Sookie poses with Isabel's human lover Hugo as an affianced couple and try to join the Fellowship of the Sun. Due to the mole in the vampire camp, the Newlins see them coming from a mile away and toss them in the basement, where somewhere Godric also is. Bill can't run to her rescue, because Lorena is in Dallas -- at Eric's explicit invitation -- being all "Ah am yore Maker" and holding him back. There are also some B-A-N-A-N-A-S flashbacks to their lives together as faux-French swinger/vampires in 1926 Chicago that... Well, frankly, they must be seen to be believed. Turns out the only thing more excruciating than Lorena's regular fake accent is her double-fake French accent.
Jason and Luke build a gibbet for the crucifixion and photodecomposition of a vampire, again presumably Godric. Meanwhile, we see some peaks and troughs in Sarah's affect, first with a bitchy AM interaction with Jason and Luke, and then in a manic PM episode where we come to find God wants her to fuck Jason in the chapel and then tell Steve all about it. Mysterious ways! Oh, and Steve's plan is revealed: he wants a war as bad as Vampire Stan does, which is what all of this has been heading towards.
Maxine turns off Hoyt's phone, thinking Jessica is a late-calling floozy, but he informs her that his girlfriend is a vampire and drives all night to be with her in Dallas. Lafayette has a nervous breakdown when Andy comes sniffing around about Miss Jeanette's murder, but Terry saves him with kind words and PTSD experience. Then he nearly loses it again, when Pam shows up with word from Eric that Lafayette will be going back to dealing V, for unexplained reasons. Meanwhile the rest of Bon Temps -- and you will never believe this, but -- let's just say there's an orgy.
Maryann shows her not-so-sweet side after a broken water heater delays her morning shower, and Tara drags Eggs out of town to get a replacement part. Halfway there, he starts feeling mysterious vibes and leads Tara to a random campsite where the Blair Witch once had a keg party, apparently. Much import is placed upon this mysterious shit, but since Eggs can't remember ever being there before except for how he was, nothing comes of it yet. The kids return to Sookie's a bit worse for wear, and walk in on a seriously scary orgy of straight fucking, with a whole rhythm section of many nations. After a few shocked faces, Tara and Eggs shrug and join the black-eyed grunting crew.
Overjoyed to finally be in the company of another shapeshifter, Sam takes off the afternoon to go running around in the woods in his doggy form, with Daphne as a giant pig. Whom Andy recognizes, and which is apparently Daphne's go-to shape. And yes, that does mean she's totally Maryann's creature, which we confirm when she tricks Sam into attending said orgy, delivers him into the cult's hands, and then places a giant minotaur mask on the vibrating Maryann's head, the better to hunt Sam down in the forest and I guess ritually gut him.
Eric's in the lounge at the Hotel Carmilla trying to get it up fangwise for this blood hooker, but he can't get into it, and he's just sort of staring into the middle distance until she goes, "That's it, baby," and he finally just gives up and shoves her away. "Baby? I am over a thousand years old." He whines that he's not really into "feeding on the willing," and in a conciliatory way the woman offers to pretend she doesn't totally want him feeding on her, and he makes her promise she's convincing, and as Lorena arrives the woman's like, "Stop. Get off me. You sick bloodsucking bastard." He ignores this business altogether, and just feeds already, but when Lorena arrives he feels her and holds up a finger, having lost his vampire boner for good. Blood hooker grabs her cash and takes off, grinning when he says she might as well tell her pimp she was great, and then thanks Lorena for answering his invitation.
Surprisingly, Bill and Sookie are fucking and pretending they're on vacation, because that's all they do this season, when somebody knocks on the door. It's Isabel, still in that white dress from Godric's house with a human guy named Hugo whom Isabel explains is Hers. Bill and Sookie graciously put on bathrobes and he microwaves a couple TruBloods, then the two couples have a seat. Sookie reads Hugo's mind and he's stone crazy in love with Isabel: Forever and not just my forever your forever and forever and forever.... You might think at some point somebody would point out how ridiculous Sookie's latest plan is, but no: Isabel's there to offer Hugo as a companion, because as she points out, "People of the church, they have a way of not trusting a woman when she's absent a man." Sookie agrees, because remember how she didn't have a man before Bill, but now she has Bill, and schmooby-schmoo he rubs her back and pulls a quarter out of her ear and whatever. Isabel and Hugo, one presumes, barf.
