Maryann assumes her most horrifying form yet -- Bridezilla of the Gods! -- after quickly taking control of Jason, Andy and Lafayette. They dress Sookie up and pronounce her the Matron of Honor, whose responsibilities in this sort of ceremony include licking a giant egg and then standing around awkwardly while Bill comes up with a plan that seems really dumb until it goes down, which involves handing Sam over for the sacrifice.
The reason he's been such a big deal is some things from the night he broke into Maryann's house which showed oracular signs of him being the perfect vessel for Dionysus's incarnation. So the plan is, as expected, to hang him from the giant meat tree and then serve up his heart to the God, who will then incarnate in the form of a bull-headed man and wed Maryann, destroying all of Bon Temps before continuing on to the rest of America!
Bill hands Sam over, and Eggs stabs the shit out of him, and just when you think he's going to die Bill tells Sookie to go nuts, which basically amounts to her awkwardly pushing the meat tree over and then yelling a whole lot like she'd probably be doing anyway. Albeit with more of that magical electricity effect, which Maryann likens to "nature herself shooting out" Sookie's fingertips. Sounds kind of messy, not to mention giving us a partial explanation for how she managed to take out the Rattrays in the first place. Maryann thinks about killing everybody as a replacement sacrifice, but decides instead to chase Sookie around the woods. There, she runs into a beautiful white bull and naturally assumes that she's having a Pasiphaë/Io moment, because maybe you hadn't heard but 90% of all mythology is Greek chicks banging bulls.
But it's not actually God, it's Sam. Who gores her to death, giving her an atheist epiphany before she turns to a dusty old corpse in Gran's wedding gown. Meanwhile, Bill's a walking deadman because he fed Sam so much before the ceremony. Sookie yells at them to clean up the body and reassures Tara she is yet again responsible for nothing she does, and the rest of the town yawns and wonders what they've been doing for the last week. Sam goes off to see his adoptive/abandoning parents, and gets the info on his real parents (apparently not great people).
Hoyt processes his mother's latest nasty lies, and realizes that they are not, in fact lies: His father really did commit suicide, and she's been using this secret to control him for his entire life. He tells Maxine he should have just let Jessica have her, and goes over to the Compton place to make up. But she's not there, having told (mega-sweet) Bill that she's going over to Hoyt's to apologize for almost eating his mother. While Hoyt's knocking on her door, though, she's making out with and awesomely murdering nasty truckers like a homicidal lot lizard. So it's pretty much like Romeo & Juliet.
Tara collects the broken pieces of Eggs and herself as best she can, but when he comes to Sookie asking her to reveal his blackout memories, he realizes he's this season's serial killer, and goes to Andy to turn himself in. There is a farcical mishap and Jason -- who's spent all season playing soldier boy, from paintguns to paramilitary exercises to this latest arms race -- finally graduates to murder, killing Eggs. Of course, Tara goes into a meltdown, but only after Andy covers it up and calls it a suicide. So Tara's doing great as usual.
We learn some more things about the Queen: Firstly that she is the one who ordered Eric to sell her blood -- presumably so she can have a psychic bond with all the white trash drug addicts in Louisiana -- that she knows very well that Sookie is more than human, and that drinking her electric blood is the first step to falling in love with her for a vampire... Like for example Bill, who proposes a Vermont marriage to Sookie -- who, of course, equivocates and then decides to go for it -- just before he's kidnapped by a glove-wearing vampire. Which gives us for the first time ever an episode ending with something other than Sookie screaming her ass off. Great season!
This isn't the first time it's happened. It's what the Maenads meant. Rabelais talks about it, Carnival, and most of us have done Mardi Gras at least once. The masks come off when the masks go on. You could say that our country has a sickness in that we don't do it anymore, but I think that's only partially true -- you still get the Margaret Meads and Robert Blys saying we don't have rites of passage either, and they're right too -- but I think the unimaginable is particularly hard to imagine. That's what the chaos, the loss of control ("we crave it") basically means, and it always looks terrifying to people outside the circle. In my family we call it "drinking." In Washington they call them Tea Parties.
Rabelais was enamored of them, glamoured by them, because they represented cultural rebirth: For one day, the world turns upside down. A peasant becomes a king, or the Wicker Man is lit, common sense about food and sex goes crazy around us, and we all remember that most of this fake civilization bullshit is just something we agreed upon so things would go easily. When you're sitting at a 3 AM red light and nobody's coming, there's a little thrill in running that light. It's a reminder that nobody's watching, the Mad God isn't coming: There's just us, and our choices. Even if, in the morning, somebody has to be blamed.
But tonight it's in full swing. Sookie Stackhouse is still screaming, as usual, as Lafayette orders Tara and Eggs downstairs with their big weird egg. Eggs grunts happily, and Tara hoots to herself, and they nearly weep with anticipation of the coming God. Left with black-eyed Lafayette, Sookie reaches out to him; inside his head it's a maelstrom of preparation, running through them all like a river underwater: Prepare her for Bromios, prepare her for Eleutherios...
Lafayette tells her to take off her clothes, and she's shocked. Watching this the first time, it's as disorienting for us as for Sookie -- just how far gone is he? -- but when you watch it again, the whole conversation takes less than five seconds. He menaces her, tells her to take off her clothes, flirts with your racism, and then bends down: Not to smell her, but to present her with her bridal party gown. Scary and then not scary is the basis of all comedy. She puts it on quickly and he shoves her down the stairs.
Tara, Arlene and Jane attend the bride: Maiden, Mother, Crone. She flips back her veil and grins wildly at Sookie, beyond joyful. "What the hell are you doing in my grandmother's wedding dress?" Maryann ignores her rudeness and welcomes her, explaining -- as the triplet goddess frames Herselves around the bride, like a tableau reenactment -- that Sookie's the maid of honor. Behind Sookie, Lafayette claps hilariously to himself.
Sookie struggles, and they tell her give in: "Let it take you!" Sookie, whose penchant for getting kidnapped and caged up has run rampant this season, assures them she's done being "taken," and Maryann laughs. "Shush, you haven't been taken, just borrowed! To go along with Old, New and Blue over here," she says, gesturing to Jane and Tara and Arlene. "Which one am I?" Arlene asks, and Maryann smiles to herself.
