact that it was just dropped after he went up in flames (except for the little Sookie dream sequence, which was delicious, btw).

" Dallas " said...

Yeah i think it was the way the Maryann storyline was written if they'd made it shorter then Dallas would have had to be shorter because the end of Maryann requires that Sookie be back in BT

I think Eric hs gotten so much more screen time in S@ than he did in LDiD and i think the setting is ready for him to be even more involved next year

It alwasy is the writing - but she is written as srcstic and nutty but the actress hs to seel it

Just think how awful Ryan's dumb Jason could be if he didn't sell it soo well.

I'm thrilled that Ball and Team True blood saw the genius in CH Godric charter and to connect Eric to him was wonderful for the Eric character in TB - i look forward to the flashbacks