Sookie arrives in Dallas -- with Bill and Jessica in travel coffins -- ten tiny bottles of airline beverages to the wind. The limo driver proves to be more than he seems, and before long Bill and Jessica have him glamoured out the wazoo and explaining that the Fellowship of the Sun contracted him to abduct Sookie and take her to the church. They also mentioned Godric, linking the Newlins to his disappearance as well.
After stopping off at Lafayette's and offering him some blood -- and the vamp GPS that comes with it -- Eric joins the Dallas crew in their vamp hotel for some more of Bill's whining. Meanwhile, Sookie tries to watch some vampire porn (Intercourse With The Vampire!) but is distracted first by Jessica's made-to-order hot human room service, and then by Barry the Bellhop, who brings it: human, and a mindreader just like Sookie.
Meanwhile, Jason finds all his church camp buddies slaughtered. Or so he thinks for a moment, having fallen prey to an elaborate practical joke invented by Luke to set off his PTSD. Far from causing him to go that kind of crazy, it sends him off on a Patton-esque speech about who knows what, which combined with a hilarious target-practice session (alongside rampantly salivating Steve Newlin) sends him even further to the top of their charts, and before you know it they've A) given him a room in their mansion and B) inducted him into the secret terrorist cell of their cult.
Back in Bon Temps, it's Tara's birthday and she's all alone in the house she now shares with Sookie, watching a special on the bulls at Pamplona. This lasts for about five seconds before Maryann shows up with her whole crew and throws a big party. Because Tara doesn't have any friends, she's a little confused by that, but before you know it everybody is dancing all slow-motion and you realize it's orgy time.
This orgy goes a bit further than orgies -- including as it does dirt-eating, cake-diving, scary sex, a little violence and Terry/Arlene and Tara/Eggs finally hooking up -- but what really sets it off are the giant minotaur claws Maryann ends up sporting. On the other hand, Daphne's revelation that her crush on Sam is unperturbed by his furry little secret couldn't have come at a better time.
Jason comes back from dinner with the Newlins pretty proud of himself, but the bunkers are dark and scary on the Light Of Day: windchimes, scary music, a dripping faucet, the whole deal. The door is hanging ajar and like, I don't know, the whistle of witches overhead and a whole family of wolves singing "Don't Fear The Reaper" in three-part harmony. Shit is dire.
But inside, oh! It is worse still! For all his brother-friends in Jesus have been slaughtered and are lying on the floor, covered in tomato-red blood! It flows from sucked-on wrists and slit-up throats! It drips from casually thrown-wide arms! It is an orgy of blood! He stares around having PTSD for a second and then somebody in a hoodie jumps him from behind and tosses him lovingly to the ground. Is it the Fangbanger Strangler back from the Bon Temps dead? It dresses like him. Or maybe it is the Unabomber! Or a vampire!
"I can smell that hot blood just under your skin," the apparently turned-on demon whispers into his ear. "Cowboy! You smell awesome!" Jason whines and wriggles beneath his bulky vampire frame, squealing, "Fuck you!" The monster laughs seductively, but not appropriately: "That can be arranged. But I'm gonna kill you first!"
The monsters bites slowly into Jason's neck -- Softly! Delectably! -- as Jason Stackhouse's QB-1 frame continues its mute undulation... But then the lights come on! And it is not a vampire's boner against his Grade A Louisiana Beef at all! It is LUKE'S BONER! All in fun. Sometimes you get a yen to play Mass Slaughter, you just go ahead and do it.
The Light of Dayers are covered in ketchup, laughing, and Jason's like, "Heck yeah I was scared! Vampires are scary!" Luke asks how his split lip is doing, while they all stand up and act goofy. His lip is bleeding, thank you, so he asks, "How's your nose?" And then punches Luke in it. Then he takes off his clip-on tie, which in addition to being adorable in its own right also signals a change into Jason Stackhouse, Orator and Flimflam Buyer.
"Vampires are not a joke!" He commands their attention regally from the start, busting somebody's Heinz bottle right out of his hands like a barely literate George S. Patton, staring at them each individually. Into their souls! "There's a war going on," he says, manfully pushing a man to the bed. "And you're either on the dark side! Or you're on the side of the light! And there ain't no in-between!" He is like a preacher! A preacher of hate! He points down at Luke, who still rolls about on the floor clutching at his nose and his harder-to-reach manhood. "I thik you broke by dose!" he shouts, but does Jason care? He does not. He tastes only a determination, a belief, reignited by this tawdry display as though the hounds of hell were at his back, waiting to be struck DOWN by awesome Jesus power. Also his own blood. Jason tastes his blood.
On Bill's red velvet couch where so much has already happened, both sad and joyful, both fickle and fated, a very sad thing comes to pass: Hoyt, buckling up his pants. He apologizes profusely, such is his love for Vampire Bill, but the doleful fire in Bill's eyes will not be so easily doused as the flames of passion roaring only seconds before! Bill throws him out once, twice, three times! But he moves too slow. Sookie throws him his shirt as he swears he wouldn't have let it go further, and begs everybody to chill. But to this "chill" our Mr. Compton will always remain a lukewarm acquaintance at best! He offers to show Hoyt out through a window! That is already closed!
"Bill, that is just rude," Sookie says, embarrassed for everybody, and Hoyt's little heart is breaking, and Jessica's like, "I LIVE HERE TOO!" and Bill says, somewhat more softly, that it's not Jessica he is protecting. Hoyt looks at her, undone, and crosses to the door as Jessica whimpers, embarrassed, with her fangs still out. His mood is regretful, with a tinge of blue balls. Which for a fangbanger, even a fetal one like our Hoyt, is no laughing matter. He could have had his first fangbang, his first intercourse with a vampire, but he doesn't mind. "I don't believe him for a minute," Hoyt says softly, sweetly, and she smiles to herself as Bill closes the door.
"We established there was to be no hunting in this house!" Bill screams, and instead of pointing mutely at Sookie, she just informs Bill of WTF is actually going on, which somebody always has to do and for which she has already demonstrated a serious competence and interest. "Look, I know you feel like shit because you had to make me. And you should feel like shit. But guess what? I'd never even kissed a boy before that." Sookie, until recently herself a young dowager, is touched. "Meeting Hoyt's the only good thing that's happened to me since my whole 'new life' started." Bill is chastened to the degree that Bill can be chastened. "Now, I'm not ready for anything to happen too fast. I'd have been happy just to go on kissing him all night long!" Now Bill is openly touched, because now you are speaking his language. The language of love!
"Is it my fault my fangs come out when I get turned on?" Bill is literally struck still, in a sort of horror, by this statement. If he were not already dead one might say he gains a pallor. Jessica slams her hand over her mouth, giggles madly, and dashes upstairs. Sookie follows a few steps and then sits down instead, to bend to the task and consider how best to make this about her.
"I think I'm going to like her." Bill doesn't like the sound of that, nohow, and reminds her that she is not allowed to befriend her daughter, at the risk of the like one half of a nut he still has: "Yeah, I get it. She is vampyre." But also, duh, I already know that and I got paralyzed on the way back from finding that out, so chill. And even more importantly, it would be great if you would bond with Jessica and thus get over your self-hatred, because hating vampires is no less grody when you are one. (Not to mention, again, that putting that shit on Jessica is the best way to fuck her up, vide her entire situation when she was alive.) He doesn't get it. "Hating yourself? Is a bad thing?"
Vampire Bill actually smiles, and becomes adorable and almost sexy for like one second: "I am vampyre! I am supposed to be tormented!" Sookie smiles back, and reminds him that neither he nor Jessica necessarily needs to be either tormentor nor "just a vampire." And then again he shows a sense of humor talking about how great he is at walking the line between vampire and human, with a quirk in his mouth. "Okay, so you can teach each other," Sookie says. His eyes go sad, in addition to music which is also sad, because oh my God the many torments of Bill Compton.
And oh my God the way the gay/vampire metaphor jumps up in some strange places. "It's so different for her. When I was made, one had no choice but to live completely outside the human world, as an outlaw. A hunter. Humans were prey and nothing else." (And now Jessica can get married! In certain states, for the moment! And she doesn't have to watch Steven Weber pretend to be a vampire in thirty different goddamn patronizing movies about Hep V! Or pretend to like Liza Minnelli!) "I envy her," says an entire generation of handlebar-mustachioed vampires, and Sookie nods.
