Bill spends a spa day at the home of Sophie-Anne, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana, eating hot Latvians, fake sunbathing, catching up with Sookie's cousin Hadley and literally playing Yahtzee. This is because Sophie-Anne is a lunatic who has borrowed Godric's book of being bored and then scribbled Depeche Mode lyrics and quotes from the Matrix in the margins. Finally Sophie-Anne tells him the secret to dealing with a maenad, which is basically to give her whatever she wants and stand out of the way, because the God Who Comes never actually shows up. Wonder how Sam's going to feel about that.
Eric arrives at Sophie-Anne's -- hair all tousled from flying through the air to Shreveport -- just in time for a quick measuring contest with Bill, and the Queen points out that their BS would be a lot easier to take if they'd just fuck once and for all and stop getting their mess all over other people. Oh, and that her interest in Sookie, which Bill apparently knows all about, isn't going anywhere.
Lafayette, Lettie Mae and Sookie try to keep Tara from heading back to Maryann's, because they stupidly think she's better just because the black eyes are gone. Sookie and Lafayette take a quick break to defend his house from zombies while discussing the fact that they're now both having sex dreams about Eric now that they've had his blood, which lasts not so long thanks to Tara's mad crazy mind games on her mom, who eventually threatens to shoot them if they don't let Tara go back to Maryann. This really is the worst intervention on record. She gets away, and Sookie brains her with some pottery, following after Tara.
...Which is, of course, the dumbest idea she's had since the gross bullshit Bill and Sookie pulled on her last week, and just as pointless. After Maryann's explained to Tara that killing the little black-eyed girl last season was the invocation that brought her to Bon Temps, and punched her like mama used to do, Tara backflips right back into the cult. By the time Sookie arrives, the cult has gone seriously haywire: Jane's cutting off fingers, some dude is playing with intestines, and Mike Spencer makes Sookie cuddle with him in the spot on the floor where Gran got murdered.
Andy and Jason continue to run around like idiots, attempting to quell the unrest and stock up on guns. Hoyt dumps Jessica for biting his mom, and then gets totally abused by Maxine's stories about his father's suicide and questionable sexuality. While Sam takes Arlene's kids -- who've been running around the forest the last two days eating dirt while their mom's in that orgy cult -- to Fangtasia!, making him the latest person in Bon Temps to owe Eric a huge favor.
Maryann is beyond pissed at the cultists for being fooled by Jason's lightshow theatrics last week, and otherwise storms around being a jerk, until a bullet from Lafayette's gun ends up killing Karl. Then she possesses Lafayette, who surprises Sookie in her bedroom attempting to stop Tara and Eggs from building a nest for a giant demonic egg in her bed. Everything in this entire recaplet is true and unembellished.
In two weeks: The ritual, which we now know involves 1) the sacrifice of Sam (or Sookie, apparently) 2) "in the presence of her familiars," I guess Tara and Eggs, so that 3) Maryann can finally get her heiros gamos freak on.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what vloggers Val and Beth think about vampie babies in TV is the Answer! And check back soon for the full recap!
Well, Bill is just gobsmacked. I don't know what he was expecting, but you know, he's chivalrous. It's sort of his thing. And walking in -- after being announced, note -- on his Queen sucking hell out of the thighs of a cute young thing, double to his Sookie, it's just too much for his little heart. Before he can succumb to the vapors, Sophie-Anne grins back at him over her shoulder, with blood smeared across her face, laughing. Wild, on top of it.
"Is this a bad time?" Bill asks, squinting manfully, and the Queen laughs. "There's no such thing as bad! Or time, for that matter."
The Queen invites Bill to join her -- it's his very favorite snack, the femoral, after all, and she does look a lot like Sookie -- and he just squirms, while Hadley moans under her hands. I guess it's scary, to see your Queen supping on your lover's twin, when you're still nervous about even asking.
Speaking of fangbangers, we might not have expected Maxine to be such a willing victim to Jessica's mood swings but there she is, groaning like a sunny afternoon. Hoyt throws himself at Jessica, holding her against the wall with blood on her lips. "Have you lost your mind?" Jessica reminds him of the relatively horrible shit Maxine was saying about them both, but Hoyt reminds her that he's a good Southern boy: "She's my mama! She gets to! The hell are you from?" Maxine's still rolling around on the floor, but Jessica has already snapped back like a rubber band, scared to death of what she did.
Hoyt's on his knee by his chuckling momma, casting horrified looks back at Jessica. To be fair, she warned her. She's been warning her for a day, and Maxine didn't care, because Maxine loves it. It would be scary, I suppose, to see your girlfriend snacking on your mom. Even when the guides are gone and you know for a fact that mom's a nihilistic black-eyed orgy zombie and the girl's a bloodsucking fiend.
Maxine hates to leave, and reaches out desperately to Jessica for more -- more blood, more sex, more lines to cross, more sensation -- but he shoves her out the door. "I should have listened to Vampire Bill when he warned me about you," Hoyt says, storming out, and Jessica shrinks down to nothing. When they're gone, Maxine moaning out into the yard, Jessica slams the door like a girl and screams like an infant. She saw in his eyes that she was perfect, and so she was: What does that make her now? Besides all alone again?
Hadley dozes, looking at Bill across the Queen's indoor pool, on a chaise that matches her own. Sophie-Anne returns with a handkerchief, having wiped the blood clean. He jumps to his feet when she reenters. "What gives you the right to say no to the femoral blood of a good woman? You know what your problem is, William?" Caressing Hadley: "You are a snob. I hate snobs," she says, waving her handkerchief: "Tiny, tiny souls. Or penises. Or both." She touches a drop from her breast to her lips, wiping at it, and tosses Hadley out, barely even looking at her. It's the mirror to his angry demand last night, Sookie's wrist in the car, and he hates to see this too.
"I have several new members of court. A Latvian boy. Has to be tasted to be believed. Not polluted like most humans. Tastes exactly the way they used to taste just after I was turned. Before the Industrial Revolution fucked everything to hell. Should I summon him?" He's hot and dumb, but Bill's committed to his sobriety. She rolls her eyes and picks up a copy of Vogue from about 300 AD, ready to make him wait for what he wants. "There are pressing matters at hand I need your help with. I need to know how to kill a maenad." She's intrigued, it's in her wrists and the sharp movement of her neck: "A maenad?" she asks boredly. "In Bon Temps? That's random."
Not really, but he can't tell her that. He doesn't even know how it happened, yet. All he knows is how to make it worse, which he has already done. Sophie-Anne sits down, barely able to keep her curious eyes from his face. "She seems to have caused some sort of mass hypnosis," he explains in his stilted way, sitting again now that his Queen has done so. "The whole town has devolved to a primitive state in a matter of days." The Queen is impressed at the rate, figuring this one's old. "Well," she laughs, "They're all old. Relics."
We're right about the point the Big Bads came out last year too, right? If Steve and Sarah Newlin are the children of Rene Lanier, then Sophie-Anne is born equally of Godric's love of the world and the new, with Maryann's passion and Eric's devotion to fighting for her place in it. Of course Sophie-Anne thinks the old world baddies are laughable, and of course she contains them all. As Barth says, the key to the treasure is the treasure, just as Sookie spent last year learning that every answer stops being the answer when you find it, or else you will stay there and rot. Every synthesis immediately becomes a thesis, because all you do when you answer a question is let two more out of the bottle.