Eric cracks a joke about giving Lorena the room to Bill and Sookie's, which sounds like a little bit of hell for everybody, and finally admits that Bill has something he wants. That's what he says. Lorena's totally grossed out -- "His human?" -- but Eric knows Sookie's not exactly that either. And anyway, shut up and do what Eric says, because isn't Lorena still totally in love with Bill? And isn't Bill still slightly in love with Lorena because she's his Maker? Eric's like, "I am still as fiercely devoted and loyal to my Maker as I was during that Viking flashback, because Godric is not only my two thousand-year-old Maker, but also a swell guy and the most wonderful player of video games I've ever seen, can play better two thousand-year-old basketball than men twice his height such as myself, saw Velvet Underground at CBGB's like a million times, and has met Anderson Cooper. Who told him he was dreamy." Lorena's all, "I will see your queerbutt Viking flashback, and I will raise you a truly gaywad speakeasy flashback. Picture it: Chicago, 1926..."
Bill is grey of skin and singing the title song with his dorky head thrown back and some kind of idiotic vaudevillian accent and it's just too difficult to even watch. And if you thought Lorena's atrocious accent was unbearable in the here and now, let me introduce you to Faviana and Guillaume Olivier, who are the people Bill and Lorena are pretending to be. They're French, so they're like totally over conventional mores and Prohibition and not being totally creepy and stupid. She's all bisexual and weird and he's all rapey and he's so dapper and she's a flapper and whatever. I wonder if Faviana and Guillaume are characters they played a lot back then, or just did it at this one lame party.
Anyway, Faviana suggests the lame people that threw this lame party -- Who are so Jazz Age you can smell the brilliantine, like his name's "Sidney" and he bought his little lady a beautiful necklace to get out of one "whopper" of a fight, and it's just offensive. This whole thing is so fucking stupid, not least because Lorena makes me want to claw my own eyes out but also because what, like they're all going to start doing the Charleston on the wing of a biplane with bathtub gin martinis and saying "you really know your onions, kid" and "twenty-three skidoo" and whatever. Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters stealing orphans. I mean, what's the point of doing a flashback if it's just flashing back to somebody else's cheesy Xeroxed memory of a memory of a lie that didn't exist in the first place? It's like a junior varsity football player's diorama of Atlantic City -- that they do some lame swinging, and the guy is like, "Let's ankle, baby vamp" or whatever, because he's gross, and the choice bit of calico with the necklace gets all bicurious, because welcome to flappers. And the whole time Guillaume's going the full Peter Allen Ish Kabibble over at the piano, and it is all. Wet. Then he comes over and flirts with the lame people, and he and Faviana keep like winking and nudging and eyebrowing at each other, as if we might forget for one second that they are giant drama queen vampires who are going to fuck and eat these people, and generally Chicago Bill is just as hilarious as Bon Temps Bill, but this time by being "sexy" in slow-motion instead of crying and bossing people around endlessly like he does now.
Sam and Daphne are all post-coital on the pool table talking about her horrible scars all over her back, and she's like, "Craziest thing. I was running around the woods in the form of an animal and something grabbed me -- possibly the late '90s acid-jazz doucheband Jamiroquai -- and then I was almost in a coma, but now I'm fine. But enough about me, let's talk about your self-hating lack of shapeshifter pride, and how you should really love yourself and stop being so whatever, because this is a post-vampire world we're living in, and you aren't alone anymore, and you can trust people and let them in because life is for the living." Basically, the three things Daphne always says? She says them, all in a row, while naked. Honey, you lost me talking about what we were "put on this big ol' round ball to do," because nobody fucking says that or would ever say that, and it's embarrassing.
Over at Sookie's it is kind of a rough morning because there's something wrong with the water heater, so the carnies that have infiltrated are trying to deal with basic shit and get it fixed. Eggs is mainly hitting things with a wrench and pretending to work, Karl is giving Maryann her morning foot-lick, and Tara's on the phone actually fucking doing something and apologizing that the place Maryann's squatting in and emotionally blackmailing Tara for doesn't have more modern plumbing fixtures. Maryann is in no mood for anything even resembling shenanigans, because if she doesn't get her morning shower in five seconds, she's going to komodo everybody, and it's sort of really scary. Eggs and Tara finally locate a part in another town, and Maryann screeches and yells but finally lets them both drive there to get it, and when they're gone she makes this hilarious sound, like tsk-augh that really sums up where she's at right now.
Luke and Jason have been summoned to a side yard at the main Fellowship of the Megachurch building, where Sarah is being amazing. Jason is all terrified because of the Holy Handjob from last week, and assumes that Steve is going to kill him or generally act like a disappointed authority figure, but Steve's all excited because he wants the boys to built a big platform, the better on which to crucify Godric so they can all watch him "meet the sun" tomorrow morning, which excites Luke who has read about this on the internet.