"I'll need to call the airline to arrange for two travel coffins instead of just one..." Having gotten her way, Sookie lays on the sweetness. "Isn't it exciting? Our first trip together!" But Bill sulks, because it is sullied by the taint of Eric Northman and putting Sookie in danger and whatever. "Come on, Bill! I was almost killed last night. Again!" Sookie is the funniest in this episode than I think she has ever been, it's awesome. "At least give me this." He puts his arm around her and pretends to be happy and kisses her forehead, and they cuddle, and I love them so much more now that they're not pretending to be anything other than the dorkiest dorks that ever fang-dorked.
...With the possible exception of Da
phne and Sam, who are still swimming around in disgusting nature and getting it all over them. Daphne, on the way to being sexy, talks about how nightswimming is so awesome because you have to focus on your other senses, like being a huge werewolf I bet, and you can "feel" so much when you "take away the looking-at-things part." Maybe she was a dominatrix before this. That's like being a werewolf, but as a revenue stream.Sam's like, "Also because people suck in twelve ways which I shall now enumerate. They have boats. They have car stereos, on which they blast crap music. They say stupid things, way too loud, because they are drunk." Daphne's like, "Okay, back to my hot naked ass. Remember the world when it was brand-spanking-new and they hadn't even invented underwear like the cute underwear I am wearing only feet from you." He's like, "Yeah. Bon Temps is also paradise, like you were saying."
Daphne stops with the pothead naked talk long enough to laugh at him, because Bon Temps sucks in twelve ways additional to his twelve ways, which she will now also enumerate: number one, it is little and "hick." Number two, there is nothing to do. ("So there's less to distract you from just being where you are when you're there," Sam says incomprehensibly.) Number three, "aggressively ignorant people." ("Who are a very loyal clientele. Once they decide they like a place, they stop looking for anywhere else to go. And they like to drink," says Sam, trans. "Without aggressively ignorant people, the American economy would completely shut down. Oh but wait.")
They talk about how much Sam loves Bon Temps, and how he regrets having to leave it due to the sudden reappearance of the age-old goddess who vibrated on top of his teenage dick, plus how he has slept with every waitress under his employ except the lovely but questionable Arlene, plus how these two vectors seem to have intersected in a get-out-of-towny type way. Daphne gets a face on her face. I don't know if it's terror because she has werewolfy plans for his ass, or Jamiroquaish plans, or because she loooves him, or because she's also some sort of shifter that has finally found Sam the way Sookie finds Barry at the end of the episode, and doesn't want to lose him, or what. Maybe it's not a face, maybe she's just like, "Not until I bone you, which further to that case, how clueless can one adorable man be?"
Sam informs her that cities bring out the worst in people and also cause them to lose touch with nature and/or where they come from, which is nature also. Daphne points out that people do that in Bon Temps, too, with insane regularity, and only more so I think if Maryann gets her way. Or maybe they will stop when Maryann gets her way, which is the same problem but reversed. Too much nature ain't fucking natural, as my Grandmother used to say, and which I still dearly take to heart.
Speaking of too much nature, Daphne's fingertips are raisins, she wants sweet potato pancakes (which re: Sam completes her sentence, adorably), and she wants them now. And is he coming? No, because just like Luke he has a boner problem. She's like, "A) I know what a dick looks like, and B) water is clear. That's like its whole job. Which means C) I was checking out your dick. While wearing my adorable panties mere feet from you, and so are we getting pancakes or what?" She is very awesome, this Daphne. She does sultry really well. It's like she took the cartoon of soap operas and applied them to being a human being, which makes her sexiness and secretiveness huge but not cartoonishly so. And she climbs onto the platform and Sam sees the humongous scars we saw last week, and what he thinks about that I do not know. I don't even know if they got pancakes. I hope they did. Sam needs friends worse than the Collective Thorntons.
Of whom my favorite member is, now that it's morning, talking to Sookie on the phone about their arrangement. Which Sookie hastens to remind Tara is a permanent placement, so stop thinking you're a couch-crasher who needs to find an apartment, and just come live with me so we can be awesome together... Just as soon as I leave you all alone in a house where in the last month approximately fifty people were murdered and/or nearly murdered and/or turned into dogs who may or may not have gotten into fistfights with vampires and where I was recently chased around the kitchen a dizzying number of times by our town's first serial killer. On your birthday.
(To which a conscientious co-tenant might reply, "Sure, as long as you don't mind my orgiastic Dionysus cult establishing a base of operations in -- and splattering blood, jizz and cake all over the walls of -- your childhood home! Happy-ass birthday!")
"You're family," Sookie signs off, and Tara laughs delightedly. "A limo is picking me up at five today, so..." Tara's nervous and touched, and not wanting to do the step after this, so she says she'll be there as fast as she can, and signs off with a choked "Love you the most." Which of course causes Maryann to appear from nowhere and goose her, sending her ten feet in the air because of all the conversations, why that one?
"Who do you love the most?" Maryann giggles, and Tara laughs uncomfortably. "Sookie." Maryann dances around fruitily, asking what's on the books for today. "I ... Think I'm gonna be taking off," Tara says warily. Maryann pops something sweet and delicious into her mouth: "You're taking off work? Fabulous!" Tara shakes her head, beyond afraid at this step into the future, but more so about Maryann's disappointment. "No, I'm gonna go live with Sookie." Maryann sways like a snake. "I'm very sorry to hear that." Tara stutters that it was only supposed to be temporary, and Maryann twirls her, softly but lunatic: "Everything's temporary, Tara!" She pulls away. "...I don't really wanna dance right now. Okay?"
Lynda Barry has an interesting thing to say, which is that some dogs are so beaten by the time you get them, you could spend a lifetime training them to stay off the bed, go to the bathroom in the proper place, not be scared of strangers or men, stop shivering when there's nothing to be afraid of. Stop barking when people try to pet you. You could go nuts waiting for them to pull it together. And in these cases -- and for us all -- there exists an alternative, which is to go back to the beginning. You let that dog, no matter how old or stinky or terrified or angry, just be a puppy again. You let her have the chance for another mother, a softer and more loving one. You hold her, speak in soothing tones, and you let her have her way just long enough that she realizes she's got a second shot. Now, it's only temporary, and in the wrong circumstances -- and most of the time they are -- this would be disastrous. But if the dog is broken enough, sometimes it's a way to heal.
"Of course," Maryann says, in a false high tone, obviously hurt. "What happened? You fit so well here, and you..." she flits and whines, putting her hands to her hair like the goddess whose body is a blade, "seemed to be having so much fun last night." Tara nods grimly. "Think everybody was having a little too much fun last night." Maryann laughs. Knowingly, uproariously, provocatively. It was fun, wasn't it. "Will you ... tell Eggs I left?" she asks, sadly, and even more sadly Maryann agrees. She puts her arms out dramatically with a loving moan, pulling Tara close. "Oh, I'm gonna miss you!"
Tara thanks her, and Maryann squeezes her hard, looking into her eyes with ultimate love. "I'm sure you'd do the same for me." And maybe she will. Maryann puts her hands on the sides of Tara's head, like a mother to a daughter, and the temperature in the room says it's no longer appropriate, that it's time for Tara to move on:
"Go. Flourish. And don't every say no to yourself. Okay?" Tara smiles, and walks away, rolling her eyes at the diva/guru vibe that just now started to come apart. But it's the medium, not the message, that's wrong: like any good philosophy, it's precisely one-half of the truth. At its extremity, asceticism is violence. That's true. But at its extremity, so is abundance. Alone in the kitchen, Maryann goes hollow. The triumph and the tragedy of gods is that they are one thing, all the time. They don't change because they don't have to. The triumph and the tragedy of us is that we do.
Jason eats his breakfast and fights theology with Luke and the intensely delicious Dirk: "I don't know who Lazarus was, but he sure as hell was not the first vampire. Everybody knows it was Dracula!" Luke explains that in the Bible, Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. Which, Jason points out, means Jesus made the first vampire. And for that matter, maybe it was Jesus instead: "He rose from the dead too! And he told people, 'Hey, y'all, drink my blood. It'll give you special powers.'" Dirk shakes his head as Luke protests, and says they're both wrong: being a vampire is the mark of Cain, his punishment for bringing the first evil into the world by killing his brother. Luke protests that the firster evil was Eve eating the apple, hence "Evil," which is hilarious and also kind of deadly serious. Ask Jessica's dad if he doesn't sort of think that's true. Or her second one. Life is a palindrome; now death is too.
