In Rhythm & Sorrow

Recapped by Jacob Clifton · Aired 08-01-2010 · S03E07

Bill and Sookie kill Lorena with a minimum of dallying around, but before Tara and Alcide can help her get Bill loaded up in the van, Debbie arrives and acts all crazy on drugs. Since Tara is also crazy on drugs right now, she can tussle with Debbie just long enough for Cooter to walk in and get shot by Alcide.

Now, a moment of silence for Cooter.

Debbie offers Alcide this amazing curse of death and dismemberment that will surely bite everybody in the ass, and they get going off Russell's property. Sookie stays in the back of the van with Bill, because apparently the fact that it is daytime so of course he seems to be dead is too much for her to process about her vampire boyfriend, so she saws open a vein for him, which has two effects. At first there is the positive effect of helping him not be quite so dead anymore. But after a minute there is the negative effect of, he drinks all her blood and now she is in a coma.

Once Tara finds out about that, she kicks his ass out into the sunlight and they rush Sookie to the hospital. Bill, having just fed to bursting on Sookie's magical blood, is only minorly inconvenienced by the sunlight, and follows. At the hospital, lots of things are going on: Lafayette is quoting Inuit prayers, Tara is still crazy on drugs, and Sookie has no blood type. (Her blood? It has no type.) So she can't take a transfusion even of Universal O- or Jason's AB-. What is a girl in a coma with no blood to do?

...Apparently take a trip to a magical land where everybody is supermodels and they frolic with flowers in their hair and drink from a magical sparkling pond that is a portal to a land even more magical. Sookie's guide, the beautiful Claudine, invites her to go with them, but soon enough a "darkness" falls over the land, and the magical fairy people have to leave, an invite that Sookie declines. Other info of Claudine: It wasn't the water that killed Sookie's parents that time they drowned, and that Bill will, if Sookie's not careful, steal her "light." In the real world -- as the magical realm reveals itself to have actually been the Bon Temps Cemetery, which is the most important thing about the entire sequence -- Bill convinces Jason over Tara's strong protests to let him feed Sookie. He does, she wakes up, and screams bloody murder at the sight of Bill, for at least three reasons I can think of.

Eric turns Hadley into a vampire, I think, after torturing her to get info about Sookie out of the Queen. She won't tell, but Hadley does. (But we still don't know what's so special about their family.) Then he goes, along with Sophie and Russell, to visit Pam, who is being tortured real bad by the Magister. Turns out the Madge, and presumably Nan Flanagan, work for a mysterious Vampire Authority to which all must swear fealty. Russell is not into that anymore, so he tortures the Magister into finally marrying Sophie and then delivers a speech about how the Authority is over and he is the new Authority, and then kills the Magister's head off. Pam is fine, as I'm sure you'll be relieved to know. Also, I think in this paragraph alone everybody has now tortured everybody else at least once, so probably less torturing. (Bill will, of course, continue to be tortured.)

On this show there are also other people. Lafayette is in Ruston at the hospital with Sookie and Jason, so no Jesus this week. Sam infiltrates a dogfighting ring, spends way too little time running around naked in a dog collar, and then convinces Tommy to actually leave his parents and come live with him for real and stop killing other animals for sport. (Dad ends up, once again, in those undies.) Jason decides to sneak meth into the jail to get info on Crystal, which is just about Jason o'clock, while Summer's back to tell Hoyt that she is his new girlfriend... And making a pretty good case for herself.

week: Everybody's back in Bon Temps, I think, so hopefully Jessica will get some play. And Sookie and Bill have either a very lot or very little to talk about, depending on how much of a dealbreaker "sucked out all my blood and put me in a coma and is keeping secret files on my family and ran off to fuck Lorena the day after proposing to me" really is. But in the meantime, did I mention there was a magical land of glowing water and fancy people? This is the greatest show ever made. You cannot buy that in a bottle.

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Man, Lorena's fantastic. So she's got Sookie up against the wall and she's sucking on her blood and Bill's down on the floor and he's not doing so great. But you know who else is awesome? Miss Sookie Stackhouse, who after a moment of screaming and getting sucked on immediately goes back to being her usual faultlessly fuck-you self. Lorena's all, "You are magically delicious!" And Sookie tells her to fuck off. Lorena, for at least the third time, asks Sookie what she is, and Sookie thinks about saying "A waitress" like usual, but instead says that what she is today, in Mississippi, is the bitch what's going to kill Lorena.

It's a little awkward. Then Bill snags Lorena to the floor with his chain and the last of his strength, and holds her down on top of him like a tired cowgirl. Thank goodness this Slave Quarters comes equipped with an entire bucket full of jagged stakes right there. Sookie, who has only killed one person so far -- shovel through the neck! -- has a little bit of a crisis. Bill begs her to just stake the bitch, even helpfully holding her up and away from himself in case Sookie is worried about accidentally making a whole shishkebab, and Lorena realizes it's over, so she very gracefully agrees with Bill that probably staking her is the right call. Lorena's ability to understand love, which exceeds every other character's on this show or real life, is called into question, but she is peaceful. She dies with his name on her lips, which was always going to happen.

Fountains of blood are the thing that come of Lorena, and then Sookie's there covered in her slithy toves and a very out-of-it Bill Compton. I don't know if the fact that his mom just died on top of him has to do with this, but it is, after all, daytime and he has, after all, been tortured nearly as long as dear Pam back home. I guess he just needs a nap. Sookie also needs a nap. Instead, what she does is start screaming her motherfucking head off for no discernable reason. Mostly, of course, it's Bill's name, but also some yelling for help. The "Come and eat me Nazi werewolves if you please" is just sort of implied.

