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Upcoming episode!

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Next week's preview:

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True Blood hit another ratings high on Sunday, surging to a best-ever 5.3 million viewers. That’s up 20 percent over last week’s record 4.5 million viewers.

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Well, the book is out there, so I'm not giving anything away when I say that we'll meet the Vampire King of Mississippi, Russell Edgington. And we'll encounter werewolves for the first time in the flesh; we've heard about them, but we'll meet them. I'm very excited about the character of Debbie Pelt. She's bad news.

There's also talk that it was werewolves who took Bill.

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In what would be a boon to Sookie-Eric fans, True Blood boss Alan Ball isn’t ruling out incorporating a major (and controversial) plot point from the books that, up to now, has only been hinted at in the series (spoiler alert):

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That Bill came to Bon Temps and seduced Sookie with the ulterior motive of getting her to work for Queen Sophie-Anne.

“It’s certainly something that I found really compelling in the books,” says Ball of Bill’s deep dark secret. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ But I can’t really tell you what I’m going to do story-wise. So much of the appeal of the show depends on the element of surprise.”

Bill-Sookie shippers are no doubt hoping Ball opts not to go there. In addition to driving a stake through the heart of their favorite couple, it could push Sookie into the arms of Eric.

"I try to stay out of how the fans are responding to the show," says Ball. "I have to tell the story that I think is the most interesting story. Certainly, the main ingredient in drama is conflict and revelations. For every person who loves Bill and wants him and Sookie to just be in love always, there's another person who's like, ‘I'm sick of Bill. He’s such a wuss. I like Eric. He's dangerous.’ Especially when you're working on a show like this with the kind of palette and the colors you use; you want it to be continually surprising and shocking. Not for the sake of being shocking, but that's part of the fun."

EW


Stephen Moyer says that the third season of the hit series will be heavy on the werewolf action. [ShockTillYouDrop]

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It seems there will be a True Blood video game.

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For a backwater burg with only a single watering hole, Bon Temps sure does have a lot of colorful characters passing in and out (well, those that end up making it out). Case in point: Check out the motley crew Alan Ball and Co. are introducing in season 3 (premiering next summer). While Ball teased some of these arrivals in my recent Q&A, there’s nothing like sinking your teeth into the actual casting notices.

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* Tommy Mickens is a grungy but handsome man in his early ‘20s who just so happens to be Sam Merlotte’s long-lost younger brother. Apparently, at some point he’ll be showing his unadorned backside, which, with Sam’s similar feral tendency towards the “full moon,” proves that they really must be related after all.

* After his mysterious abduction, Bill finds himself with the latest addition to the True Blood Gallery of Impossibly Attractive Male Vampires (or the TBGIAMV). Talbot, a bitingly (har har) sarcastic vampire with a model’s looks, will appear starting in the second episode as a guide of sorts for the kidnapped vamp.

* More news on the PYT front is the appearance of Jesus Velasquez, an unordinary orderly with a heart to match his good looks.

* In a friendly bit of one-upmanship, Tara gets her very own over-protective vampire buddy. And a “sexy, sexy, sexy, sexy” one at that. That’s right, four sexys. Eat that, Sookie. The neckbiter, Franklin Mott, is also clearly in the running for TBGIAMV status.

* We’ve had vampires, shape-shifters, and demi-gods, and now the next supernatural spook to waltz through Louisiana is…rednecks?! Well, maybe they aren’t so unearthly, but they can sure pack a punch and we can expect a group of them, led by a guy named Coot (of course), to unleash their mobile home magic on some of our dear characters.

* Jason Stackhouse will find that his notoriously limitless libido has taken a hit, when two NYU girls, Jen and Missy, ménage à try to get him into the sack to little avail.

* Yvetta, Fangtasia’s new Czechoslovakian dancer, is tremendously hot and comfortable being in the buff. Oh, and she makes lots of sexy time with Eric. (Don’t shoot the messenger!)

* Tara’s ever-distraught mom turns to the church for comfort (and maybe a little more) in the form of the honorable Reverend Daniels.

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The cable network is so pleased with Ball and company that, Ball relates, “I just closed a deal to show-run [True Blood] for two more seasons, so I would assume that [the series is at minimum] going through Season Four.”

What does Ball feel is important to preserve from Harris’ books? “The main story is the same. We diverge mostly in the secondary characters. The books are sort of Sookie’s story, what happens to her. The other characters disappear if they’re not in a scene with her. And so we have diverged, certainly in the storylines for Tara [played by Rutina Wesley] and Lafayette [played by Nelsan Ellis], but we’ve tried to remain very true to the spirit of the world.”

“I think we’re always going to use the books as sort of a foundation, but I just don’t see how, as time goes on, you can’t diverge from them a little bit more each season. I don’t know, though. We’re starting to work on Season Three and we actually are really, really sticking to the books, at the beginning at least.”

“I don’t want it ever to become a show about effects. We don’t have the time or the money to do a show about effects, and I’m getting tired of stuff where it’s all about the CGI and the characters are secondary. I always wanted the effects to be minimal, just enough to suggest. I think a lot of times it’s a little scarier to leave the effects to your imagination.”

“Season Three is a big Eric [the vampire played by Alexander Skarsgard] season and Season Four is really big for Eric’s character, according to the books.”

Read the full article at the Source

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