"Ancient Greece, correct?" Bill knows to demonstrate knowledge if she's going to cut to the important parts; she nods. "Before that, even. Orgies, sacrifice?" Yes. Now she's excited: "Cannibalism?" Bill shamefacedly says they suspect it, which makes me think Tara must have learned somewhere along the line about Daphne's heart before the intervention, because now everybody knows about it. (Once you've beaten the shit out of your boyfriend and fucked him in front of your social worker, I'd think something like "Guess what was in that soufflé?" isn't quite so upsetting.) Sophie-Anne shows how exciting she finds this by turning back to her magazine. Bill actually has to ask the obvious question, because Sophie-Anne is so affected, so he does: "...So how do I kill it?"
"You can't? She's convinced herself she's immortal and so she is." He stares, because what. "William, surely you know that everything that exists imagined itself into existence." Even her eyes are in on it. She puts down her magazine to explain further, fluffing herself up and getting into the role.
"Think about it. You're a wild young girl who's married to some jerk who treats you like property, and is also fucking some 14-year-old boy..." -- cue Bill wriggling nervously while she applies her makeup -- "And along comes this religion which encourages you to get hammered, run naked through the woods, have sex with whoever? Whatever? And it's all part of getting closer to God?" *
Bill admits he could see the appeal, especially -- he adds, knowing his audience -- to humans, with their tendency towards Puritanism. Because Bill is so totally down on that, just like Sophie-Anne.
*(Fill in the blanks however you want, but you're looking at Sarah Newlin, and Maxine, and Jessica's dad, and her mom too.)
"Exactly," she says, explaining the orgy escalation that seems so hard to understand for some people: "So you're fucking everybody in the dirt. Why not kill something, and eat it raw? Hey, you're super-extra-pious. There's nothing you can't do. And each time you do it just brings you one step closer to the 'divine.'" Bill asks if that isn't sort of delusional (slash self-serving, which welcome to religion), and she reminds him of the power of blind faith: "It can manifest in ways that bend the laws of physics or break them entirely." Waiting for him to gasp in wonderment, or ask his question, or disappear completely, she's distracted by her nails. Once again you have underestimated the slowness of Bill Compton.
"...I bit her and it poisoned me," he says, after she's managed to give her own fingernails a triple-take. "Of course it did. We can only drink human blood, and she's no longer even remotely human." Which she was, a bajillion years ago: "Hello, evolution? We started out that way too." Duh, you still are, thanks for playing. He nods and she checks her watch. "Less than two hours till dawn," she says, waiting for him to do or say anything remotely interesting. But it's Bill, so she changes tack again for the fifth time in the conversation, playing the libertine: "Shall we have sex?" She shoots for worldly coquette and ends up at galumphing Lolita yet again. He stares, because he is Bill, and her real face shines through: "Kidding? I haven't enjoyed sex with men since the Eisenhower administration."
When Bill stands to leave, she cautions him three times: "Nonsense. Sookie's not in any trouble, you would know it." He whines. "Spend the day, and leave tomorrow night." He whines, and she finally cuts him dead: "I insist?" His clueless ass sits down, finally, and she asks him to compliment her new dayroom -- shells and waves and water, just like the rest of her house, but with sunlight and the sound of the ocean as well -- and so he does.
"It's lovely," he says, and wonders how she can so blatantly yearn for something he'd be laughed out of Fangtasia! for even admitting he remembers. But she's the Queen. Why trade the sun for the moon, when you could have them both? She answers Godric's question, and in doing so takes his place in the story. She answers his asceticism with her own brand of bricolage, swanning about in a Gibson Girl maillot and supping on their technology as she bemoans their industry and loss of purity, using fashion as a weapon and time as a color where he just saw it in shades of grim, sad grey. She's not tired yet, she likes the game too much.
If Marie Antoinette were savvier -- and if it weren't for that damned necklace -- she'd have been dancing in Keds to Joy Division by the end of things. She did for industry what wars usually do; she built little worlds like this one. And how about Bill, shuttling between these two women, the shock of the old and the shock of the new, and not a gentleman in sight? He's smothered by it. Everything she says is meant to calm him, and to make him feel small. And so it does, because he has no idea what Vampyre really means.
Tara's still pacing madly, obsessing on Eggs, while Sookie tells her to chill. It's not good enough for Tara that Bill might return with news, because she knows his track record and she's not blinded by love. That's not what she's blinded by.
Lafayette hangs upon the doorknob, big as he can be, but Tara's not cowed. "How many times have you put yourself in danger for the man you love? How come you get that option and I don't?" It's worse for being true. There are howls outside, and laughter, and Tara can't hear them comforting her. While Lafayette gathers guns against the zombies, Tara delivers a treatise that has nothing to do with things, beyond the fact that Maryann's seduction was so tied up in her real attraction to and love for Eggs that they are indivisible. This is what it means to be a familiar:
"I finally found a strong, beautiful, good man who loves me! And y'all want to keep me from rescuing him, because you're afraid I might get hurt? How hurt do you think I'm gonna be if we wait and something happens to him?" It doesn't matter. This is addiction, plain and simple. In Bon Temps codependence looks like this, just like it does in your town: the brightness of love and the darkness of the thing it slumbers with. Lafayette shocks the hysterical -- if that's not redundant -- Lettie Mae by mentioning the ass-beatings they've been administering to each other, but Tara's stalwart: "It wasn't him. It was Maryann. Her influence!"
Lafayette points out that Maryann didn't throw the punches herself, proving he gets it already better than most of them; he points his gun at Tara and tells Sookie to fetch his handcuffs. They are covered in a light purple fur, but he's not going to waste time explaining that. They tie her up and he locks her to the coffee table; she predictably goes Intervention nuts:
First up is Lafayette, who she pronounces jealous because she found love, and he never will, because is a "fucking freak." Lettie Mae is dead set against her happiness because she's never been happy -- and Lettie Mae points out that it's all she ever wanted, even when she was where Tara's at now -- and finally, Sookie's so pathetic she's had to settle for a dead guy. "Wow," Sookie sighs. "That supposed to get me on your side?"
She's past sides. She's past caring. They are all part of the world that is hurting her, and her pain has the talking stick. Finally. This is just the step in the very necessary thing that started with Miss Jeanette, that Maryann brought to a boil and Sookie and Bill fucked all to hell with their faith-healing violation bullshit. Like she'd be okay, like it was just a magic spell. Which is what got her into this mess, and now everybody's surprised she's backsliding? Although to be fair, everybody in the room now seems to know their role. The only difference between an exorcism and an intervention, frankly, is shame and guilt culture. And you can't go the "your addiction hurts the people that you love" route here, like usual, because someone she loves is in the thick of it, and they're preventing her from saving him.