What she doesn't know is that tweaked-out Tara and man-mountain Alcide are on the way, in his little van. So they show up and are confronted with: Sookie screaming, of course; Bill looking like fashion roadkill; and the many heaps of horror that were once our dear departed Lorena. Sookie is going through what were once her pockets, or her organs or whatever, looking for the keys to Bill's manacles -- a word she must have learned from her Word-A-Day calendar -- and it's an altogether confusing tableau for them to comprehend, being a sort of Jackson Pollack free-for-all.

By Jacob Clifton

Tara, of course, assumes that Bill is dead because she doesn't know about how vampires explode when they die. Probably at some point once she has calmed down she will realize that Franklin Mott did not explode when she clunked his head off, but right now she is flying high and mostly just yelling. And in fact, this is key: Sookie only knows about that because of Longshadow, and Jason only knows that because of Eddie, and nobody else knows that. Because in this world, it is very important that people not know the infos of vampires, and vampires are the only ones that can give you the infos about vampires, if you see what I'm saying: Don't blame Tara for thinking that bashing someone's head into a paste is sufficient. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, I think you'll agree, it is.

Also, though, every time Tara calls Bill "dead" it's a double-entendre that strikes at the heart of Sookie, who has already stopped thinking of dead things as dead things, or else she would not have sex with the dead things. And finally, Tara is allowed to hate Bill a very lot. She's like the one person who has the right to hate vampires without seeming like a racist when she does it, because even if she was a racist before Franklin -- and Russell's house, and Talbot's lilies -- she now has more experience of vampires than Sookie, whose empirical evidence would suggest that what vampires mostly want is: To put the moves on you and then do you big favors.

(Also, remember please that Sookie only met Bill Compton something like six weeks ago, and is still very much in the flower of her love -- one thing I really respect about this show is how much it respects us by expecting us to keep up with the incredibly compressed timeline over the past three years, in which only once by my count have we "skipped ahead" -- so it makes sense that she is being so fucking insane. That, and the fact that she is fucking insane.)

The wolves are coming! Sookie doesn't give a shit. Tara and Alcide, seeing that Sookie is barely operational right now, wrap Bill up in a useful tarp and are getting ready to leave when good old Debbie comes twitching in there. "Oh, shouldn't have! Vampire burrito? For me?" (At first I thought she said "Oh shnap!" which made me miss Jamie Pressley.) She holds a gun on them, and Sookie tries to freak out even more, but I guess she's hit her limit on freaking out, so she just sort of vibrates. Tara, on the other hand, is on V, which Debbie is also on, so the vibe is really intense all around. (Alcide makes that one face.)

By Jacob Clifton

A yucky man in Bernice (accent on the first syllable!) stops Sam from going to the dogfighting, and there is a lot of backwoods 'tude and Sam doing his best "aw shucks I'm just a country boy what loves dogfighting" routine, but to no avail. He is simply too beautiful for this man to believe him. So there's a gun in the face and the yucky man takes away Sam's gun, and Sam drives away a little nervously back down the road. But not too far, because what Sam is making up in his mind is a total Sookie Stackhouse Plan par excellence.

Alcide tries to talk sense to Debbie, which is dumb, but he's very consistent about it, which is soothing. If you were going to be talked down from a V-fueled rage, Alcide would probably be the best bet for talking you down from it. But old Debbie, she's got a lot on her plate right now, even including the drugs coursing through her werewolf body, so whatever. Sookie hears in Debbie's brain a little pep talk about pulling it together, but of course the second Debbie starts thinking about getting a tad more drugs off of the vampire burrito, she throws down. They call each other "bitch," bitch.

Everybody tells Sookie to stop yelling "bitch" at the druggie, but Sookie doesn't give a damn, and Alcide talks about how shooting people for drugs isn't what Debbie's really like, again, and Debbie thinks about how these folks have killed a few of her FUCmates, and Sookie realizes that she's drunk the Kool-Aid to the extent that her thoughts are all about Eye For An Eye and that she is dead serious about doing this for her Pack. Debbie responds that Sookie needs to stop doing her "mind-reading shit," which she finds played out and more than a little unsettling.

Alcide does more of his basic hostage negotiation-type shit, and Debbie brings up the not-entirely-relevant factoid that part of their breakup had to do with Alcide not wanting to have kids because they might/would be werewolves, which would be a bad thing, I guess. They talk about this for a good long while, including one wonderful line in which Debbie indicates her FUC brand on her back as her new identity, and he goes, "No, baby. It's just a scar. We all got scars." I love Alcide very much.

Tara psychics to Sookie that she is going to rush the drugged-up werewolf, because she is full of V and Franklin shame and ready to wreck shop on all creatures. Sookie doesn't realize the full extent of this version of Tara's crazy yet, and thinks it is not as awesome as it actually is, but Tara's not having it. Tara tells her to distract Debbie, so Sookie does the thing she knows how to do, which is scream her ass off.

Tara jumps Debbie and they scuffle, which is good for Tara on many levels. She gets the gun, gives it to Alcide so they can continue to fight, but then just when everything is going okay, Cooter comes in. Oh, Cooter. I love you as I have loved few people on this show. Please do not do anything stupid.

Cooter does something stupid, and then is dead. Well, that should totally calm Debbie down.

Debbie: Very sad. Cooter: Very much brain coming out of the back of his head. Tara and Sookie: Staring, nervous. Alcide: Apologetic, but only to a certain extent. He holds the gun to Debbie's own head and sends the ladies out to the van with the burrito. Tara basically can do this one-handed, because she is a superhero right now. Left alone with Alcide, Debbie delivers a speech that is one of the highlights of the episode. She really is just one of the most mindblowing actors on this show. I mean, if you knew Debbie from the books -- I know, I know -- you would just die from how awesome Debbie is on the show. I don't even know if I can get across how amazing her giving this speech is:

"So what's it gonna be, Sweetheart? You gonna kill me too? You fucking better. Because if you don't, I'll sniff you out. I will. I will come after you, and I will hunt you down."