None of which is that interesting, because OMG Sarah Newlin is so goddamn intense in this scene that it's magical. Her whole body, like, shakes with hardcoreness and she keeps telling Jason to buck the fuck up and remember that our Lord Jesus Christ was a carpenter and to get a life and stop acting guilty and weird and shifty and staring at her wedding-ringed handjobbin' hand like it's going to attack at any moment. It's like... Imagine you had a really bad hangover, and you got into a fight with like your boss. You know how your lips can sometimes wiggle in that circumstance, like you're about to cry, but you're actually just really angry so the wiggly lip just makes you angrier? That's Sarah's entire body right now. It's remarkable. She does for post-handjob remorse what Hoyt and Jessica do for true love you can believe in.
In the bar at Hotel Carmilla, Hugo has just figured out that Sookie is annoying as hell. He gives her a wedding ring and she dorks out, and he asks her to be subservient to him while they pretend to be married, and he asks her to think about being a big anti-vamp racist, and she dorks out some more. She explains: "Hugo, I don't just hear the things hateful people say. I hear the things that are so hateful that hateful people don't even want to say them out loud!" Then, because their deadly mission just isn't about her as much as it rightfully should be, she turns the conversation to how he's dating Isabel, which Sookie of course sees as a metaphor for her relationship with Bill.
"It's funny, but whenever Bill and me fight, even as I'm screaming and I'm so mad I don't think I'm ever going to stop, somehow in the middle of all that, I know that we're both fighting for our relationship. For each other. We're fighting to stay together." Blech. You deserve each other so fucking hardcore that I don't really think you have to try that hard, but let's explain to Sookie that she's trying too hard and see how that works out, shall we?
Hugo explains then that it's his wish to become a vampire at some point, but Isabel is not feeling that because then how would she fetishize him, and Sookie hilariously goes, "Is that a thing that people actually do?" Hugo explains that in fifty years Sookie will be fat and ugly and walking around on a cane, while Bill will still be... Bill. There are NO winners in that scenario. Sookie makes lemonade: "Now, if I die today, who cares? I'll never have to feel old and unloved, and unwanted!" Hugo doesn't know from Sookie Logic yet, but that is a great intro.
"Bitches, don't you know that sarcasm and cold water do not mix?" Eggs and Tara laugh, driving down the sunny road in Maryann's convertible, so you know something terrible is going to happen, because God forbid Tara spend one second smiling, and then Eggs starts feeling these mysterious vibes and eventually leads her off the road and into the mysterious dark forest where he's never been before. He looks really lost, and I've been saying for awhile that I trust Eggs, because if anything he's just the possible future of Tara as a Maryann person, which is not that bad -- but also not as good as not being in a cult -- but it never occurred to me to feel one way or the other about him.
I mean, Take Off Your Fucking Shirt is not an emotion. So this is the first time I've felt an affection for him as a man, separate f
rom Tara, or like I've felt like I had anything invested in him, which is funny because how fucking silly is this scene? Slash-storyline? It's literally the plot of Blair Witch 2: Book Of Shadows, which is not a movie I would normally admit to having seen, but then, you wouldn't think the show would either, and yet here we are.Terry's bussing a table and Arlene pops up once again to romance him, scaring the shit out of him and saying all mysteriously, "I just got off the phone, and I got a surprise lined up for you..." Um, let me take a wild stab here and say that it's an ORGY. Because see here's the thing, it's not a surprise, per se, when you had an orgy last night and an orgy the night before that. At some point it stops being a surprise, and starts being what you do. Plus, Iraq vet Terry's like, "Hey, remember how I don't like surprises?" Arlene is hilarious, with this "come with me to the casbah" kind of sexy-lady vibe: "I just happen to be an extremely mysterious woman." She's hilarious, he's terrified. What's mysterious about Arlene is how such a lovely woman can look like such ground-beef ass so much of the time. But I do like how, even as deeply wrong and obnoxious Arlene is, they throw in these little scenes to remind us that she's also sort of adorable.
