By John Keegan
Well, it took nearly two-thirds of the season to finally happen, but it looks like this season of "True Blood" is starting to find some measure of direction.  Various subplots are starting to intersect, and though it's still not happening enough for my taste, it's better than the wheel-spinning we've seen up to this point.

For example, the intersection of Lafayette's struggle with his dark magical side with the endless nonsense of Terry's subplot with the Ifrit made both of the wearying stories a lot more interesting.  I still don't care about the "cost" of resolving the issue with the Ifrit, since killing Patrick might actually be merciful to the actor at this point, but at least it makes a bit of sense to have these two plot threads link together.

As fun as it was to see Luna in Sam's form running around Bon Temps, it felt like a way to waste time while Jessica and Hoyt had their moment in the Slayer camp.  As it stands, I think the threat of the Slayers has not been realized, especially since a number of their victims have been surviving of late.  Never mind that they would seem to be rather convenient for the newly minted Sanguinistas running the Authority to use as examples.  If the "supers" decided to band together to deal with the threat head-on, how long would these Slayers really last?

The whole mystery of the vampire that killed the Stackhouses would be a lot more interesting if there wasn't a connection to the faerie.  As nice as it is to have lots of scantily clad beautiful people running around, they are just plain annoying.  If it turns out that the vampire in question is really a new character, and not an existing familiar face, I'll be very disappointed.  The cast of characters is already too big as it is!

Equally disappointing is the apparent pointlessness of the Tara/Pam and werewolf material.  As much as I love Pam and her acerbic wit, this feels like it's going nowhere.  Tara is still one of the worst characters on the show, and the early hint that she might turn Sanguinista has never borne fruit.  And while I appreciate seeing plenty of Rikki in that love scene with Alcide, the whole leadership battle was about as compelling as an Uwe Boll film.

As always, the best material is left to the Authority, and I enjoyed Eric's struggle to deal with his vision of Godric while surrounded by the converted.  While Salome's seduction of Bill makes his apparent switch to the Lilith team a bit more believable, I'm still not sure that he's not setting a trap for the Sanguinistas.  Whatever the case, I would have expected Nora to do everything possible to convince Eric to join the team.  (I will admit that I say this with some desire to see more of Lucy Philips before Nora's inevitable true death!)

Without Bill's strategy suggestion, however, I wonder if there would have been any sense of direction.  For all their desire to wipe out the Mainstreamers, and thus escalating the civil war, they were awfully focused on their own individual desires.  It's the eternal lesson of history: revolutionaries that band together to take control often resort to even more bloody in-fighting when the common enemy is vanquished.

John Keegan is Editor-in-Chief for Critical Myth, a partner site of SciFi Vision.