It is epic. She is broken, and shivering, and sad, and shaking, and yet it seems to take forever because the vibe is so intense. She's like an angel, a slutty, bloody angel, for a second; like she's telling him what's going to happen instead of threatening him. It's like watching a former person turn into just one thing. It shines.

Alcide totally believes her, too, but today is not the day for him to kill her. He's like Lorena, in that the day will never come. So he locks her in the Quarters with Cooter's body -- horrible screams, sad screams, echo throughout this paragraph, as well as the howls of the approaching FUC -- and heads outside, where Tara is clean-jerking Bill into the sky with, like, her pinky. Tara also notes that "the fucking fanger's lost a lot of weight in blood," which helps. Sookie is, of course, appalled, and wonders if being totally high on drugs is making her be so rude. Tara says no, in fact this is just her talking: "He left me for dead?" Sookie, of course, literally goes, "Two wrongs don't make a right!"

A statement with which I agree completely, but in this case "he left me in a house to be tortured and tied up by a crazy person" is hardly on the same level as "talking smack about your boyfriend." Nobody really thinks Sookie should be riding in the back of the light-tight (-ish) van with her vampire lover, but like Sookie gives one tiny shit. And besides, the wolves are still coming. So they get in the van, and Tara bitches about the horsepower of the tiny van but then calms down about Alcide's dedication to Operation GTFO once he just starts running werewolves over with the tiny van. Thump-thump!

By Jacob Clifton

Half-naked Hoyt worries about Jason's well-being, because they are roommates and because half-naked Jason is lying on a recliner with his nightstick and sighing. Let's just sit with that for a moment. Jason has finally realized not even Jason Stackhouse is too stupid for depression. I think they should do some pushups; that would probably help. It couldn't possibly hurt. Or maybe puppies. Shirtless Hoyt and Jason with a bunch of puppies is about the most undepressing thing I can think of.

Well, not too far off: Hoyt presses further and Jason admits that yes, this is about Crystal, and the essential unknowability of those we love, q.v.: How can he possibly love her this much after just two sightings and a moonlit dry-hump? And who is that man claiming to be her fiancé? Why does she stay in the environment of Hotshot when he can offer her so much more? What is it about the curious blank pages of our loved ones' history that calls to us, denies us, tames us and electrifies us? Would we be better knowing they had once loved, once embraced, once been dedicated to someone before our meeting them? It seems impossible, when the unending now of their passion obliterates his own history: How can that effect be denied him in the negative space of her own? Are we forever doomed to take that blankness on for our own, accepting all past ties and the countless characters in the drama of our beloved, for the greater good of our common future? And the impulse: Is it base, rank jealousy? Or simply our passionate need to know them better, further, to know them completely? Should those unknown places -- perhaps contributing to our passion itself -- remain denied us? And how, trailing endless heavy loads of history and pain, can we ever expect to move forward? Together, or alone?

Um j/k he's totally like "Do you think she's named after the champagne?"

Jason presumes that Crystal was named for Cristal; Hoyt presumes, given the Hotshot connection, that she was named after her nation's chief export: "I'll bet you 100:1 her middle name's Meth." Jason pronounces this unchristian, and Hoyt must accede. But he was only mean to make Jason listen! Nothing shall make Jason listen. He pursues that which he desires with a single-minded fury known only to the most passionate among us. Hoyt reminds him of the time a few episodes ago he took down a drug dealer, and Jason waxes: "Reminding me of last week's glory ain't gonna change the fact that this week ain't done shit for me yet!"

By Jacob Clifton

Words to live by. Well, the "done for me" part is classic Jason and the worrisome thing about him always, but mostly it's a good idea. And anyway Hoyt wasn't doing that, he was reminding him of the Hotshot drug dealer they still have in stir. "He's the best shot you got at getting answers about Crystal, and he's just sitting down there at the jail locked up waiting for you." Jason hoots, hollers, calls him "Bubba," and we leave the scene as gracefully as we entered it. And so, the pushups do commence.

Summer, the mini-Maxine with whose brother I am so enamored, appears at the door of the Stackhouse home some moments later, vamping in at least three senses when welcomed by Hoyt. "May I come in?" she says, batting her eye, rehearsed and adorable. He stares blankly and she flounces in, giggling. "Just kidding! I'm not a vampire like your last girlfriend!" Something about the breezy way she says this makes me a fan. God never closes a sexy werewolf door without opening an insanely marriage-minded window: Lose a Cooter, gain a Summer.

Sam becomes a pitbull, and launches himself into a doggy unknown.

Hoyt notes that Summer just called herself his girlfriend, after a single date, and that further she has chucked her copy of The Rules out the prenominate marriage-minded window: "I baked biscuits. My great-gram's recipe, still warm from the oven, butter churned by hand, and homemade strawberry preserves I picked myself from the church-house garden." He stares; she notes the bachelor-paddiness of their house. Finally, she asks him what the staring is about, and he very delicately tries to Good Southern Boy her about showing up unannounced. Behold please the true majesty of Summer:

"I know, and maybe I should have called first. But Hoyt Fortenberry, I had the most amazing time with you the other night, and then yesterday, I sat by the phone waiting for you to call, and you didn't." (Summer: Sunny, bright, easy, free. The opposite of his last girlfriend? Or simply the break between one darkness and the ?) He apologizes for not calling, but she doesn't even pause: "Because I woke up this morning, it hit me. 'Summer,' I said, 'Why play games?' And then I decided that I was gonna declare my feelings for you, and let the chips fall where they may. And if you don't feel the same way about me, well, then that will be your loss. So here it goes. I like you, Hoyt. I wanna be your girlfriend, and I really want you to taste my biscuits."

