Another Stackhouse Filibuster

Recapped by Jacob Clifton · Aired 07-11-2010 · S03E04

Sooo gooooood. So here's what's going on: Sookie, um, runs around screaming and stomping her feet. That's per usual, but what's especially interesting is how, this season, she's so awesome doing it. The first thing that happens is Bill calls her and gives her the brush-off of all time. It's before the credits, so you know it's deep, but what you might not know is that it has the power of making you cry like a motherfucker.

Seriously, it's like five minutes in realtime, but watching it felt like every single cell of your skin (the largest organ) being peeled offa you slow-motionly. I didn't think it was possible to feel sorry for either of them, much less mourn their relationship, but somewhere between Bill saying they could never be together and he no longer gave a vampire hump about her -- and her crumpled Claire Danes no-vanity cryface -- I sort of fucking lost it. Turns out the only thing worse than the two of them being together is them breaking up. Like watching your Special Olympics brother drop the top scoop of his ice cream cone on a motherfucking hot sidewalk. Devastating.

So of course Sookie finds immediate parallels with hot fucking Alcide, whose ex also has dumped him in an ice-cream kinda way, and she's decided that the only way "he" can get closure is by going to her engagement ceremony to the ineffable (but yet so effable) hotness of Cooter. Which is interesting only because it turns out that, since well before WWII, Russell has been setting himself up as pretty much Actual Jesus for the whole Op Werwolf/FUCrew, down to letting them drink his blood which was shed for them, and so forth. It all ends in a bloody wolf-out orgy, which Sookie exits (not that she would ever leave a dangerous situation on her own) when the wolfing-out Alcide tells her to.

(But only after she's explained to the sort of brilliantly wonderful Debbie-the-ex exactly what's going on with Alcide, emotionally. This is important, and I'm sorry but it is, only because this show has managed to take the second-most repellent character in the books, Debbie, and make her awesome, while also taking Alcide's sister Janice -- in the books, a sort of classy nonentity -- and additionallying her into a similarly-amazing, and -beautiful werewolf version of Adriana La Cerva. Two birds, one episode. I now ♥ werewolves. I knew the second they created and cast Coot that we would be in for a treat, but these bitches? So much more awesome than you'd think, being bitches and all. Soooo ready to hate her, so unprepared by how much I loved her. We'll see.)

(And yeah, I am well aware that I'm a sucka for the character of Alcide, but welcome to Living-Color, For-Real Alcide because DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT? I'm all like Eric who? Sam what? Pam for real? Jason verrrrrrrrb? "There's this thing called shirts and pants, we gotta get rid of that." "Tell Tom Ford thanks for that movie but he is no longer required. We got pants and shirts crying out for obsolescence.")

Meanwhile, Russell has been dicking Bill around tantalizingly nearby, making him glamour a stripper from pretty much door in order for him, Lorena and Bill to feed to the death, without ever knowing Sookie's minutes away, getting as bored by werewolves as we are. Needless to say, Lorena is fine after last week, and apparently back in Russell's good graces. Furtherly needless to say, what a fine week in which Talbot's presence is reduced to some hot pecs peeking out of his gaywad kimono. My prediction: Talbot and Lorena will end up by the end of this season being not only my but possibly everybody's favorite characters. In the meantime, though, go suck a duck. You guys are the worst.

Other than painstakingly outlining the very obvious parallels between herself and the as usual incredibly hot Alcide, Sookie mostly runs around yelling. As usual. But also being totally awesome the entire time, which is also as usual this season. Bill also, besides mesmerizing the ugly hooker and kind of sympathizing with her and eventually eating the entrails, does little else. Well, unless you count totally selling out Queen Sophie-Anne about selling V, which to me felt like the worst thing. (Including last week. And this week. It's just fucking rude.) And all the bullshit he has yet to unleash. Either way, his motive is clear: Protect Sookie if Russell's takeover doesn’t work, and do what he can to help that takeover, in the off chance that he can be with Sookie after all. (Like she would want him after all this nonsense!)

Jason is taking masculinity like he takes everything: Like it's a workbook he needs to finish before the end of the period. In this case, it involves not only eclipsing Andy's weird covetous obsession with his own personal junk (from the first season) but also recapitulating that same mess on some new quarterback. Who, hate to say it, actually is twice as hot as Jason. But don't you worry, because he has a new love interest in play...

Who right now is having trouble because her dad, Cal Norris -- a.k.a. my favorite man in the books besides Alcide -- is too busy getting pathetically limited as regards Lafayette, who is trying to sell the meth-town of Hotshot some delicious V that they can't afford. Cal tries to get rid of the blood-selling homo, in a less than elegant way, resulting in Eric flitting through the skies and stopping them mid-gaybash.

What both of them are secretly hoping turns into some awesome Renfield vehicular sex turns into a bunch of nothing when Eric gets the horrifying news that the Magister is raiding Fangtasia! looking for V, and ends up torturing our beloved Pam. Until she names Bill Compton as the culprit seller, with which Eric goes along, I think mostly because he loves Pam, so wait for that to get weird.

Speaking of weird, Franklin Mott the Britvamp gets a glamoured Tara to admit that Sookie is magic, Bill is whatever -- basically the entire first two seasons -- before tying her to the toilet, which was gross, but not as gross as when he makes her call Sookie and say the puppet words that are coming out of his puppet mouth. From a science fiction perspective, this scene is awesome. From the perspective of a lady, or anybody with an abusive boyfriend ever, it's pretty much the worst. He then gets her in the car and takes her to Jackson, MS, where Sookie's story is going down.

It seems pretty clear that we're going to burn (thankfully) through this idea -- Franklin's mind control recapitulates Maryann's, down to the bouquet of flowers he literally duct-tapes into her hands at one point -- as quickly as possible before Tara fucking gets real. I don't want her to stake him in the Buffy way, where it's all gasps and clouds: I want her to fucking cut him limb from limb, painstakingly, in a way that takes all night. Given that we've gotten this gross in this short a time, I feel like that's gotta happen. Or else she'll flip it on him by relaxing into the sheer comfort of his bullshit. Either way: How many times you gotta be sucked into marrying or bridesmaiding for the Devil before you actually look at yourself?

He wants to turn her and make her his vampire bride at Russell's house -- and I realize this recaplet is long, but it's not TV it's HBO -- which is pretty much the dark side of Bill's bullshitty proposal last season. Not loving the idea that Tara only plays out the opposing side of Sookie's relationships, but check it: She has more reason than anybody on this show to hate vampires. Even more than Bud and Arlene, whose lives have been substantially changed by the Great Revelation two months ago.

Which is especially funny, considering Arlene's Psycho Baby still hasn't come to light, and -- for this week at least, knowing her racist ass -- is more of a problem for her than Sam's new waitress, Jessica. Less delightful and easygoing, for old Sam, is the entirety of his family, who are living in a fucking trailer in the parking lot, as one might have expected. Total pedo Joe Lee and God Knows What Melinda interest Sam less than old horribly Tommy, though, whom Sam invites to Bon Temps as a sort of living experiment in what would have happened if either of them had had parents instead of abandoners and/or molesters. Half and a half men, if you will.