But Jason's tasted a few apples in his time: "That wasn't evil, that was just skirting the rules. Evil is making the premedicated choice to be a dick." Heh. The PA summons him to meet Reverend Steve outside, but Luke can't decide to gloat about this latest thing. "There's one thing you can count on: God will make sure evil gets punished." Jason tosses over his shoulder as he's leaving, "Yeah? Then explain Europe to me." They stare.
Outside, Jason's scared because Steve's in a golfcart with a big old gun, which he cocks: "Ain't she a beauty? Let's you and me take a little trip together." He pats the seat and Jason asks if he's in trouble. Something dark behind the brightness. "We're all in trouble, Jason. As long as there are vampires in the world!" Jason hops up beside him, unnerved, and they roar off. Hope somebody brought a condom.
Sookie tells Tara to ignore her stuff and take her room, and when she gets back she'll move all her stuff into Adele's room and celebrate Tara's birthday. As an early/actually punctual gift, she gives her that TERRIFYING picture of the two of them with Gran looking like Leprechaun In Da Hood, and they cry and hug and hug and cry and it basically turns into Tara comforting Sookie for her loss yet one more time.
(Which, fine, because although it's Tara's birthday, Gran died like three weeks ago. I think like Lost or Weeds, this show will be much awesomer on DVD, because the end-to-end joining of the episodes won't stick out so much. I mean, you had people complaining about come on already with the constant orgies when it was only like the third episode, which on DVD is not going to seem like three weeks of orgies, it's going to seem like what it is, which is a 24-hour period in which Bon Temps goes from X to Y, on its way to Total Z. Total, I mean to say, Z. As in, in tonight's performance the role of Kevin Bacon will be played by Maryann Forrester and the part of "dancing" will be played by "the breakdown of consciousness via the return of the bicameral mind." Am I making myself clear? Because ya got trouble, folks! Right here in Renard Parish! With a capital T and that rhymes with ODC and that stands for ORGIASTIC DIONYSUS CULT! Right here in Renard County! On a cultural level!
There's been the same thing in comics for years, it's called "writing for the trade" and it means basically that a standard comic book story-arc is now pieced out to six or eight issues (like this show does arcs for twelve, or most one-season broadcast shows do for thirteen) which only get awesome when collected the year, so that the company can keep up a production schedule of two $19.95-or-so trade paperbacks a year rather than -- optimistically speaking -- twelve smaller $2.95-or-so, it's been a while, issues that less people buy because they're waiting for the trade. So the buying habits have pushed the development cycle and storytelling itself in this new, often initially unsatisfying format, which only good writers can
balance for both -- and it leads to a lot of bullshit filler and/or repetitive stuff.And on the fan side, you have two completely separate discussions: the week-to-weekers, like us, and the DVD people year, right before the season; it's the same in comics. In TV, it's easier in some ways to balance, since there's no purchase outlay to watch each individual episode which means even disgruntled viewers aren't risking anything by watching, while comics people might just drop the book and wait for the trade so they don't pay twice, but it's the same basic principle. So you get on paper, "in these six episodes Jason will fuck a lady and feel weird about vampires, because that's his arc for this part," which is fine on paper but means six. weeks. of. fucking for people watching in realtime. Which turns them off of Jason, which sucks because I don't know if you're aware, but to me Jason is the bomb.
My favorite one of those is Buffy's classic magicks junkie plot, which lasted all of two episodes, but they happened to be stretched over the winter break so it seemed like the person was in this ridiculous repetitive drug spiral that lasted two months because, subjectively in realtime, IRL time, it did -- but in showtime it was all over before the sun came up. Same deal with Sookie's bullshit, which in actual showtime makes sense because each season takes only two fun-filled weeks, and not four months like it does for us to watch it, so instead it seems like she's been fuckin' crying about Gran for exactly 280 days... Which is also true. This show particularly is rife with those. "My God, Lafayette stop whining! It's been two weeks!" Actually no, it's been literally ten minutes since I laid down on this couch, give me a sec.)
So anyway, sorry, it's hard to think about the business and stuff when everything is so intense all the time, but I take enormous pleasure-slash-comfort in thinking about that stuff when the magicks have got me down, and Tara finally lets Sookie go uncomforted for five seconds to ask why, of all places, did Sookie choose Dallas for her romantic getaway? They laugh, and Sookie says brightly as ever, "Bill has some business there." Tara thinks about this for a second, suspicious, and then nods angrily. "Hell. Do those vampires wanna use your mindreading again?" Sookie points out that Bill will protect her, which as a response is such weak sauce even she seems a little offended.
Tara wonders why Sookie's even with Bill, if he keeps pulling her into his vampire shit, but before Sookie can explain that, since it's her deal with Eric this is actually her vampire shit, she goes, "The sex can't be that good." As though giving Sookie another chance to be awesome is her life's work. And Sookie immediately goes, "Oh, it's pretty good." And then -- after just enough of a pause that it's plausibly not an afterthought, but delicious nonetheless -- "And I love him." Anna Paquin is a gifted motherfucker, that's awesome. Tara starts to say something, but Sookie decides to deliver a short speech, entitled What I Keep Telling Myself, Which Also Happens To Be True, And Which Also Applies To Your Situation, About Which I Have Not And Will Never Ask: "You can't just sit around saving your heart for some perfect idea of a man who's never gonna come along." Tara's like, "You're right! That does apply to my situation, not that you would or will ever ask!"
"Life is too damn short. Besides, Bill's not making me do anything. I agreed to this to save your fool cousin, thank you very much!" Tara melts into hysterics, because WTF is going on with Lafayette now, and she didn't even know he'd reappeared after his unceremonious disappearance three weeks ago, and Sookie feels dumb, but then dishes the dirt because they are sisters not only w/r/t Adele, but also Lafayette.
Coroner and swinger-of-late Mike Spencer, who I decided the other day looked pretty hot in Trekkies 2, stands over Miss Jeanette's body and notes that there have been panther sightings in Nakatosh, to which Bud -- apparently a felinetologist on top of everything else -- responds that the paralyzing gashes in her back are two wide for panther scratches. Another thing we'll miss until the DVD, then, is the self-conscious way this scene mirrors and responds to the vampire/dwarf scene at Fangtasia! where the same questions and answers came out in whole other ways over Sookie's body. E.G., "I can tell you this: There's some nasty poison in that wound," says Mike: "My guess is it paralyzed her. And she was alive when they took the heart, and that's what killed her."
Kenya asks if it was an animal, and he says the back, yes, but the heart was carved out by a knife for sure. Bud asks if this then was the work of a "human/animal collaboration," which is exactly what it was, and at Kenya's protests says that he was making "what people with an actual sense of humor" call a joke. Andy comes blundering into the office just as Kenya's like, "Sorry, a black woman is paralyzed and then butchered to death in the town where I live? Not entirely funny," and then what is funny is Andy, some more, screaming about the Big-Ass Paul Bunyan Pig mentioned in her Tara report.
Bud reminds Andy he's not even supposed to be looking at the files, and Mike bounces for the gym, noting that he's spending time with his shirt off lately due to being inducted into a Dionysian orgiastic cult. "Didja get a good look at that pig?" Andy roars, and Kenya reminds him she didn't see the pig, because there was no pig, because Tara made that shit up. "Was it brown? Because I've seen that pig! In a dollhouse!"
(Pause for applause, laughter.)
Bud's like, "Bitch, you are drunk! Again!" and Andy protests but then admits he's only had a few, like anybody who drinks in the middle of the day, such as Bud Dearborn, who points out that he's not in recovery and thus answers to nobody, while Andy answers to a higher power plus Bud Dearborn, and before you know it Andy's screaming at Bud that he is a dumb old man who sucks, to Kenya's horror and Andy's subsequent token attempt at apology, so then Bud has to commandeer Andy's gun and badge, to which Andy responds with a tearful, childish, hilarious and oddly moving, "Oh, hell no! NO!" Before he gives it up.