Hoyt Fortenberry's head goes spinning around like a top. The only thing that keeps him from physically drilling down deep into the earth at this point is Jason, who snags a couple of Summer's biscuits (I exceedingly hope this is not foreshadowing, but I do realize we need something in place for getting Hoyt back together with Jessica once whatever happens with Tommy happens; Jason's dick would, and does perennially, suffice for most errands, but especially that of ruining sweet girls like Summer) and bonds with her instantly about them.

On the way out the door, he advises Hoyt to hold onto this one: "She's gonna make a great grandmama one day. She's a keeper!" (Nobody's turned off by the dynastic implication here; I would further point out that, in terms of people who have baked Jason biscuits in his cumulative lifetime, he knows more about grandmothers than he does about mothers.) Left alone, Hoyt stares and eats; Summer spruces. She can't know, can she, just how well she's doing Maxine today; she must know, certainly, what Good Southern Boys are about. The simplest and most obvious characters, on this show -- Jason Stackhouse, Sarah Newlin, even Amy Burley -- are usually the most complex, if you squint right. Think on it. Summer is a mastermind.

In the completely feminine realm of Queen Sophie-Anne LeClerq -- compare to Russell's ultramasculine compound, and what happened there when Woman entered -- things are awry. She's been put in a cage, in fact, a gigantic wrought-iron (guessing silver is involved) birdcage. It's a beautiful image, and just as weirdly out of place as anything else in vampire-world, but with this show I feel like they buy themselves the ridiculous at a vast overprice: The weirdness shows you -- and this will become increasingly important to remember as the episode continues, right? -- the stakes. Moving back and forth to dreamworld, vampires as symbolic modes of being, with the only sign we've done so the increasingly bizarre ways things can look.

Maryann's stuff got stranger and more affected as it took over more and more of the actual sets of the show, until she owned everything. Here, you've got Titania and Oberon. So searingly feminine and masculine their worlds are overbalanced; their lovers aren't gay propaganda, they're a sign of this season's story. When Titania and Oberon fought over that little Indian boy (Sookie), the weather itself was bent into madness. Last year was Old Religion and New; this year is, in part, Old Male/Female and New. These two, this King and Queen, are Gods of Death, and Eric is wrecking both their worlds completely with every step he takes.

By Jacob Clifton

Eric brings Hadley -- dressed like Wendy, or Alice; innocent and beautiful, pigtails, all in white -- to her caged mistress, and she apologizes profusely for appearing this way. Eric cuts through the non-romantic romance (possibly fangbanger obeisance, as well) by explaining quickly that, and Hadley knows this plan, he is going to sink his teeth into her neck and drink, and drink, until Sophie tells him why she's after Sookie. Like Lorena, it took a while to understand the particular ways in which Sophie's "lies" look a lot like a regular person's "acting pretentious." She swears she has no interest in Sookie, still playing by the same rulebook as Bill, and Eric points out that eventually Hadley will die if he keeps up drinking. It's hard on Sophie, but not a dealbreaker at first.

You can kind of see how she got to where she is, her implacable way of going cold. One of my favorite movies is Tank Girl, but mostly because I like the way she doesn't ever give in. (I liked Salt, also, for the same reasons.) Eric's not buying it, because he knows there's a reason she's kept Hadley around, human, for so long, and that it is beyond simple affection. (I wonder what Isabel over in Texas would think about all this, after what she went through?) So he keeps going.

Oh, also they both have the Bleeds, because it's the middle of the daytime. I don't really love the way this season steps all over the "Dead Until Dark" aspect of our vampires, because I don't see a need for it. About the only vampire on this show that still does it is Talbot, and like I'm so sure he's a vampire role model. Well, maybe the Madge, not that it helps Pam any, since she'll be dead during the daytime, too.

So it becomes a double-bluff, because she goes after Eric about his own weird interest in Sookie. Girl, don't you be pushing that bruise. Not until Pam's okay (and Russell's dead) and he can think again. Pretty regal, to pull this stuff from inside a birdcage; reminds me of Sookie with Russell last week. Eric, of course, is in such deep denial about Sookie that he actually believes, in this moment, that it's just Russell's and Sophie's interest in Sookie that matters to him. Sophie laughs at Eric for aligning with Russell, "the most duplicitous vampire in the Americas," but Eric points out she's not really trustworthy, either. "The only vampire a vampire can trust is the vampire he made," Eric says, which means at least one thing. (Depending on what happens directly after this scene, maybe two things, but you're really pushing it with Sophie if that really happens.)

He drinks, Sophie won't spill, and finally Hadley gets scared enough that she tells him: Based on the Queen's confidences, but mostly based on her own relation to Sookie -- "Tell me, tell me," he whispers in that way of his, caressing her breast as she begins to white out -- their family... Something we don't get to hear. It's shocking to Eric, in a funny way, but not as shocking as what he does , which is give his wrist to Hadley to feed. Which is fucked up no matter what, because A) Hadley is Hers, and you don't feed the Queen's people; B) If she just died a second ago, he's Making her, which, don't do that to the Queen's people; and C) Eric has now just literally done every possible thing -- specifically every male thing, from forcing her to accept marriage on her knees to molesting and possibly sex-murdering her lover -- to break Sophie-Anne. In her realm.

Essentially, Eric has ridden an ATV into Lilith Fair and begun jerking off on the ladies. That's just bad poker, babe.

A somewhat Bubba-sexy dude notes the pitbull of Sam approaching, and amongst talk about his giant dog-balls, puts a leash around his sweet little neck; he notes that Sam-Dog will not last long in the ring with such good manners. This is the truth of Sam.

