I loved season 2 up until the last 2 episodes (the finale), which were terrible. Like others, I was appalled that nearly every bit of dialogue and action in the last 2 episodes was done for laughs (as Ian pointed out earlier). Not only was the town-gone-mad veering into farce, but also all the scenes in the palace of the Valley Girl-esque Queen. All the regular characters felt like their actors were barely in character, like maybe it was all shot after a holiday break or something. Eric Stackhouse may be stupid, but he was never, ever, portrayed as a joke before. It upset the reality of the show to have characters being written so poorly. I'd have thought the actors would have objected when they saw the script.
That said, the very ending of the finale -- the last of the many Lord of the Rings type endings that kept coming up before the end credits finally emerged -- was solid. Sookie not knowing what to say, trying it on in the bathroom, coming back out -- that was perfect because it felt real. Probably the only perfect moments in the last two hours. Poor Bill.
I can forgive the whole Maryanne storyline since, even if it was sort of a B-story not relevant to the larger Sookie/Bill or Vampire arc, I'd rather have them play out an irrelevant story now, rather than, say, using up all the vampire story elements too quickly. At least this way we have season 3 to look forward to. That said, this show will never reach season 4 if they do this kind of tangent for that long again. These diversion storylines should be maybe 3 episodes long, max. The Mayanne storyline was important only to the extent that it gave Sam Merlotte a brief connection to others of his kind.
I HATED THE QUEEN! I was confused by the dichotomy of her supposedly being an old vampire, and yet having the interests and expressions of a modern teenage or early-20s girl. That the tv show changed her to a "younger" 400 year old vampire helps smooth that out a bit, but not entirely. She doesn't command any respect, and I'd assume that is because the actress sucks, but, I believe I've seen her in a Wim Wenders film where she was good. But I wouldn't mind if they recast her, or at least rewrote her so that she was not one degree away from a Valley Girl.
I assume she wants her blood distributed so that she can sense the mood of the entire local population (or at least everyone who has taken a dose of her blood).
I wanted the new redhead vampire to find out if there was indeed an operation she could resolve her problem. I imagine there'll be some kind of "surgery done by silver blades" or something. I'd have thought she'd have gone straight to Eric's nightclub to find out from Eric's female partner what can be done. About her last scene in the truck, I'd like to think she was just doing that out of despair, and she will eventually get back together with her boyfriend. The writers did a lot more with her character this season than I ever expected, and I am glad for that. Though believe it or not I did expect the virginity issue to come up (and was surprised it did!).