Sookie, with hope fading that Bill somehow missed getting napalmed by Royce and his gang, returns home to -- of course -- mop the floor. When loved ones die, that's what she does. Of course, it also serves as a rude reminder of her dead Gran, from which the last week has been kind enough to distract her due to the running around having sex with Bill and getting her blood sucked. This turns her into a total bitch.
Which is ironic, because Tara is the more advanced Pokemon level of Raging Bitch on a regular day, but spends the morning regressing to a six-year-old now that her mom is undemonated, and then turns the bitchery up to 11 through the afternoon for reasons unknown. She wigs out on Sam, Sookie and even kinda Lafayette and eventually notices that she's acting like a total freak, so she heads out into the forest to see old Miss Jeanette.
Sookie goes to the graveyard to put flowers on Bill's original grave, and he randomly crawls up naked out of the ground and bones her in the graveyard, and it's sort of fucked up, but mostly she just doesn't want him to bite her on the neck. Which would be pretty smooth if she'd just manage to avoid overdramatically taking her B-12 in the office of who else but Sam Merlotte, who knows damn well what it means.
Sam behaves horribly in this episode, first playing off Terry Bellefleur's instability and PTSD shame to cover up his secret, then telling Tara she is a sex grunter, and then lying to Andy Bellefleur that his parents were nudists, rather than Border Collies. Oh, and he openly bitches and moans about Bill not dying, and bonds with Bud Dearborn over being total racists. Somebody needs to smack him with a newspaper.
day, Sookie's back to Crazy Manicland, recycling her Arlene compliments and offering to babysit and tossing a bunch of stones in the glass house of how pathetic fangbangers are. Sookie, please. While Bill (adorable) and Sookie (decompensating quickly into total freakout) babysit Arlene's kids, Rene pops her the question, making her a four-time bride. That's our girl.
Jason and Amy have awesome V experiences and she becomes the new waitress at Merlotte's. Sookie is a complete bitch to her, for no good reason except that she's about to go completely nuts. Then, once the V's left their systems, it turns out Amy is a psycho junkie who makes Jason go with her to brutally kidnap Lafayette's V supplier/john, played by Jimmy James aka Red Swingline Stapler aka Dwight Dixon, Stephen Root. Who is so abjectly abject that he kind of makes you want to hug the nearest vampire just in case they're having a bad day. Like, as the guy is making Lafayette swear that he really does find him attractive and this isn't merely prostitution, he's put on "Eternal Flame" in the background. Doesn't that make you need a hug?
Finally, Bill comes home to find all six feet four inches of Eric Northman taking a relaxing bath in that insane tub of his, and we learn that Eric is the "Sherriff of Area Five," which means he's the boss or something. What he bosses Bill to do, in this case, is bring Sookie to Fangtasia! so that she can A) marvel at the pink cableknit truth about Pam and B) figure out who's been stealing cash money. But the second she does, the perp -- Long Shadow -- jumps in her face and starts eating her, or choking her, or showing her how to tie a four-in-hand using your teeth. You know how zoomy they are, it was kind of a blur. All I know is, the lead actress of this television show better survive this television cliffhanger, or we are fucked.
Wild cards: Hoyt is starting to be creeped out by Sookie; that dead preacher's son, now making the rounds as the latest hatemongerer is a vampire fetish object (extra points if he'd been wearing a bowtie!); and the titular fourth man in Malcolm's nest was young fangbanger Neil from KY, which causes Coroner Mike to blubber inconsolably; Andy and Bud seem to have forgotten about the Killer entirely. Four episodes left.
Sookie stares down at the four coffins, crispy, and Bud offers her some water. "Four? You're sure you found four bodies?" Andy nods, but remembers protocol and warns her they shouldn't be talking about an ongoing investigation; she pushes back. "Andy, not now. Not with me." He sighs and nods again. "There's four sets of remains inside four coffins." She shoves past him, toward them, and Andy grabs at her. "Andy, if you don't take your hands off me right now I swear to God I will kill you." She runs up the hill to where Mike the Coroner stands, alone with a cop, staring down. "Jiminy Christmas," says the man who's not Neil from Kentucky. "That's what happens to vampires?" Mike laughs, because this has nothing to do with him. They stare down into a coffin: it's a soup of blood. "Evidently. Plus, we got three more." The cop is totally grossed out, and Mike keeps laughing. "I hope you skipped breakfast!" He spots Sookie and doesn't really care. "Did Bud send you up here to make an ID? Because..." She barks, a rough and terrible sound, and runs away again. Andy calls after her, but nobody cares. Of everybody on this scene, only one of them had a man in the fire. Everyone else is safe.
Brothers and sisters, if you'll turn now to Hymn #203, "Fuck My Legless Grandmother," we'll see if we can't get to the bottom of all this. Because what appears at first to be a disjointed episode of Thirtysomething crossed with scenes from "Strange Love" is actually a pretty excellent meditation on what happens when you meet the Buddha, if you look at it right. Here's the text from the song:
You want me to complain?
All right then: Fuck this
Fuck you, fuck all of you
With your sniveling self-pity
And fuck all your lousy parents
Fuck my lousy parents while we're at it
Fuck my selfish bohemian sister
And her fucking bliss
Fuck my legless grandmother...
And fuck you for dragging me to this terrible place
And not letting me have a Snickers bar:
I'm going to get something to eat!
If you're not familiar with the poet, Ruth Fisher, the background to this melody is a pretty simple story: a woman loses her husband, not just once but many times, and tries to fill the aching hole in herself in lots and lots of ways. She tries, endlessly, to incorporate herself into her childrens' lives, and is rebuffed. She tries, endlessly, to reinvent herself. She dates souls more broken than her own, and even remarries. But the best thing she ever did was join a cult. And this cult, a self-help forum called The Plan, told her there was salvation from her pain. That emotions are rational and can be thought around, that God is a crutch, that exposition and explosion are the keys to repairing the cracks in our foundation. Not untrue, depending on the context and the history, but more importantly: the only person that hates salvation more than I do is Alan Ball, and this episode tells why almost as eloquently as Ruth just did. At some point you have to realize the story doesn't stop until we're dead. Assigning your pain or guilt or fear a number, like a diet plan, doesn't take them off the table. Everything's on the table, all the time. Giving in to the seductive idea that something, or somebody, can save you once and for all is the first step to getting really fucked up.
It could be a man, who shows you that you're not alone, and helps you heal your perfect, holy body, who chases away your fear and doubt until the fever consumes you. It could be the empty ritual of church, in well-worn sayings and crazy-ass hats, letting the devil in the back door while you linger at the front. It could be a hedge-witch, just past the crossroads, taking you apart and putting you back together; or the return of your mother's lap, corncakes and bacon in the kitchen, turning you into a little girl again. It could be the beast inside a beautiful woman, whose rage suddenly expresses your own. It could be the drug that we call God, or V: whenever you arrive at a stopping place, you can stop and rest. But if you plan to stay there you will grow moss, and the cracks will get wider, and your foundation falls apart. The human mind and spirit were not meant to stop. They were meant to go, go, go, forever. When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Because it's not the Buddha, it's another trick: the real one's just a mile on down the road. Forever and ever. And that's what Ruth is telling us: we don't ever bury anything, but we can let those things bury us if we're not careful. Grace is a wave that never breaks, fuck my legless grandmother, amen.
Sookie runs home, in screaming denial about one death, now two, and sits at the table. Lovely pink roses stand on the kitchen table, where she sits and listens to his voicemail message one last time. She doesn't leave a message. On the floor, from the door to the table, are the footprints of a very long journey: the dirt of a murder scene, tracked across the floor. She forgot to take her shoes off, like she normally does; there's mud everywhere on her beautiful kitchen floor. She knows what she has to do. This is her house, now.
Sookie scrubs and scrubs, the mud of a murder screaming across her brain, trying to get it clean, to wipe away the memory. A tiny girl against tall walls, scrubbing the floor clean: what does it remind you of? All that sex and pain and pleasure, that deep knowing, what have they been hiding from you, further down the road? What did the Buddha say to you? It comes in flashes; Sookie reads her own mind. Adele, Adele, Adele. In a pool of blood she cleaned up just like this, because if the scars don't show you were never hurt, wounded, marked. Touched. She hurls the muddy cloth against the wall and starts to sink. He is dead. Gran is dead. Jason's gone. She is becoming an orphan on the cold kitchen floor, just past dawn.
Not even eight yet and Lettie Mae's awake and well, tossing bottle after bottle into the bin. Food for the demon, sacrifices to him, out with the garbage. Tara comes out wondering what she's up to, the clashing loud sounds, after the night they had; Lettie Mae is beautiful. Like sunshine through the rain; I thought the actress maybe touched the ceiling last week, if not went right over it, but no. Nobody but the most talented could become two such different women. Look at her beautiful face! This is the face that looked down at Tara when she was just little, when the demon was quiet. That's the smile that greets her now. "Good morning, baby! Did I wake you? I'm almost done. Just a couple more loads..." Some of them are half-full; it's the first time Tara's seen anything that way in a while. "Useless to me. Just fuel for demon fire. The bottle kept him alive for forty years. As long as I keep the stuff out of my house, he ain't never coming back."
