Mr. Edgington Goes To Washington

Recapped by Jacob Clifton · Aired 08-15-2010 · S03E09

Oh, before I forget: Three very important things I forgot or just totally missed last week.

Number One: Tommy "Merlotte." As in, "I have changed my name, family and allegiance to my brother Sam." Caught that the first time, totally forgot about it the times, presumably due to looking at Hoyt Fortenberry.

Number Two: Hadley's neck. Which was bitten, and slightly bleeding, when Eric grabbed her outside the Queen's quarters and sent her to Sookie's house. Of course she's still human and Eric didn't turn her, but it was confirmation of the fact that I just completely missed, presumably due to looking for Sophie-Anne to be more than a disembodied voice.

Number Three: Maybe a thing maybe not, but is it possible that Jessica -- whose sexual obstacles are very real and tie into both physical vampire things and pre-death family things -- has found a way around all the sex stuff? The death of Swayze Wolf (even precluding its juxtaposition with the Sookie/Bill grudge fuck) was patently sexual in nature. Is being a vampiric penetrator Jessica's paraphiliac way of engaging with her sexuality in a way that doesn't brush up against the whole hymen/Eden situation? Is this something that can/should be avoided? Is this something innate in either her vampire nature or a consequence of being born a Hamby? Because if so, and probably regardless, Bill's trouble is only beginning. Our boy does not do well with the whole Eros & Thanatos thing.

Anyway, Bill and Sookie are back to being sucky and boring again. It was fun while it lasted. They have some of that healing vampiric shower sex and clean up the werewolf bodies. Sookie wonders about the secret files he's keeping on her, but not to any real extent. Hadley kidnaps her own son Hunter and brings her to Sookie to confirm that he's a telepath, then takes him on the run because the Queen and Russell are... Mean, or something. To telepaths? I dunno, it's less clear than ever what Hadley knows about their family, which is weird because Eric acted like it was a big deal but it seems like Hadley doesn't know as much as we thought. Anyway, Bill wakes up in Fairyland, has a little fight with Claudine, and now knows What Sookie Is.

While Tara rejects the idea of psychotherapy in her particular case, which is hilarious, Sam cares for her and she eventually attends a trauma survivors' meeting run by Holly Cleary, whose history is pretty horrific. (Tara! Making friends with Holly! Magic powers! No possums please!) Other people Holly is totally chill with include: Everyone. Especially Arlene, who would like to not be pregnant with her serial killer baby but also refuses to terminate the pregnancy, because she is moronic trash. Apparently there's a third option. I think it's witchcraft. And then out of nowhere Franklin Mott reappears, obsessive and adoring and murderous as usual, and Tara tells him off, awesomely, and then also out of nowhere Jason appears and finishes him off for good.

Crystal and Jason have all manner of white trash adventures, as is their wont. They beat Felton's head in with a gun and then report him for carrying V; this results in the hospitalization of Deputy Kevin, which is kinda sad, and Crystal's cousin T-Face or whatever spots her in the police station. Jason prods Andy into some random plan to raid Hotshot some more, which can only end in more injured cops and Jason crying. Meanwhile, how come Andy's stashing V instead of putting it in evidence?

In Bon Temps news: Tommy Mickens Merlotte is a rascal! He fucks ladies, runs around nude with his cute little Hobbit body showing, yells at Arlene and steals her tips, and generally makes Sam's life shittier and complicateder. Eventually Sam's so steamed and caged up by it that he takes it out on Calvin Norris's face and person. It's dark and scary and sort of hot. Nearby, Hoyt admits to Jessica that he hates Summer, but it's Tommy that comforts her after their sweet, sad reunion. Oh, and if you're making a list of hipster cultural pomo references regarding Jesus, he's got an Olmec/Maya tattoo of Jaguar that may actually just be his high school mascot. Lafayette admits to his mom that he's dropped his "mask," thanks to the healing love of Jesus.

After a very sinister webcam conference with the Authority, Nan Flanagan tells Eric to kill Russell, thus keeping the American Vampire League's collective hands clean. Eric and Pam have some sweet scenes locked up in Fangtasia! by Nan's goons, and he gives her leave to make a child of her own. (Also, Eric is a Virgo. Shocker there.)

Meanwhile, Russell is going all kinds of Jackie O about the bits of Talbot, and by the end he's lost it: Carrying a huge glass urn of Talbot's remains and having conversations with it. He sees the Authority vehicles around Fangtasia! and assumes that Eric's in league with them. So it is that Nan's gettin' her lesbian fangbang on when Russell appears on the live news and pulls out the anchor's spine -- for starters -- before talking just awesomely about how vampires are killers of people and drinkers of the Real True Blood and how the VRA is a lie and the AVL is an absurd machine and he's the only real vampire and also the evil of fossil fuels: "Why would we seek equal rights? You are not our equals. We will eat you. After we eat your children. Now, time for the weather. Tiffany?"