The bride excuses her rudeness in not asking permission to wear the dress -- "You'll probably never use it anyway" -- and when Sookie tells her to go to hell, Tara hisses like an animal. Maryann asks her to chill -- "It is my day," after all -- and Sookie says this is her house and her friends. (Plus Jane Bodehouse, who cackles and swears she's always liked Sookie. Being the town drunk/ho means never having to pull class on retard barmaids.) Sookie yells at Maryann some more, and her mouth goes firm, ordering the bridal party out of the room. "And bring some vines?"
There's scary music as Maryann steps to her maid of honor, but she smiles easily. "I'm all yours. Give it your best!" She is speaking, of course, with spirit fingers Sparky Polastri would envy, of the electricity. Sookie swears she doesn't know what that was last week, but Maryann is enraptured at the thought. "I never felt anything like it, it was like nature herself was shooting out from your fingertips!" She wants to swim there; she knows Sookie can teach her.
Standing there with nothing on but a borrowed dress, with the voltage running through her skin, Sookie reaches out. She stares, awkwardly, and woggles her hands awkwardly at Maryann's face, finally grunting and shoving her collarbones weakly. "That's hitting me," Maryann explains. "You're not committing to this at all." Sookie swears she doesn't have "electrical powers," that she's a human being, but Maryann laughs. "You keep saying that!" To demonstrate, she vibes at Sookie, who is perturbed but not otherwise affected. "I would have taken you over by now," Maryann laughs, stepping close. "Come on, it'll be our little secret. What are you?" Sookie's bewildered; she doesn't know Maryann's being friendly right now, and just sees a madwoman in a stolen dress, standing in a desecrated shrine. "I'm a waitress. What the fuck are you?"
At the Fortenberrys', Hoyt's sleeping a hasty contraption tied around his wrist, pink thread tying him to every room. Maxine sings outrageously while he sleeps, doing the twist; when she notices he's really out she grabs her nasty casserole and makes a run for it, but she trips on one of his wires and drops the casserole heavily. He jumps and grabs her immediately, and she screams "Norman Baaaates!" at him. He promises -- never, ever say or do this, on this show or anywhere else -- that he's going to take everything she's said this week, about him and about Daddy, and lock it up in a little box, and forget it ever happened. She growls at him, trying to explain the immensity, weeping with religious fervor and the beauty of the moment: "This is bigger than your petty little feelings. A God is coming into our midst, does any part of your puny brain understand what that means?" He is tender with her; she throws a cushion in his face and runs away again delightedly, but he catches her up again.
"Think back. Wasn't there ever a time you felt someone, or something, watching over you?" Of course, Sookie nods: "God." Maryann arranges a garland, taking blooms and blossoms from every part of the room: "You can call it that. But it's not the same one the blind billions worship." She finally turns: "And in your heart of hearts, you know it." Sookie remembers -- ah, the chain! The time she took down Mac Rattray and it looked all weird! That was confusing. "Fine. Then what am I?" Maryann assures her she's beyond human: "I live off human energy, and yours I can't channel. That's very rare, though surprisingly not unique in this town..." Sookie tilts her head: Is she saying she's going to marry Sam Merlotte?
Offended, Maryann looks up from her bouquet: "Please. My husband is a God. Sam is... He's just the ideal wedding gift." She tears up, like Sarah Newlin at her wedding, or up in the balcony the day Jason showed her the new sun. "Oh, it's been such a long wait... I'm sorry, I'm getting a little overexcited. I'll smear everything!" She assures Sookie joyfully that the time is auspicious and perfect, and that Sam's on his way. Sookie protests some more, and Maryann reaches out to stroke her chin: "He is the vessel! He appeared to me naked, a virgin, drawn to the very statue that represents the birth of my God. Should have sacrificed him then and there, but I foolishly let him go."
Meaning, of course, cutting out his heart. "It's the food of the Gods. My husband will love it, it's the very thing that gives him life." Just mixing and matching, like Sophie-Anne said, trying to get the recipe perfect. Just like the Fellowship of the Sun. Just like you and me, any time we reach for wholeness. Sookie assures her that it's not going down like that, and Maryann shrugs. "That is why you are here. It's fate! Just as Sam Merlotte is the one who will bring forth my husband, you, my dear, are the one who will bring forth Sam Merlotte. The moment he learns where you are, he'll come running like a dog. Maybe even as a dog." Sookie is grossed out as Maryann plants the crown of flowers on her angry, ridiculous, resentful head, and it's awesome.
My favorite of those wild customs, though, is called rough music. One aspect is called charivari, or chivaree or shivaree -- the last is my favorite, because it's a very good band -- and it's a French custom from the Middle Ages, where it happened for every wedding. Later on it was intended primarily to protest weddings for whatever reason -- widows marrying too early, things like that -- but once it was a celebration.
Everybody in town would gather outside the couple's house after the ceremony, banging pots and pans, sometimes in masks, to keep the couple awake all night. Whistles, fireworks, things from the kitchen. On the frontier it was sometimes called "belling" or "horning," but the word charivari itself means "headache," because of the clashing mad sound it creates. They still do them in Ontario; last year there was one that included Jason Stackhouse's shotguns and chainsaws.
To some old-timey music, Sophie-Anne assures Eric in his lovely suit that they'll play Yahtzee! to five million. "She's way ahead," Hadley notes grimly, but the Queen assures them it's only luck. "Yahtzee is the most egalitarian game in the world! You could be my social, physical, or intellectual inferior, but your chances are equal to mine." (She points to each of them in turn: Eric her social inferior, Hadley physical, Ludis intellectual. His name means game, and she's lying about cheating, and they're just another triplet for her to score off. Old, new and borrowed.) "It's the antidote for this world, where things such as superiority and inferiority do matter."
She deigns to remember something: "Speaking of which, I heard about your maker. That blows." He swallows and thanks her, but it's covered over by her triumphant shout. "Yahtzee!" The humans protest ("It is a magic!" shouts Ludis.) She asks angrily what the point would be, to cheat, and begs Eric to go on. He starts again to thank her, and she shrugs him off again. "Did you know that there's a maenad in Renard Parish?" He does. "I wouldn't get involved if I were you. Stick to what you're good at." She rolls again. "I gave William Compton a few bits of hand-me-down folklore we've accumulated over the centuries, but who knows if it's gospel or gorilla shit." Eric likes that, but it doesn't last: "You know, I think he's monogamous with his human."