And if we rule out demons I guess we rule out vampires and werecollies and psychics and then we have no show, so yes, I can believe that the demon was so into gluttony that he would allow bottles half-full to collect in the house. Alcoholics don't, but alcoholics aren't demons, and inside Lettie Mae were both. It's the same reason Eddie's as turned on by the ritual of bloodletting and the angelic beauty of the Reverend Steven Newlin as by the sex itself: no ritual is empty.
"Let's see how long you can keep it up," Tara scoffs. "Forever," Lettie Mae promises, and gives the Buddha a high-five. "Gotta be, I'm down to my last chance." Nothing's forever, but this is the first dawn. "You didn't have a drink today?" She didn't even want one. Tara smells her breath, the kind of shameful thing children and parents don't normally talk about or do so obviously, but it's not liquor. "Is that maple syrup?"
Lettie Mae's so proud, it's heartbreaking. "Check the kitchen, I made hoecakes." She struts behind her daughter, into the house where a beautiful breakfast waits. Breakfast, on this show, is a really powerful symbol: Gran serving her daughters and her son every morning, Sookie singing poetic odes to sausage; there are three breakfasts in this episode alone. And I couldn't figure it, beyond an easy signifier for the support of the family that nobody's getting because everybody is grown or an orphan, and then also because this whole show is consumption, what we eat and how we do it and why (and who!), and then I thought it was a pretty good metaphor for suckling at mama, like they do with V and the vamps do with us, and how orphans are denied that essential right, but no. All of these and more: breakfast marks that meridian that separates light and darkness. The dawn means that last night, however dark, is gone, and we're starting a new story. Together, eating our food together that we cooked together, in the family in the sunlight. Meals together are the oldest ritual we have; this is the one that starts when the night is over.
"Are you serious? I haven't had hoecakes since..." Since Lettie Mae's mother was alive. "I always could make 'em, just never did. The demon never let me." Demons hate breakfast! Tara sits down like a little girl, kicking those Juilliard legs, six years again or younger, and spears a cake. "Mmm! You made these with bacon grease." She's so young for a moment. She piles them onto her plate. "It's the only way." Tara sucks them down like a vampire, like she's starving: trying to fill up on love, to replace the hole her childhood left with another chance at happiness. "You eat, baby girl. I got me some more devil juice to take out." Tara smiles out the door at her Momma. Strong little Mommy, back from the dead.
Jason and Amy lay on his bed, minds blown. His sheets are, needless to say, black satin, because sex is a show Jason puts on for Jason. Until today. "Goddamn. You... You are not like anybody I ever met." Amy agrees, and they stare up together, and Jason explains what it is, that thing he's been looking for, the way it finally presented itself: "It felt like the whole world came together. Me, you, the bed, the house. We were all one big giant..." Love, love, love. Amy nods: "...Organism." Jason goes for the rimshot: "Yeah, mine was huge." She laughs and he stretches, thoughtful and spent. "I never knew vamp blood could do something like this to you."
Amy agrees. "I mean... I've had V partners before, but this was... on a totally different planet." They curl up, around each other. "You're an extraordinary being." He jumps, not sure if she's making fun, or trying to offend. "What's that supposed to mean?" She's not wrong. "In some ways, we barely know each other, right? But you felt that. Tell me that that wasn't just me. We ... tapped into each other." He nods, excitedly, and falls all over himself trying to agree.
Amy Burley looks Jason in the eye. "There's something old and good and wise deep down in you." (Starbuck! He is Starbuck!) "I have to know that person." Jason's put off, troubled by it. Nobody, as they say, wants the embarrassment of absolution. Not when so much of the scaffolding is getting by on blame and lack of expectations. As long as Jason is retarded and amoral, he'll never let anybody down. Tell him how wonderful he really is, and the whole thing falls apart. "Come on, cut it out. Nobody who knows me has ever called me wise." Doesn't make it true. Me and Diogenes had a twenty riding on you since day one. "Then nobody really knows you." It's true. Painful and loving, wonderful and terrible in the same moment. Nobody really knows you, so you don't exist and you don't matter/Nobody knows you but me. He is overcome, and hides his tears from her, burrowing down into the bed.
Say my name
Sun shines through the rain
No matter what happens, it's real and it's true. It's so easy, week to week, to say a character is good, so they are right, and week say a character is bad, so all the things they've done are invalid. That's not how people work. Amy's not evil any more than Jason is pointless or Arlene's stupid. The difference between a good TV show and a bad TV show, or any other kind of story, is that assigning these arbitrary values either works or it doesn't. When the scary music plays on a character in a bad show, that character is bad, and everything he does or ever did is suspect. That's just another way of letting your brain stop working, and that's not what brains are for, and that's not what this show is like.
It's like blowing off Jason's storyline, or Tara's, because it's not Sookie: they're the same story, played on three different instruments. At this second Amy couldn't be more right, and there's nothing sad or shameful in him hearing it from her first. Most of us never get to hear it at all. "Are you blushing?" Jason is as amazed by himself as he is by her, and by the fact that he's not lying: "I don't want you to go." She admits that she was planning on burning through, but if he's offering a place to crash... "Stay," he says excitedly, kissing her. "Stay with me! I don't wanna ever leave this bed. Let's just screw and do V until we starve!" She laughs.
"Sure, okay, but I mean, let's hold off on the screwing. I'm a respectable girl." Jason's confused and jumps off her immediately, visions of Maudette and Dawn and other girls dancing in his head. "Oh, did I hurt you? I'm sorry if I got carried away, it was just so amazing..." His voice is panicked, and she tries to comfort him before explaining. "Jason, we didn't have sex." He laughs at her, but she's telling the truth. "We were together on V. Deeper than I've ever felt with anybody ever before. But physically, we barely touched." He's not buying it; she pulls down the sheets: "Panties still on." Jason is totally freaked out, because if you're not your body then what are you? "Whoa! What... The fuck?" She smiles indulgently: "I told you. It's better than sex." He collapses onto her, relieved and full of joy. Me, you, the bed, the house. He laughs like a child. So this is love.
Tara comes running, excitedly, only to find Sookie with her head in the oven. It's a disturbing image. "Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing?" Sookie pops up, irritated, with a face mask on and a bottle of Easy-Off in hand: "Stop with the JC. I'm cleanin', what does it look like? Watch your feet, I just waxed." Tara, still jumpy from the sight, tosses off a joke -- "I hope you mean the floor..." -- but Sookie's not having it. She charges past Tara across the room, finally turning with an annoyed look on her face. This is the funeral, finally, after a week. You are crashing a funeral. My Gran died this morning, when I remembered it. When I came down off the high and realized Bill was gone too.
"Can I help you? I'm up to my elbows in Easy-Off..." Tara's not catching the 'tude, which is scary, because she's too thrilled to look: "My momma made me hoecakes this morning!" Sookie literally goes, "So?" "She cooked me breakfast! When's the last time you saw my momma lift a finger before noon for anything besides Mad Dog 20/20?" The more she talks, the more pissed off Sookie gets. Lower your voice. Leave the premises. This is not an appropriate event: Look, I get it. But right now she needs to be alone. You're a good friend. Now get the fuck out of here. Please.
"We went into the woods to get a $445 hoodoo exorcism last night, you do not wanna get me started on that..." Like today's just a normal day, a normal morning, breakfast for everybody. "My grandmother's dead. At least you got someone to make breakfast for you. You ever stop and think about what's happening with others before you barge in on them?" Tara gets it, but before she can apologize she spots the marks on Sookie's neck. "Oh my God, are those fang marks?" Sookie shrugs, with a nasty look. "So what? It means someone cared for me, when everyone else left me high and dry." Jason hit her and ran off into a hell of his own creation; even Sam went off somewhere (to bang Tara); that house swallowed her up in memory and pain and she ran across the graveyard to the one man who could understand; who wanted her as much as she wanted him. And that's just the first death: she's still on her knees before this newer one, can't even think it much less talk about it. She carries it all on her back.
"No wonder you're all crazy! Let a vampire make a meal of you..." Speaking ill of the dead, the truly dead. "Why am I the only person that doesn't think vampires are monsters?" Tara gets in her face: "They drink our blood." And to change the subject, to Sam Merlotte: "What's to say Bill won't leave you once he's had his fill?" Why should your answer work out when mine is damned to fall apart? "Do you have any idea what I've been through today? A friend would ask," Sookie tells her, opening the door, and Tara tells her to fuck off. "Don't tell me how to be your friend, I'm the only one you got, goddamn it." Sookie whispers, hatefully, "Lord's name in vain..." and Tara tells her, rightfully, to fuck off.
We don't retreat to the old dead corners and unthinking rules when the world's falling apart. What you're saying when you spout the old reliables like that is that you're can't be bothered -- or you're too busy with something else -- to actually be present. You've allowed your brain to stop. Sadly, though, in this case it's the latter: she's on autopilot because she has to be. "Get out of my house! I've gotten very good at losing people like you. You are only making it easier for me." She shakes, terrified by herself and the enormity of it. Gran, Jason, Tara; she can feel Sam slipping away too. "Bitch, I don't even wanna be here. If you are hell-bent on being alone in this world, I ain't gonna stop you." Tara takes off and Sookie slams the oven door, once and then again. Maybe, just maybe, she is losing it a little bit.