Well, I guess Eric finally figured out that he has been edging up to the edge for awhile and now has edged right over it. Was this his great plan? It seems like there were a lot of moving parts but really it was just him covering his ass? Well, I guess it makes sense: He needed to save Pam and he was willing to do whatever it took with Russell and Sophie-Anne. Then he figured out about the crown, and once Pam was safe he dealt with that issue. So it seems Eric's story was, just like Talbot's, less complex than we might have hoped. Although I'm still confused about why he dicked Bill around so much the whole time. I think I'm still missing something.

Anyway, Eric camera-zooms into the Fangtasia! offices and tells Pam they need somewhere to hide. Pam immediately steps over that whole paragraph up there, because she knows that Eric doesn't hide from anything, so obviously it's a big deal. What's the big deal? He killed Talbot. She's like, "Are you insane?" This is because Pam never met Talbot, or else she would just applaud.

Pam immediately thinks of running to Sookie's house, but in a very Pam way: "We've both been invited into Sookie's," she says. Not "I'm sure Sookie would love to help us" or "Perhaps Sookie can forgive you for whatever she was yelling about that one time, she seems reasonable," but: Who cares if the bitch wants us there, we're vampires and it's a place we can go. Eric, of course, wants Sookie safe -- and probably also doesn't want her screaming at him in front of Pam -- so he's like, no way. Pam returns to freaking out about the fact and very idea that Eric is freaking out. Should she be panicking?

More to the point: What on earth would Pam panicking even look like? How could you even tell? Her jokes would be slightly less funny and mean? Maybe she would quiver a bit?

Ginger's dumb ass comes in looking a great deal less busted than usual, but before Eric can wangle an invite into her no-doubt five-star accommodations, she alerts them to the "V-Feds" coming in the front door as we speak: Darth Flanagan, accompanied by about ten stormtroopers and an air of total meanness. Eric shivers and tells her the bar's closed, and Nan party-line lies about how she only drinks TruBlood, which makes Pam roll her eyes both for the hypocrisy and for the fact that she's just being rude with her implications. Like Claudine before her, she asks if it's even possible for him to stay out of trouble.

"The VRA is two states away from ratification, I should be kissing asses in Oregon, not cleaning up after you in ... fucking Louisiana." He says there's nothing going on -- even though he still has not officially fixed either the drug problem or the Bill disappearance, and it's not like the Magister called to tell her as he was dying ("Oh, and while I've got you on the phone, send some wedding gifts to Louisiana and Mississippi, I think they're registered at Bloodbath & Beyond") -- but she's like, "Also the Magister has vanished." So then she tells Alejandro and the rest of her Lady Gaga backup stormtroopers to silver Eric, so then you got screaming Eric on top of everything else. Oh, and screaming Ginger, but you knew that was coming the second she showed up.

Drunk full on a terrified psychic knowingness, Russell zips into his compound and shoves his way into the trophy room where his first trophy wife is now a puddle of guts. It's sort of heartbreaking to watch him scream and pull on the guts. It's even more heartbreaking to have confirmation that Talbot was only ever an outdated faggy Birdcage joke, decorating in gross Hollywood Regency and throwing tantrums and piercing the toast and sluttin' around and acting like the brainless tween housecat power-bottom everybody already thinks we all are.

(I mean, I never doubted that for a second but there was hope, and now there's no hope. But there's also no Talbot, so cheerio. At least you got Lafayette and Jesus being realistic homosexuals; maybe this is all a generational thing I don't know, but I sure did hate it and I sure am glad we'll never have to deal with Talbot again. Unless his ghost shows up and starts hurling objets around or something.)

Anyway, boo hoo, Talbot's dead and Russell is busy coating himself in leftovers. He looks up and sees the trophy cabinet has been messed with, an Eric-sized hole in the screen right where the Viking crown was, and then I guess he remembers every time Eric was totally obvious and weird about the Viking crown and how Eric is a Viking and how he killed that one family that time that were Vikings and maybe there's a connection, and so the whole mystery about Eric and revenge just sort of ends right there and Russell realizes that Eric killed Talbot instead of doing it with him and doesn't even stop to question why somebody would do that.

Sookie's covered in blood, which is nothing new, but it's crazy that apparently she let Bill bite her while they were fucking before. He grabs her neck from outside the frame and they make out sort of, and then he pricks his finger on his teeth and rubs the blood on her bite marks and they go away -- thinking of that earlier would have really cut down on Sookie's scarf budget, Bill -- and then they make out. I have officially hit the wall where I now know what Sookie's breasts look like and it's not even exciting anymore. If they committed a crime on me I could describe them to a sketch artist. Anyhow his body is full of her magical blood and her body is full of his regular vampire blood and now it's washing down off their bodies and circling the drain. Carrie? Psycho? All I know is, they are fooling themselves.

Sookie heads out into the living room in her nightgown and house shoes and there's a dead naked werewolf in the parlor, so they clean it up and talk about how there's always dead bodies in her house. It's true, nine times out of ten there are going to be bodies in her house. They talk about how normal couples don't have dead bodies in the house (or in the bed having sex for that matter) but how Sookie has once again gotten over her need to be normal, and so let's think of dead bodies as fun/annoying ways to show we're different from all the other couples. Like veganism, or collecting vinyl.

