Be Quiet & Drive

Recapped by Jacob Clifton · Aired 09-12-2010 · S03E12

Gosh! Okay, humans first. After Sam darkly tells Tara about leaving your various shapeshifted shapes behind and pretending not to be a jewel thief and whatever, she says goodbye to her mother -- who has shapeshifted into a ho -- and Sookie -- who could care less about most things -- and takes off out of town with a brand new haircut. Between Jason's confession and learning that everybody but Sookie is a magical creature, as far as she knows, it's probably best. I'm assuming she'll come back awesome, because there's nothing horrible left for them to do to her ass, but I say that every season.

Sam may or may not shoot his illiterate brother Tommy in the back for stealing from him, and there's still not a huge point to any of that. Ditto Terry, who has some kind of manic gratitude episode that is as unnerving as it is touching. Jesus finally admits to Lafayette that he's a witch, and can thus help Lala with his quickly multiplying shamanic problems by training him in the ways of the brujo. I guess my wish for Tara to become a witch will just never come true, but then I can't see her dealing with Lafayette's talking dolls, much less the visions (Sam's bloody rage hands, Rene at Arlene's throat), with quite the same aplomb.

Jason tries to stop the DEA bust at Hotshot, but of course ends up getting Calvin killed and Crystal abducted by Felton, so now he's suddenly the pack leader of the Hotshot panthers, which is sort of exactly what he's been trying to get to all season. He might not be good enough for the Bon Temps PD, but he's more than up to the challenge of caring for a pack of inbred hillbillies. Back at the station, embarrassed in front of his crush the DEA agents and without even Jason to take care of, Andy thinks about trying V.

And finally, Hoyt narrowly escapes an intervention by Maxine and Summer before proposing pretend marriage to Jessica and getting a house for them to live in, complete with haunting baby doll reminding them of everything else they can't have. (In case you missed the memo, Hoyt and Jessica are the actual gay couple of this show.) Rebuffed, Maxine and Summer buy some guns at the local Crazy Christian Gun Shoppe for what promises to be a delightful farce about ignorance and gunplay. They really are cute as pigs. (Even cuter? Alcide, who between Bill's bullshit and Eric's manipulation is starting to look as good as a boyfriend as he does just generally. Can't wait to see him and Debbie year.)

All-Star Sookie electro-blasts those silver handcuffs, dragging Eric inside Fangtasia!, beating the tar and fangs out of Russell and dragging him in as well -- as requested by Eric's crazy/actual visions of Godric pleading for mercy -- and finally learns all the Things About Bill. Namely, that her blood isn't just tasty but addictive, Bill was sent by the Queen to procure her, including letting her get beat mostly to death by the Rattrays long ago, but is now bent on "protecting" her magic blood by... Killing everybody who knows what she is.

A list which includes Russell, whom Bill and Eric encase in cement and silver -- Eric once again fighting back against the better angel of Godric's spirit in an unhinged but still quite sad fashion -- Eric, whom Bill tosses into another cement grave, Pam, whom Bill tries to have murdered by Eric's pet assassin, and the Queen. With whom we leave him, levitating in his parlor with fangs bared for what seems like the fight of the century. So what that means is basically, Bill's that Gollumy cokehead that always obsesses on hiding the coke from everybody before the party starts, and for the same reasons.

Sookie realizes that -- real feelings or not, and obviously they are quite strong on both sides, which is what makes this compelling -- their relationship's been from jump a particularly nasty kind of joke, and breaks up with him for the sixteenth time today. As for Russell's mysterious plan to reincarnate Talbot, possibly using said fairy blood, I have no idea, but most interesting by far, is the wicked laughter and faerie glee on Sook's face when she puts Talbot down the disposal in front of Russell: That's what the Fae look like. They are hard and they are joyful and they are terrible and beautiful, and Sookie's just getting started. To that end, Sookie has a little talk with Gran's tombstone and accepts Claudine's invitation to their realm, vanishing completely out of real life and zapping to what we hope looks less like a children's theatre set and more like Poland, or Libya.

Maybe a bit slow, especially after the Labor Day break, but the climaxes have been hitting for the last three episodes, and there's something exciting about the fact that there are no more secrets left, basically for anybody. All about moving forward now! Into even more horrible sexy stuff, presumably.