Lafyette's lair is a pile of pills, Swishers and vodka, girl-interrupted by Tara banging on the door. "I know you're in there! Even if you won't pick up the phone!" Finally he unlocks the door with a mumbled damn hooker shit, nursing his gunshot leg all the while -- it's still just this morning -- and immediately returns to the couch so that hysterical Tara can harangue him about all of it. "How come I have to hear about you being back from Sookie?" Highlights including: "That you got shot! And fed on! And chained up! In some vampire dungeon!" Lafayette suggests that both Sookie and Tara, now, should keep this schtum, and notes that he is not interested in going to the hospital, where young black men with gunshot wounds tend to invoke the police up in one's business.
"You need to see a doctor," Tara says, and he reminds her that they can't even get him the drugs he already has, and that Uncle Cyrus has already been called into surgery. She lies down to him, aching for company, and promises to take care of him, which sets off every PTSD and depression alert bell he's got. "Hooker, look. I'm not in the partying mood right now, okay?" She says she just wants to watch TV, lonely after all that time chez Maryann, and worried about him besides. "Bitch, look. You know I love you, all right? But I just spent two and a half weeks thinking I'm gonna die at any second. I ain't got it in me to take care of you tonight. All right?" He's only half honest here; the other half is shame and shock. She nods and goes to the door. "If you die, I'm
gonna be really pissed." He agrees -- "That makes the two of us" -- and lies back down, blanket all the way up over his face.Sam unloads a flat of tomatoes under Terry's angry gaze, and he interrogates his boss about whether not not -- hopefully not -- he's even still leaving. Sam goes into the back room, and Sookie arrives at the window, asking if there are lunch specials today. Good of her to show up for work once in awhile. He says he could make "Jailhouse Chili," and she asks if, like last time, he forgot the corn chips. Shouted profanity and a dropped knife are her answer; the pressure is on him again. "Right. We'll just call whatever this turns out to be Terry's Scramble. Scrambled Terry's Scramble..." She tells him to hush, because of all the people in Bon Temps she knows the fuzzy boundary between people thinking you are crazy and actually being crazy, and he sighs.
"I just don't know if I can do it, Sookie." Do what? "Run this place when Sam leaves town. It's too much pressure." She puts on a smile to cover her hurt. She wasn't there when he felt like saying goodbye, last night. And when Sam reappears, he's not feeling that way anymore. She follows him out to his truck, and there follows a tremendous fight, the basics of which are that Sookie is offended that he was skulking away because they are friends and she loves him, and that while she knows there was a moment where his doggie sunlight love was more attractive than Bill's twice-dead vanishment, ultimately she did apologize. Sam, give up now! You are in the no-spin zone! Even if you quote Balzac and Shakespeare and all them other highfalutin' Greeks, you have no chance!
Sam's basic point, on the other paw, is that this conversation is not actually about saying goodbye or not saying goodbye so much as it is making Sookie feel better for dicking him around, especially since that once-proud duty has to take a backseat to the very real secret shit that he has to deal with right now, and that maybe she should just take being the bad guy like a man for once. Her rejoinder is that she also has very real secret shit, and needs a few days off, but also that he is letting everybody down in whatever fashion he is letting everybody down. They are both right, but Sookie wins by A) being Sookie and B) being the first one to huff away.
Jason and Steve have gay sex in that time-honored tradition of straight men everywhere: by shooting things. Specifically cardboard vampires, with paintballs, spread throughout some kind of nature preserve that pop up as the golfcart zooms past them. Which is to say, things are fucking awesome right now. Finally they're done, after Jason has wahood and yeahed and Boom! You're gone! Boom! You're gone! How do you like me now, you scary-ass motherfuckers?'d his way through the maze. Steve, already more in love than he was previously in love, stares at Jason like a dripping porterhouse and says they should give him wooden bullets time.
"No! Silver bullets? Way cooler!" Steve explains, with the wild light of a very real Lord in his eyes, stares with holiness. "Silver bullets won't kill a vampire, they'll just bring him down so he can be staked. But if you shoot a fanger straight in the heart with a wooden bullet, you are staking him right there. Makes them explode!" He looks down mournfully: "...So I hear." Jason shakes his head, back there for a second: "No. They just kind of fall apart," he says sadly. "It's like a water balloon." Steve gets all horned up again. "Oh! That's gotta be a sight! Watching God's awesome power just obliterate evil, right in front of your eyes!" Jason begs to differ in his silence, but Steve's talking to himself now: "One day. One day soon."
I love the Newlins. I love their purity of purpose and the hate and fear and absolute rightness/righteousness behind what they are doing. As much as this show is about the horror of any absolute, it's also fun and enlightening to glory in them all. But I most of all love the actors who play them. Awesome io9 interview this week in which Michael McMillan draws allusions between not only his character and GW (both from TX, both with the Dad thing, both dealing with world-changing events in a particularly God-driven way) but also noting the Arthur/Lancelot vibe between Steve and Jason. And for this, for which I will always love him: "In some ways [Steve's] like Bruce Wayne. He's setting out to ensure that what happened to his family won't happen to anyone else."
Tara cries, eating cereal in her new house and watching her life story play out on the television: "For young Rafael Cordova, it was the beginning of the longest day of his life. Rafael first ran with the Pamplona bulls the week after he turned 18, following in the footsteps of his two older brothers, and had run five consecutive runs without a scratch..." It's all Tara's ever done, it's all we ever do. It's what she's doing now, and she doesn't even know it. There is a sound, outside, somewhere, and it occurs to her that she is all alone, in that big house, where danger comes regardless of the sun.
There's nobody on the porch, there's nobody at the window, there's nobody outside the door, which she forces herself to approach, unlock, to turn the knob, to open and step outside into the quiet, terrifying sunlight. And then from nowhere, a hand reaches out and grabs her. "Surprise!" they scream: Maryann, Karl, Eggs. She shivers, and breaks into tears. "Aww, did we scare you?" Asks Maryann. Were you all alone, did you miss our enveloping arms, did you miss Eden? She falls into Maryann's arms, still terrified and embarrassed to be terrified, embarrassed about the tears that were already on her cheeks. "Yes," she sobs for a moment, in shock. She's been terrified since she left.
"Nobody should spend their birthday alone!" Maryann says expansively, ushering Karl into the kitchen with a huge, beautiful cake adorned with a rainbow of flowers. "Aww," she says, patting Tara's cheek as she makes her way into the house, uninvited. Any house could be Maryann's house: For wherever two or three are gathered together in her name, there she is, in the midst of them. All you have to do is say yes.
Eggs asks why she was crying, when they watched her, before they let her hear them in their glee. "I always cry on my birthday. It's always the worst day. No matter what I do I end up crying, because my birthday always sucks." It would be so awesome if every season Tara's birthday really did suck, just like Buffy's. But at the rate this show moves, we'll all be dead by her birthday. "Well, this is the year that changes," he promises, kissing her cheek tenderly. This is the day everything changes.
"We have been planning this party for days," Maryann says, sweeping into the room again. "But you threw a major monkey wrench into things by moving out!" Tara remembers the cake: wasn't it a wedding cake? Maryann laughs, so abundantly that Tara joins in. "Wedding. Birthday. What's the difference? It's all about casting off the empty shell of what's dead and embracing the mysteries of what is yet to come!"
(If "it" is the Big It, then yes, I agree. But neither weddings nor birthdays are actually about that particular It. They are about celebrating what came before, and the real world they've created and in which you sit. Neither of which Maryann knows much about; neither of which Maryann has to think about. Honestly I have said everything already about Maryann that I can say, which just goes to show you the show made a place for her before she ever came to Bon Temps, so I guess blame the show.) "We are gonna have a wicked good time tonight, I can just feel it in my bones. I've been on the phone all day calling all your friends!" she says, stressing the your, and dashes off madly back into the house. And the punchline, of course, Tara supplies: "
What friends?"Indeed. Huxley has a thing, in Doors Of Perception I think, about the "reducing valve," which is the thing that makes us work. Imagine if all your memories, your pain and your pleasure, your tragedies and triumphs, were all happening simultaneously. How old are you? Times 365, times 24, times 60, times 60. All at once. The reason very small babies just sit there is because they're collating and processing every single thing and combining and comparing it to every single other thing, trying to make sense of the insanity of sensation. The reducing valve is what, in Huxley's image, keeps us from staying there. Most of your brain, that chaos is alive: somewhere down there, we're all of us every age we've ever been, and sometimes surprising usses take the Talking Stick. We live at the very top of the iceberg, and think we can see the whole world. What Maryann does is take away the reducing valve. Like poetry, or Tim Lysergic Leary and the Kool-Aid Kesey Kuckoo Acid Bus, or the Classics students of Hampden/Camden College: if you lose the ability to perceive time, or consequences, then you become eternal. Any house could be Maryann's house, as long as you never say no to yourself.