Bill lets her bitch about the body for awhile, but then points out that this particular dead body belonged to a lycanthrope neo-Nazi drug addict who was sent there by a Vampire King to kidnap or kill her for magical reasons they don't even know yet, so you can't really call this a typical dead-body-in-the-house situation. And maybe she could just trust him every now and then, like, when he's not actively trying to murder her at least. He seems a little wounded at this thought, but it's Bill Compton: Those are his favorite kinds of thoughts.

Well okay, says Sookie, you aren't currently trying to murder me. However, you are keeping a secret file on me and my entire life and my genealogy, which is spooky. He lies about how he only did that because he was jealous about/interested in Eric's extreme interest in the Sookie Situation. Apparently, Bill assumes and he's correct to an extent, it has to do with her magicalness. (At no point does he mention the Queen in this conversation, which makes this entire conversation a lie.) Sookie is more interested in dating etiquette though, predictably enough, and wonders like a good Rules Girl if secret dossiers are really the modern way of dating, because honestly it just seems creepy regardless of your century. Sookie, when they ask you for an inch why do you give a mile? It's not "creepy," it's fucking unacceptable.

"I have to know what you are, or else I can't protect you!" Um, okay Young Master Cullen, thanks for leaving me out of that equation entirely. "But you have to trust me. And stop thinking of me as a thing to be protected!" Just because I continually get myself into situations that doom not only myself but everyone in the entire world, usually by yelling and stomping around! Sookie says she's going dark: "I took care of Debbie by myself. I'm not afraid to spill a little blood anymore. As much as you want to be human... I think I'm meeting you halfway to vampire."

(Ha! We always used to say that about Buffy and Spike, that she was the worst Slayer in history and he was the worst at being a vampire -- which he was, until Bill Compton -- and that was why they got along so well. But what's "halfway" to vampire? Godric. I would say Godric is the only one that's gotten the mix right. And Jessica, I would have said once, before Bill's repression/oppression cycle started pushing her towards Crazytown, which is the last stop before being very good at being a vampire, which is not a great thing to be either. I still have faith in Jessica, though, because she's part of the first generation after the Great Revelation, she's never known a world in which vampires were a disgusting secret, which see above re: Talbot and his place in generational gay culture.)

When your mentally ill knife-wielding mother is asleep in the room, generally that's the best time for a post-game afterglow meeting with your new naked boyfriend. Let's put on sparkly robes and drink some tea and flirt. I don't mind. Lafayette and Jesus do a schticky little routine about how to get tricks out of your house and then cozy up on the couch. Lafayette admires Jesus's "ink" and Jesus maybe does or maybe does not admit that it's either a sacred mark tying him to the Olmecs and Mayan worship of Jaguar ("He's strong and elusive. He holds power over the universe.") or a high school mascot.

Man, hurry up. It's starting to feel like we're throwing the syncretist New World book at Jesus to see what sticks. week it'll be the Great Turtle Spirit talking to them through Ted Casablancas and a wendigo and the chupacabra and El-Ahrairah and Lynn Andrews will be fighting each other in the yard. Jesus's dead daughter Beloved will show up and start eating sticks of butter. Meantime, Lafayette kisses the Jaguar. That part's not so bad.

(This week I'm going to go with: Jesus is a shifter like Sam, but the difference is that he has an actual cultural/religious reference for it and so all of his mesoamericana will end up being part of that: A shifter-witch, in the parlance of the show, and thus a nagual. Because Lafayette is a Guide character, it would make sense that he needs to be initiated into the level up where all of this magical shit has a spiritual component, and because the irony/comparison is just too beautiful and too gorgeously Alan Ball: Sam's poor white family is disconnected and spiritually bereft and animalistic, while ethnic world-traveling Jesus has been initiated -- by his solely matriarchal upbringing, note -- into the true centered beauty of shifterism, etc. Add that to whatever magical secrets Lafayette and his (solely matriarchal) family are brewing up this season and you've got a situation where Lafayette can actually be initiated into magic without it going all fucked up -- with Miss Jeanette and Maryann as false prophets for this narrative -- and he can resume his rightful place as the holy transvestite prostitute, where he started out.)

Jason's coming back from putting himself on Calvin's freaky radar to shouting inside. Felton is not buying Crystal's story that Jason abducted her -- "Why ain't he got you chained up or something?" (YIKES) -- but of course Jason's not picking up on that subtext so he just runs in yelling and being confused by all of Felton's abduction-related screaming. Is he a cop? Kinda/not really. Crystal is just shooting lies in every direction like that wobbly guy you put on your lawn. Jason's confused by the kidnapping allegations, of course, and Felton's being sort of central casting about the whole deal -- "You know I hate it when you make me hit you!" -- and Jason's got the gun, and Crystal helpfully tells Felton that Jason raped her, for some unknown reason except to distract him long enough that Jason can knock him out. Sometimes it's okay to just accidentally shoot home intruders in the face, Jason. Talk to your sister.