"I'm going on the front porch to make sure that devil woman don't try to come up in here," says Lafayette, reminding Sookie of all people that supernatural things don't wait for you to show up, when they want you. They'll discuss that further in a bit, but for the real-world application, just look at Tara. It's already here. Any house could be Maryann's house. Sookie looks at Tara, who's just shivering with rage now, and joins Lafayette on the porch. Which means it's now down to Lettie Mae, which seems like a recipe for disaster, even though she's spent most of this season proving she's going to be okay. Exhausted and terrified to see her daughter playing out her story, she throws herself down on the couch and sobs dramatically. It's pretty hilarious. Tara just about spits. "You are kidding me. This ain't happening to you!"
But it is. That's what addicts get to have: A whole world, for them. Day and night, sun and moon and everything in between. And the only thing you give up -- like Hadley, like Eggs, like anybody who gives in -- is the option of linking today to tomorrow. That's the only price of immortality, whether mad-born or given as the gift of death: Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today. It's what drives Sophie-Anne crazy, and it's what killed Godric, but it's most clearly written on their faces: the story passed down from mother to daughter, and all the way back again.
Sam has told Jason and Andy about being a shapeshifter -- thanks, Daph -- and Jason is, unsurprisingly, totally into it. He's like a little kid. Andy's in a tank top behind the bar, sanding it back together while the others clean up Merlotte's. Andy's not interested in thinking or hearing about Sam's magical abilities, so he changes the subject back to Maryann, and like a good Southern boy Jason appeals to the authorities, asking about the cops. "I am involved," Andy thunders, because only at the end of the world would he be the face of authority, but then, it's all he's ever had.
Jason blamelessly explains he meant the real law: Sheriff Dearborne and Kenya and "that other guy, the squirrelly one," whom as we'll see is a dead ringer for Gomer Pyle USMC, and thus automatically adorable. (So if Bon Temps is Mayberry on E and meth, does that make Maxine the cracked-out Aunt Bee? Hoyt is already like a horny giant Opie.) "Then we have got to be the law," Jason says, and gears up for one of his magnificent speeches. Sam pre-drops his jaw in preparation. "Guys, I read a book about this. This is Armageddon. This is The Oral History Of The Zombie War." He starts thinking weapons, and Sam points out that A) guns can't hurt Maryann, and B) they can't shoot anybody else, so C) they have to remember this is still their town. The guides are gone; they have to be their own.
"Well, sometimes you need to destroy something to save it." Sam stares; I just wish somebody would tell the interventionists at Chez Lafayette so they'd let her deal with her life. "That's in the Bible. Or the Constitution..." It should be in both. They should nail that over the door so the time we start pointing fingers we can remember what fertile, broken ground we're standing on, and stop being so afraid all the time.
Sam hears little kids at the window, looking for Arlene, and runs out into the woods calling for them, on the off chance that they're just little kids and not some new horrible danger he can rush into faster than Sookie Stackhouse on a three-day V binge, but they're not horrible dangers, just Arlene's obnoxious kids. They are happy to learn that Arlene is not in the vicinity, which is kind of sad, and when they ask for food you can see from their grody faces they've apparently started eating dirt sometime in the last couple days. Sam offers them refuge and lunch, and the glimmer of a thought that Sam Merlotte taking care of kids is like going swimming in an ocean of hugs and sunlight.
But then, he was already doing that: Jason and Andy head off to the police station to "arm themselves," against Sam's level-headed protests, and Jason yells about how he's had paramilitary training now and thus can handle it, and then in the middle of yelling at Sam for being ungrateful for his total stupidity, he walks into a tree and sputters to himself. Andy's like, "That is my entire life."
Sookie asks the staring and wigged-out Lafayette to sit down, and then gets a very exciting Bill text... From five hours ago. "Dammit. I'm getting a new phone as soon as Eric pays me." Lafayette asks if she's seriously working for Eric, and instead of being ashamed or explaining that it's nominally because of Lafayette's endungeonment, she's just like, "Yeah, mm-hmm. Oh, let me read you this text from my boyfriend." Sadly, Bill isn't coming back tonight, which means they have to save themselves. Which honestly, isn't that pretty much how it always goes down anyway?
Bill does a lot of staring and jerking around, and he will run his ass out into the sunlight for no reason on occasion, but the proportion of Bill Saves Attempted to Bill Saves Accomplished is like 50:1. It's one of the reasons I love Sookie so much: She could have five guys running to her rescue, but one of them will inevitably fall in a ditch and one will catch on fire and one will get knocked out in dog form and finally she's just alone, yet again. So she shrugs, cuts off some motherfucker's head or goes ninja on them with tire chains, and cleans up the mess while the rest of them get it together. Anybody who has the princess act down that well knows that it's the thought that counts anyway.
Some off God music starts playing as Tara harasses her mom hardcore, hitting every open wound she can think of one by one until she finds the right one to take out her heart. This is exactly why one-person interventions don't work. "You keep me here and anything happens to Eggs, you will have destroyed my one chance at true love." Lettie Mae informs her daughter that "true love" rips you open and tears you up, which is true enough. Tara rises to her knees, to prove this: "I will forgive you. For everything. Everything. You know that is a lot. And this is a one-time-only offer."
Oh, fuck you, Tara. I mean, I love Tara and I love this storyline more than anybody living, but addicts are so fucking horrible. I mean, okay. The word "shaman" is dorky, but all they really did was take your crisis and put it in a divine context, and what Bill and Sookie have done is take it back out of that context and make it annoying again. The last thing Tara needs is her wits back, because her wits are the problem, and this shit right here is why: crazy people, especially addicts, are exactly as crazy as they are smart.
The smarter you are, and Tara's undisputedly the smartest person in Bon Temps, the crazier you get to be, because you can build all the walls you want and call everybody into question so that nobody can see you properly to give you the reality check. And if they do, you're smarter than reality anyway, so you can get around that one too. What Miss Jeanette did, what Maryann nearly helped Tara do, is confront this shit on the mythic level.
In the old days there wasn't that division: Guys with animal heads would come into your tent in the middle of the night and cut you into a million pieces, and after the longest night they would put you back together stronger, with a crystal in your skull and all that poison just puddled on the ground, and you could speak the language of birds and dreams. Or for Maryann and her sisters: The messengers looked different, but they did the same thing. Now, we tend to medicate.
Miss Jeanette fucked it up by thinking visions follow the same rules as the sympathetic magic that worked for Lettie Mae: She thought killing the black-eyed girl was just like killing the possum. The difference is that in a vision, the possum is you, because everything is you, and you can't kill any part of yourself without opening a hole in the world. And now you've got Lettie Mae, who crossed that line from psychology to shamanism from the other side and found that it worked -- and more importantly, came from the same place as her faith, which Tara also denigrated -- looking at a mirror of herself in those days, and feeling what it was like when there was nobody to catch her.
"If you don't, God will judge you," Tara says, going for the weak spot, but Lettie Mae assures her that God's the one telling her not to. It was tough love that day in the jailhouse, too, and she was right to do it. She didn't get what she wanted, but it did get her daughter into a treatment program that sidestepped every rational defense she had.