And yet still I still feel like I'm leaving like 30 things out. Welcome to this show, okay.

Sookie just loves taking care of people, doesn't she? I'm sure that's all it is. I'm sure taking three hours to sponge-bath every inch of Alcide's gigantic gorgeous frame is just that Southern caregiver Gran-thing in action. No other reason, no sir. She explains to him a bunch of things he already knows, like how that Were he took down last week in that shamefully stupid-looking were-bar was hopped up on V. (Says: "Bill's, in fact, so I know it's strong." Means: "I have a boyfriend! A vampire one! I suck his blood! We have sexual intercourse! You are not basically naked right now!")

Alcide is grossed out by the thought of werewolves doing V, and they talk about how mostly it's just the FUCrew that's into it, which is a problem for Alcide less than the Bill factor (not that Sookie would understand that even if you drew her a diagram) and more because his ex-fiancée Debbie is involved with them. Taking slightly more notice of the mountainous expanse of him, Sookie pries a little about Debbie, a little bit because Alcide is hot but mostly because check it out: Her fiancé disappeared too! So Alcide's relationship concerns have merit!

Debbie moved out a month ago, in what I'm sure was one of those crushing scenes, and he still hasn't gotten new furniture -- a "joke" Sookie can't wait to make -- because he's too busy brooding and I assume working out on what must be quite a punishing schedule. He still gets Debbie news occasionally, from his awesome sister Janice, who owns the place where Debbie gets her hair did. Looking at Janice and Debbie, as we'll be doing later, you wouldn't be amiss thinking that maybe Janice should find a new job. Or maybe work on the monster movies.

Sookie sort of loses track of herself for a second, because of Alcide being so sad and did you know she's so sad and how they are sad together with minimal clothes on, and Alcide looks back at her like, "Trailing your hand around my musculature is not very Florence Nightingale" and she's like, "Um?"

I always thought that the opposite of sexy girl-shaped cars and things should be met by the equal and opposite sexy boy-shaped things, and that this is where SUV's for ladies came from. The Tank Girl approach. So if Pam, let's say, is a Corvette, and boys aren't that weird for putting brassieres on their cars just to make sure you get it, then all women and certain fellas should be driving Range Rovers, and this is because of things like: Alcide.

Alcide looks at her and how pretty she is and how they both lost their affianced and he thinks about kissing her a little bit with his big sad eyes and then the phone rings and she ducks her head like somebody's chucking things at it, things like giant muscles with giant carbon footprints, and runs to answer. This is when things get awful.

Bill takes a while to speak once she answers, and their song starts playing. She asks if he's okay, what with the werewolves and all, and Lorena giggles on the bed, head right-side-front again and looking luxe. He assures Sookie nobody "has him" and that he's just giving up life in Louisiana and leaving Sookie for real. "Shut the fuck up!" says Sookie, because she is awesome this year.

Sookie points out that he just proposed to her like five minutes ago, and he thanks her for not saying yes, and she filibusters to the logical place, that somebody's there listening and he is a hostage or whatever, which gives him entrée to say the meanest thing he can say -- pretty much exactly what he did to Lorena last week, minus the head-grabbing neck-twisting hatefuck -- which is: "Lorena, actually. To whom I have just made love... We fucked like only two vampires can. I didn't hold back for fear of hurting her, like I do with you."

Which is awful on many levels, because first of all you're with the ex, second of all there's no room for maybe because he just said they fucked, third of all there's the racial part of it where Lorena is "real" and Sookie is just this naïve girl who thought she was In On It, fourth of all because of that Edward Cullen thing of fucking you until you are bruised and your bones are broken and how she kind of was always on the edge of that, and fifth -- and most of all -- because it means the whole time they were fucking and it was so romantic and he was knitting her body back together and killing her uncle and wiping her clean and saying he loved her, over and over, and taking it slow, and teaching her how he liked to be touched, and teaching both of them how she liked to be touched, and all the different maps and stories they built up together, as though neither of them had ever known another soul, in fact he was: Never actually there.

Fucking Sookie was a little bit, in a tiny way, a bit of a joke. There was a place in his mind where he went, when she was lost to the abyss and finally in love with herself, so that he wouldn't completely ravish her and break her body. And if he can break up with her like this, on the phone, from the bed of his old and new lover -- whom Sookie knows to be an asshole -- then that place was even larger than the place that he loved her. Which means every time they fucked, he was making a fool of her. Which isn't as bad as the fact that every time they fucked, she was making a fool of herself.

Well done, Bill. It's barely even a hint on the radar during all this, that Lorena leans into the phone with a friendly, purring "Ça va, Sookie?" Sookie barely registers that, just stays with the filibuster, calling his name again and again. "Look at your life since I entered it: I've only caused you pain. I am death."

(I am Death. Never forget that. This is a story of Gods fucking men, and why it's not really ever okay. Part of her love for him and part of the story of first love is the fact that he swims in depths she can't even see and fathoms she can't sound; he's a black shape in the blackness, like all vampires. Nothing Bill says is ever a lie; he wouldn't allow it.)

"I will bring you only suffering. Our worlds are too different. Our natures too. We were doomed from the start." Of course she doesn't believe him, or any of this nonsense, because it's no more or less true than it was the day they met, and since then he's comforted her against it a thousand times: She's special. The rules don't apply to her, or to him: They are the one true thing. They break the rules and rewrite them, their love is so powerful. Every fear and nightmare, every part of Eric that nobody can touch and the real reason she can't trust him, coming true: "Believe what you want. You are no longer of concern to me. Do not try to find me. I do not wish to be found." And then just a dial tone.

Left alone with Alcide, numb and nearly barfing, Sookie wonders to herself what on earth that phone call was about. "I'm pretty sure it means he doesn't wanna see you anymore," Alcide helpfully suggests, and she's like, "Nothing of the sort! Clearly strange things are afoot at the Circle K. We gotta get twice as weird and twice as pissed and hurl ourselves twice as hard into twice as much danger! Hand me a knife! Or a cudgel! We're doing this shit bra-less!"

Because this is the last fucking thing Alcide needs to hear -- in fact, what we can't quite see yet is that letting go of Debbie is harder even than letting go of Bill, even after a month -- he sets about setting her straight, in a way that would drive her bats with anger if she could actually hear this on an emotional level and not as some logical puzzlement that she can filibuster her way out from under: "Maybe the man you love never existed except in your head? No matter how well you think you know somebody, they can still turn around and kick you right in the nut sack."

As though it is a logical defense, Sookie jerks: "I don't have a nut sack!" (Simply untrue.) She goes on, into sobs: "He's risked everything for me! Our love is way bigger than him breaking up with me over the phone!" Like constructing a logical proof is going to make that phone call never happen; like she's never been broken up with. "How many relationships you been in?" asks Alcide, recognizing this panic and logical irrationality as the tiny fish-thoughts that swim around but don't come out of your mouth unless you are very, very naïve.

