Matthew Gilbert at the Boston Globe:(T)he neo-gothic series, which will finish its first season on Sundaynight at 9, has turned out to be so much more than a canny metaphor.Yes, the parallels between vampires and American cultural outsidersremain strong, and Ball and his writers aren't afraid to use them tocomic and dramatic effect. The clips of vampires defending their rightson TV are amusingly droll sendups of real-life talking-headed venom.And Bill's mistreatment by Bon Temps has been both touching and, as itundoes the sensitive vampire and his beloved waitress, tragic. Sookieand Bill belong together. Yes, yes, sensitive vampire and thought-hearing waitress, fine, but what about the rest? Bill and Sookie are all well and good if you're watching the show as a neo-gothic romance, but I like looking at this show's larger picture, the struggles of the variously oppressed and oppressing factions, the lure of the dark, the rawness that comes across every time Jason Stackhouse gets that look in his eye or Lafayette turns on his webcam.Gilbert, on Ryan Kwanten as Jason:Kwanten, as Sookie's man-slut of a brother, Jason, deserves the biggestshout-out. He has been like a live electric wire on the show. At first,he seemed doomed to portray self-parody, with Jason as the classic biglittle boy. But, while he is still funny as he makes Jason's dullthinking process crystal clear, Kwanten has also given us a guy who hasbeen unexpectedly baptized in self-awareness. (BTW, buy the Merlotte's mug, or a t-shirt, at the HBO shop online, and you could pick up a 2XL t-shirt in black for me, too.)On tonight's finale, the easily led Jason meets a preacher in jail that starts him on a very very different path than he was on with Amy. I'll miss Amy with all her contradictions, justifications and rationale for her drug habit. I swear if she were a man she'd be someone I dated in the 90s. Lizzy Caplan was so different than in any of the other things I've seen her in.Nelsan Ellis? Electric when he comes on screen. L...