"Uh-uh, it is Satan. That's Satan in your motherfuckin' Sunday hat. Satan has been telling you he is God for a long time, and you've fallen for it hook, line, and sinker." Lettie Mae swears she's wrong, and she is, but Tara can sense her sudden weakness. "Yes, it is," she presses sincerely. "I see it in your eyes, and it's looking right back at me. Like it has ever since I was born. God? You've never been a real woman of God." That's closer, because it treads on the concept of faith, which has plagued Lettie Mae for a long time; it's closer too because Tara believes every word. Tara doesn't need faith, and is too smart for faith, but she has something better: Direct and ecstatic contact with God. "You never stepped outside your own ignorance and fear," Tara weeps selfishly, "And done something selfless for me or for anybody. Well, God is knocking on your door right now, Mama. It couldn't be more loud and clear. Are you gonna let him in?"
Lettie Mae stares, lip wobbling, and drops to the floor in prayer; her daughter weeps with rage, big fat tears running down her cheek: That was her last trick. Now it's up to Lettie Mae, and her silent God: "Save and deliver me from all those who pursue me, or they will tear at me like a lion," like love, like now, "And rip me to pieces, and there will be no one to rescue me..." That's what it was like; that's what her daughter's living now. She finds her answers in prayer. But her guides are gone.
"What was it like inside Tara's head?" Sookie explains that it was limitless: "Like anything could happen. And it probably will. And you can feel your insides expanding, but there's also this... This emptying out of everything right at the very center of your being, and you don't want that to ever stop. Ever." Sounds good. Lafayette agrees, with his eyes sighting down into the gathering night.
Lisa asks Sam about Arlene, while they eat their food. She's sick or something, is his best answer. "Is she blind?" Maybe, sometimes. "Is she gonna die?" No. Not unless we all are. Sam asks if she's gotten sick in front of them, and they matter-of-factly inform him that she's not sick, she's crazy. "She's always kissin' Terry and doin' other gross stuff when her eyes get weird." They ask for a doctor, and wonder if there isn't a higher power, even, they could appeal to. "Like a vampire. I bet a vampire would know what to do." Lisa asks for Vampire Bill, whom Sam assumes is still in Dallas, and Coby asks if he knows any other vampires. (Like maybe somebody he met at a Bar Owner's Association meeting, the concept of which had me rolling for the last ten minutes. "I move that we change last call to 6:15 AM. The current curfew is racist." The Chair does not recognize the member from Fangtasia!)
Sookie asks after Lafayette's leg, and he admits that Eric forced him to drink the thousand-year-old elixir of his blood. "Me too! He tricked me!" ("It ran down my chin like a warm jet of champagne! It got all over my clothes, they were so dirty! I felt so naughty I had to take a hot, wet shower! I had to get all soaped up and wash it off! And fuck Bill for three hours, for some reason! Eric's back muscles are like a sweating, heaving stallion! I was tricked!") Lafayette suggests that somebody slap the shit out of Eric, and Sookie giggles. "I did! He groaned a little! His thighs are like a tiger in the jungle, that could kill you in an instant! I want to eat an entire cheesecake!"
Then they talk about the amazing constant sex dreams, which Lafayette points out are not only awesome, but terrible for him considering his PTSD and total hatred of Eric, which Sookie can only infer so far. God, given Sookie's sexy/gaywad fucking-and-crying dreams about Eric, I can't imagine what Lafayette's would be like. "It is so hot on this yacht in Ibiza, I better pour champagne all over a hundred guys in thongs, and then make them do a little dance and watch us bone." Oh man, but that's like Queen Sophie-Anne's regular life! As fun as a theoretical meet up between Maryann and Nan Flanagan is, the idea of Sophie-Anne and Lafayette even being in the same town gives me the shivers. It would be like Maryann but instead of drunks humping it would be like spontaneous outbursts of fabulousness. Picture it: Jane Bodehouse in Yigal Azrouël, fierce-catwalking across the sky.
As much as Sookie and Lafayette dishing about their Eric dreams is wonderful/terrible, that's how terrible/wonderful it is to see Lettie-Mae Thornton rolling out onto the porch, yowling like a cat. Lafayette is like, "Christ, what now." She informs them that Tara is breaking her heart and that she can't handle it anymore. I don't know how old she is, but she has been rode hard and looks about a hundred; she can't have much of a liver left; she's never been anything approaching stable: Girlfriend has a point. Maybe the unflappable Sookie could take guard? "She can't hurt you like she's hurtin' me," Lettie Mae says, characteristically assuming that nobody has ever suffered like her, and Sookie's like, "I beg to differ." The line reading is really smart here, because you can hear in her voice that she understands her intervention role and has not yet been wounded by Tara's bullshit, but knows the one will hit twice as hard, and she's not interested in losing/killing Tara herself on top of everything else.
Lafayette asks if she can handle the gun, and there's a nice beat where Lettie Mae reminds him that she was the one who taught him to shoot, when he was little and being bullied. I feel like we've thought about this before, and I know it comes up again in a second, but I really like the idea of young freaky Lafayette having only the town drunk to turn to, and her being so low she couldn't even judge him. Knowing for a fact that she gave him more love and acceptance than his own mother -- speaking of a bitch I'd like to meet one day -- already puts an even neater spin on their team-up the last couple episodes. And makes this even better/worse: he hands her the gun, and she points it at him.
Mission accomplished, Tara. You took the weakest woman in Bon Temps besides yourself, and broke her. Well done. But frankly, why the eff would anybody leave those two alone in any circumstance, much less one directly related to their familial addiction and abuse issues? Or on the other side, nobody thought, "Gee, being tied up in a room with the woman who beat you savagely for the last 28 years -- until about two weeks ago, matter of fact -- roaming free, and praying at random, is probably a little fucked up to deal with all on its own"? Why not just chuck a rabid raccoon in there with them?
Of course, once the gun's pointed at Lafayette he heads into meltdown, because that's what happens these days, because Lafayette's body doesn't know the difference between having a gun pointed at you and being in a room with a vampire, because there isn't one. He folds, and Sookie tends to him while pointing out that Lettie Mae is sending her daughter directly back into the arms of evil, but Lettie Mae doesn't care anymore, about what's best for Tara: "I got a chance to win my baby back for real. The Lord works in mysterious ways." Usually by not doing much of anything. Lafayette can't even dig the handcuff keys out of his pocket on his own, so Sookie grabs them -- staring at a statue on the porch for about five times as long as foreshadowing requires -- and goes inside.
"I pity you," says Lettie Mae, but she's not Lettie Mae anymore. She's Eric. In a dress. Which is funny and all, but you'll see them accrete as we go along, and maybe you'll read The Bacchae and maybe you won't -- and this far into the season it's unlikely you are the kind of person who will -- but there's a reason. Lafayette moans as Eric comes closer: "I don't hate you like your mama does. You can't help what you are. But I cannot let you keep me and Tara apart."
The creature takes on Eric's voice now: "And that's why I'm gonna have to kill you." He cocks the gun, crouching and smiling sweetly as Lafayette whines: "I thought you wanted to be a vampire. You know how you feel with my blood inside you?" He is beautiful; as beautiful as in Sookie's dreams. "Well, being a vampire is like that. Times a million," he says intensely, staring into Lafayette's eyes. "Goodbye, sweetheart," he says, winking, and pulls the trigger. Vampires mean death. It's that simple. Every night, for the rest of your life.