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Russell's take on the whole Viking massacre thing is that King Daddy deserved to be ripped apart by drug-addicted werewolves, for some reason, and that they were just there looking for goats to snack on. Also, Eric's dad was apparently a "self-important greedy little putz," et cetera. Russell is delivering this information to Eric, you remember, while they are lying in the sun like Sookie and Tara, sans SPF, smoking, skin flaking off.

Maybe because he is dying, maybe because he is crazy, but for whatever reason, Eric sees Godric looking down at him with a sort of distinctly Roma Downey glow about him. I haven't the time nor really the inclination to unpack this. There's a plot reason that this is interesting, because what Godric is saying to Eric has an effect on him, but it's for opposite reasons. And I don't know how the grief for Godric and the grief for the Vikings is connected.

And I don't know but that we all have better angels that show us the opposite of ourselves. Or that Godric went to heaven, because God's not as dumb as his people. It's weird and seems complicated, in a way that things about this show rarely are, so I'm going to say it's the usual ambiguity, as to whether Godric is real or not, but that he is also a voice of Eric's better nature.

It is my belief that everybody, down in the infinite chaos of the stuff you're not looking at, has tried every possible recipe, combining everything with everything else in fractal iteration, before arriving at the future perfect self, and that we're mostly just getting pulled along by that person. That the things that happen to you aren't scars or determinism but just the obstacles between you and that best possible person. Who maybe sometimes looks like Godric, if you're Eric, because that's how much you loved him. Who probably hands you just a little bit more than you thought you could handle, so that you grow a little more all the time.

So Godric wants Eric to forgive the King, to end the hate, before they die. They're just laying there, dying at pretty much the same rate -- even though Russell is as old or older than Godric was, no? -- because "forgiveness is love," and "Love is all." Probably that sounds less ridiculous in Viking language, but given Eric's response -- a sort of gut-wrenched childish scream -- maybe not. And when Eric says, "I swore to my father," he's getting at the very heart of the vampire issue, because he's telling Godric, father and brother and everything else, that this doesn't come under his emotional jurisdiction.

By Jacob Clifton

I'm intrigued by the idea, centered on Eric, of the pre-vampire life and its obligations. Godric was always honorable in his sort of Godric Code; it seems this year that we are learning that it's Viking Eric that brings in all the naughtiness and the hot-blooded craziness and that Godric sort of tempered that in him, which sounds good in theory but in practice just seems to have made him a manipulative sociopath. Which, not for nothing, but you're chained up to King Russell, who has become everything bad about vampires, but he's coming from this intensely personal, sad place. A place that is, similarily, very human. I think Anna Paquin was right about Godric after all, that the last hope for peace had to die because there is no hope for peace.

Where things shift, which we don't know yet and won't know until the end of the episode, is with Godric's sort of desperate message, that we are linked in our love and our forgiveness because in the end, death means peace. For everybody. Meaning that when Russell dies, and Eric dies, they will both go to the same place. Meaning that Russell will be worthy of sharing the same space as Godric, somehow. That's when Eric starts to scream.

Sookie's inside Fangtasia! having another coma from getting all her blood drunk by vampires again, if you recall, and once again she has gone to Fairyland, only this time she's alone on this forest path and then visited by a giant chandelier that looms over her in the sky, like a UFO, and it feeds her more light. And then when she's back to her fighting weight, light-wise, she wakes up and sees Bill Compton's goofy old smile, and then she hops right up, presumably full of his blood, and slaps him across his damn face with an f-bomb to boot.

Bill gets plenty sassy with old Stackhouse, all about how yes, he "betrayed" her in a sense, but it was only in the usual sense of lying to her face and pretending to sell her out that he does every single week. To his credit, he does not point out that he's usually having to do this because of her propensity for calling monsters assholes to their faces and then daring them to kill her for no real reason, and other similarly reckless manic behaviors. Bill says it worked, and Russell is even now dying, and of course Sookie's like, "Okay, what's up with Eric then." Pam's still crying by the window and explains the handcuffs and the many drama queen moments Eric's been indulging lately, and of course Sookie runs out of there as fast as possible, knocking Bill's hands away when he tries once again to Cullen her out of having thoughts.

