Sure, the books are cute, who doesn't like the books? (My favorite part of the books so far are the lack of skin-sparkles and spine-devouring devil-babies with retarded names.) I mean, the books would make a great show on TNT or A&E, like, my understanding of The Closer is that it seems to be about a woman totally engulfed by her troubling relationship with food, but who is secretly the most manipulative person on the planet, attended by six or seven dwarves, who are policemen by day. (…Am I even close?)
That sounds like wacky good fun, and I've always kind of assumed that would be the model for the Sookie Books. And then sliding toward edgier, Lord knows I adore The Cleaner and Saving Grace (besides Mad Men they're all I've really been watching), because basically I'll watch anything where people do a whole bunch of drugs and a whole bunch of fucking, and then have long conversations with God while solving crimes. That is so the best job. That would have been a fine match. The Sookie Books are mysteries, right? Do some fucking, snort some V blood, do heinous shit/solve a crime, be adorable and quirky and psychic. Easy.
Except this show didn't get made for TNT or A&E. So the whole character-centric, client-based formulaic fun goes out the window. This show got made for HBO, by Alan Ball, a man whose relationship with the zeitgeist is not unlike that of The Closer's with food, Grace's with scary sex, or Da Bratt with sobering people up. Which is to say, Alan Ball is so very much about the issues of the day that he's managed to grab hold of a concept that literally stands in for all issues simultaneously. Which is… the opposite of a dick move, as it turns out. It's actually fucking brilliant.
Because the show asks the same question as the books -- What if vampires...? -- and then answers it about fifty different extra ways. The books are about Sookie, but the show steps away from Sookie, which means you get to actually see what things are like for people who are not Sookie, so every scene in the entire first episode just keeps asking this question -- What if vampires..., what do you do? -- over and over and over, and every single scene answers it differently. So like, what does unshielded psychic waitress Sookie Stackhouse do? Wait for two years after the vampires' official simulcasted "coming out of the coffin" to see one up close, and spend that time getting more and more adorable. And when she does find one, his mind is closed to her. For a show -- and a trope -- that's all about penetration and interpenetration, whose teeth are where, whose mind's inside whose, that's a powerful aphrodisiac. She's spent her life hearing the beast in every man: why not choose the one monster whose beast she can't see? Plus, he's like soooo übercute.
And what does violently sexy brother Jason do? Well, that should be clear if you've ever seen a queer movie in your life: act totally gay-bashy about them while simultaneously focusing with laser-like sexual intensity on them and what they do in bed exactly, and then getting any vicarious hit he can off it. The sex part, actually seeing it happen in all its grotesque biological glory, seems to have really scandalized some early viewers, but I don't know. It's not particularly titillating, that's for sure. And it seems obviously played to a specific note that has more to do with Jason's body sending out certain unexpected signals that make him wary of himself, which is just one way we do this. Our era is such that a huge part of this kind of cultural change would be sexual in nature, because we are right now allowed to experiment with our bodies more fluidly than ever. He's the fetishizing-the-Other viewpoint here, so it's good that he looks so excellent naked, because mainly what he's going to be doing, apparently, is: Be Naked. Oh, and framed as a serial killer. A Naked one.
And what does the town's former Other -- a makeup wearing, hard-as-nails gender-nonspecific fry cook named Lafayette -- do about the vampires? Um, nothing really. He's too busy trying not to get his own ass murdered while holding down what seems to be 11 jobs, by my count, and simultaneously uttering witchy, wise, harsh and strange advice. For a character I was pretty sure was going to push every button I have, he sure did become amazing in about two seconds. He's like if every weird character from Shakespeare had a very skinny, very violent and sexually aggressive baby.
How about Sookie's sweet old Grandmother? She just giggles and nudges her granddaughter to ask the vamp out, because she's seen it all before. And the guy at the liquor store, he's all set to pretend to be a vampire just to fuck with normals, until he does it in front of a very unamused real one. What does the town whore do? Get caught up in a web of very spooky demon sex that ends in her murder. What does the best friend do? Act like a dick and whine a lot. I don't like her too much yet. What do the town meth addicts do? What addicts do best, which is do whatever's most brutal and nasty in order to get the best hit for the best dime -- which in this world includes chaining vamps down and draining their blood for dope. And what does Sookie's gorgeous boss Sam -- who is, of course, deeply and secretly smitten with her -- think about all this? Trust me when I say he's got his own shit to deal with.
I mean, we'll see what happens. Ball's giving all the right answers, Paquin has now slid 95% of the way across the bar from Cute to Hot, the vampires are all awesome so far (and will be including the Sexiest Man in Sweden by the end of this month)… Mostly I just like the idea: What do you do? What would you do? Now, of all times, I'm excited about watching the story of people who are present for a cultural change of sweeping intensity. Terrifying -- the apocalypse always is -- potentially gratifying, certainly edifying. This is a story about the moment everything changes. Now's the time.
I keep thinking about my grandmother -- or yours -- and how one day, maybe she was sitting on the porch or behind the wheel, and she saw a man and a woman together, with skin colors that didn't match. And their baby between them, toddling along, and maybe in this hypothetical Poitier moment she didn't have the software to process it: Babies are awesome and cute, but hate is this whole other thing, which may or may not even apply, but they don't really belong together, but too late for that now, but what's the kid going to grow up having tooooooo. Not "good"/"bad", not "hate"/"tolerance", but something much more human: I don't have the fucking software for this downloaded into my head yet. Please be kind to me for as long as it takes.
So what do you do? Sex, either as a means to absorb the other or to be subsumed by it. Death/immortality: the two biggest opposites we've got. Freedom from illness/enslavement to hunger. Pain/pleasure, wisdom/addiction, euphoria/degradation. Escape/control, power/submission. You're on there somewhere, I'm on there, there's something there for everybody, because it's not really about what the vampires are, right, like their themness, because they've got it under control: they've been vampiring around behind your back forever. It's about what happens to us when things change, which is really the only story there ever is. Because, sorry, what happens to Sookie when things finally change is … very simple: she falls in love, she saves her man, she gets the ever-loving shit kicked out of her.
And I mean, not to knock it, but: wouldn't you rather watch something like that than Kyra, The Vampire Closer? Even if things get do a little porny now and then?
See what creator Alan Ball had to say about the new series. And check out our list of TV's sexiest vampires.
Oh, Kelly and Brad, you madcap couple of swamp rats. Let me ask you a question: how come the trashy-slutty-country vibe makes women look worse and men look hotter? Is it like age, like some kind of cultural misogyny where Sean Connery's ancient dick is still appealing to people, but Helen Hunt became disgusting when she turned 35? Is this fear of pussy talking? Are slutty country girls, in fact, hot and I just don't know it? And if so, is it because they -- like Kelly -- are willing to drive down the highway with one hand on the wheel and the other one around Brad's dick? Even though he is snoring and asleep? She says it's because she's bored, and he notes that she gets bored pretty easy, then lays back for his handjob. He's just getting into it when he sees the sign for a roadside gas station -- WE HAVE TRU BLOOD -- and squeals for her to stop.
Inside, Nan Flanagan is explaining for the umpteenth time to Bill Maher that, as citizens who pay taxes, her people deserve basic civil rights like everyone else. "Yeah, but... Come on. Doesn't your race have a rather sordid history of exploiting and feeding off innocent people? For centuries?" Is she a Republican? She looks kind of like a Republican. "Three points: Number one, show me documentation. It doesn't exist. Number two, doesn't your race have a history of exploitation? We never owned slaves, Bill, or detonated nuclear weapons." That's so human, like how if you kill one guy you're a murderer but if you kill a thousand you're a hero: vampires kill in a way that's way too intimate for Americans to handle, because intimacy is not something Americans can handle. "You blew up Japan." "Yeah, well you killed a dude in 1895, and it was really dark outside."