Eric admits that Bill's in love with her, which grosses out the Queen but surprises Hadley. "Well, of course he would be, with her. You probably are too," the Queen suggests, and he has trouble saying the words. "I do not love humans" is the best he can do. "She's not entirely human. Have you tasted her?" the Queen asks, like a housecat, and covers up her relief when he answers. "Don't," she says in her scariest voice. "Ever. One vampire falling in love is bad enough." Hadley stares at her Queen, sadly.
Eric agrees that Bill is a fuckup and tends to fall into trouble, and she nods her thanks for the segue: "For instance, how does he know I'm having you sell vampire blood?" The guards, of course, hear everything. Eric stumbles, apologizing and promising Bill didn't find that out from him. "That is really bad," the Queen says, pulling the ceiling close like Godric used to, for a moment. "He does not know you are supplying it," Eric says, quietly, and she shoves him suddenly onto his back, by the pool, fangs out. "He'd better not. I'm holding you responsible." She kisses him and he leans up, fangs out. "Ah, there they are," she smiles. "Aren't yours lovely. You may be the strongest, oldest vampire in my queendom, but if I wanted," she says, shoving him back down like a beast: "I could own your fangs as earrings. Understand?"
Eric promises to take care of it, personally, and reaches up to kiss her again. Ludis calls them back to the game, and after a moment of lying there bewildered -- Hadley looking on, sad and jealous -- he pops his fangs back in and sits up as gracefully as possible, as though it never happened. They're animals, just like anybody else. He rolls the dice, and the Queen rolls her eyes. "You suck at this." (This game that she just explained takes no skill, at least in the throwing, and then demonstrated every way she could that she was lying, she's saying, even when you think the rules are equal they are never equal. You can be bad at Yahtzee! and never know why.)
Walking toward Maryann's house, Andy Bellefleur's worried about going in without backup, but Jason explains that Andy is the backup. "Now, this is Special Ops. We're surgical. One shot. Say hello to my little friend: Boom! Hasta la vista, baby. Ah love the smell of nail polish in the morning." Oh, Jason. When he catches a look of the revels in the yard, the drummers, Eggs dancing, people whirling in circles around torches while Sheriff Dearborne sends out nonsense squaredancing calls in his boxers, he is moved and insulted. "That's Stackhouse property. They got no right to do that." Tears running from his eyes, he starts ramping them up, talking faster and faster, psyching himself up by giving Andy a nonsense pep talk. "You see that house? It's been in my family for 150 years. Now, what kind of man would stand by while his grandmother's house gets torn to the ground?" Andy points out that she's not his grandmother, but Jason's not talking to him. He grabs his neck and forces their foreheads together: "But it's in the town you swore to protect. It's times like these when this town needs a good man, Andy. And that man is us."
They wade through the dancers, that chick from the station that wanted Jason so bad jumps on Andy, and they quickly lose sight of each other. Terry's worried that somebody will see the bride before the wedding, and finally they both go down in a moving pile of bodies, almost devouring them, taking their guns; when Jason fights clear and finds Andy, his eyes are black as night. "HE'S COMIN'!" Andy shouts, and punches Jason in the face, and when he stands up again his eyes are black, too. He grabs an old woman on his grandmother's lawn, and kisses her hard.
Sam's just got Lisa and Coby to bed in his trailer; Lisa was so worried about Arlene she couldn't sleep at first. "If you'd let me glamour them, they would have been asleep in seconds," Bill says in that way of his, and Sam rolls eyes. They discuss the maenad and Sam says he doubts Maryann's going to stop with him, either way. She's gone too far: "Killers don't just suddenly quit killing, you oughta know that." Unnecessary, Merlotte, but I guess he's feeling sort of helpless and touchy. Bill orders him to come with, and Sam is not feeling that, and then there are some fangs, and man, Bill, you should have stuck with "Sookie needs you," because you don't show teeth to a dog unless you want to see some more. But it's scary and suspenseful, and this whole half of the episode is so totally Grand Guignol Baby Jane nutty that this is what counts.
Arlene licks blood onto the giant egg, and passes it around the bridal party's circle. Sookie finally goes, "Okay, what is with this egg? Did you lay it?" Imagine if you could, though. If you could lay your own egg. Maryann grins and says it's a symbolic ostrich egg, that it represents fertility. As with any bachelorette party, it's more about the things you don't want to do than the things you do, so they all start yelling at her about how she has to lick the egg. Finally she dips her tongue in a goblet of some blood -- whence? -- and licks the egg. They laugh, and sing.
"Only through the blood will He come," Lafayette groans lasciviously. The gender stuff that conferred his Guide status last season is in full effect here: Straddling the line between male and female the way Jason touches it at its poles, neither/nor to Jason's either/or, he is the physical expression of what Maryann is looking for, which is heiros gamos, the holy marriage: A union of God and man that represents transcendence. All transcendence is temporary, but it all redounds back to this, the union of opposites -- no inside/outside, higher/lower, above/below: Exactly what gives Lafayette his power, and the tiniest taste of which is what he and Amy Burley gave Jason so long ago. And its' saved him, again and again, even this year. And now, that force is just as important as Eggs or the bride or even the Triple Goddess. Maryann has to bring it all, be inclusive, if she's going to find the right mixture, just like the Fellowship thinks they can keep stripping things away (kindness, rationality) to find it. Just as Godric and Luke died for, and with, each other and each of us.
Bill brings Sam to the yard as Maryann licks the egg the last time, and everybody cheers. "Your vessel has arrived!" Jason announces, and when he notices Sookie in her dress he tears up, touched. "Sookie! You look beautiful!" She's terrified, and sad for him; Maryann unties her and the women shot and scream. "I will not be part of anything so evil," Sookie repeats once again, and Maryann sighs. "You're the brother? Maybe I could kill you." She strokes his neck and he smiles, excited. Sookie promises she'll do it, if Maryann doesn't hurt anybody, and her brother is disappointed. He's elected to manhandle Sookie out into the yard, and when Sookie yelps at his rough handling, he shouts back at her angrily.