What follows is wonderful and takes a while, but like the constant orgies is hard to really describe. Sarah is grilling up a meal for her boys, who drink beers and make small talk. Except it's Steve who smally is talking, and Jason is just staring at Sarah as she turns from a person into a fantasy, and does an outrageously funny and sexy (and improvised) dance at the grill: first she twirls, and giggles, as Steve's voice recedes into the mental distance, and then smacks her Christian ass with a spotless metal spatula, and unsnaps her apron -- No Special Rights For Dead People -- to free her breasts, which then join her in a dance, which becomes bootylicious, and then the grand finale: licking the entire shaft of a beer bottle before tipping it back. Jason finally shakes his head and snaps to, where Steve is still talking, and barely keeps it together.
Later, Steve makes a comment about how Sarah used to be a vegetarian, which Jason unwisely admits he already knew, and Sarah enters the room with a tray of ribs -- "Hope you boys are ready for some true Southern decadence!" -- and Steve giggles. "You don't really eat Sarah's ribs. It's more like you take a bath in them." They all laugh like crazy people, and then -- like Lynda Barry's puppy -- Sarah helps him with his rib-eatin' bib.
I'm reminded, with the Newlins, of Farscape, of all things, where the gross stuff -- the particularly Australian glorying in bodily fluids, sex jokes, the like -- always occurred when the most important shit was going on. You wanted to look away at the precise moment you should be paying the most attention. And with the Newlins, you see that the show has sort of the same principle happening: whenever things are at their silliest, or the most cartoonish, or the seemingly most leftist or whatever, that's when the real shit is happening. Lafeyette doesn't turn capers to make you laugh, in a bit: he turns capers to make you stop thinking about the real price of his joy.
This isn't a sex farce and it's not some adolescent anti-Republican screed: it's the real shit, happening in front of you, so that later you can say you didn't know how the trick was done. It's not just a seduction of the body, or the mind, or the soul. It's all of them. They are doing the Lord's work, and they are doing it well. He lost his parents when he was ten.
"Steve," Sarah says once she's seated, apropos of nothing, "I think Jason has the makings of a true soldier of God." And he's not even lying: "I was just thinking the same thing!" Jason assures them he's got a long ways to go, but Steve tells him that's not true. Steve and Sarah check in silently, across the table. "God has chosen you..." Sarah coughs with praise: "Amen!" Chosen you: "For His most glorious mission." ("Praise His light!" she shouts, in classic misdirection.) "We are forming an elite spiritual army called the Soldiers of the Sun." Sarah stares at him, a-bibbed and ready for ribs: "And Jason, we need you. God needs you." Sarah grabs at Jason. "What a blessing." He says okay, and they take him in their hands, across the table. "All right!" she yells, on fire with the Lord.
Because by that logic, then, this funniest of episodes must be hiding the darkest secrets, in the places you'll never look for them. In fact, in places you'd be terrified to look for them. But see, here, now: Texas is a chessboard. Whatever's going on in Louisiana, with Maryann: Texas is a field of war. Watch them: Vampires versus humans. Nobody's right, nobody's wrong; everybody's at the behest of forces, pains, desires they don't understand. For vengeance, for power, for primacy. Balanced and equal, armies of light and darkness. And nobody knows which is which, and that is the truth of war.
Watch them, swaying like snakes, brightness hot in their eyes. Watch the pretty lady smile, and laugh, and check her lover's eyes for support. The White Queen. Watch the silly, funny White King looking into their pawn's eyes, with so much love. Watch the way they set his greatest fears, his worst nightmares, to rest: You're doing so well. I'm sure your Lord will be pleased. What could you do? It's not your fault. You got so nervous for nothing!
Daphne orders Andy another scotch and Coke, and Sam heads over the deal with him himself. Daphne remarks to Arlene, whose nine fingernails hate the fact of her existence, that it's a slow night. "Lucky for you," Arlene fairly hisses. Sam and Andy discuss his ever-less-convincing sobriety, and Sam points out that if he dried out he could have his job back, but of course he can't stop drinking until he does, which: welcome to addiction, and he bitches about tight-ass Portia and his tighter-ass Grandmama Bellefleur and what a loser he is, and finally Sam cuts him off.
"He's the only one in here," Arlene points out, obviously on her way toward something she wants, "No one else has come in for over an hour!" And so: "Let's close up early! I want to go to Tara's party." At Sookie's, she explains, for her birthday. "You know that real elegant woman that Tara's friends with? She's throwing it, and I heard she knows how to throw a party..." Andy agrees, loudly, across the bar. "And I need to ask Tara about a pig!"
"So can we go?" asks Arlene, and Daphne appears: "Go where?" Arlene's face immediately falls, into a snaky kind of rest: "...Home?" Andy lets her in on the secret, and Daphne jumps out of her apron, while Arlene hates the shit out of her. Daphne flirts with Sam, asking him to come with, but as they clear out Lettie Mae appears, holding a sad, tinfoil-wrapped gift. Of course her gift would be a mirror.
Sam treats Mrs. Thornton respectfully, admitting that he and Tara broke up and telling Arlene to stop eavesdropping almost in the same breath. "Today's Tara's birthday. Twenty-six years old. Would you give this to her? I don't know who else to ask..." She is ashamed, and weak, almost like a ghost. Almost like a woman whose heart has been torn out. He accepts it, and she runs, and he sighs, because now he's the bearer of the gift, and has to attend. It would be so awesome if every episode were just this: Sam trying like fuck to get out of town, and some other waitress he's hooked up with blocking the door.
Anubis Airlines welcomes you to Dallas, the most vampire-friendly destination in the great state of Texas. Which is funny on multiple levels, if you know Texas, but basically resolves down to: A) Welcome to Dallas, we are the most money-friendly destination in the universe, B) Welcome to Dallas, we invented vampires and will suck out all your money, and C) Welcome to Dallas, we are lying if we say we are friendly to anybody, especially minority groups such as yourself, but please give us your money so we can have even more money.
Sookie floats wackily
down the gangway toward an unhappy guy with a sign that says COMPTON PARTY, giggling and yoo-hooing. God, I hate Breaking Bad. She holds up the tiny bottles of Grey Goose, giggling in her best Owen Meany. "I've always loved these! THEY'RE LIKE BOOZE FOR DOLLS! THEY GAVE ME TEN!" He asks her repeatedly to get in the limo, but she's too busy wiggling around in her weird dress, and finally the out-of-place firmness in his tone sends her looking inside his brain. Just get in the goddamn limo you stupid bitch, he thinks, and immediately at her recoil he grabs her. She shouts for about two seconds before Bill appears at his throat. "Make a noise and it will be your last." Meanwhile, Jessica's still in her coffin, jostling it so hard it falls off the luggage cart, screaming, "How the hell does this thing open?"Everybody in the world is at Sookie's, including Sam with the sad present and some impressively window-down doggy hair. He makes his way through the already-excited crowd on her lawn and porch, nervous because of how he hates people, but also because this is officially a Maryann Party, and some deep-magic part of him knows what that means. She greets him at the door, at the threshold, and damn she looks good. White gown, classic lines, white flowers in her hair. Excessively dangly earrings and necklace. She looks like a goddess. "A present? For me? I love presents!" That's like Maryann's Indian name. Dances With Presents. Sam tells her it's for Tara, but it's only when he admits it's from Lettie Mae that her face goes sour, and she hums displeasure. "Gift table is in the dining room."
Sam puts the gift down, and Maryann reappears at his elbow. "Well, I have to say, I'm impressed by your showing up!" He grins angrily, and responding to the implied threat after last night, tells her to go ahead: she'll also reveal herself in the process, if she does the thing. "Reveal myself as what?" she asks sweetly. As whatever the hell she is, of course. She laughs, but he leans in quiet: "I don't know what you're doing, but these are people I care about. And I will not stand by if you try to hurt any of them." He's forgotten how she feels about threats, I see, but she doesn't seem to mind: "Even when they've dumped you? Or chosen a dead man over you?" She laughs, and caresses his cheek. "You're really not an alpha, are you?" She goes aww again and dances away. Daphne waves to him from the kitchen, and he walks past Tara and Eggs without noticing.