(Listen, don't fix. Boys somehow do not come with this thing from the factory, and you have to teach them it. Just without being a bitch about it.)

He takes her in his arms, finally, realizing that all the ugly-crying and pretty horrible sadness faces aren't going anywhere: That no matter how much he tries to use Sookie to talk himself out of his own heartbreak (one more thing they have in common, that inability to talk to anybody when you're not really or also talking to yourself), and she's shocked at his warmth. Warmer than a live body, much warmer than a dead one: "It's okay, I'm just not used to it." Weres run hot, he says -- which: word up -- and she flips into caretaker mode: "I thought maybe you were coming down with the flu..."

Alcide tries to give her privacy, but as her first Were she finds something comforting in the low-level snarl of his thoughts, and the last thing she wants is to be alone. Jason might help here, probably not, but Tara would hold her and give voice to all the anger she's not allowed to feel yet, and talk her down. Instead: Silent, sexy Alcide, who feels weird about staying with her and weirder about leaving, so he cuts the diff and just puts on a shirt before settling down for the night.

Bird-Tommy's practically laughing as he takes off into the sky, Sam following after with his pistol. Sam sniffs out the Mickens trailer and goes looking for them. Melinda, as usual, is conciliatory and weakness personified and completely innocent: "We hadn't left yet because, uh, well, we got nowhere to go. We're a little behind in rent? Plus, our landlord got foreclosed on..." Sam realizes why they came, to eat his food and steal from him, and Melinda acts all surprised and mad about Tommy's attempt to steal from Merlotte's: "Sometimes I think that boy's cheese done slid right off his cracker. He does desperate things when we fall on hard times."

"When you fall...? How often does this happen?" Sam isn't about to listen to any more of her bullshit, and she begs him not to take it out on Tommy, and then old Grimy-Whities comes out and yells about how Tommy makes his ass itch, and Melinda assures Sam they'll leave the second Tommy returns: "He's just off somewhere beating himself up. Won't be long." Instead of calling the cops or shooting them both and giving them to Eric for a snack, Sam just kicks up dirt and wanders away feeling like a grumpy little boy.

Fuck that. First of all, you don't owe your real family anything, much less your birth family, any more than you owe your SO something on Valentine's Day. We enter into these relationships because we want to be in them, and obligation breeds resentment. And second of all, these people are gross. Way too gross to be anywhere near you unless you have a compelling reason otherwise. I guarantee every nasty carny and drug dealer in the world has a sad story, if you stop to listen to it, but that doesn't stop them from being what they are. Trouble is, Sam keeps listening. And even if he loves Tommy more than their parents, for pretty obvious reasons, that still doesn't mean you do anything but keep walking. Letting people in that haven't earned it is the number one way you end up with sad drama and nothing to show for it.

Franklin grills the glamoured Tara for info on Bill and Sookie, because what Franklin and Tara are about is Bill and Sookie (with a heaping helping of Maryann thrown in there, as we'll see). As much of a bummer as this episode is re: Tara, it's also an act-break, which means this is the last time we'll ever have to look at whatever it is we're looking at.

(Weird thing about this episode is how it went last episode/July 4/act break, which means we've spent almost four weeks thinking the same thing is happening over and over, when in fact this story is making huge jumps forward. Same deal as with Maryann last year, if you were paying attention, which is almost impossible to do on a weekly basis but especially hard to do when the weird episode and act-break fall on either side of a holiday. To this day people still believe the Junkie Willow storyline was six months long -- when really it was two short episodes long -- because of Christmas break that year. Even harder to do when you don't understand how TV seasons get broken down -- how if you're doing a storyline at the beginning of the season, you're going to be concluding that storyline in some form at the end of the season -- or if your p

By Jacob Clifton

Bill lies on the bed with his pants still on, although his shirt is now off. He's looking very healthy this season, presumably because he's been drinking real blood for the first time in a long time, especially during his stay at Uncle Rusty's Blood & Breakfast, but the pure nihilism running through his veins probably helps. Lorena, cracking her head back into position at the vanity, assures him it was the best sex she's had in a while. She laughs at him for growling about it, and promises him that was "true passion" at work. He says the only passion going down was about him "killing [his] love for Sookie," which is so perfectly Bill it makes your teeth ache. He can't just do things, it's always this big thing. "Ah am doin' this laundry because mah clothing does not feel clean!"

Bill asks Lorena to leave -- I'm sorry, he tells her to "get the fuck out" -- and she giggles some more. "Oh, William. I'm happy!" She promises he'll love her again, even if it takes forty years of neck-cracking blood-barfing sex to get there, but before she is able to complete this nonsense he throws her out the open door and all the way across the hall, and closes it with his bare hands even though it burns him. (Silver door doesn't matter if he's got clothes and bedsheets, right? Ah, metaphors. They will get you.)

Eric hovers outside Sookie's window: Inside, she's got Alcide curled up chastely on the bed and a million used tissues lying everywhere. Speaking of metaphors. "Cheese and [fries/rice]*!" she squeals, because obviously this is a dream sequence and obviously that's what he thinks she'd say, because his idea of Sookie is even more adorable than this season's Actual Sookie. She asks if all vampires can fly, and he responds by asking if all humans can sing, and I don't think she really understands his point, but anyway she asks him in.

*("Fries" if he's thinking of her as a waitress; "rice" if she's a good Southern home cookin' gal.)

"Turns out [Bill]'s not who I was looking for," she says, and climbs all over him, while the Were sleeps peacefully and occasionally paws at imaginary rabbits. "You smell like the ocean [in/and] winter. How is that possible? Bill doesn't smell like anything." (Again: I can't say whether or not Sookie would ever say anything that dorky, but I'm sure in Eric's head she would, because Eric is dorkier than she is.) The more she says, the more freaked out and amazed by her he gets.

"You played by the North Sea as a child," she whispers, explaining that she can smell his very memories. (To be known, that's the thing Eric wants: For somebody to understand the whole of his life the way Godric used to and Pam is learning. For another love that goes that deep.) "I got skills you can't even dream of, cowboy," she says, and there is some hot kissing, and then Alcide's gone from the bed and she's climbing atop him, body insane, tissues scattered everywhere, all about how smelling memories is nothing compared to whatever.

"You want more?" Sookie says... And turns into stupid boring Yvetta the boring stripper, at whom Eric is staring half-heartedly from his throne. The more we see her face, the prettier she gets. Maybe she'll be a person one of these days. Disappointed on very many levels, he sends her boring ass away, and Pam worries about him.

While the news talks about the Vampire Rights Amendment's impending passing, Alcide's been making breakfast. He asks her about heading back to Bon Temps, since of course she's given up looking for Bill, and she's like, "Have we met? I don't just let shit go." He calls her a doormat and she says she just wants to hear it from Bill's actual mouth, which Alcide thinks is stupid. And he'd be right, if this were real life, but since we're only a third through the season, she's right by being wrong: There's more to the story. Like for example Alcide's hair, which is looking werefabulous this morning.