The guy operating the gas station this late at night has long lank hair, so black it's gotta be dyed, to match his gothy boots and intensely douchey silver jewelry: pentagrams, five rings on every finger, upside-down crucifix, etc. That was so sad when this guy got beat up every day of his entire childhood, but at least he had the shadows into which he could retreat. And look at him now: proving to everybody that being a self-conscious overdramatic weirdo is its own reward. Working the graveyard shift at a gas station is totally sticking it to the man, Ponytail.
"And most importantly, point number three: Now that the Japanese have perfected synthetic blood which satisfies our nutritional needs, there is no reason for anyone to fear us. I can assure you that every member of our community is now drinking synthetic blood." The only other guy in there is good old boy, whistling at the beer cooler, as Nan goes on: "That's why we decided to make our existence known. We just want to be part of mainstream society." On the screen the cheering and applause erupt; Brad and Kelly come in laughing, drunk.
"Y'all have Tru Blood! For real!" giggles Kelly, and Brad asks if there are even vampires in Louisiana. The guy puts on an obviously ridiculous Transylschpoovian accent and stares them down: "You didn't know that New Orleans is a Mecca for the vampire?" Brad can't believe it: New Orleans vampires would have drowned in Katrina, because they couldn't get out, because nobody got out, because FEMA is a joke. "Vampires cannot drown... Because we do not breathe." He bares fangs at them and they shrink back; over at the beer cooler the good old boy is none too happy either. Brad swears they didn't mean any harm: "We're just a little drunk." Gothtard is like, that's awesome because I can get drunk while I'm fanging you, and then stares at them with what I imagine is an eldritch fire in his eyes.
"Score! I totally had you guys!" He laughs, but Kelly's not too happy about it. Brad agrees with the guy that it was actually pretty funny, and then the NRA guy comes walking up to the counter to disagree. "What? We don't care what you think," Brad snorts, rolling his eyes at the counter guy, and asking if he knows where they can score some V-Juice. Kelly's grossed out, but the shop guy asks how much they're looking for. "I knew a girl who knew this girl who did vamp blood during Greek Week," protests Kelly. "She, like, clawed her own face off." Urban legends about legends -- that is truly hot. Brad swears he can pay good money and the good old boy tells them to leave immediately, having had enough of their shit.
I like that V-Juice, based on the people we see involved in its use and manufacture, seems to be akin to crystal meth in that it's nasty and classless and cheap and trashy. I love that, because it goes to an "I don't care where it comes from or what it's doing to me, I just want more" place. (Only instead of making gross trash look grosser and trashier, like meth does, it makes you some kind of dang superhero.)
"All right, fuck you, Billy Bob," says Brad, having had enough of the dude's interruptions. Then things become awesome as he turns from a silly old thing to a hot trucker dude from a pornographic cinema film: "Fuck me? I'll fuck you, boy. I'll fuck you, and then I'll eat you." His fangs pop out and they run off, and meanwhile the loser behind the counter shits a brick. Billy Bob drops a sixer of Tru Blood on the counter and explains that if the guy pretends to be a vampire again, he will be eaten. Gothbag nods and shivers and whatever, and Billy Bob smiles wide: "Have a nice day now."
Credits: Swamp, scary trees, scary houses, scary church, scary church people, Selma, a rattlesnake, little kids eating raw meat with blood all over their faces, naked ladies in their underwear, road kill, KKK kiddies, a church-type sign reading GOD HATES FANGS, heh. Sexy girls dancing with sexy boys, sexy boys with sexy boys, a fox rotting, random bodies in random combinations, people praying like lunatics, nature being totally amazing, a barfight, the rapture of God, strippers, baptism at night. Yeah, that about covers it. "When you walked in, the air went out... I wanna do bad things to you." As much as I love the song and opening intro, which accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish if nothing else, I have to say my favorite part about all this is never having to see Brad and Kelly again. We live in hope.
Sookie Stackhouse is beautiful and tiny and blonde and psychic and looks much like a grownup. She takes a tray out to the tables at Merlotte's, a bar somewhere near a road but not really a city. Back in the kitchen, Lafayette's at the grill flirting with Big John, who flirts right back. She can't hear them; she's too busy trying not to listen to everybody else thinking. One large guy sits sadly at a table in the center of the place, guilty and staring down at the table. Just let me have just one beer tonight, Jesus. One beer, that's all I need. And if you just give me the strength to say no to beer number two, then I swear... Sookie puts down his first beer of the night and just keeps walking. Much as I would, were I Jesus and somebody said shit to me.
Scary fat lady shovels French fries into her face (1) and thinks about killing her man (2) if he disapproves (3) of her self-medicating with French fries (4), especially after what she did for him (5) last night in the bedroom, which by the way was disgusting (6), although she kinda liked it (7). Problems with scary fat lady, from where I'm standing: Seven. I count seven. Sookie's feet barely touch the floor, she's in such a hurry to get past this table full of, coincidentally, all the very things that make me want to protect the institution of marriage with everything I've got.
Gay kid staring at his parents: Who are these people? And what the hell is this music? I feel like I'm trapped in some hillbilly's OxyContin nightmare. I cannot wait to get the hell out of this podunk town. Sookie loses composure with this little space dog transmission from the Flying Dutchman and nods at him sharply: "Make sure you do, and before it's too late, because every year you wait, you just get more and more stuck here. Believe me, I know." Gay kid predictably freaks and wonders if she can hear his thoughts -- just in case we were confused -- and she fidgets and runs off to get them ketchup. The voices close in, and finally get so loud that she must stop, in the middle of the floor, and breathe, quiet them, and continue on. If Sookie Stackhouse doesn't do at least three very dramatic/off-kilter things in the middle of Merlotte's each episode, how will people remember to think she's retarded?
At the Super Sav-A-Bunch, her best friend Tara is sitting in a picnic display fold-up chair, reading Shock Doctrine and swinging her legs. Without looking up, she welcomes her visitor to the store, and goes back to her book. The visitor in question is a giant lady like in Harry Potter whose knees are where your head probably is when standing erect, and -- like Dexter -- what she wants most is some of "that thick, translucent plastic sheeting, the kind they hang in front of the doors of walk-in refrigerators." Without looking up, Tara notifies her that they don't sell that at the SSAB, and to try Home Depot. Which, of course, is what happened to the woman only backwards, and she's getting frustrated. "Awww," is Tara's hilariously not-unsympathetic response, but she still doesn't look up. "Now, I cannot believe you don't have that stuff. I don't even know what it's called... You're supposed to have everything!"
(And frankly, I'm kind of on Tara's side in this one particular instance, because: the conversation is over. "Do you have this?" No I do not. Thank you for asking. What's left to talk about? "But I thought you would have this." And yet I do not. "But I wanted you to have this." I love you so much that I also wish that we had it, but no. "But my plan was that you had it." And now we see that your plan has gone awry. What in the fuck do you actually want from me? "For you to go back in time in your time machine and have the thing that I want." Okay, since time machines do not exist, what would be the second thing, on the list of all the things I can do for you at this time?)
"Well, we don't have that stuff that you don't even know what it's called," Tara says, for the umpteenth time, because that's all there is to say, because the woman needs to stop. "Your website says that this is the most well-stocked store in five parishes. Now, I just drove over an hour from Marthaville..." Tara finally stands up, because the lady is not going to stop. This is not like the greatest customer service in the world, but on the other hand, what are you supposed to do? Cry with the lady about the unnamed plastic stuff? Because the lady's not going to cry, she's just going to keep asking if you have it until she gets the answer that she wants, which is the opposite of reality, because that's what this lady is all about. And plus, having seen Prior Tara in the original pilot, this Tara is like one thousand times easier to take anyway. I don't approve of the shit that she does, but of the conservatively ... ten? ... asshole things she does in this episode, I'm pretty much with her on this one. And the one. "Does our website have a phone number?" Giant Lady supposes that yes, it does. "So it never occurred to you, before you drove an hour, to pick up the phone and call us, to see if we stocked whatever the hell it is that you're looking for?"