"Who are all these people?" asks Tara, and he says he sees none, because he only has eyes for her. When these two talk to each other it makes me want to barf. But maybe that's puppy magic too. I mean, her bender did include an '80s prom dress, it's not only possible but likely that this crap would work on her. "Seriously, who are all these people? And why are they bringing me presents? Not that I'm complaining." He very specifically doesn't answer this last, turning the conversation to her dancing -- " Anybody that dances like you should dance every fucking day" -- and they move together as Maryann watches and smiles, happily. Almost at her command, the music changes, going hotter and more rhythmic -- albeit sounding like '90s hip-hop, something a fifty-year-old man from Sacramento would find just edgy enough without being noise -- and the crowd cheers. Tara even goes haaaaay.
Maryann snags Lettie Mae's present, while Terry and Arlene dance more slowly and insistently in the yard, and a woman celebrates with a ring of laurels in her hair; she dumps the gift in the garbage like Balzac or Shakespeare and heads into the forest, hands up over her head, stretching luxuriously. On the porch, Andy drinks a beer, shouting; the dancing takes them all; Maryann vanishes into the darkness.
In the limo, Bill stares into the driver's eyes, casting a glamour. "All right, Leon. No one is going to hurt you..." struck by a thought, he turns to Jessica, who is rapt. "Would you like to try?" She breathes, and he motions her closer: "Here, lean in close so you can catch his gaze. And just let everything go. Let yourself be dead." Sookie stares, fascinated. "You feel it?" he asks quietly. "You are empty. A vacuum. Now you can pull his mind into yours..."
Jessica takes over, confidently, not letting his gaze drop. She spent a lot of time being empty, in her day. "Everything's gonna be okay. There's nothing to fear..." Bill gets out of her way and moves to sit with Sookie; her monologue carries on as they grin, at her and at each other: "Don't you worry about a thing. It's gonna be all right..." Sookie's impressed: "You were very sweet with her." Bill worries, because some dude just tried to kidnap her, and that means somebody's behind it. He knows it wasn't vampires, because it was so sloppy, which leaves the Fellowship. She scoffs. "Bill! They may be crazy, but they're still a church. They're not gonna kidnap anybody." He points out that they've done worse.
But then, that's the question, isn't it? Steve and Nan fought this one out on TV once already, this season, haven't they? Whose atrocities, which army, is worse? "Just trust me," says Jessica in the background, swaying like a snake.
Jason returns, proud, and Luke asks what the "dork face" is all about. Jason trumpets that he's moving out, becoming a Soldier of the Sun, and though Dirk is surprised, Luke is just once again grossed out. "You heard of it?" Jason asks, cocky, and Luke spits. "Of course I've heard of it, it's why I came here. I guess you feel pretty special?" Jason allows as how there's nothing wrong with feeling good when you achieve something, and then gets all hubristic about how Luke wouldn't know. Luke drops the bomb that they're all going, fourteen others total, including him and Dirk, thank God.
Dirk pipes up to say that even some women are becoming Soldiers. As though by the pejorative implication that doesn't burn him just as bad. (I tweeted something the other day about how it was obvious to me even before the election that the GOP was going to scapegoat poor stupid Sarah Palin just like they did poor stupid Lynndie England and poor stupid Eve before them -- either in loss by blaming her, which is what happened, or if they won by turning her into Dan Quayle, win/win -- and ended with some offhand thing about "And I'm dumber than Sarah Palin!" To which some member of the conservative braintrust who was monitoring Twitter that day for reasons known only to him responded, "Yeah, you probably are!" Irony 1, Palin 0.)
Trying to get it back, Jason asks if they're all going to be bunking at the Newlins' like he is, which causes a momentary duh for everybody before Luke finds a way to get in there, laughing that he gets it: "I get it. Preacher's wife needs something to play with." Jason is honestly insulted, because after all, puppy magic aside, these are the only people who have ever said he was good at anything besides fucking. They haven't been incredibly specific on what that is, besides the marksmanship, but they're pretty sure he has this like undefined excellence. I mean, I love him, and I want him on my team, but I'm pretty sure it's for the exact opposite reasons, and I still couldn't really define it for you. Which is fine, because like he cares.
"She wants your hot beef injection," Dirk clarifies, and the whole bunk relaxes: that's what Stackhouse is bringing to the table. We aren't being Esau'd, we're legitimate. It's Jason that hasn't earned it. The whole world is right again. Which is sad on many levels, number one being Jason Sad Face, but also: this is a case in which Jason's skills are useful, basically because every army needs cannon fodder and a poster boy, just as every cult needs a terrorist cell. I'm not saying he's not going to nail Sarah Newlin -- and the number of eyes on his ass, seems like he'll pull a train with most of the Institute -- but that doesn't mean he didn't earn this. He earned this the same way you earn your way into any predator's lair: by being delicious and stupid.
p>"That ain't true. And you shouldn't talk about Sarah that way!" Jason yells, which Luke just uses against him: "You work fast!" He swears this time he isn't working, and packs his stuff as quickly as possible, mortified and terrified and turned on and self-hating as usual. "She ain't like that. I earned this!" Luke assures him that, either way, he most certainly did.
The desk agent at the Hotel Carmilla (nice) says the computer has Bill and Sookie down for one room, no bed. Bill of course immediately starts seething, but Sookie -- because she grew up with Jason, and knows that only Bill's well I never pearl-clutching invokes such powerfully nasty playfulness from Eric -- grins and lets it slide: "Nooo, we need a bed." The woman hooks them up with a "light-lockable," "double-soundproofed" king suite, and Bill asks for an adjoining room for his... What to call Jessica? The vampire word, he tells Sookie, is "progeny," which isn't true either. "Call her your ward!" Sookie exclaims. "You have a ward, like Bruce Wayne!" Who turns, of course, into a bat every night.
Over in the lobby, Jessica sits with a still very addled Leon. "Would you give me your cell phone?" He hands it over and she bounces in teenage ecstasy on the opulent leather couch. "Thank you, Leon. Everything's okay!" He nods, and she reconsiders. "Actually, everything's not okay. All your worst fears are about to come true..." He shudders and begs. "Unless you scream at the top of your lungs..." She whispers into his ear.
Over Bill's confirmation that Mr. Northman is paying their bills, Leon screams from the lobby, "Becky Eubanks is a stuck-up whore who let Chase finger her in the church!" Jessica rocks, almost falling over, rolling around in joy on the couch. It echoes. "She's... New," Bill says, embarrassed, and even Sookie feels a bit awkward.
The people of Bon Temps laissés their asses rouler, and out in the mist Maryann raises her hands over her head, toward heaven, hands pointing down toward earth. Her body is like a dagger as she calls Him up: "Lo, lo Bacchos; lo, lo Eleutherios; lo, lo Loxias..." The wind kicks up, the dancing slows down; Eggs and Tara kiss as they dance, the players whirl. Maryann raises her face to the sky, in wonder and passion. Eggs leads Tara up the stairs, scattered with rose petals, past Jane Bodehouse in ecstasy. He kisses her, and lays her moaning on the bed.
It's getting hot in Bon Temps; Lafayette fans himself on the couch, watching the Harryhausen 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, in which Sinbad and magician Sokurah play out Tara's dance with Maryann -- and, one presumes, Lafayette's oncoming voyage -- scene by scene. "Good evening, Lafayette," says Eric's voice from the window, sending Lafayette flopping painfully to the floor. "No!" he screams. "You can't come in unless I invite you in! And I ain't nowhere near that crazy." Eric threatens that he has all the time in the world: "You have to come out eventually," he says, speaking for the world at large, insensate to Lafayette's pain and fear and longing.