Sookie cannot wake Bill, even for a moment to tell her he's all right. Their love theme quivers and stares, wonders at her, shakes until it's sick. She grabs a small handsaw from Alcide's racks and cuts into her flesh: "If you make it through this, you owe me." At first he drinks, and she weeps with relief, thanking God aloud. Then the fangs come out, and he bites into her arm. Once, twice, again. She almost laughs at first, but quickly it is too much to bear. "Oh, my God," she gasps (best line reading of the night) and slaps at him, telling him to cut it out. Then it's gone too far. He hits her, flips her over, covers her mouth, and feeds.

(Leaving aside the first line of the scene -- "You need to try and relax" -- though, we should discuss. Now, first rule is don't ever use the word rape unless you're talking about rape. And in the books, we got through this part of the day with a scene that managed to be more complex and multivalent in a lot of ways, but also more brutal. I am glad what happens, happens. But we just went from a scene in which pretty much this exact thing happened, in order to break a woman's strength in the very realm of her feminine power. So we're getting there, and it's not even really a metaphor.

By Jacob Clifton

But secondly, he's feeding on Sookie because he is an animal. The thing she couldn't see him as, because when we are in love, and especially first love, even the most animalistic and passionate things are beautiful and overwhelming and full of power. But what Bill is, what men are and what people are, is an animal. A dead thing, and a feeder on people. Sookie needed to understand that, and Sookie does not historically want to hear your bullshit. But along with this comes the idea of darkness and light, specifically: He is not feeding on her to steal her light. He is feeding on her because he is hungry and out of his mind and dying.

But, and this is where the parallel to sexual violence becomes most important: He is not stealing her light with this act, but he is having his darkness taken away. For a time. As the passive party you can't say she's stealing his darkness, and you can't say it remains in her, but after he has drained her he can withstand the sun. This opposition may not matter now, but given the storyline to this point I think the knife's edge that it breaks down to is going to be very important. Darkness is a force on this show; but if darkness is simply the absence of light, then the world is a fundamentally good, and fundamentally dangerous, place. And we all live in the shadows between, and have to make our home there.

And because this episode plays skillfully with a lacuna here -- it's important we not know what happens in that closed box right now -- I will go on to say that, if darkness is merely the absence of light, then V and its use and sale will always be a factor on this show, because the exchange of blood goes both ways. Vampires are magical creatures who feed on blood, yes. But if they are merely displacing the darkness in themselves with our light, then what is their blood? Life. Life so magical that it causes the dead to walk, right, but also so dark that it can show you your soul -- and everybody else's -- as through a glass: Darkly. But if V is life-force replete with darkness, quantifiable, it only makes sense that there is a Light to life as well, and that's what werewolves don't understand, because their life is all fucking and fighting and blood.

By Jacob Clifton

And so whatever words Hadley used, they don't really measure up to the truth. Maryann, though, never once lied, but especially in joy: "It was like Nature Herself was shooting out from your fingertips!"

Life, borne out in shocking bright light. But just remember that Light is just as frightening and destructive as the Dark, when you're that close to it. In The Grey King Susan Cooper says, "At the center of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe."

In the best episode of Six Feet Under, there's a scene I go back to a lot, in which the son is taken in dreams by his father to a miraculous poker game at which both Life and Death are playing. Death looks uncommonly like the boy's father; Life is abundant. And before his eyes, they begin to fuck. In rhythm and in sorrow, but mostly they are one. And the boy becomes a man, enters the Game, begins to die.

Or I'm wrong, and it's the worst case, and maybe it's just what Anna Paquin said of Godric, IRL: "The last hope for peace committed suicide, because there was no hope for peace." Neat lady.)

Tara's realizing that there is exhilaration here; Alcide tells her to relax and her eyes roll uncontrollably: "I ain't even breathed for a week." He begs her to breathe; they keep driving. In the back, where they can't hear it, Sookie is dying. Her lover's hand is on her face, over her mouth, keeping her quiet. On the radio, it sings: "You get what you pay for..."

T-Dub is nasty and chromosomal in that Hotshot way. Jason approaches, nervous at first, but gives him a little of the old "I'm a cop! Not really, just in my mind!" There is discussion of how Crystal, shockingly enough, is T-Dub's cousin. And that man, her fiancé? Also his... He breaks off at this point, but duh. Finally, Jason remembers that he is Jason Stackhouse and can charm anybody in the world, so he relaxes and gives T-Dub a little Stackhouse Filibuster: "I don't know Crystal very well, but the little bit I do know her tells me she is a good person in a bad situation. And I think she deserves better, don't you? I mean, you're family." (This last with fingers interlaced through the bars.) T-Dub agrees to give him the Crystal info, but only as an exchange for the other kind of crystal. Jail will make you want things. And so Jason's quest for his Crystal becomes a quest for the other kind; Andy shows up and yells at both of them, and Jason scampers.

Only lightly smoking, Bill wonders about his newfound imperviousness -- will he now begin to sparkle, and scrapbook, and eschew all intimacy? -- before picking himself up and, still wearing Russell's tracksuit, not that he doesn't adore them, going to ground.

Bubba Guy callously compares Sam-Dog's future in the ring to -- once again in this episode, please do note, because I am sick and tired of hearing about what a crappy show this is when all that does is prove how lazy and dumb you are, but then I say the same thing about Gossip Girl, so clearly I can't be trusted -- the act of rape. Sam responds by taking human form -- a specifically love-letter-to-us-all naked form, with a chrome dog-collar chain around his neck -- and bopping sweet Bubba on the head. He crams him into one of the cages, and then opens all the rest of them because Sam is a sweetheart and because Sam does not think about what unleashing a herd of vicious, abused, mindless, dogfighting dogs into the countryside might actually accomplish. (Or would be, if this whole storyline and particularly this moment weren't actually about Tommy.)