Also adorable: Daphne, fucking up orders again, some more; this time with Maxine Fortenberry and her Sparkle Motion friend, I don't know if we know her name. Maxine says probably it's better that Daphne suck as a waitress, because the very best Merlotte's waitresses tend to get murdered in their beds. "You are so bad, Maxine!" says Sparkle Motion, and Maxine shoves like an entire okra in her face, and then Andy comes brushing through to harass Lafayette in the kitchen about how he vanished for a few weeks and has now lost his "pizzazz." (Again: adorable, like with Arlene, but I'm almost close to tears at this point whenever Andy shows up, because I know he'll just be sad and make that cute sad face.) Lafayette claims to have been on a gay cruise -- certainly not cutting the heart out of any forest witches -- and Andy yells, "You weren't on any gay cruise! You would have come back with more pizzazz, not less!"
Terry, who's been near the back door watching this go on, finally steps forward, but it's too late: Andy's offered to lock Lafayette up at the station, which sends Lafayette scurrying off into a crazy spiral where Andy's suddenly wearing Eric Northman's face, shouting at him about this and that, and Terry finally throws his considerable bulk between his cousin and Lafayette and yells at him that when they played cops and robbers as kids, at least Andy made his arrests with dignity, and now he's just being mean, plus he's not even a cop anymore, and the shivering fetal ball of fear that was Lafayette a second ago is neither a suspect or a flight risk, so fuck off.
Of course, merely stringing that many words together has Terry nearly crying too, so now you've got three people in that room who are barely fucking holding it together, and it's awesome and pathetic -- I mean, poor everybody -- but not as awesome/pathetic as Andy saying, "I'm sorry, Mr. Reynolds" before leaving. Then Terry hunkers down and pulls Lafayette into his arms and holds him until he stops crying, trying to teach him how to negotiate the trauma in a way that makes sense, and it's fairly beautiful.
Hoyt comes storming into Merlotte's and tosses his cell phone down on Maxine's table, because she has had it turned off, because she is terribly lonely and can't stand the idea of Jessica taking him away from her. I mean, there are less kind ways to say it, but that's what you've got, and this whole episode is about your Maker: who made you, what you want out of them, what they want out of you, what you give up in order to be made, or remade, and how you're selling yourself short thinking you need anybody else's help defining the life you deserve:
Hugo wants to be a vampire and can't see how that would ruin everything; Sarah Newlin wants to be a leader of men and can't imagine just doing it herself, so she's willing to be anybody's wife that she can use to realize her own ambitions; Lorena controls Bill today, and he went into terrible places trying to impress her eighty years ago; Eric has a slight affection for Godric; Eggs and Daphne and Tara don't even know what they're giving up yet, for the privilege of touching divinity. Jessica, in rebelling, unconsciously follows in her Maker's footsteps, pouring TruBlood down the sink to hit him in the pocketbook just like he did Eric last week. Poor Jason Stackhouse is... Well, he's in the same mess he is always in, but this applies to him of course just as strongly as ever, because his Maker is still Amy Burley, who taught him to hate vampires with her left hand while teaching him to love them with her right.
Hoyt worries that Jessica will think he's "like, one of those guys that never texts back," and Maxine protests weakly that girls like Jessica -- that call boys at all hours of the night -- are after money, which Hoyt points out they don't have, which sends Maxine into a Flannery spiral about how they're very comfortable for Sparkle Motion's benefit, and finally Hoyt's like, "THERE IS A VERY GOOD REASON JESSICA ONLY CALLS AFTER BEDTIME," and then informs both ladies that he's dating a vampire, and stomps out looking if possible even taller as Maxine gasps and has vapors and the southern sympathy of Sparkle Motion translates itself loudly and roughly as, "I finally know what an orgasm is like."
Sam and Daphne are flirty and cute some more at the iced tea station, but watching Sam act "horny" is like watching Bill act "in on the joke," in that it's sort of difficult in some ways. Like he's pretty believable when he's talking about how all he wants to do is "shift and run and play," because after all this is the first time he's met another shifter; she's his Bellhop Barry. And it's pretty hot, if an awkward mess of dialogue, when he tells her that if she doesn't go out back and take off her clothes, she's fired. But when she goes, "Meet you out back in two" and he grits, "Make it one," through these horny Clint Eastwood teeth, it's like... Right, Sam is also a dork. I forgot, because he was wearing plaid, which always makes him act sassier.
Luke's trying to make up a song to the tune of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" about the vampire they're going to lynch, on a burning cross, and distracts Jason long enough for him to bang hell out of his thumb with a hammer. And here we thought the hammering was all he was good for. Luke's concerned, but Jason's like, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just stupid." Both Stackhouses should get t-shirts with that. THANKS FOR YOUR CONCERN BUT I'M JUST STUPID.