"You let me go!" Lafayette shouts; Eric is unmoved. "I gave you a very generous gift: The gift of not killing you." And alongside, he offers a flourishing wrist and another bit of generosity: "The healing elixir that is my thousand-year-old blood." Lafayette is, to put it lightly, unsure, but Eric doesn't even know what that means. "Your leg's already infected. I can smell it. You don't get that taken care of, you can lose it." At first he says he wants to feed Lafayette because he likes him, which, while not untrue, is patently not the real reason. "You want to be able to keep track of me," he says. That old bond. "You obviously mean something to Sookie. And what Sookie finds meaningful, I find... Curious." Still not sure if that's true either, but okay. "You really have no choice, Lafayette. You know it," he says. And he does, now that he knows it's infected. "Fuck," he groans, and stands, and on the television Sinbad kills a skeleton.
In the Harryhausen films, the skeletons are armies, born of miraculous blood, fighting war which is a chessboard. Nobody's right, nobody's wrong; everybody's at the behest of forces, pains, desires they don't understand. For vengeance, for power, for primacy. Balanced and equal, armies of light and darkness. And nobody knows which is which, and that is the truth of war.
"Leon, look at me. Look at me, Leon." (Sweet, sweet antimetabole! I use you overmuch as it is!) Leon takes his time dragging his gaze, physically, to meet Bill's eyes. "Everything is going to be okay," Bill intones gently, and Leon swears it is not. "My worst nightmares!" he shivers, and Bill shakes his head. "Jessica! What on earth did you do to him?" She has no time for Bill right now, as she screams teenagedly: "I am on the phone!" To Hoyt, no doubt. Hoyt, what are you wearing? What are you wearing, Hoyt? Sookie suggests Bill put his hand on Leon's shoulder -- "Sometimes touching helps me hear their thoughts better" -- and he does. "Who sent you?" The Fellowship of the Sun, obvs. "Are you a member?" asks Sookie, and politely Leon says he is not. They hired him. Who specifically?
"I'm not sure. It was over the phone. Money was put in a locker for me at a Greyhound station." So the Newlins feel okay with calling up the underworld (metaphorical not actual) and ordering kidnaps. Good to know. What was the mission? "Abduct a human with the Compton party and bring her to the church." Sookie has the balls, God love her, to get offended: "Do you [even] know my name?" Nope, didn't even know she was a lady 'til you got off the plane talking about drunk dollhouses. "All I know is a vampire's using a human to find a vampire, Godric." And of course he doesn't know where Godric is, but I'm startin' to feel like I do.
Bill smiles kindly. "You did very well. I'm sure your employers will be pleased." Leon looks at him lovingly, happy for the approval. "Think so?" Knows so. "What could you do? We never arrived. It's not your fault..." Sookie stares, drawn down deep enough into their life, and the stakes, that she can honestly love this. She's fascinated, she's drawn in. It's part of her disability, after all; it's the opposite of what she does. Bill corrects his memory: the flight arrived, they weren't on it. "I got so nervous for nothing!" Leon giggles. Bill laughs, suddenly scary; Sookie follows suit, happily. Has she become like they are?
Watch them, swaying like snakes, brightness hot in their eyes. Watch the pretty lady smile, and laugh, and check her lover's eyes for support. The Black Queen. Watch the silly, funny Black King, looking into their pawn's eyes with such affection. Watch the way they set his greatest fears, his worst nightmares, to rest: You're doing so well. I'm sure your employers will be pleased. What could you do? It's not your fault. You got so nervous for nothing!
See here now: Texas, the chessboard. Nobody's right, nobody's wrong; everybody's at the behest of forces, pains, desires they don't understand: vengeance, power, primacy. Balanced and equal, armies of light and darkness. And each depends on the other for its survival, and for its destruction, and that is the truth of war. Stay only one thing, and your triumph and your tragedy will be change; you will starve, become a skeleton, have your heart torn out. Become everything at once, and you will be reborn a black-eyed child of the night. In the Harryhausen films, the skeletons are armies, born of violence and a miraculous wine.
Lafayette kneels, sucking hungrily. Eric tells him that's enough, but at first he doesn't mean it. They just enjoy, Lafayette keeps going, until Eric's had his fill and smacks him away, and it drips down his chin as he tumbles. "Don't be greedy." With a flex of his wrist, Eric begins to heal, and answers the phone with his sinister hand. "You were supposed to call me when you arrived."
Bill explains they were ambushed, his well I never alive and well in Dallas: "You know exactly by whom, Eric! The Fellowship of the Sun! Why didn't you tell me they were involved?" Eric explains that he wasn't sure, but now he is. Bill whines. Eric reminds him that he is the Sheriff of Area V, and if he is displeased he can take it up with the Magister or the Queen, which is shorthand for cram it up his rigor-tight white ass, because guess what two people Bill is not even about to fuck with.
Behind Eric, Lafayette capers, dancing dervishes and jumping jacks, speaking to himself in an unending and nonspecifically motivating idiom. "Get that shit! There you go! Get that shit! Fuck it, get it!" Eric turns to watch him, charmed. "I just want to fucking dance!" he shouts, humping another couch, feeling the air of Bon Temps again with his new body. "How nice for you," Eric says, and says he must fly, and then I think literally flies away, with a whooshing sound. Lafayette fucks the floor and there's this sound like whoosh.
Jason hurriedly pulls his shirt together when Sarah enters his beautiful bedroom, unsure who the prey and who the predator is anymore. He thanks her kindly and calls her ma'am like a hundred million times, in her ivory-white and very sexy peignoir and negligee. And out in the wilderness a family of wolves starts tuning up, in three-part harmony. It was at this moment that I realized just how much I love Sarah Newlin, because it's like even the cartoon people are more real than most real people, on this show. I have seen a lot of people like Sarah Newlin, in real life and on TV, but I have never seen this particularly precise, sexy, affable, scary, darling, adorable, vicious, stern, joyful, insane, scathed, unscathed, subservient, nurturing, controlling, Christian sort of Antichrist in my life.
It's like if you take the false binary of Virgin/Whore, and put everybody on it, and then go three-axis to Monster/Not Monster, and put Anne Coulter here and Rachel Maddow here, you would still need to go fucking quantum to place Sarah Newlin on the graph you've devised. Um, for judging women, this graph, so don't do it. But I love her for the purity of her conversion, and her steely insides, and her grief, and her love of the Lord and all the passion and righteousness she's got going on. I never thought they were, but this episode really showed me that this wasn't about right-wing/left-wing red state/blue state blah blah blah. Obama. I'm over it.
Luke and Dirk are vicious and stupid representations of Christianity, and that's fine because it's not TV, it's HBO, and more importantly because Adele, Hoyt and Sookie are stronger versions of a better representation of Christianity. But the Newlins are more than that, and they are the focus. I don't agree with, say, Lettie Mae's version of religion either, but I get it. Frankly, it's Maryann's version of religion I'm having a hard time finding the dark edge to, really. But the Newlins are so easy to love, no matter how wary you have to be, because they are about how Christians are terribly and wonderfully made, just like non-Christians and every other kind of person. Loving Sarah Newlin, or her husband, is like loving Amy Burley, or Miss Jeanette, or Maryann Forrester: absolutely essential if you're ever going to hold the universe in your hand. He's gay, or not, and while hypocrisy goes hand in hand with American Protestantism it also goes hand in hand with American everything else. She's everything good, and everything bad, about what she's about. Like we all are.
Jason, hoping against hope, asks if he's the only one staying there in the house, and he is, so his smile falls, but she explains the perfectly rational explanation that it's only because the terrorist bunker only holds fourteen. He's happy, but also sad about that, so she adds that he is number fifteen because he is So Special And Awesome, so then he's happy: "And you're also the best! I mean, the one that we have the highest hopes for." He says he wants to try as hard as he can, and try not to disappoint them, and she leaves, reminding him that if he needs anything at all, like a creepy culty threesome, their personal Maryann Party is just down the hall, past the big double doors!
Bill and Sookie are making out, because they are very much in love, when Eric knocks at the door and summons Bill to the bar for talking. Alone, Sookie stares around, at a loss, and looks adorably off-camera. "Fudge." Been there, sister.
Downstairs, Eric reframes Bill's panicked call as an "admirable" admission that he can't protect his human. Logic and etiquette not permitting a retort, he changes the subject to how only a monster like Eric can possibly care about nobody but himself. "I care about others," Eric says, in a limpid tone that for him expresses both true hurt and true boredom. "You care about Godric," Bill says, and Eric stares at him because no you didn't. "You have no obligations to Dallas or Texas. This is personal for you. Why?" Please God let Eric give the big gay Pam-annoying speech about Godric's awesomeness one more time.