The filibuster continues, about how maybe he's in trouble and what have you, and Alcide calls this a need for closure, which is always lame and fake and wrong, and Sookie points out that he is being a hypocrite/pulling a Sookie his own self: "Says the man cooking breakfast in a wok because he's too sad to buy a new frying pan!" Sookie demands that he take her to Debbie and Coot's engagement party tonight -- extreme(ly) elegant I'm sure! -- and Alcide assures her that his debt is paid and he's not taking her out to any more Were functions so she can cause more huge problems with her constant crazy behavior.

"I know you're still hurting over Debbie. Seeing her with those creeps might help you get over her." Closure, again. They are peas in a pod. We can only really jerk people around when they're just like us, because we know the tricks. Alcide points out that getting their asses killed at that place is now a foregone conclusion, and invites her to go to the Were bar herself and get eaten if she's that stupid. Oh, says Sookie's face, You have no IDEA how stupid I'm prepared to get.

"Ring ring hooker ring ring!" From now on, if you're leaving me a voicemail, please try to do it Lafayette-style. He explains that, holed up at Sookie's with her suicidal ideations or not, he is now driving one bad-ass automobile courtesy Northman, meaning that now Tara has a car of her own. "That's right, Buddha done did us a 180, he did. Now, why don't you calls a motherfucker back, please? Shiiiiiit." They should do some kind of integrated marketing where Lafayette calls you up every day and says amazing things.

Tara is not available for this call because she is tied up. Literally, on the toilet, in her undies, with duct tape on her mouth. It's a pretty bad date just if they bite you. But once they start hypnotizing you and extorting info about your compatriots and tying you to the toilet and not even bothering to pull your panties down in case you need it while you're on it, I think you can safely say this relationship is not going to last. (Also, the whole vamps v. werewolves rant was, I admit, pretty hypothetical before now, thanks to the sweetness/repression of Mr. Compton, but worth remembering at this point: Last year Tara was out of control and this year control is all she's got, so far.)

Alcide's sister Janice is probably as tall as he is, with the looks of an Amazon-slash-mail order bride, but there's something really likeable about her almost immediately. If you were nervous about meeting a biker chick, she'd be the best possible option: Very lovely, hidden under a lot of trashy nonsense that stops mattering after a few minutes in her company. Needless to say, she's very happy with the looks of Sookie Stackhouse, given that Debbie Pelt is a nasty bitch and almost anyone would do: "But you are cute and sweet. You're just what he needs!"

Big old hug for a bewildered Sookie, and then Janice explains that her horoscope just today said that things were looking up for somebody close to her. "Nailed it!" she giggles, and gets out her spackle and whatnot. Sookie tries to tell her that she and Alcide have a strictly business relationship, having to do with a disappeared buddy and a need to get into Lou Pine's (still: ugh) without getting tossed. It's a neat little acting moment, like, you can actually feel Sookie relaxing and trusting Janice as she speaks.

Janice is thrilled to give Sookie a biker bitch makeover, and clearly good at what she does: "How deep do you wanna go?" Not knowing that our friend Sookie, of course, can only do things twice as much as normal people do things. "I wanna look like I could kick some serious ass." Janice grins. "Which I can!" Somehow, Janice doesn't just pet her on her sweet little head that Jesus made, and pulls out some fake tattoos to look into. "No chance of anything more between you and my baby brother?"

A) Have you seen him? And B) We are both insane about our exes, so not this episode at least. Janice is quite the transmitter, though, and within seconds has psychically revealed that Debbie's engagement party is second, if it exists at all, to Debbie's initiation into Operation Werewolf/the FUCrew, and also Debbie is on the V. Because she is nuts, this will only make Sookie want to fight her more. She floats the obviously dumb theory that Alcide should go and talk to Debbie and talk her out of what they're now both pretending is her engagement to Cooter, but Janice's psychic told them that if Alcide stayed with Debbie he would die. He didn't listen, but she dumped him anyway.

"She was his first love, he never met anybody so alive, all that shit. But how many bullets are you gonna take for somebody? How many bad things gotta happen to you -- and the ones you love -- before you realize feeling alive ain't enough? I am just glad he made it out alive."

In Sookie-speak, where we're all just robots performing for her entertainment, then: "First love" equals Bill. "Taking bullets" equals Bill, but there's a hint there -- for us -- about other stuff. And the last couple of sentences are multivalent in a way that encompasses everybody on the show, but especially Bill's breakup speech, by managing to make the same word ("alive") mean almost opposite things at once.

To love is to bury: Barely breathing, or not breathing at all? Is Alcide happier, now that he isn't "alive"? Is Debbie happier now that she's got V making her feel more alive than she's ever felt?

Poor Jason has to watch the first pitcher of beer -- Arlene's moving slow, due to her massive constant drama and the serial killer in her abdomen -- go to the new QB-1, a "cocky little shit" who goes by the name of Kitch Maynard and who, if it weren't flirting with blasphemy to say it, might be hotter than him. Hoyt knows all of his infos because Hoyt knows things like that, and Jason is getting more and more upset, because this is exactly the same go-round we did Season One with Andy -- I remember it well, because I got so much hateful hatemail about it from the oppressed white men who just can never get a fucking break -- where his weird jealousy of Jason was pretty much his only trait for awhile, and was as much a plotpoint as it was an inescapable fact:

The man of an obsolete generation loves in his successor the thing that he hates in his successor, which is a virility that once he thought defined him but has vanished, leaving him with no actual definition, which turns eventually and quickly into a covetousness that often expresses itself in a sort of hateful desire. Before Viagra, this kind of misplaced and projected lack often ended in violence, but now it's just about acting super fucking creepy and angry and not being able to understand, much less voice, why.

As Andy hated Jason right up until the point they settled into their natural father/son roles, so Jason is going to be hating Kitch Maynard until somebody gives him the nod of being a man. Which, for Jason, right now means using his FotS training to be a cop, no matter how little effort he actually puts into it, which lack of effort in turn comes from being that golden boy of their generation's desiring to begin with: He never had to try, because he fit the definition they were giving him, and he never had to step outside of it, which is where trying happens.

And there is a way in which this makes Jason a jackass, but there's also a way in which it is as disenfranchising and minimizing as any woman who's been defined growing up by her body, which is what turned Anna Newlin for example into something way worse than just a jackass, but also somebody I felt for the same way I feel for Jason. Which is to say: You're handed what you're handed. They got beauty, some of us got brains, some of us got nothing, but staying in the place that best defines you, which is to say the house of your best accomplishment, is something that everybody naturally does. Stepping out of that and trying to be better at everything, that takes a strength that we find lacking only in those who don't share our particular faults and lacks, or gifts and accomplishments.