The bridal party makes their way down the stairs, capering and gibbering. A truly amazing, deranged string quartet plays a scary wedding march. Arlene and Jane spread petals in the bride's path, followed by Tara dancing with the egg, and Lafayette with the bull mask in his arms. Terry and Eggs laugh joyfully as they arrive. Andy carries the bride's train, shuffling like Renfield. Bill calls out to Maryann with Sam in his arms, and Sookie is horrified. "My sweet vessel!" Maryann cries, and he offers the exchange. Sookie knows he'll be killed; Sam knows it won't stop with him. Maryann juts her chin out to the men. "Take her to the dead man. She's served her purpose."
Jason shoves her forward, yelling at Bill all the way, even as he's tossing Sam back across to Eggs. "This is the only way," he promises her, and she shouts and struggles. Sam tells them to get her out of there -- "I won't have her watch me die" -- but nobody's listening. Maryann looks at him with infinite love: "I will always be grateful to you." She touches his face as he swears it's not for her. The men drag Sam away, struggling and shouting, and Sookie whisper-yells at Bill. "This is what your vampire source told you to do? To give up Sam?" Bill asks her to trust him; it's remarkably less sexy when it's Bill saying it.
Maryann raises her arms for the invocation as Lafayette puts the bull's mask on the meat tree, which repeats her gesture. She's just making shit up at this point. That's all we're ever doing. "The God with horns!" Lafayette shouts when it's in place: "Worship him, bitches!" Tara places the egg in the goddess's chest, and Andy gasps with anticipation: He's coming. God is coming.
"Hail Dionysus," Maryann calls, and they respond, repeating. "Bacchus. Bromios. Eleutherios. Dendrites." There is a bathtub in the yard, burning and black smoke. "All these names of Yours, our bull-horned God. Upon this occasion of our marriage, our offering symbolizes the rebirth of our God." Jason holds a twig before his heart, like praying hands. "When He was a child, the jealous Titans ripped Him to shreds, eating all but His heart. And this last piece was saved by His sister, Pallas Athena, Who placed it into the womb of His mother so that He could be reborn." What if you could lay your own egg?
Maryann holds her hands up to the goddess: "Oh, Great Mother. Soon You shall have the heart that will make Your egg grow fertile." The congregation stands, supplicant. "And Your son, our bull-horned God, will come and stand in Your place." The music starts again, wild and rough, and the men bring Sam out tied to a ladder of blossoms and saplings. Sookie calls to him, horrified, as they stand him up against the goddess. "Oh, at last," Maryann weeps. "At long, long last. He is Yours, my Lord." Eggs approaches with the knife, and she looks at Sam in love and gratitude. You've never seen a love so strong as the look Steve would have given Godric on the tree. "You're lucky, Sam. It's everyone's wish to have their life mean something. So few ever get to realize that." It's all Godric wanted; it's all Luke ever had.
Terry, Arlene, the rest of them, call for the sacrifice. They don't care for invocations and prayers, they don't understand anything but the vulgate. "Sacrifice him!" shouts Andy, and Sookie calls out to Sam to use his gift. The power and the shame they carry in common. "Sookie," Bill mutters, "Use yours." Eggs thanks Sam lovingly, and plunges the knife into his chest; Sam dies as Sookie screams, and Arlene laughs delightedly.
Maryann knows the second she takes the knife from Eggs's hands, on his knees: She can feel it. Her body responds, she weeps and writhes: This is the vessel after all. Sam calls out silently to Sookie and she runs to him, putting hands on his shoulders, as he weakens. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry..." He fights to see her, and thinks a single thought: Destroy it. All of it. She nods, and runs to the tree while Bill makes his escape. First, the egg. She smashes it on the ground. "You killed our sacred egg!" shouts clueless Tara, who's barely been following any of this. "It's not sacred. None of it's sacred!" Sookie shots, tossing her garland aside. "It's evil!" she yells, shoving the goddess over with that fire in her hands.
Maryann is mortified; her shame turns to rage as fast as Sarah's passion. "How dare you spoil my offering? Lord Dionysus, forgive me?" She turns to the crowd, Sam's blood smudged down her throat, changing gears like the Newlins, looking for a better recipe. "Allow me to sacrifice all of them for You," she says, vibrating until the crowd is on their knees, screaming in pain as she dances. Sookie holds Tara up, shouting at Maryann even as she realizes this won't cut it either. She changes gears again. "You brought this upon everyone!" Maryann howls in that dumb scary voice she gets, and plunges her hands into the earth, coming up with poison claws. Sookie runs through the forest from her once again, calling for Bill: The claws, the fear, the blood beating in her heart, under the moon just like this. She falls, overcome, and Maryann raises fists to strike.
A bellow rings out across the road, in the darkness. A perfect white bull, without blemish, in the moonlight.
Rough music itself, of which the shivaree is a subset, goes back to the 1700's: Somebody who has violated the standards of the community is scapegoated, and they bring the pots and pans to his or her house, keep her up all night, rattling bones and cleavers, blowing bull's horns. It's extreme social sanction, in this form; like any scapegoating ceremony, it's an acknowledgement of the wrongdoer's place in the community as much as it is about her behavior.
It's not a shunning, or banishment: It's the opposite. Any time Dionysus comes to visit, that's rough music: It's never about making it go away, it's never about killing the little black-eyed girl. It's about celebrating her. Giving her a little time, a little slice of night, before she goes away again. If we are all the same amount of dirty, there is no shame, because we are all the same amount of clean.
It's about sex and reproduction and domestic issues, usually: any time a woman gets out of hand. Sometimes they put her on a pole or a donkey, or act out her crimes, and call her hideous names. Nobody really gets hurt; the masters of the ceremony are the young men, whom have been given temporary rule. The carnival boy-kings, with their chainsaws and their handguns.
Zeus came to Io in the form of a perfect white bull; Poseidon sent a perfect white bull to Minos for his sacrifice, but he was so beautiful -- so divine -- that Minos kept him for himself, and Poseidon cursed the king's wife with an unearthly passion for him. The white skin against the black night, shining like the moon. Maryann's mad claws become bloody fingers, hands, and she raises them lovingly. "My Lord? My husband. Oh, you've come," she says, stepping closer. "I am here, my love."