By Jacob Clifton

Jason asks her not to make him a rapist in her lies and Crystal is like, "Are you retarded that you don't understand why rape is the first thing that occurred to me?" And since he is, they get back to tying him up. (He's got some of Lala's V in his pocket, so I guess Hotshot is at least attempting to move product.) Handcuffs won't work, because Felton is magical in some way that the dialogue once again goes out of its way to avoid explaining -- but then again, Crystal is not going to just blab anything to Jason because he will of course be disgusted etc -- so they tie Felton up with rope instead. Better to just kill him, he is a hitter of ladies and a magical monster, but Crystal is a mass of contradictions after all.

But obviously Tara is not going to a shrink, I mean, not only is she angry and scary and fucked-up, but last time she tried to get her shit together it unleashed a goddess on the town and we had to see Jane Bodehouse's tits. Before Sam can revisit the idea of Tara possibly just giving thought to alternative therapies, his phone rings. It is Terry and Arlene, who are being kept awake by Tommy Merlotte's vigorous fucking. Sam leaves her there, offering to take her along for both their company, but she sticks at his place (Tara! Never leave Sam's house!) and opens up his laptop to look at alternative therapies.

Eric, since he's got the Authority's attention -- and since his entire storyline has just unraveled and nothing even matters anymore because his two problems are immediate, just Talbot and the Russell Conspiracy, of which he's now I would say not a member -- decides to just blow everybody's mind and tell them the entire season of facts about the King of Mississippi: "The Turks told folk tales of shape shifting jackals at the fall of Constantinople. The Aztecs were decimated by disease from the Conquistadors' War Dogs. Each time, there's been wolves fueled by vampire blood. I nearly found him in Augsburg in 1945. His wolves were in the service of the Wehrmacht. He disappeared after the war." They're like, "Why is Russell like this?" Nobody knows. But Eric's guess is that he wants to stop humans from killing the planet, because then they would die, and we couldn't eat them anymore.

If that is his plan, I like it: Not the Green part, but the idea of toppling empires. He doesn't have to rule the world, he just needs to make sure that industry doesn't, which means knocking some fuckers down a few every time.

Well, or he's just Forrest Gump and it's all been a gorgeous mistake. Nan, to placate the Authority, points out that this is ridiculous because vampires don't feed on humans, they drink only TruBlood. Eric is like, "Right, I forgot to tattle about that. Russell also thinks the Great Revelation is dumb and that humans should be slaves. And FUCK THE AUTHORITY," Eric [sics] beautifully before a pause, "...Is um also what Russell totally says all the time." Heh.

But Eric's not done, no. "He killed the Magister not because fuck the Authority but because the Magister defied him and that's how much fuck the Authority. He kidnapped Queen Sophie-Anne because she refused him, and then made the Madge marry them, so that's settled. And now if the Authority or the AVL make trouble, he is going to get real wild." Nan points out the usual Catch-22 about their dumb vampire political system, which is that everything is basically treasonous when you're answering to two masters, and he's like, "I wish that I had told the Authority about how fuck the Authority, but first I had to get revenge on Russell for sending drug-addict werewolves to my Viking house a billion years ago. It was totally on my agenda: Kill Russell's boyfriend, then come tattle. Surely you understand. In fact, I'm still totally going to kill him at some point, just as a heads-up."

By Jacob Clifton

Crystal has Felton all hogtied and she jokes that it's because she's a former rodeo champ and of course Jason believes her. He calls the police dispatcher with a funny voice and tells them Felton's a tied-up drug dealer with V in his pocket, and they get the heck out of there.

Morning. Between the many rounds of sex and the insane person in the house with them, Jesus didn't get much sleep last night, which is a bummer -- if sort of a romantic bummer -- because now he's got a twelve-hour shift. Ruby Jean's in the bathroom putting on all of Lafayette's makeup and getting as weird as possible for the trip. She comes out with a sweet smile and praises Lala's extensive selection: "Can't nothing hurt me when I got on my warpaint," she says, meaning that she's ready to face Jesus and head back home to the hospital. Coming closer, she sees something different in her son. "You ain't got your mask on." He thinks she means the makeup; he's not wrong but he's not right either. "I see you. My son is shining through." And was it Jesus that did that for him? They smile and duck their heads. "I'll be damned. Maybe God loves fags."

Jesus grins and they are super sweet and tells her they have to hurry, since it's Ruby Jean's self-selected duty to "bless the Jell-O" before meals. Lafayette takes one of his rings off her finger and kisses his mother goodbye. She tells him to come visit, sweetly, and he grins. "All right, Miss Lady. Eat your vegetables." Then Jesus and Lafayette are smoldering and delightful some more.

Jason takes his drug-dealing girlfriend on over to the police station, which is dumb on every level, but Andy can't even yell at him about continuing to pretend he is a cop, because Dispatcher Rosie is fuh-reaking out and it's real loud and annoying. Apparently she dispatched moronic Kevin over to the tied-up man's location last night -- "I thought it was a crank, some moron called disguising his voice" -- and Kevin was ambushed and his windpipe was crushed. "Boy's impossible to understand as it is," Andy says, somewhat thankfully but also, Kevin is offensive. But Rosie sucks too, so maybe that's fine.