"Eric, this is just stupid," Sookie says, staring down at her future vampire boyfriend on the hot pavement. He stares up at her, frying softly, and tells her to go away. Or maybe he's talking to his dead ex-boyfriend Godric, who is still talking about forgiveness and the sense of relief that Eric would feel if he could just perform this superhuman feat of forgiving Russell for killing those Vikings that time. Meanwhile Russell asks Sookie, "Sweetie," if she wouldn't mind using her magic powers to help them in some way, I guess to unlock the handcuffs and get him inside and away from the Ghost Whisperer. It's sort of sad that he thinks this is sensible, like, what's the opposite of noblesse oblige where he can just sort of Marie Antoinettedly assume that Sookie, having recovered from him drinking her into a coma, would be like, "I'll get right to it, sir!"

Sookie waggles her hands at the cuffs impotently but nothing happens, and Russell starts to yell at her about the Zen of Electric Fairy Blasts and things of this nature, and then -- once again with no real thought put into it -- starts threatening to come back from the true death and kill her "precious Viking" and "brooding Mr. Compton and his unbearable progeny" and everybody else she cares about. So then she zaps the cuffs, and he starts ordering her around so she zaps him too, slamming him against the wall opposite. He giggles and she drags Eric back inside, but he's not really sensate to any of this, because he's still looking at Godric, who's getting further and further away.

Eric's in such trouble that he can't even "drop fang," as Pam says, and of course Sookie tells Bill to bite her open immediately so she can feed Eric, and he gives in while Pam goes looking around for the keys to the cuffs. Sookie, always looking for a chance to score points in this game of life, reminds Bill that sometimes a vampire in extremity will go too far and keep sucking your blood until you're in a coma and then sometimes even after they revive you with their blood you dump them but then take them back after they fight werewolves for you but still have really troubling hate-sex with them. He understands her reference, because he remembers that part. So he broods over there to watch Eric sucking on his girlfriend and wonder where his life took this turn. Bill Compton is like the most interesting person.

You know how they always say that Brady Bunch is playing somewhere in the world at all times? And I think Baywatch? Well, add to this list the show where Nan Flanagan and Steve Newlin argue vampire politics all the time. Turn on the TV, there they are. Now, I understand that this is all taking place over the course of a few days and that the news cycle from when Russell told us the weather is just getting started -- I wonder if season will be all about that? That would be cool -- but I can't really get upset about it. There would still be talking heads even if these weren't the ones, and I like Nan, and it's nice to see the Rev whenever we get to see Rev.

So they're having the same debate they always have, which is that you can't judge a whole race by their bad guys, and Tara's watching it and coming down firmly on the ideological side of Reverend Newlin, which is counter to every liberal intellectual thing she's got going on. She hates the Rev but she kind of knows what he means. Her whole story arc this year has been about her becoming a total racist, which is kind of awesome if you think about it.

Sam makes her hoecakes with bacon grease for breakfast, which you would have to know this show pretty well to get that reference: It's what Lettie Mae made for Tara Mae the morning she threw out all her liquor, the day after her exorcism. The day she changed shape. That's the smell of home, and hope. That's maybe a soft place to land.

But since Sam doesn't know how far down Tara's racism goes, he decides now's the time to tell her that he is a shapeshifter, a shifter of shapes. He thinks he's doing Out and Proud, because he has no idea that Tara has spent the majority of the year watching people change shape and betray her: Bill, Franklin. Andy and Jason. The things she thought she knew about the people were wrong, like everybody was in on a joke that she didn't get to hear. And so now Sam, the dependable, the one who is sort of defined by his sameness, is telling her that her last normal, untouched friend is not just a raging drunk now but a supernatural creature. Of a type specifically defined by its untrustworthiness. The things you think you know about them are always wrong, because they could be anything.

Eric finally comes back to himself and immediately tells Sookie to go get Russell. Nobody is feeling that, at all, because it's better for him to be outside dying than inside saying mean stuff and being a huge threat to everybody. Without even thinking twice, Bill taps his fang and draws blood on his fingertip, which he rubs on the wounds he just gave Sookie so the bite marks will heal.