Much is done at the hospital in Ruston regarding Sookie's blood-free existence at this time. They rush her around, they put in transfusion lines, they hold Alcide and Tara back as they work, they get all kinds of "units" and whatever, I don't know about blood. They do a lot of medical things related to blood. She seizes and they wig out. Her beautiful dress is ruined. They take out the line and head to the waiting room. Thing is, Miss Thornton, Sookie's lost a lot of blood, but she's rejecting everything they give her. Tara yells quietly about this, and the woman -- with a spooky camera push and mystery music -- explains the ridiculous fact that Sookie Stackhouse has no blood type, and will not accept even O-. And therefore Sookie is going to die. Because she doesn't have a blood type.

Dogfighting, which is so artfully filmed that a lot of the audience is so upset that they cannot watch the scene and must flee the room due to their sensitive feelings even though there is actually no dogfighting in this dogfighting, just people yelling and smoking cigarettes, including Melinda Mickens. Sam pulls a fire-ish alarm ("Actual humans who wouldn't countenance this bullshit are coming!") and everybody scatters and he jumps into the ring, yelling at the dog that was just fighting Tommy to go away, and then their little family is alone; Tommy's little body is bleeding all over on the ground, but it looks like he was winning. Sam tells dad to give Tommy his clothes, because there is nothing I've been missing quite so much as the urine-stained rank underpants of Joe Lee Mickens. They're like a character on the show at this point. With a Special Appearance by You Barfing.

By Jacob Clifton

Lafayette remembers that crazed shaky look in Jason's eye from the day he realized giving Jason Stackhouse vampire blood was the stupidest thing he had ever or would ever in the future do, but Jason assures him this is not the case: "I told you, that shit's behind me! I just need some meth!" (♥.) Lafayette is intrigued, to an extent, and gets downright confused when Jason explains that A) It's for a guy in lockup and B) he is in love. But the two are not as connected as one might think, because in fact Jason's heart has been stolen by the man's cousin sister momwife. (Aside: Are you still watching Big Love? Because some shit has gone down on that show lately that will make you think this show is a documentary. I love it so, so much.) [Then you'll love this. - Zach]

By Jacob Clifton

This meeting of the minds is interrupted by a call from Tara, summoning Jason to Ruston to see his blood-free comatose sister die. Lafayette is immediately on that truck, too -- which means I guess that Jessica and Arlene are now in complete control, since Terry doesn't seem to come around much and wasn't really in charge when he was, by choice -- because not only has his suicidal cousin been missing for a couple days, but he has an affection for dying Sookie, as well. Plus, if he doesn't go, who will deliver the Inuit death poetry?

So is Tommy okay? Yeah, he's fine. "Thought Tara had a shitty mother, but you take the cake!" Sam yells. Do they know who Tara is? Probably not, although her mom is so terrible probably everyone in Louisiana would know what that meant. Sam, having had it with Joe Lee's bizarre patriarchy, gets in his naked face about how dare he: "You're just a scared man in saggy underpants with no discernable life skills whatsoever!" (So yeah, I think it's obvious that there's more going on than we think. Still.) He yells at them forever and ever, comparing them to even the Merlottes in terms of shittiness, and then takes Tommy away. "I can't promise you a perfect life, but I can promise you it'll be better than this one." Valid. They leave; Joe Lee tries to comfort his wife; Melinda stops crying and goes cold and yells at him about how much she hates him. Then she turns into a magnificent dragon as big as a barn and eats him, starting with his head. Just kidding, fuck both of them.

The body-part lady makes the mistake of telling Jason he's "the responsible party" w/r/t to Sookie's organs, which terrifies him more than anything in the whole world; when he cries "I ain't responsible!" it's not just about his refusal to accept responsibility, though; it's also about responsibility for her, when every time he's tried to help her he's just made it worse. Lafayette tells the lady to turn blue, in other words, and Alcide -- again with the making us like a guy by showing equality/respect with Lafayette -- goes off to tend the lady's feelings. (And, of course, so this bizarre family of four orphans can have their scene.)

Magical mystery music starts playing when they talk about how Jason does have a blood type, which he knows because he's always fucking up with chainsaws and power tools, but that Sookie has never been sick and also wasn't born in the hospital. She was born on the kitchen table and Jason saw his mother's "more than I cared to," and isn't that a coincidence because both she and Boyfriend Jesus show a high level of something called midichlorians.

By Jacob Clifton

Tara has filled Jason in on how they found her, and they discuss whether it was Bill's drinking that took away her blood type, or Sookie drinking his blood that did it. (Interestingly, it's Jason that starts on this train of thought, because V was a life-changer for him and probably he's always wondered if her experience was like his; also probably they did not have the related "Did you ever just start masturbating on somebody's porch?" conversation.) Note how Tara is like, "I kicked him out in the sun! He is ash, now, just like Franklin! I am the worst Vampire Slayer of all time!"

They talk about how much they hate poor Bill for awhile -- activating, we note from the previews, a new way Jason can be Sookie's hero (or Hero, since it's always all about Jason) -- and then both start yelling at Sookie's coma about how they "fucking need her" until Lafayette finally tells them to stop cursing at her and calm down.

At this point let me tell you upfront everyeffinthang goes fucking B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Magical Dream Sookie, with fresh as a daisy makeup and no wounds, wakes up in a shiny Magical Dream Hospital, which is deserted and smells like Kokomo. Picking up a crystal chalice and drawn forward by the laughter of children and rose petals and birds twirking, Sookie is drawn to a shining door -- Bad idea, Coma Girl! -- and before she steps through, she is joined by a radiant, beautiful creature (Claudine) who is super-shiny, super-sexy and maddeningly vague.