Anyway, Rosie's in love with Kevin, which grosses Andy out, although he's pretty upset too. Crystal and Jason stress about how they got Kevin's windpipe crushed, and Jason runs in there to try and assuage his guilt while Crystal comforts Rosie... Which means she's right there in the middle of building when Kenya walks through with T-Dub, Crystal's brother-cousin, which is why you shouldn't take Crystal to the police station in the first place. But I'm not sure what it means, since Jason made it pretty clear to the entirety of Hotshot that Crystal was with him already, which is how Felton found him, so I guess this moment... Ah. The "snitch" that got Felton almost arrested.

By Jacob Clifton

But what's really going on is that there's an animal inside Tommy and he just wounded the animal inside Sam pretty bad because they are fighting for pack dominance and probably the person that calls Sam a pussy is going to Get It. He's caught between being an animal and a boy, and being a man and a dad, a packleader of two. He doesn't like authority and he doesn't want to be involved in that kind of thing because it runs counter to his personality, which is nurturing to the exclusion of forethought. But you know what I always say: Fuck Authority. Preferably in the romantic sense.

(The particulars aren't really important and frankly I think it sells everybody short when we set the bar for sexual and abuse trauma so terribly high because then you're like, "Well, did that count as abuse? I didn't get raped for six hours or anything, so how could I possibly compare my situation to that, or give it merit? Best to just soldier on without reporting it." When a culture rates and hands out victim-attention as highly as ours does, it's hard to know or justify your own pain and history, because there's always something worse making you feel like a whiner.

It's insidious and gross and not just about those kinds of abuse or trauma either: Just because your entire family isn't dying of lymphoma and you aren't missing the majority of your limbs doesn't mean you don't deserve a hug from Ty Pennington. Or from anybody, really. And then in this case, my fear is that if Holly ever goes dark it's going to be like, "Well, if she'd just gotten raped a couple times probably she would not have blown up the town through witchcraft, but you know, she got super-raped, so probably that's what happened there. You know how women are.")

"And every day I face not only my memory of that, but that part of me who... Who wants to feel sorry for herself, and expects the worst out of people. But that's not who I was raised to be. And I still believe that people are worth trusting. And every day, that piece of me gets a tiny bit stronger and wins out just a... A tiny bit more."

Tara's face as she watches this goes from shame, to fear, to pain, to sadness, to acceptance, to a doubt that she'll ever have that much peace. And I don't really think Holly will ever go dark, because it's pretty shallow, not to save naïve, to think that a rape survivor's message of strength is in any way comparable to Maryann's self-help trip last year; that any writer, or story (fan fiction aside) could be that callous, or spiritually dead, or sexually sheltered. Bad enough to whine that Maryann lacked merit -- that the best of her wasn't carrying Tara on her back this entire season; that Maryann and Miss Jeanette together gave her the tools she only managed barely to escape with -- but even worse to just assume that because you got bored with Maryann last year, when it got too challenging, that these three episodes with Holly are somehow going to replicate that boredom. So gross.

Anyway, Sookie's looking at a scrapbook (which always works out so well) and somehow noticing (for the first time) that her family is telepathic superheroes going way back when Hadley calls Sookie to be mysterious and withholding some more. She yells at her for answering the landline and thus not leaving Bon Temps -- which Sookie explains no longer matters, because the bad thing happened; "They came, they gave it their best shot, and I'm still here," she says delightfully and a little grim -- and Hadley just reminds her that Jason and Sookie are the only family she has remaining. (Where is the Queen? Not necessarily related, but what does the Queen think Hadley does all day? "Just another day of running around giving my cousin spooky messages and kidnapping children, you know. Went shopping.")

By Jacob Clifton

Anyway, this way Hotshot will be no more and Jason will be able to keep his lady without constant attacks on his home. Not to mention the fact that he walked in there two nights ago and asked them to please start attacking him and his home at every opportunity; this hopefully will also no longer be an issue.

Tara walks into a meeting at a church, holding her purse high and tight, and who's there running things but Holly Cleary, Merlotte's newest and most magical waitress. She introduces the women to her and Tara admits, as they get started, that she's not even sure why she's there. Holly assures her that they're in the boat together now, and starts the meeting.

"Hey y'all, I'm Holly. It's been a while since I spoke, but there's enough new faces here I figure I ought to take a turn. I'm a rape survivor. Easy for me to say now, but took me ages to be able to put those words together. And it's women like y'all who helped me the whole way."

In case you were wondering whether Holly was the most even-minded and supportive person in the entire history of all time, she is. She follows Arlene into the back office and talks her through the Tommy altercation and through being disillusioned by her job and being worried about the baby. And then they talk about how the baby is EVIL because Arlene is a total idiot: While the actual fact of evolution may be the scary imaginary Devil's work, Lamarckian genetics is just plain ol' intelligent design.