Jason brings pizza into the living room from the kitchen, all, "Oh, man. I wanna not have sex with you again so bad, you don't even know!" He looks her in the eye and she smiles and walks away, leaving him hanging: "But that V that we did was the last I had." He gets a whiny look -- not panicked, yet, not like before -- and she tells him to chill. "When we need more, we'll go out and get it. Don't be greedy. We'll be okay for a while." She makes so much sense right now, but it's just The Plan. Of course everything's fine right now; the mistake is in thinking things will be this easy forever. "You sure you don't want some? Pepperoni and sausage!" He offers her the breakfast he made: cold pizza from the fridge. "No, thank you. I only eat organic. The cleaner my body is, the more intensely I feel the V."
It all makes sense from this angle, doesn't it? The V wants to be in us, just like orange juice and LSD. These fragments we shore up against our ruins; the whispered legends of childhood and drug addicts, the secret messages on cigarette packs and bottles of beer, the marijuana myths. Eat organic and do some V: you'll see God in another person, you'll be less alone. "Wait, why do you have two televisions in the same room?" He admits the gigantic console below the newer model is busted: "I just keep it 'cause it was my parents'." She wonders if she can ask, then asks how they died. He looks away and says he doesn't talk about it, and her immediate "okay" is so understanding and gentle that it opens the door in him.
It's a dare. He doesn't drop her gaze until he starts talking. "It was a flash flood. They were caught on the bridge down by the Parish Road, and got swept out in the river. My little sister and I were staying at our Gran's while they went out. They didn't think I could look after Sookie by myself, even though I was almost eleven... Sometimes I think ... If I was a better kid, they wouldn't have had to drop us off at Gran's. Then they wouldn't have been on the bridge at the exact point when..." He sighs and drops his pizza, looking at it with disinterest. No more breakfast. Ever again.
"So your grandma raised you after that?" He grins, thinking of her. This is a funeral too. "I moved back here when I was eighteen, even though Gran would have rather kept an eye on me." He admits she died too, a week ago, and Amy is moved. She looks at him with too much understanding, too much gentleness and love, and he closes up tight. Or tries to. "Goddamn. I don't mean to be spillin'. I never do this." Not with anybody? Not even with Sookie? "Least of all her. She brings out the worst in me." She points back my own ugliness. Everyone who visits Fangtasia! is looking for death. He dreamed of fucking Liam when he was wide awake. She brings out the worst in me. "We had this big fight after Gran died, and ... I hit her." He swallows it. "I am the worst brother in the world," he says, horrified and sad. Surprised to hear the words taking form in his mouth and sound so true.
Amy sits and touches his shoulder gently, trying to catch his eyes and bring them back. Here, now. Be with me: "That's ridiculous. I've seen who you are inside. I've been there. And you're good." Oh the way the V lets her walk about inside him and tell him things he never knew. He jerks away; it's too much. Boys don't. She turns his face to hers, daring him to hear her. Daring him to see her, seeing him. Seeing himself matter. She wipes away his tears, and sees it in his eyes: he does. As long as nobody moves and nothing changes and nobody reminds him what he's lost, yes: he can admit he's worthwhile. But you must keep it, like a secret, quiet and hidden, because if anyone finds out, he will die. She kisses him soft, and slow. He sighs in relief. They aren't tears of grief, that's too small: they're from the ocean sadness only swims in.
Terry Bellefleur unloads a gator head from Sam's truckbed, remarking that she's a beauty; Sam says they'll put it over the bar: "Drunks like talking to the animals." Woof! Speaking of animals, Terry pulls something horrible on a string around his neck out of his shirt: "Check it out. Possum prick!" Sam's like whoa. "Shot one last week. I was gonna stuff it, but I left it out back and it got to raining, then three days later, ain't nothing left but possum sludge and bones. I saved this, though. Possums have a two-pronged penis!" Sam's like, Oh uh-huh? "It's supposed to bring good luck." Sam claps him on the shoulder and tells him they should keep the two-pronged prick between them -- "The girls might get the wrong idea" -- and Terry puts it away. He needs all the luck he can get.
Terry remembers the other thing, and asks Sam why he was running through the woods naked this morning. "It looked an awful lot like you. Except you wear clothes..." He has these little sparking gaps in him, where he's having a conversation and then it goes somewhere else, like there's a connection between the sparking gap and his open mouth. It's disconcerting and sad. Terry squeezes his eyes shut and looks down. "Maybe I'm seein' things again. Except usually when I see people who ain't there, it's..." Sam knows: "It's the insurgents." Terry says, though, that this one didn't look that way, and Sam makes a choice. "But you said he was running, though, huh? Plenty of cover in the trees. How could you tell for sure? ...I believe you saw what you saw, I just don't know why anyone would run naked through the woods in broad daylight..." Terry laughs and says he's probably right, and then his face changes again. "Shit I hate being this way, Sam." And Sam is guilty then, but just slightly less than he is afraid, so he claps Terry on the shoulder and takes him inside: "We're a long way from Fallujah."
Sookie sits on Gran's porch in Gran's blanket -- her porch now, her blanket -- and watches the rain come down. Any other night he'd be coming here, she'd be going there. A week ago she didn't even know what it felt like. Now the night smells like him. She lights a candle in the kitchen, and makes a bouquet. This is a funeral. Roses, is that foxglove? I'm sure it means something but I don't know flowers on sight. She puts the candle in the window, to call him home. She heads out.
In the graveyard it's not raining anymore. She's wearing a yellow dress and no shoes; the bouquet for him is a riot of color. She kneels and clears away the rest of the leaves of ivy from his tombstone. "BELOVED HUSBAND - BRAVE SOLDIER." He died for neither, this time. She weeps and says goodbye: Another one gone. She takes it in, all alone. Again. No brother, no sister. No Bill. Just the rest of a life, back to being a monster, crazy Sookie, touched by grave dirt. She could be a fangbanger as long as he was there, making it worthwhile. Now she has nothing, even less than she had before he came. She'll go home to an empty house, and live there all her life, and no man will ever quiet the voices again. It was better before she met him, before she knew what it could be like, what it felt like to be free. It was better to live only part of a life, if the alternative is having parts of it ripped away. Without him, none of it was worth it. She's dirty after all.
She walks away slowly, at home in the night, looking around at the dark, and a hand reaches up from the cold ground, strong around her ankle, pulling her down. Down, where she belongs. Down into the dirt. She struggles, finally fighting, away from the mud and the filth and all the death, back into life, fighting for it... And he calls her name. He wasn't pulling her down at all. He was pulling himself up.
Do you feel my heart beating?
He's covered in dirt, naked as a dead thing. She stops struggling and looks at his face, covered in the cold, wet earth, and grabs him, pulling him toward her. He pulls her dress off as they kiss, wildly, and their hunger is a song to life and a brutal one. It's too passionate to watch, in the grave dirt, saying no to all that and yes to everything else. They're not pulling each other down; they're pulling each other up. And all the questions she was asking melt away in the air. The fangs come out and he darts at her neck, eyes on fire, hungry and nearly mindless, but she resists. "No, not the neck..." He looks around, panicking, hungry for release, and plunges his fangs into her shoulder, or her breast. It's a different kind of love this time, that they're making. He screams into the night.
Arlene runs to a table and apologizes to them, wondering where the hell Sookie is. Jason and Amy enter; she looks more normal than she has so far and he's wearing a very excellent, very tight blue t-shirt. "Intense. All these animals on the wall, it's like a natural history museum." Jason's never noticed them, much less given an unending undergrad disquisition on their semiotics: "How could you not? Every one of these animals lived a life full of experiences that we can't even imagine..." So is that bad? If she's weirded out by Merlotte's, they can go somewhere else, but that's not it. "Everyone has to eat, right? We're all links on the universal food chain." She points at the animals over the bar, including the brand-new gator head. "See? Squirrel eats nuts, snake eats the squirrel, gator eats the snake. And we can eat pretty much eat anything we want. It's the circle of life!" Instead of dumping her faster than you can blink, he's totally amazed and says he wants to "lick her mind." Give him time. He just found out about thinking like an hour ago.
The shot tracks to the counter, where Terry's got an order up, and then around to the back, where Sookie's running in. You can see the sparks along her skin: the easy answers swirling in her head. It all makes sense now; needs met, never alone again, born out of grave dirt. Sam expresses his deepest sympathies for the horrible sad tragedy of Bill's total death, and she's like, "OH, THINGS ARE AWESOME! BILL'S ALIVE! THEY SAID FOUR BODIES! AND I THOUGHT BILL WAS ONE OF THEM! BUT HE WASN'T! NOT AT ALL! IN FACT HE'S COMPLETELY AWESOME!" Sam is crestfallen, to say the least. My patience with Sam Merlotte is waning. "That must be quite a relief for you," he responds lamely, and she's like "YOU HAVE NO IDEA! ANYWAYS NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT ME! BECAUSE I AM GREAT! GREATGREATGREATGREAT!" She bounces between the ceiling and the floor about sixty billion times and then goes zooming off in another direction; he is bewildered and more than a little sad.
Arlene bugs her about her tardiness, but Sookie just gives her another one of those spooky-eyed lovefest caresses and screams, "YOU LOOK SO BEAUTIFUL TODAY! I LOVE YOU! EVEN IF YOU ARE A BIGOT! SOMETIMES!" Arlene asks Sam WTF and he's like, "Oh, Bill unfortunately didn't die-die like we thought." Terry, frustrated and edgy, calls the order up for the third time, but Sookie is too busy completely freaking out Hoyt and Rene. "HE GOT MY MESSAGE THAT SOMETHING BAD MIGHT BE BREWING! SO HE FIGURED HE'D SPEND THE NIGHT IN THE GRAVEYARD!" Hoyt, sweetly, asks if he didn't get cold, and Sookie gets twice as fucking weird. "NO! HE WAS IN THE GROUND!" Also, nobody asked for this charming story, Sookie. This shit is why people think you are retarded.