No. Because SSAB chooses to classify itself as a store that has things, I guess, and misrepresented itself by not having this particular thing, which is a problem for Giant Lady, but now -- because she's having What Is trouble -- has also become Tara's problem. Say hello to the rest of us, Giant Lady, and welcome to a world without plastic murder sheeting. You have now created two problems. "Why didn't you just find it online and have it delivered to your house? Or were you just looking for an excuse to wear them ugly-ass clothes?" (I grant you that this is a bridge too far, but also, why are you still up my ass, Giant Lady? Go about your business!) Giant Lady in Giant Ugly Ass Clothes stares at her, and asks to speak to Tara's manager. Tara immediately acquiesces and screams a name (Raymond? Something Cajun I don't know?) and the manager looks up in total fear of her bullshit.
"Trust me, you are not gettin' me fired. I am quittin'. You were just the fuckin' catalyst, and for that, I ought to thank you." I love that, "You are the catalyst for all the hell I will now unleash." The lady tells her she's a very rude young woman (she is) but Tara replies that she's not being rude, she's being "uppity." Which is kind of great because firstly, who wouldn't love to act out like this, and secondly, the last thing Tara is interested in being is a sassy Southern black chick, and what better way to demonstrate how shitty people are for putting her in that box than by saying, "This is the box that you put me in."
I can't very well be making my only decisions or have an opinion that matters, because there's an us and a them and because of the amount of melanin in my skin, of all things, I'm a them and I always will be, and you need to somehow understand that this is retarded. It's not possible for me to be "rude," because that implies a choice: I'm being "uppity," because I resist the box that I'm in. One sassy black chick cannot tell another sassy black chick that she's being "uppity," without irony, for the same reason that 1 white person using the n-word will always > n sassy black chicks saying honky or cracker, or 1 man saying "bitch" > 1,000,000,000 women saying anything at all. By the same token, if Tara weren't black she'd just find something else. Maybe feminism, or whatever the thing was she happened to be, because if you want to talk about the terrors of intimacy, let's start with Tara. What makes it interesting is that she does have the black thing to use, and has no problem using it, and that's yucky to think about, which is what she's forcing you to do, which is -- for a woman -- being a bitch, and -- for a black person -- being uppity.
How uppity? Slapping the manager right in his fucking face amount of uppity, for quote "pattin' my ass too much." And again: there's your resignation, over and out. Except that Tara's kind of an asshole, and kind of too angry to think logically, and kind of deserves to be that angry, all the time: "I'm a get my babydaddy, who just got out of prison, to come and kick your teeth in." Do you get it yet? The person on the other side of this, talking? Nope. The manager starts shivering and begging for his life or whatever, and she just snorts mirthlessly. "Oh my God, I'm not serious, you pathetic racist. I don't have a baby." They stare at her, uncomprehending; they see the box quite clearly, but not the girl inside. "Damn. I know y'all have to be stupid, but do you have to be that stupid? Shit." She shoves past the Giant Lady: "Fuck this job."
Sam Merlotte -- gorgeous, earnest, unshaven, clearly in love with his employee Sookie -- answers the phone, super friendly; he hands it over to Sookie, who apologizes for getting calls at work. Sam says that it's okay, because at least she doesn't abuse the privilege like Arlene (an older, rougher, red-headed single mom) does, but what he means is, I looooove you. "This had better be an emergency," Sookie says, and Tara immediately comes clean about quitting her job: "I can't work for assholes." Sookie commends her on being so independently wealthy that she thinks she has a choice, "Miss Say-Hello-To-The-Rest-Of-Us," and Tara reminds her that Sam is not an asshole, and is additionally in love with her, so how would Sookie even know. Sookie is scandalized, to the point where Tara laughs at her. "Jesus. Look, you need to lighten up." Sookie hisses at her, admonishing her for use of "the J word," heh, and Tara says she's coming to the bar for a margarita. When she hangs up, she hangs her head, low, against the steering wheel.
Dawn, the younger hotter other waitress at Merlotte's, warns Sookie that Mack and Denise Rattray are just about to sit in her section. Sookie looks, just as Mack's slapping Dawn's white-trash skanky ass and she responds with a hearty "What the fuck?" Ew, these people. Sam mutters to Sookie to stay strong, and calls her chère. Mack's thoughts are as follows: he would like something from the menu that will give him the runs, he would like Sookie to wrap her "sweet lips" around his "slim reaper," and then also to "hop aboard the Mack express" and "ride all the way to heaven." So that's what Mack is like, in addition to being totally creepy and gross to look at. Meanwhile, Denise asks in her slowest short-bus voice for onion rings, with mustard, while thinking about how Sookie's "pathetic, like a dog that's been kicked too many times, and keeps coming back for more." Sookie smiles at them and takes the hell off. "I think she's retarded," Denise surmises as she walks away.
We haven't met Rene yet, but he also hangs at/possibly works at Merlotte's -- he's the hot one with the wild Cajun accent and bizarre facial hair -- and is dating Arlene. True to Sam's complaint, Arlene is now on a personal call: "Honey, if Rene tells you you're too young to watch a scary movie on HBO, then I'm siding with him. I know he's not your daddy, but your daddy does not wanna live with us anymore. Remember?" Sam grunts at her to get off the phone, while Lafayette dances awesomely at the grill. Sookie asks him for Denise's onion rings, making it clear that he can abuse them in whatever way he likes before they are served. He finally looks up and notices that she's wearing makeup, and goes into a whole routine about how she looks like a porn star, with her tan and pink lipstick. She's confused by all this, but explains gamely: "When I wear makeup, I get bigger tips." Lafayette shimmies in a full-body understanding of the importance of packaging. "And I get even bigger tips when I act like I don't have a brain in my head. But if I don't, they're all scared of me."
Lafayette explains that it's not Sookie they're afraid of, "honey child," it's what's between her legs. Sookie is once again scandalized, hilariously: "Lafayette. That's nasty talk, I won't listen to that!" Arlene laughs and asks if he's even aware of what's between a woman's legs, but he's being serious. And he should know, with his eye makeup and cargo kilt and all the prancing, because homophobia is really just misogyny using a different passport: "I know every man, whether straight, gay, or George motherfuckin' Bush, is terrified of the pussy." Sookie screams some more, but he's not wrong.
He's just not telling the whole story, which is exactly one lifetime long, about where we come from and where we're going and all the things we do to one another in the meantime. If somebody like Sookie were in town, the fear of her mind wouldn't be that different from fear of her body, because either way it involves extinguishment, lack of personal will, loss of control, topsy-turvy social order. The ego can't acknowledge the difference between sex and death because either way it's not in control, and the ego can't imagine situations where that's the case. Sex means no control, so all we do is try and control sex. Our bodies and everybody else's. Where the binary -- and Lafayette's little speech -- fall apart is that women come equipped with the same fear, because we all come from the same place, because no woman was ever born of man except Athena, and she was even worse about this stuff. Which is why women have historically signed on for the fact that if it's men making the rules, that means controlling women. Fear of pussy = fear of vampires = fear of Sookie = fear of Lafayette, and the story here is about the way we're stuck to our fears like magnets, attracted and repulsed, unable to see the world as it really is. So listen again, because Lafayette is saying, "Being afraid of sex is being afraid of life," and Sookie's saying right back: "STOP TALKING ABOUT SEX."
"Listen," Arlene tells Lafayette seriously, "Not everybody is gay, okay? Not everybody wants to have sex with you." But Lafayette knows the shadow, it's where he lives, and all he will say -- making mystic signs in the air with his hands -- is that she'd be surprised, and that includes people she knows. Dawn and Arlene agree that certainly they don't want to have sex with Lafayette, and he puts on an elaborate show of fucking the grill with his six-gear hips. Dawn slaps her ass as she's walking away, teasing him; Arlene cups and massages her breasts. He answers her "peaches & cream" with a "little cocoa" of his own, they all sing along, they all dance and laugh along, Big John's still laughing at Lafayette's antics, and this is how they get along. This is how they acknowledge and transcend, because they're grownups; Lafayette radicalizes gender because he has to, which radicalizes sexuality for everybody, and this is the dance they all do. Except Sookie: Sookie flees.