Thus, if your babydaddy was driven mad by his own repressed incestuous feelings and attraction to the Other, and eventually became a serial strangler, then... Obviously your child will be a serial killer also? I mean I just hate her stupid ass. America is something you could always be prouder of and I absolutely hate when it gets harder for no good reason. Does that mean if it was Terry's son it would have PTSD from Iraq? Does that mean its hair will be orange and be born knowing how to bus a table? Will it come out pregnant, perhaps birthing a fetus that is in turn giving birth to progressively smaller fetuses, in an unending white trash matryoshka doll?

Arlene weeps about the monstrous Lamarckian fractal in her womb and admits she does not want the baby in her, so Holly's like, "Terminate? We can go right now." But of course that's not an option either, because Arlene is the fucking worst, so then what? Something magical probably, but since this is all in her retarded head it seems like you could just wave your hands over her belly while The 700 Club is on and then be like, "This house is clean!"

And then watch an entire army of morons come marching out of Arlene's uterus for the ten years of her life. How is this more of a problem than the fact that your gross ass is lying to your fiancé about how it's not his baby? How is that less of an issue? Real problems before your fake crazy problems, jerk. But there's something about the kindness that Holly shows her -- and the angelic music and lighting -- and the general calming sweetness of Holly that, even if it's a lie which I don't think it is, makes me want to be nicer about Arlene. We'll see how long that shit lasts.

Bill wakes up and it's dripping on him, down in his hidey-hole and black outfit. He opens the trapdoor on a strange sunlit realm, and he's wearing white. The trapdoor sits in the middle of that pond, covered in rose petals, and he steps across the water like Lafayette's BF, and out into the Graveyard/Garden. Hmm. I've always thought it was cool that Bill and Sookie's house is separated by a graveyard -- that itself contains their lost loved ones -- but now that Bill's there it seems even more important that their houses both border the cemetery. That not only death, but Claudine's world, lie between them both.

By Jacob Clifton

Sookie finds out finally that Hadley is dating Sophie-Anne, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana, and that said Queen knows about Sookie's powers, which is how Russell got interested in her. So now you know why all the vampires in the world are after you, Sook. Feel better? I noticed you haven't mentioned Bill in like ten minutes. Sookie's just intrigued and weirded out by her constant in-demandness, and Hadley shrugs, because honestly I like the actress but the character just refuses to add a goddamn thing to the show.

"They don't think like regular people. I don't know why they do half the things they do." Always a valid excuse to stop thinking. I bet Hadley hated the Maryann storyline. So Hadley recommends once again that she get the fuck, and that she and Hunter are going to do likewise, but first could she brain-talk to the kid. What do they talk about? Nothing really. Fish. Getting kidnapped by your bisexual ex-addict mom. The usual. As she drags him away to an unknown location, Hunter starts yelling, "She knows! She knows!" but since that could mean literally anybody and we have no context, it's not as scary as it feels like it wants to be.

Tommy steals Arlene's tips, which she knows because "Four Daughters of the Confederacy with French manicures just told me I was the best server they ever had" and thus would not stiff her, and they fight. Arlene says "my white ass," which is something only racist trash like Arlene would ever, ever say, and then runs to tattle to Sam, and gets funny again: "Turn that fucker upside down and shake it out of him!" I would love to see that, wouldn't you? Shake, shake, shake. Anyway, they all get real trashy and Tommy echoes Arlene ("Is there anyone you don't let walk all over you?") but in a new way where it means he just got called a pussy the second time, which means the third person to call Sam a pussy today is, as noted above, going to Get It. The best part of this fight, though, is how it only hits a fever point when Tommy insults Arlene's service, which pushes her over the brink. She does take pride in her work, she's always been real good about that.

By Jacob Clifton

Anyway, predictably enough Crystal is not onboard with Jason's plan to put all of her relatives in jail and wipe Hotshot off the map; and likewise, Jason finds this insane. She points out that plenty of Hotshotters don't have anything to do with the drug trade, and more importantly there are kids there, who are just as sheltered as she is, and they'll be put into the system. Yeah, that's the problem with destroying entire towns sometimes.

Jesus has ordered a veggie burger with bacon, to see if Lafayette will make it, and Lafayette has come out to see the sick fuck that would do such a thing. Thankfully, we are spared some tired mimetic joke about how bacon totally rules and everybody loves bacon -- you guys, it's tired, cut it out -- and they flirt a whole lot. It's pretty sexy. Tara remembers Jesus from the time her cousin showed her the face of true crazy, and they are happy about how one of them is dating. Of course, Tara being Tara she points out the Satan-in-a-Sunday-Hat aspect, and he tells her to fuck off, and she realizes how shitty that was, for once.

So then they are super sweet, and Lafayette acknowledges that Jesus is a miracle for putting up with the many tricky secrets of their weird lives. Especially and including Ruby Jean. After a second it occurs to both of them that her last two boyfriends were A) A cult-member serial killer who was shot to death in the parking lot and B) Even more of a bummer than that. Lala feels terrible, Tara tries to be a good soldier about it, and they hug and are sweet.

