I spend most of my time on this website surrounded by True Blood and I am to a certain extent. But every year for the past six years, I have had to leave Bon Temps at the end of summer. While I write about many things related to the show, I don’t feel like I ever truly return to Bon Temps until I see the blu-ray. True Blood: The Complete Sixth Season allows us all to return to the warm, supernatural town, and all of its diverse residents.
Look and Packaging
Today, almost everything we consume now in terms of television is HD. But the True Blood blu-ray package is just gorgeous. Sometimes I just turn on an episode to see the beauty of the show. We a lot of things during the regular season airings, however there is just something about watching it on blu-ray that makes it even better.
As for the set itself, it is composed of five discs with audio commentaries dispersed throughout. The special features; Inside the Episode, True Blood Lines, and a special Vamp Camp featurette are all located on disc five. The art behind the discs is the smashed Tru Blood bottle bleeding out that we saw last year on posters and in promos. We see of course that the front cover is the main artwork from season 6, Bill (Stephen Moyer) on a red background with fangs extended.
One of the notable features absent from this blu-ray set is the DVD copy set that had been included with the season 4 and season 5 set. However given that we’re also given digital copy redemption codes with every set, the loss of the DVD copy set does not seem that much of one.
Special Features
Audio commentaries are typically my favorite part of the True Blood blu-ray sets because we get to hear the thoughts of the cast and crew for the episode. Last year I lamented that I wished more people had been available to do commentaries because many cast members were mentioned and it would have been nice to get their input. But I have to say that this year I was very satisfied with them this year because even though we had the same amount of commentaries, they seemed to be even better than last year. I attribute this to lots of allusions to what is currently being worked on in season 7 and we were clued into a lot of funny things that happened off camera.
List of Audio Commentaries and Highlights:
Episode Four- “At Last” Writer Alexander Woo and Amelia Rose Blaire (Willa Burrell)
Episode Six- “Don’t You Feel Me” Writer Daniel Kenneth and Director Howard Deutch
Episode Seven- “In the Evening” Writer Kate Barnow and Stephen Moyer
Episode Nine- “Life Matters” Executive Producer Brian Buckner and Carrie Preston (Arlene Fowler)
My favorite is Life Matters. This episode centered upon Terry Bellefleur’s (Todd Lowe) funeral for the most part. It was great to listen to Carrie talk about everything that went into filming that episode. I think out of everyone, she also hinted at what goes on in season 7. But nothing major of course. The highlights of the audio commentary for me were when she discussed doing the flashbacks with Todd, being able to work with Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse) during the funeral scene, and what Carrie revealed at the very end of the episode. While shooting the last scene between Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) and Pam, Kristin Bauer van Straten told her co-star during a take that he had better sign his season 7 contract!
The commentary with Stephen Moyer and Kate Barnow was also really good. In the Evening had Bill facing some very tough choices particularly with Eric and Nora so I really appreciated that Stephen was there to elaborate on that story in particular. But apparently Alex was also supposed to be there doing the commentary and he couldn’t be there. So that was a little sad. Since we have another box set coming out though, I hope they’ll get to do one for season 7!
Inside the Episode
As always, we get all ten inside the episode featurettes. Being the nerd that I am, I wish that they were longer because I love to know what goes on behind the scenes. I also find that watching Inside the Episode also helps me to better understand what I just watched. There is always so much packed in to every episode that we don’t always see everything that we need to the first time. I also like them because we learn more about why something happened or why a certain character is motivated to act the way that they do.
Vamp Camp
Season 6 took place in Vamp Camp for the most part and it was not what one would call warm and friendly. In the Vamp Camp Featurette, Sarah Newlin (Anna Camp) takes us through the different purposes that Vamp Camp serves through different video segments. We also gain access to different documentation generated by Governor Burrell (Arliss Howard) justifying why building such a facility is necessary. And it doesn’t get any less creepy!
With only weeks left until the True Blood season 7 premiere, be sure to catch up on everything True Blood season 6 has to offer! True Blood: The Complete Sixth Season can be ordered from the HBO Shop now! While you wait, watch every single episode on HBO GO!
True Blood Season 7 premieres Sunday June 22, 2014 on HBO at 9PM!
Image Credit: HBO, Inc.