The waitress drops off a bottle of TruBlood, and Eric changes the subject. "I hope you'll enjoy your blood substitute, which is costing me $45." Bill admits he just wanted to see Eric pay for it, and Eric's like, "Good burn," but just calls Bill "so mature" instead. It's like a revenue stream, but more like being a werewolf. Bill redirects: "Why this allegiance to Godric?"
Oh, Godric, Edward Cullen of my heart, Eric says. When I look up at the sky on a clear, hot night, and see that moon shining down on myself and my undead brethren, my first thought will always be, "Godric, are you looking at that same moon?" And lo, when I smell the first morning's blood it is sour, for it was not kissed from Godric's sweet lips. I abjure the garish sun, not because it would fry my ass, but because it is not as bright as the lights deep in Godric's eyes. And when I sleep, it is Godric's arms that hold me, ever so tightly, as though to say that I am safe and that he will never ever let me go, not ever. He is the man all men should wish to be, and the man all women should wish to have, and also all the men on that one too. Starting with me. I wish I could invent something awesome and name it, like a beverage or a spacecraft, for I would name it a thousand times Godric, Godric, Godric. I would swim through the crests of a thousand garlic seas, would wear a suit of sterling, would lift my face up to the sun if only for a taste of his tender, cinnamon lips. One day he will take me for a ride in his automobile, and we will feel the wind of a thousand wild nights in our hair, and how we will laugh. At what? Nobody knows. Nobody but us. My heart has a name, Bill. Do you know what it is?
Bill's like, "Pssht. He's just a sheriff, dude." But oh no, he is so much more -- it is only that he chooses to be Sheriff. He could be so much more than that, Bill. He could be something vampire children drea
m about, lofting over the city in a cape. I am merely a Sheriff, Bill, and a fine one, and yet Godric, he is sheriffer. "Okay, but if he's so awesome how did those hillbillies get him?""THAT IS WHAT WORRIES ME!" Eric screams, unbelievably sincerely. Well, murmurs seductively in a somewhat urgent fashion, which amounts to the same thing for him. "If One Such As He can be taken by humans, then none of us is safe!" Um, then get me the fuck out of here, and Sookie as well. "What can I give you to release Sookie from her agreement?" Nada. But, Eric says, "Since you like humans so much, I think you would want to protect them. The vampires here, they're like cowboys. If they don't get Godric back, they'll want justice. They'll start attacking people." You want to play Mass Slaughter, go ahead and do it. Vampire vs. Human. Texas is a chessboard. "That's insane!" Bill yells, and Eric leans back. "Well. It's Texas."
Hell yeah it is. Meanwhile... Oh! I didn't tell you! I came to Dallas on Friday to visit friends. I'm thinking of turning it into a whole Pilgrimage of Sookie thing. week maybe I will get kidnapped by a cult, or go back home and find out all my friends are in another cult. That's going to be awesome. I will go and flourish, and never say no to myself. I will tell you how that goes!
Meanwhile, Sam and Daphne are feeding each other cake in a sensuous fashion. I recently learned of the name of a thing I knew about, but didn't know the name of, which is how you get two cakes on your kid's first birthday, one of which is for the real party -- which the kid is barely invited to, because guess what, one-year-olds aren't that interesting at parties -- and the other one, just as nice, is for the one-year-old to do with as she wishes. And the name of that little ritual is even more awesome than the ritual itself: SMASHCAKE! I mention this only because of the Tara/rib-bib puppy magic thing, the way total indulgence and total infantilizing can go hand in hand if you do it wrong, and because of Huxley, and of course because of... Well, you'll see.
Finally, Sam and Daphne kiss after all kinds of wedding cake gets fed back and forth. Figures it would take a literal act of God to make Sam deal with the hot chick in front of him. I mean, Tara had to literally say, "What we are going to do now is fuck." But Daphne has no way of knowing that, and besides, she's under the spell too. "[This is] a great idea! You're sweet as hell, and adorable, and scruffy with that little grey in your hair, and that hot little nose, and damn, boy do you know how to wear a pair of pants." All true, every second. Girl knows what she's talking about. She also knows how to wear a sundress with cowboy boots without looking like a retarded whore, so they have that in common too: the ability to wear clothing.
The kissing goes from flirty to romantic/cute to hardcore, and he finally breaks away all, "Listen, I need to tell you something." She assures him multiple times that he doesn't, looking into his eyes and then whispering in his ear, "I know what you are." She leads him off into the party with more seductive whatnot, and I can't tell but it seems like maybe she doesn't have her scars right now, but I can't say for sure. Any takers? I think it would be optimal if she were a weresomething, because of Sam's jumpy tirade against them last year. On this show, if you say something racist that's automatically the person you fuck. It's like a rule. And any case I really don't think she's one of Maryann's, the whole Daphne/Daphnis thing notwithstanding, but I'm anxious to find out.
Then there is: Dancing on the lawn, Eggs and Tara fucking in slow motion and moaning, Maryann vibrating a short distance away, Mike Spencer naked with some lady who is not Jane Bodehouse, Terry and Arlene dancing the Forbidden Dance, more fucking, more vibrating, Andy Bellefleur screaming like a beast and shoving wedding cake in his face, that lady on the stairs I thought was Jane doing the same, Mike spreading the suddenly fish/loaves amount of wedding cake on the huge breasts of the lady and eating it, food fighting, cake in the face, Tara climbing on top of Eggs, weird moaning, a guy drinking wine all insanely with the black eyes, everybody with black eyes, Terry and Arlene getting trippy on the ground with black eyes and touching each other's hands, cake boob lady moaning while Mike motorboats the cake, vibrating, dancing that is essentially fucking, a guy punches a guy dancing with a lady that might be one of the many blonde hos we've met at Merlotte's, said lady laughing wildly, fucking like Marlin Perkins is watching, and then blonde lady goes apeshit into total ecstasy territory, rolling around and growling and shoving dirt in her mouth, tossing her head around, and off in the forest Maryann scrabbles in the dirt and eventually pulls her hands free, up into the moonlight, and they are the claws of a wild beast, while we moan, triumphant. Hope somebody brought like a billion condoms.
Bored, Sookie checks out the Pay Per View, and she's alone so she doesn't even pretend to look at anything else, just goes straight to the porn with a fascinated smile and very fake, mesmerized eew. Because bravo, True Blood: You got His First Fangbang, which think about that for a second, and the guy's got a rose between his teeth to boot, and you got the more hetero Co-Ed Chowdown, which like cheerleaders and whatnot, and you got the jewel in the crown: Intercourse With The Vampire: The Sexual History Of Vampires. I am not a vampire nor do I wish to be one, but that is so much better than real porn. Especially in a hotel, my God.
There's a knock at the door, and Sookie -- Sookie Stackhouse, I mean, the Mad Masturbating Porch Bandit Of Bon Temps -- adorably shuts the TV off so nobody will know she's heard of porn, and meets Jessica at the door. "I ordered something. Is that okay?" Barry the Bellhop smiles professionally: "Male, straight, B-?" A shoulder-length blonde hottie walks through the door essentially naked and beefy, smiling at Sookie: "Hi, I'm Travis." Sookie's all WTF but Jessica grabs him and leads him away by the hand. YES!
Sookie sort of laughs to herself, and her thoughts are suddenly audible. What am I supposed to do Bill doesn't want her to do this how old is he anyway he looks barely legal... Barry nods, "He's 21." That's weird, Sookie thinks. Almost like you read my mind. And before he can stop himself, Barry Bellhop nods again, without moving: I did read your mind. She goggles at him. Oh fuck Barry just smile and act like it's a coincidence. He smiles sweetly at her. Keep your stupid mouth shut... "But it's not a coincidence, Barry!" They stare at each other, his mouth hanging open... And he bolts, just runs like fuck, bellcap and all.
And Sookie, who has waited her whole life to know she's not alone, whose power is affliction and whose genius is torment, Sookie who's been looking for Barry so long and so hard that it brought her to love, and to Eric, and to Dallas, goes running after him, down the hall, in her bare feet, shouting his name joyfully, triumphantly, all the way around the corner. It is a celebration, a parade of two, and she goes tearing happily after.