When Sookie and Tara return -- and as important as that scene just was, you have to wonder how that went -- he's just gone. Eric too, but I mean Lafayette. Lettie Mae's standing where she was standing the whole time, and ushers Tara away, claiming she did nothing to him. Tara turns, still capable of being embarrassed, at the bottom of the stairs: "Sookie? ...I need your keys..." Sookie reminds her she's being a fucking idiot -- just like Sam did, with Jason, and just like Jason Tara's going to run into a few trees on the way -- and they watch her go. Sookie wraps her arms around herself and hopes for the best.
"Hey, you think Sam's ever turned into a dog and then had sex with a lady dog?" Only Jason Stackhouse. Andy is appalled, but Jason pulls a page from the Book of Amy: "No, it ain't bestiality if there ain't a human involved. Then it's just nature." Hard to disagree. (Have you read Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan? Trigger alert if you've got stuff, but it's a compassionate and wise, healing, Angela Carter/LeGuin-level fairytale if you can deal with the beginning.) Andy points out a random Bon Temps lady running around with toilet paper, and Jason's horrified. "We gotta fix things, Andy. I ain't lettin' weird shit like this take over my town." He thinks he can come home.
Inside, Rosie from the switchboard is laughing her ass off that some poor screaming soul dialed 911 and got her. She sees Andy come in and hurls herself on him, but he's so creeped out that she thinks he doesn't remember the time they nearly had sex. (On the walls it says, LO LO BROMIOS and it says FUCK AUTHORITY and there are dicks and anarchy symbols. I love that: "What do you want to do today?" Well, there are no limits and no law, so we'd probably better go deface the police station. "I love that idea! Fuck authority!") Once she sees Jason she pushes Andy aside and jumps on him, and offers to fuck him "every which way but north," so he -- I think -- comes up with the plan of keeping her busy blowing him while Andy gets the guns. Andy is appalled, but runs off, and then she gets a little too violently frisky and makes Jason nervous.
In the gun room, Andy opens a weapons locker and starts putting bullets in his pockets, but he's surprised by a gunshot to the ceiling and turns around. There stands Bud Dearborne, squaredancing enthusiast, in his boxer shorts, grinning madly and asking Andy to do-si-do with him. This goes on for awhile, and that shit is always so weird and Paula Abdullian that I have no idea if he's making it up -- "When that devil comes a-courtin' aha he'll catch all eight with a right hand half back by the left turn the corner by the right make a wrong way thar and you pickle up a doodle in the middle of the star!" -- but when Andy takes his gun he shits himself and runs away, and you gotta shed a tear for old Bud Dearborne. All he wants to do is dance, not shit in front of his (ex) employees. The guide is gone.
Lettie Mae can't even understand why Lafayette has gone to pieces, and Sookie's answer, that he's traumatized, does nothing to help, because she's Lettie Mae: "Well so am I!" Yeah, and you're a fucking mess, so what's your question? Sookie whispers to Lafayette that she's going to club the shit out of Lettie and all he has to do is grab the gun, that's it, and he agrees that this is possible, so Sookie turns her saddest, most sweetie-pie face up to Lettie Mae again and begs her to at least "lower that gun, Miss Thornton," because he is "freakin' out." She does, Sookie brains her awesomely, they grab the gun and run to the car. And the whole time Lettie Mae's yelling weakly, "It's not my fault! She forgave me! Let her go!"
Sam waits outside Fangtasia! with the kids -- their father, apparently, is named Dwayne and has Arlene's name tattooed on his stomach, to which Sam sweetly responds, "Well, he must have loved her a lot, because you know that hurt" -- when good old fucked-up Ginger arrives for work. She screams her stupid head off as usual when he approaches, and goes all Lurch when Sam asks to wait with the kids inside, but a hundy changes her tune and she lets them inside. As maddening as Sookie is, as often as she screams, as ridiculous as she behaves, as controlling and creepy as Bill is, imagine one hour in the life of fuckin' Ginger. She makes me want to kill humans, and I am one.
Lafayette zooms through the sunny afternoon toward Maryann's house. (Remember how long this drive took, when it was Rene Lanier driving her?) Sookie's finally chilled enough to offer to hold the gun, but Lafayette assures her he's not letting go of it. She can deal. After a second, she asks if he's okay, and he says very directly, "Nope." It's quite sympathetic. She gives it a second more, and then asks him to please suck it up: "I cannot do this alone." She's not being a bitch, and he knows that. She enumerates the plan, well acquainted with trauma and the need to know the situation: "We just need to get in, get Tara and get the hell out. And if Maryann gives us any trouble, you have to shoot her." He says he will, comforted, and she gets hilarious: "I mean it. Shoot her in the head!" He nods, they drive, dumb plan.
Inside what my notes call "Meat Estates," Tara finds Eggs -- vacant, head dropped, nearly a cut-strings puppet -- at the kitchen table. He wakes to her voice, and they hold each other close. They are family: They are familiar. She tries to get him away, but Maryann appears: "But everything you want is right here!" Eggs grins at her delightedly, even as he's petting Tara's arm around him: He is home. This is his family, finally again. Tara backs away, terrified, holding onto him. "I don't know what you are, but I want out." (As Casey Scott says, "Once you really need it to stop, that's when they ask you, well: Why'd you start?")
"Oh, it's too late for that," Maryann says: you're already my familiar. We are familiar. Tara screeches that she was forced to eat a person's heart, and Maryann laughs: "And you loved it!" Admit it. Admit that the line pulls you. "You don't want us, you want Sam," Tara says weakly. "We ain't got nothing to do with it." Immortals have all the time in the world. Maryann would have gotten to him eventually. But Tara laid out the table, and made her think the right ingredients were there, finally. Finally, finally.
"Nothing to do with it? You summoned me. That night in the woods, with that unfortunate pharmacist? You saw me. Well, you saw you, through me..."
Once more with feeling, Tara stares: The little black-eyed girl, begging "momma" not to hurt her, Miss Jeanette screaming -- "One of you must die!" -- and as above, so below: she brought the knife down. She cast herself into the outer darkness, and invited that darkness in. Her history, her pain, were too much to bear, so she asked for oblivion. She asked to kill that most painful, that most beautiful part of herself, and left a hole the wind could blow through.
"But Miss Jeanette was a fake! She scammed people by making up crazy rituals!" Doesn't change what you did. The unthinkable. Maryann circles the room, enchanting her: "Oh, ritual is powerful thing. And calling forth that kind of energy? It has consequences." Tara asks, then, if Miss Jeanette was real after all. We already know this but I guess it's worth explaining to those who haven't been paying attention. "Sadly, no. And I should have known she wasn't the vessel. But you have to try every option, you know?" Eggs laughs, totally out of it. I guess he was the one. Maybe at that place, past the red converted barn.
Tara begs to be free, and Maryann vibrates at her; Eggs is ecstatic. "That doesn't work on me anymore," Tara says proudly, unaware of what she's lost. Maryann's anger turns to a sweet smile; she approaches, and punches Tara super hard. When she looks up, her eyes are black. It's no longer therapy. Now it's just madness. "That's more like it!" Maryann touches her cheek, overjoyed to have her back, and Eggs nearly cries with relief. They chase each other upstairs, giggling like children.
