The problems with “True Blood” all steam from the same big problem: Too many characters. We count at least 20 recurring ones (who’ve appeared in multiple seasons) and dozens of other minor ones. To compound things, we’re not only talking about characters but supernatural characters (vampires, werewolves, werepanthers, witches, shapeshifters, skinwalkers, maenads and fairies). While you can get away with that many freaky characters in a series of novels (“True Blood” is based on books by Charlaine Harris) where you’ve got hundreds of pages of exposition to work with, you can’t with a one-hour weekly TV show (even soap operas are five hours a week). The result is lack of focus, lack of continuity, lack of attention to detail and characters acting, well, out of character.

Consider:

+ We spent three seasons getting to know Bill Compton, the show’s central vampire, as a benevolent protagonist, thrown into his preternatural existence against his will and unwilling to succumb to the lust for human blood that comes with the territory, hopelessly in love with a human woman he can never truly have as a partner. Then, in Season 4, with no foreshadowing and very little setup, Bill turns bad – very bad – and we learn everything about Season 1, 2 and 3 Bill was an act and that he’s really a power-hungry vamp social climber who doesn’t care who he hurts along the way. Um, OK. But wait, there’s more. After six episodes of getting acclimated to cutthroat (pardon the pun) Bill, he goes soft again on us, bailing out on the opportunity to eliminate his chief rival, a move that certainly would have cemented his power, something we’ve been told for six episodes is ALL HE CARES ABOUT.

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