Sookie: "Why are we in a tampon commercial?"
Claudine: "Welcome to Iceland! We sell mountains, giggles and dragons!"
Sookie: "Why is the lens more vaselined than a Barbara Walters Special?"
Claudine: "Whatever! We're both wearing fairy dresses and Enya is playing! Have a Fruit Roll-up! Come out into the magical fairy garden! We be rollin' like Harry Potter!"
Sookie: "I feel like Little Nemo right now!"
Claudine: "More like Little Neo! Have some magical water!"

"Ooo, baby," said Life. Heaven is a place on Earth. As is Hell. And those that know the worth? Haven't met one yet. Get in the Game.

Sookie: "My chalice was empty!"
Claudine: "That is because men disrespected the Womynplace in every scene of this episode. You need to rejuvenate your womynplace like Ramona on Real Housewives by drinking, also like Ramona on Real Housewives!"
Sookie: "Andy Cohen is more beautiful than anyone except Brad Goreski!"
Claudine: "Ever since you got bought out you only talk about Bravo shows!"
Sookie: "That is a misapperception based on misplaced myths about brand loyalty that has no bearing on the quality of the work!"
Claudine: "I still love you."
Sookie: "I still love you! Who are you, though?"
Claudine: "I am a dream about Life and Light! Also a supermodel!"

Sookie: "What is it?"
Claudine: "It is Stolichnya! But even more magical!"
Sookie, actual: "It's the most amazing thing I've ever tasted."
Claudine: "You've had it before."

It's like Nature Herself, shooting from your fingertips. She drinks. She's had it before. So have I. So have you. We forgot. This is all remembering.

Sookie: "That half-naked lady just came out of the magical pond! Is that sanitary?"
Claudine: "Magic Fairy Land is also obviously the Bon Temps Cemetery, is that sanitary?"
Sookie: "But for real though?"
Claudine, actual: "Don't be fooled. That pond is bigger and deeper than you think."
Sookie: "That gaywad dancing, it looks appealing to me. Can we dance?"
Claudine, actual: "We can always dance."
Sookie, actual: "I knew you were going to say that!"
Claudine, actual: "I knew you were going to say that!"
Sookie: "We're so fucking clever!"

In the Summerland, every moment is now and every thought is shared. Time is the silliest thing. Vampires don't respect time because even though they go in one direction only, they go a very long way. Humans don't respect time because they can't see it happening until it's too late. But in the Summerland you see it is all one thing: Time and space like a thing you can poke, and us up here staring down at it. I think, you think, it's all blanket. There is only beauty, outside your smallness; that's what the Light tells you. The Dark tells you something else, but that hasn't reached here yet, no matter how empty your chalice gets. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. They dance. They shine.

"I think over again my small adventures, my fears, those small ones that seemed so big. For all the vital things I had to get and reach, and yet there is only one great thing, the only thing: To live to see the great day that dawns, and the light that fills the world."

Jason loves it. It is beautiful. "That's because that shit is Inuit," Lafayette explains. "And we all is used to lesser religions."

But what would a greater religion look like?

They dance. They shine. Everything is beautiful, and nothing hurts. Here. They are a bright candle in the darkness. The great day that dawns, every time. The light that fills the world, at dawn. Summer. They dance in a graveyard and they have no idea what a graveyard is and everything is beautiful. And nothing hurts.

By Jacob Clifton

Jason loves it. It is beautiful. "That's because that shit is Inuit," Lafayette explains. "And we all is used to lesser religions."

But what would a greater religion look like?

Sookie: "This dancing makes me feel like I look like a total idiot."
Claudine: "Look around, sweetheart."
Sookie: "Okay, but whew. I am tired."
Claudine: "The more, the brighter you become, the stronger you will get."
Sookie, actual: "You promise?"

Everything is beautiful. Claudine forgets herself. Begs Sookie to come with them; to let it begin now. To let the great day dawn. To enter -- Or is it to leave? Is this a mirage, at death's door? -- the Game.

Sookie: "Um, where do you live? American Apparel?"
Claudine: "Even better. Imagine IKEA but, like, magic."
Sookie: "Does that mean jumpin' in that big ol' magic pond?"
Claudine: "Word. We swim, through the endless source of life into a place where life burns so bright there is no place for darkness."

Sookie balks, for several good reasons -- that place sounds like a real bad idea, for starters; everything is not beautiful and some things hurt for a very good reason, and fucking grow up already -- but also and mostly because she doesn't swim. Can't swim: Her parents drowned. Half her words are shared in the silence, as are Claudine's, as she explains that it wasn't the water that killed them, but will say no more. And the dark approaches. "The dark approaches!" she shouts, and the few magical fairies that haven't hit the pond scatter, terrified and intrigued.

Promises are important. They leave; the cemetery once again becomes a cemetery. All that life, dancing in the world of death. The world she crossed each and every time she went to him. She falls down, away and asleep, calling out to Claudine as the real world pulls her back.

Jason finally accedes; Bill pulls a Boomer and shunts his blood into her veins, tearing at the flesh inside his wrists.

The Magister comes to Pam bearing "gifts," because he feels so "rotten" about his two days of torturing her. She is bound to a convenient altar with silver chains. The gift is Tiffany, silver earrings. Pam does the whole Tank Girl to the max, as of course she's done for the last two days: "How'd you know I was a Tiffany's girl? They're beautiful... They'll match my chains." (Pam is most wonderful; this is what I am talking about. There's a strength you can have in your extremity that nobody can take away from you. It's the reason I love Lorena, and Debbie, too. And screaming madman Sookie Stackhouse most of all.) Life says, no matter how much she loves you she says: "Ooo baby. Nothing is beautiful. Everything hurts." You can't take a picture of this, Life says. It's already gone, says Death. Do you know what that's worth?