You get to say, that pretty person is very stupid; they get to say, that smart person is very ugly, or fat, or whatever you are. And even if it's not true -- and honestly, if you're a grownup at all you should have crossed the lines at least halfway by now -- you get to think it's true, and in this way you never have to measure your lacks, because they don't matter anyway, because the particular things that were handed to you are much, much better. And underneath the hate is a covetousness that borders on, or parallels, or very often hides, a very deep desire indeed.

So with that little taste of Jason's first experience of obsolescence which just happens to be coinciding with his nineteenth epiphany about being a better man, and his other thing about having killed a man and gotten neither absolution nor accolades about it, Andy tenderly pulls Bud up in front of the lunch crowd, and traces the line back even further, to a generation so afraid of change they'd rather drop out altogether: "Get on up here, Bud. Get up here, young man."

After much talk about Bud as father figure and sheriff -- and confirmation that the Gomer Pyle guy is, in fact, Kevin (from the books, in which he was not Gomer Pyle) -- they give him permission to dance, which is the thing he loves the best. He accepts the dancing boots they got him, to a round of applause, and thanks everybody. He smells the leather, and starts into a speech -- but three generations and half of Merlotte's away, the high school jocks are screaming for Kitch Maynard. Andy, one level down, becomes sheriff, and classily ignores the jocks.

r eyes -- and still with these boners just from being a part of this experience together -- because even the definition of "man" seems a little less secure and little harder to come by with every generation, and they need all the tradition and handing-down of manhood they can get. Awesome, awesome movie. When you think about straight guys this way, and the absolutely untenable position they are in all day long, it makes it slightly more difficult to get annoyed with their bullshit.

Although far from impossible.)

But so Jason, one level down from there, listens to the shouting of the high school jocks, and feels a certain jealousy and covetousness echoing down from dancing Bud to Sherriff Andy to Placeless Stackhouse, and does what he can -- what he has to do -- for them both. For all three of these obsolete men. He lays down some non-charm on Kitch for a bit, and then some major charm on his lady friend, and then tells them all to stop being fucktards and causing disrespectful ruckuses "when a fine upstanding citizen is getting all commemorated," and additionally tries -- classic Stackhouse Filibuster -- to warn Kitch about how obsolescence feels, and how in ten years there will be another generation of Percivals stealing your dick, and Kitch in addition to looking like the best of all the gay pinups ever pinned up, has no idea what he's talking about, which to Jason counts as a win. He struts away with a pitcher of beer, and even Hoyt has no idea how the math works out that Jason has just triumphed, but whatever anyway.

And while the men are having their same problems they've been having since being invented several years before, Kenya is in the corner drinking shots and making a valid point: "I guess the only way to get a promotion in this town is to drink like a fish, hallucinate farm animals, and kill a black man. Hey, promotion!"

"Pig!" Kenya shouts into the chaos, and then Arlene runs in for more of her patented bullshit, yelling at Sam about this and that and being generally awful -- although she is right that she should not be the only front of house employee, which she is because the other waitresses and bartenders are all dead, hypnotized, or getting tarted up by werewolf biker chicks, and also that Sam has "got" to start looking out for his own. Which means firstly Tommy, in Sam's head, but also Arlene has made her point, and thirdly that who is Sam's family? Among others, Sookie. Who has a family of her own she didn't ask for, but whom he promised to care for in her absence. I will give Arlene this week off from being hated, because that was pretty awesome.

Alcide can tell just from looking at Sookie -- short dark wig, corset, tats all over, leather pants, fingerless gloves, old-bitch makeup -- that Janice took to her. That's sweet, and Sookie is flattered by his glances and the sentiment, but mostly here is some information she will be screaming at you, Sookie-fashion: "Debbie's getting initiated into Coot's pack and she's addicted to V!" Alcide -- because we have to learn to think of him as Sookie's twin brother before we can get to know him on his own -- managing to combine both the folksy "cheese and ____" thing from Eric's dream with Sookie's own STFU earlier: "Shut the fuckin' door!"

Sookie admits to pokin' around in Janice's brain, with a tad bit of guilt, and points out that Janice was just trying to protect him, but that obviously Sookie couldn't just do the same because A) "Debbie" is code for "Bill" so of course he, being code for "myself," would want to know, and B) This is just one more reason for Alcide to come with her to the Were bar, which even in her getup is still really scary to think about. (Sookie would never let a boy protect her without first jumping everybody through a bunch of hoops to get her ass protected, which really is just a brilliant thing about Sookie Stackhouse: It's not big strong men she needs, it's big strong anybody, but they can't get the wrong idea and think it's because she's a five-foot babydoll of a person, because she has no time for the concept of actually being in danger.)

Alcide's grossed out by the idea of Debbie getting branded by the FUCrew, and is quite positive that it's just because she's a V addict and not any other reason, like her own internal grodiness, like there's a difference. He agrees to go with her, but they have to go separately, so that her disguise will actually have a point but also because he knows this will have no result, for him, other than yet another ass-kicking. She's grateful, but once he turns his head, she lets herself shiver some more. I can't blame her: This is like the first time in her life/the show that the danger hasn't just naturally come flying at her of its own accord.

Russell gives Bill a sort of intake interview over scotch and cigars and creepy Victrola versions of the cello that follows Bill everywhere. What they are talking about is specifically stuff we never really got to hear much about, which is Bill's work for the Queen of Louisiana. For 35 years he was her "procurer," which is a fancy word for "pimp," and which to say there's a difference here is really splitting hairs, if you think about what vampires actually do. Bill promises he was only in Bon Temps on sabbatical, but Russell knows better.

Bill wants more confirmation that Russell can usurp Sophie-Anne's territory -- I guess "via marriage or otherwise" is all one concept now -- and they smoke cigars and generally keep distracted by niceties and historical name-dropping and quotations -- "A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke," Rudyard Kipling, who unlike Shakespeare never stole spoons -- and then Bill says he additionally wants Lorena dead. It won't be reported, so nobody will get in trouble. Then he starts getting real treacherous, in a sort of uncomfortable way: "Eric Northman, the Queen's Sheriff of Area IV, has been selling vampire blood, and I believe it is at her behest." Russell knows the Magister would love proof of that, and they reiterate how she's in need of serious cash right now. Anyway, Russell is loving these data, and now he feels like celebrating. Bill makes a terrified face, which I would too in that bathhouse of a house. "'Celebrating' as in... A circle jerk? Or like a tea party? How should I be dressed, basically."

This is all very complicated, because in a minute Pam and Eric are going to sell Bill out for the same thing, which makes me think this whole V storyline is going down sooner rather than later, which is fine. You've got way too many good characters tied up in it as is, and it's really just a hanging doom waiting to come down and turn into something else. The parallel materials have been talking about this "Authority" for awhile now, and we still don't know about Nan Flanigan and the Magister's official roles in the government itself, so that seems like the logical place to go with at least the Sophie part of this.