Maryann looks after them, but the idiots arrive -- where have they been? -- shrieking their triumph: They crawl over each other like puppies for her favor. "...He came!" Terry yells, and Maryann is afraid for a moment that it happened without her: "What?" Arlene grins. "The God Who Comes?" He came!, they howl. "Yeah, and he smoked old Sam Merlotte but good." Maryann is disgusted; they continue. "He had horns. And he took Sam Merlotte and he smote him. And then Sam disappeared. Just boom! Ha-ha! Gone!" Arlene holds up some clothes: "And then -- And Sam's clothes just fell to the ground, empty!" She screams into their minds, all the rage and loneliness and disappointment of a thousand thousand years; they clap hands to their ears but it's their souls she's ripping up. "You fucking morons! Out! Get out!" They run off screeching and sad, and she readjusts. "Must I do everything myself?" And isn't that just the way.
Rosie's tied up and groaning, grunting in a chair, as Jason attempts to interrogate her: "You ain't got nothin' like grenades?" Flamethrowers?" Um, no? This is real life? She promises to tell him if he lets her blow him, but he learned that one the hard way, in a DFW bathtub: "Rosie, I ain't never taken advantage of someone while she was fucked up." She laughs: What about Patsy Lyle, who passed out in the middle of having sex with you. "She was fine when it started!" he exclaims, which apparently is the difference. Gomer appears with a gun to Jason's head, and Rosie gets excited about seeing what happens to Jason's head when he pulls the trigger, but it's a game. Gomer can't remember the name ("Chinese Fire Drill?"), but Jason knows he's talking about Russian roulette. He pulls the trigger, just like Eric, and Jason's saved by chance. Andy cocks a gun and Kevin shoots him with the bullet, but he's wearing Kevlar. Is there a vest for Jason? No, just the one, which "sucks," but not as much as what could have just happened there. Rosie continues to be bizarre, and they head out.
Hoyt was as adorable at every age imaginable as he is now; his pictures fight those of his father on Maxine's shelves. There's wrestling on TV, to calm his nerves, while he sits in daddy's chair with a baseball bat, waiting for the thing. Maxine's in the kitchen, making a Snickers/potato chip casserole for God, sprinkling it with cheese and Rachael Ray (Paula Deen?) spices. Hoyt comes in to check on her as she's pouring on hot sauce, and is grossed out: "Oh, God. Nobody's gonna eat that!" She assures him that He will. "And He is gonna love it. Ooh, we have to hurry! Maryann will remember this day for the rest of her life! I don't have the heart to tell her it's all downhill from here. Ain't a woman alive who'd go through with it, if she knew the truth." So: It's a wedding after all.
"Oh, Hoyt, you can go ahead and pack that box of chardonnay in the car," Maxine says distractedly, and he grabs her, promising to take care of her like he promised. "You were ten," she growls. "Let it go." He moans, saying that he's already let too much bad happen to her, and she snorts. "You haven't let enough bad happen to me. You know how many times I wanted to go down to Merlotte's, and drink myself silly, and find some dumb redneck to take to my bed? But no, I had to take care of you." She shoves him, calling him a pansy like his dad, and he bristles. "Daddy was a hero!" he says, confused, and she informs him in quick order that "Daddy" was a secret drinker, probably a homosexual, and shot himself in the head. "I lied and said it was a burglar because otherwise we'd have never gotten that life insurance money, dumbass." Hoyt crumbles all to hell. His guides are gone.
Outside Maryann's, there's a fat man doing a meat dance while a naked couple bobbles around. Sookie is horrified, talking about the violation in seeing "people who are the exact opposite" of everything Gran was, defiling her house. Lafayette tells her to chill: "They ain't themselves, and they're not doin' it on purpose." Sookie talks about the first time she met Maryann, how clearly she was fucking bizarre, "thinking creepy foreign stuff," and she did nothing. "How come there's so much wrong in the world, Lafayette?" she cries, apropos of nothing. "How come so many people are willing to do bad things and hurt other people?" Because they're weak, of course. She gasps bravely: "Well, I am not weak. And I am not afraid." You go, Glen Coco. "I am gonna kick that bitch's evil ass out of my Gran's house, and then you are gonna shoot her." Lafayette agrees, reiterating the plan one more time: "In the fuckin' head!"
Arlene and Terry drop literally out of the trees, doing some childish fun "you're trespassing!" stuff that little kids might do in a Jane Austen novel, asking for "a hundred million dollars" and Lafayette's wonderful pants. Terry goes for the gun, and Lafayette offers him drugs instead. Arlene is all about how drugs are for losers, but once Lafayette pulls out a fiesta of multicolored pills, Terry gets very excited and tells her about the effects on their sex life, so they start Hanselgretelling down the path after Lafayette, who scatters the pills like chickenfeed while Sookie heads inside. How much you want? "All of 'em," Terry says, and Arlene delightfully agrees: "Yeah, because if a job ain't worth doing all out, then why order a hamburger unless there's steak at home, or... Something like that, right?"
Eric sprawls in a beautiful grey suit, with Pam in a glittery red pantsuit behind him, considering Sam and his young charges. "Why should I help you, shifter?" That old rivalry again. Sam honestly just needs the help, but offers a boon in the future. "Can you give me Sookie Stackhouse?" Eric immediately asks, since this is the one man in her life he doesn't control, and Pam rolls eyes. Sam cannot give himself Sookie, much less Eric. "Well, that's a shame. That would be a tribute I would not soon forget." Sam gets all bristly and says he's not there to give tribute, and Eric points out the realities: "No. You're here to request my help, based on a hypothetical future in which you return the favor." Seriously. Sam, come on.
Sam remembers that this is the case and he has no leverage, but Eric's not done. "But you are known to not be friendly toward those like me," Eric says HELLA AWKWARDLY, like who even talks like that, and asks why he should trust old Sam. "Because until somebody starts trusting somebody, we're all single targets. Just ripe for the picking." Which is sweet, but Maryann's not ever going to be a vampire problem. The Queen could tell you: She's in some other venn diagram on some other page of the universe. She's too much life, and vampires know all about that. "I have no knowledge of this maenad creature, although I suspect it's the bullheaded beast that passed through recently. Right, Pam?" Pam spits and mourns her shoes, but Eric says there might be somebody with better info. Which I like, because in both this and Bill's case it's not about power or aristocracy, but just the fact that Sophie-Anne knows all kinds of shit. They're not begging for her favor, they're asking for her knowledge. It makes her a lot easier to buy this way.
"Can we see your fangs?" asks Coby, and he immediately pops fang at them. Lisa pulls her hands to her chest, like a prayer. "Don't you like vampires, little girl?" he says, flirting, but of course Sam doesn't get Eric, so he takes a warning tone, but Lisa's got the Hoyt benefit on her side, w/r/t vamp-hating: "Our almost-stepdaddy hated vampires, but we don't." The best way to raise a non-racist is to be a racist and a failure. Of course Pam rolls her eyes in the background, like of course trash like this associates with vamp-haters. "He went on a vacation with Jesus," Coby explains, somewhat counterfactually, and Pam thanks heaven she never had kids. Arlene's kids will do that.