"SO AFTER I COULDN'T FIND HIM THEN I HEARD ABOUT THE FOUR BODIES AT THE BURNT-UP HOUSE! YOU CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT I WAS GOING THROUGH! IMAGINE IT! YOU CANNOT! YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT WAS LIKE! I AM SO HIGH RIGHT NOW THAT I THINK I AM HOLDING YOUR INTEREST! INSTEAD OF FREAKING YOU THE FUCK OUT!"
Rene asks if there were, as reported, three of the troublemaker vamps, who was the fourth body? "TO BE HONEST I DO NOT GIVE A FUCK! BECAUSE IT WAS NOT BILL! BUT I HEARD IT WAS A FANGBANGER! HAVE YOU HEARD OF THOSE BECAUSE BLESS THEIR HEARTS! IT IS SO SAD! IT IS THESE GIRLS WHO HAVE SEX WITH VAMPIRES! SOMETIMES RIGHT THERE IN A GRAVEYARD! THEY ARE DISGUSTING AND PATHETIC! I AM DIFFERENT BECAUSE I AM IN TRUE LOVE! BUT THEY ARE JUST BEING USED! FOR SEX! ALSO BLOOD! ANYWAY I HAVE TO GO TAKE VITAMIN B-12 FOR ALL THE BLOOD I GOT SUCKED OUT OF ME BY A VAMPIRE WHO WAS FUCKING ME REALLY HARD IN A GRAVEYARD, LOL! BYE BYE NOW!"
Rene and Hoyt are like, "Sooooo... There's a downside, I see." But they don't exist anymore. Sookie goes to get the order that nearly fried Terry's brain this time, but somebody's already got it. The "new girl," Terry says, and yeah. It's Amy Burley. She's sort of turning into the Vanessa Abrams on us, isn't she? She drops off like fifteen plates at a billion tables, and lays down some annoying "we got a four-top open" lingo that would be completely different if Arlene or Sookie said it, but I mean, is Texas the South? Because that shit would not fly if Merlotte's were in Texas. "We do not have shit. Stop touching people's food and fooling the PTSD vet that you work here, drop the Obama Hope Police act and sit your organic ass down. You need a beer is what you fucking need." Jason slides up to Sookie all, "You are allowed to still hate me, but I really need you to like this girl, because she's how I get fixed. She told me I was good. I need this to live."
Sookie stares at Amy, relentlessly unfriendly, but one of the very good things about Amy, which this episode kind of demands that I point out as we go, is that she's not pushing through. She knows what she's up against. Arlene just kind of shoves past whatever it is without even seeing it, and Sookie stands up to the tippy-top of her four feet three inches and dares it to fuck with her, but Amy's like, "Yes. I am sort of an asshole. However." Which is actually more nuanced than either of the other two, and is a thing I love about her. Like, she's not confused about how she just way overstepped and made an ass of herself: "Sorry about that. You looked really swamped and the natives were gettin' restless, so...You're Jason's sister, right? It's... I've heard so much about you." She shakes Sookie's hand, but girl's not budging an inch. Arlene, responding to the set of Sookie's back and the outside, scoots in from the side like a skidding cartoon character entering a scene: "Who [the fuck] are you?"
"My name's Amy, Amy Burley. I'm with Jason... And you must be Arlene, with the beautiful red hair! It's so nice to meet you." Arlene's thrown and all she can throw up is like, "How did you crack our secret table-numbering code, Outlander?!" Amy explains that clockwise as a direction has been discovered wherever she's from, just like Bon Temps, in fact, and that puts Arlene at ease somewhat, but like nothing compared to what she does , which is produce a bunch of cash from her pocket and hand it over, plus a sideways compliment: "I think the guys at table 5 like you, 'cause they left you a really nice tip." (Because, of course, you are irresistible to men!) Arlene is bought and paid for: "Sam, I think we might have found a replacement for Dawn!" Sookie, betrayed now twice, grins nastily at Jason and leaves: "Looks like you did too." Jason, of course, grins like he hadn't even thought of that and ought to put it in the column with all the other things, and kisses Amy's forehead. Is it bad that I am loving Mean Girl Sookie this much? I mean, my favorite characters are obviously Jason and Tara, I haven't been secretive about that, and this episode is about how horribly she can treat them, but it's still so, so fun.
Tara sees the laundry drying in the yard and goes to take it down, amazed at her mother's demon-free energetic nature, and Lettie Mae comes running up with a church lady; they are both wearing those amazing crazy dresses you see in my neighborhood on Sunday, and quite elaborate hats. They are like a couple of pastel Sputniks, orbiting closer and closer to Tara's soul. They nitter and twitter and blah blah at her about how she should go to church. And why? Because it has helped Lettie Mae so much.
Lettie Mae spins out a bullshit story about how after two years she "heard the call: the good Lord said Lettie Mae, you been away too long. Your church needs you!" She's begging, openly, for Mabel's approval; she needs it. Mabel means church and church means her day starts today, no witches and no deals and no demons -- just a calling from the Lord, and then a beautiful dress, lofted toward the church on angel wings, just like everybody says it happens. Just like every bitch in that building told her it needed to be. And Mabel nods her approval. "You should have heard her testify. The entire congregation was filled with the spirit!"
Tara has no doubt Lettie Mae was "full of it," and watches this display in total disgust. Because if we're clearing the decks, then breakfast wasn't an apology, it was amnesia. And all that pain, the crossroads and what's beyond them, are being pissed on. It's not the most mature response, to want our parents to bleed for their sins, but it's also not the most atypical. And in the grand scheme you should be strong enough to let it go, and let them join whatever church they want, sure. If you're positive it's real, you have no claim on their happiness... But it's not real. They were witches by midnight, sacrificing blood to their own demons. You don't forget that, you incorporate it. Incorporate, take it into your body, open up that room and air it out, and learn to live there, in the bigger house. And what Lettie Mae is doing is taking all those years and putting them somewhere we can't get to them anymore, like Sookie constantly washing the kitchen floor.
Tara laughs at them again and again but they keep pushing, like the woman at the store when we first met her, and finally she gives in. "Shit. Are you even listening to what you're saying? You can lie to yourself and everyone else but when you go to bed, you are just as fucked up and miserable as I am. And going to church, and wearing a crazy-ass hat, ain't gonna make you a better person." She stomps off, and Lettie Mae confides that her daughter has a demon in her. Mabel nods sagely: "My granddaughter had a demon in her. They everywhere!" It's not that religious people are stupid, it's that stupid people are religious, because it's easier, which is a very different -- an opposite, in fact -- proposition. Real religion, like anything else, means your brain doesn't stop. Engaging with anything, from a TV show to another person to God, isn't a one-time effort. Fuck my legless grandmother or not, there's another Buddha at the intersection, pulling you along.
Arlene's sad on the phone, calling her disappointing babysitter "sugar" and "baby," and when she hangs up she's clearly exhausted on multiple levels. "You know," Terry says nervously, sweetly, "I like kids..." He nods, and turns a conversational corner: "Donuts, too." Arlene actually accepts with a maybe, but only if he brings a lady friend along: "Lisa likes a female in the house." Terry comes closer, drinking her in: "I ain't had a lady friend since I come home." She watches him staring at her and, because he's so damned quirky and weird, has no idea where it's going; the corner he'll turn. "That's some bad luck for you, I guess?" True indeed. He keeps staring. "Did something ... happen, there ... that you been keeping to yourself? 'Cause you could talk to me, you know, if you're wantin' to..." It's too much. He shivers and turns it again: "No, I'd... I'd just as soon sit here and listen at you. I like your voice." If Dawn was parakeets and angels, Arlene is late '70s sitcoms and violins tuning up. "...And your clavicles." She's touched, and weirded out, and takes that as her cue to leave.
Bussing tables, Sookie tries for like an entire second. "I've been admiring your necklace all day." Amy nods, pleased. "Oh thanks, it's a lariat. I made it." Sookie's grudgingly impressed, and Amy offers to make her something, but Sookie's still in her interracial dating phase -- something Amy surely recognizes -- so she takes it on the offensive: "Thanks, but I don't think my boyfriend much likes silver." Amy wearing a silver lariat: noted. They move to the tables, and Sookie turns hooded eyes on her. "You know my brother's a dog, don't you?" Amy's surprised. She brings out the worst in him. And vice versa. Sookie gets closer and closer, won't blink or drop her gaze: "He's all charm and smiles in the beginning, but the second he gets tired of you, he's gonna stop callin'. Before you know it, he's off with some other floozy." Amy smiles, she knows this part. She knows how angry Sookie is, he told her. And she knows this is not exactly charitable either. Sookie realizes what she just said: "Not... not that you are one! But trust me, it's as regular as the seasons." She shrugs: hate him as much as I do, please. We can both get out of this alive. Otherwise, you're the pretty girl in his life, and I am an orphan, and you're taking him away. What interests me is how, this time of all times, we don't hear Amy thinking, responding to this. "You seem like a sweet girl. I don't want you to get hurt."