The Madge starts in -- "I realize your ears are already pierced. Would you object to my piercing your eyelids?" -- but Eric immediately shows up, cold as death. It's time to deal. Did he bring Bill? No he did not. But he did bring the Queen of Louisiana, who is all slinky and whatnot. Eric immediately admits everything, the V, doing it for Sophie. Madge reminds him of the original issue, which is that, either way, the V is going to fuck him over in part because he either turns on Sophie or the Authority itself. He picks Sophie, but come on, it's Eric. He's only telling you the truth to further his agenda.

Also, though, Sophie's not his Queen anymore, so it's not technically treachery. (Impute the usual hilarity about how these "kingdoms" are teeny-tiny and dumb.) And who is? Russell, who comes down the stairs with an even more regal air. So then the Magister offers to arrest Sophie, by "the powers vested in me by the Authority," and Russell makes fun of him about that for a while, which maybe makes sense maybe not.

The key is this Authority went from being not a thing to being very much a thing. If you do the viral stuff, videos and stuff -- which I don't, but now have -- you know that the Authority is where Nan Flanagan and the Magister come from. It's sort of a High Council that has nothing to do with royalty: Royalty earned it, Authority has been there since the beginning. Like Russell Time or pre-Russell Time. The Kings and Queens earned their role by being totally awesome, and always there's this other thing that is what's selling the PR of vampires. We don't know about it in the same way that Tara didn't know Franklin needed to explode, but it's about to become very important. I always explain the Madge as the Attorney General, but maybe it's better at this point to refer to them collectively as the Vatican. (Sorry.)

By Jacob Clifton

The Magister greets Russell with his given name, and he corrects him, and Madge offers to arrest him as well. Russell goes right back into his V For Vendetta stuff about how the Authority can go ahead and shove themselves up their collective, and meanwhile Eric is taking care of Pam, or at least cooing at her. (There's an awesome moment where the Madge interrupts himself to scream at Eric to leave her tied to the table, as he feels his authority draining out of the room.) Anyway, now Russell has put the Magister into a pickle not unlike the one Eric was in, because of all the "blasphemy" going on, and how the three of them (four including Pam) are a Conspiracy at this point, and Madge has responsibilities w/r/t that. I feel him. But also the four of them, the King and Queen and Sheriff and Pam are about the least interested-in-that-idea people you've ever met whose last names are not Stackhouse.

By Jacob Clifton

So Russell and Sophie -- with a cute little air-kiss -- tell the Madge that, since he's now at the unspoken mercy of the Conspiracy, would he mind terribly putting their marriage on record? Um, he would. But a little bit of nudging from Russell -- and reminding him that see above re: the Authority we don't care. He kisses her hilariously on the shoulder and she hilariously agrees and he hilariously reminds the Madge that he is Their Royal Subject. So the Magister throws around a lot of rote language, ritual language, about his fealty to the Vampire Authority. Um, no. Russell nods, and Pam's on the other side of the room due to vampzooming and the Madge is on the table. It does not look good for my little pudding.

Our boys are asleep: Jason, Alcide, Lafayette. The only boy in the world that's still awake is the one whose time it is, now that it is night. Bill looks down at Sookie with so much love. So much passion, and worry, and care. And when she wakes, all she does is scream. Fear and hate and pain. Today's the day men invaded, and took everything.

Russell reminds his loyal subject that he is 1) A pathetic fool; specifically because he 2) blindly does the bidding of others, just like 3) humans and btw this is the major issue with vampires and being one: Vampires like the Madge are what is keeping us all down, etc. Pam chuckles because the Magister, I don't have to tell you, is not taking the lash at all as well as she did, a moment ago minus two days. Eric adoringly tells her they can go ahead and taunt later, but be classy now; Sophie asks her affianced to hurry up: "I'm getting cold feet." He calls her his little pudding, and torments my Magister until he finally -- and oh, how much less I loved him when he did -- pronounces them Husband & Wife. And my Magister is disgusted, with himself, for reasons maybe only Lorena was equipped to understand.

And just like that the episode resolves just like a song. Just like.

Or it would, if things were that simple, ever, or if this show were comedy, and not a tragedy: Pam and Eric hilarious congratulate the "happy" "couple," and there's an air-kiss that rivals anything that ever happened on Gossip Girl. Madge starts in with the Authority, because he is a zealot, because he is just like you and me, but Russell sees and thinks so much bigger than that, and he always has. "The Authority will never recognize," begins the Magister's sentence, and Russell completes it beautifully: "Its own irrelevance?" Gorgeous. I do love the King.

By Jacob Clifton

His blood, the Magister's blood, tastes like his home: The beginning, not the end: "Andalusia, the Iberian Peninsula... Later 9th century, no?"

Un chien andalou. Plucker of eyes, piercer of eyes. Debaser. Nothing is beautiful. Everything hurts.

Russell explains lovingly one more time my Magister's irrelevance and that from whence: "It's a long enough time for you to have outgrown your blind allegiance to the Authority and their rule of law. There is only one law: The law of nature, the survival of the fittest. And we need to take this world back from the humans, not placate them with billboards and PR campaigns while they destroy it. That is not Authority! That is abdicating authority!"

Gotta say I agree. Faster than you can say "Buñuel," faster even than just "Black Francis," Papa turns from where he'd almost let my Magister go. And with the silver-tipped tip of his own silver-tipped cane the debaser is debased, and the only thing funnier than his CGI head -- almost as ridiculous as Lorena's once upon -- is the silent o, o, o faces of each of our four wonderful Conspirators: Watching it fly, through the air, before the Magister explodes. And Law is lost, and gone forever.

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