"Oh, come on, Pam. They're funny!" Eric leans closer, inspecting them affectionately: "They're like humans, but miniature. Teacup humans!" She switches to Swedish, at least: "I hate them. They're so stupid." Heh. He points out, still in Swedish, that they are also delicious -- yee -- and Sam's like, "Um, can you fix my problem?" Eric nods, and gets ready to go see her immediately. They walk out together, with Pam in the back delighting Eric where she can't see him: "Please! Get those horrible things out of here! I'll be smelling them for a week." At the truck, Eric leans down -- "Good night, tiny humans," he says, with a delicious wink -- and takes off into the fucking sky. Guide gone, they pull their marbles together and clamber into the truck.
When Sookie heads inside Maryann's, through the mud porch, Jane Bodehouse is cutting off her own finger with a huge knife, singing to the tune of "Row Your Boat: "Lo lo bromios, lo lo bromios..." In the kitchen, there's a beautiful boy in the sink, naked, playing with intestines, and abundance rotting on the kitchen table. Lying in the shadow of Gran's body is Mike Spencer, shirt open, eyes wild, who pulls Sookie down onto the floor with him. "Remember when your Gran was layin' here all bloody and dead?" he giggles. She's like, "Um, obviously." When she tries to get away, he starts screaming that scream, setting the other two off, so finally she's coerced for a moment into spooning with him in that deadly place. "You smell good," he says grossly; she is well aware that he does not. "Makes you feel more alive bein' in the presence of death, don't it?" The boy in the sink laughs, and Mike says she'd probably know. "How come you let him put his dead pecker inside you, huh? It ain't natural, and it ain't right..." Sookie points out that pine-fucking floor-wallowing Mike Spencer is in no position "to talk about what's natural and right," and he just laughs.
The dioramas of the sea, outside the Queen's dayroom, are as ornate as they are lifeless: gulls, and ocean fantasies like a Disney gallery. The song plays -- "Oh, the good life, full of fun/ Seems to be the ideal..." -- as we see the humans, lined up in revealing costumes across the water: French maid, film star, pool boy, Olympian. Quite a buffet. "Yes, the good life lets you hide/ All the sadness you feel/ You won't really fall in love/ For you can't take the chance..."
The Queen offers Bill a choice of meal, and he smiles tightly, begging off. "William, you have to eat before we play Yahtzee. I need you to play your best game!" When he explains that he only feeds from Sookie, he knows that he just fucked up, and then two things happen: First, Hadley's eyes swing around to stare at him, so I guess she doesn't know about their relationship, and second, the Queen's true face shows through again for a second: "Why on Earth would you do that." He asks again to leave, and Sophie-Anne responds with a distraction, clapping for the Latvian hottie. "Ludis! Ludis, this is my good friend Bill Compton. Would you allow him to feed from you?" Ludis kneels, nearly naked, at his feet, offering to let Bill fuck him in the process. "William, you have to at least try him. I insist." So he does. It's delicious, and so long in coming. "I love watching two men together," the Queen says to her retinue across the pool, and their laughter is one that courts have known since time immemorial. Just because Bill doesn't get irony doesn't mean irony's enough to live on.
Maryann approaches a very jumpy Lafayette in the wild edge of her yard, holding up a fat green weed: "Horse nettle. Also known as bull nettle, the Devil's tomato..." -- and yes, she pronounces tomato the way you think -- "And my personal favorite: The Apple of Sodom." He shivers. "It's quite poisonous. But in the tiniest of doses, a savory addition to any wine-based sauce." She tastes it, moaning, with Karl at her side. "Mm! Gives it a pungent hint of madness. A little touch of total abandon." She steps closer to him, intrigued and proud, and he begs her not to come closer. "I can tell that you are no stranger..." -- Bitch, I said stop! -- "...To total abandon." We always knew he was one of hers; so did he. Never more so than now that Eric's taken away everything that ever kept him sane. He fires the gun and she holds up her hand, proving new geometries upon the world: an angle becomes a corner, deliriously, and strikes Karl through the temple. He falls. "Oh, poor Karl!" she mourns. "You didn't really advance much in this lifetime." She turns smiling -- something familiar in her smile, I mean to say -- to Lafayette, looking for a replacement: "You cook, don't you?"
The Queen throws her hand -- "Oh, I hate threes!" -- at the Yahtzee table, and Bill's had enough. He picks his way through courtly ways as through a minefield: "Your Majesty, I really need to leave." She keeps playing. He will wait on her. That's what it means. When he finally stands, in a patented Bill Compton huff, she calls him back delightedly. "...Maenads are sad, silly things. The world changed centuries ago, and they're still waiting for the God Who Comes." Does he ever come? "Of course not," she says impatiently. The guides are gone now.
"Gods never actually show up. They only exist in humans' minds. Like money, and morality." Ludis acts like this is deep, but it sort of is: What she's describing in her ineloquent bullshitty way is the answer to Godric's question: a new morality, for vampires and humans alike, that takes all thought as its eternal bricolage. There's no such thing as bad, for vampires, or time. Maryann's teaching the humans the same. We imagine ourselves into our situations and we imagine ourselves out; sometimes, if you push hard enough and have the will, you can break the laws of physics.
"If I can't kill her, how do I get her to leave Bon Temps?" Which is the most sensible, and I sure hope the correct tack, because killing her would be the worst thing I can think of; the Queen rolls her eyes. "She has to believe that she's successfully summoned forth 'Dionysus,' in hope that he will quite literally devour her, until she's lost into oblivion." Hadley rolls the dice; she knows that hope. As Bill knows the rest: "So she seeks death? Uh, the true death. The one thing she's evolved beyond..." The Queen agrees that it's ironic. Godric knew better: that's not irony, that's how it works. They are young yet.
"You know, they're really not that smart, these maenads." And how does she summon this nonexistent God of hers? "I never said he was nonexistent," the Queen contradicts herself, "I just said He never comes." She speaks in riddles. He asks about reality and she tells him about faith; he asks about belief and she lectures him in reality. He thinks they're separate issues, and she's convinced they are nothing like. "She believes if she finds the perfect vessel, sacrifices and devours part of him or her, while surrounded by the magic of her familiars, then her mad God will appear. At that point, when she willingly surrenders herself to him..." She can be killed. Not that she will be, but good luck convincing Sam Merlotte to play that fucking game.
"Who's the smartest boy in class?" Sophie-Anne exclaims (and slack-jawed Ludis grins, because not him either.) Hadley laughs. These are the benefits of court: You see demigods ridiculed, and know that your cage is gilded bright as the sun. And that perfect vessel, Bill wonders, is human? "They prefer supernatural beings. The two-natured..." Like Sam; she agrees. "Shifters, yes. And Weres. Fortunately, they show little interest in us. Something about our hearts not beating. But they'll try any other being that straddles the two worlds." And has those glowy hands. Maryann loves glowy.
"As long as it has a beating heart..." Come on, Bill. I have such low expectations of you, and such great faith. Put it together. You saw her fall in love with Sookie. You have to know what that means. "You have to remember, they've been trying for centuries. They're constantly improvising their recipes in hopes of finding that one magic element that will make it all happen." Like all of us. Sophie-Anne shakes her head, feeling her man approach; he announces Eric and she finds it diverting. He wants her to be a guide so bad, and she's so not interested.