Amy nods, wise and secure in her wisdom. She's not wrong, but it's only true from her specific angle, and that's something not even she's going to be able to hold onto for long. Still, it bears saying. It bears repeating, whether or not he can hear it, until everybody agrees that it's true. Because it's true: "You know, I don't think Jason's realized even half of what he's going to be. I wouldn't be so quick to judge. I think you might be surprised at what he's capable of." That is some oracular shit right there. Almost scary, how divergent the meanings of that could be.
Sookie considers her as she's leaving, and Arlene approaches. "Hey, Sookie. I've been meaning to talk to you... I've just been a mess lately. You know, with the kids and the double shifts and Rene and everything, it's been awful hard. And I've probably said some things that I don't mean, but ... That's the pressure talking. I love you like my own sister. I mean you know that, right?" Sookie's cautious, and I mean: this is weird, right? Except that we have to retroactively believe this relationship now, because Arlene's been sending out such negative vibes regarding Bill that she has been coming off as a total bitch. Paquin sells it, and thanks her, and offers to babysit. "I... I didn't... I mean..." Sookie laughs: "I heard you talkin' to Terry. I'm a better choice." Word. Arlene, grateful, agrees. "Rene's taking me to Ruston to see that Oak Ridge Boys tribute band!" Second only to Burning Man in the lexicon of personal hells for yours truly. Can you imagine? Sookie's like, "AWESOME!" and they giggle awhile.
Sam, thundercloud clearly visible over his head, pours his stock of TruBlood deliberately into the sink, a bottle at a time. Tara serves Hoyt his beer, and when he tells her how pretty she looks tonight, he earns a vicious "Fuck you" from our girl. Confused, he pouts: "I'm sorry, w...was that sexist?" Sam asks for a word with her in his office, and she goes without complaint; Hoyt's alone and sad again. "Hey, I get it. You said yourself hiring me might not work out. I piss people off." Her voice gets shaky: "If you wanna fire me, fire me. I totally understand." One more goodbye. Sam almost laughs. "No! You and I are the only ones who get it! It's everybody else who's fuckin' themselves up." He kisses her against the door, and she laughs, wrapped in his arms.
Sookie and Bill lie in a crisp white bed, later. "Doesn't it get old? I mean, you've been doin' it for over a hundred years. Doesn't it get predictable?" Not with you, he says obligatorily: "You're entirely different. And the beauty and the tragedy of it is... you don't know just how different you are." She gets brave enough to ask for pointers, and he scoffs. "There's nothing more natural than the act of makin' love." She smiles in thanks, and he's bewildered. "Who am I to try to change what comes naturally to you?" She looks at him, asking if there's one thing he would change. (PS: Do not do this unless you are dating a vampire from the Civil War, because it's totally stupid and if there were something to change, there are way easier ways to get that accomplished than talking about it that have the additional benefit of not getting your ass murdered.)
"I wouldn't change a thing," he says, stroking her hair and gazing kindly at her until she lies back down. He kisses her forehead and they doze. "What's it like to sleep in the ground?" Bill admits it's not that comfortable, with a hundred-yard stare, but it's safe. "Which, if I recall, is what the three voicemails required of me that night..." She laughs; they are sweet. The doorbell rings and they sit up, startled; she remembers Arlene's date. "Shall I go?" She tells him to stay, because it'll be good for Arlene, but probably pants would be a good idea. She kisses him and runs downstairs; he doesn't take his eyes off her.
The kids at the front door wonder what took so long, and she says she was in the backyard. Lisa stares up at her. "In your nightie?" asks Coby, as Bill appears. "The cat got out," Bill says with that crooked, creepy smile he gets. "Made friends with a squirrel." Lisa points at him, and Arlene gets scared. "Uh, Sookie? You didn't mention that you had company..." Sookie points out that she had no reason to broadcast that, and Arlene's like, "Valid, but I should know who's looking after my kids," and Sookie points to herself and Bill: "Well? Here we are. Is there a problem?" Rene tells Arlene to take it easy, reminding her that Bill had a couple of children once too. Arlene chills a little, but takes off a couple of her silver bangles and puts them on her kids, right in front of him. Sookie is appalled, but Bill's just like Oh boy. Sookie offers pizza and the kids scream and shout; Rene asks if Bill can eat pizza and he says he's heard it's quite delicious, again with that fucked-up smile he gets when he's trying way too hard. Give me chills.
"You know what's good about sex that people never mention? For anywhere between five minutes to an hour, you forget your own fucked-up life." Sam considers that. "Only if it's good. If it's not, it reminds you just how bad your life really is." Tara tells him, then, that he must be pretty good, and they luxuriate in their forgetfulness, laughing. "Thanks, you're not bad yourself," Sam says, in his usual awkward way, and Tara, looking for a fight, immediately rolls away from him in the white sheets. "Easy on the praise, honey." Sam wonders WTF it was this time, and assures her she is good, but she keeps pushing. He begs her not to grill him about that stuff, but she finally pushes hard enough that he's like, "Sometimes you grunt." Um, Barkley Barksdale IV is calling you a grunter? Tara goes nuts. "It's just a sound!" he protests, and she's off.
"A gruntin' sound? Like a farm animal?" He says it's more like athletic, like a tennis player. "You mean like Serena?" Sam's mouth opens and then closes again, because what? "Because I'm black I sound like Serena Williams?" He still doesn't know how far this fight goes, so he's sort of indulgent at this point, but she's not having any kind of calm-downery. "You racist son of a bitch." She starts getting dressed and, as an impressively stupid followup to the foregoing, literally goes, "How can I be racist? I just had sex with you." Dumb. "You asshole! Why'd you have to go and take the only good ten minutes of my entire day and ruin it like that?" Sam weakly protests that it was more than ten minutes, but Tara is done. "Oh, fuck you. Fuck you all." Fuck who, he pleads, as she is bouncing, and staring bewildered long after she's gone: "Everybody. Fuck everybody!"
Fuck you and a bunch of grunting bullshit, fuck my demon-possessed mother, fuck my prostitute drug-dealing gay cousin, fuck my forest witchcraft, fuck my crazy sister's nasty little secrets, fuck Jason for breaking my heart and hitting Sookie. Fuck the entire universe for thinking one little possum could contain thirty years of misery, and pretending any of us deserved breakfast this morning. Fuck you all, for pretending to be my family. If I had a fucking family I wouldn't feel like an orphan. Fuck Adele for dying, fuck Bill for taking Sookie away, fuck you because I know we're both thinking it would be soft little sighs and breath caught in the back of the throat and innocent fucking creamy white skin, none of this athletic grunting with Sookie, oh no, Sookie who's a virgin every time, whimpering and moaning and that soft sound of shock when you touch her, and fuck you for taking away the obvious reason for my rage, because I still feel like a possum in a cage and now there's no way away from it. Fuck you for telling me I know what's going on, and everybody else is fucked up, when I clearly don't and neither do you. So much of the scaffolding that keeps me standing is getting by on blame and lack of expectations: as long as I'm out of control and full of hate, I'll never let anybody down. Act like I'm wonderful and the whole thing falls apart. If I was worth loving I would hate myself a little less, but as it is you're just dicking me around. You'll get your fill, and then you'll leave. She always had more of you.
Bill gives the kids whipped cream and Coby says he'll finish it before Arlene ever finds out: "I ate a whole jar of mayonnaise once." Lisa shivers. "I had to watch." Coby asks Bill why he can't have ice cream, and Bill delicately compares his state to lactose intolerance. "Just like my Aunt Fern. Except she don't tolerate Mexicans." Bill and Sookie make little yee faces at each other, and Lisa pipes up. "Aunt Sookie, is Bill your boyfriend?" Sookie asks Bill, in a deadpan teasing voice, "Bill, would you say that you're my boyfriend?" Bill asks the kids' permission, and Lisa asks if he brings her flowers. "Why no, I haven't yet." Lisa advises him to immediately. "Rene buys flowers for Momma all the time." Bill admits he should mend his ways, and Lisa gives him the hard eye: "You do that. Then we'll talk." Sookie watches him geeking out happily. Coby asks to see the fangs, and while Sookie nervously tries to interrupt that line of questioning, Bill reveals two gigantic fangs made of corn chips or something, and growls at them as they scream and giggle. He's deliriously happy; his smile is totally new and different. He needs more kids around, stat; he's a whole new boy.
On the way home from Ruston, Rene pulls over to a clearing on the road, and checks it out; Arlene's nervous and jumpy about leaving the kids with Bill. He stands nervous behind the truck awhile, hands shaking. The music gets ominous. "Bébé! Pass me that Maglite, will you?" She rolls her eyes and gets out, following him into the night. She tries to turn it on, but it won't light. "Are you sure? You better check it. I just put some fresh batteries in there..." She unscrews it, and something falls out. She looks around on the ground, but he's found it. He holds it up in the light, and it sparkles; he is on one knee. "Arlene Fowler..." She gasps, staring at the ring. "Would you do me the honor of being my wife?" She starts to cry, and he puts it on her finger, kissing her sweetly. Laughing and crying with her arms around him, she looks into his eyes: "Why didn't you say anything at the Red Lobster?"