You like to see couples, like established long-term relationships, in the kitchen. They move around each other without looking and they know where everything is and they've made the guacamole a million times so he knows when to cut the lime and she knows he likes to lick the fork. And this little moment with the blood is, for a second, like that. But by the end of this episode, it is the complete opposite of that.

When they ask if Eric's crazy, this is his response: "Godric appeared to me and asked me to spare Russell." So... And Eric turns his puppydogs up to full force and it has no effect, Pam tells him to drop it, and finally he stands up and heads for the door, with a little fangs-out growling tension with Bill for some reason, and then Sookie's like, "You idiots" and goes out to get Russell herself. She wraps a thick chain around his neck and then drags him inside by the head, which right now looks like the actual inside of a gas grill.

By Jacob Clifton

Tara complains that Sam didn't tell her about his powers before sleeping with her, which is A) Not really what she's complaining about and B) It wasn't the sex, it was the hoecakes. But really what she's saying is that he has accidentally tripped a wire because she has decided to define the world as Normal Things and Darkness, so she can stay whole for a little while longer, and he just brought darkness for no reason into her business. He tries to remind her that Franklin was a singularly bad bad guy, and that Sam himself is not a psychopath. The best part is when he reminds her of all the many terrible things that have happened to her that weren't supernatural in nature. Sam is really good at pep talks.

They change topic suddenly to how Tara wants to not know any of the things she knows or feel any of the things she feels and just be a whole new person. The shapeshifter who was once a jewel thief and murderer assures her that it's possible, especially for a genius like Tara, but that it will eventually always catch up, like the bull-headed MILF that took your v-card, which is why you just have to keep on moving.

By Jacob Clifton

Should they kill Russell or not? Eric can't kill Russell now, because of something imaginary Ghost Godric said, but to reveal that would be to ruin the big surprise at the end of the episode, so instead he just acts cagey and weird and refuses to answer direct questions. Pam is especially wonderful in this scene, telling Eric to stop fucking around and rip off his fucking head. Russell loses a fang and Eric takes it, for the Authority; when Sookie gets close to Russell he fangs up and she's like, "Don't even think about it, bitch." He says he can't stop thinking about it but that will mean something different later too.

They make Sookie babysit the King, all chained up, while they take their vampire naps. At first she is unhappy, but then she remembers that she hates all of their asses and decides to yell at them some more. "Go crawl back into your holes, you creepy cold freaks!" Eric calls Alcide, which is always a good idea, and then goes to bed. Sookie grabs a magazine and a crucifix and settles in to watch the King.

The guy from the DEA that's been called down for the raid has coined the awkward neologism "blood-demic," thank you Alan Ball, and will be tossing that around a little bit. Andy doesn't like the idea of this being an epidemic, since it reflects so poorly on him, but hot DEA guy has a point: "Well, this here's blood enough for about a hundred doses. That's a lot of hard-ons, enhanced athletic performance, and spontaneous healing of physical infirmities for a town of... How many?" 2712, last count. 2712 people in Bon Temps Louisiana. About half of them are magic and the other half are on drugs. Most of them are on magic drugs.

Jason comes running in yelling about how he's a cop and whatever, so Andy pulls him back into the Sheriff's office and tells him not to warn the innocent inbred children of Hotshot. Jason has figured out a way through the moral quandary here as follows: "Well, if we stop 'em, somebody else is just gonna start up. Right?" Andy points out that he has just rationalized away the concept of law enforcement, and Jason doesn't know what that means, and they argue about saving Hotshot, and Jason has panther secrets so he runs off to save them, because he doesn't even really want to be a cop anymore.

Tara heads out from the trailer across the Merlotte's parking lot, and remembers everything bad that has ever happened to her in that parking lot, which is a lot of things, even for Tara who only has bad things happen to her. Miss Jeanette, dead and staring with no heart. Franklin, staked with a wooden bullet. Eggs, shot with a regular bullet. Tara cries and feels weirded out and sort of like how totally unfair it is that even her PTSD has PTSD at this point.

