"True Blood" Season 4 Preview: "Something Witchy This Way Comes"

This article contains minor spoilers.

Has any TV series gone off the rails as spectacularly as True Blood – and had such a good time doing it?

What started in its first season as a fairly focused murder mystery with supernatural overtones morphed last summer into a series of gory, funny, sexy, WTF, head-turning (literally), spine-tingling (literally), what-just-happened, I-can’t-believe-they-did-that moments.

The only trouble? Somewhere along the way it managed to sacrifice any semblance of narrative coherence.

Don’t get me wrong … I loved much of last season. In fact, I’d argue that its good parts were the strongest in True Blood’s history, particularly the introductions of such compelling new characters as Russell Edgington (Denis O' Hare), Franklin Mott (James Frain), and Alcide (Joe Manganiello). But midway through, the main narrative arc concerning the vampire-controlled wolf pack had come to a dead stop. Meanwhile, a myriad of sub-plots (and sub-sub-plots) concerning various secondary characters were introduced, only to themselves putter in place.

And anyone hoping the finale would somehow tie these disparate elements together wound up as disappointed as a Fangtasia groupie on “No Biting” Tuesdays.

So the main question for me coming into Season 4 was this: could Alan Ball and his team maintain the show’s go-for-broke craziness while finding a way to restore any sort of dramatic momentum, not to mention comprehensibility?

Having seen the first three episodes, I can tell you with utter conviction that the answer is a firm and definite yes.

And a little bit no. Actually, it’s less a case of hit or miss than of hit and mess.

What I mean by that is that all those divergent storylines are still very much in evidence, and no effort has been made to tie them into any kind of cohesive whole. But here’s the good news – each of those stories is a heck of a lot more interesting this time around, and that’s largely thanks to a pretty clever narrative trick in the first episode …

Alexander Skarsgård as Eric

The season picks up right where last season ended … and then it doesn’t. Instead it leaps ahead in time, although unlike other shows that have tried the same gimmick – Desperate Housewives and  Brothers and Sisters – a rationale for the jump is provided here and it’s actually a fairly satisfying one.

The time shift proves to be a saving grace for the show in that it reinvigorates all those secondary storylines that had seemed so stagnant last year. In fact, much of the fun of the first episode is discovering the new circumstances in which familiar characters are now portrayed – in some cases barely recognizable from previous seasons. Even better, this dramatic momentum builds, and by the end of the third episode, most of the characters are in even stranger circumstances than at the season’s start.

Bill (Stephen Moyer), for example, who always struck me as being as close to a wet blanket as a vampire could possibly get, is given a powerful new vocation that has him demonstrating a startling craftiness that brings out dark undertones to his character. Jason too benefits from the time shift. While I’ve long admired Ryan Kwanten’s unique, um, talents, and Jason could always be counted on for hilarious one-liners, his character particularly seemed aimless for the past two seasons. This year, his storyline moves to the forefront and manages to become one of the most intriguing, bringing with it a series of nasty shocks.

Given how wasted their talents have been in the past, I’m particularly grateful that AfterElton.com favorites Tara (Rutina Wesley), Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) and Jesus (Kevin Alejandro) are finally connected to the main narrative arc. In fact, they’re brought directly into the inner circle of this season’s Big Bad.

Nelsan Ellis as Lafayette and Kevin Alejandro as Jesus

About that Big Bad ... she’s played by acclaimed Irish actress Fiona Shaw, who like all acclaimed European actresses is most recognizable to American audiences for being in the Harry Potter movies.

Marnie is about as far from Maryann the orgy-hosting, Eggs-scrambling Maenad and Russell “now for the weather” Edgington as one could get in a potential villain – a timid grandmotherly type (one can just image all the cats in the den, the mothballs in the closet, and the hard candies on the coffee table) who operates one of those New Age-y candles-and-incense boutiques where, naturally, a local coven meets during off hours.

Fiona Shaw as Marnie

It’s easy to underestimate her, not only for us as viewers but also for the show’s vampires, who make the mistake of thinking she and her little coven are easily disposed of. That mistake has major repercussions for both Sookie (Anna Paquin) and Eric (Alexsander Skarsgard) in ways I wouldn’t dream of spoiling.

Although far removed from this main storyline, there’s also plenty going on with Sam and his twerpy brother Tommy, lovebirds Jessica and Hoyt, Alcide and his psycho ex Debbie Pelt, and even with Arlene and Terry, plus even more droll screentime for my personal favorite, Pam (Kristin Bauer), and a more central role for American Vampire League P.R. head, Nan Flanagan (Jessica Tuck).

By the end of the third episode, I was having so much fun watching that I hardly cared how all these parts fit together, or even if they would at all.

Which is why I’ll happily embrace Season Four and look forward to each upcoming episode, witches, warts, and all.