But sexuality doesn't automatically make you a grownup, and involving yourself with the pussy even on a regular basis doesn't mean you're not afraid of what it means: it just means you're putting it outside yourself, where you can look at it. Most of the reason high school is hell is because of this: your body going crazy at the same rate you start being interested in the mystery and the terror of pussy, which is why teenage boys are gross and constantly trying to get a look at it or taste it or stick their fingers in it, and why girls get eating disorders. "Okay, you've sufficiently investigated our vaginas to your satisfaction and have the map to the thing, the scary place, the undiscovered country. You've solved the mystery. Now how about you say hello to the rest of us?"
Maudette Pickens is watching some douchetard on Blind Date, who says he's got "a little bit of an edge" and gets in fights all the time, whilst looking like the last fight he had was with a Level 12 Half-Orc or something, and Maudette finally comes. Sookie's brother, hottie Jason Stackhouse, appears between her thighs, and they kiss. He notices a tiny pair of marks, little kisses on her thigh, and gets scared. "What the fuck is this?" Maudette's embarrassed, scratching at her marks, pretending they're mosquito bites. Soon enough she gives in, and admits she fucked a vampire once. "I went to that vampire bar, down in Shreveport. Look. I was broke and he paid me a lot of money." Jason rises, and sits on the ottoman: "You a hooker, Maudette? Because I don't pay for it. Never have, never will." She smiles, a little afraid he's turned off, but loving the creepy mystery of it all. "I don't charge for it, neither. He offered me a thousand dollars to bite me. What was I gonna do, say no to a thousand bucks?" Jason, hypnotized and disgusted and intrigued, asks what it was like, and for a second she's back there. She shivers and deals with it, and admits that it was scary. (Which: very scary. Although not quite as scary in the final edit, because let me tell you the original scariness gave me the screamin' meemies.)
Jason grins conspiratorially, like children talking about sex, and says he read in Hustler that everybody should have sex with a vampire at least once before they die. Maudette assures him once is precisely as many times as is necessary. "He was way too rough. I mean, I like to be rough sometimes, but..." Jason takes the bait and asks the requested question: "You like it rough?" She says yes: "It's not like it's gonna kill me. And if it does, well, then I won't care, will I?" Even Jason is weirded out by this fucked-up reply and starts looking for his pants, because one thing you don't do with a person who hasn't dealt with a nasty sexual history is adding to it. Desperately, she speaks up: "I videotaped it. With the vampire." She runs her hands lightly along his naked thighs and asks if he wants to watch. Of course he does: he's an investigator of these things. It's how he solves the equation, it's how he's done his whole life. He grins and tosses his pants aside again.
Sookie drops her tray on the bar near Tara, whose life sucks. She reminds her friend not to be feeling sorry for herself -- "That's just lazy!" -- and Tara wonders aloud why she can't keep a job. Sookie offers that perhaps it's because she can't keep her mouth shut, and Tara calls her a bitch. They laugh. Sam asks how Sookie's night's going, and offers to improve it for her, with a bit of a glimmer in his eye. She stares at him, completely innocently just as she intends, and eventually he is embarrassed. She doesn't even notice, though, because she's hearing something that isn't there.
A piano plays across the scene, as a man enters Merlotte's and sits down in a booth. He finally turns and looks at her, and they stare at each other. This is the heir of Compton, vampire at large, powerful and magical and every bit as courtly and anachronistic as Sookie's own Alice In Wonderland/Little House On The Prairie combo of blunt pragmatism and Miss Manners etiquette. She's a little afraid of the sudden silence; he senses it and raises his head and she squeals to Sam and Tara, delighted. "Oh my God! I think Merlotte's just got its first vampire!" Sam agrees, hackles raised, and Tara stares distrustingly. Sookie's happier than we've seen her.
In every man there is a beast, and she can hear him, speaking softly, adding a blade's edge to every kind word and a thrust to every caress. Sookie's the Final Girl, the virgin trope, but not because it's a useful cliché, or because it's one more way to control the pussy. Sookie's a virgin because men are disgusting, and because none of us can tell all the stories inside of us, because we hide the ugliest bits even though they are the loudest. Men, sex, love were created to break her heart. And now she's the happiest she's ever been, because there's a hole in the world.
But why wouldn't she be? To know you are a monster, alone in the world, was bad. Knowing there were vampires out there -- who penetrate because they lose control; who must rein in their natural abilities in order to fit in -- made it better. But this is best. (It's like the whole The Little Mermaid thing: sexist or not? The movie I mean, not the real story: Ariel loved humans and human things before she met her prince, because she felt alone. The prince was a side effect of her loneliness; maybe that's how love always starts, simply by telling us we don't have to be alone.) The idea of vampires -- of the unnatural intersecting comfortably with the world that fears her -- has been a comfort for two years; she's about to meet her people.
"Can you believe it? Right here, in Bon Temps? I've been waiting for this since they came out of the coffin two years ago!" She fairly prances over to him, order slip in hand, as Sam sighs. Sookie tries to take the vamp's order, constantly fading out and smiling hilariously, too excited to say anything at all, shaking her head and fading out again. "Do you have any of that synthetic bottled blood?" She talks around her huge grin, explaining that Sam ordered some a year ago, but then no vampires ever showed, so it went bad. He smiles at her and she leans closer: "You're our first. Vampire," she whispers, in case he thought she meant some other intrinsic quality about him that made him interesting and special and caused her to act all squirrelly. "You're the first person I've met that wore black shoes and a brown belt together. I am going to call my Grandma immediately and tell her."
He asks if it's obvious, and she smiles: "I knew the minute you came in. Can't believe nobody else around here seems to." Except Sam, the vampire notes, but she brushes that off. "He's cool. I know for a fact he supports the Vampire Rights Amendment." Fangster flirts about how progressive of Sam that is, and they look at each other for awhile. He doesn't eat or drink actual things, but orders a glass of red wine, to "have a reason to be here." Sookie giggles that she doesn't care what the reason is, she's just glad he's here. Mack Rattray, from the booth behind him, says not to worry about Sookie: "She's crazy as a bedbug." Sookie shoots his trashy ass a death look and heads out for his wine. Mack drops some seductive fangbanger threesome swinger creepiness into his native creepiness and introduces Denise, who acts all horny and shit. The impassive vampire tells them "Good evenin'" without even turning around.
Jason stares at the screen: a muscled tall guy, bald head, yucky tattoo of a beetle skeleton crawling from his medulla oblongata down the length of his back. The vampire has Maudette's hands chained above her head, to a hook hanging from the ceiling; he's screwing her standing, from behind, while on the couch she goes down on Jason. He doesn't take his eyes off the screen until his head falls back against the couch: directly above him is the hook. On the screen, the vamp growls right into the camera and goes scary-wild on her, making a sound like an espresso machine.
Sookie stares at the vampire, now sitting with the Rattrays; Denise's arm around him as she slouches drunkenly in the booth. "What a ... bitch. You really think that she's gonna let him bite her?" Tara asks if this is one of those Sookie things, essentially: "You know how many people are having sex with vampires these days? Sometimes those people disappear..." Sookie assures her that he's not like that, and Tara indulges her for the five seconds she spoke to him. "You ignore how many people he sucked the blood out over the last however many centuries he's been alive." Sookie's entranced: he's just not that scary. He's a guy. Tara employs the J word again, but Sookie doesn't even notice: "Yeah, but the synthetic blood has everything..." Sam interrupts and makes a very, very good point. "Are you willing to pass up all your favorite foods and spend the rest of your life drinking Slim-Fast?"