"How's my cousin Sookie?" asks Hadley, who is already as perfectly cast as Sarah Newlin was: Sookie's blowsy, American twin. The perfect pigtailed virgin, with a devil's smile. "Be sure and tell her I said hey," she says regretfully, and asks after Gran. He does that sympathetic smile that always bothers me, but this time it feels real. "I'd love to talk to her sometime," Hadley says sadly, "But I owe her so much money..." (At the funeral, remember, they talked about cousin Hadley, unreachable cousin Hadley, poor ungrateful Hadley, who ran out on a rehab paid for by Gran. Poor Hadley, Bartlet's other victim, who ran into the cold arms of death as quickly as her cousin. But upgrade, come on.)
"I think it's best that you are not in touch," Bill says with that plastered sweet smile, not wanting to drop another bomb or hurt her -- sweet girl, Queen's own -- and she nods wisely: "Oh, I know. There's no place for me in that world anymore. Still think about 'em, though." And that's how I fell in love with Hadley Hale. Bill too, I think. A little. He knows about that. We all do.
"Well, seems your friend Mr. Northman is here," the Queen smiles, and Bill knows that means it's time for him to bounce. "This alpha male posturing," she grins, "You two really should just fuck each other and get it over with. I could watch!" Bill grins back at her, not entirely as a loyal subject. He knows she finds him ridiculous; perhaps he revels in it. I certainly do. He kisses her hand indulgently, like a favorite aunt, and thanks her for seeing him. "Enjoy your restricted diet," she says, and he nearly blushes. He's almost out the door before her true face shines through once again, cheated out toward the camera. "I do look forward to meeting her." He repeats the smile, but it's brittle now; as he leaves she sits down with her pets and rolls a perfect Yahtzee.
Outside her ocean paradise, standing on the cool blue water, Eric fusses with his hair -- the flight from Shreveport is murder on your hair -- and teases Bill mercilessly for awhile, laughing behind his firm grin as Bill works himself up into a tizzy about how he's only there to ask about the maenad because of Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, and Eric preens: "Oh, Billy. This paranoia, it's really quite unbecoming." He cocks his head, like, since you mention it...: "Has she uh, mentioned me?" She most assuredly has not! And furthermore it was quite desperate of him to take advantage of her weakened state and trick her into drinking his yablahblah. Eric giggles and points out -- as the Bill and Sookie theme starts playing softly -- that Bill did the exact same shit, the night they met. He stomps his dwarven feet. "I was savin her laff!"
"Isn't that convenient?" Eric chuckles, and Bill growls at him for twenty impotent minutes before threatening to tell Sophie-Anne about the whole V-selling storyline that still hasn't actually happened yet. Eric stares at him and reminds him that he totally wouldn't do that. Bill shuffles his feet, pleading and admitting: "I won't! As long as you never come close to Sookie ever again." Anybody else, Eric would be like whatevs, but it's Bill, so you have to remind him not to threaten you. Bill goes, "I don't like threats, either!" and stomps away into the night. Eric has been given pause, but God knows what that whole deal is all about. All I know is that Bill has exactly 65% of the pieces to every puzzle that ever existed, and does not care to have more because the pieces in his possession are more than sufficient.
At Maryann's, Jason feeds Andy carb-load bars and wonders if Sam could turn into a chicken and lay his own egg. And after the whole fascinated-Jason train of thought, from Merlotte's to the station to Maryann's house, you might be tempted to think it's more of the same, but even before the last image in this episode proves it, it's already significant: Gods don't have bellybuttons. They lay the eggs that hatch into Them. They bring Themselves into existence through the belief that births Them. It's all Sophie-Anne was trying to explain, because people are no different. It's all anybody ever does.
That's what the myth of the Phoenix is about, and in this case you're talking about Somebody crossing from the realm of dreams and oracles and visions into the world we know. Maryann wants to bring something across, and that thing is Him, and He wants to come here, and that's why she exists in turn. Faith bends the laws of physics until they break, but this is the definition of faith: reality born from dreams, hard evidence born of fantasy. Guides gone. It's the Eschaton, the thing that Steve Newlin is in love with, and the thing Luke embraced with his dying breath: You lay your own egg.
Andy starts in about how Jason is totally perverse, and Jason finally gets sick of getting messed with. "Why ain't you never liked me, Andy? Is it because of how much pussy I get?" No, he says with his elaborate shrug; Basically, he means, yes. "Because I ain't taking any pussy away from you. There is more than enough pussy to go around." (Wait until they find out every pussy has a human being attached! They are going to freak out!) "It ain't about pussy. I just think you've had everything too easy." Jason explains that fallacy in detail, which is basically that nobody has it easy, and he's hot because he "works out like fuck" -- and watches porn "to learn stuff" -- and being all-state QB was great but shot his knees before he was thirty, his best friend was a serial killer who killed everybody he slept with plus his only living parent, his real parents died when he was a child, he's poor, and basically dumb. Andy weakly protests, but it's over. We're in speechville again, and loving it:
"You may hate me, Andy Bellefleur. You may think you're better than me, and maybe you are. But you and me are the ones who have received the calling to save this town. So obviously God wants us to bury the hatchet. It's all up to us, and we can't fuck it up. Because this town might be full of crazy rednecks and dumbasses, but they're still Americans, Andy." Andy notes that being an American used to mean something. "It still does." They clasp hands before leaving the truck and grabbing guns, and fall into a manly, American kind of love with each other.
Meanwhile Sam is sitting on a porch somewhere with a shotgun when Bill vamp-zooms up into his face, presumably to ask him to be so kind as to get sacrificed to the devil without making a huge fuss about it.
Meanwhile -- still on the floor in Maryann's kitchen, still lying where Gran died -- Mike Spencer is laughing into Sookie's ear about the road not taken to the point that she's bored and just goes, "Mike, enough with the foreplay, let's just... Let's just do it already." He says it's fine for her to be on top, because it's better for his back, and she immediately proceeds to club the shit out of him with a cast-iron skillet. Upstairs, she hears groans of pleasure -- "Oh, yeah, baby, you... Oh, yeah, I want me some of that, show me how you shake your moneymaker, that's it..." -- and opens a bedroom door only to find some random tattooed guy fawning over himself in a dress. "Too much?" he asks, and she closes the door politely on him. "Way too much." I love Sookie under pressure. She's like a person, plus awesome.
There's a crashing from Gran's room; the room that was going to be hers, before Dallas. Before even the walls and sconces aged themselves well past the wear and tear of the old Compton place. Tara and Eggs are smashing, destroying everything: perfume bottles, sentimental items. Whatever makes this place hers, or Grans, is gone. "Oh, tear it up," Eggs giggles, while Tara laughs. "It's paid for!" His voice is familiar.
Sookie snatches at Gran's knitting, but Tara won't let go. "I need it for the nest!" She whoops and carries it over to the bed, where an actual nest -- lovely, in a Pottery Barn self-consciously rustic way -- is taking shape around a giant egg. Actual egg, on the bed, in a nest, as Tara arranges the ribbons and threads and Eggs scatters feathers down onto it. And before Sookie can even comment on this latest ridiculous turn of events, a lacquered hand lays itself lightly across her shoulders: "I was looking for you," Lafayette smiles as she begins to scream. His eyes are black as night. The guide is gone.