Jason brings up -- wearing the Ring of Honesty as he proudly does -- the whole scenario Luke painted the other day about Sarah just being after his "johnson," and Luke sweetly blows him off: "Man, that's just me being jealous! Even as it was coming out of my mouth, I knew God was frowning on me. Because not only do you deserve everything coming your way, but Sarah, if she ain't the holiest person I know, then I don't know who is!" Jason doesn't go there. Instead he asks if Luke's really been abstinent for the last three years, and Luke's like, "Other than the time I pretended to be a vampire raping you, and jizzed in my pants? Yes. Three long years." Jason's like, "But WHY."
Because sex outside of marriage is a sin, duh, which is why Jesus asked you out today. But Luke's got a whole rubric going: If you do fuck out of wedlock, you have to make sure "the girl you do it to" is also unmarried (Jason literally mutters to himself, "Right. Because adultery is bad."), because adultery is up there with incest and bestiality. Jason gets this great face like, "Why did you go there?" Like how gay marriage automatically makes Christians fantasize about marrying their dog or a Plymouth or something. Three Plymouths. But so even worse than those things is fucking a vam
pire. OR A DUDE, Luke says very seriously, pointing at him: "Or a vampire dude, that's like crème de la crème of sins." (Um, what about a married vampire dude?)Poor Jason, because you would be surprised how often this comes up with him, for some reason having to do with how his brain is like 45% gay vampire thoughts. But then, there's repentance. "God's a... He's an open-minded guy. To a point!" Luke says, hilariously, and Jason tries to imagine himself being abstinent, but it almost makes him pass out, so he sings, "Big old scary vampire/ Went to the sun to fry!" Which Luke thinks is the coolest shit, but what's really the coolest shit is how deliberately we're shown in this episode that Jason and Sookie are in the same place: there's Hugo's car now, just over Jason's shoulder.
Up close, Sookie thinks Sarah looks "like vanilla pudding," but she's not. They get out of the car and Sarah welcomes them -- "Happened to be looking out the window as you were driving up, and I thought I'd come on out and greet you myself!" -- and she and Sookie gleam at each other hyperactively for about a million years, getting so aggressively friendly and polite -- says Sookie, "You are cute as a button!"; "You're like a cool breeze on a hot summer day," Sarah somehow says -- that it just ramps Sookie's native dorkiness up to eleven and, despite having promised to shut up and look pretty earlier, talks nervously without ceasing about whatever boring and awkwardly worded shit she can think of. "This is Rufus Dobson, my fiancé. I love saying that word. In fact, sometimes I love it so much, I don't even want to get married, just so I can keep on calling him it!"
Inside Steve's office, with Luke and Jason hammering right out the window, there are WTF cracks appearing in Sarah's calm demeanor because Sookie is still talking. "Rufus and I actually met in church, but we both left, like, a month later when we realized that our pastor was ... a little iffy." Steve nods, hilariously: "He was a homosexual." Like, duh. Sookie's line here is one of the best: "We don't know that, he might have been that too." I don't know why, but that cracks me up. Of course, the issue was that he was into vampires' rights, and tolerance, and all that stuff that's even gayer than being gay.
So as Sarah shakes her head sadly/hatefully, Steve talks about how the usual, how can you love something God detests, and Hugo actually tries to speak for once about how they want to join the Fellowship. Which is smart, because it gives Sookie time to listen to Steve's creepy little Gollumy thoughts (wonder how that platform's coming I can't wait to bring that vampire up from the basement and watch the sun do him the justice that 2000 years of living couldn't), and I hope if they ever make a Transmetropolitan movie that Michael McMillian is available to play the Smiler, because he has that shit down.
So remember the nest last year, and how silly and OTT and cheesy those three dead vampires were, and we talked about how maybe it was just because they didn't have any other role models besides the movies? I think Bill is 85% Lorena right now, back in Chicago as we are, and just trying to learn how to be what he is, putting himself to the fullest possible use. Which is all, I think, that any conscious entity can ever hope to do. So what that means in this case is -- while Lorena lies in her bed at the Hotel Carmilla fondling a necklace she was admiring on the flapper girl earlier -- Bill chowing down on Sidney, then Lorena making him watch as Bill guts the flapper girl -- "say au revoir," he shouts goofily -- and then Lorena snaps the guy's neck, and they make out and roll around in the flapper girl's blood, and Bill gives her the necklace in question -- "You are so thoughtful and generous. I love you, William Compton!" -- and he pushes the girl around in her slippery blood, and then last thing she sees as she's bleeding out is Lorena fucking Bill in fifteen different positions, wearing her necklace. And then, of course, the internet catching fire with the strength of a million viewers simply shocked to learn that vampires kill people. Even vampires such as their imaginary boyfriend Bill Compton.
