True Blood - again
I can't believe I'm saying this, but if you ignore all the sex in this show, it's actually pretty good.
I have to say that this show exceeded my expectations. Maybe after SGA, my expectations have been lowered to the floor, but that's another issue.
As I said earlier, in this season at least, the sex was extremely gratuitous. Which I guess is not surprising, and given the nature of the show, one could hardly be surprised by this. But I have to give the writers a lot of credit here. Man do they know how to use an ensemble cast. There were so many mini-arcs in this season - Bill/Sookie/Eric, Jason/Church/Sarah, Godric, Maryann, Sam/his gift........ - but they managed to give each of them the proper time without managing to make them all overly contrived. Heck, even in the last few eps, they managed to incorporate a story involving Hoight & his Momma, which was actually quite well written.
And again, I have to take my hat off, especially in the last five eps, for the amount of comedy the writers used. There were so many great lines - Eric/Sookie "you're using words I don't understand" cracked me up - that weren't simply someone being a wiseass.
I was surprised by how dumb they made Jason appear through the season, but they redeemed him well by the end. I was glad they put in the scene with Sookie, talking about Gran and his inability to process her death. At that point, it was quite noticable that Jason & Sookie have had very few scenes together over the course of the two years - I imagine this was the writers attempt to rectify that. The scene with him and Andy in his truck where Andy is complaining about how easy life has been for Jason served both of the characters well, although their newfound friendship is going to be serverely tested next season.
While the surprise with Maryann was pretty easy to pick up on (who else could it be??) it was pretty effective. I'm glad they didn't go crazy with Sookie's powers like I feared they were going to, although no doubt that will be one of next season's arcs. Also in that will be Andy/Jason's murder/self defence, Eric/Sookie/Bill love triangle, Eric/Queen bloodletting.......
So all in all, better than I'd expected. While the show clearly isn't as deep as others out there, and there is a lot of sex and nudity (it varies a lot from ep to ep), but it may surprise you like it did me. Maybe a six out of ten? It's solid, reliable, but few eps are ALL TIME GREATS.