Lafayette, who was up all night with the talking dolls and going slowly insane, decided to come to work early. But he was in such a rush to get away from the talking dolls that he forgot his Merlotte's key. So now he is just standing around in a hoodie, looking very manly because he didn't have time to get pretty. Sam unlocks the door for him, but then suddenly Sam's hands are covered in blood and he's saying/thinking "Cross me and you're a dead man." Lafayette jumps back, as would you, because that is some startling shit.

Sookie's actually kind of into it when Russell proposes they make an alliance, just because it's funny and he's a loon and she's bored. He promises not to hurt her, or anybody she loves. She says that his word is worth "about as much as tits on a turtle," which is just so authentic and colorful, and he offers her a million bucks, and she negotiates him to five million imaginary dollars, and he offers to kill Eric for her, or Bill, or both, or neither of them. She's like, "Kill both of them and give me your house in Mississippi." Because shockingly she and Talbot have the exact same taste. Anyway, she was obviously just dicking with him and goes back to her book, but he's not done.

Russell starts out seeming like he's trying to get in her head, but the more he says the truer it sounds, all about how when she does die it will be by vampire, because she is that delicious: That in fact her blood is "paradise, Arcadia, nirvana" and perhaps capable of all kinds of magical things. That she is vampire crack and that anybody who says different is selling you something.

Which makes a very different person, retroactively speaking, of Bill Compton. Who is jealous and crazy about her, and her blood, and as Russell points out, "true gentleman" and "total creep" are not that far apart here: "By showing such a degree of control he's able to make the experience last that much longer. That's basic tantra. But others won't be able to stop themselves. They'll drain you dry. Which is a shame, really. But the rose only blooms for a short while, I suppose..."

Anyway, at this point Sookie maces him with that silver stuff and changes the subject to the Jar of Talbot Goo and her theory that Russell's crazy ass is thinking now that somehow her magical blood will bring him back to life, and the music starts to wail in the background and Sookie goes at this point totally nuts and you can see the shiny scary Faerie self there under the surface for the first time, hard and wild and angry and joyous in destruction, as she pours Talbot down the sink and turns on the garbage disposal and laughs and laughs as Russell's heart breaks and then his language breaks, first down to German and then to just noises, and she laughs like an child the entire time. Just completely out of control.

By Jacob Clifton

Calvin is not happy to see Jason in Hotshot, nor his daughter, and there's a lot of yelling, and even though Jason is saving his bacon Calvin's still just very stubborn and ungrateful and trashy, but the rest of the people start getting the V together to get rid of it, and burn down the meth lab, and in his little way Jason points out that Cal isn't making any sense really, and besides that Hotshot is totally gross and all the people are malnourished and uneducated and "several people obviously got dental problems" and things like this. The kid with the long hair that was noshing that deer that time calls Norris "Uncle Daddy Calvin," which, my God.

Which is pretty great. I mean, this is what he's wanted to be for Bon Temps since Maryann. Actually, since he accused himself of being the Strangler, even. He wanted to protect the town and save the world, it's why he joined the Fellowship, it's why he gets so weird around men. And there's not really a way for him to get that story finished, get what he wants, because he's still just Jason Stackhouse. And the last straw was when he realized how deep the corruption goes back home, like, why would you want to save Bon Temps when it's so excited about damning itself. But he can get to be in charge of a pretend town, an approximate community, of people that actually are... I mean, in the Country of the Blind, you know?

So the former hotshot gives up his girl and his job and his entire life, essentially, to save an awful shitty town nobody likes called Hotshot. The boy who invented Perfect From Now On is suddenly choosing to make do with this nasty thing, the boy who used to lie so well he believed them himself, telling Tara the truth. I just think that's marvelous. Jason rules.

Tara heads over to say goodbye to her mom -- because a visit to Lettie Mae's hardly ever ends in abuse and tragedy! -- but her mom's getting plowed by the good Reverend Daniels. Old schizophrenic alcoholics getting fucked, what's more fun to think about than that? Maybe her wig coming off in the middle of it. They lie and stutter and make no sense, and Tara leaves. Lettie Mae does the whole desperate "he's going to leave his wife any day now" bullshitty thing, it's barely even sad anymore because she's so reliably shitty, and Tara's like, "I'm not even judging you, I just can't believe you're like this."