Eggs and Tara finally happen upon an abandoned campsite that has bloody clothes and shit scattered around, and a rock with scary symbols, and another rock that clearly was the site of some serious blood ritual sacrifice, and Eggs has a total shit fit, and Tara tries to stay rational, but eventually the cognitive dissonance -- of having been here and never having been here, where something incredibly scary went down, and finding it again without knowing how -- just takes Eggs over, so she picks him up and takes him home. Without, I guess, getting the part for the water heater, which is DUMB because Maryann is SCARY. I don't care if you start hallucinating one of those Satan daycare gang rape false memories, you get your ass to Ferriday before breaking down.
Steve calls Gabe to meet them, on the way to the sanctuary, and at the doors he's like, "Watch out, because... Sometimes when we open these doors, so much love comes flowing out it'll knock you down! If you're not ready for it!" Kind of like your dorkiness, matched only by Sookie's -- "We'll be sure to brace ourselves!" -- and then he opens the door proudly, and both the Newlins are excited to show it off. It's intensely bright, as befits the Fellowship, with more windows than walls. I wish I lived there. They talk about how beautiful it is, and Hugo starts talking about how they have to get married there, and Steve goes, "Hey, have either of you ever been to a lock-in?"
Meanwhile, Sarah's freaking out -- "Steve don't bring the girl into this probably so scared she doesn't want to do this those vampires made her do it..." -- and Sookie's like, "Um, okay. Lockdown sounds great, let's go get our sleeping bags." Hugo, for some reason, is dragging his feet a little bit, even when Gabe's mountain of muscle shows up and Steve starts talking about "Wanna go see my dad's tomb and shit?"
Andy is, of course, drinking and driving when two creatures run out in front of his car: Sam as a dog, and Daphne as... A giant pig. Oh, Daphne. No! I was so sure it was all a red herring! So of course Andy comes out yelling "PIG! HEY PIG!" and trying to catch the pig, but falls on his face instead. At the end of their run, they're giggly and they feel strong, and getting dressed he's like, "I thought you'd be a doe again," but Daphne explains that pig is her "go-to shift." They have a poorly written conversation in which Sam calls attention to the fact that Andy recognized her, so to distract him she... Sucks his dick. How Sookie of you, Daphne.
Lafayette's doing stock in the walk-in freezer when Pam appears out of nowhere, looking trashier than she has ever looked, with giant wrecked hair and some kind of pantsuit. "Is you real?" Lafayette asks, which is sort of sad. He basically spends the entire scene trying to climb onto the shelves with the food to get away from her, and she makes a point of going, "I could sleep here in a pinch," looking around the place. He asks her why they didn't just fucking glamour him instead of bothering him every other episode, and she points out that then, they couldn't use his PTSD to make him do things... Such as get back in the V-selling business, for reasons that are at this point unclear but obviously have to do with pussylover69, who's probably Gabe (if that's @gmail.com) or Steven (if it was @shemale.com). Either way, that is just the cutest thing.
In the main lobby, Steve tries to get them to check out his dad's tomb, but Sookie has finally made her point with Hugo, who's ready to bounce. Even Sarah's like, "Um, they don't need to see that." Steve says two awesome things, "You can literally feel the presence of his spirit!" which is crazy, and the even crazier "It's the rock our church was built on! Much like St. Peter's tomb in the Catholic Church, only without being polluted by evil! Did you know that there was actually a vampire Pope back in the Middle Ages?" Gabe follows them, so that both couples are in this tiny anteroom, before the door to the "cell," which is actually just a scary flight of stairs down into the basement and, God willing, Godric's hot ass is banging around in there somewhere, because I want to see him without dreads.
Sarah registers deep protest with whatever Steve's about to do, but he gets very intense on them, and finally he and Gabe just grab them both and wrestle them down the stairs. Of course, Sookie screams bloody murder -- waking Bill at the Hotel Carmilla, who is restrained by the randomly bedroom-lurking Lorena, with her horrible accent and the most poorly written dialogue of this poorly written script ("Yore blood knows maaaaahn! Yewll naiver physically overpower me!") -- and acts generally in a manner unbefitting a woman, fighting for her life like that, so obviously Steve assumes "the cunt" must be on V. At which word, sister, Sarah Newlin has had it. She apologizes to Sookie for what's going down, and peaces.