I still think there are non-financial reasons the Queen wants her blood in a bunch of people -- ooooh, actually that line of thought just got interesting, because isn't that exactly what the vampire head of the FUCrew (Russell, in a minute) is personally doing? And has been doing for centuries? So basically they're both doing the same thing, building an army of people with their blood: It's just that Sophie-Anne also gets money for it, while Russell just gets... Hot naked werewolves. Hmm. That's a tough one. I'm so glad I'm not a vampire! It is always something with those people.

("Those people." Racist.) Anyway, Franklin's home from doing whatever awful creepy shit he gets up to, and takes the tape off Tara's mouth -- but only after flirting about and taping a creepy bouquet to her praying hands. "Did you miss me?" he asks several times, knowing her mouth is taped closed. There is a quote "magical" thing about Tara that obsesses him, and makes him do these things, in addition to what I'm sure is his own native creepiness: Licks, rather than kissing. "We have so much ahead of us!" he says. Tara just stares, terrified and finally realizing just how far he's going to go with this.

(Last year a bridesmaid, this year a bride. But put it together with Sookie's whole marriage conundrum -- and Alcide's, and Russell/Talbot as the show's only married couple -- and Lord knows where we're going: Sam's family, Lorena, even Arlene.)

Sam puts Jessica to work hostessing, to start, and we talk about how she can't serve alcohol because she's not eighteen. Jessica points out that she'll never be eighteen, that s

he'd make a great waitress ("I used to be the best server at our church pancake night," she says, to put that in our heads for the scene), and that she's "a vampire, not a fucking idiot." You don't really talk that way to Sam, Jessica. It hurts his feelings. She whisks the first group away and immediately there's Arlene with the bitching: Hostess does not a full-time Arlene's-load lifting employee make, also redheads make good tips, and the whole time Sam's all conciliatory and Arlene's all nuts, and then the hormones reverse themselves and she starts apologizing for being "emotional," but then remembers it's a secret and says she just doesn't want him getting railroaded.

"You let in every stray, Sam. I mean, first that old dog, and then your folks, and now Jessica? I mean, it's your business. It's not a charity." He tells her his parents are not a problem and no matter how adorably wee he is, he can take care of himself, but Terry points out that the Mickenses are still there -- grilling in the parking lot, matter of fact -- and Sam runs off to yell at their trashy asses some more. "One thing's for sure," Terry tells Arlene, with a sweet hand on her arm: "We'll never be as bad of parents as they are." Yeah, I can't see even Arlene doing... Whatever it is that they are doing.

Jessica bumps into the cutest little church boy, named of course "Chip," who is so excited to see her not only because he misses her from Bible study but also because, you know, she died. He shouts about God and praise Jesus and it's a miracle that she's alive, and her glamoured parents will be so happy, and Jessica just stares at him that usual way, like being a vampire is just the worst, and which of the three vampire things she knows how to do are going to take care of this mess. He's too cute to eat, she's not interested in killing him, so it's going to have to be glamour. Poor sweet Chip.

Cal Norris is gross in the show. That is a heartbreaker and I'm going to stop talking about it because who needs the stress, but it's a major bummer. Even though Janice and Debbie are vastly cooler on the show than in the books, so that's something, I always thought one of the neatest tricks Harris did in the books was making you love Calvin. He's like right under Alcide and right above Eric for me, in terms of guys I love in those books. Holding strong at number two, no matter how weird Hotshot gets. And girl it's gonna get weird.

Lafayette is trying to sell Cal some V, and they talk about how Jason busted his little brother last time, and Lafayette is not a cop, and has no interest in infringing on Hotshot dealing territory, but wants to help Cal up his game and diversify: "Help you step up in the world, clean some shit up." Crystal offers to "grab the Dirt Devil from Felton," but one mean glance from Calvin and she slinks off, yelling about how she's not Felton's momma and won't be feeding him any dinner. Alone again with Cal -- whom you may remember as the health inspector that dated Phoebe and made Gunter cry -- Lafayette tries to impress upon him just what a good deal, financially, the stuff is going for. He should introduce them to Pam and then they would act right.

Cal replies, finally, that Hotshot isn't interested in dealing with "people like you," which seems maybe-racist for a sec but you're like, maybe it's a vampire thing, because the thing Cal does is warn Lafayette to leave: "Son, polite's in short supply around here. It's time you get your ass home." Which seems more than maybe-racist. Outside, they are fucking with his new car, and everybody's yelling, at which point Cal grabs Lafayette around the chest and I think he is all the way racist, and there is also homophobia.

Hoyt comes looking for Jessica because of true love, but then sees her deep in intimate conversation with cute little Chip, and -- because he knows even less about vampires than Jessica does, and because he is Hoyt -- naturally assumes they are to be wed. Really, of course, she's glamouring him and probably doing him all manner of synaptic damage in the process, as he explains that he is only in town on his way back from picketing "the babykiller factory up in Birmingham," and she corrects his story -- sort of loving this, a little bit -- to say that he never stopped at Merlotte's, but kept driving and went home hungry without ever seeing her. He nods sweetly: "I hate being hungry before bed." They laugh sweetly with each other, completely together on that: It is a bad thing, isn't it, to be hungry when you go to bed. Nothing could be simpler.

Eric stops them Hotshotters from totally ruining Lafayette's whole self, holding Cal in the sky by the neck and threatening to kill all his "brother/cousins" before killing Cal. Lafayette, terrified and bruised, starts to see the upside of having a vampire boyfriend. Cal promises they'll sell the V, and Eric drops him. "Let's go, RuPaul," he says, which is just stupid and offensive on every level besides running counter to the actual storyline, being at best a cheap laugh, and they drive away together, Lafayette grinning when the Hotshot boys scatter.

Tara's still wondering why Gollum is all obsessive about Sookie and Bill, and their conversation is awful. He's driving them somewhere far away, and making weird small talk the whole time to distract her. She's still got the bouquet, now dying, between her tied-up palms. Essentially, she is His, I think in the vampire sense or at least in his head, and he loves how tough she is and tastes, and he takes a lot of comfort from their wonderful relationship, and this is work-related, but they are going to be together forever.

Tommy's funny little body goes away while he gets dressed and Sam tries real hard to be nice to him. Sam understands that their parents are bullshit, but wants Tommy to understand that running around stealing is no way to do things, like, sometimes you get deflowered by clawed bull-headed demigoddess priestesses and then they come and stab you and whatever. Bad scenes result. Tommy responds that he has no plan of running away from the Mickenses, because they are worthless individuals whose natural habitat is the gutter, so he's stuck with them until they die. Which Sam would have figured out, given a minute and a few reminders of what families are like, but it doesn't stop him from offering Tommy a place to live that isn't quite so... Grungy-underweary.