Over in the booth, the Rattrays are totally acting like meth heads. Denise is going on and on about how she's always been discriminated against, because she "never felt like being what society wanted [her] to be," and Mack's babbling, backing her up after every phrase without really saying anything, drumming his fingers on the back of the booth seat, horny or hungry. Sookie interrupts to ask if they want anything else, and this is what Denise is thinking: Not that big, he's probably got eleven or twelve pints in him. Holy shit, that's almost two hundred ounces! I bet we could get five hundred an ounce in Dallas... Fuck me, that's $10,000. Sweet Jesus. Stalling for time, Sookie offers to bring them a free round; Mack's thoughts are unkind as she whirls away again, ordering them not to go anywhere. Sookie has three walks: regular A-to-B, tiny little trip-trops, and sexy high heel swagger. I love Anna Paquin because: Sookie has three walks.
Sookie runs up to Tara near the bar, begging her to help save the vampire from the white trash crackheads; Tara swears that they will not be involving themselves in this drama: "We don't have to get anywhere near that vampire." Sookie -- I love everything Sookie says, always -- solemnly informs Tara that she is "very disappointed," Tara due to her "small-mindedness." Sam arrives to once again tell her that the vampire can take care of himself, but Sookie feels it before she sees it: she turns to stare at the empty booth, his untouched wine. "Shit," she blurts, and heads off running without a second thought -- Sam follows, tossing his apron at unemployed, drunk Tara and telling her to take care of things -- but out in the parking lot, it takes Sookie a sec to locate their minds. Look at this, Denise is thinking. This is so thick. Damn, this is gonna bring a pretty penny. We should keep some for ourselves... Although if Mac freaks out on me again, I am so through with him... Sookie runs into the woods, stopping only to grab a heavy length of chain from a truck bed.
Jason's got Maudette tied up for the investigation, hanging from the ceiling by her wrists, fucking her from behind. "You like this? Being punished? You're a sick -- little -- vampire -- fucker. You like that, Pickens?" The camera trails along her bookshelf, reflecting their bodies: prom pictures, those creepy baby statues, all the bits of a life, and finally a video camera, taping the whole thing. "Come on. You look at me. You let a dead man fuck you? Fuckin' disgust me. It's too bad I don't have fangs, huh? Rip your fuckin' throat out." He wraps his hands around her throat as he goes. Safety first, people. If you're gonna bone the town slut, at least have a safeword.
The vampire awakes, pinned to the ground with a delicate silver chain laid across his wrists and neck. I like that. The vampire has black hair and sad eyes. The Rattrays bitch at each other over his body, waiting for his blood to finish draining. Why are they doing this out in the middle of everything? No time to wait: "I just need some V-juice. I need it bad. My body is starting to hurt and I just need to get it in me." Denise notes that her husband is a drug addict, which should have been obvious if they'd just looked in the mirror back at their trailer. Sookie sneaks up behind Mack and bashes him with the chain just as he's telling Denise about how when she talks, all he hears is "a-yada-yada-yada," and he goes down. He pulls out a knife to cut her up with, and she tosses the chain around his neck as the vampire stares.
The chain moves of itself, like a coiling snake, pulling tighter around his neck. He falls. "This ain't your business, you stupid cunt," says Denise, which Sookie -- now holding a knife in addition to her Carrie shit that just showed up -- takes the c-word as proof of "how low-rent" Denise really is, and there's some of this "do you know who you are dealing with" kind of talk, and the whole time the chain is still quite actively choking Mack to death. Sookie tells Denise, voice shaking, that she's not worried about being on Denise's bad side because that's all Denise has, being "no-account, backwoods trash," and Denise -- not interested in getting into hand-to-hand with a knife-wielding telepathic retard -- goes for the bags of V-Juice instead, but Sookie warns her off. Denise promises to kill Sookie for interrupting their little murder and beating up her husband, whatever, and she drags him away. He still can't get the chain off, but her hateful monologue is pretty funny: "Come on, Mac. This ain't over. Come on. Get up, Mack. Why can't you take that fuckin' thing off? I ain't got time for a fuckin' cripple, because I'm getting out of here one way or the other." And the whole time Mack's just grunting and screeching like crazy. It's satisfying like on Intervention when they cry.
I like that it was a big industrial steel chain that Sookie used, because of the funny inequality it sets up against the tiny chain of silver, which wouldn't work on the opposite men in the quartet. Hit the vampire with a big old chain and he's going to eat your face; drape jewelry across Mack Rattray and probably same thing. We have our weaknesses and we have our inversions; there's no stronger or weaker, nor good or evil, just ways of being what God made you. Sookie peels the chain slowly away from his skin; it smokes, and takes skin with it. He'd groan more if he hadn't been bled so intensely. As her journey across his body frees his chest, he immediately puts his fangs away. Right this second is the hottest Bill is in the entire episode, and I am not even interested in investigating why that is. The scars and lesions on his wrists and chest instantly heal right before your eyes; Sookie whispers: "Shut. Up." She drags the vampire out of the way as Denise drives their trashy pickup toward them, shouting about how "I'm going to get you bitch" and things of this nature. I wish the Rattrays would instantly die because I cannot handle these people at all. And it's not like it's bad writing, because the hate I feel for them is ever so real.
Sookie considers the vamp. "Oh, bless your heart. I am so sorry I didn't get here faster. You'll be okay in a minute, right?" He stares around, and looks back up at her; she's confused. "Do you want me to leave?" He says he doesn't, and she smiles sweetly -- girl is crushing hardcore -- but it quickly falls: "They might come back, and I can't fight yet." (But also we are in true love! I am the answer to all your questions!)
A mysterious cute doggy comes running up out of nowhere to bark at the vampire ("Stop being sexy and mysterious!") and give Sookie a good licking. She giggles and he runs off after yelling at the fang some more. "He's checkin' on you," the vampire offers, but that's silly! Doggies don't patrol for ladies of virtue in trouble, silly vampire. "That's just some old dog that hangs around the bar sometimes, he must live nearby." The vampire nods indulgently; she tries to help him up and he shrinks back, still healing. "I reckon you're not too happy about being rescued by a woman." He brushes himself off, staying out, and remembers to thank her. She reaches out, in the silence, listening for him as hard as she can; he pulls the tourniquets from his arms and she listens, but hears nothing. "I can't hear you," she says wonderingly, now convinced it's not a trick of the light. "Thank you," he hilariously reiterates, but she kneels and puts her hands on his cold face, looking into his eyes. "No, no, no. I can hear you, but I can't..." She gauges the depths, sounds the dark, measures the silence. It goes on forever. "Oh, my stars..."
He doesn't like it. Being stared at, being sounded. "Aren't you afraid to be out here alone with a hungry vampire?" Her answer is a simple "no." He points out that, colloquially, "vampires often turn on those who trust them," because they don't have "human values." She grins, because nobody turns on each other like humans, with their values. She wraps the silver chain around her neck, like a scarf, and finds his eyes again: "I'm not a total fool." The vamp pushes it, trying to get back control of the situation, find that easy sexy intimidation that's gotten him through the last few centuries; the sex beast that's given men the upper hand since people were invented: "But you have other very juicy arteries," he says, eyes traveling. "There's one in the groin that's a particular favorite of mine..." More Sookie greatness follows. "Just shut your nasty mouth, mister. You might be a vampire, but when you talk to me, you will talk to me like the lady that I am." The vampire is undone, charmed, defeated, impressed. She's of him, of his people: courtly and rulebound.