I can see it from your angle -- that it's funny, or silly, or crazy, that she's been acting crazy and this is just more crazy -- but these are the stories we grow up with. Gods become bulls, women become Goddesses, people live forever. When was the last time you laughed at the absurdity of vampires? I've got a myth for you: There's people just like us, but powerfully beautiful, that live on blood and have snake's teeth, and only come to you in the night. If I can believe in that shit, I can believe in the bull husband in the night, the ancient bride, the transvestite priest, the Fates. I can believe that for one night Jane Bodehouse and Tara Thornton and Arlene Fowler became the Goddess, and blessed the bride of God with all the power of their immaculate trinity: Fingerless and alcoholic, post-traumatic and negligent, raging and lovely. Especially watching Him under the moon and the streetlights, with this power and grace. His slow hoofbeats shake and crack the earth.
She comes close to him, hesitant and beautiful in the light, two white shapes in the darkness reaching across to each other, begging to touch. To be whole. She reaches out to his nose, petting him softly, weeping with wonder. She holds her arms out, ready for him, and he gores her; she moans, shaking on the tree. "My God? I am the one to be sacrificed?" Again. She changes gears: "I am the vessel. Yes, I'm happy to die." He rips into her a third time, her black blood coating his horn. "I'm yours," she says, bleeding out... And he is Sam. Holding a black, beating heart covered in ichor.
"Was there no God?" she asks, and in answer he squeezes her heart in his hand; as it explodes, she drops. Back at her house -- Sookie's house again, now -- their eyes clear and they moan to themselves; Eggs holds up his bloody hands, uncomprehending. Sam stares down, naked in the spotlight, at the rapidly decomposing remains of something immense, and powerful, and beautiful.
Sookie throws her arms around Sam, confused at his apparent health, but soon enough we see Bill limping toward them, holding his arm crooked and nearly dropping. "Is Sam all right? He had to drink more of me than I expected," Bill explains as she holds him. "I promised Sam that I would heal him. We knew no other way of destroying her." For the first time, Bill realizes, he wanted her to hear his thoughts. That he could comfort her across the silence. Sookie thanks Sam, now wearing his jeans, for risking so much. "If things didn't work out, I guess I... I was ready." That's how we do it in the real world. No Godric, no Luke: Just the realization that we would if we had to.
Jason and Tara come running up; she goggles at the bride's body before running into Sookie's arms. She doesn't remember anything -- "It was bad, wasn't it?" -- and while Sookie holds her she orders Bill (who really does look like a pile of laundry at this point) and Sam (who just died and turned into God and killed something majestic, all in the last three minutes or so) to clean up her fucking lawn. Tara shivers, wondering if it's really over this time.
Hoyt throws himself on his mother's knee, thanking God she's finally come back to him. She's curious about the missing time: "The last thing I remember is meeting that red-headed vampire of yours, and then I..." She reaches up to her hair, her face, and discovers Band-Aids on her neck: "She didn't ... bite me, did she? You let a vampire feed on me? he's ashamed. Why on Earth would you choose that girl over your own mother?" Hoyt admits that she was kind of asking for it, but that he broke up with Jessica immediately after the biting commenced. Quick enough, he's told her about the main offenses Maxine perpetrated while under the influence, ending with Daddy's suicide. He knows that part was true, he says it anyway to see her face, she doesn't cover well, and he finally begs her to lie about it, essentially. She refuses.
"You're nearly thirty. You should know the truth." Hoyt freaks out and throws himself away from her, laughing angrily. "I should have known the truth when I was ten! Or, hell, when I was 25? All these years you keep me here, you keep me from moving out, from going to college... From doing anything, all because you were scared of some burglar that never existed," he cries. Her voice is honest. "I was scared. I'm still scared." Not good enough. "Just because you didn't want to be alone, instead of letting me be an actual person?" That line kind of got to me. That's intense. Not to mention the Jessica parallels again: Daddy Hamby didn't want anybody coming into Eden, and Maxine Fortenberry didn't want anybody going out. "You know what I wish?" he smiles hatefully: "I wish that Jessica had finished you off." Her hands fly to her mouth, and she weeps long after the door's slammed behind her.
Arlene leaves yet another voicemail at her house, terrified of what's happened to her kids in the meantime. Terry comforts her while Lafayette takes care of the survivors, and Jason offers to take her home to check. The whole town, knitting themselves back together. They're shocked by a sudden scream: Jane Bodehouse has located her finger, in the chest of the broken rotting goddess. Jason grabs her, swinging into action, and everybody runs off to get her to the ER. Lafayette flips a scarf over his shoulder and wonders how he got there, past Bud offering a contrite Andy his job back: "This town's a hell of a mess, and I'm man enough to know I can't shoulder it myself. You might have your faults, Andy, but at least you got pants on."
Sam spots a deer, delicate and lovely, standing in the road. He weeps for her, for all of them, but wipes the tears away when Bill interrupts. He looks like a boy. Bill thanks him formally, and when Sam bristles he reminds him they both just wanted Sookie safe. "Well, she's family," Sam says lightly. "But they all are. If there was a way to save 'em, how could I say no?" That's been one of the loveliest (if not the most graceful) threads in this season: Watching Sam take ownership of the town, his place in it, the people that drive him crazy. Losing that stance of his that kept everybody so far away. Daphne was his Amy Burley, and will be remembered just as hatefully, but it is still good.
"I am grateful that you would reveal your gift for the sake of the town," Bill says, and Sam points out his final realization: "You suffer more hiding something than you do if you face up to it." Bill's face changes, suddenly: First shame for his secrets, and then something else, a recognition of the ways in which Sam is a better man than he is. He says goodbye, and when Sam turns back the deer is gone.
Eggs, washing his hands madly, goes back to the basics: "Where's Maryann? She's gotta know what happened." Tara knows that's over, and was never a good idea, but now's not the time. "We're okay. That's all that matters." Eggs points out that huge amounts of blood on his hands is hardly okay, and she remembers how Sookie helped her get some of her memories back, and assures him he doesn't want to know the real shit. "All that stuff's in the past. Why dwell on it? Can't we just start fresh?" (Dammit, Tara. No. Eat it and keep living.) He notices blood under his fingernails and goes back to the sink; Sookie appears and stares at him but Tara can't even talk about how weird he's getting.
Tara tearfully apologizes once again for fucking everything up, and -- not by way of excuse, just explanation -- tells her that Maryann centrally made her feel like part of a family. Sookie grabs her and the Adele song starts as she once again explains that Tara is part of a family, and lives in this house, and no longer needs to apologize for her existence. 364 more days and she'll believe you. They look at Mike Spencer -- still on the floor where Sookie bonked him -- and Tara says she'll take care of it before sending her up to bed. Everything else, they'll clean in the morning. Eggs stares at the window over the sink, and his reflection in it, and the darkness on the other side.