They laugh and hug, and I realize trashy poor people and the trashy poor things they do must be funny to some huge portion of the population, or else the Coen Brothers wouldn't have careers, but I don't really get it. Like proposing at Red Lobster is all that much more abject than hiding an engagement ring in a flashlight? Diamonds are at least as distasteful as cocaine, and for the exact same reason, which is the blood of innocents all over both, and I know I always rant about this but my God. Meth, coke, diamonds, limousines, the institution of marriage: just cut it out, already, because much like heterosexuality, they are fundamentally tacky, and I can't pull it together to point and laugh at that, because even racist Americans like Arlene are my people. I don't know. I'm not saying it's evil or wrong, I'm just saying I have never gotten the attraction or the humor. It's like Monty Python: I get that it's funny, I just lack that gene.
"I know I've done it four other times, but it never gets old!" My brain stopped! Sookie squeals at the kitchen table and takes Arlene's hand; she barely has to ask Sookie to be her bridesmaid, again, and Bill and Rene smile at each other as Sookie and Arlene crawl all over each other, possessed by wedding demons. "Maybe you two are , huh?" asks Rene, and the whole room goes quiet; Sookie looks down, because that's one of the cracks, isn't it. "...Well, I mean, when it becomes legal..." Everybody smiles guiltily, but it's still weird. Thank God for Lisa, who comes in rubbing her eyes and asking what the fuss is about. "Sweetie, you're gonna be my flower girl!" Arlene screams, and they hug. Saved again, by a man with a diamond. Sookie's loving it, and Bill once again flashes an honest smile: a family, taking shape before your eyes. All those breakfasts still to come:
Bill sits at the table reading the paper, still wearing his band collar, when Sookie comes downstairs. "Morning, dear," he says easily; the table is full of Adele's food, on Adele's plates. From Adele's kitchen. "Bill! Did you make all this?" Am I home again? "I borrowed some of your grandmother's old recipes. But the handiwork is all mine." She smiles greedily, staring down; he tells her to start with the biscuits. And as she reaches for them, he remarks: "Gonna be clear skies all day." Clear skies, forever. The Buddha. She feels the crack before she sees it, and stares at the window: "Wait, Bill, it's light out." He looks at the window and remarks that she's right; his face begins to burn, and as he turns back to his newspaper he bursts into flame. Gone in a moment. Sookie wakes up gasping, with Tina meowing at her side.
Mike the Coroner sits at his desk, touched by death. Nodding. "Yeah. Yeah okay. No. No, I'll make the call. His mama passed a couple years back, but he had some family in Kentucky..." Bud says the dentist just confirmed Neil's dental records, and he wanted Mike to know right away. Mike's not listening. "Goddangit! Why Neil? He was such a quiet kid. I'd have never thought he'd get mixed up with fangers... Damn. To have nothing left of you to ID but teeth." Bud offers to let a home in Monroe handle Neil, not that there's much left to handle, but Mike squeezes back his tears and shakes his head. "He worked for me. I owe it to him. Give me a couple hours, I'll come over and claim him, okay?" They say goodbye, and Mike weeps.
"Pretty tore up?" Andy asks, sitting in their car outside Merlotte's. "Blindsided him. Had no idea Neil was a fangbanger." Andy points out that Neil was inordinately creepy, which he was. "What nineteen-year-old goes to work for a funeral home?" A fangbanger sort; the kind that needs to look death in the face, that goes looking for it. "I worked in a slaughterhouse when I was fifteen," Bud protests. "They made me clean chitlins." I'm not entirely sure what those are, but I'm pretty sure I won't be cleaning any, ever. Andy spots Sam: "Speaking of freaks..."
Later, in the trailer, Sam's wrapping up the story of Malcolm's visit. "...And that's it. I got no control over what people do after they leave the bar." Was anyone "unusually angry" about the fight? Mainstreaming is for pussies. Everybody was. "Heck, you might as well interrogate the whole town. Between you and me? I wouldn't be heartbroken if you didn't find who did it." Bud smiles warmly, but Andy's not feeling him. I think Andy's so willing to take any human suspect over any other suspect as another way of not dealing with weirdness. Either because he's more comfortable with it than he realizes, or because he's so very uncomfortable with it that he'd prefer not to acknowledge it, even as an active agent in murder and crime. The freakiness of humans preoccupies him: Sam, poor Jason, even Sookie. "Old Mrs. Stackhouse, on the other hand, now that's a real tragedy. Her and Dawn and Maudette Pickens, one right after the other... You fellas got any leads on that?" Don't look at me, look at the vampires and the things on whom they feed. Andy nods, lies that they've got leads, and Sam offers them encouragement. Bud drags Andy away to have lunch, and Sam breathes in their absence until Andy reappears.
"Hey, Sam?" he says, smooth as silk in his own mind, "One other thing. You recall spendin' any time out in the woods lately?" Sam nods, makes a production of it, admitting it: you got me. Your investigative tricks are too much for my simple mind. Andy crosses his arms, self-satisfied. Sam goes in for the kill. "Andy... If... If I tell you, you have to keep this a secret, all right? Nobody in town knows, but..." Andy's loving it; he leans closer. "I come from a family of naturists." Like birdwatchers? "No. No, not naturalists. Naturists. Naturists believe in a freer, clothing-optional kind of lifestyle." Andy looks at him almost cross-eyed, but it's honestly the only explanation you could give: "You're a nudist?" Oh, good Lord no. "But my folks were, I'm embarrassed to say. They spent most of their lives at a nudist colony... in Texas, just outside Beaumont. But uh... ever since they passed, I honor their memory once a year by... taking a run through the woods the way they used to. It's... It's my private way of mourning. I'm sorry if anybody had to see it." Andy grunts athletically, and smiles, and it's done.
Lafayette laughs at Tara while he's cooking at the grill: "Hooker, you done got took. That was no damn exorcism, that was a straight-up con job." Except, Tara points out, it worked: "It was like aliens beamed down and switched out her brain or something." Which changes everything: if it works, work it. Who cares where the magic comes from, what faith it demands from you, when it comes down to the same thing? To date I have not made out with Anderson Cooper but it doesn't mean I couldn't, one day; it doesn't mean he doesn't exist. She saw it with her own eyes. "That was 445 well-spent. Shit. Happy dance. You should be glad to be rid of that... That's your Mom. I ain't gonna say it." Even Lafayette doesn't know how much better it would be for Tara, if somebody would. "Fuck that. All the shit you've built up doesn't just go away because a hoodoo woman moves some rocks around on your belly." I am still in pain.
"I thought you said it worked?" Tara reminds him it was a con job by his own admission, but he shakes his head. That's not how it works. "Heifer, it's not a con job if you got your money's worth." She rolls her eyes, but he's right. "Hell, and who knows? It might do you some good too." She says she doesn't have $445 left of bullshit money, but he's unconvinced. "You just saying that 'cause you don't understand it. And trust me, this world is filled with things we will never understand. Compared to a lifetime of Zoloft? 445's a bargain." Especially when it's getting worse. She looks at him.
Sookie pops some B-12 in Sam's office, dumb on many levels, and Sam asks what she's up to; he's never seen her taking vitamins judiciously before. She never had a reason. "SO WHAT?" She asks, nasty. "YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ME PUT ON DEODORANT! OR WASH MY HAIR! OR FEED MY CAT! HAVE YOU? BUT I DO ALL THOSE THINGS! I DON'T NEED A PERMISSION SLIP FROM YOU!" He's like, the hell? He checks the shelf and realizes what it is: what he's taking from her, what she's giving away. He slams the bottle against the hearth in frustration, and the pills go everywhere. And he starts picking them up again.
Amy's off work and closed down when she gets in Jason's truck after the lunch shift; he tries on the Buddha for size. "Good day?" The thing that we say to the little woman, when our life together stretches into infinity. Amy rocks, calmly but on the edge, and spits it out: "I need V," she admits. "What? I thought you said you didn't need any again until... You needed it again." Um, yeah. "Well, I need it. Okay?" voice sharper now; he's unconvinced; he's high on something else. He is good, and wise, and no longer alone. Something like a replacement for Dawn, but without that betrayal, without the fangbanging, without the secrets: they do V together. Nothing hidden, everything permitted. "Look me in the eye. Tell me that you don't want it too." Well of course he does. It's the answer to everything, it's salvation. Me, you, the bed, the house. "Of course I do, but Lafayette won't sell it to me." Amy nods, and thinks, and all those lovely athletic muscles of her brain turn into something new. Squirrel eats nuts, snake eats the squirrel, gator eats the snake. Something's eating Amy.
Did you see Southland Tales? It's a gorgeous hot mess, like Donnie Darko, with a million threads you can follow. But the most heartwrenching was this: our boys come home and we give them God in a drug vial. Liquid karma. Sound familiar? And when they shoot it, oh, the tawdry heavens they create: dancing girls and mugs of beer, skeeball and visions of their own unscarred faces. God's not the answer to your life, He's the question you spend your life asking: Amy's engineered her entire soul around an artificial state of life, and hasn't figured out a way to get there on her own. V blows the doors off the barn and introduces you to the bed, the house; opens up every passageway and fills it with love. And if she could do it on her own -- if she didn't need V -- she'd be halfway there. She could have love, and glory, and grace. But instead she's found salvation.
There's strange music upstairs at Bill's; he puts his suit over the banister and zooms up to the bathroom, where the sound of dripping and a light under the door alert him to a curious visitor. He opens the door cautiously, sneaking around in his own house. Like Amy, like Tara. Eric lies in the bath, surrounded by candles, listening to something in Old Swedish, arrogant eyes closed to Bill's approach. "I texted you three times. Why didn't you reply?" Bill shrugs. "I hate using the number keys to type," he says honestly. Sometimes I like Bill. "What are you listenin' to?" Eric still hasn't looked up; he's a beast in the bath. "I have a favor to ask of you." A favor? Or an order? Eric finally opens his eyes, because that's the question and never the question: "Depends on how you look at it." Bill crosses his arms, considering him. "Honestly, did you think you could keep her to yourself?" He drops his eyes. No. No, he didn't.