"I am changing," Lettie Mae promises. "I'm gonna be a minister's wife. I'm gonna be happy at last." At this point, it does get sad, because that was a bunch of kinds of crazy at once. And in fact, it's really sort of beautiful to watch Tara look at her mother and somehow be released, by this. The last shapeshifter. She just doesn't know what to say for a while and finally is like, "You know what? Good luck with that." So that when she hugs her mom goodbye there's nothing in it but love.

Sam comes tearing through Merlotte's, slowing as he gets closer to the office because he already knows what's going to happen there: The safe, gone altogether, scraped deep into the floor. He screams Tommy's name and outside, Arlene's like, "Is Sam going to be an asshole again today?" Lafayette looks over and there's sexy old Rene with the accent, hands around her throat, grinning: "I'm inside her right now. She can't get rid of me." And while Arlene brightly says something else about Sam, the vision version of her goes, "This is hell. We're in hell!"

It's scary. Lafayette waves a spatula around at her, moaning in fear, and she takes off... Right into Terry Bellefleur, who doesn't want her working because of the baby fears. Meanwhile, Lafayette is on the payphone in the back hallway, freaking right out, finally admitting about the demon head issue with Jesus, also blood and ghosts, and how probably he is turning schizophrenic like Ruby Jean, which I guess is why he has called the health care professional of his closest acquaintance. Jesus says he's on his way. "My new boyfriend, a drug dealing prostitute, is having a schizoid break. Can I use my flex time? I should really go see him." Jesus has a great boss, if that's how it went down.

When Alcide drives up, Russell assumes that his wolves are coming to rescue him, but they're not. Ginger, irrelevantly, offers to make Sookie a peanut butter and butter sandwich, which is much funnier than it should be thanks to her eternal gonzo weirdness. Sookie is romantic and soft-lit, immediately, "How did you know to come for me?" She's sort of bummed when he explains it's an Eric thing, and he finally gets the vibe and starts flirting back. "You in trouble again?" And the requisite answer: "When am I not in trouble?" 4It's your retarded behavior, yo!

Later they catch up and flirt and talk about Janice (fine) and Debbie (vanished) and Alcide says he's been dreaming about her and they are super cute and sweet. She asks him to be less of a nice guy, and he says he cannot, and Russell laughs about how he's a werewolf nice guy, and basically just seems desperate to be involved. The vampires wake up and Alcide notes the total weirdness between Bill and Sookie, which Bill hates.

Bill tries to like order Sookie to stay at Fangtasia! so Pam can take care of her, while Eric drags Russell out the door by his chains, but Sookie tells him that she knows she's vampire crack now, and doesn't trust any vampires, and nobody is invited into her home, and fuck everybody, and whatever. Alcide loves it. Bill and Alcide stare at each other and the vibe is palpable, to the point where Eric's like, "If you two have finished eye-fucking each other..."

Andy thinks about taking V, and the DEA guys drag Jason into his office for tipping them off and whatever. Andy yells at Jason for this and for telling Tara about Eggs, also. Jason tries to explain that it's not about them, separately or together, but in fact about taking care of these broken people: "Sometimes the right thing to do is the wrong thing. And I know I did the right thing."

Big hugs from Jesus and then a little conversation about Ruby Jean, and how Lala's first memory is of her talking to motherfuckers who weren't there. Luckily Jesus is well-informed about both magical crazy and regular crazy, and is qualified to make this diagnosis. The thing with Lafayette now is that he has "opened up something inside" himself and is "just much more sensitive now." Lala's not interested, but Jesus can identify because at the very beginning of learning magic, they put him in a sweat lodge for three days and "the earth started talking to me, literally, with multiple faces."

For some reason that line is so funny. Thenceforth, Jesus could see "things that people wanted to hide," but that eventually it wore off or he got used to it. Lafayette backs him up to the Harry Potter part where this was part of his learning magic, and Jesus is like, "Oh right, if it wasn't obvious, I'm a witch." Lafayette recovers quickly at this point: "You're a witch, who's a nurse, who's a dude. Well shit, I guess I lucked out then." Yeah, you left out the part where he looks like Kevin Alejandro, which is the most important part. The rest of this shit is just bells and whistles as far as I'm concerned.