Bill's standing in the window upstairs in the most bizarrely posed, male model way. It's awesome. She asks him how long it is before sunrise, and tells him to hold her for one minute less than that. He smiles and kisses her forehead, and they hold each other for a little longer.
Adorable Charlaine Harris tells Sam she never expected anything like that shit to go down in Bon Temps, sitting at the bar, and Tara thanks him for even opening Merlotte's after everything. "It's not just my bar. It's everybody's," he explains, and she says it's called Merlotte's after all, and he reminds himself that isn't really his name either. "Doesn't really say anything about me, does it?"
Lisa forgives Arlene, sitting in a booth, and it sends her into fresh tears. "You shouldn't even have to know what that word means!" she says. Coby assures his mother that it's fine: "Mr. Merlotte kept us company. He took us to see some vampires, and one of them can fly!" Even Lisa smiles; I can't get a read on Arlene's feelings about that one. She's a little weirded out, and though she loves Sam and knows he's a good man, he's not their family. She will never know how untrue that is. "I'm the one that should have been there. I'm so sorry about that, okay? But I promise you that from now on, I'm gonna be the best mama in the world, okay?" Arlene's feelings are really affecting. I like it better when she's being gross and funny, because when she cries or feels stupid it makes me feel just awful for her. Like, worse than the people I actually like. I would like to attribute it to the actress, and certainly that's a huge part, but at the ugly bottom I think it's just classism. She's just so honest, I can't deal with it.
Terry appears with a couple of toy guns and a funny t-shirt about how crazy and PTSD he is, and he assures Lisa and Coby that he's going to keep an eye on Arlene whenever they can't. "That way, we can all take care of each other, okay?" Arlene's touched, he's intense and sort of sexy, the kids are fine with that arrangement. Sam and Tara start screaming at her to come work, and the last thing Coby asks her is, "When you went away for all that time, you didn't go see Rene, did you?" She awkwardly says he's still on his Jesus vacation, and when she's gone they nod to each other: Definitely dead.
Those two townie ladies that sometimes play the chorus start talking about the town's explanation for all of it -- a muddled mishmash of conspiracy theories ranging from aliens and racism ("Maryann Forrester" rhymes with "Martian Foreigner") to gas leaks somehow both the pharmaceutical companies and the liberal media to LSD in the water, like in San Francisco -- ultimately deciding that Mountain Dew is the only thing that will protect you from Obama's fascism, and Sam's like, "Actually, the ATF shut down this distillery for shipping pure ethanol instead of vodka, so clearly Mountain Dew is the smart choice." They are amazed, he's pleased with himself; somebody finally notices his amazing ass. "God bless who made those jeans. I'm serious, I'll wear him like a scrunchie." They giggle. They're family now.
Tara pours Lafayette a drink while he shivers over how stupid everybody in town is, and then tells Sookie feels worst for her: "You know what really happened, and you've got to carry the burden of that. I mean, I'm thrilled I got a choice, and I don't ever wanna know." I like that line, I like that Sookie and Bill asked at least the inner circle if they wanted to know, and I like that Lafayette would pick the blue pill. He's like the only person in history that I can approve of, doing that. "Don't tell me nothing, even if I beg for it. I don't think it's healthy to know everything you've done. It's like knowing what's in sausage, just eat it. Shit, enjoy it."
Which reminds Sookie of the jambalaya Jane Bodenhouse ordered, so we head over to her table, where she's telling two guys -- who have probably had sex in a truck with her and will probably do so again in a few hours -- that her defingering must have been "so traumatic" that she blacked it out. Perhaps a gator, she says. "But the doctor who sewed it back on says I have wonderful bone structure, so hopefully it'll take. Luckily, I use my right hand for most things..." Andy interrupts this troubling train of thought by shouting (sober, but still nuts) that it wasn't a gator and she wasn't by the lake. "I saw you pull that finger out of a giant statue of meat. Just like I saw you getting it from behind from Mike Spencer."
Jason gasps, but Jane just laughs and leads her table in a chorus of "Whatever Andy's drinking, give us some." Jason nervously pretends to laugh along as Andy pouts, "It's Diet Coke with lime!" Jason toasts them, and tries to calm Andy down. "Great. Used to be they all thought I was crazy. Now they know I'm tellin' the truth, and they can't face it. Zombie-eyed freaks!" Jason tells him -- calling him "Bubba," which if it means what I think it means makes me very excited for Andy's future on this show, because I was never all that interested in Bubba in the books but he does get to do cool shit sometimes -- to let it go.
"Look, you and me both know we saved her and everybody else. Come here, we're heroes to this town." How? Because they set out to save everybody, and now Maryann is gone, and everybody's okay, so obviously. "In my book, if no one thinks we're heroes, it don't count." I had a rant last year about Andy's unhealthy obsession with Jason that got me a lot of hatemail, mostly from people just like Andy, and one of the wonderful things about this latter act of the season has been watching that stretch and reverse itself. Jason's learned a few things about manhood, which is always what's upset Andy about him, but this way they can share them: the boy-kings, the jealous town nutter and the fatherless town himbo, trading their insights and becoming men. It's nice: "Of course it counts. It's like if a tree falls in the woods. It's still a tree, ain't it? The whole point in being a hero is to do something greater than yourself." Andy nods, touched of course, and Jason fairly gives him a noogie. "It'd be easy to do it for the glory or the girls, but we're bigger men than that, right?" He sits back, proud, and gives himself a satisfied "Yup."
Sam runs into Sookie back behind the bar, and points out how long it's been since they worked together. "It's like riding a bicycle," she grins, and he asks her shifty-eyed to keep an eye on things for a couple of days. "I'm the only one who hasn't had a break. And in case you didn't notice, last night was a little rough for me too?" Obviously he's not going to do anything relaxing, but whatever. "I don't have the words to thank you for what you did," she says, and he grins that it's probably better this way. They wouldn't want to know any of it, his secret included. "I, for one, wish everyone knew how special you are." He likes that, she pulls him in close as family. A lady shows up right then with a parcel for her -- is it a driveway? -- and congratulates her on having such a "classy admirer." (It's a driveway, I know it! In that little bag!)