Lafayette tries to talk back once Eric starts giving him the dressing-down -- for what, I can't imagine, since he must have no more interest in visiting Hotshot than Sookie secretly is happy about Lou Pine's -- but Eric has a point: "You walk into every situation all flash and fire. You expect them to adapt to you. That's not salesmanship, it's ego." Good advice for life. Possibly to be followed by more, except right then Pam calls from the cellar to tell him Fangtasia! is being raided by the Magister, probably because of Sophie flipping on them, and he quickly finds her downstairs and acts giddy and scary as usual. "This is blasphemy," he says, holding up some V samples. "Take her."

"I know I ain't got no fangs," Lafayette tries to explain, "And I know I can't talk... Whatever language that is you're talking... But I can move your shit," he says, and Eric rolls down the window and vanishes. "Oh hell," Lafayette says, looking up into the sky. "How am I supposed to deal with this fuckedupness?" See? Always something.

lready solved three crimes: Falsifying evidence, in the case of Eggs's shooting; Taking out a murderer; and then the Hotshot dealer takedown. "I'm already the best cop you got, Sheriff Andy Bellefleur." Andy makes that sad face like somebody stole his candy, and leaves, and Jason enjoys watching himself pee for awhile.

Those fucking hobos are cooking hotdogs in a firepit when Sam and Tommy come back to them. Sam tells them the following: "Now, here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna give you a place to stay for now 'til you get back on your feet." Specifically, though, Tommy can't do anymore stealing and Joe Lee can't do any more drinking. Melinda still acts like all of this is a surprise to her and that she is ever so embarrassed about it, "it" being her life. Joe Lee makes a joke, but Tommy seems pretty sincere about trying. Sam is, of course, touched, because way to go right for his weakest spot: The idea that people can change, even shapeshifters.

Talbot is so grossed out by Franklin, when they arrive at the Jackson compound, that it almost makes me wish the character weren't erased from all history. And you must admit, standing among all those pretty things and bodyguards, Franklin looks quite a mess. He tells them to wait in the foyer -- Russell is, remember, "celebrating" -- but asks whether "this," meaning Tara, is a hostess gift. "It's skinny," he whines, and takes off. Tara is still shivering, but Franklin has that same sort of horrible ease, willing to wait. I bet there's nothing quite so trashy-feeling as being stuck in some sumptuous gay vampire foyer with a dead bouquet strapped to your hands. Especially after a long day of sitting on the toilet.

One of the guys nearly recognizes Sookie in her Leather Ho outfit, so she goes from politely declining his offer of shots to a fabulous "FUCK YEAH" and then downing several. They all cheer her on, and she makes some biker bitch faces and it's all fun for like one whole second, but then Debbie -- looking TORE UP FROM THE FLOOR UP -- immediately jumps up her ass for actually being pretty, which is like unheard of for werewolf biker bitches. Alcide, who is every bit as stupid and crazy as Sookie is, when the situation calls for it, immediately blows their whole cover and jumps up to Debbie and claim Sookie for his own. time you're waiting in the car, Herveaux. I'll crack a window.

Russell's car, where we learn that celebrating means in this case doing a three-way on some poor stripper with Lorena and Bill. Lorena is so into this, of course, and Bill's back "procuring," but I have no real idea what Russell's get is, here. They have blood at home, and they're going to fuck up the upholstery. Is it just about making Bill prove how far he's willing to go, both as a procurer and as an eater of people? Yeah, that must be it: What is the furthest thing from Sookie you can think of? Lorena in the bedroom and a stripper on the dinner table. He's crossing lines he didn't even know he has. And you know meanwhile Lorena's like, "This is just like old times!" She really is unsophisticated.

Oh, wait. There's the whole other Russell thing about to happen, we just don't know it's around the corner yet: Lou Pine's is very close to this strip club, so he can run off to do his whole Jesus thing with the Weres and still have a vampire alibi of sorts. I wonder what the strip club will be called? "Pole Position," perhaps. "Camp Save-A-Ho." Those are all very subtle. Or, if it's a vampire-friendly establishment, "Deady Issues."

"Goner Rita's." Well, the Magister is not buying any of Pam's protestations, much less Eric's on her behalf. "Oh, you've got the wrong man! My dog ate my homework! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil!" (How, how is Željko Ivanek so hot? I have been trying to figure this out for ninety-five years, which is coincidentally how long he's been alive.) In addition to his many other accessories, he's got a silver-tipped cane that hurts as good as it looks. Lots of torture, Pam's incredibly hot body getting all kinds of fucked with, and then it just comes down to this choice, which is not a choice: Is Eric going to admit to desecrating the blood -- huge no-no for the Magister and Authority -- or working against, making treachery for, his regent? The two worst things!

Especially since this is all about the Queen, to whom he is loyal for some reason. Anyway, Pam is just howling a blue streak and it's very hard on old Eric -- in addition, of course, to being hard on Pam -- and she finally screams, "It was Bill Compton!" One look at Eric, and he's in: "He's gone missing. You've seen yourself how easily he betrays our kind for personal gain. I believe he is behind this, and I am gathering evidence to bring him to you." Eric shoos the Madge, but he's not going out without a bit more awesome: "They say the loss of a child is the deepest of despair. Two days, Mr. Northman, or she dies." Two days, that's what. Like an episode and a half.

Debbie is so not interested in Alcide's whole white knight act, especially considering what a strong junkie biker lady she is, but Alcide is more concerned with how she looks like Death's wrung-out sweatrag. She assures him she's never been happier, and he says that when this madness passes she's going to be up shit creek because the old crew, the real pack, won't have her once she's branded. "I don't need your pussy pack! And I was fucking Coot when I was still with you!" (Every time they fucked, she was making a fool of him. Which isn't as bad as the fact that every time they fucked, he was making a fool of himself.)

Debbie assures Alcide that "this skank" isn't making her jealous, and Sookie as the skank in question points out that, Debbie being ranking Queen of the state of Skank, this is hardly an insult. Debbie lunges, because this is after all her party they're at, and Sookie gives her one of those awesome Sookie speeches: "Alcide came here -- despite every good reason in the world not to -- because he believes the woman he fell in love with still lives inside you somewhere. He's willing to risk his life to make sure you hold on to her, even if he doesn't get to."

Alcide wants to talk about maybe getting Debbie fuck on up out of there, but no: Cooter! Debbie tells him not to mess with Alcide, just get to the branding, and they make out a little bit in that biker way, and "something" about the half-chub this gives ol' Cooter flashes him back to sucking on Bill's neck the other night, so now Sookie's not going anywhere. Sookie came here -- despite every good reason in the world not to -- because she believes the first man she ever fell in love with still lives inside him, somewhere, and she's willing to risk everything to hold onto him. Debbie doesn't care about Alcide leaving: In fact, in some twisted Bill way she knows it's the right thing. "He ain't never gonna let us be baby. 'Til he understands I'm with you for good." Howling and hooting, they crowd-surf her to the stage, ripping off her skirt as she goes.