The vampire sits back and offers her the blood the Rattrays drained off him, which of course disgusts her totally. "I understand it makes humans feel more healthy. Improves their sex life." She assures him she's healthy as a horse, "And I have no sex life to speak of, so..." He meets her eyes, just the tiniest glint of laughter behind them, and her eyes slide away. She laughs at herself, caught in a game she's never played before. He offers she could sell it, now that it's drained, and she swears she'd never touch it. Suddenly, he is to her, staring into her eyes, afraid of what she is and the mystery she holds: "What are you?" he asks, in a new voice. She shrinks back. "Well, I'm... I'm Sookie Stackhouse. And I'm a waitress." Still a bit wary, but polite as ever, she asks his name. It is Bill. She cracks up, never dropping his gaze. "Bill? I thought it might be Antoine, or Basil, or... Or, heh... or like Langford, maybe. Vampire Bill. Oh, my." He's none too impressed, so she changes the subject again. "So. Silver, huh? I thought that only affected werewolves..." (Was that racist? Is she calling him a mythical thing and otherizing him or something? What are the rules? She starts to stutter.) "I... I... I'm not implying that werewolves exist." (He grins, as though they totally do and he knows it.) "I mean, that's just what you always see in the movies."
Bill nods at her, inclining his head seriously, manipulatively, telling her in word and manner that she is now a part of the elite, responsible, special. A very special girl. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't share this information with anyone. We don't like for our weaknesses to be made public knowledge." She nods seriously, worthy of this secret, and puts her hair absent-mindedly behind the ear. She stands slowly, and he stands with her, and she excuses herself to go back to work. Walking away, smiling to herself and at herself, glorying in the silence, loosing the silver cord from her throat. He stands in the darkness; he watches her go into the light.
Sookie Stackhouse, you are a charmer! Sam's standing outside the bar when she returns, obviously concerned for her welfare. Her smile and posture are the self-satisfaction of a girl in love. "I'm fine. And for your information, not all vampires can take care of themselves." She breezes past him, back to work, and he stares out into the night like he can smell something coming. For the record, of the three major hotties of the show, I have to say Sam's my favorite. Once Eric shows up in a month, everything is going to go nuts, but for now: Team Merlotte all the way. Mutual adoration is really the only relationship I can manage to deal with, with my employers; anything else is too complicated. Plus, dude is fine and gets zero credit.
End of the shift; Arlene says an easy goodnight to Sam and Tara before heading home. Foremost on Tara's mind is how much she's getting paid for the twenty minutes of work she put in, and Sam offers her twenty bucks. "Sam! How do you expect me to work here for twenty bucks a night?" He points out the million different ways of disaster even saying it aloud implies: "-- It'd be a matter of time before you went off on somebody. I don't wanna drive my customers away." Tara protests that she only goes off on stupid people, and Sam hilariously reminds her that the majority of his customers are stupid people. She presses, in a way that's not even really pushing or manipulating or untrue, but insincere nonetheless: "Yeah, but... I could help you keep an eye on Sookie. You see the way she was looking at that vampire? That is just trouble looking for a place to happen. And she means too much to both of us to let anything happen to her." Sam is, of course, immediately defeated. He hands her a bartender's guide and tells her to report back at six. "I was mixing whiskey sours for my mama when I was in first grade," Tara assures him. "It's just like riding a bicycle." They agree that this is a fucked up thing to have be true in one's life.
Jason enters, and Tara goes through an immediate and dramatic change; she lights up like spring just came to Bon Temps and she's a lovely flower. Sam tells him Sookie's gone home already. Jason's distracted and weirded out; the last time we saw him he was impersonating a vampire while roughly fucking and strangling the town whore, so probably he just needs a hug from somebody who won't fuck him; that person is clearly not Tara. She gets in his face, of course: "Uh, my name is Tara? Been your sister's best friend since kindergarten? I used to sleep over at your house for, like, years?" He blows her off and says he knows her; she snaps that he better. He just kind of shrugs, like, "Um, okay," and drinks his beer and tries to avoid the weird aversive lasers shooting at him from all of her body simultaneously. Dawn, the youngest of the waitresses, is somebody Jason used to date. They sniff around each other; she says she's not mad at him for not calling because he's Jason Stackhouse, on whom no woman puts expectations. "I'm not a idiot," she [sic]s, (and Tara quite strongly begs to differ, behind the bar), and Jason basically makes a boning request. She laughs and tells him she's going home, and he laughs too, loving it. "Oh, my God. You are a gigantic parody of yourself and you don't even know it." He tells her it's great seeing her, and wishes her luck (for what?) and then chases Dawn into the night. "Good luck? Good luck with what? ...Shit." I know, girl.
Sookie arrives at home, her grandmother Adele's house. Flies cover the screens, buzzing in your ear, as she watches through the window. "Guess what happened tonight?" she asks her grandmother, who takes a moment answering. "...You got a date!" Sookie makes a hilarious face -- um, no? -- and gets excited all over again. "A vampire came into the bar." Adele gives a half-hearted but participatory squeal, like she's just heard a story about a mouse that was in the kitchen once, and asks if the vampire had fangs. "Yeah, but most of the time they stayed put away." She asks if he bit anybody, and Sookie says he just ordered wine. "I think he just wanted some company," Sookie says, and Adele seizes on the obvious truth. "Did you like him?" Sookie allows as how he was "...real interesting," and Adele stares her the fuck down. Oh, that grandma look. I miss it. She kisses Adele's cheek -- is her grandma reading a Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire novel by Charlaine Harris? Because that will really give her a leg up -- and heads off to bed, calling Tina, the cat. Adele giggles as the cat runs across the kitchen table, instead of punching it in its little kittycat face like I would. That shit is gross.
Tina purrs as Sookie sleeps; she arises to a breeze at the curtains, and sees him down in the garden, staring up. She pulls on a short, fleecy robe and runs out into the night; she can't feel him anywhere in the yard, and suddenly he's there, behind her. She gasps and whirls, says hello, and he immediately starts to take off his shirt. Not so courtly, but certainly not a problem. "I never thought I would be having sex with you. At least..." She opens her robe slowly, speaking in a dreamy singsong: "Not so fast." Bill asks, "Who said anything about sex?" The fangs come out, and he licks them slowly; she wakes up gasping, smiles at herself, embarrassed, and falls back...
Into a deck chair, in her bathing suit, morning. Jason drives his truck up and runs over to her, all abuzz: "How come you didn't tell me you beat up the Rattrays last night?" I love that line. She points out they haven't seen each other since then, and tells him to be quiet about the whole Sookie The White Trash Slayer deal -- Gran's hanging laundry out back. "Fortenberry couldn't wait till I got to work this morning to tell me all about it." Hoyt Fortenberry? That's the one (he's the other cute townie type that isn't Rene.) "How the heck does he know?" When Hoyt went to the Rats' last night to buy some weed, and Denise was just driving up all fast and pissed and nutty, and made Hoyt drive Mack to the hospital in Monroe. Sookie finally sits up, because what is more awesome of a morning than finding out you put a motherfucker in the hospital?
"Uh huh. Did Hoyt tell you that Mack came after me with a knife?" Nope. Jason shifts into big brother mode: "Motherfucker. You want me to kick his ass?" Sookie, most excellently, reminds her brother she already covered that particular box on the Bingo card when she stomped the shit out of his windpipe with magic powers. "What are you doing messing with him anyway?" She informs Jason that, in addition to being disgusting trashy drug-dealers, they're also vampire drainers. "One of my customers last night was a vampire, and they were draining him out in the parking lot. I couldn't have that."
The reason I love these little "this is the way things go" speeches she's always giving is because every single person on this earth has to come up with a moral structure by which to live his or her life. Even the Rattrays and the vampires have rules, even if they're destructive or ignorant or whatever. Usually they come from somewhere, usually they come from somewhere stupid and received-wisdom oriented and lazy and we live our lives afraid of everything in the world because we're not sure what to feel guilty about. But some of us, the best of us I think, manage to think their way there on their own, by looking logically at the world and their place in it, and acting accordingly. Sookie has had to come up with a really good set of principles that proceed entirely from the very specific tragedies and triumphs and capabilities of her particular existence: We don't talk about sex, because if we did we'd never stop; we don't let bad things go down if we can stop them, because that shit gets in your head. I love Sookie's ethics because they are totally categorical -- besides taking her superior abilities into account -- which frankly means that if we all followed them we'd all be okay, which is my favorite sort. People were doing bad shit, she wasn't having that on her watch, so she fucked them up. Little Sookie Stackhouse.