Tara spends some time with scissors and pain and then cuts off all her sexy braids, crying, resulting in a sort of wonderful explosion of hair that Sookie likes. I like it too. Shape shifting. They make dinner and apologize for being bitches to each other all season, they're sisters, it's going to be okay. But when Sookie admits that she fought a werewolf in her bedroom, Tara knows she's not safe there either. She's not safe anywhere. When Tara hugs her goodbye, her body knows what Tara's not saying, and Sookie holds her sister tighter. "I don't wanna be alone right now," she said.

Where they are taking Russell is an Herveaux construction project with lots of cement trucks and places to pour cement. How crazy would it be to find out that you'd been living or working just a few feet over somebody's head as they went nuttier and nuttier but never died? That's like Sick Building Syndrome to the max. Anyway, Eric explains that he was worried about the concept of Russell finding peace in oblivion, and so he has designed something much worse than death so that Russell won't ever stop being sad.

I wonder how much of this quest to avenge the Vikings is really about Godric? It turned him and Sookie around on each other, when he died, and we haven't really seen him do much else this year. Anyway, as Russell laughs about Eric's quaint ideas of heaven, Godric appears again and tells Eric that everybody deserves peace, but Eric can't handle that idea yet. Bill also has a lot of reasons to hate Russell, from the kidnapping to the coma to getting dumped like eleven times, but also because of that time he went dark and turned Lorena's head all around and then ate a stripper with them. So his weird glee and purple prose at this point make sense, I guess. It's Bill Compton.

By Jacob Clifton

And just when you're ever so happy, three terrible things happen, the first two being dialogue and the third being a scary creepy doll on the floor that they haven't noticed yet: She goes, "I love you so much, I don't know what I'd do without you," which is like just asking for him to get murdered, and he goes, "Well, it's lucky for you you'll never have to find out," which is just like him offering to get murdered. So now Hoyt is going to get murdered, I guess, and then we are going to have ourselves a motherfucking problem.

And on that note, Steve Newlin has his own line of Vampire Hunter rifles and wooden bullets, and looks adorable in the marketing materials, and Maxine is buying one. So just to review, now there's three problems: Maxine has a vampire gun, there's a voodoo baby in the house, and they just said the magic incantation that gets you murdered.

On the other hand, between Jessica's need to rejigger her sexuality in light of her physical disabilities, resulting in a free exchange of penetration, sexual and otherwise, Hoyt choosing a socially liminal mate over a mini-Maxine, self-defined marriage and family, the fact that they'll have to adopt and all these different ways that the politics of hate intersect with their lives, and the simple fact that average human life is built to work a certain way that doesn't accommodate their particular lives, and so everything is harder and more complicated and more open to disaster, and more hard-won... Considering these things, really Hoyt and Jessica have a more realistic gay relationship than Jesus and Lafayette do. Or at least a more mature one.

Bill shows up and Sookie's not dying to talk to him but she invites him in, and he can't wait to immediately tell her that he killed not only Russell but Eric, which Sookie can't handle, of course, but here's Bill's sick little justification for everything. "Sookie, most vampires are not like me. Even if holding themselves back occurred to them, they would probably not be able to. I'm not taking any chances. I intend to bring the true death to all that have tasted you and know what you are. Russell, Eric, Pam, the Queen... And any who discover it in the future. I will do anything to keep you safe, even if it means me not being a part of your life. This I swear to you. I have never loved, nor will I ever love, as I have loved you."

There is nothing harder to shed than the White Knight complex, believe me. You can make everything work within that structure if you do it right. The worst abuses coming from the greatest places. He's the guy at the party that wants to hoard the coke, but he's selling it to himself as this paragon of virtue and self-control. Any time you have somebody telling you they are the only good person, get out of the room, because they are the worst person there. And it sucks because it's such an addict move, and he's so clearly an addict and always has been, but that doesn't invalidate the feelings at all. You know? They loved each other, they still love each other. But when it's tainted by this kind of thing, love is not enough.

