SPOILERS!

The season two finale of True Blood aired a few hours ago, and as expected, it brought some storylines to a close with a cliffhanger that set viewers on edge for the much-anticipated third season.  Well, sort of.

I didn’t become a True Blood fanatic until the end of season one. The arc that began with Jessica’s forced transformation at Bill’s unwilling hands and ended with Bill and Sookie returning home from Dallas (episodes 110 – 209) was twelve hours of juicy plotting and irresistible character development.

• Previously pious Jessica runs wild as a teenage vamp before settling down with Hoyt for the blossoming of a truly charming vampire-human romance.
• Eric the sexy Viking is a manipulative lying a-hole as his attraction to Sookie grows, and he earns shipper bonus points when he reveals his more vulnerable side in a series of heartbreaking scenes with his Maker.
• Godrick, the 2000 year-old, forever-young vampire embraces humanity in a fiery farewell, his captivating appearance on the show far too brief.
• Sookie and Bill’s relationship faces new hurdles with keeping tabs on surrogate child Jessica, Sookie’s growing lust for Eric, and Bill’s desperately crazy and immensely unlikeable Maker, Lorena, despite attempted maker-cide by plasma screen.
• Jason Stackhouse reprises his role as comic relief dumb-ass in a series of mishaps at the Church of the Fellowship of the Sun, never quite coming into his own, but beginning to prove he’s more than just a pretty face.
• Overly-possessed Tara shacks up with the boring Eggs and the mysterious Maryann, who would have been an engaging character had the writers concluded her story mid-season rather than painfully dragging it across more than twelve episodes.

Season two was in a great place up until the last three episodes when the Dallas plot wrapped and everything in Bon Temps stagnated. There’s only so many raunchy orgies, Tara bitch-slaps, and Sam nude-y escapes one can take before a previously well-written show collapses into a rut. Or jumps a shark. Or nukes a fridge.

I understand that the seasons of True Blood are more-or-less faithfully following the trajectory of Charlaine Harris’s novels with one season = one novel. Creative liberties can – and should – be taken, and hopefully Alan Ball takes as many as necessary in season three to maintain the quality of the first half of season two. Mix it up! It’s better to combine two novels into an explosion of action-packed plotting than to give us another overlong and ultimately underwhelming Maryanne fiasco. We get it, she’s crazy and hard to kill – move on, already!

Speaking of the books… I’ve read Dead Until Dark and I’ve read Internet SPOILERS that mention that Lafayette dies in the first book … and I simply don’t remember this happening. I recall him being mentioned – once – and that’s it. What did I miss?