Summer leaves her many doll purchases at the table and excuses herself, so Jessica comes over to apologize for fanging out. Hoyt tries to be sweet about that. Jessica tries and fails to be sweet about Summer -- "She seems... Short?" -- and they flirt, he mentions how statuesque and lovely Jessica is, and they commiserate over how Summer clearly doesn't know about Hoyt's fear of dolls. (I forgot about that until she said that.) Jessica is brilliant as usual in this scene, playing it equal parts loving and good-friend and loving it, but also feeling like she's lost something. She asks if, barring the fact that Summer has no apparent interest in this or any other fact about Hoyt, at least she makes him happy, and Hoyt breaks it down:

"I hate her. God help me, but I fucking hate her. I-I... Everything is dolls, and show tunes, and cleaning stuff, and she will not stop talking. And I feel like it's making me crazy, Jess." On the other hand, at least he's not moping about Jessica. She knows what he means, and they share a pretty intense moment before Jessica, of course, starts to cry -- given that Hoyt still has no idea why they're broken up and hopefully never will -- and when she jerks away from him, good old Tommy's right there to whisk her away from the table and yell at Hoyt for making her cry. Oh, my Hoyt.

By Jacob Clifton

Pam's like, "Oh, speaking of killing Talbot, why did you kill Talbot?" Because of Viking things. She's like, "Why didn't you ever tell me the sad Viking story? At least then I would have had something to think about while you ran all over the country acting gay with Russell. At least I would know you were going to fuck him up at some point. But now you're telling me this is the preeminent fact of your entire life and you didn't feel like sharing it with me?"

Get this, the reason Eric didn't tell her the secret truth about his family is not -- as you may think -- because Alan Ball just thought of it, but because it's simply too sad. It would have hurt Pam's feelings too much to know that some Vikings got killed by werewolves a thousand years ago. He acts stoic and whatever some more, and she's like, "And now we're just going to die? That sucks." He agrees. But also, when he takes the fall, he wants her to go and have a new son or daughter and continue their line, because they are the only vampires worth a goddamn as far as I can tell, and it would be a shame not to keep that going.

Hoyt stupidly/shittily goes to Merlotte's with Summer, I guess hoping once again to make Jessica jealous and now worried that she's dating not only poor glamoured Chip but also sexy little Tommy Merlotte. Jessica -- who was comfortable and happy and adorable a second ago, and is now sad and more than a little pissed -- points out how tacky it is for him to even come, when he could just as easily schedule his visits during the day, and he says that she was the one that dumped him anyway, so shut up. She agrees and says she doesn't care, but then when she is formally introduced to Summer, her fangs pop out and she runs away. It's totally embarrassing, but of course Hoyt tries to apologize on her behalf and then watches Jessica try to pull it together while Summer gives him a real southern succotash of a speech:

"I love vampires as much as anyone else, but they have no life in them... Look how sad she is without you! She pulled you into the night. I'm just so thankful you chose to come back with me. Can't do much antiquing after dark, can we?" Hoyt realizes, the more she talks, that Summer is kind of a monster, and even if that's not true, maybe he is, and it becomes quite clear that he has made a horrible decision.

While she worries about being labeled a snitch by T-Dub, Jason proudly informs Crystal that her cousin-brethren are going to be raided quite soon anyhow. Firstly, I still don't see how Jason waltzing into Hotshot and telling them that he and Crystal are in love did not connect the dots on this one already. Of course she's at Jason's. Everybody knows that now. And of course Felton went straight there, which is how Crystal knows they know that now. And of course they beat him up and called the cops, because that is the right thing to do. The air of mystery surrounding this sequence of events still makes no sense to me.

Before Tara can even process the what-the-fuckiness of that, much less what it means that even Sam can sometimes lose his cool, who should appear and drag her behind Merlotte's but, of course, Franklin Mott. His head is back to looking normal, and he requests that she not scream: "It's an ugly, ugly sound." They discuss how she killed him and he says that it was emotionally pretty rough on him, getting killed by somebody who loves him. She says she doesn't love him, but he says this is also not true.

"You wanna know what hurts the most? You didn't mourn. If you had a shred of love in your heart for me, you would have mourned me. I love you so much." Tara gives him the speech she's been so looking forward to giving him that she's been giving it to Sookie and anybody else who will listen: "You don't love anything. You can't. Because you are a psychopath. You violated me and terrorized me, because that's what vampires do. And you are calling that love."

Franklin says that he is capable of love, insofar as he will be sad to his "very marrow" about totally murdering her right now, and see, this is not being an ambassador for vampires when you do this. Tara has had negative experiences in the past with vampires, and you are only adding to the list. Don't be a Talbot. Finally she just starts screaming at him to go ahead and fucking kill her already, just to shut him up. "It's the only thing y'all can feel, the destruction of life, because you ain't got none in you! You sick motherfucker, I won't give you the satisfaction!" Why the death wish? ("I hate it when you make me hit you!") Because it's finally not a death wish: "The second I'm gone, I'll be rid of you forever. I'll be free. And you'll have nothing!"