I watch you when you are sleeping, you belong to me
Amy bites her thumbnail in the truck, watching, waiting for something. "Feels a little like stalking, don't it?" Not at all. Feels exactly like it: "It's the most natural thing in the world," she twitches, and fits her need into her philosophy. "The hunt. People used to do this all the time before we got complacent with cloned beef and prepackaged dinners." The way it slides so easily off the tongue, the way brains can take you places your heart knows better than to lead. Jason stares at her, then crouches down as Lafayette gets out of his car and Amy shivers. Jason Stackhouse, stalking Lafayette? You is a stupid bitch. Jason sits back up to start the truck, and her voice rings out. "Headlights off." He wonders how many times she's gone hunting before, and she tells him in other words: "Stay five lengths behind, ten if we get on the Parish Road." It was a flash flood. They were caught on the bridge down by the Parish Road and got swept out in the river. They couldn't save themselves. They'd found salvation.
Eddie the Vampire roams the living room in his cookie-cutter development house, lighting candles in his loneliness. There's a knock at the door, and he goes to it, nervous and in love, fussing with his hair. He's overweight, Stephen Root of the red Swingline stapler, cute but definitely what in my family we call a Third Husband. He breathes, and opens the door casually; his softness and his nervousness belie the strength and hunger in his bones. "Well hey there, sweetness," Lafayette purrs. "You ready to party?" The fangs come out immediately, as Eddie stares. "I'll take that as a yes. Nasty..." Lafayette draws his hand across Eddie's chest; it leaves ripples of hunger. In the living room, while Eddie pours him wine, Lafayette turns down the radio: "Eternal Flame," a song about desire and about the desire for desire to solve every equation. No flame's eternal. No salvation lasts.
Lafayette notices Eddie standing at the door and smiles. "I bought this specially for you," Eddie says, obviously. Eddie doesn't drink wine. "I remember you said you Go for Merlot." Lafayette grins to himself. "I said I worked at Merlotte's, but whatever. Pour me some anyhow." Eddie swirls the wine, shows Lafayette the legs like he saw on TV. Eddie's life is from television: the way things are supposed to be, the salvation stories offer us. The hooker has a heart of gold, inner beauty overcomes all obstacles, people in love buy each other little gifts, bottles of wine, people in love sometimes mediate the heat of their passion by stretching it out, into dates every Monday, so that it doesn't burn them up. Eddie is a sad little, scary little case, though, because he's not just an average couch potato TV-watching loser, getting fatter and sadder as the lonely years go by: he's also hungry, and wild, and strong, and deadly. You might forget that, but rest assured Lafayette does not. Eddie's just like any other man.
Lafayette smells the wine and considers drinking it, as Eddie comes closer and closer to him, smelling at his skin, pulling at Lafayette's jeans. Poor old sad fucking Eddie, a god in human form, sitting on a couch as his brummagem lover spits the wine back in the glass. What would a vampire know about wine? He tries and tries, but he's just a dead body animated by desire; he bought the lies hook line and sinker. St. Valentine is the worst of our demons, because he tells us that our salvation depends on other people. On love, on the actions and the tokens of somebody else's appreciation. Everybody wants to be seen, to matter: St. Valentine of the Television tells us those two very different propositions are synonyms, and we sell him our souls without a thought.
"All right, baby. Eddie juice first. Then we play." Eddie sits back, sad -- but sad because the fantasy is gone, or because his hunger is deferred? Does he think one is the other? That's my read: all of this is an elaborate fetish, playing out the puppet games he thinks people play out, like on TV. And it pushes and rages against his natural desire, to fuck and rend and suck and bite and live. Again: same as you and me. But if we slept with everybody we were supposed to, nothing would ever get done. You have to prioritize! His salvation is humanity, and the grotesque approximation that Lafayette helps him talk himself into. He licks the vein on Eddie's arm, and it pops up. Tongue on skin. Eddie gasps, rolling inside it. Lafayette smiles and slips the needle in; that awful thing that always happens with syringes, when the blood backs out suddenly, in squirting thrust. "I always look forward to Monday nights. First Heroes, then... You." Lafayette looks seriously into his eyes: "Eddie. What fun is it being a vampire, if all you do is watch TV?"
Do you feel the same?
Am I only dreaming?
"Well, I like TV." Lafayette cares about this, though. When Eddie asks him to lie and say he loves him, we can see that's what he's saying now, to some small extent: he sees Eddie, Eddie matters. "I'm just saying, you should try the bars. I know you like getting laid, too..." Eddie leans back, breathing as Lafayette draws it out. "Why should I go to the bars? I got this." And is he wrong? Isn't that pretty much what Jason was doing, with the hot and cold running ass, or Maudette, reaching higher and higher into her pain? Why go looking for anything real, why risk the journey and the skinned knees and the truth about yourself, the lies of television exposed... when salvation arrives at your door every time you call?
"You like me, don't you, Lafayette?" Eddie's voice is desperate; Lafayette soothes him, strokes him with that voice; never forget that he is a beast. "I mean... even if I wasn't helping out with the blood, you'd still want me, right?" He strokes Lafayette's hand absentmindedly. This isn't the hooker with a heart of gold story. Every vampire is a serial killer, older than time and colder than the dead. Lafayette is a hostage; no matter how much control he's got, he still has to play by the rules. So this becomes a negotiation: not just keeping Eddie twisting on the line, but keeping him from ripping out your throat. Just like a man. "Why you even got to ask me that?" Because he is in love.
"I'd hate to think it's just business for you when you come over." Eddie is soft as a flower, running to wilt, afraid to look at Lafayette, who laughs conspiratorially but never takes his eyes off that monster's face: "Of course not. What, you think I fool around with all my business associates?" If you thought about the amount of time we spend putting our lives in other people's hands, you'd never leave the house. "Ah, there we go," he says, finally popping the vial into his cooler. "Now, show me what a dirty old vampire you is."
Eddie's intense. There is no giggling, no romance in his face. Of all the things about Eddie, and Eddie's got a lot of things, you can't say he ever giggled. His need is real, he's not some fop looking for a Jude Law to buy dinners and expensive clothes -- he's a guy in a house, full of hunger he can't control, lonely and afraid and sad and violently desirous. Somewhere TV told us that people like Eddie, non-camera-ready people who sit on the couch, that their desire wasn't real and painful and controlling and compulsory. On TV, when people are horny, it makes them even sexier. On TV, nudist colonies are full of people you wouldn't mind seeing naked.
It's already healed, that scar. Eddie's hungry, leaning closer and closer, snapping like a dog at a steak, too hungry to eat. He kisses Lafayette, wildly, as though his life is beginning, as though Lafayette is a vein. And there aren't fireworks, or music, or a crowd of people watching and remembering their own lost loves. It's just two men in a sad house, with the Bangles in the background, about to exchange some loveless sodomy for drugs and lies. And when you stop looking at love as salvation, that stops looking like a nightmare and becomes recognizable. It doesn't mean Lafayette doesn't love him, even beyond the implied threat of his existence. It just means the kind of love he's looking for doesn't exist.
Eddie nearly weeps, so hungry he could crawl out of his skin and through to yours. Hungry for blood, and hungry for Lafayette's body, and hungry most of all to the answer to his loneliness; like any man, he can't really tell the differences between them. "I want you so bad," he says, nearly in tears with the enormity of his need. "I ache." Lafayette pulls his face back, by the hair, and stands. He takes Eddie's hands awkwardly, and pulls him up off the couch, and leads him away into the house. These are the deals that we make.
A whole life so lonely, and then you come and ease the pain
I don't want to lose this feeling
Sookie sits in the car outside Fangtasia!, pissed and holding a bouquet, per Lisa's instruction, from Bill: red roses and one white. When she said she wanted to go out, she clarifies, "I did not mean Fangtasia!. I mean really. All those pathetic people who come here looking for sex with vampires?" Who think it means salvation, no matter how many times their lives are threatened. Who are willing to take the risk, go right up to the door of death and knock, rather than be alone one more second. Bill grins at her hypocrisy: "I know. It's despicable!"
"Didn't even have the decency to ask me himself," Sookie mutters, and Bill puts a fourth spin on the phrase: "You are mine. He didn't need to ask your permission." Sookie hisses that Eric can't check her out like a library book, and Bill regretfully informs her that yes, he can. "Eric is Sheriff of Area 5... It's a position of great power among our kind. We do not want to anger him. As long as the requests are reasonable, we should accede to his wishes." These are the deals that we make, too. She sniffs her roses and rolls his eyes and is adorable; Bill is pleased until she tosses them onto the carseat and snarls her way out of the car. She looks amazing, she's total fangbait again: white, soft dress and sweater, those amazing breasts once again on display. Smart girl.