Sookie follows Bill to the door, and just when you think she's going to fuck it up yet again, Eric thankfully shows up and just starts laying it out. Bill tries to apologize or explain it but there's no way, and Eric just keeps saying worse and worse true shit. Like the Edict of the Queen to procure Sookie for her own, although he didn't know why it was, and then once he got to know her (and got addicted/fell in love) he did all he could to keep Sookie away from her (and everybody else/for himself).

Okay, but how about the first time, when she first tasted his blood that we keep mentioning this season, when the Rattrays beat her almost to death. The thing -- tears pouring down his face now -- that she's wondered all the time, if she can really love him without the blood being a part of it. And what they're saying now is that she never had the chance to know that. She orders him out the door and he holds onto the doorframe like Sylvester the Cat, feet in the air, weightless.

"Don't ever come here. Don't ever call me. Don't ever talk to me. Ever. You manipulated me into falling in love with you." Bill swears that he is actually really in love with her, and she screams and ugly-cries about how he doesn't even get to use that word love, and wills him out into the dirt. Eric too. He promises, before leaving, that he wouldn't really have given her to Russell, and apologizes for telling her those last little tidbits. "I'm sorry to see you suffer like this, but I thought you had the right to know." She calls him a dead piece of shit and he flies away.

Tara drives past Merlotte's one more time and smiles, listening to their voices. The place isn't dirty anymore. It's just another place that used to be home. Then she's gone.

Pam, having washed the cement out of her hair while Eric was at Sookie's, asks if Eric killed Bill or what. Eric says that what he did to Bill was way worse than that, and those two beautiful sons of bitches go right back to being their usual awesome selves: "Ruben tried to kill me, by the way. I took him out," Pam explains, to Eric's protests. "I have zero patience with that shit."

Sam chases Tommy through the forest and threatens him with a gun and just keeps demanding his money back. Tommy makes the very good point that Sam, for his own White Knight reasons, basically destroyed his life. It was shitty and exploitative and full of Joe Lee's dingus, but it was the sum total of things he knew. Like, he can't even read. So Sam has made that mistake of trying to help and then doing it half-assed, and won't even admit it. He just wants his money. Tommy tells him to suck a dick and takes off into the woods, and then I guess Sam shoots his brother dead. No idea. If he did, that sucks. Love Tommy.

By Jacob Clifton

Tara drives past Merlotte's one more time and smiles, listening to their voices. The place isn't dirty anymore. It's just another place that used to be home. Then she's gone.

By Jacob Clifton

Sookie sits in her house totally alone: Alcide's gone, Eric's a fuckface, Bill is something so gross there's not even a word for it, Jason's King of Mongies, Tara's pretty obviously gone, Sam's off doing murders, Gran's dead, cat's dead. Instead of eating pie, she runs off into the graveyard. Which used to be simple: It was the place between her house and Bill's house, and the place Adele was buried, and that was it. Sometimes for sex. But now it's also the place between here and there, too, and it's interesting how we're reminded of this, because it cuts from her running to the same place she always runs, to somebody knocking on Bill's door. And of course it's not Sookie, but at the same time that one little cut just told you how important that is. The geography is shifting. The graveyard meant that Death was between them, but now that Claudine's arrived it means that Life is between them too.

Sophie-Anne, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana and Mississippi, arrives at Bill's house looking fucking amazing in her widow's weeds and drooling for faerie blood. "I can't wait to feel the sunlight on my skin again. Maybe I'll get a yacht..." Bill once again tries to be cool and once again it is sheer nihilism: "Sookie is not here. Yes, I brought you here under false pretenses. But I do have another surprise for you. Only one of us will leave this house." The Queen's like, "I'm twice as old as you and a bad-ass" and he's like, "Ah have nothin' left to lose" and it's so quaintly Bill that she can't help it, the fight starts there. They fang up and both of them slowly rise into the air like ninjas in the Matrix.

And out in the graveyard, all alone, without her sister and without her brother, Hadley gone to ground, Sookie cries at Adele's grave. "Gran, I am so lost. I followed my heart, but it led me down a dead-end road. I miss you so much. I've never felt so alone, and I've spent my whole life feeling alone." And then she's not alone. Claudine appears, and holds out her hands, and Sookie's not alone at all. And then she's not anything. Then she's just vanished.