Sookie's house in Bon Temps is a WRECK when Tara and Eggs get back (water heater partless, I do believe). I am taking bets on an orgy being involved. They spark up a joint for some reason and go out into the backyard, following a trail of clothes and wine bottles and no condoms whatsoever. "People are pigs," Tara says, which is funny but not as funny as it's about to be, and then they happen upon a truly dreadful orgy. It's not like the other ones, with the cake and the food and the fun times, or even like the scary times. It is straight-up fucking, all over the place, around a campfire while these guys play the drums and Maryann does her whole shaky vibrating thing. Two men share a woman, the fire builds, there's a giant bull's head mask, Eggs and Tara are sort of shocked, Mike takes Jane Bodehouse from behind while Arlene rides Terry Bellefleur, and they all grunt back and forth like monkeys. Maryann catches Tara's eye, and there's not half the horror you might think, in them.
Night time is the morning for Jessica, whose suite windows automatically unshutter themselves once the sun is down. She wakes up immediately, but her worst fears are confirmed: Hoyt is, after all, one of those guys who doesn't text back. She hears Bill pleading with Lorena in the other room, assumes it's Bill and Sookie fucking and pretending they're on vacation because why wouldn't you, and vengefully pours two TruBloods down the sink.
Somebody knocks on the door, and it's Hoyt. Hoyt, with a bouquet of flowers he brought all the way from Bon Temps in his hot car, Hoyt who can't stop apologizing, Hoyt who really thought his mother had taken away his last chance at happiness; Hoyt who will ask if she's mad, and she'll just stare in wonderment at him. ("I'm so happy I could cry, but I don't want to, because it's really gross when I do.") She attacks the door, squeaking in a panic trying to get it open. I bet if this weren't a vampire hotel she'd have just ripped the motherfucker off its hinges, to get to him. Hoyt, who's joined her in a blissful, simple madness that the rest of these desperate motherfuckers keep trying to approximate, to evoke, to remember.
If you ask me why I think Maryann is a good thing, I'll point you to "Jesus Asked Me Out Today," which is the other side of that coin. It's good that we got Hoyt out of Bon Temps, because that place is rigged to blow, but this abandon coincides too. We don't hate the rain, even when it's tearing down our homes, because it's just water, weather, ecology: a powerful force, a faceless nameless eternal force that needs to be respected. But it's also freedom, abandon, passions, explosions. Maxine's pressing down on Hoyt and Bill's pressing down on Jessica, both of them on fire and ready to blow: If the orgies are a hurricane, then Hoyt and Jessica are the softest, hottest summer rain. It brings the green shoots, bursting up. And that's why Maryann is a good thing. It can't just be death all the time.
Jason comes into the church, passing within a few feet of the room they've got his sister tied up in, and into the now-dark sanctuary, to tell Sarah and Steve the platform is ready. Sarah stands above the chapel, in the balcony, weeping softly to herself. Jason runs upstairs to check on her, and she admits that Steve is not quite the man she thought he was. "Sarah, your husband is a great man." Listen to Jason. This is like the nicest, smartest he's ever tried to be. He's being so good! "I feel bad about what we did last night too, but we can't try to make it easier on ourselves by blaming the victim."
Sarah straight up tells Jason that he and Luke and the other fourteen recruits aren't actually be trained to "defend us," they're being used to start a war. "Does that sound like a great man to you?" No, it sounds like Stan to me. Texas is a chessboard.
"I thought he was, but lately I've been seeing a side of him I never did before. He's vicious, and he's cruel. And he uses the C-word! And he lies to me, Jason. Our marriage has always been a partnership, but now he's shutting me out." He wipes her tears away with his nasty bandanna, and smiles sweetly, trying to comfort her, but she goes right for the kiss. He freaks out and thinks about leaving, but she tells him a story about how since she was a little girl, she's known her "calling."
"I was put here on this Earth to be that great woman, behind her great man. And when Steve came into my life, I thought he was that man." She's got Jason by the lapels, shaking his whole body with her grip. "But now I see it clear as day: I'm supposed to be with you." She goes for his cock again and he jerks away, but she explains that A) she's not "really" married, not in her heart, not to mention that B) God called and said they're supposed to fuck. Jason thinks about that, apparently finds it valid, and fucks her. In church.
Which is yucky, but... It's like, you know how much I love Sarah Newlin. And what she's saying is that she's got, she is sitting on, so much fucking power she doesn't know what to do with it, but she can't imagine a way to exercise it except through controlling a man. And I don't mean "control" in a misogynist way, I mean it in a powerful way. Her lightning can't touch the ground directly, it must be conducted. Because of her family, and her culture, and her teeth, and her breasts, she believes that the best she can do is be the FLOTUS and not the POTUS. And there's a strength in that, but a twisting too.