There is some Franklin romance -- "Your heart is beating so fast! I want to feel it stop!" -- and then who should appear but Mr. Jason Stackhouse, trusty gun in hand. They face off for awhile and Tara smartly keeps her trap shut, and then before you know it Jason has blown Franklin into a big old soppy mess, because he was packing his FoS wood-tipped bullets the whole time. Thirty years later, he's still protecting her when it counts.

Sookie's been calling Bill for hours, and now it's nearly midnight, and it's not like he's a full calendar of stuff to do, but honestly he can't account for his time in the Garden. "You mean you overslept?" He tries to tell her about what he just learned, but of course the one time he's being honest and actually trying to tell her something, she is off on a whole tangent. Was he visiting the Queen of Louisiana? And if so, why? And how do they know each other? And what about Hadley and Russell? And is there a fatwa on Garden people suddenly or is Hadley just being paranoid? And why won't Sookie shut up? Finally she does, and Bill's like, "I went to a crazy place, I don't know how but probably it's from that time I murdered you a couple of days ago, I don't know if you remember that, but anyway I went to a place and here's the kicker: I actually know what you are."

Tune in week for that revelation. Meanwhile, Nan's eating the femoral artery, among other things, of a sexy young lady in the limo -- "Oh, Miss Flanagan!" gasps the enraptured fangbanger, hilariously -- on the way to the airport for her Portland speech, when something catches her eye on the TV. What is it? Oh, just Russell eating his way through a news station on live TV, plunging his hand through the back of the on-camera talent and coming away with his spine, before delivering a super scary, super wonderful, super amazing, game-changing, politically combustible rant. He comes off about half scary, half like a kooky crank, and 100% awesome.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Russell Edgington, and I have been a vampire for nearly 3000 years. Now, the American Vampire League wishes to perpetrate the notion that we are just like you, and I suppose in a few small ways we are. We're narcissists. We care only about getting what we want, no matter what the cost, just like you. Global warming, perpetual war, toxic waste, child labor, torture, genocide. That's a small price to pay for your SUVs and your flat-screen TVs, your blood diamonds, your designer jeans, your absurd, garish McMansions!"

Gesturing wildly with a piece of spine; throwing stones in the glass McMansion for sure.

"Futile symbols of permanence to quell your... Quivering, spineless [!] souls."

He tosses the spine behind him and crosses his fingers: One hand clean, one hand covered in innocent blood.

"...But no. In the end we are nothing like you. We are... Immortal. Because we drink the true blood, blood that is living, organic and human. Mmm. And that is the truth the AVL wishes to conceal from you. Because let's face it, eating people is a tough sell these days. So they put on their friendly faces to pass their beloved VRA, but make no mistake, mine is the true face of vampires!"

This is the best bit. Quiet and slow, and something most of us have wanted to say on TV at some point:

"Why would we seek equal rights? You are not our equals. We will eat you, after we eat your children.

How embarrassing. Or I guess I mean, Fuck Authority. Preferably in the romantic sense.

"Now," he says, turning a smile off-camera. "Time for the weather. Tiffany?"

And just like that the whole world changes.

Is HBO in big trouble despite the success of True Blood? Find out.

By Jacob Clifton

Calvin shows up at Merlotte's looking for Crystal, who is now in three different kinds of Hotshot trouble, but of course Jason just thinks he's got to defend his lady from her dad. Meanwhile Cal's not interested in Jason at all because he's too busy calling Crystal a two-faced whore. There is a bit of a fight, so Sam appears, and Cal calls him a liar for saying Crystal hadn't been there, and then a pussy for lying about it. A little bell goes "ding!" and Sam commences hammering the shit out of Calvin Norris until he is just a twitching pile of denim and bleeding.

Tommy loves it, Tara's freaked out but sort of feeling him, and eventually Jason and Hoyt pull Sam off Cal. There's blood everywhere. Tommy is deeeeelighted by this, because that's the brother he wanted. His eyes are just a-sparkle. Jesus gets Cal into his van and calls somebody at the hospital, and Lafayette drives them. Crystal comes screaming out into the parking lot because she wants to go with, but Jason has no idea why she would want to make sure her dad is okay. Jason says that Hotshot is continuing to control her, like has been done her whole life, and she says that the list of people who are not allowed to control her also includes Jason. She shoves him off and they go driving away.

By Jacob Clifton

Gesturing wildly with a piece of spine; throwing stones in the glass McMansion for sure.

"Futile symbols of permanence to quell your... Quivering, spineless [!] souls."

He tosses the spine behind him and crosses his fingers: One hand clean, one hand covered in innocent blood.

This is the best bit. Quiet and slow, and something most of us have wanted to say on TV at some point:

"Why would we seek equal rights? You are not our equals. We will eat you, after we eat your children.

How embarrassing. Or I guess I mean, Fuck Authority. Preferably in the romantic sense.

"Now," he says, turning a smile off-camera. "Time for the weather. Tiffany?"

And just like that the whole world changes.

Is HBO in big trouble despite the success of True Blood? Find out.

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