Sookie takes her package out to that tree in the back of Merlotte's: A lovely lavender dress, with a note: I've owed you an evening out for some time now. I would very much like for you to wear this tonight. -- Bill. God, he even writes adorable. She smiles, but immediately a hand creeps out of the woods and grabs her, so she has to shriek a little bit. It's Eggs, wanting her to do her mojo on him so he can remember what happened. "I did a lot of terrible things in my past, but I paid for 'em. I thought that was all over but if it's not... I got a right to know." Sookie tells him again and again that Maryann did this shit to everybody, and it doesn't reflect on him; when she touches him the thoughts are too sad, too afraid, too yearning (I don't know who I am I don't know what I am you can help me I know you can I know it please help me please help me) for her to do anything but try.
She takes his hands, finally, sending him back to the first blackout. Laughing with Maryann in her car, going somewhere in the daylight... And it fades. They concentrate, pushing, and he lets her in further. "Okay. Okay, you're in the woods. There's a woman there with a... Cane?" Miss Jeannette totters up to them in full witchy regalia, crooked and uncanny... And then she's on the ground, Eggs has gone black. Maryann stares down at her: "You're a vessel to the Other World. You will bring forth my God." Miss Jeanette swears she isn't. She never knew what she was. Sookie's God should have protected her too. She was just a door for Maryann to walk through. She never knew what hit her. The memories come faster now: Daphne, Sam... He runs into the forest, Sookie begging him to stop, crying for him, begging his forgiveness.
Jessica comes down the Compton stairs looking determined and sneaky, and very lovely. Very young. "Jessica!" Bill says expansively, and sweetly informs her that she "looks quite a vision" before inquiring proudly as to her plans: "Are you off to see Hoyt Fortenberry?" She doesn't know that he's giving her approval and assent because she has never seen those things. "So what if I am? You're going to see Sookie, aren't you?" He grins and gets explicit: "It's fine. In my day, the gentleman came to the lady's house to court her, but... Times change." There's something awake and wonderful in him, and Jessica doesn't know him well enough yet to see what it is.
Bill notes that Maxine's no longer chained up in their house or playing scary Wii, and Jessica nods. "He took her home yesterday..." she says a little wistfully, and Bill sends his best wishes. Jessica tries to open up about it, mentioning the "little fight" they had last night, begging Bill to inquire further, but he doesn't. "I was just gonna go over and make an apology?" Bill assures her that he'd be a fool not to accept, and his smile is so delightful and inviting that Jessica sweetly asks in turn where the two of them are going. His tail wags mightily and he dorks out, sort of blowing Jessica's mind: "To a French restaurant! Do you know I haven't been to one in over seventy years? Humans seem to love them! They go there to celebrate!" She cutely tells him to be back by five, and he eyebrows at her to be back by four, and opens the door for her, and sometime in the last paragraph I sort of fell in love with Bill Compton a little bit. That's new and troubling.
Sam stands at a strange house, taxi behind him, and he calls the woman behind the door "Mrs. Merlotte." To her credit, she's not wormy about it at all. She feels terrible, she's not all that happy to see him, but she doesn't call him a monster or anything. She tries to be honest. It's a fresh take. There's a baby monitor and family photos on the mantle: None with him. "It'd be hard to explain to friends who think we never had children." She asks him to sit down, and he won't. "We never thought we'd see you again," she says, and he points out that we have the internet now. She's terribly ashamed. "Sam. If you came for an explanation, I don't have a good one. Mitchell and I were down to our last nickel, and we were scared. We still don't know what we saw that night..."
Sam's Daphne pride flares up: "You saw me turn into a dog." It hurts her, physically. It's the end of the world, when things change that much. "And apparently that was worth abandoning me over. So I spent the nineteen years... Making sure nobody would know who I really was. That's what you left me with." She weeps, apologizing over and over, until he gets uncomfortable and waves it off. "Hey, hey. I'm not here for an apology. I want to find the people you adopted me from. I want to meet my parents." She can't, she says: She swore not to. He goes, "Jesus Christ!" but what he means is, "Um, you also packed up in the middle of the night and left me behind as a child, which I'm fairly certain they would have also asked you not to do, if it had occurred to them what assholes you are."
"Please, trust me," Mrs. Merlotte swears. "You don't want to know them. They're bad people." She will be right, presumably. He points out that she's bad people too, and as she cries the baby monitor starts buzzing. They make their way down the hallway to Mr. Merlotte's room, where he's close to death. He scrawls a note, painful and slow, and Sam watches his eyes; there's still love there. Poor old Sam. He takes the note with shaking hands.
Melinda & Joe Lee Mickens
Last Known in Magnolia, Ark
I'm sorry
Hoyt stands on the Compton porch, with a bouquet, calling her name.
Jessica straddles a man in a bright red eighteen-wheeler, kissing him hard. He tastes like beer, and cigarettes; she likes it. She smells like sex and candy, he likes that too. He rips open a condom, too drunk to focus on her beautiful face. "Now, before we go any further, there's something you ought to know." He calls her Sugar. "That I'm... I'm a virgin." His head flops around, barely there, horny: "That's okay. I'll be gentle with you. In fact, I kind of like it." Just like Daddy. "Really? Well, I don't like it one bit," she says, pops fang, and feeds. Good girl.
Hoyt finally gives in, placing the bouquet carefully on the porch, and wanders off into the night.
The hostess welcomes Bill and Sookie to the restaurant, and goes to get the music started: he's rented out the place. "The sight of you is not something I wish to share with others tonight." He promises it's okay for him to go all-out like this: "I love nothing more than to see you happy. It's really quite selfish." The strings that greeted them fade to country pop, and she asks what he can do at a restaurant. Well, Best Beloved, they can dance. So they do. They cut a rug or whatever. It goes on a while; there is laughter and giggling and some kissing. Bill's kind of hot, I guess. Her dress looks really pretty in motion. I don't know what else to say. You know how those two always are? It's like that, times a billion. They dork out powerfully. It is muscular.