It's hard enough to imagine, it's worth closing your mouth to avoid, being a ball-buster, a dick, a crazypants, a jerk... And I'm an affluent white male. You know? And then on the level down, where I actually have some minority cards to lay down if I have to, I'm afraid of being too forceful in my opinions -- about gay rights, homophobia, feminism, sexism, all of which are part of the same experience and derive from the same Maryann place, ultimately -- because I don't want to be the self-righteous queer, or crying wolf about negligible insults and acting like I'm being oppressed while on the other side of the globe people are literally being stoned to death for doing normal everyday shit like, I don't know, dudes kissing. Ladies wearing pants.
But even with the million fucking ways there are to feel weird about yourself that I personally know of, I still wouldn't EVER want to be a pretty white girl, because just opening your mouth is asking for it. Having any opinions at all is either A) not an option, or B) something you work so hard for that it ends up becoming its own pathology. Maybe Bella wouldn't suck so much if, instead of having to choose between Team Edward and Team Jacob, we had the option of choosing Team Bella. A choice she denies us, as strongly as my girl Heigl seems bent on doing.
So if I can't even see my way to understanding the use of strength, without hedging every single bet -- if I feel guilty even trying to lead -- how much worse is it for Sarah Newlin? She could not only fight a war, she could win it. And she has no fucking clue, because we don't even have the words for that yet.
"I feel like/am becoming/fucking a bizarre creature, that's why I was acting so weird before."
"OMG me too! That's totally why I was acting weird!"
"I just want you to know that I still think of you the same way as I did yesterday. We have a lot more in common than we don't."
"Thank God! Once again, communication has saved the day!"
"Bro, I totally thought it was just me. I felt completely alone."
"I think that's just how it works."
Daphne leads Sam down a road through the forest. You know, last year so much was made of the geography, Sookie's house and the Compton place being on opposite sides of the graveyard; I'd like to have seen this, Maryann's stuff, taking place on the other side of the house, away from the graveyard. Toward a river or a lake maybe. Or actually, no, this serves the same purpose, having it in the forest proper. I love the idea of all that overgrown, lush forest rubbing right up against Sookie's house like that, with the roads criss-crossing through it, contiguous to the places Sam runs and Terry fishes and Tara saw the pig -- and Miss Jeanette, and Maryann -- for the first time. Sam can hear the drums, and stops.
"Don't be such a nervous nelly, it's a surprise!" In her Merlotte's shirt, Daphne leads Sam toward the drums; he worries at it. "In my experience, no good can come from drum music. Follow it and all it ever leads you to is hippies and cults." She goes, "NOT THIS TIME!" super-intense, but also super-imprecise? Because hello, hippies and cults. Two hippies who are in a cult, eyes black as black, appear out of the forest as she's apologizing, and drag him to the bonfire, where Eggs is fucking Tara with eyes black, and Arlene and Terry still monkey-grunting at each other, and Sam, I think appropriately, asks WTF is going on.
Daphne goes, "It's the end of the road," which is also imprecise and just meaningless enough to be kind of scary, and then she ceremoniously puts the bulls-head mask over Maryann's head, and Karl produces a ritual knife on a tray, and Maryann begins to chant her invocation, and to vibrate and to cut through the air the way she does, and Sam screaming his little head off, and it's all very Wicker Man.
Not that shitty misogynist one with Nicolas Cage and the bees, the real one. The one where the repressed, sexist Christian investigates a fertility cult, spends the entire time getting tempted and flirting with danger and generally being a prick, and eventually gets what's coming to him, essentially, for fucking with Maryann. Or as Alan Ball says, Six Feet Under was "about" repression, True Blood is "about" abandon. I would say, defining the limits and boundaries and outline of abandon.
More than anything, this episode reminds me of "To Love Is To Bury," thematically, because we've reached that halfway point, in the season, where things are breaking open -- last year it was Gran's funeral, which pretty much rewrote the entire direction of things -- and this time it's not about grieving and inaction and eating pie, but about action and passion and giving in, one way or the other. So another name for Maryann is Werewolf Boyfriend, if you look at it from that angle. It can't be Vampire Boyfriend all the time. Werewolf Boyfriend is just as scary, if you do it right. And can be just as beautiful.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see who vlogger Sean Crespo thinks Bill will hook up with in No Prior Knowledge!