This was not a happy spring. "The Office" wilted, the U.S. adaptation of "Skins" was a hot mess and "Glee," in typical campy bravado, pushed its audience's limits with one too many plotless, rambling episodes. "30 Rock" got weird and "United States of Tara" lost its snarky edge and began treading the melodramatic waters of daytime soaps.
Come summer, all I wanted was for Alan Ball to pick up my spec script for "True Blood" and at long last consummate the tension of Eric and Bill in passionate embrace.
The supernatural show, with its sly social commentary and sharp self-awareness, enjoyed a compelling fourth season replete with an overabundance of new mystical creatures and lots of bare-chested Alexander Skarsgaard. Despite the voyeuristic pleasures of watching lots of beautiful people with bad teeth have fast-forward sex, the chemistry between Sookie and Eric, which so magically brewed since their initial encounter at Fangtasia three seasons ago, was annulled as soon as Eric lost his memory.
This attraction between fairy-girl and Nordic god had been based in the illicity of their union. If Eric had always been the attentive, wounded man-child he morphed into after the patchouli-wielding Marnie attacked him, I for one would never have lusted after him so immensely. Nor would there be a "True Blood" fanfiction folder on my laptop. I am not actually admitting to this either way. I did not want Sookie to make love to Eric because she suddenly fell in love with him. I wanted some hot make-up sex or V-infused naked romp through the creepy woods of Bon Temps.
Fangirl sulking aside, it was a relatively satisfying season. I only wish Lafayette had gotten more screen time. His brief stint of being possessed by a completely tangential and unnecessary slave-mistress did not quite offer the actor with the best eye makeup on television enough material with which to work.
"Weeds" had a less successful return with its seventh and worst season ever. The season premiere, which picked up three years after the last finale left off, foreshadowed the show's demise. After season six, which I found to be the most introspective and engaging season yet, the Botwins' three-year offscreen hiatus felt like a major cop-out. "Weeds" creator Jenji Kohan has said before that the writers, like the viewers, often have only a vague idea as to how the characters will get themselves out of each conundrum. The magic of the show rests in the fact that after every increasingly shark-jumping season finale, the viewer gets to begin the next season seconds after the previous one ended. After the sixth season ended with Nancy's FBI arrest, the show failed to build upon this shocking finale by avoiding its immediate ramifications and jumping ahead three years. I expected more from the writers that got us out of a marriage to a DEA agent, a swimming pool full of bud, a machine-gun holdup in a drug den and Shane's epic Jack Nicholson swing at Pilar Zuazo.
To add to the show's woes, Michelle Trachtenberg ruins every television show on which she guest-stars. Sure, she might have Steven Tyler's mouth and a dark indie-film past (Mysterious Skin, anyone?), but her law-school-come-dealer queenpin character fell flat and lacked the moral flirtation to give her the depth of, say, Nancy or Shane. This might be why she and Silas are a good match. Silas is beautiful and should have stuck with modeling. He doesn't, however, pull off the angsty half-son very well. I would have preferred to focus on Uncle Andy's evolving role in the family, a topic that only gets explored very minutely in the seventh season's messy finale. While we're on the topic, I hereby invite you to email me with the name of the gun-wielder. I'm starting a betting pool, and my firm wager is Zombie Esteban.
But enough cable television. "Wilfred," the zany new Aussie import starring Elijah Wood and the scruffily attractive Jason Gann, was by far the best new show this summer. If you can imagine a hybrid of "Arrested Development" and "Pushing Daisies "that meets "Clifford the Big Red Dog," you've got "Wilfred" an imaginative, whip-smart comedy about a suicidal twentysomething and his unlikely mate (in an Australian sense) his neighbor Jenna's wise dog. Each episode finds Ryan (Wood) on the path to self-discovery with Wilfred (Gann) as his guide. The dark humor is spot-on, and Wood's comedic delivery is endearingly uninhibited. Cue some really bad puns: This show is sure to keep skeptics on a short leash. Skeptics are in the doghouse. Throw me a bone, skeptics. It's god-dog-good. I'm done.