"Sookie. You do not want to get mixed up with vampires, trust me." She tells Jason to shut up, and points out the logic: "Even if you hate vampires, you can't let trash like the Rats go and drain them. It's not like siphoning gas out of a car. They would have left him in the woods to die." Which would not bother Jason in the slightest: "He's already dead!" Sookie protests that it's not his fault, and Jason gets a new, terrifying idea. "What did he look like?" ("Handsome, in a sort of... Sort of old-fashioned, like from a movie on TCM.") "Was he bald-headed?" No: "He had really nice hair." Any tattoos? Sookie giggles to herself about how she hasn't seen any tattoos yet, and Adele comes sweeping in before Jason can bug her about their storylines possibly connecting. Adele makes tea and lunch.
Later, at the kitchen table, Jason teases his sister, spearing food off her plate and chewing it quickly: "If you're gonna wear that suit, you might want to start watching watch what you eat." She stares at him and he grins rakishly. "You look nice." Adele comes running in, doing a perfect "Southern grandmother with intensely gruesome gossip, which is Christmas for Southern ladies," having just heard that Maudette Pickens was found in her apartment ... strangled to death. Hmm. "She didn't show up for work, wasn't answering her phone. And so her boss called Bud Dearborne, he rode over, got the manager to let him in, and they found her." Sookie is shocked; having gone to high school with old Pickens. "Can you believe it?" Adele delights: "A murder in Bon Temps!"
Jason's not surprised, since A) he's a racist and B) it's important that we talk about how vampires killed Maudette Pickens as loudly and as often as possible. Sookie says that just because somebody died right around the time a vampire showed up in town doesn't necessarily mean he's a murderer. "Oh come on, fangbangers go missing all the time, in Shreveport, New Orleans... They never find them, but everybody knows the vampires are killing them and then disposing of the bodies." Sookie is put into the queasy position of defining "fangbanger" for her grandmother without alluding the whole sex thing, and Sookie is shocked to learn that there was anything interesting about Maudette, and asks how he knows this about her. Jason suddenly bashes his fist on the table and raises his voice: "I don't know, Sookie. The way that you just know things sometimes?" She's hurt and thrown -- whenever anybody mentions her psychic powers, pretend they're saying, "That totally giant mole on your face" -- and Adele looks away.
Jason stands at the sink, apology in his voice, and changes the subject to something related, but a bit further from the murder he may have committed: "There's also hookers who specialize in vampires. They drink Tru Blood to keep their supply up, and they keep a bodyguard there in case the vamp gets a little too frisky. ...I read that in a magazine." Adele wonders how much the fangbanger whores cost, and he immediately says it's a thousand bucks. Sookie's grossed out, and Adele agrees, because what kind of self-respecting lady would do that, but Sookie, hilariously, shakes her head: "No, it makes me sick that they're getting a thousand bucks to lay there and do nothing while I bust my ass for ten bucks an hour plus tips." Jason laughs and says they're "supposed to, you know, participate." Sookie squeals and he grins, loving that he's freaking her out, but after a moment his smile fades. He goes dark, and she tries to listen in, to reach him. He makes haste for the door, thanking Gran for lunch and saying goodbye, but she comes around on him, putting her hands on his face. (This can't be happening to me! How could I lose control like that? How come she...), but he pushes her off. "Don't try that with me, goddamn it! I'm your brother!" He heads to work, Sookie worries some more.
At the worksite, Jason's still not feeling normal enough. He wants something normal, to tell him that he's okay, and for Jason that means sex. Dawn's shaving her legs on the side of the tub when he calls, and she teases him a while before inviting him over. Seeing the cop cars coming for him, he hangs up and yells a friendly hello. It's Sherriff Bud Dearborn, a jerk, and Andy Bellefleur, a detective. Jason slaps Andy on the shoulder; Lafayette watches from afar. I love how Lafayette works everywhere in the entire world -- because I love Lafayette -- but I think that if you had beef with Lafayette, you would not go places very often. So Andy and Bud do the whole thing where like, "Do you know Maudette?" No, but okay yes, "Do you go over there?" No, but okay except for last night, "Do you fuck Maudette?" No, but yes, "Did you know she was killed?" No, but wait yes, my Gran just told me that, "Why are you lying about everything?" So you won't think I killed her, "But like obviously now we do, so say goodbye to your little friends." Well played, Stackhouse. Hoyt and Rene and Lafayette watch, worried, as they put Jason in the car and take him away.
Sookie's putting on her makeup -- her face, to hide who she is; the costume, to help her remember to be stupid -- when Adele enters. "I was just wondering how old you think the vampire is. The one you met last night." Why? "You think he might remember the War?" As in, the Civil War? That's awesome. "If he does, I would love to have him come speak to the Descendants of the Glorious Dead. You think he might want to?" Sookie points out that Bill Compton -- a vampire -- might have difficulties showing up at the public library come Thursday noon. Gran suggests a special meeting at night, or a one-on-one in which she could "tape his recollections." She laughs loudly with the joy of her idea: "I am sure the other members would find it so interesting!" They giggle, and Sookie kisses her cheek, promising to try. Should she ever see Bill again, which of course she's going to.
Hoyt, Rene and Arlene are hanging out at Merlotte's; Tara's sitting at the bar reading a book as a large bubba customer approaches from the front and Lafayette approaches from the back, excitedly: "Hey, hooker! How you doing, what are you doing here?" He has real trouble believing she works there ("The hell you don't") and she returns the serve: "Oh yes the hell I do too, you ugly bitch. You need to make peace with that." Okay, for some reason watching them bitch each other out is the most charming thing so far in this show. How -- how -- is Lafayette so awesome? If you made a list of things I can't deal with and then crushed that list into a fine paste and made it into a person it would be this person, and yet? I think it's the actor, in great part, but also the way the character's written, he's like this ... serious force, at the middle of the storm, issuing these statements and things and still being a person. The whole Kenneth Anger component is heightened when he's around, even just chatting. "Shit. Sam must have lost his damn mind, because you should not be allowed to work in no situation where you actually got to interact with people." Oh, and BTW? Lafayette is punctuating every line in this entire scene by pouring straight vodka into his coffee mug, swigging it, and pouring it again; also, trying to fuck the good old boy across the bar without actually touching him.
The dude finally snaps at her, fed up with waiting on her rude ass. And, of course, she erupts. "Do... Do not snap at me. I have a name. And that name is Tara. And isn't that funny? Black girl being named after a plantation? [He laughs, of course, because that's what white people do in this instance.] No I don't think it's funny at all, in fact, it really pisses me off that my mama was either stupid or just plain mean -- which is why you better be nice if you plan on getting a drink tonight." He apologizes, calling her "ma'am," and they go back to their conversation. Lafayette asks if Sookie knows about Jason yet, but Tara didn't even know yet, so Lafayette pours another shot for the betrayal of confidences and total incoming drama. "Are you serious? Jason couldn't kill anybody. And he can do a hell of a lot better than Maudette Pickens." Lafayette laughs at her and her enduring crush, which she denies, calling him stuck-up. "That boy is sex on a stick," Lafayette says. I don't give a good damn how stuck-up he is." Bubba at the bar shrinks back, and Lafayette stares him down -- which, if you're into these big trucker guys like certain people I myself know, is a pretty good specimen: "How you doin'?" Tara calls him out for -- and she would know -- "scaring that white boy," but Lafayette knows the game even better than she does. "Ain't nobody scaring him, he's too big to be scared. I likes a big man. Look at that belly. Dance all over your ... You can be my Santa Claus." He heads back to the kitchen to fry things, tossing back a hilariously off-the-cuff "I'm in the phone book!" 5:3 it works. Just saying.