"I had this crazy dream this morning. We were sitting, eating breakfast, and all of a sudden the sunlight set you on fire." We will never sleep beside each other, we will never have breakfast together, because we are a family and because you do not eat, and because breakfast happens across the meridian. He knows what she means, all of it, and fidgets with his keys. "It wouldn't happen quite that way." She looks at him; the coldness of this, the way he's a man and a beast and a dead thing, all at once. "The sunlight would severely weaken me. And eventually, of course, I would die. But I wouldn't burst into flames." Is that good enough? "Not right away, at least." She rolls her eyes at another crack in the foundation. The one man in all creation that she could be with.
Tara creeps toward the hedge-witch's bus. The nature is so loud out here, a thousand creatures chirping and buzzing and hissing and sliding and fucking and eating and dying in the night. It's deafening past the crossroads. Standing at the door, listening to the world, she hears a crack and turns: Miss Jeanette, beautiful and crooked, smiling at her proudly. "I knew you'd come. Let's go inside."
The guy at the nudist -- sorry, "naturist" -- colony outside Beaumont goes all the way back to the Sixties looking for the Merlottes, but there's nothing. Andy, disappointed, says goodbye, and because it's Texas the guy invites him to their monthly naked barbecue. Andy hangs up without giving what you would call a firm RSVP one way or the other.
Pam reclines against the bar -- yes! -- in a cute pink sweater, hair soft, makeup normal, nothing dominatrixy about her; Bill is to her looking suspicious and worried or else that's just his face; Eric prowls around the bar in a black tank top; Sookie sits at a table in the middle of the room. Eric explains the favor. He, Pam and Long Shadow are partners in Fangtasia! They recently noticed $60,000 gone from the books. He indicates Bruce, a sweating chubby human accountant at the table, who is freaking the fuck out.
"Perhaps you can listen to him," Eric says, and Sookie gets snotty with him as usual, plus the rage that is bubbling ever Tara-closer to the surface: "He's not saying anything."
You have to know him, and we don't, or at least the actor, to understand how charmed he is by this. His lovely face is palsied with the effort to control his old, old hunger, and his smile is a threat, but there's a twinkle in his eyes that says there is maybe one person in Area 5, human or not, who is packing just enough game to talk this shit to him without getting kicked across the room, and that's because he is a pragmatist, just like Sookie, and realizes that every time she opens her mouth, what she's really saying is, "Fuck you for being the boss, and fuck you for putting me in a cage by dint of your existence." She could walk away from all of this, and Eric wouldn't have a call on her, do you see? She only belongs to Bill, she's only "mine," for as long as she says it's true. At least at this point. So she can afford to tell Eric to fuck off, because she's only visiting. She's only kept there by her heart, and not her blood.
"Don't be coy. It's humbling enough to turn to a human for assistance. We know what you can do." So then why not fucking glamour him? Eric respects her more than that, and asks her to fucking chill out because obviously they would have tried that already. "So," he says a little more strongly, asserting his authority in the room, "It would be a great favor to me -- and to Mr. Compton -- if you help us." Sookie asks what happens to the culprit when she finds him, and from the bar creepy old Long Shadow assures her they'll turn him over to the human authorities. "Hundreds of years old and you're still a terrible liar. Come on." She looks up at Eric, willing to deal with demons directly. She's been doing it her whole life. We look at her gifts as a handicap a lot of the time, but knowing the worst thing about every single person in Bon Temps has to give you some confidence in negotiation, right? It's like your intuition taking V. "I'll make you a deal. If you promise to hand over the person who did this to the police, I'll agree to help you... Any time you want." That shaking, terrible, barely controlled smile, and eyes that say she's the bee's knees: "Why not?" Sookie reaches across the table for Bruce.
(Shit what's this crazy bitch doing why did I agree to work for vampires goddamn it I knew it was a bad idea been nothing but straight with these fuckers gotta be an idiot to steal from them Jesus Christ I was the one who reported it...) Sookie's natural kindness takes the reins from her rage and, having shared his mind, can't be bothered to be angry any more. She's naturally Good Cop, thanks to a lifetime playing off Tara and Jason both, but this is about him. "Bruce, it's okay, take a deep breath. Did you steal their money?" He shivers and quakes and swears he didn't, babbling, and she calms him, shushing. "Do you know who did?" (I wish, I would turn that fucker in so fast couldn't have been Ginger she's too dumb although she's hot as shit I'd fuck her if I could) And that's enough of that: Sookie tells Eric he's clean.
Long Shadow coughs. "You trust the skinny human to clear the fat one?" Bill watches Eric breathe, and nod. Yes, he trusts the skinny human. She's guileless; vulnerability as power, passive mindreading as the ultimate aggression: Sookie's a Steel Magnolia because she has no other options than complete honesty. This has been her most dishonest day, and her most insanely disclosing day too, but even so. If she had anything to hide, she would hide it, or at least make the attempt not to be a bitch whenever she opens her mouth. You know what I mean? She's not scared, but she's not dissembling either. Bill practically cries, relieved, as Eric nods his approval of Sookie and orders the human brought in.
"The Fourth Man In The Fire," by Johnny Cash, starts playing on Jason's radio as they wait for Lafayette to leave Eddie's; Amy plays crazily with her hair. The song's about salvation; about the thing that's with you even when you're being destroyed, that reminds you to come home. They forgot that. It was a flash flood. They watch him drive away, and Amy starts going through her purse. She wraps the silver lariat around her neck, and Jason asks what her plan is: will they buy the man's blood? "Just remember your lines, that's all I need from you. I'll handle the rest." Jason's all, I am going to end up having gay sex tonight, I just know it and Amy's like, shut up. "I know you probably don't think I'm all that smart, but I do know that that vampire can kill us both before we even get in the door." She breathes, grossed out; she breathes out fear and breathes in the hunt. Jason looks down in her purse, and sees the new weapon inside, jumping in horror. This is premeditated. Get out of there, Stackhouse.
Eddie watches, rapt, as Reverend Newlin speaks. His hair is John Edwards shiny, his looks are Congressional Page immaculate. I kind of want to take a bite out of him, and I'm not even a vampire. His father died a few weeks ago, if you'll remember, after advocating his hate agenda a little too loudly with Nan whats-her-face, in a horrible car accident in Dallas. "...While the wing nuts on the left keep pushing their so-called Vampire Rights legislation, I'm more concerned with basic Human rights. The right for our sons and daughters to go to school without fear of molestation by a bloodthirsty predator, in the playground or in the classroom." Eddie rolls his eyes, but keeps them on Newlin, hungrily. "Someone has got to take a stand for public safety over permissiveness and immorality!" Ask yourself what's on the nose here: the use of the rhetoric, or the rhetoric itself? Something has to be said a bajillion times, no matter how retarded it is, before it becomes a cliché in the first place.
The host of the show Eddie's watching laughs at the clip: "If you ask me, he's protesting a little too hard," she says, and Eddie laughs. "Come out of the closet, Reverend Steve! I know plenty of friendly vampires who'd like to take a bite out of you." Eddie bites his lip, running hands across his skin. "Oh, but truly, it's inflammatory talk from folks like Steve Newlin who make me ashamed to call myself a human," she says, as the hilarious, campy, sad cable-access organ music starts up. "Thanks for watching, we'll be bite back!" See, when everybody has their own channel you get some shitty programming, but I don't even want to get started on that one because wow does that rant get offensive real fast.
Eddie's doorbell rings and he turns off the TV; at the door stands Jason Stackhouse, like a pizza only very much better; it's only just post-primetime, so I'd say it's about breakfast time. "I'm a friend of Lafayette Reynolds. He sent me? For you?" Jason smiles nervously, giggles that way he has when he's wondering how gay things are about to get; Eddie opens the door and Amy throws a chainmail mask over his face. It starts to steam and smoke immediately, and the screams are very human underneath it. Jason freaks out, but she moves him out of the way, binding Eddie's hands and feet with silver, ignoring him until he says her name aloud and she nearly slaps him. Eddie begs for his life and she slams his head against the floor; they carry him out to Jason's truck and load him up, screaming all the way, begging for his life. Eddie, begging for his life of couches and TV and prostitutes, and they don't even hear him.
"Strange Love" started with Kelly and Brad and a hand job, and ended with Mack and Denise. This episode started with holy pilgrims, kissing in bed, walking in each other's most exalted places; this is what happens when you think you've found salvation. Everything becomes its opposite whether or not you're there to ride the change, but if you ever let yourself think you're allowed to rest, to stop, something in you will crack, and sicken, and die.
"This is the last of our humans," says Pam, some time later, and oh, what a shining example she is. Meet Ginger, who's wearing a garment that wouldn't be up to Leeloo's structural integrity code, made out of shiny stripper crap. I didn't know they had regular strippers at Fangtasia!, although I never really looked at the servers either so maybe they all dress like that. Ginger does a fairly good impression of being what she is, which is disgusting trash, and hits on Bill on her way to sitting down and being really hostile to Sookie, but eventually thinking enough thoughts that Sookie realizes she's clean, but knows who did it. "What? Fuck you!" (Shit how'd she know I didn't tell anyone I swear fuck he's gonna kill me) Sookie asks who's going to kill her, and presses harder, and tells Eric it's just blank, like an erased memory; the four vampires look at each other and just as Pam and Sookie realize she's been glamoured, meaning the thief is a vampire, Ginger's eyes dart to Long Shadow and Sookie stands, terrified. But it's already too late, because duh he is a vampire, so he leaps over the bar and jumps her, hands around her throat and teeth out and ready.
I don't know, guys. I know this is the eighth episode to end with Sookie Stackhouse dying, and yet never quite dying, but I think this time she might really be in trouble.