Eggs comes running up to Andy outside Merlotte's brandishing a giant sacrificial knife. You know, as one would to any racist, trigger-happy cop. They yell at each other for a long time and Eggs confesses his murders and Andy tells him not to worry about it and he explains about the heart-cutting-out and Andy tells him not to worry about it, and finally Eggs just throws him down on the ground and demonstrates what it was like for those people to get chopped up by Eggs, like to a ridiculous degree: "It was like this! This is what their eyes saw before they died! Me -- just like this -- stabbing them again and again with this knife, like I'm doing right now in pantomime. Just stabbing, and cutting, and eviscerating, Andy!" He carries on in this vein for awhile, and finally Jason just appears out of nowhere and shoots him in the head. Maybe the most blameless murder of all time.
But of course Jason goes into shock because of the murders and deaths and bullshit that has happened to him, and the whole "I am a killing machine" thing that comes with paramilitary training, which causes Andy to overreact in turn and take the gun away and send Jason running into the forest for no real reason so that when everybody comes running out of the bar to see what's going on, he can say, "Eggs did all the murders and tried to kill me -- or committed suicide by cop -- and now we don't have to worry. The young black man, not the rich white lady or any of us, was the problem." Everybody's like, "Whew!"
(Meanwhile Taylor Swift is like, "Really, guys, I'm fine. He didn't rape me or bludgeon me to death with his big scary black cock, he came onstage at a joke award ceremony watching mainly by tweens and made an ass of himself, just like he's done at the last sixteen award shows. Damn." Thanks, Taylor. Now if we can just get her to explain the office of the President, or even just define "socialism," we can finally be done with racist ignorance and its completely inappropriate place in our political discourse forever.)
Tara, who is having one motherfucker of a life, drops to her knees on the dead body of Eggs and freaks out like whoa. Meanwhile, her best friend is polishing off dessert at a French restaurant and drinking champagne. Bill, ever so proud of himself, produces plane tickets: "Where's Burlington?" Lord, Sookie. It's in Vermont. Where, for the last month, fangbangers have been ruining marriage for the rest of us. Do you even watch this show? She finally pulls it together and starts wigging out, and he produces a ring. She cries, and he asks her to marry him -- "Assuming that last night didn't scare you off weddings for good" -- and she says... Nothing.
To his worried, impatient smile, she can only say this: "I've dreamed of this since I was a girl. And in my dreams, I always say yes." So? "Then why can't I say it?" He doesn't pout, exactly, but he has reason to be upset here. And I mean, it's sort of early, but they are very much in love, and she was the one who laughed about it last year (two weeks ago) when Arlene asked her if they were going to tie the knot, not to mention the fact that he could have been planning this all season and that was one of the reasons he was so bitchy about the Dallas trip. I mean, the timing is realistically weird, but these people don't actually get a second to do anything normal. "My heart's flying around in my chest. I can't even think straight. My life's inside-out. With all that's happened, I'm not sure about anything." Oh, now he's nearly crying too. "I don't even know if I'm human..."
Heh. Bill's like, "Wait, what?" She talks about how she's only ever met Barry, and he was mean -- not that she noticed -- and so what about that, and then she starts crying because of what Hugo said, about her getting old and weak and he's still Bill. She goes into full-on ugly crying mode at this point, which always really gets to me, and for once it's Bill who tosses his heels up in the air and is like, "Let's live for the moment!" ("Especially before Eric does some other trick!") "I want you just as you are," he protests, and she responds quite honestly that she doesn't know who/what the hell that even is, which is when most young women do make their first-marriage mistake after all, so she runs to the bathroom to clean up and have a quick think. Poor old Bill looks destroyed.
In the bathroom, she stares at the wall and weighs it out. It's gross: what if she's losing it, what if this is her chance and she's throwing it away? But isn't that just desperation? Are they settling for each other? What if there's something better? What if behind Bill, even behind Sam and Eric, there's something better? How young is old enough to know what you want? Can she be that girl? Can she be that fangbanger girl, and go to Vermont, and let them take her picture, get political, come back here to this shitty town? Can she look Eric in the eye if she does that? Would that kill her? Would Sam even come to the wedding? How drunk is Jason going to get? It clashes in her mind; it is rough music.
Bill sits at the table, feeling a peculiar ache. All these gifts she's given him, this new life and heart, she could take them away. He's fought for her life and cries tears of blood for her pain, but never this: She could walk out of this room with his heart in her hands, and he wouldn't have a word to say about it. That electricity that tickles, a dead circuit. The silence would press in, push him down, and she would be gone. And there would be nothing, ever again. He would die away and become part of the past, and her life in the sun could begin.
But she looks at the ring, and the tears fall, and she puts on her finger. That ring means forever. Diamonds are strong, and beautiful, and that's how she feels with him. This ring would sit on the finger of a girl who was never supposed to know love. Do you want to be tied up in the darkness, arms around you as tight as death's, and know that you are finally safe? To love is to bury, do you want to be buried? Exactly half the time. To love is to be taken apart and put back together better, do you want to be ripped apart? All those pieces, the freaky ones and the sad ones and the wounded ones he's helped her heal; the negotiator and the bloodthirsty killer and girl who fights for anything weaker, that girl she's becoming: Should she have to wait until she's whole? Do we wait until we're perfect? How long does that take? How long do we have?
Bill sits at the table, getting tired. Not in his body, but in his soul. She's woken something up. The past is dead to him, he thinks. Finally. Lorena marched him up to that porch and showed him his children and explained the veil to him: His family was dead. He was dead to them. It drove him mad. And eventually he got sane, and knit himself to together, and tried to touch the world. He tried to find respite there, and when he couldn't find that he climbed into his hidey-hole, and found love in the unlikeliest place. With a girl who knew his secret places and reached out and touched them before she'd ever tasted him.
This ring, here, on this finger: The retarded girl at the bar, the one everybody has to help, with a ring on her finger. She could be that woman. Clean. It feels right, on her finger. She can leave that past behind, and bring him into her family, and he shall want for nothing, and they will build a world. His loneliness and hers, like speakers canceling. Blessed silence.
The chain that loops around his neck is silver, gripped in velvet gloves. He struggles, glasses and plates flying, sounding out their shivaree.
There's nothing to be ashamed of, or afraid of. It does feel right. It's okay. It's okay to want things; it's okay to be happy. The past can lie back and look to the future, and she'll be there, running toward it with him. She can be that woman. She can trust that woman: Brave as Godric, ecstatic as Maryann. Sookie cascades out into the room, floating on air, voltage thrumming in her heart, eyes shining, calling his name. She comes to him like a bride, arms thrown wide. But he's gone.
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