In back, Sookie's wigging about the arrest. Lafayette sympathizes quietly -- When are we going to see these two interact? I bet it's awesome/unexpected -- and Sookie gets stuck on how everybody knew but her. Dawn admits that she only knows because she was complaining to Arlene about getting dogged by Stackhouse once again, meaning Arlene knew thanks to Rene. "Besides, we figured you'd just..." Sookie wheels -- the giant mole on my face? -- and they trail off, embarrassed. Dawn asks, if we acknowledge the mole as a given, wouldn't she still just ... psychically know? Thanks to the mole we don't talk about? Sookie, awesomely and literally, runs screaming from the room. "I AM NOT PSYCHIC!"
She runs to the pool table, where Arlene's hanging with Hoyt and Rene; Arlene is frigging drunk as hell and talking in a hilarious loopy weird voice. "I cannot believe I am here on my night off, just pouring my hard-earned money back into Sam Merlotte's pocket!" Sookie interrupts her incipient alcoholism to ask about Jason, and all three of them get hangdog. Rene says -- and this doesn't add to the recap, but I love when he talks -- "Hell. I promised him I wasn't going to tell ya, you." Hoyt explains about the questioning and how suddenly Bud and Andy just threw him in the car. Which, Sookie points out, means they don't even know if he's technically arrested, and Rene acknowledges that he wasn't cuffed. Arlene gets soppy sad on Sookie's behalf -- I think I love Arlene -- but Sookie's like, "Y'all are already acting like Jason's been convicted of killing Maudette. We don't even know what they were talking to him about." Hoyt, sweetly, says that this is because Jason is a "standup guy." Once again, Sookie draws the line between sentiment and actuality: "No, he's not, Hoyt. He is selfish, egotistical, and a complete horndog. But he is not a killer." Hoyt's sad, but she's not listening to him. She's listening to something that suddenly isn't there.
He's there. She turns and they focus entirely on each other. Everyone in the bar, the couple at the table behind them, every single person, stares. Tara slowly shakes her head (Now just look at that, like she's walking down the aisle on her goddamn wedding day, which is what it's like. Sookie honey, just 'cause...) Sam fairly shivers (He's got her in his sights. I need to protect her... Sookie, please do not...) Some scary Jesus lady's lips get all thin (That's that vampire she saved last night...) Bill does something almost like smiling. "Good evening, Miss Stackhouse." An old man gets smaller, in the corner (Ain't right, him being here with normal people. She's going to sit...) Jesus Lady can't take her eyes off it (I always thought she was nice, but I just wonder what kind of a good Christian girl would even look at a vampire...) A biker shivers (I don't think he looks that kind of scary to me...) They blend together, in her mind, getting louder as she nears the silence (Looks like she likes 'em tall dark and dead... Stackhouse family ain't nothing but trash...) He puts out his hand, and she takes it. She closes her eyes, in love with silence. She comes back to herself. That's what love does too.
"Your hand is cool," she says, like it's the deepest thought ever thunk. He looks away. "Yes, uh... I'm afraid I'm not as warm as the men that you must be accustomed to." She laughs, because what men, and he looks sharply back at her face. She remembers herself, pulls back from it like heat, pained face at having to go back, to the clash and cry: "What can I get for you tonight?" What are you? he asks again, and she swears she's just a waitress. "No, you're something more than that. You're something more than human." She begs him to stop, with her eyes: don't talk about the mole. Don't put me down where you are. Who knew not being alone meant joining others? "Sookie. That's an unusual name, Sookie. Is it short for something else?" She swallows, begging him with her eyes to stop being weird and start being her boyfriend. "Nope. Just plain Sookie." Nothing extra, nothing scary, nothing for this moment other than what you want. Just give me the silence.
"...May I call on you sometime?" Nice. That's even too oldschool for Sookie. "May I come and visit with you, at your home?" She's like, hell yeah: "My grandmother would love to meet you. Oh, that reminds me, can I talk to you after work? I have a favor to ask you." Bill galls a bit at the reminder; favors and loans: "After all, I am in your debt..." She laughs and clarifies that it's a favor for Adele, and something different for her. "If you'll be up... Well. I guess you will be." She laughs, and he smiles. "Would you mind meeting me around the back of the bar when I get off at... probably around one thirty?" He'd be delighted. She smiles at him.
"Do you realize that every person in this establishment is staring at us right now?" And they are, among them Sam and Tara. (The music at this point, by the way, becomes totally amazing. Most TV shows written by gay guys, they do the whole romantic performance while everybody stares thing once. We are getting more than our money's worth.) "Oh, they're just staring at me because my brother's in some kind of trouble with the police." She thinks. "Bill, did you know Maudette Pickens?" He doesn't, wrong vamp and wrong story; they lean closer toward each other. "They are staring at us because I am a vampire. And you are mortal." She speaks to his lips, to his mouth: "Who cares what they think?" Bill does: he's returning home to Bon Temps after hundreds of years. She closes her eyes and nods. "Right." He leaves, promising to return at one thirty, and she's like, "Fucking for real this is happening? Vampire high school ROCKS!" Run away, Arlene thinks, As fast as your legs can take you. I guess... The other voices return: This is wrong. It's wrong. I shouldn't be feeling like this. I just want to watch them do it. Damn... He hypnotized her. I heard they can do that just by looking at you. Somebody... She's gonna let him feed... I'm telling Reverend...
Sam grabs her, and pulls her into the back, away from all the words. "Sookie, You're being a very stupid girl." She tells him off and says she can take care of herself. "I don't think so. Mack could have cut you up last night. How do you know what he'd have done? You settin' up a date with a vampire? What do you have, a death wish?" She says not a death wish, just a belief that judging an entire group of people based on the actions of a few individuals is morally wrong. Without strong morals, she would have drowned long ago. He tells her he won't let her put herself, or the bar, in danger. She asks if she's fired, and he puts his hand to his forehead in frustration: "No! But time you think somebody's being harmed in the parking lot, pick up the phone and call the police. Do not go out there alone like a goddamn vigilante!" His voice is so loud at the end there that it scares him; it scares her more, shocking out some tears. All the tension and the weirdness and the fear and the sex well up, and she weeps, falling into his comforting embrace. "Oh, chère. Don't you know I couldn't stand to lose you?" That's what he says, but what he's thinking is the truth too. Feels so warm... I can't help it. I want you. Damn, you smell so good... I love the way you smell. I love you, and I always have. I want to tell you the truth... How often does he lose control? Has this happened before?
Sookie backs up, more upset than ever, but Tara runs in to scream at her too. "Are you out of your ever-loving mind? That vampire wants you for dinner. I won't let you just walk into his trap. Ma'am, over my dead body. You mean too much to me." (Don't you look at me like that when I'm looking out for you. I never noticed how much you and Jason have the same eyes. Such sweet eyes. He could never kill anybody...) Sookie nearly screams with frustration, with embarrassment and confusion and desire to hurt: "Oh for heaven's sakes, Tara, Jason is never going to care about you the way you care about him." Tara's reaction is beautifully acted, eloquently ineloquent: "What the fuck? Y...? You made a prom... You stay out of my head!" (Sookie... I know how hard for her it's got to be... your burden... I understand, Sam thinks. Maybe he does.) Promised you would never do that again... Maybe Jason will get shook up by this whole Maudette... Sookie shivers and shouts. "Shut up, the both of you! And stop bossing me around! I am a grown woman, and I am the one who decides what I do, not one of you." She storms out, and Sam holds Tara back.
The Merlotte's sign turns off, leaving the parking lot darker. Sookie steps out tentatively, looking for Bill. Sam comes out and smiles at her, tender and quiet and unsure. She smiles and tells him she doesn't need anybody to wait with her. "Go home, Sam. Night." He smiles, gentled, and lets himself into another part of the building to sleep. She heads out to her car, as his house lights go down. There's an old car in the distance; a fluttering outside the light. Of course, she investigates; strange hands take hold of her and throw her to the ground, kicking her again and again until the blood pours from her mouth. It's Denise and Mack. She chokes on it.