The True Blood performance that just gets better — deeper, richer, wittier — belongs to Deborah Ann Woll as the ginger-haired, heart-on-her-bloody-sleeve Jessica Hamby and she is doing the teen vampire proud.
In a Twilight world, it’s difficult to play an adolescent vamp for something more than heaving melodrama, but creator Alan Ball (who devised this character independently of Charlaine Harris’ source-novels) and Woll are collaborating to make Jessica a sympathetic character as well as a believably romantic, emotionally fragile, gratifyingly brave girl.
Over the past couple of weeks, Jessica has fallen out of love with Hoyt, in lust with Jason, and joined forces with Bill to forestall the curse of ancient witch Antonia. Where in previous seasons Jessica was frequently presented as a self-centered brat (a role she fulfilled with highly amusing petulance), she, like many an adolescent in formative years, is rising to some big challenges. Granted, not all teens must cope with the urge to fang and suck, to fulfill awakening sexual urges while also knowing she could ruin lives.
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