Right on time, Russell heads over to Lou Pine's, leaving Lorena in the car. Even Lorena thinks this might mean an impending whack, or else just that Bill and Russell are going to split dinner without her. Inside the strip club, inevitably, there's some Massive Attack going on and a bunch of nice young ladies. One in particular catches Bill's eye, maybe just her deadness and lack of interest in the life she's living. He gives her a little smile, turns it a little sexy, and thus procures.

Russell Edgington, whom Alcide recognizes as an area antiques dealer, takes the stage with Debbie, and settles a wolf pelt on her shoulders. At his hand, all the wolves bow down in silence. "Now shall you drink the dark wine of our ancestors," he says in German, and they happily Ja their herr. He bites into himself -- Sookie's mystified, Alcide's just pissed at their worship of anybody, especially a fanger -- and bleeds into a tray full of shot glasses.

They look on hungrily; Debbie nearly cries when he tells her she can't have any V tonight, be

cause of the branding. He talks about the tradition here, how he's been doing this for their people for "ages," which catches Sookie's attention, and then he gets the fuck out of there. They all start growling and yipping and things get sort of sweaty and Red Bully everywhere.

It's sort of like if you took everything Lafayette and Amy ever said about V, and added it to the nakedness and the abandon of Dionysus, and stuck it in a Mississippi biker bar, incorporated their lycanthropy and put some neo-Nazi clothes on it and said: There is meaning here. You get all the religious significance of the blood, and separately the communion; add to that the drugs qua drugs thing, which is its own worship; the fellowship of being a pack and losing control together in a sanctioned or sanctified way; and then on top of all of it you have all that lovely White Power/Teabagger stuff about being somehow both the powerful majority and the overlooked minority at the same time. "You are special, this has been handed down to you from generations."

Russell Edgington is a genius, because this is a perfect recipe, and he's the only one that can give it to them, in his round sunglasses and leather jacket and car waiting outside. The only reason neo-Nazis look archaic to us is because their stuff, their iconography, seems out of date. And they are silly ignorant idiots, so there's no real reason to consider it at all, obviously. But to them, it's always been in season. There is an unbroken line of hate going back sixty years. And to these Weres this is, and has been for hundreds of years, living ritual. Not just some sad drug orgy in a bar that smells like piss, but a connection to the divine -- and one that not only accepts them just as they are, in their hate and violence and rage, but makes them feel themselves like gods. It's altogether too realistic. If Sophie-Anne weren't so disdainful of belief she might have thought of this herself.

Not the only ritual in town. The stripper plays with her nipples and does a little private show for Bill. Maybe he's into it, maybe not. I can never tell. She says her name is Destiny, which is how you end up a stripper, but Bill asks again. "Camilla," she says, which only sounds like a lie because he's a vampire and has known probably fifty of those; he glamours her a little bit, and asks for a third time. Ann is her name (Coincidence? Bill having just sold out Sophie-Anne?): No husband, no kids -- "world's too fucked up" -- and no family. "Told me I wasn't worth nothing. I figured they ain't worth knowing." She points out, bookending Tara's speech to Franklin earlier: "No point anyway... Loving anyone. Anything. Feels good at first, but it always turns to crap. I know the truth about life. It's a hell I'll never get out of alive." There's that word again. And Bill agrees; maybe "Destiny" was the right name after all. He goes cold.

They brand Debbie and she screams, but she stays upright. Cooter cheers, up onstage, and they all do. She cries for awhile, in her g-string and fur coat, and then they all start howling. Cooter takes off his shirt and howls, and drops his pants, and wolfs out. He licks the blood from her shoulder, and climbs up to a speaker, howling. The whole room drops to their knees, and Alcide feels it, starting to shift. "Sookie run," he groans, then barks: "Run!"

Bill feels her fear, outside Russell's car, but then follows Destiny inside. Russell and Lorena dig in as Bill watches, almost licking his lips. Russell follows. Bill shifts uneasily in his seat, and Russell commands him to join in. So he does.

By Jacob Clifton

To love is to bury: Barely breathing, or not breathing at all? Is Alcide happier, now that he isn't "alive"? Is Debbie happier now that she's got V making her feel more alive than she's ever felt?

By Jacob Clifton

(Have you ever seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre II? That movie is precisely and explicitly about this same lineage, up to and including a sort of horrific part where they try to get WWI wheelchair grandpa to kill/rape this girl, and thus win back his manhood, and end up having to pretty much do it for him, like cutting up your kid's steak while letting him hold the knife and fork limply in his hands. And you find yourself sort of feeling sorry for this old guy because they love him so much and all they want him to do is to murder this girl, and it's so frustrating that he can't do it, like, there are actually tears of disappointment and sadness in their eyes -- and still with these boners just from being a part of this experience together -- because even the definition of "man" seems a little less secure and little harder to come by with every generation, and they need all the tradition and handing-down of manhood they can get. Awesome, awesome movie. When you think about straight guys this way, and the absolutely untenable position they are in all day long, it makes it slightly more difficult to get annoyed with their bullshit.

By Jacob Clifton

Although far from impossible.)

By Jacob Clifton

Sam puts Jessica to work hostessing, to start, and we talk about how she can't serve alcohol because she's not eighteen. Jessica points out that she'll never be eighteen, that she'd make a great waitress ("I used to be the best server at our church pancake night," she says, to put that in our heads for the scene), and that she's "a vampire, not a fucking idiot." You don't really talk that way to Sam, Jessica. It hurts his feelings. She whisks the first group away and immediately there's Arlene with the bitching: Hostess does not a full-time Arlene's-load lifting employee make, also redheads make good tips, and the whole time Sam's all conciliatory and Arlene's all nuts, and then the hormones reverse themselves and she starts apologizing for being "emotional," but then remembers it's a secret and says she just doesn't want him getting railroaded.

By Jacob Clifton

Jason stops Andy outside the bathroom and tells Andy it's time for him to become a cop. Andy tells him to apply himself, but Jason's not interested in being Old Jason one more day -- not with Kitch Maynard out there in the world being all hot and awesome. Standing to Andy's urinal, he tries to get very threatening with Andy, but Andy's not even really hearing him until Jason says fuck the rules because he killed somebody and has to live with it, which means there are no rules at all. Andy points out that pushing Jason through the system is the easiest way to screw everything up for everybody. Jason points out that he's already solved three crimes: Falsifying evidence, in the case of Eggs's shooting; Taking out a murderer; and then the Hotshot dealer takedown. "I'm already the best cop you got, Sheriff Andy Bellefleur." Andy makes that sad face like somebody stole his candy, and leaves, and Jason enjoys watching himself pee for awhile.

By Jacob Clifton

They look on hungrily; Debbie nearly cries when he tells her she can't have any V tonight, because of the branding. He talks about the tradition here, how he's been doing this for their people for "ages," which catches Sookie's attention, and then he gets the fuck out of there. They all start growling and yipping and things get sort of sweaty and Red Bully everywhere.

By Jacob Clifton

Check out this interview with Joe Manganiello, a.k.a. Alcide on True Blood.

Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why vloggers Val and Beth discuss vampire pregnancy in TV is the Answer!

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